Talk:Dickens

RFD discussion: September 2022–August 2023

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Dickens

Rfd-sense: Charles Dickens, English novelist.

I readded this sense after it was removed without process. To handle things cleanly, I am listing the sense in RFD. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per WT:LEMMING; governed by WT:NSE. The sense is in M-W[1], Collins[2], and AHD[3]; see also “Dickens”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com has entry Charles Dickens[4], which we do not want and have policy against. OED does not have Charles in Dickens but they do not have surname Dickens either, only mentioning the surname in the etymology of lowercase dickens; OED does not have Asia, Ontario and Germany, so it is not much of a guide for us. Having Charles in Dickens matches our long-term practice: more examples include philosophers (Plato), poets (Keats), politicians (Churchill), writers (Emerson), playwrights (Shakespeare), composers (Chopin), explorers (Cook) and scientists (Darwin). Charles is also supported by the uncodified derived-adjective principle with unknown support: there is adjective Dickensian dedicated to Charles. WT:NSE does not provide specific rules for Charles in Dickens, so we have to use uncodified rules to handle the case. Attempts to remove specific individuals from Wiktionary date back to 2010, per Category talk:Individuals, but they never went anywhere. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

  Needless to say, it is easy to design a policy in either direction, e.g. "There shall be no sense lines dedicated to individual people in entries for surnames, and individual people shall not be mentioned on the surname definition line." And the derived-adjective principle is this: "When an adjective is derived from a proper name and the adjective definition features a specific individual or other specific entity, that entity should also be listed as a sense in the base proper name." The problem is that neither is probably supported by consensus. The result is the apparently unfair inclusionism since deletion has to overcome the hurdle of 2/3 threshold (not official, but no other one is better supported by evidence). This could be amended by passing 3/5 (60%) to be the overridable threshold for deletion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

  Not a single general dictionary in OneLook has Dickens as a surname: each one that has Dickens at all has Charles Dickens there. This is a systematic pattern with biographical names in general dictionaries: not at all or the specific person. Even more dictionaries have Darwin, done exactly the same way. With geographic names, we are hugely more inclusive than general dictionaries; why do we choose the opposite for biographical names? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:18, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

  I expanded Category talk:en:Individuals with a list of 193 individuals in English surname entries. Category:English terms suffixed with -ian currently has 2,615 entries; that's the current upper limit on the individuals supported by a derived -ian adjectives. Even if it reached 10,000, that's nothing like a million biological taxa duplicated from Wikispecies in Wiktionary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:35, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

  For tracking, this is per User:Dan Polansky/IA § Derived-term principle and User:Dan Polansky/IA § Extrapolate lemmings.--Dan Polansky (talk) 08:44, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep, properly defining for anyone who looks this up as the lemma for something like Dickensian. bd2412 T 06:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Already got a "see also" for him, by the way: that's the correct solution here. Equinox ◑ 12:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

The See also is a remnant of the out-of-process deletion (actually moving to See also) that I forgot to remove. The See also does not need to be there when there is a sense line. This See also solution also shows that the disagreement is in some sense really petty: the person is going to be covered anyway if one admits See also for the person, just not on the sense line. And in Mother Teresa, the person is going to be covered in some way anyway, just in the etymology; the term will have no proper noun section, which is bizarre given it is primarily a proper noun. I don't understand this fear of specific entities on the definition lines when the entities are human individuals: there is no such fear with geographic names such as Newtown. I saw no rationale for treating humans different from places. Places are on the sense lines, exceptionally notable humans can too; more generically of proper names: some specific entities are on the sense lines. We don't cover place names by saying "place name" on the definition line and then shoving the specific places to See also or Further reading. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete obviously. It's completely normal for texts to not repeat the full name of a person over and over, but that still doesn't endow the surname word with a new sense. I also reject any exemption based on notability. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:43, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

There is no "exemption": CFI does not forbid this case. The referents of proper names are their meaning. It is only about practicalities, to what extent to cover the meaning. "surname" is not a sense; it is a function of the word; having it as a definition line is a practical expedient, not semantics. "Dickens" used out of context, without introduction, without repetition, automatically refers to Charles, that's the point. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:50, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete per Fytcha and others above. - -sche (discuss) 18:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete No uses except as a person's surname. DJ Clayworth (talk) 20:14, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

This person says in other RFDs that "Dictionaries should not contain proper nouns, especially ones that only refer to one thing" and "Dictionaries don't contain proper names", the former being an opinion contrary to our CFI, the latter being manifestly factually wrong. And they have 14 edits in content namespaces, and would be ineligible for a formal vote, although there is no such rigid rule for RFDs. I think votes by someone like that should not count. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:53, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Unsure. I added an RFD notice to Prince (the singer) but didn't list it here, I got cold feet. DonnanZ (talk) 10:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Weak keep. I can't quite agree with Fytcha's reasoning above because there is an obvious difference between switching to a surname after the referent has already been expressly introduced in a text (i.e. not repeating over and over), and a surname that is well-established in use as a reference to a particular person without any prior context. Of course, the latter can apply to many people with more ephemeral fame than Dickens—so I'm not sure what a good specific criterion for inclusion would be if we need a hard-and-fast rule. If there were to be one, I think it would need to depend on a degree of perenniality and universality (or context-independence), and "Dickens" seems to be closer to "Shakespeare" in that sense than just any surname which would only be understood in a specific context, hence my leaning to keep. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:03, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion after several months. Those who would want to delete this would perhaps find it more productive to join forces and handle this is a matter of policy: no senses for specific entities in surname entries. They would need to hope that editors will bother to come to a vote much more readily than come to RFD, since the yield on time is better (delete a whole batch of senses, not just a single one). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Undid closure - it's bad faith to say there is no consensus here for deletion (4 delete vs 2 keep + 1 weak keep). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:44, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  While I'm here, delete. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:44, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  I discounted DJ Clayworth, who has almost no contribution to Wiktionary (less than 50 edits in content spaces) and ought not count; that person claimed elsewhere dictionaries do not do proper nouns, a clear untruth. That gives us 3 deletes vs. 2.5 keeps. With Surjection, we get 4 deletes vs. 2.5 keeps, still no consensus per WT:VPRFD; however, the above delete with zero rationale ought to be discounted, and minimum rationale ought to be required. Speculations about "faith" are uncalled for, and closure can be contested on whatever plausible grounds; I am fine with that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:41, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

• On balance, delete. It is extremely common usage to refer to people by their surnames. While Dickens itself is, I suppose, a relatively uncommon surname, allowing a definition like "Charles Dickens" opens the door to entries like Kim or Smith being flooded with senses consisting solely of people with that surname. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  As for "on balance", no items were stated that are being "balanced", so it has no practical semantics. As for "opens the door" argument, that seems to be the case of the slippery slope fallacy (if one wants to play the fallacy naming game). In any case, it seems to present some kind of open-floodgate problem although the very top of this RFD presented two gates to stop any flood: 1) lemmings, and 2) existence of a derived adjective. More floodgates can be invented. The argument that "Kin" or "Smith" are somehow in danger of being "flooded" does not have a iota of plausibility. I motion that the RFD closer dismisses the above as utterly baseless and implausible; one has to argue much better than that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. There's quite a number of these, without naming them. It's unfair, therefore, to pick on Dickens. In fact, my Oxford Dictionary of English lists Dickens, the English novelist. DonnanZ (talk) 10:51, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

  Then all of such entries should be deleted. I think Wiktionary does not strive to be the same type of reference work as the Oxford Dictionary of English, which “includes thousands of brand-new words and senses, as well as up-to-date encyclopedic information, and extensive appendices covering topics such as countries, heads of state, and chemical elements” (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199571123.001.0001/acref-9780199571123;jsessionid=C53A2FC0EA5E2841169BDD060ECF389D). We regard the italicized part as the job of Wikipedia. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:37, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

• Revise: There is another way around this. Alter the surname definition by adding "notably that of Charles Dickens", then the separate definition can be removed. This has been done elsewhere, and I think it's a good compromise. DonnanZ (talk) 21:15, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  I’ve added a note to our sense 1 of Dickens to reflect this. I’m indifferent whether we keep sense 2 or not but we don’t need it now. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:45, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

•  Keep. ‑‑Kai Burghardt (talk) 21:34, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Thus far I count four to keep (one "weak"), five to delete, one unsure, and one to revise, though the proposed revision would effectively delete the sense. I am not seeing a clear consensus here for deletion, but I think the proposed revision would satisfy all concerns. Is there any objection to closing the discussion in accordance with this reading of consensus? bd2412 T 05:26, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Since nobody has objected—and I don't either—RFD-deleted sense 2, with the revision kept for sense 1. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)