Proposal: I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
(Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).
Reasons to do so: *It goes against what I believe (and I think generally believed) to be the purpose of a dictionary (particularly Wiki ones): not to judge or make rules for a language, but to objectively describe language. Pretend words are, of course at their heart, POV. In Wikipedia marking an article as POV is a cause for alarm, in Wiktionary it has become a classification. *[[hu]] is a good example of how pretend words can become encyclopedic pretty quickly. It is necessary to create the context that is obviously not otherwise present, as well as make arguments for the words very necessity. *The rules for inclusion of a pretend word could be considered one of Wiktionary's more arbitrary set of rules: whether folks believe the word to be viable, fulfill a need, follow naming some convention etc. are not the sort of decisions that sysops should have to make if it can be avoided. *Even if identified as pretend, they lessen the credibility of Wiktionary and Wikimedia as a whole. *Pretend words might happen to be real ones already. (ex. [[hu]] was apparently a god in an esoteric New Age religion already). *The previous point brings up the scary possibility of folks deciding an existing word should have an additional meaning in their POV. Scary because it would be very easy to miss. **There seems to be currently a division between the rules of pretend word (make up your definition) and the rest (describe accurately real words), which is inconsistent and thus confusing for new users. *Wiktionary is still young and such changes are still possible without much hassle. *Recent beer parlor discussions have showed a lack of support for pretend words. Folks differ on how exactly they should be dealt with, but its seems to be generally felt that they do not add to the quality of Wiktionary.
Implementation: Just to make things clear, Wiktionary should allow and encourage the inclusion of new words that actually exist in the wild. Words should more or less be given the benefit of the doubt, especially if the author is willing to take even a jab at defending it. So far the words of [[Category:Protologism]] are all quite obvious as to what they are, even if they hadn't been marked. Except ironically for "protologism" itself which should probably hang on as a wiktionary jargon.
If the proposal was implemented, pages which direct users on creating new pretend words could be removed and/or edited. I know for a fact that some of the pretend words being created are in response to such documentation.
I'd be interested to know what the other Wiktionaries have as their policy.
Thank you, [[user:eean | Ian Monroe]]
Ian Monroe wrote:
Proposal: I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
(Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).
I would recommend that this be adopted as a blanket policy for all of wiktionary. The specific means of judging which words are "pretend" will likely vary by language, of course, but the general principle is universal.
I would be interested to hear any counter-arguments, but I doubt very much if there are any. Made up words, original words, are quite beside the point of a dictionary.
There will be some tough judgment calls about neologisms, and I'm not sure exactly how these should be decided. A "google test" is no good, although it can be a clever tool for a first check.
--Jimbo
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 02:37:24 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
(Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).
I would recommend that this be adopted as a blanket policy for all of wiktionary. The specific means of judging which words are "pretend" will likely vary by language, of course, but the general principle is universal.
I would be interested to hear any counter-arguments, but I doubt very much if there are any. Made up words, original words, are quite beside the point of a dictionary.
A minority language may find it necessary to resort to neologisms, either by calque or by borrowing, when defining modern concepts ("blog", "fluoxetine"), culturally remote concepts ("khan", "senator"), the best gender or declension to put a foreign place name in (is "Shikoku" neuter or feminine?), or the best way to spell foreign names in a non-Latin script ("Xhosa" in Cherokee, or "Pirahã" in Mkhedruli).
This practice should probably be (strongly) differentiated from making up words at random, as with [[hu]].
(For a language as "fixed" as English, we take for granted one of the earlier purposes of dictionaries, which was to suggest usage as well: note the innovations made in spelling by some of the earlier lexicographers, some of which took hold and some of which didn't. For a project as rambling as the English wiktionary, this effect is probably impossible, but if a language took its wiktionary as seriously as, say, English takes its Wikipedia, it could well be influential, if not an actual authority.)
*Muke!
Well, I think the elitist 19th-century dictionaries serve as a poor example of what Wiktionary should be about.
Then English Wiktionary has a Sanskrit entry for [[surfboard]] , [[तरंगफलक]], and as you noted in the discussion of it, it does create a problem because its really hard to say whether someone just decided thats how surfboard would be spelt or if there's some Hindu cleric who has been praying for तरंगफलक's for years. I don't think its appropriate for contributors to Wiktionary to translate words into languages that don't have a word for it already, thats not our place IMO. Granted, Wikipedia might have to from time to time, but they have different goals.
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:37:01 -0700, Muke Tever muke@frath.net wrote:
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 02:37:24 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
(Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).
I would recommend that this be adopted as a blanket policy for all of wiktionary. The specific means of judging which words are "pretend" will likely vary by language, of course, but the general principle is universal.
I would be interested to hear any counter-arguments, but I doubt very much if there are any. Made up words, original words, are quite beside the point of a dictionary.
A minority language may find it necessary to resort to neologisms, either by calque or by borrowing, when defining modern concepts ("blog", "fluoxetine"), culturally remote concepts ("khan", "senator"), the best gender or declension to put a foreign place name in (is "Shikoku" neuter or feminine?), or the best way to spell foreign names in a non-Latin script ("Xhosa" in Cherokee, or "Pirahã" in Mkhedruli).
This practice should probably be (strongly) differentiated from making up words at random, as with [[hu]].
(For a language as "fixed" as English, we take for granted one of the earlier purposes of dictionaries, which was to suggest usage as well: note the innovations made in spelling by some of the earlier lexicographers, some of which took hold and some of which didn't. For a project as rambling as the English wiktionary, this effect is probably impossible, but if a language took its wiktionary as seriously as, say, English takes its Wikipedia, it could well be influential, if not an actual authority.)
*Muke!
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:54:24 -0600, Ian Monroe ian.monroe@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I think the elitist 19th-century dictionaries serve as a poor example of what Wiktionary should be about.
No dictionary has been perfect yet. But just because some areas are flawed doesn't mean we can't learn from what good points they may have.
Then English Wiktionary has a Sanskrit entry for [[surfboard]] , [[तरंगफलक]], and as you noted in the discussion of it, it does create a problem because its really hard to say whether someone just decided thats how surfboard would be spelt or if there's some Hindu cleric who has been praying for तरंगफलक's for years.
It doesn't have to be about obscure clerics. Sanskrit may be a dead language like Latin, but as I understand it it didn't experienced a decline in use like Latin did starting from about the fifteenth century (see [[Humanist Latin]]). Sanskrit, according to [[Sanskrit]], is still commonly being taught and apparently is used by about four million people.
I don't think its appropriate for contributors to Wiktionary totranslate words into languages that don't have a word for it already,thats not our place IMO. Granted, Wikipedia might have to from timeto time, but they have different goals.
Well, the neologism template on la: (Latin is a bad example, I know, but the only one I am involved with) has a call for older, better, and attested forms of words. This is important mainly because the Latin most people know is Classical Latin, but the language has been in use for a long time since then, and a lot of more modern things have actually been written about and subsequently forgotten. My hope is that wiktionary can become a vehicle for these things to be found again.
I could give an example, I guess. A user on la:wikt created [[Honsium]] for the Japanese island "Honshu", based on the wikipedia entry. Now, in general, the quality of Latin on the Wikipedia is very bad, so it's not admissible as a source and it gets the neologism template.
Afterwards another user comes by with an attestation in a Latin reference work from 1977 (Carolus Egger's _Lexicon Nominum Locorum_) where it is given as "Honsua", to which the page was moved and now currently stands, without the neologism template.
Sometimes we can do better. [[Sicocum]] ("Shikoku") was also created. The 1977 source lists it as "Sicocus" (feminine). However, we were able to go back even further, and found a 1589 source speaking of Xicocum (neuter; with a Spanish value of x, i.e. /S/, in modern spelling better Sicocum), so it gets to stay where it is. (It doesn't list Honshu by anything approximating the modern name, though. It named the island Meacum, after Kyoto.)
I know this is a ... special situation. This language has no native speakers left, so its compilation depends entirely on research. We don't _know_ if we have the words, so we put things down tentatively. Other language Wiktionaries have the benefit of native speaker intuition as well, so this system may not work as well there.
*Muke!
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 17:06:59 -0700, Muke Tever muke@frath.net wrote:
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:54:24 -0600, Ian Monroe ian.monroe@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I think the elitist 19th-century dictionaries serve as a poor example of what Wiktionary should be about.
No dictionary has been perfect yet. But just because some areas are flawed doesn't mean we can't learn from what good points they may have.
You seemed to be making the point that the elitism of the early dictionaries served a good purpose (they made spelling standard, a Good Thing indeed) and that Wiktionary has something to learn from this ("to suggest usage"), which I disagree with. Maybe I misread your point.
Then English Wiktionary has a Sanskrit entry for [[surfboard]] , [[तरंगफलक]], and as you noted in the discussion of it, it does create a problem because its really hard to say whether someone just decided thats how surfboard would be spelt or if there's some Hindu cleric who has been praying for तरंगफलक's for years.
It doesn't have to be about obscure clerics. Sanskrit may be a dead language like Latin, but as I understand it it didn't experienced a decline in use like Latin did starting from about the fifteenth century (see [[Humanist Latin]]). Sanskrit, according to [[Sanskrit]], is still commonly being taught and apparently is used by about four million people.
Well, that does make it much more likely that तरंगफलक is a real word if Sanskrit is being spoken. Kind of like the Irish learning Irish again.
I don't think its appropriate for contributors to Wiktionary totranslate words into languages that don't have a word for it already,thats not our place IMO. Granted, Wikipedia might have to from timeto time, but they have different goals.
Well, the neologism template on la: (Latin is a bad example, I know, but the only one I am involved with) has a call for older, better, and attested forms of words. This is important mainly because the Latin most people know is Classical Latin, but the language has been in use for a long time since then, and a lot of more modern things have actually been written about and subsequently forgotten. My hope is that wiktionary can become a vehicle for these things to be found again.
I could give an example, I guess. A user on la:wikt created [[Honsium]] for the Japanese island "Honshu", based on the wikipedia entry. Now, in general, the quality of Latin on the Wikipedia is very bad, so it's not admissible as a source and it gets the neologism template.
Afterwards another user comes by with an attestation in a Latin reference work from 1977 (Carolus Egger's _Lexicon Nominum Locorum_) where it is given as "Honsua", to which the page was moved and now currently stands, without the neologism template.
Sometimes we can do better. [[Sicocum]] ("Shikoku") was also created. The 1977 source lists it as "Sicocus" (feminine). However, we were able to go back even further, and found a 1589 source speaking of Xicocum (neuter; with a Spanish value of x, i.e. /S/, in modern spelling better Sicocum), so it gets to stay where it is. (It doesn't list Honshu by anything approximating the modern name, though. It named the island Meacum, after Kyoto.)
I know this is a ... special situation. This language has no native speakers left, so its compilation depends entirely on research. We don't _know_ if we have the words, so we put things down tentatively. Other language Wiktionaries have the benefit of native speaker intuition as well, so this system may not work as well there.
*Muke!
I think a Wiktionary user should not sit down with a phoentic guide and decide how to spell a word. Granted, I don't work on any classical languages so I guess its really up to the folks that do to make the call, and it should be the policy of en.wikt as well regarding those languages.
Ian
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 04:01:37 -0600, Ian Monroe ian.monroe@gmail.com wrote:
Proposal: I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
Just remembered this. This was around back when I was working on en.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclusion
Was it superseded, or just forgotten?
*Muke!
Never seen that page. Perhaps it could be linked to from [[MediaWiki:Newarticletext]]. Those are some nice criteria. It pretty close to the OED's I think, whose relatively low standards for words are kind of what we're going for.
We've let first and last names into the Wiktionary which I don't think is necesarily a bad thing. It does make thinking of good concise criteria for proper nouns difficult though.
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:25:12 -0700, Muke Tever muke@frath.net wrote:
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 04:01:37 -0600, Ian Monroe ian.monroe@gmail.com wrote:
Proposal: I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
Just remembered this. This was around back when I was working on en.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclusion
Was it superseded, or just forgotten?
*Muke!
I've started a dicussion on the beer parlor regarding how to implement the new policy.
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 04:01:37 -0600, Ian Monroe ian.monroe@gmail.com wrote:
Proposal: I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words (so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
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