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

[Stephanie Daugherty]

While there may be cases where the guideline's been taken too literally, or
some cases not literally enough, the point of "not a dictionary" to me in
our current state is to avoid overlaps with our sister project - if we
didn't have that, we'd have tremendous duplication of content. For the most
part, an encyclopedic article about a word is just a very verbose dictionary
entry - there's no need to have a word defined in both Wikipedia and
Wiktionary. If it's a definition, regardless of how much fluff we can put
behind it, it belongs on Wiktionary. If it's more than just "a word" then it
might have a place on Wikipedia. It's usually not all that hard.

-Steph



On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

>
> >
> > Anyway, not that big a deal.  So the next problem I have is that there
> > don't seem to be any notability guidelines.  Is the word "computer"
> > notable?  If so, why isn't there yet an encyclopedia entry for such a
> > common word?  There's certainly quite a lot that can be said about the
> > word.
>
> Well, is there interesting or relevant material published in a reliable
> source? How did we get from "difference engine" to "computer"?
>
> >
> > And I guess if "Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is more
> > explicit about being a formatting guideline, and not an inclusion
> > guideline, that would then reflect the de facto policy.
>
> Appropriate, although that language has been there probably since Larry
> Sanger.
>
> Fred Bauder
>
>
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-- 
Faith is about what you really truly believe in, not about what you are
taught to believe.