Talk:f**k

Older citations

Google Books appears to give an instance dating from the 1910s. Can some earlier examples be located? 24.29.228.33 03:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I included all the Google Books hits that I could find; I may have missed some, though. (Google Books doesn't make it easy to find words with asterisks in them!) Can you give any information about the 1910s instance you mention? —Ruakh_TALK 03:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for deletion - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of November 2008. 08:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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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f**k

1. Entry originally created by WF.
2. Bad entry title: only in very extreme cases is the asterix allowed as a page title character. Two has no possible justification, except perhaps to break tools that follow different wildcard syntax (besides the MediaWiki search syntax.)
   1. Some wildcard algorithms treat "**" as line-break wildcard search, while others treat it as pass-through wildcard notation, while others threat it as multi-word wildcard syntax.
   2. Other stream-oriented problems could arise from double character reduction.
3. Entry currently suggests this is a primary sanitized spelling; in truth it is rare (at best.) No comparative evidence is given to show its relation to, say, "@$#&" or "@#$&" (also bad entry titles.)

--Connel MacKenzie 22:08, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep for now.

#1 is a good reason to doubt the accuracy of an entry, but not a good reason to delete one once confirmed, and certainly not a good reason to ban future entry creation by other editors. And to clarify, I don't mean that taken on its own, it's not a good reason; I mean that it's not a good reason, period.

#2 is suggestive, but if a tool is applying wildcard algorithms to entry titles, then properly speaking, the problem is with the tool, not with the title. Depending on the tool, on the problem, and on the feasibility of fixing it, we might decide that the benefits the tool offers outweigh the costs of arbitrarily excluding certain character-strings from entry titles; and similarly, if there were a lot of such tools, we might make a similar decision even if no specific one of them, taken alone, would be worth it. But since you're not actually naming any such tools, nor describing the problem(s) that this entry title causes them, you're not letting us make that decision. (By the way, keep in mind that nothing is set in stone; we can decide to keep this entry for now, and then delete it in the future if and when we discover a problem.)

#3 is an interesting point. I see "bowdlerized spelling of" and infer an "a", but I definitely see how someone else might see it and infer a "the". But, that's not an argument for deletion; it's an argument for cleanup/tweaking/rephrasing/etc. This is a wiki, after all. :-)

—Ruakh_TALK 23:15, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep Concur with Ruakh on all points. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:35, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Move to an Appendix - Bowdlerized forms are highly variable and potentially endless. I think it would make more sense to have these in an appendix than in the main namespace. --EncycloPetey 23:37, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Redirect to fuck, there's no need to include all of these as seperate entries. However this should be documented somehow - an extensive usage note at Appendix:Bowdlerisation linked to from words commonly mutilated in this manner would be ideal - but it'll probably end up being a Usage note in an entry. I have no sympathy with the technology arguments, correctly-written software knows the difference between data and search patterns. Conrad.Irwin 23:54, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with an appendix or usage note or some such. The variety of censored forms is admittedly rather vast. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, agreed. And the MediaWiki software now allows targeted-redirects (using JScript/JavaScript), so if we want, we can redirect [[f**k]] to the specifically relevant part of an entry or appendix. —Ruakh_TALK 00:05, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Authorship is not inherently an indication of poor quality. As has been discussed before, we should not be technically bound from making valid entries. That some old-fashioned search tools may come a cropper on some input might be a reason to give some time for such problems to be resolved, not for an indefinite hold on a class of potentially valid entries. If the definitions said "A bowdlerized spelling", then the last of the original objections would be addressed.

I assume that attestable bowdlerizations would be included in principal namespace, just like any other attestable entry using special characters. I doubt that we would have more than a score of attestable bowdlerizations in a year. I haven't noticed many of them coming up on, say, usenet. Conrad's only-in redirects address the hard-to-attest forms. I suppose that the "only-in" redirect could have a good brief explanation and refer to a full appendix. If internet gambling were not illegal and were it not for "moral hazard", I'd run a betting pool on the number of attestable bowdlerizations we would have. DCDuring TALK 00:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep if sources for this word can be located via Google Books or print sources. I believe this spelling does appear quite often in the English language. It would be interesting (as we should do for all entries) to find some of the earliest appearances in print of this word. 24.29.228.33 01:48, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep per others' arguments. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 02:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep since it's obviously a fairly common [1] bowdlerization and no severe technical problems have yet been demonstrated. Rod (A. Smith) 03:15, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep, possibly as an appendix "Bowdlerizations of X". Circeus 13:30, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Clearly common use. bd2412 T 03:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep, clearly in widespread use. and per Rod A. Smith. Thryduulf 20:31, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

• Kept by consensus. --Jackofclubs 18:07, 8 November 2008 (UTC)