On 30/07/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
It would appear that lists of words violate the provision that Wikipedia should not have articles which define individual words, nor should it include Lists of such definitions. However, we have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_words , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_slang and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_phrases , among others. Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive. Is this policy still being applied (in which case, *all* of these articles must be deleted), or not (in which case the wording of the policy needs to be changed). I have raised the issue at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Lists_of_W...
I don't know if all of these articles need to be deleted, or whether policy needs to be modified to reflect reality. But I think this needs to be determined in general, not determined piecemeal
We have many articles which define individual words (cheese, lawnmower, carpenter, etc.), but I take the problem is to do with articles about the words themselves. One that comes to mind is the article [[fuck]], quite a good read.
Many articles which aren't specifically about the word have sections concerning etymology and semantics.
I don't think this is a problem for Wikipedia. I don't think being "encyclopaedic" is to do with what articles are about, it is to do with how they are written and how the information is presented.