Talk:Star Wars

RFD discussion: August–November 2022

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Star Wars

Rfd-sense 1: An American epic space opera franchise centered on a film series created by George Lucas in a setting where futuristic technology co-exists with a semi-sentient form of magic/religion called the Force.

Obviously goes against WT:FICTION. If it's attributive, we need to explain how, but the definition as it stands is just the franchise.Theknightwho (talk) 18:16, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

As it stands, delete, but mainly because it—like e.g. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1—is not dictionary material, not necessarily because of FICTION, whose application to franchise names seems unclear (whether franchise names "originat[e] in fictional universes" seems debatable; they are applied to the franchises as part of constructing their fictional universes, but they may never be uttered or conceptualized as a thing inside the fiction the way something like light saber is). If this has attributes worth documenting (e.g. along the lines of BRAND) I'll reconsider if cites demonstrating that are found. - -sche (discuss) 21:02, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. This is not defined as the film, but as the franchise, which as a name is clearly used in senses that meet WT:FICTION. Functionally, it is like Potterverse, rather than any individual Harry Potter installment. bd2412 T 02:09, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
• Keep: The entry has sense "The United States Strategic Defense Initiative" which is not proposed for deletion. It seems weird to exclude the most common use of the term while including a rarer use. The entry is not improved by relegating the lead sense to etymology as if it were not a sense of the term. Governed by WT:NSE, from what I can see, since the term and the sense do not originate from fictional universes and therefore WT:FICTION does not seem to apply. Jedi is an example of a term originating from the fictional universe, but the franchise title itself is not; this line of argument was made by someone else in Winnie the Pooh RFD discussion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  Later: Let me change my rationale. This is a multi-word name and these are in general less includable in a dictionary. There has to be a saving grace. And the saving grace is not much the defense initiative since that could be deleted as well, but rather the derived adjective Star Warsy. Further saving grace are the uses in modification by "very", which is not all that common with proper names. Lexicographically, Star Wars is no worse than King James Bible or European Union and much better than United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; we include all these for reasons lexicographically irrelevant and I think we should actually delete the full name of the U.K., but we probably won't. Let us also keep things in perspective: there are 1.9 million described species and all these are includable in Wiktionary although not particularly lexicographically interesting. Including names of franchises where they generated a derived includable term seems pretty conservative by contrast. I have a new writeup at User talk:Dan Polansky § Include attested proper names that are lexicographically interesting, but it is a rather long read. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:26, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

  This (the defense sense) is the rationale which has me leaning keep as well. When something is named after something else, or when something is an attributive sense of something else, it is functionally the same thing as having an "&lit" sense to have the originating term. I don't want this to be a blanket policy, but in this case I am inclined to keep. It is probably more properly kept in an etymology, but from a usability standpoint that is an unsatisfying solution. I disagree with BD2412's assertion that this is not within the universe, the films are called "Star Wars: Episode n - subtitle", it is right there in the official titles. - TheDaveRoss 12:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  Delete, based on below discussion I am in the "mention in etymology only" camp now. - TheDaveRoss 13:35, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

  Sometimes, but not consistently in actual use. Sources are as likely to use titles like The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi without using "Star Wars" in the title. In any case, the phrase is also used out of universe, e.g., Steve Lillebuen, The Devil's Cinema: The Untold Story Behind Mark Twitchell's Kill Room (2012), p. 67: "The guy was weird, some kind of Star Wars and horror film fanatic". bd2412 T 16:30, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep per reasons already given. AG202 (talk) 15:24, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

On second thought, I'd more lean towards sending it to RFV. (though I'd fall back on keeping it) AG202 (talk) 19:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Franchises are encyclopedic, not dictionary material. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:24, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Note that is not about WT:FICTION but WT:NSE. Why on earth should we allow one franchise but not allow all of them? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:26, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

An answer: We would allow this franchise since the primary sense covering it yielded another sense to be included, and it seems weird not to include the most common sense of the term and only include a rarer sense, pretending the primary sense does not exist. If we decided to delete the entry with all senses wholesale, that would be a different matter. This criterion is far from being true for all franchises. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:45, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

No, we shouldn't. A mention in the etymology is enough. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:18, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Argument by contradiction and assertion, evidence-free, fact-free, analysis-free. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Another hint that Star Wars is lexicographically significant is the existence of derived adjective Star Warsy, referring to the franchise, again not true for any franchise. Another franchise is Star Trek and Talk:Star Trek shows repeated keeps; there is adjective Star Trekky. Using the arguments from Talk:Star Trek, we can note the modification by "very" referring to the franchise: "She's strong and she's cool, so we went with leather and a backward apron skirt that is quite punky but also very Star Wars" and there are many uses like this in google books:"very Star Wars". By contrast, Indiana Jones does not have a franchise sense but lists Indiana Jonesesque as derived, yet the adjective is not derived from the noun sense "expert in some scholarly subject who makes daring explorations" and pretending the primary sense does not exist seems just weird to me. For Indiana Jones, adding the fictional character without adding the franchise would do a lot to fix the entry. So there are at least three independent supporting criteria for this particular franchise and even if each of them alone were weak in filtering, which they are not IMHO, they apply here jointly. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Star Warsy, if attestable, can exist IMO, even though it is somewhat SOP-py since you can attach -y and -ish to basically anything. Star Wars should not. A dictionary isn't a database of fictional intellectual property. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:18, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

@Surjection: "Star Wars" can be used as an adjective in itself. See, e.g., Ray Dexter, The Hungarian Girl Trap (2006), p. 113: "Inside it is quite nice, all silver girders, silver tables in weird shapes and leather sofas. It is a very Star Wars bar (without the aliens) and it was filled with types who would have been called Beatniks in the 1950s". bd2412 T 20:27, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

"A very Star Wars bar", so what though? "That was a very J K Rowling tweet. You're a very Sid Vicious type of punk." It's understood that you can informally dump proper nouns into sentences like this, as though they were adjectives. But if that alone merits inclusion, we would indeed potentially have to include any movie, book, video game that anybody ever talks about. As I said not long ago IIRC, there is a reason why "real" dictionaries include Dickensian but not Dickens, and even why we go so far as Zeldaesque without (in video game sense) Zelda. Equinox ◑ 00:16, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

While google books:"very Sid Vicious" finds non-zero occurrences, google books:"very Star Wars" finds many; and in very Sid Vicious, very Star Wars at Google Ngram Viewer: very Sid Vicious not found. So "very" seems to be a useful filter, not leading us to include any movie, book, etc. But one has to actually look at evidence to see whether the filter is useful nor not.

“Darwin”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. reveals Charles Darwin in M-W, Collins and yourdictionary.com; Dickens fares worse, whyever. The "real" OED, a classic and very impressive dictionary, lacks surname Darwin, first names Martin and Paula, and the cities of London and New York; in New York, they define it as some kind of attributive adjective, mentioning New York only in etymology. From the New York entry, one would get the impression that OED avoids proper nouns and specific entities like a plague: they would rather include New York as an attributive adjective than being forced to admit New York is a city. But OED has Sirius (star), Mars (planet) and Milky Way; it has Homo sapiens; it has river Thames but not river Nile; they have entry Nile, but the river is only in etymology. OED Canada entry has the country only in etymology. OED Europe entry has the continent only in etymology and has European Union as the only sense. OED has no entries for Asia, Ontario and Germany. But OED has China as a country. OED Star Wars has the military defense strategy as the sole sense, having the franchise only in etymology. The selection criteria of the "real" OED for proper names remain elusive; it seems pretty chaotic and inconsistent. From our voted-on coverage of proper names (esp. geographic ones) it follows we do not plan to follow the "real" OED in its exclusion of proper names and specific entities. Ontario is instructive: we have 14 specific entities covered. And here we are debating whether the term Star Wars is allowed to cover its primary referent as a sense or whether we should follow OED's lead to push as much as possible to etymologies, so we become like the "real" OED. We definitely do not want to be so chaotic, unpredictable and incomplete as the "real" OED. As for our predictability, the existence of "Star Warsy" is a nice purely linguistic (not notability one) cue that we should include Star Wars and the existence of Dickensian in reference to Charles is a nice purely linguistic (not notability one) cue that we should include Charles in Dickens. The principle behind the cue can be freely accepted or rejected; it is not forced upon us. But it is a nice principle, a linguistic one. It is a pity that the principle probably cannot pass a vote.

Our entry Zelda has "(video games) Shortened form of Legend of Zelda": it does have the video game covered. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:27, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete; obviously mention in the ety for the real weapon system thing. We aren't "pretending it doesn't exist", as somebody claimed. We are just sticking to being a dictionary and not an encyclopaedia. Equinox ◑ 19:23, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

After deletion, the sense lines would make it seem the sense does not exist, and yet it is the predominant sense of the discussed term. Sure, the sense would be in etymology, but this is not what etymologies are for: etymologies are for origins, definition lines are for senses. And the specific sense would be mentioned in Star Warsy in the definition (it does not refer to Strategic Defense Initiative), yet be forbidden from Star Wars; bizarre to me, in any case, a gaping hole. And I am not clear why the sense "The United States Strategic Defense Initiative" is non-encyclopedic; are strategic initiatives somehow more inclusion-worthy than franchises, both being specific entities? And what makes Strategic Defense Initiative inclusion worthy anyway as its own entry? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:11, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Given it would be in the etymology, this is nonsense. Theknightwho (talk) 11:26, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

So rude. There are multiple sentences making independent claims and all of them are allegedly nonsense. You are talking nonsense, so often, and yet I try to respond to specific points. There is nothing to respond to above, but let me try: "the sense lines would make it seem the sense does not exist" is plain true: from reading the sense lines only (and sense lines are for meanings while etymologies are not), one gets the impression the sense does not exist. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:27, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I give specifics - you give a stream of consciousness. And yes, if you pretend the etymology section doesn’t exist, then it would appear as though the things in it weren’t there. Not seeing how that’s relevant, though, because the etymology section would in fact exist. Theknightwho (talk) 12:34, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

More rudeness and incivility, and inability to engage with the substance. Just forget about "me" and talk substance. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:45, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Saying I’m being rude and uncivil every time I make a point you don’t like is intellectually dishonest. It’s a common tactic of bad faith debaters to ignore the main point while pointing at some perceived attack, however periphery it might be to the main point. Theknightwho (talk) 12:58, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

More of the same. Also check WT:NPA and WT:AGF. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:01, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

And yet you ignored my actual point, so I won’t give you the benefit of the doubt. This kind of manipulative rubbish will get you nowhere. Theknightwho (talk) 13:06, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete per all the delete votes above. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete for the reasons expressed by others above. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:14, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Unsure. If we want to treat this entry like Sam Spade then we should delete the challenged sense but if we want to treat it like Sherlock Holmes then we should keep it. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:18, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1 I just restored Sam Spade to a proper noun, as it was before April 2022‎. The proper noun survived two RFDs per Talk:Sam Spade; the proper noun sense was de facto removed out of process. There seems to be some current push to remove as many persons from their entries as possible and replace them with figurative definitions, often presenting no improvement for the user but rather satisfying a wish to have as few senses for specific individuals as possible. This could be handled as policy: "A proper noun entry should have no sense for an individual person as a proper noun as long as it has a figurative sense as a noun arising from that individual; the individual can be mentioned in the etymology". This could then be sent to a vote rather than being rehashed in a host of RFD discussions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:29, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

There was Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/August#Fictional characters as proper_nouns with very little participation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:35, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I participated in that discussion. Now that you’ve pointed out that Sam Spade was removed out of process though, and for the sake of keeping the format of our entries consistent with how the Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes entries now appear, I’ll change my vote here to Keep. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:26, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

A look at Category:en:Fictional characters shows our practice is pretty inconsistent, and WT:FICTION does not make it clear whether the literal sense for the character can be included, merely that a figurative use must exist; this could be handled on policy level in WT:FICTION paragraph of CFI. Other entries having both a proper noun and a common noun section include Darth Vader and Ali Baba. Once those pushing for a change pass the policy text I just designed above or similar, there will be no need for repeated discussions and for these kinds of common practice analyses: new policy will be applied regardless of previous practice. My guess from this discussion is that there will be no consensus in either direction. Maybe a minority could yield to 60% majority; 2/3 is a pretty high bar for a thing that seems to be more of a matter of preference than correctness. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:55, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Sam Spade is a clear violation of WT:FICTION - particularly the part relating to names. We do not need a policy to specify that they can be mentioned in the etymology either - it is permitted already. Theknightwho (talk) 11:30, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

You mean this, I guess: "With respect to names of persons or places from fictional universes, they shall not be included unless they are used out of context in an attributive sense". This does not say that a literal sense cannot be included, merely that "attributive sense" must exist, a phrase that is probably intended to mean "figurative sense". If exclusion of literal senses was intended, that should be made explicit via a vote. And use of etymology for the purpose is not forbidden but also not explicitly recommended by any policy; making an explicit recommendation would make things easier. Incidentally, the vote was designed by bd2412 and is Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2008-01/Appendices for fictional terms. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:07, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

If you don’t know what attributive means, you have no business commenting on what the policy should be. The point is that we do not include such senses unless we can find actual usage examples of them being used to refer to things attributively. That is not a “figurative sense”. It also requires it be out of context - i.e. with no contextual clues.

Policy is not generally for recommendations. No doubt you will now waste countless words and hours arguing why it should be (because you don’t like being wrong), but it isn’t. Theknightwho (talk) 12:29, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Stop being rude. If you do not want to engage with the substance, disengage. google books:"attributive sense" finds nothing helpful although it finds many hits and google books:"refer to things attributively" finds zero hits, and so does google:"refer to things attributively". In linguistics, the primary meaning of "attributive" is "Modifying a noun, while in the same phrase as that noun", but that is not meant here. "Having the nature of an attribute" is not applicable either, so it must be "serving to express an attribute of an object", from which I cannot decipher what "attributive sense" means. The quoted text does not forbid literal senses and you have not shown otherwise. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:38, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

In "Next we tried amateurs, two college students out to make their fortune as modern-day Sam Spades", this is a figurative use, namely metaphorical use of "Sam Spade". Other figurative uses could include metonymy, synecdoche and other. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:42, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I am engaging with the substance - you just don’t like it. Why would you say that the primary meaning of “attributive” is not meant here in order to claim that the policy is meaningless? Quite clearly, it means that a term may not be included unless it is used as an attributive (proper) noun. Theknightwho (talk) 12:56, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

See, I think the primary grammatical sense cannot be meant here and "modern-day Sam Spades" is not an attributive use of the noun, grammatically speaking. And "attributive use" in the grammatical sense is an incredibly weak requirement that the deletionists would rightfully reject. In Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion/Fictional universes, you find "was rapidly becoming the Darth Vader of Japanese baseball" as an example and that is not an attributive use of Darth Vader, grammatically speaking; "a Darth Vader cap" is an attributive use, grammatically speaking. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:05, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Look, if someone told you "I have a Star Wars car" you would know that they mean a car that is reminiscent of the style specific to Star Wars films. It probably looks sleek and futuristic and has rounded contours and bold orange and white lines, as opposed to something reminiscent of Star Trek, which would have more blue and angular or triangular features. At this point, "Star Wars" is practically a synonym for "science fiction/fantasy". bd2412 T 07:05, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete The remaining sense (US Strategic Defense Initiative) should be moved to star wars (lowercase). Star Wars (capitalized) is a name, in this case referring to the franchise. Star wars (lowercase) is a compound noun, in this case a colloquial/informal term for the Strategic Defense Initiative. It was a rookie mistake to put both under Star Wars. ‑‑Kai Burghardt (talk) 23:16, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Not seeing any justification for that move at all, from a Google search. Theknightwho (talk) 23:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Let's have a look: I boldly strike out the above as depending of obviously incorrect statements. The degree of obviousness here is such, I think, that a strike out is warranted, if any strike out is ever warranted. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:29, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

That is completely inappropriate. Do not do that again. Theknightwho (talk) 11:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I think it's only fair if any votes should be discounted at all. But your objection is duly noted. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:41, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Leaving aside the serious problem with striking out another user's vote, the part that is incorrect relates to the sense that hasn't been nominated. Theknightwho (talk) 14:09, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Contemporaneous and current references almost exclusively use the capitalized version (and usually in quotes) see this books search. - TheDaveRoss 13:01, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep, per all the above. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:16, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep, per Dan Polansky. How can Wiktionary be defined as a dictionary if it does not include this term? --FocalPoint (talk) 18:46, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

A dictionary defines words, not brands. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:05, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Not that a dictionary has to cover Star Wars, but single-word brands such as Fiat are words by any serious analysis: they are spelled, pronounced, take positions in sentences, get inflected, etc. We even have policy to cover some brands: WT:BRAND, and we cover Fiat, "An automobile manufactured by the Italian firm Fiat S.p.A.". Wiktionary was kept as meeting WT:BRAND. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:35, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: 6 keeps, 8 deletes, no 2/3-supermajority for deletion. One delete voter makes blatantly obvious incorrect claim in their comment about star wars and no other pro-deletion comment. "words, not brands" is manifestly false: brand names are words by any serious analysis. Disregarding the content of comments, the outcome is the same. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

  We do not require a 2/3 supermajority for RFD, as you are well-aware. Your attempt to impose that also failed. I am re-opening this until somebody can close it on a legitimate basis. Theknightwho (talk) 19:08, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

  The close was fine. We may not require a specific 2/3 majority, but we do require consensus, which has always been more along the lines of a supermajority than a mere majority. It is also permissible for a closer to expressly disregard a !vote that misstates policy, and the suggestion that a word would be excluded because it is a brand contravenes the existence of a specific policy for defining words that are brands. bd2412 T 03:31, 25 November 2022 (UTC)