Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 7

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Backup

I've never come across "to backup" meaning "to back up", in the sense of moving backwards. In the sense of backing up data, I'm not sure it is admirable grammatically. In either case, though it may be legitimate, can't a better exemplar be found? Unfree (talk) 03:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Umm ...

Shouldn't this page have the essay tag on it? — Ched :  ?  20:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It's core policy that is integral to the wikipedia actually being an encyclopedia, always has been as far back as 2002 and probably earlier. It helps decide what articles get deleted or kept. So... no.- Wolfkeeper 00:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Ummm ... sorry .. NO ... it is NOT policy! It is an essay about a sub-section of WP:NOT. — Ched :  ?  03:20, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

It appears that you are by no means alone in that assessment. I never knew this subpage existed until someone flat out deleted Secularity based on this "policy" page, and edit warred over it all the while claiming that the term was an adjective and not a noun (something I'm still dumbfounded by). The reason I bring that up is because the impression that particular incident gave me was that some editors are rather rabid about defending this "policy" and it's stand alone status as such, even if that means forgetting about more basic conventions like establishing consensus for contentious content deletion. Nothing is gained by having anything above and beyond what is plainly stated on the WP:NOT policy page considered actual policy, except for the power trip it gives people to wield some fine tuned policy hammer around the project when people disagree with their assessment of how to interpret the relevant section of WP:NOT. Maybe this issue needs to be discussed by a broader group of editors in order to gain a more adequate consensus.PelleSmith (talk) 05:16, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a guideline, as I attempted to argue above. Essays are more interpretive and opinion oriented, whereas guidelines descrive how to apply practices. There clearly is consensus that "Wikipedia in not a dictionary", and the policy that supports the point that there is content that is inappropriate for Wikipedia is WP:NOT. This document describes one of the more important and concrete cases of "What Wikipedia is not", and it should therefore be a guideline.

The only issue is that there is one particular editor who misunderstands the role of policies and guidelines, but has taken it upon himself to jealously guard this document as his turf. Anyone who dares to question his views on the matter is to be attacked by various means. I just quit caring about it, and so has everyone else to this point in time (and really, it doesn't matter that much. After all, this is only a policy document).
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:19, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• Well, at least I found the source of my own confusion - someone had changed the policy template which is transcluded here, and apparently without any wide discussion about it. It appears that somewhere between April and July of this year, the "policy" template was added to this page, and the "proposal" template removed. I haven't researched the history of that yet, but I'm sure there is a large scale discussion which included a RfC that prompted it. For now, I've fixed the policy template, and will do a little checking into the back-history of this "policy" in the near future. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to drop me the links to these changes. Best — Ched :  ?  02:37, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The policy on the difference between policies and guidelines and essays is at: Wikipedia:Policy#Role. Please check it yourself, but it states that policies are things you have to follow, and guidelines are things you should only normally follow. Ohm's law says: "Essays are more interpretive and opinion oriented, whereas guidelines descrive how to apply practices.", but this is flatly wrong according to the policy on policies.

This page is policy, has always been policy and has been written intending to constitute policy, I'm sure, by the very many people far cleverer than me that have contributed to it.- Wolfkeeper 03:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I do see that this being a policy page dates back at the very least more than 3 years. My confusion arose due to a change in the {{policy}} template which was done in very recent weeks. It effectively changed the header from:

• This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

to

• This page explains an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

Hopefully you can understand the confusion here. There were some changes to that template in August which removed the bold This page documents an official English Wikipedia policy; the version that many folks were familiar with. While there was some discussion on this - it wasn't a broadly advertised change; and even the one RfC that I have been able to find didn't discuss this change, but rather the removal of the Changes made to it should reflect consensus.. I have indeed struck my "It's not a policy" statement, regardless of my (or your opinion). I'm quite familiar with the differences between policies, guidelines, and essays - but the change in the policy template (which equates to this page's header) led me to believe that this was not a policy at the time of my original posting. It's not something I see as worth bickering about, but if an RfC were to arise about this page's role in WP, I'd be more than happy to offer an opinion. To be honest, it was an issue at an AfD which brought me here, and I tend to stick to the main talking points of WP:NOT. Now that I've seen the various difficulties both here and at the template, I'm happy to add them to my watchlist and I'll continue to follow along. If the unapproved change to the policy template which caused my confusion led to you being offended, then I humbly offer my apologies to you. I have taken the steps to restore the template to it's previously discussed state. If there is anything else you require from me, feel free to drop me a note. Also, you may wish to note that (I believe) this page is not listed at our official list of policies (Wikipedia:List of policies), while WP:NOT is. Cheers and best. — Ched :  ?  03:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

No, that's fine then. It's just we actually have someone here that unilaterally decided to edit the policy tag away; it actually was marked as a guideline for a few weeks over Christmas until I spotted it and broke out in a cold sweat- if it hadn't been a surreptitious edit it could actually have counted as consensus, but he'd lied in the subject line. And there's others that start long hate discussions on various policy pages about how a 'certain person' is stopping the wikipedia from becoming the dictionary it's always wanted to be (or something equally ridiculous like that 8-) ). And some of the admins are as bad, and it looks like they tend to self-select for deciding article fates in AFDs, which is really, really bad news.- Wolfkeeper 04:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Please note that whatever the incident is that Wolfkeeper seems to be attempting to insinuate I had a hand in... I didn't. I'm not at all surprised at these tactics though, as this sort of vitriolic, combative attitude is something that I've seen from him in every single interaction I've ever had. Anyway, it takes all kinds to develop Wikipedia, including the worst personalities, so... se la vie.

Wolfkeeper wants to view policies as some sort of body of law, and he's willing to sit on this document and impose his view, so it's labled as policy. Eventually though he'll leave, and it'll be properly classified. I guess that there are many who either hope or worry that it's role in AFD will change, which I don't see happening regardless of any editing, so that seems to explain the reason why actual consensus isn't effective here.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

LOL, I wasn't talking about you.- Wolfkeeper 22:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• I agree that the page should not be a policy as it is not rigorously followed. Guideline status seems best as this provides the appropriate amount of wiggle-room to properly represent our common variation in practise. Regarding User:Wolfkeeper's insinuations, it seems that he refers to a matter which was discussed at length at WQA. Colonel Warden (talk) 01:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletion policy

A while ago I said a dumb thing, something like, if this page were in a policy subcat, it would probably be content policy, since it's a spinoff of the content policy page WP:NOT. That was just wrong ... at least 90% of what's here is about how to categorize pages and what kinds of pages not to have, which is why when this page is cited, it's cited at WP:AfD. That clearly makes it a deletion policy. WP:NOT is cited for page deletions too, but it's also cited for lots of other things, which is why it's content policy. There's still an argument that this page has a little bit of a how-to and advice-giving feel, which is sometimes more appropriate for guidelines than policies, but I don't really want to push the point. The page has been policy for a long time, and it's headed in the right direction. - Dank (push to talk) 21:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Hacker jargon

"But see also jargon file; articles, even extremely in-depth articles, on hacker culture are very welcome, and insofar as guides to some particularly essential piece of hacker slang is necessary to understand those articles, of course articles on that slang would be great to have."

What is this line trying to say? Do we really have a special exception for hacker jargon? I'd work on clarifying this, but I'm not sure what the intention was. Gigs (talk) 15:46, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed this emphasis on hacker jargon based on the lack of comment here. Gigs (talk) 18:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Ambiguity

I notice there were some long discussions above about removing the ambiguities in this policy but I didn't see a resolution (and the policy page still appears to be ambiguous). Is there any further plan to resolve this? I'll bring up another case that hasn't been mentioned here: Category:English idioms. This category is essentially a dictionary of phrases. The only difference between these articles and the ones listed above is that these expressions involve more than one word. So does having more than one word make it encyclopedic?

--Mcorazao (talk) 19:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

No, nor does having one word. All titles are made of words, and can be idiomatic.- Wolfkeeper 20:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I see the key difference between an encyclopedia and a dictionary being that a dictionary entry is about the term itself, regardless of the meanings ascribed to it, while an encyclopedia article is focused a particular subject, regardless of the term used to name the subject. Thus, this article is about motor fuel derived from petroleum, regardless of whether the page is named gasoline or petrol. But the dictionary entry on petrol will be about the word petrol itself, which will be different from the entry on the word gasoline.

Articles on things like idioms and such are kind of a gray area, in that they're about a given phrase (similar to a dictionary), but treat that phrase as a subject matter. You could argue it either way.

I do think Wikipedia articles sometimes edge into dictionary territory, but my impression is that the general consensus is: Such articles are considered suboptimal and should be fixed -- not that WP:NOTDICT should be relaxed. So the existence of dictionary-like content does not mean the policy is obsolete, just that enforcement is sometimes lacking. Vandalism sometimes goes uncaught, too; that doesn't mean WP:VAND isn't policy.

Cheers. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• It is our policy (WP:NOTLAW) that policies are not prescriptive; that they should represent what actually happens. This includes the outcome of enforcement, as you say. In this case, we have numerous outcomes which show that dictionary content is tolerated and impossible to remove in practise. We don't just have a category for idioms, we have one for words: Category:English words. Colonel Warden (talk) 07:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking at Category:English words, it seems the category's description does not match what it is actually used for. Most of the entries are not about individual words the way dictionary entries are about individual words. For example, The is a redirect to English articles -- favoring subject matter over a particular word. It appears most of the "loanword" categories simply categorize articles which happen to have a loanword as the article title. So I would say this actually supports the proposition that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. • I'm sure one can find exceptions somewhere. Policies are far from ironclad. Since w'ere invoking, WP:NOTLAW: "Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies." —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 11:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

You say ee-ther, I say eye-ther

Another relevant example:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations (3rd nomination)

Colonel Warden (talk) 10:46, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

• The result was Keep. Colonel Warden (talk) 19:27, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

• I can't see how this is relevant to us here. The list of names are all proper names, most dictionaries and Wiktionary (for example) don't have proper names (actually they have a few if they can be used as adjectives). It's difficult to see how this article is dictionary material.- Wolfkeeper 00:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Start as stubs?

Quote from the lead: "Both dictionary articles at Wiktionary and encyclopedia articles at Wikipedia start out as stubs". I recommend removing or changing the bit on Wikipedia articles. They may start out as stubs, but there is positively no need to generalize it. Start articles as stubs or welcome to CSD? On the contrary, starting more or less complete articles, say, at least B-class, should be preferred to stubs. NVO (talk) 19:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It is true though that they do start as stubs. The policy never said that they must start as stubs.- Wolfkeeper 15:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

So... um 'wikipedia is not a usage guide'

Somebody seems to be trying to edit war on the policy: [1]

There's a big problem, because even though freedom has more or less always been in this policy, freedom isn't even an article, and hasn't been since around 2005.- Wolfkeeper 13:45, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

There's actually quite few true usage guides in the Wikipedia, but there's quite a few which are badly written encyclopedia articles.- Wolfkeeper 13:45, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The "someone" trying to edit war is you. My objection was to your wording changes, not to the "freedom" link. Your changes slanted the wording towards your opinion that Wikipedia articles should not contain discussion of word usage, and that Wiktionary should be Wikipedia's receptacle for this. This opinion is not backed by consensus.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:10, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

This is actually not controversial in terms of policy. What the policy is clumsily trying to say is that the topic of an article should not to be a usage guide of a term or word, but it's acceptable sometimes to include some usages of words in an article. However, usage guides are not the purpose of encyclopedia articles at all; they're supposed to be covering the thing not the words. Dictionaries are explicitly about covering words, and how they are used. Encyclopedias are intended to be used in conjunction with dictionaries.- Wolfkeeper 14:45, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

That's why a lot of the policy is written as it is, why WP:ADJECTIVEs are heavily deprecated and why the wikipedia is not a usage guide.- Wolfkeeper 14:45, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

A lot of people... don't quite get this... but nevertheless 99.9% of the articles turn out correctly probably because people ape other article's style and the style more or less forces you to do the right thing. Occasionally somebody really doesn't get it, or doesn't care, and then we get some dictionariac articles appearing. In a sense that's not entirely wrong, since the policies are not 100% binding, but it's highly desirable nevertheless that the policy try to push people in an encyclopedic direction.- Wolfkeeper 14:45, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

• No, it is not the purpose of policy to push people in any direction, as a form of central direction. And we have a policy which says so - WP:NOTLAW. Policy is a distillation of practise and consensus, recorded as a convenience for new editors or those unfamiliar with some aspect. The example in the previous section, which looks like being kept again, shows that usage guides are accepted and it is not the case that we forbid them in a rigorous way. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:49, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The point of policy is to help people follow the principles of the five pillars. The key point in WP:NOTLAW is that you're supposed to be following the spirit of the policies, not the letter. If anything there's an attempt here and elsewhere by others to write and rewrite the letter in a deliberate attempt to change the spirit. The general thrust of the pillars is pretty clear.- Wolfkeeper 19:14, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

No, the key point is that "Written rules do not themselves set accepted practice, but rather document already existing community consensus". Our policies are not laws - they are customs. If you want a policy to say something then you should demonstrate it is customary. And so provision of good examples is appropriate. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:09, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

No, that doesn't really work, because it devolves into wikiality. Principles are very much normative, whereas simply doing 'consensus' is inherently divergent; people have always done something different in lots of places in the Wikipedia and it just helps people increase these divergences to the point where it aids any agenda they may have.- Wolfkeeper 00:22, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Consensus is really supposed to be about trying to match article contents to policies and policy contents to principles. It's not about just creating any old consensual reality that people happen to agree on at the time.- Wolfkeeper 00:22, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

• I have substituted "prithee" for "freedom" as the latter is a disambiguation page and so does not seem a good example of what is meant here. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:56, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree that's a good example.- Wolfkeeper 19:14, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

You nominated prithee at afd in November 2009. (The result being that the community disagreed with you. Read the closing statement.)

Do you have any suggestions for what you think would be good examples, of articles on notable words/phrases/terms?

I think we need at least 2 examples for this page. I suggest Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and grok and prithee and thou and no worries and negro. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:06, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I would use thou. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:08, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That's part of Early Modern English.- Wolfkeeper 16:38, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

You're clearly trying to change the policy with that edit.- Wolfkeeper 19:17, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

• Per Dank's note here, I object to the recent changes that have no consensus. I do agree that Freedom is a poor example, and suggest we revert to the February version, but update that example. Prithee and Thou seem to have the most support (ie everyone except Wolfkeeper), so I suggest we use both of those. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Being old words, they're hard to put in context. Things like nigger, gay, and cunt, while dirty, are easy to understand why they have encyclopedia articles (for everyone other than Wolfkeeper, that is). It may be time to just choose one and add it; it seems like Wolfkeeper is going to keep edit-warring and remove anything that anyone else tries to put, using his 'consensus of one', so I see no point in waiting to find an edit that he approves of. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:43, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
    • I remind you that the text is referring to having usage information of terms that are related to and in addition to the primary encyclopedic information, not articles that are only about usages and meanings of a term, so those articles are not the kind of articles that the text referred to.- Wolfkeeper 14:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

What we really need is a new section indicating that articles on words and terms are acceptable. This is already indicated at WP:NOT, where the text already reads: "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject, such as Macedonia (terminology) or truthiness...", so in the very least this page ought to accord with that. I suggest a new subsection under The dictionary definition trap called "Dictionary entries", which would say something along the lines of: "Wikipedia articles should not be styled after dictionary entries, which are designed to include all definitions of a term, including distinct ones. Words and phrases may be the subject of an encyclopedia article, for example [ truthiness, thou, gay, craic, prithee, cunt, etc. ], and in some cases it is acceptable to discuss multiple related uses or definitions of a term, for example [ Macedonia (terminology), Americas (terminology), Netherlands (terminology), etc. ]. Articles about the cultural or mathematical significance of individual numbers are also acceptable. However, articles should rarely, if ever, contain multiple distinct definitions or usages of the article title." Thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuchullain (talk • contribs) 12:36, 5 April 2010

The principle is that they're broadly not acceptable. The problem is that, as soon as they are generally acceptable, then you have dictionary articles in the Wikipedia, and the wikipedia is no longer an Encyclopedia. The policy essentially says, that in some cases they have been judged acceptable at AFD. That's all it says. It's not a general rule at all.- Wolfkeeper 14:06, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, they appear to be acceptable to everyone who isn't Wolfkeeper. WP:NOT makes no such statement as "word articles must be run through an AfD to determine if they are acceptable; if they are kept, they are kept as an exception to the general rule". It says, "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject." We need to include something along the lines of my suggestion to ensure that this policy page and WP:NOT are in accord with each other. A further step will be towards creating a specific section specifically on articles about words, as the community consensus is abundantly clear that they are acceptable in some cases.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:45, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Uh huh. If you were right, then you would need to try to explain why according to the various policies there's to be no verb articles, preposition articles, prefix articles, suffix articles, adverb articles, adjective articles, and why all the other professionally written encyclopedias in the world don't have those things either. If you were right about what an encyclopedia is, then all of those things would be here in abundance. But they're not. Articles are supposed to be noun titles only. Please try to reconcile that with what you claim.- Wolfkeeper 15:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I mean, sure you can find some of probably all of those; but why are there so very few?- Wolfkeeper 15:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

(1) It is widely accepted words and terms can be the subject of Wikipedia articles. (2) To the point that it is already specifically indicated in WP:NOT. (3) This page ought to accord with that one. (4) Virtually everyone you've ever discussed your interpretation of policy with has disagreed with you. The end.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it isn't generally accepted. In fact word articles are regularly deleted at AFD, and this policy is a deletion reason given in the deletion policy.- Wolfkeeper 15:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Articles about bands and businesses are also regularly deleted at AfD. That means the encyclopedia cannot have any articles about bands or businesses. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:48, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I repeat the question, why are article titles always supposed to be noun titles???- Wolfkeeper 15:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Either because someone wrote that sentence badly; or, because that's what traditional paper encyclopedias did, and someone copied a sentence that described them. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The literature on encyclopedias says that they have nounal titles, and they didn't do that because they were written on paper, it's because of the relationship with dictionaries and because they summarise. The policy is that the Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.- Wolfkeeper 23:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

As you've agreed & defended before (eg 1, 2), we have many articles on notable phrases, which are clearly not noun titles. More below. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

You know what? That's a good point, I could and should have used a noun title.- Wolfkeeper 23:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

• I still hope that we can all get on the same page. To that end: Wolfkeeper: I think a fundamental part of your perspective, is predicated on the idea that someone else (ie. not Wikipedia) should be fulfilling the part of providing an encyclopedic dictionary. You believe that Wiktionary ought to be doing so, and you have been frustrated in the past when editors have said that Wiktionary does not accept that type/format of content (eg the "copasetic" discussions). Is that somewhat accurate?
  There's obviously some disagreement here somewhere, so let's see if we can unravel where it stems from, and how to resolve it. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, Wiktionary is not paper either, it probably wouldn't be an encyclopedic dictionary because that usually has proper nouns in it. Wiktionary is being run by people that act as if it is paper, and hence are trying to keep entries unreasonably short, and presumably that's why there's a weird guideline that (for example) etymologies should be short. Traditionally dictionaries are brutally short primarily because of space/weight/cost issues and Wiktionary is unthinkingly apeing that.- Wolfkeeper 23:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

So, given that Wiktionary does not work the way you believe it ought to, but instead works the way that it does, (meaning that they delegate the burden of writing "encyclopedic dictionary" type content to us, per wikt:Wiktionary:What Wiktionary is not point#1 sentence#2), and given that they are unlikely to change, what do you now believe that we (Wikipedia) should do with "encyclopedic-level" content on words? We can't move it to Wiktionary, so the only options are 1) delete it, and 2) keep it.
If you agree that we should keep it: How would you propose that we clarify the wording of this policy, to acknowledge that Wikipedia is the host of encyclopedic-level content on notable words? (Not on all words - we're definitely not a dictionary, and we don't want simple dicdefs. Everyone agrees on that.) Is Cuchullain's proposal above, something you can agree with?
Or, If you still believe that we should delete it: How do you propose we reconcile your position, with the fact that almost everyone else, and common-practice, disagrees? (provably so: the majority of afds by ltpowers and tenpoundhammer concerning dicdefs, end in 'keep'. I've spent hours investigating.)
Much thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

You can certainly have word-related information in the context of encyclopedic articles. It's generally not a really brilliant idea to go overboard on it, but the encyclopedic nature doesn't instantly disappear.- Wolfkeeper 22:35, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

For example if you look at truthiness, the topic is not actually about the word any more (I did a certain amount of light rewriting- and I freely admit that that article is still very word-heavy for a good encyclopedic article) but the primary purpose of the encyclopedia article is (roughly speaking) about a satirical event related to belief masquerading as facts in politics; it is not actually a word article anymore. I also don't think that macedonia (terminology) is really a word article either, it's really about geo-temporal-spatial aspects of a particular sense of nationality. If a different language used a different word than 'macedonia', the article would still translate perfectly, that's because it's not a word article about the word M+A+C+E+D+O+N+I+A, it's about the thing the sense of identity.- Wolfkeeper 22:35, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Your Truthiness re-write, which I believe should be reverted, because the article is about the-word-as-redefined-by-Colbert. Your rewrite makes that unnecessarily confusing. The same with your rewrite of the lead to The three Rs. -- Quiddity (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia is certainly not primarily about deleting word articles or moving things to Wiktionary, it's about putting things under encyclopedic topics; these are the topics that are not words. That's what the content policies push you towards doing if you follow them properly, not just WP:NAD. It's not about deleting stuff, it's primarily about finding the encyclopedic presentation and therefore making it encyclopedic.- Wolfkeeper 22:35, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't directly answer my question, but it seems to imply this: You still believe that Wikipedia should almost never have words as article-topics; and, you still believe almost any article that is about a word (eg. Moonies, Thou, Craic, Pwn, Sisu, Airplay, Copacetic, Witch (etymology), most of Template:LGBT slang, American (word), etc etc etc etc) should either be deleted, or be rewritten/merged so that they are no longer primarily about the term itself.
Furthermore, you intend to continue rewriting article-leads (and afd'ing long articles on words that other people think are "notable") in order to comply with this interpretation, despite all objections.
Is that accurate? (Not necessarily the specific examples or phrasing, but the general gist). -- Quiddity (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

No, this isn't about me. You and a few others apparently believe that encyclopedias should cover words, whereas the literature on encyclopedias and basically all the policies of the wikipedia say they shouldn't (with the exception of one tiny place where a couple of very dubious 'counterexamples' were written in, a technique normally called 'begging the question'). Nor do other encyclopedias cover words. And yet you insist that articles should be rewritten to make them entirely about words. Is that accurate?- Wolfkeeper 14:43, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Enough. It's abundantly clear now that you need a topic ban. I am not sure about current practices: Is it enough to ask for one at WP:AN, or do we need a full RfC/U? Hans Adler 15:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

When I point out your truthiness it hurts huh??- Wolfkeeper 15:29, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably RfC/U as Wolfkeeper is contributing in good faith. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:37, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

You could try that, but there's a significant chance you'll all end up topic banned instead, or as well; I am actually following the spirit of the policies, and I don't think you are.- Wolfkeeper 15:40, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

By significant do you mean zero? We are following the spirit of the policies, you are following something else... --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:47, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The primary point and spirit of this place is to build an encyclopedia. You seem to believe/wish/hope that that means that articles on words are desirable, but all the actual evidence is that they're not. The policies, written over many years clearly deprecate them in lots of different ways, and it's not just this policy, and it's not just me.- Wolfkeeper 16:04, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Funny it's just you arguing against different, multiple editors in the discussions I've seen. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Given Wolfkeeper's complete refusal to acknowledge how widespread the disagreement with his perspective is (I count at least 10 admins who've tried to explain things to him), I see no other option but an RfC. It's been going on for over 2 years. Enough is enough. I don't know if the RfC should be about "notable words", or about Wolfkeeper - the two are hard to disentangle.
Unless someone has a better plan, I'll post my extensive notes here soon (sometime before the weekend). FYI, My notes are a mess, and are giving me a headache from re-reading too many times, so I'll be requesting assistance to help organize them. I'd prefer that someone else would take over (lead) the process - ideally an admin with Wiktionary experience, and experience formatting rfc/med/arb -style pages. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:24, 14 April 2010 (UTC)