:::::So, if you don't like WINAD, the name of the game is, write articles that look like they could become encyclopedia articles. If you want to counter a deletion, pick up the page and do just that. (The dictstub may help with that, I think. Fortunately one can't kill earlier versions...) |
:::::So, if you don't like WINAD, the name of the game is, write articles that look like they could become encyclopedia articles. If you want to counter a deletion, pick up the page and do just that. (The dictstub may help with that, I think. Fortunately one can't kill earlier versions...) :::::: Yes! I agree 100% with the latter! --LMS |
I got interested in this issue in response to Larry's comment about my induhvidual page. I thought it was a phenomenon interesting enough to warrant an article, although I only wrote a stub. Larry referred me to item #3 of what Wikipedia is not.
I'm not entirely convinced about the inappropriateness of induhvidual, yet.
<>< tbc
It certainly has a place in a larger article about Scott Adams and Dilbert. I don't think the term is used or understood outside of that context enough to merit coverage on its own. --LDC
I agree with the title. It is not a dictionary, glossary, thesarus, or any other reference source. First and foremost, the Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Second, it is a place for academic debate as it relates to the content of the Wikipedia. That is it. If you want a free personal web page go to geocities or angelfire.
The Black Griffen
Try this out for size: if you think the meaning of some word both (1) needs explanation and (2) doesn't merit more than a dictionary entry's worth of explanation, then you should probably just define the word in the article itself. On the other hand, if the term really does need some special explanation that you can refer to from several different other articles, such as cannot be found in a standard fat dictionary, then probably your term is a piece of jargon. Explaining jargon is totally acceptable in an encyclopedia. The explanation of jargon is an art, by the way. It's not just a matter of giving a dictionary-type definition. It's a matter of conveying how the word is used, in what contexts, and it almost always helps to give some background information about related topics. And, of course, much jargon does itself name important topics, about which a lot of non-semantic information is very important to include in an encyclopedia. Hence, most complete, good explanations of jargon will not look like dictionary definitions.
If the above is correct, then we still won't, in the end, have many articles that look like dictionary definitions. The briefest of definitions can be included in other articles. When they need to be referred to by many other articles, they're probably jargon, and jargon almost always can be usefully and helpfully explained with information that involves more than just the sort of basic semantic information you'd find in a dictionary.
The above-mentioned football terms are, indeed, football jargon, without which it is impossible to understand or explain the game. That's why it's OK to have that jargon. I have my doubts that induhvidual is a piece of jargon necessary to explain anything that belongs in an encyclopedia, although someone far more expert on Scott Adams and Dilbert might want to disagree with me, I guess. :-)
I hammer on this point, that we're working on an encyclopedia, for what I think is a good reason. Part of what makes Wikipedia so cool is that we are focusing on the fact that it's an encyclopedia and not, in addition, a bunch of everything2 nodes (just for example). If we let it, it would become all that, and more. But then it wouldn't be half as cool as it is. There's a reason we're here and not at h2g2, everything2, Usenet, Kuro5hin, Project Gutenburg, etc. --LMS
There is absolutely nothing wrong, in my opinion, with deleting stubs that will never be anything more than dictionary definitions. But whether a stub could ever be "anything more than dictionary definition" is somewhat difficult to determine. I can easily imagine a long, informative article on arrow quivers; I cannot easily imagine anything more than a dictionary definition of "quiver" in the sense of what I do when approaching a grizzly bear. Hence, my tendency would be to leave a stub expressing the former sense, and delete a stub expressing the latter sense. See [1] for further considerations from me on this. --LMS
Cor blimey! An argument of almost infinite regress looms... :-) sjc