Talk:Golden Gate Bridge

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Golden Gate Bridge

Bridges for Wiktionary? --Keene 10:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep. Famous place name, specific translations in other languages. —Stephen 16:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep, as above. --EncycloPetey 01:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep famous monuments. bd2412 T 02:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep. Famous place name.--Dmol 07:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Kept. DAVilla 19:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

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Has passed RfD. It's sole current meaning is literal and does not seem to justify its inclusion, but there are no citations shown supporting any other meaning. DCDuring TALK 11:17, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Have we ever had a discussion about including proper names of world-famous landmarks? I don't recall one. --EncycloPetey 05:05, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Nor I, but I haven't been here long. The RfD discussion of this was quite brief and resulted in a it passing. This is the only one of a list of these brought to RfD which passsed RfD. I would assume that it would have to meet attributive use requirements under our current rules. DCDuring TALK 12:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Found in books.google.com: "Hoga, the Golden Gate Bridge of Sweden", "Pont du Gard — the Golden Gate Bridge of 19 BC", "jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge of political reality", others where the context is not clear. I don't think an attributive use requirement is healthy because in many cases we'd be trying to force a connotation that may not carry weight. Even if it's credible by our standards, three out of millions of citations doesn't make it noteworthy enough to mention. DAVilla 06:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I always thought the purpose of the attributive use criteria was just to provide evidence that an otherwise unincludable Proper noun was in significant usage in a non-encyclopedic sense. I can't think of wording for a sense that encompasses these usages. DCDuring TALK 00:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Great Wall of China, Eiffel Tower, Grand Canyon, World Trade Center, Louvre; world famous landmarks are used both attributively and metaphorically all the time, in several ways, we should list the literal meanings and allow the reader to interpret the extended meanings themselves. I say this regardless of whatever the CFI currently has to say about them, if they aren't already allowed they should be. - [The]DaveRoss 01:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The big American dictionaries such as Random House have this and similar names. The fact that they keep getting deleted here convinces me that our criteria have not been thought through or are poorly worded. We should have the names and the criteria need be reworked. —Stephen 01:22, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I feel that those dictionaries are just trying to outdo the others by being more encyclopaedic. Perhaps what we really need is a combined Wikimedia search that will suggest Wikipedia results if the dictionary doesn't have them. (Actually, I think we have that already.) Equinox ◑ 01:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

When we say we don't want to be encyclopedic I always thought we meant in depth of content not in scope of content. There is certainly linguistic relevance to place names and landmarks and monuments, there are often translations, etymologies, irregularities in pluralization, regional namings -- the list goes on. We don't want to be encyclopedic in how we describe words (i.e. we want to define words not describe the object in question) but we shouldn't limit the scope of the words we will define simply for the fear that we might cover the same material that an encyclopedia might also cover. - [The]DaveRoss 01:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The big American dictionaries are at least as scholarly and professional as the OED. They don’t try to "outdo" anyone by being encyclopedic. As long as we are controlled by this irrational, amateurish loathing of multi-word and other complex entries, we will remain a children’s grammar-school glossary. —Stephen 01:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, want to sneer a bit more? I can tell you're enjoying it. Equinox ◑ 01:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Among the OneLook references that have this: Columbia Encyclopedia, Columbia Gazetteer of North America, Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, and Wikipedia. Among source dictionaries: Encarta and Random House. Cambridge, Oxford, Collins, MW, and AHD do not. If we fail to include it directly, the WMF family remains represented. Evidently not every dictionary feels compelled to have even major gazetteer entries. That we have a sister project that has such items would seem to relieve us of the burden of duplicating content.

What WP does not have is a full range of translations. Their etymologies are uneven. I suspect that they do not cover linguistically (toponymically) interesting, but otherwise non-notable places. They do have nicknames. They don't have lists of all the placenames suffixed in "-field" etc.

I can see a role for a WikiGazetteer project that addressed the peculiar needs of topnymy. I don't know that Wiktionary will be a good home for the effort, just as it has not proven a suitable home for the taxonomic hierarchy, for a thesaurus, or even for grammatical formulas (X one's Y off), all of which have linguistic justification, two of which have no plausible alternative home in the WMF family.

Golden Gate Bridge delenda est. DCDuring TALK 03:33, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Stephen G., but many dictionaries, especially American college dictionaries do try to outdo each other in the number of entries listed in the jacket marketing text, and in the prominent entries and buzzwords you can find while browsing in the bookstore, at the expense of more valuable lexicographical definitions. They insert non-dictionary encyclopedic entries for self-promotion, with questionable actual value for the customer. Landau 2001, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography says so, in pretty much so many words. If you doubt it, I can hunt down some quotations.

But we don't add any value, or save any bookshelf space, by adding an inadequate copy of a Wikipedia entry instead of a link. Aping the print dictionaries' marketing strategies is a disservice to our “customers.” We also don't have any mandate to translate the name of every person, place and thing into other languages.

The entries we have should depend on their lexicographical identity—looks like Empire State Building arguably noses in, Golden Gate Bridge arguably doesn't— or their onomastic qualities, which we haven't even begun to address. —Michael Z. 2009-06-06 15:58 z

RFV passed as "clearly widespread use". The conclusion of RFD was to keep it because it's (sigh) a "famous place name", not because of putative attributive use or any such. It's unfortunate that the RFD discussion bore so little connection to any of our stated CFI, but I don't see that a lack of attributive citations really affects that outcome. Sorry, DCDuring. (And sorry, anyone who thinks our policies should be more than just something to bludgeon newbies with.) —Ruakh_TALK 04:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I enthusiastically agree that this is the right result. There are many proper nouns that are used this way (metaphorically ?). A usage note to guide users to some uses of the metaphor might be nice. In my ideal non-Gazetteer Wiktionary, I would really like this kind of criterion formalized. Even if we go the Gazetteer route, it illustrates a mode of use for other classes of proper nouns. In the interim, this is a very useful "common-law" precedent for how we, um, interpret and apply existing CFI. DCDuring TALK 12:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

RFD discussion

For a RFD discussion that took place in 2008–2009, see Talk:Angkor Wat. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 11:22, 24 May 2017 (UTC)