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Wiktionary:Votes/2011-04/Representative entries

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Representative entries

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  • Voting on: Deprecating the practice, rule or guideline that allows representative entries to be placed at the start of the list of members of categories.

In other words, representative entries should simply follow other perceived rules of organization of entries if they exist. For example, if the representative entry is an English word, and all other entries are sorted in the English alphabetical order, then the representative entry should simply be organized within the alphabetical order too.


Context
This is the context of the proposal. It is purely informative.

In this vote, a "representative entry" is an entry that represents a category. A category may be represented by one entry, or a group of entries. Typically, but not always, representative entries may be members of the represented categories.


Rationale
This is a list of reasons to justify the aforementioned proposal. When a person supports or opposes the proposal, they are not necessarily supporting or opposing these reasons.
  1. The categorization and the organization of representative entries suffer from a degree of randomness, as they are not practiced equally by everyone. This vote is expected to be a step in the direction of uniformity, thus improvement.
  2. Lemmings don't change the sorting order to try to emphasize representative words.
    • For example, the word dictionary in a general-purpose dictionary is typically expected to be found under D. And, the word psychology in a dictionary of psychology is typically expected to be found under P.
  3. Making an exception to the alphabetical order adds complexity.
  4. Emphasizing a representative entry by placing it as the first item of the category is redundant, at least in categories of English words (but not necessarily only in categories of that language), because the category already has (or should have) a good description linking to it. The description is where people will be most certainly always be able to find links to representative entries.
  5. The entries to be emphasized should not always be members of the category in question.
    • For example, day and week are not members of Category:Days of the week, so a reader who searches for representative entries among the first few items of that category will fail to find them. On the other hand, both day and week can be listed within the description.
  6. There is inconsistency of where to sort the entries in question to emphasize them.
    • The entry şah is sorted into Category:ro:Chess by a space, but échecs is sorted into Category:fr:Chess by an asterisk, among countless other similar examples. (This is a minor issue that can be fixed relatively easily, regardless of the decisions of this vote.)
  7. It breaks the alphabetical order.
    • If "weather" is not listed in the "W" section of Category:Weather, then it gives the impression that it is absent from the category (i.e., either not defined yet or just uncategorized). Contrariwise, if one believes that "weather" sould be the first item of the category, but it is actually listed below the "W" header, then the initial impression would be equally that the term is absent from the category.
    • As another example, it feels unnatural to see "psychohydraulics", "psychological refractory period", "psychologist", "psychometrician", "psychometrics" listed together, without "psychology" among them, as members of Category:Psychology.


  • Vote starts: 00:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Vote ends: 23.59, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Support

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  1. Support Daniel. 06:41, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 20:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC) The proposed practice is more intuitive than the practice of sorting them at the beginning. What's the first letter in Unicode anyway? I don't remember offhand.[reply]
  3. Support. —RuakhTALK 11:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Incidentally, I dislike the practice of including arguments for one option in a vote in the vote's prologue.​—msh210℠ (talk) 14:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you have any other suggestion of a place to leave the rationales for future votes? --Daniel. 12:24, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The vote page generally links to a BP (or sometimes other) discussion, which includes such rationale, and to the vote's talkpage, where people can add rationale. (Also, people sometimes include rationale as a comment when voting.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I for one like having some rationale in the vote. It is often useful when the proposer explains a bit why the proposed idea is a good thing. No one needs to read a rationale presented in a collapsible table, do they? I would often rather read a summary of the rationale than a lengthy BP discussion. Nonetheless, the rationale in this vote has around 450 words and could be made shorter; details could be outsourced to the talk page. The alternative in which the proposer presents his rationale as part of his vote does not seem to improve anything. --Dan Polansky 16:49, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't mind rationale in the vote where the vote is de novo (as, for example, a vote for a new admin). But when there's been a BP discussion already and people have expressed reasons for both sides, including only one of those sides' reasons in the vote seems unfair to me.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:34, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It does not seem unfair to me. Voters are still free to read the BP discussion if they are inclined to do so, but I do not see it as the duty of a voter to read all discussions to which a vote refers. Voters often read the comments of other voters directly in the vote, which often contain counter-rationales. The proposer carries the burden of trying to convince a supermajority, while the opposers only need to form a 1/3-minority. Actually, I think that each policy vote and executive vote should have a rationale stated directly in the vote; I find it annoying when I do not know the reasons for the vote being proposed. I don't mind if the vote says 'Rationale: See the talk page, section "Rationale"', but I want to see an official rationale that is as polished as the text of the vote (or as unpolished as the text of the vote). --Dan Polansky 09:16, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    By the way, like Dan, below, I am only voting that (e.g.) time, if in cat:Time, be alphabetized among t words, and not that time be in cat:Time.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support --Dan Polansky 08:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC). IOW, I support replacing either of "[[Category:Time|*]]" and "[[Category:Time| ]]" in "time" entry with "[[Category:Time]]"; and further on this model. I am saying nothing about whether "time" should be a member of "Category:Time" in the first place; what I am saying is that if it is a member, then it should be sorted in alphabetically rather than as one of the leading entries under "*" or " ". Some edits that introduced asterisk or space: "time" (diff, June 2005), "weather" (diff, December 2005), "psychology" (diff, March 2007). --Dan Polansky 08:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Let's be honest, nobody goes to Category:Time to look for our entry on time. There's no need to have them right at the beginning. -- Prince Kassad 15:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support. DAVilla 19:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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Abstain

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  1. Abstain Mglovesfun (talk) 11:33, 11 April 2011 (UTC) I just don't care lol.[reply]
  2. Abstain Ƿidsiþ 19:59, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Decision

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