[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has no policy on word articles

[bobolozo]

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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