User talk:Xyzzyplugh/Articles about words

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Contents 1 But we need one 2 The problem 3 Generalized to word phrases?? 4 I added a link to my own essay at the bottom

[edit] But we need one

I believe that actually having a policy or guideline on articles about words would be a good idea. However, various attempts at talking to others about this quickly revealed that everyone either has no opinion at all, finds this unimportant, or have opinions which are randomly scattered across every possible position imaginable on this topic, thereby making the chance of any policy being created at this time highly unlikely. --Xyzzyplugh 20:09, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

So your concern isn't with either of the two extremes (article is too short, it gets sent to Wiktionary; article obviously contains a fair bit of extra detail that Wiktionary doesn't want, we keep it here), which you seem to largely agree with. Your concern is with how the gray area in between is handled (article contains a small bit of extra information that would be lost if transwikied, do we keep it here and hope it will grow?), is that correct?

Anyway, the essay might be better received if it proposes possible solutions, rather than just worries about the fact that there's a problem. --Interiot 19:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

My purpose in writing the essay was to explain the problem, as very few editors are even aware of it. I don't have a specific solution in mind, as any solution ought to be formed by some consensus of the overall community, and with the community utterly unaware of or uninterested in this, such consensus will not be formed any time soon.

I can see two reasonable solutions to this. 1. allow articles on any words which have enough reliably sourced content to actually write an article about them which goes beyond a dictionary definition, including whatever etymologists have written about in various books and journals. I'm assuming etymologists have probably written volumes of text about large numbers of words in various places which no normal human being ever reads. 2. Same as above, but leave out the etymologists' journals, and only look in magazines, newspapers, etc, in order to only get words which are the most notable. Plenty has been written about Nigger, for example, in all sorts of places, but Thou probably gets deleted.

The other possible solutions, "allow articles on all words" and "allow articles on no words" are not ones anyone is likely to agree with. --Xyzzyplugh 14:22, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The problem

I think toward the end you hit on exactly what the problem is. People are really, really, really, really, really reluctant to delete any article that has sources, a few sections and a few photos in it, even if that article's existance runs counter with existing policy. That isn't really hard to do with many words. But pad it out all you want, if all you can write about a word is etymology, usage and grammar then it is a just an exceedingly long dictionary entry (yes, I'm thinking of thou here). The only counter-examples I can think of are words that have some effect on society: womyn or nigger, for example. Those are actual encyclopedia articles and I don't (yet) see "Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia" at WP:NOT. Recury 19:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Generalized to word phrases??

Any expansion of this discussion to include word phrases, such as Super Mario Bros. 2 (game name)?? Georgia guy 14:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

What is that? Recury 14:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, this question is about a variant of this discussion that deals with articles about word phrases. Georgia guy 14:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

No, what is Super Mario Bros. 2 (game name)? Recury 15:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

See User:Georgia guy/Super Mario Bros. 2 (game name). Georgia guy 16:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That isn't even an article, it's a basically a disambiguation page. It doesn't talk about any of the same things that articles on words talk about, so I don't see how it's relevant. But I guess there exist some articles on phrases that are similar like Oh My Gosh (expression). Recury 18:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I added a link to my own essay at the bottom

This covers a very similar topic, and I didn't know about this essay when I wrote it.-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 15:07, 14 August 2007 (UTC)