Talk:Boyfriend

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This article was listed on votes for deletion; see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Boyfriend. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 00:12, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

On 28 Mar 2005, this article was again nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Girlfriend (2nd nomination) for a record of the discussion. —Korath (Talk) 01:10, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Boyfriend and Girlfriend

Are people more likely to say, "This is my girlfriend/boyfriend, So-and-so" or "This is my sweetheart, So-and-so"? Also, if you drunkenly slobber on someone in a bar, are they more likely to say "I have a girlfriend/boyfriend" or "I have a sweetheart"??? Engage Brain Now Mr Merger. --207.216.10.77 06:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

And Wikipedia's newest notability test was born:the druken stupor test. --YbborT 14:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we merge boyfriend and girlfriend into one article called sweetheart. The two articles are very similar and look something like dictionary definitions. Here are a few notes:

  1. The article titles Boyfriend and Girlfriend will both survive as re-directs.
  2. The article title for an alternate meaning, Sweetheart (company), will not change, and we can still have a link to it at the top of the merged article.

Any objections?? 66.245.98.79 18:47, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Let me see how this is to be done. This is what seems just about right:

First, Sweetheart is to be deleted. Then, Girlfriend is to be moved to Sweetheart using the "Move this page" option and then reworded so that it can talk about the two genders equally. Note that Girlfriend will be kept as a re-direct. Next, Boyfriend is to be merged and re-directed to Sweetheart as well. After that, besides having a link to Sweetheart (company) at the top of the merged aritcle, anything else to do?? 66.245.64.202 19:45, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Two comments: 1) Moving two pages that have names that are universally used to refer to two concepts to a page with a name only used in the US is a bad idea. (I (in the UK) have never heard anyone's boyfriend or girlfriend referred to as a "sweetheart".) 2) As the girlfriend article points out, one of its meanings is not romantic at all, and so does not belong on a page called sweetheart. Proteus (Talk) 21:19, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, boyfriend looks to me like a dictionary definition that I want to know what to do with. 66.245.64.202 21:20, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What's a better article that boyfriend can re-direct to?? Simply leaving it as it is doesn't look right to me because it looks like a dictionary definition. Simply re-directing to girlfriend doesn't look right to me because both terms are gender-specific. The choice that looks right to me sounds too U.S.-centric to Proteus. 66.245.64.202 21:26, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The obvious answer is to expand this article. (Some ideas off the top of my head: Is "boyfriend" used differently by men and women, or by children and adults? At what point in a relationship does it start being used? Is a certain level of intimacy implied by its use? Is it used for people in long-term relationships, or are other terms like "partner" introduced after a certain period of time? Is it a modern term, and if so what would have been used before it?) Merging is normally for articles that show no potential for development, which I don't think applies here. Proteus (Talk) 21:34, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well, how can it be expanded?? Please do so in whatever way you can. 66.245.64.202 21:37, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Merge. Possibly with sweetheart. It can then include boyfriend, girlfriend, and transgendered sweeties as well. Morganfitzp 16:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Copied from user talk:andrewa:

What you have proposed doesn't preserve the history. If you rewrite it so it does, I think you'll find that the necessary delete then becomes a speedy delete (and if not it should be). But what exactly are you trying to achieve anyway? The results won't be neat in any case. Why not leave the histories where they are? Andrewa 21:26, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The answer is that boyfriend and girlfriend are articles I think should be merged and I want to know what the best way to do it without deleting a page is. 66.245.64.202 21:29, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Sweetheart for the context of these remarks.

The reply doesn't address the question. In what way is what you propose going to untangle the edit histories? What do you want to end up with in the way of redirects, articles and their histories, and why is this an improvement on the simple cut-and-paste approach?

Cut-and-paste isn't always wrong. It's always wrong as an alternative to a simple move, but this one is anything but simple. If the articles and histories are all to be kept, there's some advantage in not moving the histories. The goal is that people coming to it later will be able to work out what happened, and the KISS principle might well apply here.

If you do want to untangle the histories somehow, I suspect that the first step should be to move the current disambiguation page from sweetheart to sweetheart (disambiguation), and then speedy delete the resulting redirect to allow another move.

But I urge you first to do some more thinking about exactly what you want to end up with (both articles and histories), personally I'm not convinced that you have it worked out yet. Then see if there's consensus to do it, and again I have to flag that I'm not personally convinced that the merge is a good idea at all. I'm happy to do the speedy provided there is consensus for the plan, in fact if you'd done that without involving VfD I'd just have done it for you and left it to others to object to the article move/merge if they wished. It's a bit more complicated now!

I'm sorry if this seems uncooperative! I do applaud your efforts to preserve history and to simplify the article structure. Andrewa 01:19, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I too applaud your efforts. However, one remark--is there a better title than "sweetheart"? It seems like a very old-fashioned term, not incredibly encyclopedic. Any suggestions? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 05:23, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

How about 'lover'? Or maybe the non-dictionary parts of boyfriend/girlfriend could be moved to intimate relationship, and a redirect set up? --Johnkarp 07:49, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

... if you absolutely must unify them, how about as a subsection of 'romance'? There aren't any appropriate English terms for what you want, I don't think -- e.g., 'lover' almost always implies sexual intercourse, which 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' don't necessarily. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 00:44, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC)

The pages could possibly be merged, but I don't think that sweetheart is the right place for it; neither is lover. Intimate relationship seems a bit awkward but is so far the most appropriate suggestion that I've seen. -Sean Curtin 03:57, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

How about creating special friend (a little cutesy/euphemistic, but not as old-fashioned as sweetheart). Or move the content to courtship... again the term is a bit old-fashioned if you ask me, but "dating" (which redirects there) is the typing of relationship in which the terms boyfriend and girlfriend are most commonly used. (And courtship would benefit from a little attention.) Tverbeek 00:45, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Sweetheart" really isn't specific to romantic type of love; you ever called your dog a "sweetheart"? Doesn't mean it's romantic, but certainly a family type of love. --66.120.156.159 21:41, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] use of boyfriend is non sexual/romantic way

I think it's true to say that:

"The term is far less often used in the extended sense as its female equivalent, girlfriend, which is fairly often used by women to refer to their non-romantic female friends, as boyfriend is rarely used this way by (heterosexual) men."

That's maybe a bit unequal, and maybe we should use it to mean male friend of a male, but it's very very rare, in reality. It's not non-neutral to report that things aren't equal, as long as the statement is done from a NPOV, as it is. I've literally never heard the word "boyfriend" used in this way ever. So i've reverted the change by 88.108.57.87 which implied it was as common as the use of the female equivalent. Spute 17:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that "boyfriend" never seems to be used in a non-sexual/romantic way by pretty much any men. I'd think gay men are more likely to refer to one another jokingly as "girlfriend" than to use "boyfriend" in a non-sexual/romantic context. Can anyone provide usage of a man saying something like "yeah, I'm heading out with my boyfriends tonight." I suppose one might theoretically imagine a gay man saying something like this, although I don't think I've ever heard such a thing. I can't even begin to imagine a straight man who is a native English speaker using the term in this way. john k 13:22, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
It's never used in a non-romantic way. (At least not now, may have been in the past) -- Steel 13:27, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I've changed the text to say that it's "almost never" used in a non-romantic context. john k 15:52, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
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