[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)
Anthony
wikimail at inbox.org
Tue Dec 28 16:57:57 UTC 2010
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:25 AM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wrote:
>
>> > The English Wikipedia contains individual articles about each
>> > of the 144 "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" television episodes.
>> > Can you give an example of that in a traditional encyclopedia?
>
> Anthony replied:
>
>> That might be a relevant question if we were discussing whether
>> or not has television episode guide entries. As it stands we're
>> discussing whether or not it has dictionary entries.
>
> My point is that each of those 144 "episode guide entries" is written
> as an encyclopedia article (despite the fact that no traditional
> encyclopedia includes such content).
That point is not relevant, though.
> Similarly, we have encyclopedia articles about words. The fact that
> these subjects traditionally aren't covered in encyclopedias and are
> covered in other reference works doesn't automatically mean that their
> presence in Wikipedia is purely duplicative of the latter's function.
What makes something an "encyclopedia article about a word"? Sounds
to me like another way to describe a "dictionary".
>> > As implicitly acknowledged in your question, Wikipedia isn't a
>> > traditional encyclopedia.
>
>> And that's my whole point. Wikipedia *does* contain lots of
>> dictionary entires, even though there is a page saying that it
>> shouldn't.
>
> Your opinion of what constitutes a "dictionary entry" differs from
> that of the English Wikipedia community at large.
>
> I certainly haven't seen the format in question used in any dictionary
> (including Wiktionary).
So "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is a formatting guideline, and not
an inclusion guideline? I didn't take it that way, but if you think
that's what it says, maybe I should reread it.
>> > > And if the concept is the word, shouldn't the title of the
>> > > article be [[the word "meh"]]?
>
>> > Why?
>
>> Disambiguation. I guess [["meh"]] would be acceptable, though.
>> It's not so important with interjections, but any word which is
>> a noun would suffer from the problem. [[shithead]] should be
>> about shitheads, not the word shithead, just like [[dog]] is
>> about dogs, not the word dog.
>
> We use the format "Foo (word)" or similar when the word itself is not
> the primary topic. For example, see "Man (word)".
I guess that could work, though it would be nice to have something
more standard. Instead I see:
*troll (gay slang)
*faggot (slang)
*Harry (derogatory term)
*Oorah (Marines)
*Uh-oh (expression)
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.
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.
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