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I have several wiki related ideas in the works, and I could set up an alternative English usage wiki if that would be helpful and would alleviate some of the pressure you seem to think the inclusion of usage info might have on this wiki. 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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