Wiktionary:Beer parlour/Quotation pages

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The discussion below was started at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion. Because of it's length and because it deals with a broader policy matter that goes beyond the deletion of a single article it has been moved here. Eclecticology 20:24, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pre-move discussion

Is this something we have agreed to do? I don't remember reading anything about it. Why can't these quotes just be included on the page for tidal wave, in the Quotations section? — Paul G 11:11, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

We haven't agreed or disagreed to do it yet. I've started it as an experiment which can be discussed. Apparently it is now being discussed.

These quotes have not been included on the tidal wave page because they would overwhelm that page. The idea is that they are equivalant to the citations gathered by lexicographers working on a real dictionary. From them some can be chosen for inclusion on the page. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, this is over the top. A subpage of the original could be considered, but there isn't even a link from tidal wave here. How are people expected to find it? SemperBlotto 14:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please show how it's over the top. I haven't linked to it from tidal wave because (a) until now it hasn't been ready, (b) I've been unsure what might be the best way to link to such pages before discussing my idea with other contributors. Nobody but the intrepid were expected to find it yet. Apparently now some have been intrepid enough to find it. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Need I mention that the use of quotes to refer to quotations is contentious and should probably be avoided in the Wiktionary framework? ;-) Anyways, there is already Quotations:Tidal wave, which, though it might also be superfluous, should not be deleted unless we have some idea of where to put the content (i.e., do we want it all on the main page?). Two quotations pages are surely not necessary. Jun-Dai 07:06, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes that's a good point. Where is this discussed? It's something I've been unclear with so far.

Quotations:Tidal wave is not superfluous. It looks like good research and analysis to me. We should have more of this type of work on Wiktionary.

I started my :Quotes experiment before I noticed the Quotations: experiment. After having looked at the latter I see we had very different goals in mind though we seem to have had similarish naming strategies. My goal is to archive published quotes/quoatations, especially by well-known or respected authors, to use as soure material for creating definitions. In this way we can be sure our definitions follow actual usage rather than our own points of view. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is starting to get silly. Delete. Oh, and now Maremoto:Quotes and Flutwelle:Quotes. --Connel MacKenzie 06:06, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please indicate how it is silly. Please indicate how the pages on the words "maremoto" and "flutwelle" are silly. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, it seemed silly as I had no idea what you were up to. It was not clear from the first article on its own, and when others started cropping up unexplained... Well, thank you for the explanation and clarifications. Now in perspective (as an experiment) I think you have done a wonderful job. Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 17:20, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Phew! Thanks Connel. I'm glad my rant was convincing (-: — Hippietrail 03:49, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's worth noting that this is not the way to do sub-pages in any case. The colon has a special meaning in MediaWiki, as a namespace delimiter, and for this reason one should avoid using colons in titles. Sub-pages are done with forward slashes: Tidal wave/Quotes, Tidal wave/Quotations, Tsunami/Quotes, Maremoto/Quotes, and Flutwelle/Quotes, which (as a selectable feature) garners them an automatic hyperlink up to the main page. And I agree with Paul G (no relation). There's no reason for the quotations not to be in the main article. The main article isn't that long. Move to the correct sub-page name, deleting the resultant redirect, and then Merge into the main articles. I happily volunteer to do the merger of these four. Uncle G 11:05, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is a valid point. As the pages are so far experimental, I am very open to better naming and linking strategies. It is worth noting that while colons are best avoided for actual titles, they are also used in creating what are called "pseudonamespaces" in wiki jargon.

On my computer, the quotes I have collected for "tidal wave" now come to just over 5 screenfuls. This seems too much to include in the article in toto, it seems disingenious to delete this work which I expected people to see as a valuable resource for honing the article. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This (and the others) should all be moved to Wikiquote - that is what it is for. SemperBlotto 11:10, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- That's a good point. However, WikiQuote mainly organizes by work, by author, and by theme; rarely by random phrase included within the quote, such as this. (And I suspect that the people at WikiQuote would argue in their turn that such things belong at Wiktionary.) What would one file Tidal wave:Quotes and Tsunami:Quotes under at WikiQuote (so that they could be directly referenced from the four Wiktionary articles) ? It won't be under a theme of "weather", for example. Most of the quotations aren't even about the weather. Uncle G 11:29, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  Not being a WikiQuote contributor, I would be surprised if this is what they want over there. This is a collection of many uses of a word to see how it's used. I imagined WikiQuote had a different and more selective goal. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've just copied it to a new Wikiquote article at "tidal wave" and added it to Category:Nature. We'll see what they do to it. SemperBlotto 11:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The original author's rationale at Talk:Quotations:Tidal wave is worth reading. Personally, I don't see why Tidal wave:Quotes and Quotations:Tidal wave (another example of why it is bad to use colons in article titles, compare Quotations:tidal wave) are different and separate, and why examples deemed unsuitable or excessive for tidal wave, or being used to prove a point, couldn't simply have gone on Talk:tidal wave where the discussion was being had. Uncle G 18:29, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My idea was that real dictionaries and real lexicographers collect quotes and analyse them as the background work to writing their definitions. Traditionally, slips of paper were used. Most current dictionaries surely now use databases of various kinds.

Quoatations:XXX and XXX:Quotes were independent ideas. Maybe they could be merged. Their names can probably be improved. So far they both seem experimental. It seems to me that XXX:Quotes represents the "slips of paper" and Quotations:XXX represents the analysis.

I chose XXX:Quotes because that seemed like a logical way to keep the source material I was collecting close to term I was researching. I chose ":" because I've seen it used on wikis before, I neglected "/" because I've had less experience with it. I didn't put it on Talk:XXX because (a) I envisaged it growing quite large (b) I thought of the Quotes subpage as being a third aspect to complement the article and its talk page.

If Wiktionary had its own software rather that being shoe-horned into something designed for an encyclopedia, one way of doing it could have been to have true namespaces for quotes and analyses as well as general free-form talk. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Now that I have read and responeded to each point it has helped to clarify in my mind what a good approach would be. I believe the collection of "citations" to be a key part of building a dictionary. I believe the analysis of a corpus of citations to be another key part. I propose, therefore, changing XXX:Quotes into XXX/Citations and changing Quotations/XXX into XXX/Analysis. Some day they could become Citations:XXX and Analysis:XXX could be true namespaces just like Talk:XXX

Wiktionary need much more solid groundwork and I believe collecting citations and analysing them to be very serious and proper steps toward making Wiktionary more like a "real dictionary" as it is now becoming more mature. — Hippietrail 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 20:13, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)> I agree that the Wiktionary is kind of limited by the wikipedia interface. We shouldn't have all the languages on the same page, and we definitely shouldn't have all the translations on the same page. I don't think we should have the quotations on the same page either. That said, it is a little inconvenient to have them on totally separate pages at the moment, since we don't have a good interface for accessing the additional data. The main page should be for the definitions, etymology, pronunciation, sample constructions, etc. At some point it would even be nice to have a page for conjugations. But this is all way in the future, and trying to implement it all now would be a little too overwhelming and confusing (this is all part of the reason why I've mostly dropped out of the Wiktionary). That said, I'm all in favor of XXX/Quotations and XXX/Citations, the former being for well-known quotes, or good quotes from well-known works, and the latter being for a fairly large (upwards of a couple hundred) selection of situations in which the word has been found, covering as broad a range as possible of time, style, context, etc. </Jun-Dai>

Also in an ideal Wiktionary there would only be one entry for each main word entry, with automatic redirects for anything specified therein as a plural, other sense or alternate spelling or other forms including adverb and adjective. And lastly it would have automatic redirects also for all (undefined) translations (raw, transliterated and romanized.) --Connel MacKenzie 22:46, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 21:31, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)> See, I'm not really in favor of much usage of automatic redirects. It makes sense for something like the wikipedia, where all the information is contained in a single article, and the user isn't going to necessarily know where that article is located (going to "new wave" brings you to "French new wave"). In the case of the Wiktionary, however, there is usually some information that is specific to that entry, that differs from it's other forms. I would prefer that "puppies" contained a line saying "puppies is the plural of puppy". There's no danger of confusing the user, and the quantity of information should not be a concern for us. Additionally, I'd like to see pages like cacti vs cactuses or Usage:Cacti vs cactuses utilized to fully explain what the difference between the pluralizations are, and which is viewed as correct, better, or acceptable by whom. This would be even better for something explaining the differences between synonyms--usage note articles, if you will. </Jun-Dai>

I've just moved all of my XXX:Quotes to XXX/Citations. It seems opposition to them seems to have disappeared since I explained them but discussion has petered out and the RFD's are still there. Could somebody remove them or make further comments please? I've left messages regarding doing likewise for the Quotations:XXX pages but so far without reply. — Hippietrail 08:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Post-move discussion

I support the idea that these long pages of quotes should be at Wikiquote. The purpose of quotations on a word's page here is to illustrate the use of the word, and give evidence of its usage in various ways and at various times. The idea of gathering slips of paper to be used as a resource makes sense, but it would make more sense at Wikiquote. I can understand Hippietrail's enthusiasm for the idea, but if the support for this idea does not translate into work from the other supporters the idea may not amount to much.

That being said, if this were to go ahead I would prefer the format XXXX/Quotations since it puts primary emphasis on the word in question. Whether "quotations" or "citations" is used is immaterial to me, as long as it is done consistently. Eclecticology 21:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)