Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Dictionary definitions

Please discuss this issue and formulate suggestions here before posting them on the main project page.

Wiktionary

I am very confused why this is being proposed as a Centralized Discussion. This issue was solved long ago. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That's been the policy since before I came to the project. It could not be more clear. We are writing a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. Users who want to write about the meaning, origins and usage of a word or phrase should be encouraged to make those contributions at Wiktionary.

The rest of us, on finding those articles, can immediately transwiki them to the appropriate project. The consensus for action after transwiki has evolved over time. The current consensus seems to be that we should replace the content with a soft redirect using {{tl:wi}}.

Yes, we have a few examples of VfD decisions in our past which contradict the general rule. 1) Wikipedia is inconsistent. 2) The community found extenuating circumstances in a very few cases. Neither of those disrupt the general rule. Dictionary definitions belong in Wiktionary. Stubs are allowable in Wikipedia as long as they are expanded past the level of mere dictionary definition sooner or later.

Wiktionary is a sister project. Like Wikipedia, it is licensed under GFDL. Any Wikipedia reader/editor can also read and edit at Wiktionary. Content can be freely transferred between the two. Wiktionary is rapidly becoming as respected an internet dictionary as Wikipedia is a respected encyclopedia. Wiktionary is no backwater. Rossami (talk) 17:33, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree, Rossami. I don't consider the Wiktionary a backwater, but I do feel that there should be a sensible work load distribution. It's just a lot of double-coverage to keep all kinds of dicdefs here when there's a designated place for them. I felt it was worth taking up here because centralized discussion won't be put those participating in the position of having to make a choice on the spot, like with an AfD. Any insecurity among most voters in those procedures tends to result in people voting keep by default, regardless of inclusion policy.

Peter ^Isotalo 06:37, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Ya know what would be nice?

How about if the "No page with that title exists" message that one gets when looking for a non-existent article were worded slightly differently for searches in which an article does exist on Wikitionary? It could potentially even give the full Wikitionaty definition, or just a link to it. This would cut down on the excess dicdef articles by quite a lot. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 22:42, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

• Although that currently can not be done automatically, nothing prevents us from manually making "soft redirects" to Wiktionary for all those pages. Granted, that's a lot of pages... but if we could round up 500 Wikipedians to do 100 apiece, we could knock out the most likely suspects pretty quickly. -- BDAbramson ^talk 03:06, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
• Soft redirects turn links that actually don't have an article blue, which I see as a bad thing. When we don't have an article on a topic, you don't just get an empty page, the page you get actually suggest other places to look including wiktionary. People need to learn how to read. We don't have to do all that work when all people need to do to find a dic def is click the wiktionary link. Wikipedia is not a dictionary and by soft-redirecting or by allowing dicdefs here, it will only confuse people. Just delete the ones which have no chance of becoming an article. Slang terms from websites and forums and slur for sexual words can all be deleted on the spot. In the last case any info should've been written in the regular titled article to begin with. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
  • True, you are referred to other places, but if a wiktionary article actually exists for a term that someone has tried to make an article of in Wikipedia, a soft redirect would discourage re-creation of that article. -- BDAbramson ^talk 15:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Should we get rid of "Wiktionary is not a dictionary?"

Personally, I tend to feel that the "not a dictionary" policy is misguided and tends to be misunderstood or misapplied. The policy, in theory, relates to articles that could never be more than dictionary definitions. In practice, it is applied to stubs that begin by stating the obvious. My specific beef is with the way it has been misapplied to encyclopedic articles about pronouns, grammatical particles, and logical operators.

I would propose instead that the policy be entirely revised and strongly curtailed. If no other reason than "dictionary definition" is given for an article proposed for deletion, this should be a ground to speedily keep it. Articles that truly can never be more than a dictionary definition should instead be deleted as simply "unencyclopedic" in the unlikely case that such a categorization is meaningful. If an article exists in complete sentences, this suggests in itself that it is more than a "dictionary definition."

The discussion about wikipedia not being a "usage guide" should be entirely dropped or strongly revised. If we have articles on individual Pokemons and Bible verses, we can also have extended discussions of the nuances of slang usage; this is useful information, especially for non-native speakers of the several languages; and if it is a discussion of cultural nuances written up in complete sentences, it obviously goes beyond "dictionary definitions." More importantly, extensive discussion of the subtleties of prescriptive grammar in English and in other languages is at least as much at home in the encyclopedia side as it would be in a dictionary.

There is some inevitable overlap between the two projects in any case, and Wikipedia is not paper. The spate of "dicdef" deletions has abated somewhat, which to me is progress; but while the policy exists, some people will continue to propose deletions of perfectly good stubs, or worse, remove valid information that goes beyond anything you'd find in a dictionary from the encyclopedia, on the grounds that it discusses etymologies or usage, or merely because it is "about a word." Ultimately any article on something with a name is "about a word." -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:24, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with most of this. Wikipedia is not a language guide. Yes, "discussion of the subtleties of prescriptive grammar" is appropriate here ... in one small group of appropriately-titled articles discussing the general cases. Not scattered among thousands of articles on slang and neologisms and this week's Internet fads and so forth, where they couldn't readily be found by someone actually trying to research the core linguistic concepts. Barno 01:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Smerdis, we can't constantly bring up articles, the existance of which are questioned, to justify other articles; Pokémon-stubs and Bible verses are particularly dubious articles to fight for. It's not valid justification since AfD-discussions can ignore policy, even when the decision is a completely obvious violation and not even a trace of consensus for changing it exists. Most of the time this is extended to utter trivialities like kekeke. In terms of dicdefs, I think exceptions like nigger are reasonable, but if this is abused by extending the exception to articles like blatte and banana (person), then the choice would have to be to enforce the policy completely, which is just as bad and uncompromising as the current option. Collecting completely non-notable Internet and Usenet neologisms, foreign slang and colloquialisms is not collecting information, it's hoarding trivia. It's not done because the information is extremely interesting, can't be found elsewhere or is generally requested, but because a small minority of the editor community thinks that we should be a an indiscriminate collection of information.

Peter ^Isotalo 06:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

It probably is true that mentioning Pokemons and Bible verses is in some sense logically fallacious --- although most of the Bible verse articles are fairly good. The point is, though, that we have the resources to be a more in depth reference than a paper encyclopedia can be about those articles that we choose to write about.

If your concern is with unencyclopedic trivia, neologisms, and fads, it strikes me as enough to label them unencyclopedic, neologisms, net-cruft, whatever is more appropriate. Labelling it a "dictionary definition" is redundant in these cases for which a better argument for deletion can be made. This, by exclusion, tends to restrict the field of "dictionary definition" to valid stubs that ought to stay. You have the perennial philosophical argument about what's a social construction and what isn't; but ultimately every article that's about a concept that is indeed a social construction is an extended definition.

Ultimately, I think "dictionary definition" as a ground for deletion is redundant, and tends to yield avoidable stress and rancor. "Dictionary definitions" that should be deleted tend to be deleted for other reasons. -- Smerdis of Tlön 04:53, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Smerdis makes several interesting points. I have to disagree with a few of them, though. A discussion of the nuances of language (slang or otherwise) is indeed useful but I disagree that "it obviously goes beyond 'dictionary definitions'." Nuances of usage and meaning are exactly the content that I would expect in an unabridged dictionary. The argument that "Ultimately any article on something with a name is 'about a word'" also fails to persuade me. The encyclopedia article is about the object or concept, not about the name. The name is not the same as the object. Finally, I am extremely uncomfortable with his/her proposed rule that "If an article exists in complete sentences, ... it is more than a 'dictionary definition.'" Any dictionary definition can be rewritten in complete sentences without adding any content. Rossami (talk) 00:53, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, it'd help if more people bothered even trying (let alone succeeding) to distinguish between "extended discussion" and "list of words". Take sexual slang for instance. It's a 65 kilobyte page, with exactly 3 paragraphs (short ones - Smerdis's first comment was longer!) of discussion. The rest is an abyssmally long list of words! I'm categorically opposed to any proposal that assists, encourages, or condones an increase in the amount of such non-article content on Wikipedia, or delays its purging. The Literate Engineer 06:07, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

• Most dic defs can also be deleted under CSD A1, but there's scores of people who don't like that provision either. Suppose for a moment we didn't have an article on apples and someone was to enter: Apple (noun) type of fruit. What would you do? I wouldn't like to get rid of WP is not a dictionary anyway, as that would encourage dic def creation here on Wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I think Rossami makes a very good analysis of the situation. The definition of what "encyclopedic" means in these contexts is definetly very skewed and overly minimalistic. These articles are for the most part just slightly more verbose definition of usage and meaning, which equals a dicdef.

I would also like to bring another example to the discussion; swordfish (password). It's not quite a dicdef, but neither is it an encyclopedic article, and I feel it's part of the same trend as all these slang-'n'-slur articles.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia should begin roughly where Wiktionary ends, erring in the direction of inclusion. If a word is really in use and is likely to be of sufficient general interest, and has enough information, then why not an encyclopedia article? -- BDAbramson ^talk 14:32, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Just so. I learned someting from the swordfish (password) article. It references public, if not "important", cultural phenomena. Objections seem to be that the subject is somehow too trivial or unimportant to be the subject of an encyclopedia article. As noted above, these objections, whatever their validity, don't fit "dictionary definition" as a grounds for objection.

If I were asked to write an article on something I knew little about, I would begin by asking questions such as: "What does X mean; when people talk about X, what do they mean?" "What is the history of X." "Are there any important public figures or cultural phenomena that feature X or discuss X? If so, what is the significance of X in them?" This method works fairly well, not only for culturally sensitive concepts like nigger and gentleman, but also for fairly successful articles like thou, lady, and honour, to take some examples from articles I've worked on. It strikes me as still plausible to call all of these articles extended dictionary definitions; but to make dictionary entries out of them would mean to gut them and make them less informative and less readable. This is what I don't want to see happen. -- Smerdis of Tlön 18:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Out of the examples you've given, only "nigger" and "thou", especially the latter, might be considered obvious candidates for a transwiki. "Gentleman", "lady" and "honour" all represent subjects that are concepts that go far beyond dicdefs, just like homosexual or general.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:55, 17 September 2005 (UTC)