[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> Interesting.  I came to accept the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary"
> guideline/policy pretty soon after reading that page - and much to my
> dismay I find it to be fairly widely ignored when it comes to
> etymology, usage, and profanity.  I'm interested in seeing what the
> original and/or newly rewritten language had to say about it.

{{fact}}

"Fairly widely ignored"? I see very few articles that could not be
encyclopaedic. And, like Ian W points out, the policy is probably too
strict anyway: a more seamless transition from encyclopaedia-space to
dictionary-space would probably serve WMF's mission quite well.

Especially when you're talking about the etymology and usage of a
word, there's a bit of a gap between the very terse etymology that
Wikitonary allows, and the more flowing style found at Wikipedia.
However, that more flowing style is only permitted in the context of
*encyclopaedia* articles, so we have nothing like it for pure *word*
articles.

Steve