I have to agree with Simon on this one.
Even if you assume that this is a usage issue, we are allowing other kinds of procedural knowledge -- what is it about language that makes it off limits?
But, I'm convinced that language use issues ALWAYS impinge on some issue of interest outside of language. I don't think meaning can be separated from the complex web of human behavior in which it is embedded, nor can use. I know this is a somewhat controversial position, but I think it is obvious in this case, that there are issues related to the feminist movement, gender inequality, and the politicization of language, tensions between academic language use and popular use, etc. These issues are real, and are related to historical facts. There is no reason that we can't do several things here: 1) Describe the way the singular they is used, 2) Describe the controversies surrounding it's use, 3) Describe the history of the words use. MRC
That said, I agree with LDC that proscriptive usage pages, which say things like: "Never use a preposition to end a sentence with," should not be allowed here (except on commentary pages). We are building a compendium of knowledge, not style advice. If however someone wants to describe the historical process whereby the prohibition on ending sentences with prepositions was imported into English from Latin, I think that is both useful and worthwhile. If that article also describes the way that controversy has spilled over into the present day, I'm all for that too.
If on the other hand, there are good reasons to think that allowing this kind of page will somehow dammage the wikipedia project I'd be glad to hear about them, and change my position. Absent such reasons, I think we should allow this, and just let it take it's course. If it results in the development of bad, ore even just useless articles, we can always decide to delete them later. --MRC
But let me begin by making some concessions.
Now, all that being conceded, is there any good reason to include in an encyclopedia any other of the many entries in the likes of Fowler?
Well, first of all, I don't buy this distinction between descriptive and prescriptive. If you will actually examine some usage guides, you will find that there is a lot of descriptive language that does double duty making implied prescriptions. So discussion on that topic is neither here nor there.
There is a number of good reasons to avoid purely usage-guide type entries in an encyclopedia.
First, the purposes of using the references are different! Totally different! This is my main reason for wanting to avoid these kind of entries in Wikipedia, and it's why I feel strongly about the issue. This is also why hitherto one generally has not seen combination encyclopedia-cum-usage-guides, but instead just the one or just the other. So, what are the purposes in question? The purpose of an encyclopedia has been to give people an introduction to all different areas of non-semantic human knowledge. The purpose of usage guides, grammars, and dictionaries UGD for short) is to teach people how to use language. One consults a UGD to get a definition, to learn how to use a word, to learn how to phrase a sentence--and to learn such things without being further burdened with a lot of other information that is irrelevant to that purpose. There is a natural division of labor among different types of reference works. One goes to one type of reference work specifically in order to avoid being presented with the information that is contained in the other types. Why should someone come to Wikipedia to look up how to use a certain word when he can more easily, with fewer distractions, look the word up in a dictionary or usage guide?
Second, having a lot of discussion of the usage of words distracts us from our central purpose. (In fact, I have lately grudgingly come around to the view that including the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, etc., in Wikipedia is a similar distraction. Maybe a subject for a column.) One of the reasons Wikipedia has been so successful, mind you, is precisely that we have stayed true to our central purpose, disallowing the project to become a system of stubs and dictionary definitions like the "Probert Encyclopedia" you can find online, and also disallowing it to become a mere discussion forum. (Not to say this particular discussion is bad--I think it's essential we talk about this.) People like focusing on one thing, and that's one reason why Wikipedia is popular. On the Internet, where anyone can do and organize practically anything, specialization is a good thing!
But, you might say, "Aren't you begging the question? Why not think usage guide entries are part of our central purpose?" Well, whatever else our purpose is, we can agree that it is at least to reproduce the contents of a traditional, high-quality encyclopedia. Now, if people start writing zillions of usage entries, this is going to distract us from that main purpose. Just scan the entries in Fowler, for example. Here are some entries: -some; somersault; sorrow; include, comprise; inchoate; continual, continuous; constructive; brake, break. Some of these name subjects that, named differently, we'll want encyclopedia articles about. Having the usage entries alongside them is going to confuse people. Frankly, I don't want to see usage articles alongside the other articles, because I don't care about explaining or reading about matters of usage when I'm looking at Wikipedia. I would go to xrefer.com or some other website if I want information on usage.
I'm also rather worried that some people, who fancy themselves experts about the English language, would start devoting a lot of their Wikipedia time to those entries and leave the substantive, non-semantic entries unattended. Similarly, I'm worried that new people will arrive at Wikipedia, see all the activity on the usage entries, and, not sharing your views about the purpose of an encyclopedia, think that the project is just confused. It really would look confused, or conflicted, and confusing, to a lot of people who do have clear distinctions in their minds between encyclopedias and other kinds of reference works.
Third, the requirements of a usage guide are quite different from those of an encyclopedia; what might be right for a usage guide is generally out of place for an encyclopedia entry on that same topic. We'd have to work out a lot of new guidelines for usage entries, and work out what to do when there's significant amounts of both usage information and encyclopedic information. (Which comes first in the article?)
Fourth, there's a comparative advantage to your starting up an English usage wiki, if you like. Look, if you really want to have an open content usage guide, then make one yourself. Wouldn't it be better to have all this work separate, "physically," as it were, from Wikipedia, so the name space isn't crowded and so that people can look in one reference for one kind of info and in the other for the other kind?
So, why don't you just set up an English usage wiki? As a bonus, you can make it a dictionary too, if you're keen on making a wiki dictionary.
On the other hand, I think your fears are unfounded. I'm also not clear on the distinction between semantic information and "non-semantic" information. If meaning is intimately related to a whole belief system, and is also intimately related to use, semantic information is behavioral information, and is therefor also "non-semantic" information.
I don't suggest that we become a usage guide either -- why would we want to do that? Instead I suggest that we allow usage guide type articles, but require that they include what you would call "real" information. In this case the singular they should include real information about how this construction has been used, and the political movements which surround it. I would suggest that it is also reasonable to say things like "group X" opposes this use for reasons A, B and C, but group Y supports it for reasons F, G, and H.
I agree that saying things which report to be factual and descriptive, but are really proscriptive should be discouraged (especially if there's no scholarly consensus). For example, I don't think the Wikipedia should say about the singular they: "many find the use of this construction to be awkward and illegitimate" unless it also says that many believe it to be fine, and actually support it's use in order to neutralize an implied male bias. This is what you call NPOV , and though I still have some objection to the terminology, I agree that it is important to be fair about the positions we cover.
Also, I don't think this is going to overly clutter the name space. Nor would the inclusion of usage and even (I know this is controversial) dictionary type information, take up important space. [Wikipedia is not paper]?, after all. I know there's a danger related to this, in that it could end up being all we do, but I'm pretty sure the only reason that traditional encyclopedias don't contain articles about the history of English usage, and about the meanings of words is that they are already long and expensive to produce, and could easily become too long and too expensive.
That is not to say that I'm against some kind of separation of these things, but I also think there are natural interactions and the separation could be accomplished by something like Magnus's alternative namespace code -- which would then allow for a much simpler and more natural connection between these related types of knowledge. Anyway, just a couple of thoughts to consider. MRC
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