On 3/25/07, bobolozo bobolozo@yahoo.com wrote:
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words. We have "Wikipedia is not a dictionary", and that's it, and that only states that we shouldn't have articles that are merely dictionary definitions.
This still leaves open the possibility of having vast numbers of articles about words which go beyond a mere dicdef, but our current vague nonsensical practice mostly puts a stop to this.
Our current practice is as follows: an article is made about a word. If the article can be rewritten into one on a topic (that is, an article on the word "shoe" becomes an article on the subject of shoes), we rewrite it, and it's no longer an article on a word.
If the article cannot be rewritten into an article on the topic the word represents, and if the article is SHORT, we transwiki to wiktionary and delete it for being a dicdef or redirect somewhere. However, if the article is LONG, and well written and wikified, we generally keep it as being "more than just a dicdef", and if there are no sources we hope some are eventually found.
This is a bizarre and ridiculous and totally unintentional way of handling articles on words, but it is exactly what we do.
Imagine if this were our policy or practice on astronomy articles. "If at all possible, rewrite to a non-astronomical topic. If none exists under this title, and if the astronomy article is short, redirect to a non-astronomical article or delete. If rewriting is not possible, but the article is long and well-written, only then do we keep it".
Obviously we do want some articles about words, though. We have "Thou", which is a featured article, we have "Truthiness", and many other well sourced and well written articles. We don't want to delete all of these, so we must want some articles on words.
But which ones? There are probably tens of thousands of english words which have been written about by etymologists, meaning we have sourced content on them. Furthermore, Wikipedia is supposed to be global in perspective, and has articles on people, places, and things from non-english speaking countries, so why would we not have articles on non-english words?
But this could end up with us having hundreds of thousands of articles on foreign words, do we want that?
One way or another, some sort of policy would be better than "Rewrite into a non-word article. If not possible, delete if short, keep if long and nice looking".
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Bobolozo,
Thank you for your question.
We have a dictionary called Wiktionary for all words. The guiding principle should be whether an encyclopedia can be written about it. An encyclopedia article can be written about shoes. It is doubtful that one could be written about shod which is the past participle of shoe.
A person looking for shoe in Wikipedia would be interested in footwear. That doesn't mean that we couldn't have a paragraph explaining the origins of the word and its meanings but the bulk of the article should have material on the origins and history of shoes, how they are made and the varieties of them.
Regarding policies on word articles, we also have a policy banning neologisms stopping people from making up words and then sitting down and writing encyclopedia articles on them.
In my view, a majority of words could have encyclopedia articles written about them but many couldn't.
Regards
Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster