This is a discussion archive created in April 2006, though the comments contained may not have been posted on this date. Please do not post any new comments on this page. See current discussion, or the archives index.
Is it really that much different from current practice? I'd like to know how. If you don't like it I would submit that it be frozen, but not deleted. When the discussion has panned out, a new one can be started. Davilla18:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Davilla. It seemed to me to include a less apparently POV method of showing equal variants. To take an example, I recently added a word chametz/chamets/chometz/hamets/hametz where the multiple spellings, all of which I found in technical Jewish writings, presumably stem from alternative transliterations of the original Hebrew word. I had originally intended to put the main entry as chometz, which usage has escaped into an English local authority website and a newspaper, but then settled on chametz to match a Wikipedia article.
To my (limited) knowledge, none of the spellings is superior to the others -- I believe they are equally valid. [If I am wrong in this please let me know, but that does not affect the validity of my argument for other words with equally valid spellings.] However, under the current rules (which I used) someone entering chametz gets straight to the article, whereas someone entering chometz, or any of the other spellings, finds a note to say it is an alternative spelling, and must then click on the link to find the main entry under chametz. My (or more accurately the pedia editor's) POV is very apparent and in your face.
Under one of the methods in the draft policy, those entering chometz would be redirected to chametz without further action, which is, IMHO, more egalitarian. While not quite apparently NPOV (the note re the redirect still appears) it is much less apparently POV than the present system, ie the editor's POV is less obtrusive. While it might not be acceptable for, eg, some of the more emotive US/UK variants (for which the draft policy suggests copying the entries to each variant), it would surely be OK for most equal variants.
The other currently used method (also allowed by the draft policy) of copying the entry to each variant encourages unintended mutations if one entry is corrected/improved, so personally I would deprecate it when there is no known difference in usage between the spellings.
So in short, keep: the draft policy contains an interesting idea, worthy of discussion rather than deletion. Enginear01:24, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I stopped reading it the first time, when the very first rule it gave was flat out wrong and in direct conflict with every conversation on the topic in the last year and a half that I've been here. We Are Not Wikipedia. Wikipedia uses redirects for each of these cases, but we, as a dictionary, do not.
Funny, no-one else seemed to have the same reaction ! I think you might have mis-read the first paragrgaph. It did talk about each contributor of a NEW article making up their own mind. I've marginally re-written it to make this clearer.--Richardb16:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Having scanned over the rest of it, nothing else immediately jumps out as being blatanly wrong. But that first item/rule, what a zinger. Instead of calming the US/UK issue, a solution like that could only agravate it. Was it meant to? Perhaps. --Connel MacKenzieTC02:06, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Do we or do we not need a policy for this ? Only if you think we will never need such a policy should it be nominated for deletion (or if it's been superseded or something). If you don't agree with a draft policy, then try discussing it on the related talk page, instead of taking a sledgehammer to it. I make no claims to creating perfect policy. I just identified that we need some sort of policy, otherwise conversations just go on all over the place, and no-one can really find what the current consensus is. I'm not going to say whether it was deliberatly provocative or a misreding. BUT FOR GOD's SAKE, USE THE RELATED DISCUSSION PAGE, NOT RFD, BP, RFC or some other place. Connel, you are the one who complained some time back about having to trawl through so many places, BP Archives etc to refute assertions by others. This is a chance to structure our discussions in a sensible way, so that all the discussion and evidence is on one place. Please, put your sledgehammer away and start discussing constructively, as other people are doing.
I felt it was appropriate to nominate it and discuss it here, as the US/UK issue had reared its head again, making this seem like a direct attack on the progress being made in those discussions. I can understand the UK desire to keep Wiktionary out of line in comparison to other Wikimedia projects, especially Wikipedia. The UK influence on Wiktionary is quite pervasive: (parenthesis) for qualifiers, definitions as sentence fragments instead of sentences, redirects from American spellings to commonwealth spellings, serial commas and a host of even more subtle UKisms. Collectively, the barrage of (perhaps inadvertent) OED/UK influence is overwhelming. "FOR GOD'S SAKE" (as you say,) even something as obvious as color/colour meets stern resistance when an appropriate technical solution to the POV problem is offered. The timing of suggesting this "policy proposal" seemed (and still does seem) to be yet another UK attack against a neutral POV for the English Wiktionary. --Connel MacKenzieTC16:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Connel, I've lost patience with you. You constantly want to make a war out of this. You are totally out of order.--Richardb12:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fairly laid back about issues like this, as must be obvious from the way I tend to make fun of RP and posh British phrases from time to time. But the downside is that I am therefore likely to inadvertently upset people from time to time by using unintended Britishisms. I am conscious that this whole episode started because I drew Connel's attention to the Draft Policy -- I thought it more appropriate for something (uncontentious) I was doing and wanted to know if I could use it.
Clearly, I can't afford that every time I open my mouth I put my foot in it (I might choke on the plums) so I need to find out something of (say) the last six months' discussions. But the BP is very big, and I have so far only ventured in the once (and look where that got me!). Where do you suggest I start? (But don't expect much from me over the next week or two, as I am not going to be near my computer very often.) --Enginear13:36, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Jesus! When will you useless pillocks get the idea. A Policy page is put up there to precisely to centralise discussion. Not to freeze discussion!. And what do you do? You come here to hold the discussion! I give up on you useless bastards, I really do! I'm friggin' wasting my time dealing with a load of dunderheads who haven't got a clue about how to organise Wiktionary properly. You just spend all your time talking over each other in the bar - sorry beer parlour. I think I'll quit wasting my time, unless more of you make the effort to understand what POLICY is about, and support the efforts made to develop policy--Richardb12:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Richard, I gather three points from this:
You believe we should discuss Spelling variants in entry names on the relevant page (and I see there is a link to past discussions, which answers my earlier question). By the way, thank you for the effort put in. I have always thought it good, and you will see above that even Connel found only one thing "blatantly wrong" in his eyes.
Since you clearly do not agree with the Wiktionary:No personal attacks draft policy, please would you discuss it there, rather than give examples here.
Dunderhead does not yet have an entry. Since it is obviously a word you use, along with some synonyms, it would be helpful if you defined it.
I don't see how this is any different from any other outdoor sport played indoors: indoor football, indoor cricket, indoor rugby... — Paul G13:47, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Conditionally keep If we can find a reference to an organisation like the USIBF (which, in an ideal world would stand for United States Indoor Baseball Federation), then it should be valid. Quick websearches suggest that indoor baseball is a similar game to baseball, but with little differences. If it is different, then it should stay in here. --Dangherous17:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know baseball or indoor baseball but I'm 99% certain that cricket and indoor cricket have quite different rules and even equipment, which to me might qualify them for separate entries. But then again maybe a sense or subsense for indoor "of various outdoor sports and games, a modified version for play inside" would be fine. — Hippietrail18:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The indoor in these sports gets translated to the Dutch prefix zaal-, so one gets zaalvoetbal for indoor football. Does this in anyway whatsoever defend this entry, or is it a rather invalid argument? — Vildricianus11:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Been here since 2004, and in the history User:Dmh is seemingly staking a claim to WT:EC that it should be included. 2 years later, can it still survive? There's not a lot of backing it up that I can find. --Dangherous17:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. seven minutes in heaven is borderline, since Wikipedia has it and there's 55,000 google hits, but I don't think we need this variant (229 google hits). Citing www.all-science-fair-projects.com is meaningless, because it appears to be a Wiktionary mirror. —Scs04:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I come from the encyclopedia, so I'm not trained in dictionary work. At least not yet. I copied a part of it from Wikipedia to give the entry a starting point. Instead of trying to delete it, can anyone please make it into a dictionaric article? (Btw, what is Dictionary to? Encyclopedia is to "Encyclopedic".) --68.102.193.7801:53, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, seems pretty dictionaric to me at this point. This is a bunch of letters with a nonobvious meaning, I thought wiktionary was here to explain things like that. Kappa03:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Um, yes, I think so. It might be considered a little unreasonable to go through them all, but this does match the tradition of having separate entries for each spelling, inflection, etc. --Connel MacKenzieTC18:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Of course keep. In fact, we should have short entries for most good dictionaries and encyclopedias - and not just the English language ones. SemperBlotto07:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Belongs in Wikipedia. I don't see why we should have "short entries for most good dictionaries and encyclopedias". As for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, they should be deleted too. And in theory, the page for Wiktionaryshould be deleted, but I'm sure we can make an exceptio for that, seeing as its OUR GODDAMN DICTIONARY! And The Beatlesshould also be deleted, but again, we cn make an exception as they're, well, The Beatles! --Dangherous18:25, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You've registered a first "keep" above as well. I take your second to be meant only as additional supporting comments. Davilla18:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and create proper entry, from scratch. The term seems to be everything but the definition listed, including the word "page" in Aragonese, a plant and a screen name or given name. --Dvortygirl03:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I remember making this such a long time ago. I was new to Wikipedia and Wiktionary and after browsing it for more 2 years, I really don't think this belongs here. I'll try to take each entry and put them in the right articles. KevinJr4204:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it; even if they did, I would imagine they would turn to Wikipedia first. (Warning: thin-edge-of-the-wedge argument coming up...) Unless we want "Roman civilization", "Greek civilization", "American civilization", etc, as well. Delete (Paul G)
Without quotation marks, yes. Without them only about 60000. Still quite a lot. "Mycenaean culture" yields 20000. "Mycenaean Greece" yields about 55000. The problem whatever criteria makes us keep also very like will force us to include them as well. None of the collocations really means anything more than the sum of its parts. I'm more and more leaning towards moving whatever intresting in the collocations to the respective adjective and delete them.
It would have been good to have some support for common collocations in MediaWiki but I'm not even sure how any such support should look like... We could of course use redirects...--Patrik Stridvall13:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(after edit conflict) ...and "American civilization" 740 000 hits, "three houses" (with quotation marks!) > 800 000 hits... Sorry, but that argument (# of google hits as motivation) is very very weak. \Mike13:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is a difference between collocations that have real world referents that are worthy of encyclopedic articles and "three houses" and "this should be deleted" that do not. We are should certainly not include collocations just because of common use. Just because they have real world referents they might translate in non-obvious ways. A totaly different term might be used in another language for some of them. At least in theory. --Patrik Stridvall15:40, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Google is a powerful tool, but misused gives weird results. That is one reason we tend to rely more on http://print.google.com/ instead of the lame http://www.google.com. (NOTE: Other full-text search engines exist as well!) Our CFI is all about attestation (mainly in printed text.) So if a term is used "commonly" in a certain way, it should be included. --Connel MacKenzieTC19:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what our CFI says. I wasn't asking you to come up with a pointed misuse of google searching, but number + anything does seem to be a useless thing to investigate. OTOH, the oriental colocation of three houses (now that you point it out) probably does merit inclusion. In fact, that use seems idiomatic. --Connel MacKenzieTC18:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The CFI can be changed if it leads us to having to accept "insane" entries likes number + anything. As for your claim that "three houses" is idiomatic, I don't understand what you mean. Sure thing like seven sins and seven seas are idomatic since they carry connotations that are not obvious but I can't for my life imagine what three houses means beyond the obvious. I'm curious, please enlighten me. --Patrik Stridvall21:42, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The topic of discussion was why Mycenaean civilization meets the CFI and then it got sidetracked what meets the CFI in general. That is not that offtopic. As for three houses, I can know and can find several idiomatic meanings of house but none that makes the collocation itself more idiomatic. --Patrik Stridvall07:19, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any sense (or translation) of this phrase which cannot be gained by searching for ‘Mycenaean’ and ‘civilization’ separately? I don't think so. Widsith09:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing really that Mycenaean can't or shouldn't be improved to contain. However, in the broad sense it means anything relating to Mycenae and in the narrow sense only what occured between 2800 and 1100 BC. Collocation like Mycenaean civilization, Mycenaean language, Mycenaean Greece, and Mycenaean Greek takes the narrow sense. Other collocations might or might not it depends. But that should be pretty obvious to anybody that have read an improved entry of Mycenaean so I'm not sure.
As for translations, well, theoretically I guess that the "time period" sense might be called something else by some scholars especially ones not writing in English, but then I guess that can and should be meantioned at Mycenaean so again I'm not sure.
Yes, the second definition of Mycenaean points to Mycenaean civilization. Many of the ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean, as well as a few other "great" ancient civilizations, are referred to as the X civilization by archaeologists. So, while Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia are typically referred to by a single-word name, the Mycenaean Civilization, Indus River Valley Civilization, and the Minoan Civilization are not. --EncycloPetey11:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have a real issue with "sum of its parts" no longer being allowed as a reason for deleting an entry. If someone creates "big red bus", I'm sure everyone else would agree it does not belong in Wiktionary, but no one is allowed to flag it on RFD by saying that it is the sum of its parts (a bus that is big and red). Clearly that is the reason why it should be deleted, but how else are we supposed to say this if "sum of its parts" is not permitted? Maybe I'm missing something here. — Paul G09:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Being a "sum of its parts" is just a necessary condition not a sufficient condition for deletion. The Pawley list seems contain some good criterias. What I mean by encylopedic is slight stronger than The naming test since it also requires that is not only a name of something it is also something that needs explaination in an encyclopedia. Mycenaean civilization needs explaination and indeed is explained in Wikipedia. See Mycenaean civilization. --Patrik Stridvall11:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But that's not true at all. Being "sum of parts" is most certainly not a requirement for deletion. Recent deletions such as flogging the dolphin and Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy were far more than "sum of parts" and yet they were deleted. A look at the deletion log shows that less than half of recent deletions could be considered "sum of parts", so that criterion cannot be considered a '"necessary" condition for deletion. That leaves open the question of what role "sum of parts" plays in making the decision to delete. I think it's not as simple an issue as most of us had assumed. --EncycloPetey08:04, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
They were deleted because violated some other criteria. The problem with flogging the dolphin is that it can't be attested as widely used. If used it is certainly idiomatic. Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy should IMHO be included but we have decided to not, at this time, include book titles and similar. The Mycenaean civilization is a very important historical entity so the case for it is much stronger.
I agree that the question of what criteria we should use is very complicated. It seems that everybody including myself seem to have trouble to properly formulate a concrete policy... There are a lot of phrases that basicly are the sum of their parts like not guilty, no case to answer, dismissed with prejudice, and dismissed without prejudice. Their approximate meaning is easily guessable so they are not really idiomatic, but we should still list them... --Patrik Stridvall15:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It's just an everyday combination of words, if we accept it we have to accept many many mundane combinations of words. — Hippietrail21:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why this is any different from any other type of hacker (in the "good" computing sense). It does not have an entry in FOLDOC — Paul G10:11, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Neither do I and I am a "Unix hacker" at least per some reasonable definition of the phrase ("white hat Unix hacker"). In a job interview I would of course call myself a "Unix expert" or a "Unix administrator" or something like that. The word hacker can so easily be misunderstood. --Patrik Stridvall13:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My guess is that it was entered as a result of the periodic/cyclic revisions at hacker, but that's just a guess. Looking at this, I'd say it would survive our RFV process, if moved to RFV instead of RFD. (That's what I peeked at, anyhow.) --Connel MacKenzieTC19:40, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Obvious, right? But I wasn't sure if this was someone who hacked into Unix systems, or from Unix systems. Then looking at the definition, it seems I framed the question entirely wrong. Hacker has several defs, so this is probably may be worth keeping. Davilla 22:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC) Seems like a tough call to me. Davilla13:09, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unix hacker have exactly the same ambiguity as hacker. It can mean both of what you meantioned as well as "One who is intensely interested in learning and modifying the technical aspects of a system" which is what kind of "Unix hacker" I am. Only a small minority does what you meantion above. However, since this is the newsworthy cases, most attested uses will probably refer to your meanings and this is why I usually don't care to call myself a "Unix hacker". --Patrik Stridvall07:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand. I have ‘conferred’ (as you put it) with this list, and Unix hacker does not meet any of those criteria. The reason is because it is simply the sum of its parts (which is not an invalid argument for deletion, it's an extremely good one). Widsith07:35, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or redirect. I don't think that counts as a legitimate attestation. The common use of playahata in speech is as a short form of player hater, but I'm not sure there's any attestation of that spelling in print. - Taxman19:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How does this follow? The name of a band becomes a word when a word is derived from it?? Besides band names, what other types of things does this apply to? — Hippietrail18:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The Beatles. Not only a hairstyle named after them, but probably an era, The Beatles phenomena. The Beatles probably have as much right to be included as does Shakespeare (well, nearly!). There has to be room for judgement in Wiktionary, not unthinking adherence to some over-simplified rule. The Beatles are notable enough for inclusion. and finally, Beatlesque is a word (213,000 Google Hits) as much as Shakespearean. How would you sensibly define Beatlesque without having The Beatles to refer to? --Richardb15:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody has mentioned that articles like this do not meet our current CFI. Specifically, having something named after you is also not in the current CFI. I have started a thread on the CFI's talk page though so please go over and comment. — Hippietrail19:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In other words, delete. Unlike goto there is no verification of use outside the computing language except as a reference to the encyclopedic Java class itself. Davilla16:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so - "xpage" is "xpage" whatever language you speak and wherever you write it. The language is Java. This raises the question of whether we want to include reserved words in computing languages (our remit is "all words in all languages", after all). I'll raise this in the Beer parlour. — Paul G09:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. A dictionary is not a list of classes, procedures, functions, constants, templates, or structures used in computing platforms. — Hippietrail21:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Deleted per Hippietrail. Trouble enough keeping natural language in check. Possible appendix material. —Vildricianus 14:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
