Talk:leftosphere

Citations for Leftosphere

Some citations for (deprecated template usage) Leftosphere, moved here from the entry:

• 2007 May 2, Robert Bluey, "The Leftosphere’s Activists vs. the Rightosphere’s Pundits"
• 2008 June 30, Jon Henke, "The Leftosphere and the Rightosphere":

  "The Leftosphere is now everything [Garance Franke Ruta] had alleged the Rightosphere to be in 2005"

• 2008 August 4, Ed Morrissey, "Why the tire-pressure gauge stings":

  "An inability to comprehend context appears to have broken out among the Leftosphere. Apparently, none of our colleagues on the port side of the blogosphere can figure out..."

• 2009 January 8, Ian Faerstein, "The Trouble With Harry" at National Journal's "The Hotline":

  "[B]loggers in almost every corner of the Leftosphere are slamming [Harry] Reid for his awkward handling of the Roland Burris affair."

—Ruakh_TALK 22:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

RFV debate

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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Protologism? Proper noun? Why (deprecated template usage) liberal rather than (deprecated template usage) left-of-centre? SemperBlotto 22:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• See also wingnutosphere that has only a single citation. SemperBlotto 22:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Cited. I ended up using every single uncapitalized Usenet hit from Google Groups; there are a few uncapitalized hits on google news archive:"leftosphere", but I can't tell if they're durably archived, so I didn't use them.

I changed it to "proper noun" because that's what it seems to be — it's always definite ("the leftosphere"); if you're talking about a lot of it, you'd say "a lot of the leftosphere", not *"a lot of leftosphere" (uncountable common noun), nor *"a lot of leftospheres" (countable common noun). Do you disagree?

Feel free to change it to "left-of-center" (but not "left-of-centre"), or to "left-wing"; they're all synonymous in the U.S.

—Ruakh_TALK 23:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The first 2008 citation provided doesn't really match up to the proffered definition. The "leftosphere" referred to in the link is said to have produced things like the Marshall Plan and OSHA, both of which preceded blogs by decades. It seems to be just a generic reference to the political left, rather than to bloggers specifically. bd2412 T 00:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a good point. I've fixed the entry accordingly. —Ruakh_TALK 04:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Ruakh, I ask, not knowing: my original entry cited usage by several high-profile bloggers. The revisions cite trivial usages by unknown users of usenet. Is there some reason why we would prefer examples of non-notable usage in a context where the term's usage is barely known, to notable usage in the context in which the term is most commonly-used? I also note that the substituted definition is inaccurate, so far as I know: the term is used to refer to left-leaning blogs (hence the "-osphere" suffix), not to the left generally. I don't mind fixing that, but want to clarify the issue of blog citations first (measure twice, edit once, as they might say). Simon Dodd 16:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I mean, if the only usage of the term were per the examples given in your edit, the term should be deleted as a rare protologysm, and the article will be left vulnerable to being deleted again. Citations of its actual use should be given - with all due respect, the reason for removal given in your edit summary isn't serious, so I'm wondering what the real reason is? Simon Dodd 17:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Please read our criteria for inclusion, or at least the section headed "General rule". Usenet citations are preferred over blog citations because the former are durably archived while the latter are not, and we want future readers to be able to look up our sources. (It's O.K. to add properly formatted blog citations to the entry, as long as they're chosen for their lexical value rather than for POV reasons, but I'd prefer that you added them after the request for verification has been dealt with, since they make it harder to see whether we have enough durably archived citations to justify keeping the word.)

The word "non-notable" basically has no place here: we are a dictionary, not an encyclopedia.

With all due respect, what about "rm quotations, none of which seem to be durably archived" seems non-serious to you?

—Ruakh_TALK 20:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

With respect, I find it backwards to suggest that we decide if there is enough usage before adding examples of usage to the article. To my mind, the more usage examples are adduced (861,000 hits on google at time of writing, although I don't propose to include all of them), the stronger the case for inclusion here. I find this concept of "durably archived" a peculiar animal. The materials are available now; if they cease to be, that problem can be dealt with if and when it becomes a problem. For example, web.archive.org may well retain some, all, or indeed none of the examples that I added - but does not do so yet (there's a lag). If the rules reject inclusion of such examples because they might, hypothetically, not remain accessible in the indefinite future, I submit that the rules are problematic and should be reexamined. Unless wiktionary decides to exclude terms whose principal usage is primarily on blogs (which would, to be sure, be a reasonable position to take), it seems obvious to me that it's going to have to bite the bullet and accept citations of usage on blogs. It disserves readers to distort the etymology and usage of the word by using leaves and branches as the examples rather than the trunk and major limbs. user:Simon Dodd 21:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that our CFI are right, only that they are the fundamental definition of what this project is. If we wish to change them — and there are many elements of them that need changing — then we should do so via a formal discussion process, not by flouting them on a case-by-case basis. —Ruakh_TALK 22:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, this is now cited from Usenet so I'd say it has passed RFV. Equinox ◑ 13:56, 6 July 2009 (UTC)