Wikipedia talk:Encyclopedic dictionary articles

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I am responding to your requests for comments at the village pump. I hope you take this as constructive. I do mean it that way but, unfortunately, I have a great deal of criticism of pretty much all of the current content and question the need for the guideline at all. Encyclopedia articles are not rendered something else simply because they are about a word in its capacity as a word, nor do they become a blend of encyclopedia and dictionary because they are about a word, define it and provide usage, etymology, etc. A dictionary is limited to these functions and generally in relatively short form. Almost all articles on any topic start with definition, and often give usage and etymology, so there's nothing about doing this in an article on a word as a word that makes it different just because a limited form of that is ubiquitous to dictionaries. There's some point of information presentation in length, detail and what is covered that goes beyond a dicdef and becomes quite clearly simply an encyclopedia entry and not a dictionary definition (i.e., not an "encyclopedic dictionary article" but just an article). Sometimes deciding if that point has been reached can be difficult when an article is is not clearly beyond it, but I don't think that comes up nearly often enough that we need a guideline to define it. In the cases where an encyclopedia article on a word is well beyond that questionable, in between stage, saying that it is "not truly encyclopedic" (the first line of this proposed guideline) is to my mind simply wrong. Fuck is a good example of an encyclopedia articles on a word that very much is an encyclopedia article, does not at all resemble a dictionary article, and is certainly "encyclopedic" under any normal definition of that word. In any event, regarding some of the standards announced:

"An article is an encyclopedic dictionary article only if it is simply about a word, term or phrase and mainly covers the history (etymology) and usage of the word, and cannot be rewritten to be encyclopedic per WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary." I find this very confusing. The purpose of the guideline is to define conventions for articles we are not deleting, yes? Yet, the definition here is of an article we should be deleting (or transwikiing). An article that "cannot be rewritten to be encyclopedic" is another way of saying "this does not belong on Wikipedia at all (let's get rid of)". Likewise, if an article fails WP:NOTDIC, it should be shuffled off our encyclopedic coil. So, all I see here is a restatement of what is already provided at WP:NOTDIC and WP:NOT as our reasons for not keeping articles on words that are really just dicdefs.
"A word is deemed sufficiently notable to be in Wikipedia if it is in Wiktionary." This is a non starter. We have a general notability guideline which articles must meet and it bears little relationship with Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion. Further, many words are in Wiktionary but do not meet their inclusion policy (just as we have many con-compliant articles here) so, even if we were intending to substitute their mismatched standard for inclusion as a new notability basis, by defining it as any word existing in Wiktionary, we wouldn't even be doing that.
"...but the article name must end in '(word)' '(term)' or '(idiom)'..." This fundamentally conflicts with our article title naming conventions and policy on disambiguation. These additions to article in parentheses are called disambiguators because they are solely for disambiguation purposes. Unless an article title is ambiguous, we do not use disambiguators. Don't get me wrong, there may be articles on words that do need disambiguators, but we add them not because it is an article about a word but because there is an actual disambiguation need. Stopping arbitrarily here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, I quite understand where you're coming from, but Fuck is a encyclopedic dictionary article because it describes the word, the history of the word, and various usages of the word. It does it very completely, which can lead you to think that it's encyclopedic, but actually it's just a very long dictionary entry.

As it stands, with the current policies Fuck isn't FA quality and can never go FA, because it violates various policies, and other similar articles on words are even worse.

In particular the naming policy largely prevents word articles going FA, many articles like thou cannot meet it, since encyclopedia article names are always nouns.

The purpose of this policy is to allow such articles to be held up as Wikipedia's best work, and to specify what it is about them that makes them good or not.

In other words, we're enlarging what it is to be Wikipedia, rather than what it is to be an encyclopedia. Wikipedia already contains many things that are not found in other encyclopedias.

In any case the ship already sailed on this, WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary already permits word articles; it's just that the other policies haven't caught up around it.Lexicograffy (talk) 02:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You've reiterated your premises by asserting it is so, without any explanation. What makes you think simply because an article is about a word and shares some information attributes with a dictionary article "it's just a very long dictionary entry." Stating it is so gets us nowhere. I know you think that and have provided reasons why that is not the case. Articles on geographic places do not become 'encyclopedic atlas articles' because they provide maps, coordinates and geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics; articles on drugs do not become 'encyclopedic pharmacopoeia articles' because they provide all the information a pharmacopoeia entry would. The analogies can go on and on. Like Jayron32 below, I have no idea what makes you think that articles on words cannot be FAs and think somewhere in the range of 99% of all experienced users (which would include all those who administer the FA process) would scratch their heads and say "why not?" As a a matter of fact, Fuck was taken to FAC and failed but because it was too rife with lists, did not contain enough prose, was considered too long—generally just wasn't high enough quality. It did not fail because there was anything inherently disabling about it being an article on a word. Your third sentence implies to me that you think other encyclopedias do not contain entries on words, so we need to define something new, But other encyclopedias do.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What?

This entire (misguided) proposal seems to be predicated on the notion that an article about a word can never be an FA. Where does that come from? I don't see that one has been promoted yet, but there is nothing inherantly un-FA worthy about word-based articles. It would just take someone dedicated enough to improve such an article and shepherd it through the FAC process. I am totally confused as to what this guideline exists for... --Jayron32 05:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this page is incorrect, misleading, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual policies.

It also reminds me of the misconceptions held by User:Wolfkeeper, who was community-banned from any discussion of words-as-articles for six months. The only difference is that Wolfkeeper wanted all such articles deleted, even when obviously merited, and Lexicograffy wants to change the rules to permit an article on any word at all, even when not merited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]