Talk:Secretary of Defense

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It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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Secretary of Defense

Looks sum of parts to me. ---> Tooironic 21:52, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

This phrase belongs to the vocabulary of English, and nobody would use it to express this idea without having heard it first (why not minister of defense?). This is a good reason to include it. Lmaltier 05:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard this argument before for an RfD discusion. "Minister of defence" and "minister of defense" do exist; each has a variety of connotations which mean no more than the sum of their parts. ---> Tooironic 08:08, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

And how do you guess which one should be used, if they are not described here? A dictionary is not only used by readers, but also by "writers" and "speakers". Lmaltier 08:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

What you are talking about is collocation which goes beyond the aims of a dictionary and Wiktionary's CFI. In Australia, we have a Minister for Defence and a Minister for Tourism and a Minister for Sustainable Population, Communities, Environment and Water, but it is not Wiktionary's job to make entries for these, that is the jurisdiction of Wikipedia. ---> Tooironic 08:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why we wouldn't indicate the appropriate English title and translations for each of the 193 current w:Member states of the United Nations that have such a position, subject to attestation, of course. Of course, the value of the information is only weakly correlated with attestability. For various reasons, I am more likely to meet the defense official of one of the 180 countries for which I don't know the English title than the 13 for which I think I do.

Wikipedia's inclusion standards are not limited by considerations of attestability and are more likely to achieve completeness than Wiktionary. I do still maintain the hope that we can eventually become a better source of information about English words other than proper nouns than either WP or competing online dictionaries.

Err, Wiktionary is a dictionary - it defines words and idioms. It is not an encyclopedia; that's what Wikipedia is for. ---> Tooironic 02:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I was just playing with the implications of LMaltier's line of reasoning.

I think there is a fundamental divide between those who believe Wiktionary should be a tool to help one decode (mostly written) material and those who think it can somehow enable user to encode into a foreign language any thought they might express in their native language. LMaltier represents the second tendency if I understand him correctly. He is not alone. I favor the first point of view. The second task strikes me as vastly harder and requires general cultural knowledge and knowledge from specialized spheres that is far more than even WP, let alone Wiktionary, is likely to provide in the near future. I don't think we have yet approached completion of the "simple" task of allowing English users to decode English writings. DCDuring TALK 03:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't propose to create a page for Minister for Sustainable Population, Communities, Environment and Water. Don't you see the difference? Don't you feel that minister is the "normal" word, and that secretary is used (in this sense) only in some phrases, and that this is the reason why somebody has created this page? The creator of the page should confirm this reason. Lmaltier 16:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

But yes, I know that dictionaries are used by writers, etc., and that they should be helped, too. Even writers using their native language use dictionaries. I agree that this is not the major priority, but, when someone creates a page with useful linguistic information, I think that it should not be deleted. It's more work to delete a page than to keep it. Lmaltier 16:42, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Re: "Don't you feel that minister is the "normal" word, and that secretary is used (in this sense) only in some phrases […] ?": I don't think so. The U.S. uses secretary for all such positions; we never use minister, except in reference to other countries. Other countries that have a "secretary of defense" (or "defence"), such as Australia and New Zealand, seem to use "secretary" for other such positions as well — "secretary of finance", "secretary of the treasury", "secretary of health", and so on. (But Secretary of State, which you mention below, may well be a special case, since it's used even by countries that otherwise have "ministers".) —Ruakh_TALK 19:21, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The UK has a Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. Having said that, I don't feel particularly strongly about this one. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:00, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that is is not the same sense at all than in the US. Is this use not the same as the French secrétaire d'Etat? And this is a good reason to include Secretary of State. Lmaltier 17:18, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Every page created is a stimulus for the creation of pages that a contributor might find analogous or otherwise justified by the original page. Any correct text might contain "useful linguistic information": your approach seems in-principle indiscriminate. Writers seem to find dictionaries not designed to do encoding for them to be helpful. It is the feasibility in the current state of things of encoding as a mission for a reference work that troubles me. For example, how would writers search for what they wanted to say without being able to put it into words? Would we need a page for each search line entered that translated the search into something more apt? DCDuring TALK 17:07, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't propose anything special, only that, when somebody creates a page for something which belongs to the vocabulary of the language, the page should not be deleted. In this case, somebody may have heard Secretary of Defense in the US and use it in another country. If he's able to consult this page for checking, he'll be able to conclude that this phrase is used only in the US. Lmaltier 17:18, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I hope that your characterization of your idea as "anything special" is offered in the same spirit as Jonathan Swift offered his w:A Modest Proposal. In any event, what you suggest warrants some clarification of one or another sense or creation of an additional sense at [[secretary]], which would thereby also address false friendliness as it may arise in other governmental titles. DCDuring TALK 17:29, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand that I was wrong about the use of secretary (this page could be improved). But the question remains: would the deletion of the page make the dictionary better or less helpful? SemperBlotto should comment. Lmaltier 05:47, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Delete per nom. Keep secretary of state (lowercase) per Ruakh, Mg. (Not that it's nominated.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

deleted -- Liliana • 19:26, 15 November 2011 (UTC)