Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary

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[edit] Support/opposition

User guide "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not" claims that "Wikipedia is not a slang and idiom guide". But perhaps it should be.

Wikipedians who support "Wikipedia is not a slang and idiom guide" include:

Wikipedians who oppose "Wikipedia is not a slang and idiom guide" include:

  • BL
  • Smerdis of Tlön 12:47, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • TOTB
  • ZyMOS (talk), this section should change from Wikipedia is not a slang and idiom guide, to Wikipedia is not a dictionary, as is the policy/article. —Preceding comment was added at 05:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
  • rsreston - it's better to have a short dictionary definition than nothing at all. —Preceding comment was added at 18:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

I agree in principle. I don't want to see Wikipedia cluttered with word definitions. But this has already become a gray area when you substitute "glossary" for "dictionary." Take, for example, American football/Glossary. There's a Wikipedia article for forward pass? C'mon!

I got interested in this issue in response to Larry's comment about my induhvidual page. I thought it was a phenomenon interesting enough to warrant an article, although I only wrote a stub. Larry referred me to item #3 of what Wikipedia is not.

I'm not entirely convinced about the inappropriateness of induhvidual, yet.

<>< tbc

It certainly has a place in a larger article about Scott Adams and Dilbert. I don't think the term is used or understood outside of that context enough to merit coverage on its own. --LDC

I agree with the title. It is not a dictionary, glossary, thesarus, or any other reference source. First and foremost, the Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Second, it is a place for academic debate as it relates to the content of the Wikipedia. That is it. If you want a free personal web page go to geocities or angelfire.

The Black Griffen

I oppose, at least, the stricture that "Wikipedia is not a usage guide." Almost all of the grammatical particles of English have interesting histories. Their usage, moreover, is highly idiomatic and requires a fairly extensive discussion to even approach a description. These explanations go well beyond dictionary definitions. The English Wikipedia seems to have a fair number of contributors for whom English is not a native language. Adding usage and idiom explanations has no other place. Smerdis of Tlön 12:47, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The core issue is the perception of Wikipedia, right? Not a matter of resources. So, how about a global Glossary page with intentionally brief subpages for those terms that don't rate a main entry but may require some explanation? That would avoid having to repeatedly enter a parenthetical explanation on every page that uses a term, and its appearance underneath Glossary would make it clear, I think, that it's not a serious entry. The extra effort to enter [[Glossary/Foo]] instead of [[Foo]] isn't too terrible a compromise. This is just off the top of my head, so I'll leave it to others to poke holes in it. --loh

Actually, that (or some variation of it) is a great idea, and I'm embarrased that I didn't think of it already. It will involve changing Wikipedians' habits and culture a bit, but I think it would be worth the effort. --LDC

It looks like I'm going to have to engage in a little more equine abuse. Wikipedia isn't a dictionary, it's an encyclopedia. Therefore, I think it's a waste of our time, qua time spent working on an encyclopedia, to work on writing a glossary, however presented. Glossary-type information is either to be found in suitable encyclopedia articles (about jargon, or in articles themselves), which is totally acceptable, or to be found at http://www.dictionary.com or your dictionary of choice.

Try this out for size: if you think the meaning of some word both (1) needs explanation and (2) doesn't merit more than a dictionary entry's worth of explanation, then you should probably just define the word in the article itself. On the other hand, if the term really does need some special explanation that you can refer to from several different other articles, such as cannot be found in a standard fat dictionary, then probably your term is a piece of jargon. Explaining jargon is totally acceptable in an encyclopedia. The explanation of jargon is an art, by the way. It's not just a matter of giving a dictionary-type definition. It's a matter of conveying how the word is used, in what contexts, and it almost always helps to give some background information about related topics. And, of course, much jargon does itself name important topics, about which a lot of non-semantic information is very important to include in an encyclopedia. Hence, most complete, good explanations of jargon will not look like dictionary definitions.

If the above is correct, then we still won't, in the end, have many articles that look like dictionary definitions. The briefest of definitions can be included in other articles. When they need to be referred to by many other articles, they're probably jargon, and jargon almost always can be usefully and helpfully explained with information that involves more than just the sort of basic semantic information you'd find in a dictionary.

The above-mentioned football terms are, indeed, football jargon, without which it is impossible to understand or explain the game. That's why it's OK to have that jargon. I have my doubts that induhvidual is a piece of jargon necessary to explain anything that belongs in an encyclopedia, although someone far more expert on Scott Adams and Dilbert might want to disagree with me, I guess.  :-)

I hammer on this point, that we're working on an encyclopedia, for what I think is a good reason. Part of what makes Wikipedia so cool is that we are focusing on the fact that it's an encyclopedia and not, in addition, a bunch of everything2 nodes (just for example). If we let it, it would become all that, and more. But then it wouldn't be half as cool as it is. There's a reason we're here and not at h2g2, everything2, Usenet, Kuro5hin, Project Gutenburg, etc. --LMS

I understand. I decided to give the text a home at http://prosaic.swiki.net/13. So. The FAQ explains how to delete a page, and I did delete the text. But it didn't go away altogether. The FAQ doesn't say how to do that, so I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable. <>< tbc

Why all the debate? Compare any sensible sized dictionary to any sensible sized encyclopedia. The amount of material in the encyclopedia will swamp the material in the dictionary. When it reaches a sensible size, you could add a whole dictionary to wikipedia and noone would even notice. --drj

A good dictionary has much less information in many more entries than a good encyclopedia. This means that if you put a dictionary and an encyclopedia together, the majority of entries will come from the dictionary, but the majority of the information will come from the encyclopedia. This makes it hard to find information; most links and most search results will lead to dictionary definitions. -- Kragen
Very well stated, Kragen. --LMS
I think there's a non sequitur: Does a high number of entries really cause a high number of links? I think, this number is entirely up to us, the authors. Realistically, nobody would write an article like this. Any sensible author would only wikify words which he/she feels deserve a wikipedia article. Let's trust the collective intelligence of Wikipedia! Sebastian 08:50 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)
BTW, as I'm revisiting this, I noticed that of the above words only an currently has an article. With an interesting bit of information. Sebastian 20:07 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" philosophy is, as of September 2001, being used as a justification to delete stub entries.

I haven't seen this happening, but that's not to say that it isn't. Any examples? -- Stephen Gilbert
See Quimby, Quagmire, Quintuplet, Quadruplet, Quiver
The question was asked two months ago, when the comment was made. Any examples from then? --Stephen Gilbert
I hope you can understand that it would be difficult for me to find examples now. I apologize for not doing so at the time. --TheCunctator

The fact that the Wikipedia-is-not-a-dictionary policy is sometimes used to delete article stubs, when the stub could actually be the stub of a legitimate encyclopedia article, does not make the policy wrong. It makes the policy wrongly applied.

There is absolutely nothing wrong, in my opinion, with deleting stubs that will never be anything more than dictionary definitions. But whether a stub could ever be "anything more than dictionary definition" is somewhat difficult to determine. I can easily imagine a long, informative article on arrow quivers; I cannot easily imagine anything more than a dictionary definition of "quiver" in the sense of what I do when approaching a grizzly bear. Hence, my tendency would be to leave a stub expressing the former sense, and delete a stub expressing the latter sense. See [1] for further considerations from me on this. --LMS

Heh, actually, I could see a good article on the psychological/physiological reasons and causes of trembling and quivering whilst under extreme stress. Basically, my opinion is that almost everything makes a good article. --Anders Törlind
Re the article topic you mention, sure! But then we'd want to make sure that the topic was correctly named. Do psychologists who study the stuff call it "trembling"? --LMS
Aye, correct naming is another matter entirely, but for the sake of argument, let's say that psychologists do not call it quivering. In that case the stub should certainly be moved and a redirect implemented. Deleting still seems a bit harsh IMHO. --Anders Törlind
But what if the stub has absolutely no useful information either about the word that psychologists use or about the psychological phenomenon? I.e., what if, as is sometimes the case, the definition is just a definition of the word and has value only as such? Then deleting is perfectly fine. --LMS

Cor blimey! An argument of almost infinite regress looms... :-) sjc

So, if you don't like WINAD, the name of the game is, write articles that look like they could become encyclopedia articles. If you want to counter a deletion, pick up the page and do just that. (The dictstub may help with that, I think. Fortunately one can't kill earlier versions...)
Yes! I agree 100% with the latter! --LMS

24 - there is plenty of use for disambiguators if the term has become in some way significant or if it is widely confused. The criteria for an entry may be different than in a dictionary, i.e. not all senses need be covered for all words, but when a dictionary-type entry is required to avoid confusion in the world at large, or even between entries, go for it.


Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. The only reason, as far as I can tell, for enumerating various senses that a word can have is to direct people to appropriate articles; I don't see how Wikipedia has an interest qua encyclopedia in enumerating senses of a word in the way that a dictionary does. I'm certainly open to debate on this point; perhaps I'm not seeing things quite right. --User:LMS

What is the cost of a dictionary-like entry? Is Wikipedia worse off for having them? -TS

One cost is that I think that short dictionary-like entries "scratch an itch" prematurely. That is, having no page will provoke someone to write one. Having a too-short page, with just a definition, will not provoke someone to write more. This is just a theory, which I offer without empirical evidence of any kind.  :-) --User:Jimbo Wales

For wiki to be most useful, a dictionary like stub article giving a short definition of a topic should be at the top of longer articles. New topics may initially manifest as dictionary sized entries and eventually grow into full articles.

For drunkenness, one could expand on the medical stages of how alcohol affects the body and medical/behavioral treatment for chronic alcholism.

The distinction between "dictionary" and "encyclopedia" is imposed by the limitations of paper. There is no reason we should obey such an arbitrary distinction when it is not useful. Wikipedia is "A place to look up things you may have read but don't understand." Certainly we want descriptive text in much greater detail than a dictionary because we don't suffer the size limitations, but there's no reason at all not to have the dictionary-like information as well, and in fact I think we should have more of it, and a standard way for presenting it. --LDC

Tim asks a good question (you mean "What is the cost of a dictionary-like entry?"? Sebastian 21:50 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)), but I think he might have asked it thinking it was rhetorical. But it has a good answer. While I don't know if Wikipedia is worse off for having dictionary-like entries, in general, the cost of having many dictionary-like entries--which list several senses of a word or phrase and give no further information than the meaning of the word or phrase--is to give the impression that Wikipedia has no ambitions to being any more than a dictionary. This makes Wikipedia seem to be much more boring than it could be; dictionaries are interesting but not half as interesting as an infinitely-expandable encyclopedia. When new people stumble across Wikipedia and see that some significant percentage of entries are just definitions, they could easily form the misleading and damaging impression that we're building just a dictionary. So I think writing article stubs that are no more than definitions is a bad habit to get into.

As I've said before myself (see Wikipedia commentary/Breadth and depth), I think there's nothing wrong with "stub" articles per se, and in fact I think it's great to have them. I just wish that when you make them, they wouldn't consist just of lists of definitions of senses of the title word or phrase.

Lee also makes a good point, that we, ourselves, needn't distinguish between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. But there are two points to bear in mind. First, while we might not make this distinction, most other people do--and when people see lots of mere definitions, listing multiple senses, some of which have little to do with any obvious encyclopedia topic, then our readers might conclude (reasonably) that we are doing what they would describe as writing a dictionary. I think this would be a bad thing.

Second, there is a useful distinction to be made between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. They simply don't overlap entirely, nor should they, because they have different purposes. The purpose of a dictionary is to give the meanings of words and short, common phrases; the purpose of an encyclopedia is to impart knowledge. Dictionaries help us to understand language; encyclopedias go far beyond that. Fine, you say, but surely the meanings of words is one of the things at least required for knowledge--and with this I agree. But if the focus of a project is on giving the meanings of words, then one focuses on stating multiple senses of words, including senses about which there is little specialized knowledge beyond what can be imparted by the definition. This, as I said, creates the practical problem of making it seem that what the project is about is (limited to) giving definitions of words. Even when we know that that's not what it's about, if we get into the habit of just enumerating senses of a word, without adding any further information (information not entailed by the typical dictionary definition(s) of the word), then de facto we are treating Wikipedia as a dictionary. I think there's something wrong with that. We could be doing and encouraging so much more than that.

Why doesn't someone make http://www.wiktionary.com to make a wiki-based dictionary? That would be interesting, and it could be useful, too.

But why not just combine a dictionary and encyclopedia, so that we could use the one for the other? The trouble with this proposal is just that encyclopedias provide more information than is typically needed when one consults a dictionary. It would be silly to come to Wikipedia if all you wanted to know is the meaning of the word--and usually, when we (as some of us often do) consult a dictionary, that is all we want to know.

So I think we should say that our sole purpose is to build an encyclopedia, and our habits should be consistent with this purpose. Of course, one important habit to get into (that most of us already are in) is to define the sense of the word we use at the beginning of an encyclopedia article. But that doesn't mean that our purpose is to create a dictionary.

So, I disagree with Lee when he says we should present information first in dictionary-type format. I think we should let people consult dictionaries when they want definitions, and we on Wikipedia should focus not on perfecting our lexicography but on increasing and imparting our (a posteriori) knowledge. I do think that we "perfect our lexicography" at the overall expense of our central purpose, of building an encyclopedia.

--User:Larry Sanger

Your Second point above is good. I now see why you don't simply merge the two. There certainly is a difference in focus.
But so is Lee's point: The distinction between "dictionary" and "encyclopedia" was historically imposed by the limitations of paper.
Let me try to reconcile the two points. Lee's historic point in and of itself doesn't mean that we should discard the distinction. It may still be a useful paradigm if it helps us stay focussed. However, we should use it smartly. Segragating all information into two distinct domains just doesn't strike me as a very smart idea. Let's think about other ways to achieve this. Such as:
  • Add two checkboxes so authors can tag articles that clearly fall in one or the other class.
Larry, you proposed the tenet "our sole purpose is to build an encyclopedia [and forbid all dictionary-type entries]".
With all due respect for your vision, to which we owe wikipedia, I don't think that everyone who volunteers to add valid contributions to wikipedia would want to, or should be forced to, endorse such a restriction. I, for one, would endorse a tenet like
"our sole purpose is to collect the best free and unbiased encyclopedic information on the web"
If we, on our hunt for mushrooms, find a few blueberries as well, we should not disdain them.
I don't share Larry's concern that one would be at the expense of the other. The internet is such a huge resource of intelligent people - tapping it is like drinking from a lake. There certainly are plenty of people out there who find writing entries on words of a natural language more interesting than writing elaborate articles. I don't think this has to harm the quality of the latter. A smooth transition may even dras these people towards what they can do best, and thus best serve the purpose to build an encyclopedia.
Sebastian 22:44 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

A fundamental restriction on encyclopedias is a lack of space for short entries. Is a 40 word biography of someone a biographical dictionary article or an encyclopedia article?

Wiki should not suffer from a sprinkling of dictionary like stub entries. Eventually, many of them will bloom into full entries.

Maybe the correct tact is to enter the basic stub/dictionary entry and one or two questions which should eventually provoke a larger article.

Some stub articles will start out looking like dictionary definitions.

Many full encyclopedia articles will contain multiple words and phrases which are unfamiliar to the ordinary guy. In such a case, an explanation of the word (be it definition or whatever) should be linked to, independent of the main body of the text to that you don't ruin the flow of an article with continual interruptions to explain yourself, and yet don't make the reader leave wikipedia to find out what the hell you just said. Some of these word explanations may themselves grow to full articles in time. If they don't, it will be for only one reason: there is no call for such an article, and you would never find it in any other regular encyclopedia, either.

Trying to stop people from writing definitions serves no useful purpose. It is disingenous to imply that a project which contains some word definitions alongside thousands of fully developed encyclopedia articles will somehow be accidentally understood as being a dictionary.

Take this example from law: In writing about "nolo contendere," I wind up using the word 'allocute.' No one is going to get the sepcific legal meaning of that word in its two main senses, without prior education. So, I link to a new page to explain the word, generating a three-paragraph article. Guess what? I checked six on-line legal dictionaries, three English language dictionaries, and every encyclopedia I can access online, and the word was not defined or discussed in any of them. Two online thesaurus' had it. So, even if I were not able expand discussion of the word into a full article and had to leave it at just a definition, should I have left the word undefined?

Good point. Who wrote this? Sebastian 21:50 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Please see this partial response. See also Wikipedia is not a dictionary and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.

Whoops, the link to wiktionary:Main Page in the article is busted. -- Merphant 11:47 Dec 12, 2002 (UTC)

I'd like to add some boilerplate text to this page for use when linking to wiktionary or when deliberately avoiding giving a definition (see definition and transvestite for examples). Something like:

''[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary|Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]. For a dictionary definition, see [http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Definition Wiktionary:Definition]''

but this is a protected page. Can someone unprotect it? (assuming that this isn't a dumb idea) Martin

Now unprotected. --Brion

I'm a newbie. I've read this page about 7 times, and I'm still no closer to knowing what should and shouldn't go into Wikipedia. Sure, it's an encylopedia not a dictionary -- so how about a simple explanation of the difference? I'm not an editor, biographer, librarian, or even bibliophile, and in general I don't read dictionaries or encyclopedias for fun. I just want to write content that belongs and not get flamed. When does something stop being a word and start being a thing? All this debating minor points seems like a waste of time if you aren't getting the main message across to new contributors.

As an example, see Hentai. Is this a dictionary entry or not? Someone in the talk page seemed pretty sure it didn't belong. Why?

-- mib 04:40 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

A dictionary entry will describe the meaning of a word and perhaps its pronunciation and its origin. An encyclopaedia entry should describe not only these things (in the case of words) but go further and discuss significance, history, effects, related concepts and so on. There is much more meat in an encyclopaedia article than in a dictionary article. -- Derek Ross 04:52 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

For your Hentai example, I would say that the first paragraph is a dictionary type entry. If that was all there was then Hentai should be deleted. However the addition of the next paragraph turns the whole thing into an encyclopaedia article. The objection was probably raised because the subject of article is so narrow that it only just about makes it as an encyclopaedic subject. It would be better if this was part of an anime article or part of an article on Japanese sexual mores. -- Derek Ross 04:59 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

That's fairly helpful, thank you. Can someone put that (or something equally clear) prominently on the Wikipedia is not a dictionary page? What about the biographical case, what distinguishes a biographical dictionary entry from an encyclopedia entry (as presumably a biopgrahical entry would include history, significance, etc.). Is Fujishima Kosuke appropriate for Wikipedia?

(Actually I have a lot of questions about foreign language content in general, is there a good place for discussion, or some existing guidelines?)

Thanks in advance, mib 05:01 May 3, 2003 (UTC).

Talk about grey areas! Okay, I'll do my best. A biographical dictionary entry would just say who a person was, perhaps by giving information about what they were most famous for. For instance

Robert Burns - Scots poet who wrote 'Auld Lang Syne'

whereas an encyclopedia article on Robert Burns should go into depth about the man, his life, his poetry, the environment that he lived in, etc. I would say that the Fujishima Kosuke is currently a biographical dictionary entry and wouldn't be out of place in something like Who's Who. However Wikipedia biographical entries tend to improve over time as people keep adding to them, so the F. K. article will probably cross the line into encyclopedia territory if enough people are actually interested in him and therefor I wouldn't be quite so quick to crticise a short biographical entry as I would be to criticise a simple word definition. -- Derek Ross 05:22 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

'Moved from User talk:81.203.98.109:

We don't usually link to Wiktionary definitions, like you just did in Viscosity. If you think it's important enough, you can define the word in the article, otherwise just don't bother. -- Tim Starling 11:56, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC) Viktionary it´s a help internal tool (wikimedia tool, like wikipedia) to spare wikipedia space. Why repeat something that has definition in wikipedia, if not necessary ??. The user can easily see the definition in wikitionary.

I think it is so Wikipedia can stand alone, without people needing to move between it and Wiktionary. Why not get an acount and login? Angela 13:35, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

There is problem when one wants to create an article with wiktionary definitions. You the person that said it to me. So, wiktionary it´s an internal usefull wikimedia/wikipedia tool. I meant that the entire article should not be a definition. If that is all there is to say about something, then it belongs only in Wiktionary. However, it's ok for a longer article to include a definition. Does that make sense? Angela 13:50, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Too much information in the same wikipedia article (too much definitions) is noise. If somebody (i.e. foreign people; learning persons... want to know the signification of a basic - for some knowledge branch - word, can use wiktionary links from wikipedia). The colour of wikipedia links to wiktionary is different from the colour of wikipedia links to wikipedia.

I'm curious about this:

While on the one hand we are all certainly delighted that Wikipedia is growing in breadth, some (but not all) of us view breadth at the expense of the very notion of what we are working on--an encyclopedia--as a bad idea.

Could somebody who does hold this view explain why breadth is counter-productive to creating an encyclopaedia? --Camembert

I don't strongly hold this opinion, but suppose we decided to broaden wikipedia by allowing dictionary entries. Well, now most of our entries would be dictionary entries... but most of the content would be encyclopedia entries - so adding lots of small dictionary entries would make our best content harder to find.
The other argument is that if Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, people going to an article expect to get encyclopedia information. If we give them genealogical or gazeteer-like or otherwise non-encyclopedic information, then they'll be disappointed, and possibly frustrated.
I don't know whether I believe that myself, but I can empathise with the fear of those who do. Martin 21:03, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think I may have misread the paragraph slightly. I was reading the bit that I quoted above as being closely related to the rest of the paragraph it's in (which is talking about obscure biographical articles), which led me to think it was trying to say that having articles on too-obscure figures is counter-productive and makes us less of an encyclopaedia. But now I look at it again, I think it's actually meant to be about not including reams of genealogical data, as you say. It doesn't seem very clear to me though (maybe when I've slept on it...).
By the way, I don't agree with "adding lots of small dictionary entries would make our best content harder to find" - I don't want us to have dictionary entries, but if we did, I don't see how having articles on if, push and might would make it harder to find info on surreal numbers (this is rather tangental, however - I'm rambling. Feel free to ignore it). --Camembert

There is no definite line between an encyclopaedia and a dictionary. There are to many words that have so many interesting facts around them that I think excluding "dictionary entries" is excluding alot of valid, encyclopaediac information. BL 04:19, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

One further reason why I feel this policy is misguided and needs to be suspended pending serious reconsideration is that it seems to have metastasized, from the notion that articles consisting merely of dictionary definitions should be deleted, to the notion that an article merits deleted if it is about "only a word," no matter how beyond the dictionary an article about the word becomes. This puts a whole raft of topics in linguistics and logic beyond the pale. Smerdis of Tlön 19:02, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that part of the problem is once you send someone off to wiktionary or wikiglosory or wikibiodictionary, the navigation gets becomes a problem. I have seen this problem in other wikis that naturally want to include content that is better covered in wikipedia. It seem like we need to be able to include a page from another wikimedia based project -- pull it in and report the license info of where we got it, but keep it in this wiki's name space and navigation. Then if there are links within the page that exist in our name space we could use them, and if the others we could treat as external links. It would also need some way to provide a custom introduction, and possibly conclusion that could be edited, but the imported content would be verbatim. -- Jake 16:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] slang and idiom guide (moved from Wikipedia_talk:What Wikipedia is not)

Rule #5 suck. I like articles about interesting expressions like Read my lips, no more taxes. Especially those that has an interesting etymology behind them. #5 seems to forbid them. BL 04:14, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I put rule 5 back as there is no consensus to remove it yet. Angela 05:02, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

OK!

Vote to abolish rule #5 (or drastically change it to allow expressions)
Deadline: 00.00, August 30, 2003 In favour:
BL
Oppose:
mav, Angela, User:Robert Merkel, Jiang, tompagenet

  • You need to set a deadline for this vote. --Jiang
  • Deadline 07:30 23 August 2003 (UTC). I win.

You aren't allowed to set a deadline for my vote! BL 07:46, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Vote over: One in favour. Five against. Rule 5 remains. Angela 16:25, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I moved it to the top of Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary in a support/opposition style. Seems to be standard on policy pages.
Really, rules 2-5 on page "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not" are duplicating Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, which is non-ideal. Martin 17:57, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think the trouble is some people try to create a link for almost every term used when the article is being written and it sometimes results in completely new pages being created for topics that, unfortunately, can only be explained briefly. Jam2k


[edit] Wikidictionary or Pedia?

I have in mind a series of concepts related to each other, and while some of them are pretty short, they have the potential to become much longer. So my question is whether to just go ahead and make stub articles (which are easier to look for), put them in the Wikidictionary or just use one main Pedia article to summarize.

One example is:

Principle I: Long vowels rise. Principle II: Short nuclei fall. Principle III: Back vowels move to the front.

These principles are defined by William Labov for chain shifting, something found in language change.

For this example, I would like to make 4 pages (William Labov already has a page). Is that making an excess of short articles?

TIA bab

There's always a third option: Wikibooks. What you're thinking of doing sounds like a good introductory linguistic text. --Menchi 09:17, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Menchi. I just found something addressing my question, so I think I'll work with both: Dictionary definitions. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so please do not create an entry merely to define a term. But of course an article can and should always begin with a good definition or a clear description of the topic. If you come across an article that is nothing more than a definition, see if there is information you can add that would be appropriate for an encyclopedia. If you're interested in working on a wiki dictionary, check out the Wiktionary (http://wiktionary.org) project! An exception to this rule are articles about the cultural meanings of individual numbers.
Don't worry. I won't. :-) --Menchi 10:35, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The ideal encyclopedia article is a dictionary definition. Bensaccount 03:27, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia can be something better than a dictionary and an encyclopedia

The phrase "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" has been bothering me since I started using Wikipedia. I've read the arguments pro and con, and the more I think of it, the more I think Wikipedia needs to be better integrated with the other wikimedia. It seems just silly to me to not be able to find the definition of any word that I don't understand in an article by simply clicking on it.

One of the best way to come up with a creative solution to a problem is to come up with a good set of criteria that clearly define the problem you are trying to solve. The discussions about "is it or is it not a dictionary" are the wrong discussion. The discussion should be what is it that people want to do, and what defines the best way to do it. Along those lines I'll try to start a list of what I think we are all looking for:

  • A comprehensive site(s) that is a repository for knowledge. Look up any subject and get information.
  • A way to move quickly and easily from article to article.
  • A way to find the many meanings of words.
  • A way to move quickly and easily from definition to definition, word to word.

There is a pattern here. The obvious missing next step is...

  • A way to move quickly and easily from article to definition and definition to article.

Several people have mentioned that it is often unclear whether an entry is the definition of a word or an encyclopedia article, something in the middle, or a combination of all of those things. Rather than have people spending lots of time trying to shoehorn ideas into these categories and decide if something belongs in Wikipedia or Wiktionary, why not leave it all flexible, changeable and undefined. An article could start as a simple definition, and gradually expand to a full article.

This comes up over and over in discussions at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Someone will say, "Delete it because it is simply a definition", and then someone else will say "But it can turn into a good article". Isn't this the natural evolution?

So here is my proposal:

  • Combine Wikipedia with Wiktionary.
  • Suggest that people continue to write using the Internal link to highlight topics that can direct readers to relevant encyclopedic articles.

but also, and this is the new part...

  • Let people click on ANY WORD that is not highlighted to get a definition or article about the word.

Wouldn't this be practical and more useable? Does it not address the criteria I've stated?

I'd like to see wikipedia be the place for one-stop information exploring. I think in the past people put a lot of thought into how to break knowledge into pieces so that it could be written about in a volume of limited size. The encyclopedia didn't have dictionary entries because it would be too cumbersome to find a single word. The dictionary didn't have long entries because it would make the book too big. In between is the OED, which is a wonderful encyclopedia about words. These differences are only because of the limitations of paper.

We are not limited. --Samuel Wantman 09:35, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Amen. — Lumbercutter 16:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Amen ThisMunkey (talk) 23:18, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. --Kubanczyk (talk) 15:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What about disambig pages?

Do disambig pages also have to follow "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy ? For example, see Bunk which a disambig page with wikilinks to various dictionary meanings of bunk. Jay 09:52, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)


[edit] What content should we have here?

Regularly, items appear on VfD or QD with a reason of "DicDef"; that the article is nothing more than a dictionary-style definition of the word. Lately though I've been watching the <300 byte rash of 'articles' which could be "GazDef" as they are like gazeteer listings: "XXX is a town in YYYY area of ZZZZ county" with no added value. Is it time therefore to either relax the existence of DicDefs in the hope that they will get expanded, or should we start removing entries that are solely a GazDef and have nothing else in their favour? I'm not sure either type of entry presently supply the general reader with useful information --VampWillow 10:53, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Granted, I don't like GazDef stubs either, but IMHO they are more valuable than DictDefs. Just add the population, maybe a map, and you already have a good article which could be found in a (cheap) encyclopedia already. However as we have no space limitations here, even for a rather unimportant town at least one screen full with text should be possible to be reached. When I exchanged the redirect Sondheim with an article as it was a bit misleading, I didn't expect that so much can be written about a village of 1000 citizens, all without ever being there. andy 12:04, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
A "Dicdef" is a very concise, accurate entry on a subject. They are ideal articles and should not be deleted. Bensaccount 15:00, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
If the article has encyclopedic potential. Otherwise, it belongs in the Wiktionary. All "gazeteer" items have encyclopedia potential, that's the relevant difference. -- Jmabel 17:08, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
I think the split into Wiktionary and Wikipedia has proved less than ideal. Although having Wiktionary has a separate project has allowed its style to flourish, in particular in its multilingual nature, what we haven't established is an easy and free-flowing passage of information from one project to the other. This flow was regarded as the absolute key to deciding to have no dicdefs on Wikipedia back in 2002. We virtually never link to wiktionary on wikipedia, and dicdefs are routinely deleted because "that's policy" without really much thought about how best to provide our readers with information. I propose we join up the two projects much more:
In particular I propose we make much greater use of "soft redirects". Suppose ickyflobble is a word that we can only write a dicdef about, not an encyclopedia article. Then at ickyflobble we write For a definition of ickyflobble, see our sister project Wiktionary's article: .... This will be useful to our readers. It will be useful to our editors who can now link any sufficiently non-obvious word/topic without having to worry about whether it is a 'pedia topic or a 'tionary topic. It will promote Wiktionary, which is getting better all that time and it will cut back on the mindless arguments about dicdefs on vfd. What do you think? Pcb21| Pete 18:30, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've set up an example at flagrante delicto. Pcb21| Pete 18:41, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
And User:Patrick has taken it to the next logical step by using the PAGENAME magic word and a template on that page. Pcb21| Pete 22:55, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

....mmm wouldn't it be nice if media wiki automatically created a link? 'you are are on a page that doesn't exist yet, but here is the dictdef, feel free to add an encyclopedia entry or expand the dictionary entry' or something like that... Erich 19:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ooooh, I really like the idea that nonexisting articles do that automatically AND that existing articles automatically include a note/link at the bottom, too, "For a short definition of this word, see______." Elf | Talk 20:22, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
These (and dictionary definitions which haven't yet been expanded) are fine. Google and other search engines can find a stub and attract someone who knows a little about a subject here, where they may be tempted to improve it. That can't happen without having the stubby article in the first place. If it's somewhat stubby and it bothers you, Please use your favorite search engine and add another sentence. It's less work than a VfD listing and in the usual wiki way slowly improves the article. Jamesday 11:52, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Soft redirects

As of September 2, 2004, there's an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Policy proposal for dicdefs: soft redirects that's very relevant to this page. Just thought I'd drop a note here for anyone who has this page on their watchlist but not WP:DP. • Benc • 05:14, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would say it was a 99% consensus, have been archived here without any further action. --Kubanczyk (talk) 15:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I have a very useful Collins 1 volume dict / encyclopedia

Why the hell not? A definition for a word certainly won't do any harm, and it's entirely reasonable that someone might come here looking for what a word means, then be drawn into that, or other, articles. This seems like stupid pedantry. [comment originally unsigned by 195.158.6.178, 05:22, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)]

[edit] Also - separating the Wiktionary / wikipedia namespace is counterproductive

Why not merge them, with Dictionary:prefixes or tags for dict defs? The added value of the two communities working with crossover and synergies wqould be great! [comment originally unsigned by 195.158.6.178, 05:24, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)]

Interesting idea. I do agree that more cross-linking is needed. However, some degree of separation is probably a good thing — we don't want a situation where people would be accidentally linking to the encyclopedia article when they meant to link to the dictionary entry, and vice versa. Believe me, tons of people (myself included) would frequently forget to add "Dictionary:" in front of their wikilinks. I'm sure this exact issue has been discussed before, but I don't know where offhand. • Benc • 06:03, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of different namespaces - that should satisfy the critics - you could have an option to turn off all the dictionary stuff if you hated it. 213.206.33.82 06:02, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What a thought -- making Wiktionary and Wikipedia the same would mean that people would start linking every single word in their articles. RickK 06:27, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Use your imagination! What if there was a dictionary tool that you could use to click on any word and that would get you a dictionary definition of the word. There would not be any need to specify which words have definitions because EVERY word has a definition. If there is an encyclopedia article for a word it can be referenced in the dictionary definition. The only need for highlighting is for multiple word titles of encyclopedia articles. I can think of several ways of how to combine the dictionary and encyclopedia funtions, I bet you can too. --Samuel Wantman 07:13, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Use your eyes — this looks terribly ugly! Also (and more importantly), Wikipedia editors carefully choose which words and phrases to wikify in order to best guide the reader to relevant related articles. We'd be undoing a lot of hard work if we wikified everything. See Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context. • Benc • 07:33, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
You're not understanding what I'm saying. I'll try again. I'm saying that wikipedia does not have to look any different than it does now after dictionary and encyclopedia functions are combined. Writers and editors will still carefully choose which words and prases to wikify, and only those would be highlighted. Those would go to encyclopedia entries (or whatever the editor chooses). What I'm proposing is some easy procedure to select ANY WORD, highlighted or not, and get a definition of the word. I just want to make it easy to look up the meaning of a word that a reader doesn't understand without making them jump through lots of hoops. I don't know enough about the implementation to say how it can or should be done. Ideally, I'd like it to be simple, The simplest would be to just click on any word that is NOT highlighted and get a dictionary definition in a pop-up window. If that is not possible, perhaps you could pick a different pointer tool, or switch a radio button that from "Find Article" to "Look up Definition", or right click on the word and choosing "Look Up Definition" from a pull down list, or click the first letter of a word, or drag a word to a dictionary, or some other method I haven't thought of. --Samuel Wantman 10:31, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Okay, thanks for clarifying what you meant. I can see how such a system could be useful, but the logistics of implementing in a way that annoys the minimum number of uses are hairy. (Some issues I can think of offhand: unexpected behaivor for accidental clicks, HTML bloat, ...) In any case, this is an idea (ultimately a good one, I think) that would be more appropriate to discuss on the Meta-Wiki. • Benc • 19:57, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Dictionaries and encyclopedias

This subject was brought to my attention when I saw people talking about Wiktionary being the proper location for numerical prefix articles:

Is a dictionary a kind of encyclopedia??

We human beings think of dictionaries and encyclopedias as 2 disjoint kinds of books. Now, what is a dictionary?? A dictionary is a book that lists words alphabetically, including their meanings, pronunciations, and, if appropriate, any usage notes or word histories. An encyclopedia is a set of books that talks about notable, non-fictional info on a variety of subjects. An encyclopedia is obviously not a kind of dictionary, but based on what I have heard frequently in Wikipedia but never anywhere else, a dictionary naturally is a kind of encyclopedia, namely, one on words. Any info relating to the classification of a dictionary as a kind of encyclopedia when it comes to defining how it is used?? Please explain with whatever detail you can. Georgia guy 01:21, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If I am looking for the meaning of a word or phrase, I want to go to one place for that information. I don't want to have to know that foo is over in Wiktionary because no one had written a long enough article on it. Dictionary definitions can be stubs and grow into articles when the knowledgeable person comes along. Shoaler 15:07, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Order of definitions

I asked this at the Village Pump, but asking here is relevant as well: If an article needs to discuss or list multiple definitions for the same word what order is to be used: chronological (some dictionaries follow this), reverse chronological, or contemporary relevance, or something else? patsw 21:12, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In cases where alphabetical order is unworkable I think in order of relevance at the time of writing is best Pedant 15:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia is a biographical dictionary (among other things)

I don't know who wrote the definition of biographical dictionary on this page, but it disagrees with Wikipedias own definition in the article on the topic. Is there any factual support for the notion that biographical dictionaries "focus primarily on the immediate family connections" rather than "on the actions and contributions of an article subject". I think the opposite is more true. What I think of, and what I assume most people think of, when hearing the term "biographical dictionary" is the Dictionary of National Biography and similar works. up◦land 06:39, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

There are dozens, probably hundreds, of articles in Wikipedia about little known U.S. Congressman. I want to make three points about that: (a) this is a good thing; (b) isn't doing this thing exactly what a biographical dictionary is; and therefore (c) I think it'd be great if Wikipedia were also a biographical dictionary. (As for the negative thoughts about genealogical data, I also disagree? What's wrong with that? See, e.g., Delano family. Summary: Wikipedia already is, and should continue to encompass, a biographical dictionary. Thoughts anyone? -- Sholom 13:36, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree, Wikipedia must be in part a biographical dictionary. I have changed "Wikipedia is not a biographical dictionary" to "Wikipedia is not a genealogical dictionary". Nurg 00:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
If wikipedia is not a genealogical dictionary, it suggests deleting large ammounts of Cat:European royalty stubs. Many of these are not rulers, but just royals who were born to certain families and got married to other royals and had children. I'm not saying there isn't a place for these, just that there seems to be a discontinuity between "wikipedia is not a genealogical dictionary" and lots of articles on royals who don't seem to have done anything notable. KalevTait 03:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for policy implementation

Some substubs about potentially encyclopedic articles that only appear to be a dicdef causing it to be substandard to article criteria should just be marked as a stub, even if it has a template indicating it should be copied to Wiktionary. The Bedpan article is a recent example of this. --SuperDude 08:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipdeia is a dictionary of meaning

I am not alone in thinking that there are no valid reasons for having short "dicdefs".

The reasons given for not doing this are:

  • It can go in Wicktionary
True but unimportant. Wicktionary is a comparatively understaffed and undervisited project, with no seamless integration with Wikipedia. It is about words, not about their meaning. We are depriving ourselves of useful glosses on ideas which will help to integrate the web of larger articles and provide robust entry points to the 'pedia.
  • There would be millions of entries.
Not really. Wicktionary only has 100,000 entries, 'pedia entries are only createed when needed, by and large.
  • They don't add value.
Well actually they do. When looking outside on'es area of expertise, a side trip to a definition is often useful, while it would clutter the main article.


However I do agree Wikipedia doesn't need either every word/phrase nor every meaning of those it has, although this often seems sensible from a completest point of view. References to wiktionary can be usefull, but it should be considered no more special than other external sources. Rich Farmbrough 18:45, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Add "or a thesaurus"

Should the words "or a thesaurus" be added to the policy after "is not a dictionary"? This would make it clear that a list of words without definitions, such as a list of terms or a list of synonyms, is no more acceptable than a single word with a definition and nothing else. The Literate Engineer 17:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggest merge

This page doesn't really add much to WP:NOT. Does it really deserve to exist in its own right? There is a perfectly good concise summary of everything that is said there on that page. See: WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Suggest we merge anything that is not already covered there, and delete this page. Having too many policy pages works directly against the goal of anyone actually reading them. Stevage 12:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

  • This is a long-established policy that most definitely should not be deleted. Uncle G 17:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Are you talking about changing the policy, or removing the expression of that policy on a separate article? I'm only talking about removing this redundant policy page - the material is already covered at wp:not. Is there a strong reason not to do that? Stevage 19:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm talking about what you actually wrote, which was (I quote) "delete this page". This is a long-established policy that most definitely should not be deleted. Nor is it redundant, moreover. Uncle G 11:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

We can assume 'wiki' means 'fast', and 'pedia' implies encyclopedia, meaning general knowledge.

When a page is deleted:

Someones work is thrown away because someone else believes it isn't encyclopedic enough, meaning it must be something other than general knowledge.

I no longer have quick access to that (poor quality) information with my URL appending shortcuts. I want quick access to whatever valid information is there, even if its not thorough.

Which means, an admins cleanup job wasted the authors time and the potential readers time, all in the name of cleaning up Wikipedia to give a better impression to newcomers.

This isn't a reasonable policy, I don't understand how a "consensus" of reasonable comes up with these policies. More and more I think editors like you and I have far less representation than we may believe.

Ieopo 01:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Please explain what on Earth you are talking about. This is a very reasonable policy. "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is a fundamental part of Wikipedia's mission statement. Wikipedia's goal is to create an encyclopaedia, not a dictionary. The project with the goal of creating a dictionary is Wiktionary. Uncle G 11:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paper Dictionaries and Encyclopedias contra wikipedia and wiktionary

Paper Dictionaries typically have ten times the number of words that Encyclopedias. Paper Dictionaries are traditionally a sort of micro-encyclopedia that is possible to take a along and easy to flip thru the pages to find a word.

This practical distinction totally falls apart on the web. I have not before seen any point in keeping these two types of references apart on the web.

The reasons why wikipedia is not a biographical dictionary nor a usage guide are clearly stated and understandable in this policy, and I accept that there is a consensus for it, but no reason. The only reason I can gauge for it from the policy, is that a few lonely encyclopedical articles should not be bogged down by a mass of short definitions but surely this has proven to be a fallacy now that wikipedia has ten times the number of articles compared to wiktionary instead of the other way around that one would expect from that premise.

Naturally, I have accepted the policy and I follow it, but I could someone please tell me the purpose of this policy, since the only purposes that I can think of apply strictly to paper versions.DanielDemaret 17:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent question. I suppose the reason is to avoid entries about things being bogged down with strict definitions, etymologies, usage etc, when what we're really interested is just "what is this thing, and how does it relate to the world?" Stevage 11:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Etymologies?

I was just over on Snake, and I realised that the inclusion of (detailed) etymologies of words that refer to their subjects is entirely inappropriate. Since this is one of the dictionary-ish items that Wikipedia should probably avoid generally, should we mention that here? elvenscout742 22:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point - the same could be said about this version of Mushroom (before I excised the waffle). --Blisco 16:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Girlfriend

For the past several weeks, there have been 3 nominations for Girlfriend for Afd simply because the nominator looks at it as a dictionary definition. I want to know what some of the most common views of what to consider "dictionary definitions" on Wikipedia are. Georgia guy 23:33, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Out of sync

This policy is actually narrower than that of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Policymakers, please put them in sync, otherwise a broken telephone game sometimes happens. `'mikka (t) 00:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed change to this policy

The policy as it currently reads only forbids/discourages articles which are merely definitions of terms. The problem with this is that this would allow one to cut and paste any decent quality wiktionary definition as a wikipedia article and then say, "See, it doesn't violate this policy because the article doesn't just DEFINE the word, it also gives the etymology, lists synonyms, explains the pronounciation". I find it difficult to believe that dictionary definitions are meant to be allowable as long as they also included the etymology and list some synonyms, since these things are commonly part of a good dictionary definition. If "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" actually means that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, then the policy should be amended to reflect this. --Xyzzyplugh 15:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree - the article never seems to clearly define in what sense Wikipedia is not a dictionary. I would add text like this at the start -
"Wikipedia articles provide information on things, ideas and events. They don't generally provide definitions or information on individual words in a language - that is the purpose of a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. For example, the article apple describes the fruit, not the etymology and spelling of the word. However, some words become notable for historical, cultural, linguistic or other reasons and it is reasonable for information on these words to be covered in Wikipedia."
That's a very rough draft but do people think that would be useful to include? Dave w74 00:58, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Religion

Some terms such as religion cannot be properly defined but are clearly useful in daily life. There is no agreed upon defintion of religion. I think this article should state this. (I am personally quite confused about this) Andries 01:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maybe it should be a dictionary?

Why not merge Wiktionary into Wikipedia? —Ashley Y 21:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes, I want to know about the Crusades, and sometimes, I want to know about the word "crusade". Those are pretty different questions (one historical, one etymological), and I would think anybody familiar with encyclopedias and dictionaries would turn to the appropriate source for the appropriate question. Should an article about a series of wars and an article about a word in English really be the same article? I don't see why. A dictionary documents words; an encyclopedia documents the things in the world to which the words refer. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your suggestion though. How would you handle merging, for example, Crusades with Wiktionary:crusade, and with Wiktionary:Crusade, for that matter? Or is that not what you had in mind? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
That's fine, except that people don't really viscerally get this distinction w/r/t their activities on Wikipedia. See for example Talk:Interim, or Mythical National Championship, or Freeway versus Motorway (which require two articles only because of differing terms in different locales) or other articles where I've tried to point out WINAD only to get responses about how the content on the article in question is interesting or plentiful. No one argues based on encyclopedicity or on conformance to WINAD; they just argue that someone beefed up the article so now it's obviously OK, or that someone on Usenet is going to look up this term so it must be OK. As far as I'm concerned WINAD is a dead letter and I'm not going to bother trying to apply it any more. Sorry if I'm playing the martyr; if there's something wrong with my interpretation of WINAD then please set me right. - PhilipR 19:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
It probably won't get support, but I kind of like this idea. It would be very possible, and have a lot of benefits. Basically, Wiktonary would get it's own namespace. -- Ned Scott 03:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
[See also #Wikipedia can be something better than a dictionary and an encyclopedia.] — ¾-10 16:11, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why were the first encyclopedias called dictionaries while today they are not?

Title page from the 1st edition.
Title page from the 1st edition.

Why were the first encyclopedias called dictionaries while today they are not?

and 2 --Oliver s. 13:46, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

See Encyclopedia#Characteristics, and the subsequent sections. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability

Hi.

I saw This: "Biography articles should only be given for people with some sort of achievement." They do not necessarily need to have some sort of "achievement", then need to be "notable", which does not mean the same thing. See the page WP:N. 170.215.83.4 01:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OK, so do I really not understand WINAD, then?

I found another entry that, to me, seems to belong in an etymological dictionary: Almighty dollar. It's an entry about a phrase, not a concept. I understand WINAD to be saying that entries should be about concepts (of course including specific people, places, or things), but not words except for relatively rare intstances where the itself is a concept. Just documenting every literary turn of phrase, every clever adjective + noun, combination, is to my understand contrary to WINAD. But if past experience is any indication, AfDing an article like this is useless because people will come out of the woodwork to testify that it's really useful to have the etymology of this phrase in one handy place. I don't doubt it, but I don't see how an article like this is encyclopedic.

See also my comments above about Freeway/Motorway, Mythical National Championship, etc. Plainly my understanding of WINAD isn't like anyone else's. Can someone explain to me what I'm missing? Can we consider modifying WINAD to say, "Wikipedia is not a dictionary unless the dictionary entries are somewhat long" since that seems to be the established consensus? Cheers, PhilipR 05:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

    • What is interesting is that Almighty dollar was recreated, and seems to still be a dicionary def. to me. Blueboar 21:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This page requires attention

A few month ago an editor (I vaguely recall that it was Mikkalai.) remarked that this page needed serious attention. Coming to re-read it, it is apparent that it does. It's highly confusing, and simply badly written. There's one sentence in the introduction whose subject is a pronoun with no antecedent, for example. I'm going to try improving it, to clarify the policy and its explanation. From the above discussion it appears that further clarification on the difference between an encyclopaedia and a dictionary is in order, for example. Uncle G 14:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Input on article

Would someone please take a look at the article Jahbulon... By my understanding it should be a perfect example of what this guideline says should not be included in Wikipedia... and yet several AfDs have resulted in "keep" votes, so I am confused. I would like to get someone who is familiar with both the language and the intent of the guideline to explain why WINAD does not apply. Note that there already is a related Wiktionary article. Blueboar 22:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colour bugs me

Where does this article get off claiming that "color" and "colour" have "very different etymologies?" They are spelling variants, identical in meaning and usage; they are not separate words. One has a Latinized version of the suffix, the other a Norman Frenchified version. That is all. - Smerdis of Tlön 03:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major problem concerning this policy

This policy forbids articles on wikipedia which are dictionary definitions, even extended definitions including examples, usage, etymology. In other words, it forbids articles about words, and says that instead we should have articles about the topics which the words describe.

The problem with this is that we have many, many articles about words, thousands perhaps. See Category:Ethnic slurs, Category:Profanity, Category:Slang, some of the words in Category:Spanish language as well as in all other language categories, amongst other places. Note that we have at least 10 different articles which pretty much mean "poor (white) rural person", White trash, Hick, Hillbilly, Trailer trash, Yokel, Redneck, Peckerwood, Bogan, Cracker (pejorative), and probably many more. If we're supposed to have articles on topics, rather than on words, why would we have 10 articles on virtually the same topic?

Possible solutions:

  • 1. Delete all articles on words. Almost no chance this will happen, we'd have to lose Truthiness, and Nigger (offensive yet highly notable word), and Thou which is a featured article.
  • 2. Change this policy to insist on very strong notability of the word in question. Only the most notable words in existence would then qualify for articles.
  • 3. Change this policy to insist on strong notability of the word in question. Word must have been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable, or something along those lines.
  • 4. Change this policy to insist on at least some level of notability. Word must have some sort of reliable source discussing it at least somewhat. This would at least rule out articles on "yellowishness" and "clumsily".
  • 5. Delete this policy. Wikipedia duplicates Wiktionary. (Not bloody likely to happen)
  • 6. Change this policy to insist that articles on words consist of more than a definition, examples of usage, and etymology. That way, we start exactly where Wiktionary stops. (Added by Amarkov moo! 02:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC))

I don't offhand even have a particular favorite solution, myself, but I believe we need some sort of policy we can reach consensus on and which matches what we actually do. --Xyzzyplugh 02:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

  • I would say, as long as a word is the subject of reliable sources (not just quick mentions or blogs/forums) other than just a dictionary, it is acceptable. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 02:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Support #5 - I also suspect few will agree with me on this one, but I always felt that Wiktionary and Wikipedia would make for a pretty nifty merge. I often wish we could provide dictionary-esque definitions alongside the etymologies currently found on Wiktionary; of which we often provide a more in-depth history of the etymology here on Wikipedia. Wiktionary just feels like a collection of stubs... So basically, I completely agree with you that WP:NOT#DICT has a lot of violations; but my answer would be to get rid of WP:NOT#DICT; just as whenever I hear someone complain about speeding, my first thought is "raise the speed limit". :) --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 02:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    • On the contrary, Wiktionary far more often provides better etymologies than Wikipedia, and is set up to handle separate etymologies for each individual word, which Wikipedia is not. That Wiktionary contains a lot of stub dictionary articles is because the project is huge and (still, even now) barely started. Much of the project is still at the "create a good stub for later expansion" stage. When it has matured, it will dwarf Wikipedia. In the scope of its goals, it is the largest of the Wikimedia Foundation projects. Uncle G 11:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete the policy - Removing stubs that haven't passed the definition stage is akin to "all or nothing reasoning" - "the article isn't done yet so remove it!" That's silly. If we remove stubs, then there's nothing to build onto. So what if they aren't any larger than a dictionary entry. How can they grow if we don't let them? And what kind of message are we sending new users if on one hand we say "the Encyclopedia anyone can edit", and on the other "the encyclopedia anyone can edit as long as you add more material than a definition - small beginnings aren't good enough!". Just my two cents. The Transhumanist   02:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • While I have always thought that it would have been vastly better to have Wikipedia/Wiktionary/Wikisource/Wikibooks/et cetera all in one big wiki which accepts all kinds of content (including the game guides/episode guides/city guides/how to articles and various others which currently get 'shipped off') and has different namespaces and procedures for organizing them... that isn't the case. I also agree that we shouldn't delete stubs which are merely dictionary definitions (which, is the most basic meaning of 'stub' on Wikipedia)... unless there isn't anything notable/encyclopedic about the term and it will never be anything other than dictionary information. I think there is a fairly clear and obvious line between articles which this policy applies to (entries which when fully developed would contain no notable non-dictionary information) and those which it doesn't (entries with extensive cultural/encyclopedic info which would never be found in a dictionary). --CBD 10:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    • No, it is not the meaning of stub. The policy explains in detail the difference between a stub encyclopaedia article and a dictionary article, and the fact that we delete dictionary articles (of whatever size) but don't delete stub encyclopaedia articles. Uncle G 11:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Look again. To quote WP:STUB, "To qualify as a stub it must at least define the meaning of the article's title.". So yes, an article which just provides a dictionary definition IS a valid Wikipedia stub... provided that it is on a topic for which more encyclopedic information can (and presumably will) be added. --CBD 15:50, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
        • You are still confused and still employing the "just a dictionary definition" error of thinking, which this policy clearly explains the error of. You'll understand things better if you rid yourself of the idea of "just dictionary definitions" entirely. It's an entirely wrong way of thinking about things, that leads to erroneous conclusions, such as the "more than a dictionary definition" fallacy that is sometimes erroneously employed. (There are tens of thousands of articles on Wiktionary that are more that dictionary definitions. That doesn't make them encyclopaedia articles.) There are stub encyclopaedia articles and stub dictionary articles, which grow into full encyclopaedia articles and full dictionary articles, respectively. A stub encyclopaedia article is not a dictionary article. Uncle G 17:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • We have a policy that we already have reached consensus on, long since. Your whole argument is based upon an erroneous premise given in your first sentence and which the policy goes to great lengths to explain is erroneous, namely that we delete articles "that are definitions". We don't forbid, and never have forbidden, stub encyclopaedia articles, or articles "that contain just a definition", we forbid dictionary articles. The policy explains the differences between the two.

    And yes, the fact that we have articles whose titles are separate words for "poor white rural person" is a problem. The same was true of Charva (AfD discussion) and Chav, and the two articles were, correctly, merged. You've identifed more merger candidates. The proliferation of such articles, which quickly fill with original research, is a perennial problem, as are Category:Slang and Category:Profanity, which have long been dictionary article magnets (despite the explanation on the former's category page). (Category:Spanish language is for articles about the Spanish language, however.) But it is a problem with the articles, not with the policy. We deal with it by merger; by reining in any attempts to grow thesauruses (and linking to WikiSaurus instead — c.f. Sexual slang); by reining in any attempts to grow mini-dictionaries (and linking to Wiktionary categories instead — c.f. LOL (Internet slang)); by suppressing original research and insisting upon sources; by interwiki links; by using redirects from alternative names, nicknames, and synonyms; and by listing name variations in the lead sections of articles as per the Wikipedia manual of style.

    Your major problem is with the articles that you have identified, not with this policy. It is one shared by a lot of editors. Witness Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shambag, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bogan, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Westies (people), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Easties (people), and many others. Everyone wants their own article for their own local slang name for the same thing, to differentiate it from the slang name used by "those people across the border". That doesn't mean that it is correct to do so, however.

    The correct thing is to have separate articles (if the sources warrant it) for the different concepts, i.e. the different stereotypes within different cultures. For example: A chav is a concept, a stereotype. Whilst it is not a distinct concept from a charva, it is a distinct concept from a bogan, which is a different stereotype.

    If you want to do something about this problematic area, I suggest working on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) to try to make the point there more forcefully that this doesn't mean that one should always use the slang names for things (Our article about penises is not at any of the slang names for penises, for example.) and working on the articles themselves to rein in their dictionary article qualities and ensure that they address the stereotypes, not the words for those stereotypes (which should be handled by linking to Wiktionary, as chav does). Uncle G 11:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

    • I appreciate your lengthy answer, but there's one important point which I believe you didn't address. How are we to determine which articles about words are acceptable, and which aren't? This policy page, from what I can see, merely defines the difference between a dictionary definition and encylopedia article as being that dicdefs are articles about words, including parts of speech, etymology, etc., while encylopedia articles are about subjects. This seems to rule out all articles on words, but I don't believe the policy is intending to forbid Nigger, a word about which vast amounts have been written. Or is it? If some articles about words are acceptable, while some are not, then this policy really needs to do a far better job of explaining which words fall into which categories, because I'm entirely unable to figure out what the policy says on this. --Xyzzyplugh 13:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Don't think in terms of "dicdefs". It's an error that leads to further errors, as I wrote above. What one finds in Wiktionary are dictionary articles, just as what one finds in Wikipedia are encyclopaedia articles. If one looks at a full Wiktionary article one will find that it also doesn't match what people think of as "just a dicdef". Indeed, it will be "more than just a dicdef", demonstrating the error of thinking that that is what makes something suitable for an encyclopaedia rather than a dictionary.

        The problem here is in part one of bad choices for article titles and scopes. This stems from two causes. The first cause is the perennial drive-by editor who "just wants to look up all of the rude words" that xe knows. The second cause is the editor who employes slang names for concepts, for stereotypes, categories, and suchlike, starts an article with "X is a slang name for Y", which then grows for three years to talk about the slang word X instead of about the actual thing Y. One problem with the latter is that, as can be seen by several Wikisaurus entries, there are a quite a lot of things that have an enormous range of slang names, all of which could potentially have an individual "X is a U.S. slang word for Y. It is considered offensive/pejorative. Here are some quotations from film and television showing it in use: A,B,C. Its etymology (lots of references) is E. Other similar slang words are F, G, and H (all wikilinked). Famous person P once used this word." articles. Everything there, apart from the final piece of who-said-what (which is a datum, not knowledge), is dictionary article content.

        Now Wikipedia can have articles about words. numerical prefix is an article about words. It's an article about a whole class of prefixes, which cross-links to the individual dictionary articles on each of the individual prefixes. What it isn't, however, is a dictionary article on an individual numerical prefix. Uncle G 17:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

    • One final bit of explanation on this: if someone writes a generally unkeepable article on a topic which turns out to be actually clearly notable, and it gets AfD'd, we don't just delete it, we keep it and clean it up. So if someone writes an article about a word, and all they write is a dicdef, how do we go about determining whether to delete (after transwikiing to wiktionary, perhaps), or whether to keep and clean up? This policy should explain this, and it doesn't.--Xyzzyplugh 14:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Well one thing that it does explain, by pointing out that both Wikipedia and Wiktionary have stages of article development comprising stub articles and full articles, is that we don't use a false "just a dictionary definition/more than a dictionary definition" rule, which is a commonly made error that leads to both the error of keeping articles when they have no content other than dictionary article content but happen to be longer than 1 sentence and the error of deleting articles that are badly written 1 sentence long stub encyclopaedia articles. Another thing that it explains is that deletion isn't the sole tool in the toolbox. Editing, refactoring, and redirecting were the tools that resulted in numerical prefix, for example. Uncle G 17:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Change the policy to insist on some level of notability. Just simple definitions should not be listed unless they provide some history, usage or information that is otherwise not on Wiktionary. On a side note though, I do agree with CBD that having one big wiki would be better. Think outside the box 12:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Change this policy to insist that articles simply not be dictionary entries. That means there must be more than definition, usage, and etymology. It's hard to meet, but Wiktionary doesn't cover past that. -Amarkov moo! 14:55, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    • It also covers quotations, translations, synonyms, antonyms, pronunciations, alternative spellings and orthography, derived and related words, homophones, rhymes, variants, syntax, and inflections. Be careful of not falling into the "just a dictionary definition/more than a dictionary definition" trap. Uncle G 17:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Support solution #4. Georgia guy 18:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • As Uncle G said. This page can of course be reworded by people who find it unclear. It is simply not true that any article on a word is automatically a dictionary definition. >Radiant< 13:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

For anyone who might wander along and read this later, I've given up on this issue at the moment, as I think the community overall has no idea what it wants to do about articles on words, and we have no consensus to make any changes to this policy of the sort I was looking for originally. I've written an essay on this, Wikipedia:Articles about words. --Xyzzyplugh 14:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreeing with most, I think this is a confusing issue. At what point does enough etymology and usage examples become a pedia article, if ever? Can someone take a look at Fall guy and Patsy? One's marked for AfD and one is not--this is not a suggestion that both be deleted, but rather, what differences might merit their being kept? I can see a Wikitionary's utility when it comes to using it for quick definitions. A different question is, how do I copy the article to Wiktionary? The full article does not show up? Luckystuff 08:12, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Support #4: I feel that the policy should change to say Wikipedia is more than a dictionary, articles that are small should be stubed. That is generally common practice. I find that people tend to use this policy only on certain articles and ignore it on others. I could write a short/2 sentence article on a specific, un-notable, scientific subject and it would generally be accepted. but if i write the same size article on a non-scientific/mathematic/technical subject, it would be deleted. Basically what i am saying is allow small articles and encourage them to be bigger. [the policy should be changed to wikipedia is more than a dictionary, or something similar]------ If we are to keep this policy, then we have to stop acting like a dictionary [or having non-ecyclopidic articles]. Pronunciations are not for encyclopedias, yet are in many wiki articles. There are other examples of non-encyclopedic inclusions in wikipeida[, such as lists]. All articles need to be interwikied with wiktionary [to fix this, and promote interwikiing]. ZyMOS (talk) 06:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC) [brackted content added 26 November 2007 (UTC)]

[edit] Does WP:DICDEF cover this?

I'd appreciate it people would weigh in on whether the following article should exist: List of words removed from the English Dictionary. My feeling is that it should not, because there is not a definitive "English Dictionary". Thank you. Joie de Vivre 13:54, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right—the page is too problematic. See my views on its talk page. — Lumbercutter 01:35, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Glossaries!

Apparently lists of dictionary definitions become acceptable if the word 'glossary' is included in the title. And nobody told me. Shouldn't the policy say something about this? - ∅ (∅), 03:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

You're thinking in terms of "dictionary definition" as just being synonymous with "definition". A "dictionary definition" is more specific, it includes such things as pronunciation, how to spell different tenses, entymology, usage quotes, alternate spellings, etc., and the policy is clear about this being what's meant by "wikipedia is not a dictionary". The policy is that you aren't suppose to write an article with the title being a specific word or idiom and the article reflecting what would normally be found in a dictionary or usage guide, ie "its part of speech, its pluralizations, its usage, its etymology, its translations into other languages, and so forth." A glossary isn't normally a collection of "dictionary definitions", and the one you linked to isn't. A way to look at it maybe is that a glossary is more like a collection of related stubs all organized into one article. I agree there should be a clarifying subsection on this policy page about glossaries. They are grouped in their own category, there's an extensive number of them according to List of glossaries, and they are considered acceptable reference lists according to Wikipedia:Contents (same degree of acceptance as "Portals" and "Timelines"). But in looking into this topic, I've clicked through a decent number of glossary discussion pages, and have seen other AfDs that have been initiated by citing this policy (editors ultimately deciding in the AfDs that the policy doesn't apply and the articles are kept). Wazronk 23:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
This appears to have been extensively discussed in the archives without consensus. The debate is really about whether glossaries belong in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, or both, not whether we should get rid of them altogether. The policy is effectively mute on glossaries, which means that glossaries are inconsistently kept, deleted, or transwikied depending on who shows up to vote. I do wish we had clear policy on this.--Yannick 18:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infidel

[edit] proposal

What do you think about: Articles in the wikipedia describe a subject, but not the word that names the subject.

Refering to the fact that the dictionary deals with words, the encyclopedia with concepts, objects or things. 80.144.108.224 19:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] maybe just a big misunderstanding?

If you ask me, this guideline is a big misunderstanding. As you can see here, it once was introduced to encourage people to write a bit more about a subjekt than just that what u can find in one of those small dictionaries that consist of just one book. Thus it should rather have the title "Wp is a dictionary with enough room for a good definition". In fact an encyclopedia is nothing else but a dictionary; a pretty big and detailed one, yet not as detailed and exhausting to read as f.e. a monography. How else can u explain, that older encyclopedias were explicitely called dictionaries?

Title page from the 1st edition of the Britannica , were it calls itself dictionary
Title page from the 1st edition of the Britannica , were it calls itself dictionary
The title page of the Encyclopédie, which calls itself also dictionary
The title page of the Encyclopédie, which calls itself also dictionary

As you can see here an encyclopedia is a dictionary that just includes arts AND sciences (That means: it is just a dictionary that includes potentially every subject). --Oliver s. 15:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


You might be taken more seriously if you spell the word as "you"... and not "u". :>) Blueboar 16:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Done. sorry for my bad english. Im german. :-)--Oliver s. 23:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, the fact that old encyclopedias called themselves dictionaries doesn't necessarily mean it makes sense to call them dictionaries now. Definitions do change over time. (By the way, English has no gender for inanimate objects; everything but a person is referred to with "it"). -Amarkov moo! 23:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Well, a dictionary here in WP is described as "a list of words with their definitions" and it does not seem to me, as if this definition of dictionary would ecxlude that, what an encyclopedia is. --Oliver s. 01:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • An encyclopedia describes Concepts, things etc., a dictionary describes words. For the encyclopedia "tree" refers to a definition of what a tree is - a plant in the woods. For the dictionary "tree" is a noun and it refers to a list of its meanings. 80.144.78.4 15:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How about morphemes?

Are suffixes and other morphemes encyclopedic? -- Hoary 10:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Nobody interested? (The question seems to have been raised before, too, at the end of this.) -- Hoary 05:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion discussion on an article about a word

NOTE: This is not a request for !votes on this issue; I am not canvassing for votes, merely posting a notice of a discussion that might affect this policy.

I nominated the article Fart for deletion, citing this policy. The AfD discussion is ongoing here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fart. The consensus is building toward keeping the article, and if that is indeed the result, I believe it would have major ramifications for this policy page. Because policy is descriptive, not proscriptive, a consensus for keeping articles on notable words -- even in the absence of encyclopedic information beyond what would be found in a dictionary -- would require changes to this policy page. If you have an interest in the future development of this policy, I encourage you to weigh in on the deletion discussion, or at least read it to see where consensus is leading.

Thank you.

-- Powers T 14:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Policy modification proposal: Articles about words

Per the consensus that was apparently reached at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fart and at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 October 6#Fart, articles about words are acceptable in Wikipedia, at least under certain conditions.

There seemed, during these discussions, to be a perception that this policy is strictly about definitions, perhaps due to the shortcut WP:DICDEF. However, it's obvious that regardless of that perception, "Fart" is considered by the community to be a word worthy of an article in itself, separate from the article on flatulence.

This leaves two questions: 1) What is the community consensus on articles about words, and 2) How do we modify this policy document to reflect that consensus?

Obviously, we can't answer 2) until we answer 1). Please, submit your thoughts on articles about words so we can work toward identifying consensus.

-- Powers T 18:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

For the start, User:Xyzzyplugh/Articles about words essay summarizes the current situation pretty well (it was mentioned in the DRV, not sure whether you noticed it). Personally, I'm ambivalent as to the issue: maybe there's no real consensus, but the current practice is to keep the article if it's thorough and well written; I enjoyed reading several similar ones, although they might contravene WP:DICDEF. OTOH, enshrining parts of the said essay into policy might violate WP:BEANS: we will accept well-written articles on words, but I doubt that we want to encourage the practice in future. My thoughts on the issue are sort of Zen: do nothing unless there's an immediate problem. Duja► 08:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I have seen the essay before, but it is just an essay; it's impossible to tell how much agreement an essay has among the wider community. If it has actual currency in practice perhaps it ought to be promoted to guideline. As for the question of an "immediate problem," it's hard to say. I'd personally say that it's a problem that some articles about words get kept and others get deleted (on "this belongs in Wiktionary" grounds) without having a clear way to distinguish the two. Powers T 18:18, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
It's doubtful that there is any agreement with the essay, because almost no one has given any thought to the subject of articles about words at all. My essay does in fact describe the current situation accurately though, and simply looking around at how things are being done will provide you with proof of that. I would like to see some actual policy or guideline as to how we should deal with articles about words, but it would take a major effort by a bunch of people to get such a thing done, probably. I made some minor effort to get this done some time ago, and I found that everyone who expressed an opinion about this disagreed with everyone else. --Xyzzyplugh 12:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Still, the community has managed to come to consensus on more contentious issues in the past. What puzzles me most is the near-unanimity I saw in both directions on the two AfDs I started. One was near-unanimous to keep and the other was unanimous to delete. Powers T 21:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Etymologies

Wikipedia does, in fact, have numerous articles discussing specific etymologies. See Category:Etymologies, Category:Etymology. Wiktionary does not accept such discussions, they only want one-liners saying "derived from such-and-such". This page should reflect this situation. Wikipedia's etymology articles are generally branched-out from the main article on the topic per WP:SS. The point of WP:DICT is that the mere existence of a word does not warrant having a Wikipedia article about it. The converse doesn't hold at all. If a word and/or its etymology is noteworthy for some reason or other, be it only that the etymology is subject to dispute in academic literature, there can very well be a discussion on Wikipedia. A good example is witch (etymology). The etymology of witch is far from clear, and there is a considerable body of literature that can be quoted on the question. There is no way wiktionary would accept such a discussion (sadly, but that's how it is). Therefore, it belongs on Wikipedia. dab (𒁳) 16:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

If Wiktionary is being more restrictive in their policies than you think appropriate, lobby them to change it. Frankly, I was not aware of this restriction and will support you in an effort to change it. Just drop me a note on where to join in the conversation. However, their failure does not automatically mean that we must bend and distort the mission of Wikipedia. Let's fix the right problem. Rossami (talk) 20:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quoting the dictionary to make a point

I think a new section to the policy should be added prohibiting the quoting of the dictionary to prove a point which is in contrarty to policies and guidelines.--Lucy-marie (talk) 17:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Not bad advice but I think it would be confusing to add it here. That sounds like something that might fit better in one of the ettiquette pages. Maybe WP:POINT? Rossami (talk) 20:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, but this specifically relates to the ditionary maybe it could explicitly state etiquette pages such as WP:POINT.--Lucy-marie (talk) 00:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

Unless wikipedia is short of space it's unfair. An en-cycle of knowledge includes a dictionary. "Every page should have at least ... links" That would solve the dictionary requirement and the expansion requirement. See WP:TEOWINAEFKTW (The Existence Of Wiktionary Is Not An Excuse For Killing The Wikipedia). There is no good reason that wikipedia should not include definitions. Definitions can hardly threaten the Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians against censorship. This is a blatant censorship project. Fuck off!
ThisMunkey (talk) 23:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

  • See WP:PTWAAC (Plug The Wiktionary At All Cost)
    ThisMunkey (talk) 23:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
This isn't censorship. It's a common distinction - encyclopedia and dictionary. Two different things. Wikipedia isn't going to be "killed" by Wiktionary. Think about the differences between dictionaries and encyclopedias. And what exactly is censorship, anyway? The suppression of your own personal opinion? These two reference materials: They are not one and the same. If you have specific articles in mind, then bring up your disputes there. Also, ending your comment with "fuck off!" doesn't help you prove your point in the least bit. It only seems discourteous, and probably offends other editors. It makes you seem angry, belligerent, overzealous, and incredibly passionate about yet another silly issue. Please try to restrain your emotions when editing. And... Wikipedia is full of definitions! Again, think of how encyclopedias and dictionaries are related. It has some bearing on our previous discussion.
Cheers, Fuzzform (talk) 08:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Look Fuzzform, you said "take mammal for an example" so I prepared a debate on mammals relating to what we were discussing. You come back saying "what have mammals to do with it?" in a huge response/discredit. You are promoting emotional responses. And here you are discrediting my "anger, belligerence, zealousness, and my passion". There are good debates on this talk page with no replies. That may produce anger, belligerence, zealousness, and my passion. Why dont you give an argument along with your opinion? I belive you have repressed opinions. I wonder if my "fuck off" was designed to produce a light bubbly feeling amongst the crowd? The debates are not entered into. I would like to see the response at least or I will always question it. This debate has been sought after for several years. A public institution should have a pinch of PR at least.
ThisMunkey (talk) 10:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Those debates are long over. Read the archives. No one is responding in detail to your rants because you haven't asked any question that hasn't already been answered at excruciating length. Rossami (talk) 10:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy Delete: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Wikipedia, by and large, includes a dictionary. The title of this project is a double negative. The project should reflect the subject does not include. Maybe the rule should be restricted to one liners and non linkers but regardless, the disscusions in favour of change to this directive are extensive, well written, and ignored for years ie: no answers, deaf ears. This is contrary to WP:PNSD which is much more important than WP:DICT. If the debate was open the policy would be fair. The debate is not entered into. Admin v Opinion. Instead it is a dictatorship policy. Some of the suggestions for change are very considerable. Any project not open to intelligent debate (for several years I may add) should be up for speedy deletion.
ThisMunkey (talk) 09:32, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

This is not a project. The link to the non-talk counterpart of this talk page is labeled "project page" or similar, but that's because it's an administrative part of the project termed Wikipedia, not because it's a "WikiProject" or similar. You won't have a snowball's chance of having this thing speedily deleted, but you could always propose its deletion at WP:MFD. As it's a page spelling out policy, your effort would most assuredly fail and you might well also find yourself clobbered for violating WP:POINT or similar. So I'd advise against it. If you really think that reasonable objections have been unreasonably ignored, you might instead summarize them clearly and see how people respond. -- Hoary (talk) 11:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
To provide a dictionary definition of a word requires a whole wiktionary box each. There are many words on Wikipedia that would suit definition for basic understanding. I dont need to explain that very far. Anyone encouraging the information to reach the public will understand the usefulness of definitions. Persons expanding the amount of correct info may, or may not understand the usefulness of definitions. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a collection of accessible information (alone). I propose that "WP:NOT" is closely related to "WP:IS". The Wikimedia Foundation covers lengths to provide on information and media in a quality manner which is little asserted. My opinion is support for that and I have gained a great deal from them.

Classic example of "head off brick wall" :-

“ Napoleon Bonaparte (steam power) :- "You are suggesting we light a bonfire under the deck and push the boat against the wind? I have no time for such nonsense!" „


Assertion that this rule is designed not to better Wikipedia but to promote Wiktionary, taken from this page, intending to illustrate "typical" :-
“ Thanks, Menchi. I just found something addressing my question, so I think I'll work with both: Dictionary definitions. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so please do not create an entry merely to define a term. But of course an article can and should always begin with a good definition or a clear description of the topic. If you come across an article that is nothing more than a definition, see if there is information you can add that would be appropriate for an encyclopedia. If you're interested in working on a wiki dictionary, check out the Wiktionary (http://wiktionary.org) project! An exception to this rule are articles about the cultural meanings of individual numbers.

Don't worry. I won't. :-) --Menchi 10:35, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC) The ideal encyclopedia article is a dictionary definition. Bensaccount 03:27, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 „


What could be more "mere" than defining a term. Such is the main content in support of "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" versus "Wow, wouldnt the definitions be such a good add to the most bestest encyclopedia?" Any circumference of the english language would include its definition. Invalidate and restrict that if you will, as you do, it is no less clear. Hoary, your view on the validity of the project/placing it etc. is insightful but I am concerned with its result/intention. What in your opinion is the intention of the policy? In your opinion, what is the result of the policy? What is the best policy for the encyclopedia as it grows into a definitive collection of human knowledge (new page every minute, new edit every second)? Can any one do better than "that was done years ago", "we just said so", "is not"? Is debate irrelevant?
ThisMunkey (talk) 14:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Look up Wiktionary in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wiktionary
Simple English edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus
Look up Agenda in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up Rhyme in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up Reason in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.


So, you think dictionary definitions are valuable. I do too. People just in search of a dictionary definition may find it in a dictionary; that dictionary may be Wiktionary.

Yes, a WP encyclopedia entry may incorporate something akin to a dictionary definition where the latter is helpful to content that's genuinely encyclopedic.

To link to a Wiktionary entry you certainly do not need a box; you can do it like this.

The intention of the distinction is pretty well explained in Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary: which part don't you understand or agree with?

The result: An avoidance of confusion between encyclopedia and dictionary functions, and an avoidance of a plethora of mere dictionary definitions, many of which would almost certainly be bad, and whose number (eventually one per lexeme) would obscure the location of the relevant encyclopedia entry.

There need not be a distinction between encyclopedia and dictionary: the encyclopedia–dictionary hybrid is a familiar item. But one reason why the hybrid works in (for example) various Larousse publications is that these are planned; Wikipedia is not. The best policy for this encyclopedia is to deprecate dictionary definitions.

If you care to reply, please be concise (no chunks by other writers) and avoid layout gimmickry (no "big" tags). -- Hoary (talk) 15:13, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The policy is that the introduction of each article should contain a definition of the term as used to describe that particular topic. The point of NOTDICT is that the article isn't about a word it's about a subject. So we don't have a single article on all the different meanings of the article name. We have it one of them, and another article on another and so on.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 16:05, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
These are good answers. The definition link should be a part of Wikipedia:Your first article thereby in a sense, the dictionary is a part of the encyclopedia. For me words like plethora and lexeme would be much easier with a simple link to definition. Just because it's complicated or I dont understand it does not disqualify it but a definition is a welcome compromise. The chunks by the other writers were relevant and the stylising were hardly offensive, Hoary. The easy dictionary link is not mentioned at all on this (WP:DICT) page either, where it is at least appropriate. Agains thank you both for an actual answer. I hope that someone closes the debate by considering putting the information on the [[wikt| ] ] tags on Wikipedia:Your first article and WP:DICT.
All best
ThisMunkey (talk) 19:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dude

I just tried cleaning up or deleting the article Dude which focusses on the word and its usage. I got nowhere because it seems that editors are too fond of its explanation that you can pronounce the word in different ways, Bill and Ted use it a lot in their movies and similar slang dictionary stuff. This policy seems to be a dead letter. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Change to Guideline status

In view of my recent experience and the discussions above, it seems that this article is more of a guideline than a strict policy. I propose to change the wording to reflect this. Any objections? Colonel Warden (talk) 14:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I object strongly. The fact that we have currently have inconsistent enforcement of the policy is not all by itself enough reason to abandon the goal. Encyclopedias and dictionaries serve different purposes and rely on different standards and tools. The separation between Wiktionary and Wikipedia remains a good one.
Looking into the history of the discussion you reference above, I think the mistake was attempting to take the discussion directly to AFD. In my experience, the community is far more willing to consider a transwiki followed by a soft-redirect to the appropriate wiktionary page. There is often good content that belongs somewhere, just not in Wikipedia. If you clearly make the case that all the good content is being moved where it is still fully accessible and, better, even more likely to get the care and attention it deserves by Wiktionarians, the community will usually agree to the move. Going directly to a deletion discussion creates a stigma and unnecessary hard feelings. Rossami (talk) 22:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The discussion was not taken straight to AFD and there is already an entry for Dude in Wiktionary. Anyway, it's not just that we have erratic enforcement but it seems that we do not have a consensus for the goal. The debate in this case was a Snow result. The overwhelming majority of the editors were simply not interested in this policy. Maintaining it as a full-on policy is not justified. Colonel Warden (talk) 01:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I am still not seeing significant support for this policy here or elsewhere. To be a policy, this needs more overt support. Guideline status still seems more appropriate. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is, by definition, an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is, by definition, not a dictionary. To reduce this policy to guideline status would be implying that in some cases an encyclopedia can be a dictionary, which is incorrect. That's why we have Wiktionary. The Dude article recently nominated includes detailed information about the word itself merely to introduce the article. The bulk of the article is about how it has been used in other contexts, such as in popular culture, and is information that would not be found in a dictionary. The bulk of the editors in the discussion were not showing disinterest in the policy as you claim. Most of them claimed that this was more than a dictionary definition, as it is, and that there was no grounds for deletion based on that policy. Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The policy states, Another perennial source of confusion is that some paper dictionaries, such as "pocket" dictionaries, lead editors to the mistaken belief that dictionary articles are short, and that short article and dictionary article are therefore equivalent.
My impression is that many editors, such as those commenting upon Dude work on this basis - if the article is short then it is a dicdef; while if it is long it is an article. But this is not correct. If you look at a major dictionary such as the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find that entries on words can be huge, with much detailed citing of sources, etymology, usage, pronunciation and so on.
The real test, as the policy explains is whether the article is about the word or whether it is about the concept or topic that the word denotes. The policy goes to great lengths to explain this difference but this seems to go right over the head of most editors. And that's why we have articles on Dude as well as Man, Shit as well as Feces and Nigger as well as Negro, Black People, African American, Colored, etc.
You can easily recognise such articles because they tend to start by saying that "XXXX is a word which means...". The article is thus about the word XXXX and explains it in the way that a comprehensive dictionary would. And in some cases, such as Hacker, much energy is expended over what that meaning is - pedants love to argue about the meaning of words.
Since you (Hersfold) think the same as most editors, the policy should be aligned with our actual practise. Either the strict policy should be relaxed to guideline form, or it should be reworded to reflect our actual practise. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
You can easily recognise such articles because they tend to start by saying that "XXXX is a word which means...". The article is thus about the word XXXX and explains it in the way that a comprehensive dictionary would.
Often times, a larger article will still maintain the original stub-like introduction after it has been expanded. Or theres the possibility that the article was in fact, badly written. If the article adheres to your example, a change needs to be made in the article. We simply need to make the article read more like an encyclopedia entry, and less like a dictionary defintion. And I dont see a change in this policy in the near future. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 03:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Colonel, I didn't say a damn thing about length. My arguments above focused on the fact that the article includes more information than would be found in a dictionary, pocket sized or not; the fact that the article does include more than just the word, but also the concept it embodies. Simply because I may think similarly to other editors, does not mean that we all fit perfectly into the stereotype you appear to have developed. Let me, in fact, quote from the deletion debate some of the responses that were made which has nothing to do with length and focused on the point I tried to make above:
  • "Dude" is as much an idea and recurring social trope as it is a word. --The Fat Man Who Never Came Back
  • [A]rticle is more than just a dicdef, and word has historical and cultural significance. --ZimZalaBim
  • WP:DICDEF prohibits articles on words that are just dictionary-like definitions. This article is not. --seresin
  • [T]he current article is not well written, but I contend it is possible to build a reasonable article about the word "dude" from proper soucres. [...] The fact that the current article is below standard should encourage us to improve it, not delete it, as long as we can find good sources to work from, which I think we can here. --Gwernol
  • The word's cultural relevance and linguistical impact is more than sufficient to keep its place. If the article isn't great quality, it can always be restructured or improved upon. --Experimental Hobo Infiltration Droid
  • However, clearly the word possess notability. It's an example of vernacular with culture significance. --Wisdom89
  • Articles shouldn't be written by citing the dictionary, but the journal article in American Speech [2] listed in the external links section strongly suggests this is an encyclopedic topic, even if not presently a very good article. --cab
Since most of the remaining !votes (that weren't simply WP:ILIKEIT) were generally "per [one of the above seven] [plus other comments]," you can definitely see that while we may all think alike, we think in accordance to policy, a policy which does not need downgrading to a guideline simply to make a WP:POINT. As SynergisticMaggot says, if you have an issue with a particular article, fix that article or mark it for cleanup if you're not willing to do it yourself.
And finally, if you're going to over-generalize, at least do me the favor of bothering to read my comments so that you can do it properly. I do greatly dislike being misquoted. Hersfold (t/a/c) 12:49, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
This is not a personal matter and others have made similar points as you can see from the discussions above. No doubt I have failed to express myself clearly enough. As for the Dude article, I still fail to see the concept that this article describes that is not adequately covered by other articles such as Dandy, Dude ranch and Man. The article seems to exist purely as a vehicle to discuss the word qua word. The supposed cultural issues aren't covered well or at all and, in any case, are better treated in articles such as Valspeak, California English, Youth culture, Surfing, etc. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:13, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
So improve the article, don't change the definition of Wikipedia. Yes, the use of the term in those various cultural contexts is better explained in those other articles, however someone looking for "Dude" isn't going to type "Youth Culture" (etc) in the box, and we can't have "Dude" redirect to all umpteen of them. I agree the "popular culture" section needs to be trimmed to only the most notable and verifiable bits. I agree that the article needs to be expanded and improved to include more information on those cultural concepts. I agree that the article is in fairly shoddy shape at the moment. I do not agree that it serves only as a dictionary definition, and I do not agree that this is grounds to go fiddling about with policy. Would it be possible for you to provide more examples of dicdef articles, so we're not just arguing about this one?
I do apologize if I seemed a bit blunt earlier. I don't like waking up before 9:00, but my 8:00 Physics lecture (during which I pay little attention to the lecture itself, as you may notice by the timestamp above) rather necessitates my consciousness. Occasionally the diplomacy switch goes a little haywire before I've had breakfast in those cases, however that is no excuse for being rude. Hersfold (t/a/c) 21:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Here's a fresh example, in which I am on the other side of the argument:Eyesore AFD. Editors are using this policy to remove material when it seems that they really don't understand the difference between a stub and a dictionary definition. It seems that they focus too much upon length rather than the difference between a word and the concept that the word stands for. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
So, to put it plainly... its the editors who are confused. Right, I fully understand that. This still doesn't mean that a change is necessary in the policy. A simple template could be made informing participants in AFD's to make careful observation of the context in what wikipedia is not or more to the point; this talk pages main article (is only one example of changing the minds of participants). But nonetheless, once a large portion of nominations are disputed on the grounds that the article can in fact be improved through additions which no longer make them appear to be dicdef's, I believe other editors will not rush to nominate so many articles citing this policy. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 21:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The examples discussed here and the numerous cases at AfD, confirm that the functions of a dictionary and an encyclopedia overlap. One often cant define a word well without explaining what it signifies, and one can't discuss something without defining t. It is perfectly reasonable to write an encyclopedia article beginning with a definition, & in fact that advice is often given. Unless someone can actually propose a real guideline, we had better mark this an essay. DGG (talk) 04:53, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Mark what exactly an essay? The argument was for a reduction of the policy down to a guideline. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 05:05, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
sorry I meant a guideline.DGG (talk) 14:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Nothing in this or any other policy has ever said that a good encyclopedia article can't begin with a definition. What we've always said is that an encyclopedia article can't also end that way. An encyclopedia article must be more than a mere dictionary definition. If we can't find anything to discuss beyond merely lexical information, then the page belongs at our sister project, Wiktionary. That's long-standing policy and I personally don't see any likelihood that it's going to change anytime soon. Rossami (talk) 13:24, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Dude begins and ends with stuff that is just about the word, qua word, and it is still here. When you try to use it, the policy doesn't work. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I just made a test. I walked through Wiktionary using its random page feature. It took a while to get to an English word as it seems to be mostly full of foreign verb forms. Then I reached the word apocalyptically. I then went to the root word, Apocalypse which literally means revelation. Checking Wikipedia, I find that we don't just have a corresponding article, Apocalypse, but we also have separate articles for all the synonyms, Revelation, Doomsday, Judgement day, Armageddon, Ragnarok.
  • So, here's a challenge. Is there any headword in the dictionary that one couldn't make an article about? Colonel Warden (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikipedia is not a dictionary"

Just for sake of clarity, what does this mean?

Does it mean: "if an article will amount to nothing more than a dictionary definition, it should not be a Wikipedia article".

OR does it mean: "we can write this article using a meaning of (article topic) which does not agree with the usual dictionary definition."

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

This page means the former. Pages which can not be expanded beyond merely lexical content (that is, meaning, origins and usage of a word or phrase) belong at our sister project, Wiktionary.
The latter is also true but exceedingly rare - and discussed in detail on one of the Manual of Style pages if I remember correctly. Rossami (talk) 05:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Policy change - soft redirects

See discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Allow (some) soft redirects to Wiktionary. I propose to allow some WP:Soft redirects to Wiktionary, such as {{wi}}. --Kubanczyk (talk) 16:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WINAD

There is a discussion at talk:WINAD about the possibility to turn this page into a disambiguation page with self references. Cenarium (talk) 13:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Articles about potentially controversial concepts

There are a number of articles that I have been watching and/or editing for a long while which are about terms/concepts that some writers use and other writers reject. It seems to me that the ambiguity hanging over these articles can keep NPOV disputes running. New antisemitism (a "concept") is the subject of a current mediation. Chav declares that it is "a stereotype" but vandals and good faith newbies often add unsourced material in which the term unproblematically describes a group of people. Byzantine Empire is FA and starts off declaring the subject to be "a term". And now there is a dispute on Terrorism about whether the subject should be described in the lede as having no definition. Does anyone else share my feeling that this is an area of continuing difficulty? Itsmejudith (talk) 12:06, 11 June 2008 (UTC)