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[edit] Language

Should articles include coverage of linguistic and lexicographical significance? User:Wolfkeeper is removing content (some of it that clearly needed trimming) that addresses how subjects are used in language (see slam dunk and doughnut) based on the idea that policy that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. I think this information and content establishing cultural relevance should be included when properly sourced and significant.ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Provided that the article is not merely a dictionary definition but contains other information pertinent to the subject of the article (see "Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary"), I see nothing wrong with there being text in the article that deals with the linguistic and/or lexicographical significance of a term. For instance, information about the etymology of a term can sometimes be quite enlightening and shed light on its meaning. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

From how I read WP:DICT and sub-category here[1], I don't know why you would cut out content. Encyclopedia articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic... but the article should provide other types of information about that topic as well. That seems to be rather precise wording to keep such things. ... Oh dear. I see articles up for deletion on this? This is no good. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The information is completely off-topic. There's an entire f****** articles on those two other uses of the word 'doughnut' elsewhere Donut (driving), torus. This topic is about bread products, not everything that uses the word donut. We don't have an article called 'back' that contains information on the 19 different meanings of the word 'back', we have up to 19 different articles; and each article is independent and covers one topic. That's how encyclopedias work! Right? One article = one topic. If it's not on-topic- it doesn't go in. If we don't do this, eventually you get the information copied all over the wikipedia, and will have varying degrees of sources, correctness etc. etc. It doesn't work. Don't go there. The policy says you don't get to do that.- Wolfkeeper 01:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The article Earth is about the planet, not soil. etc. etc. etc.- Wolfkeeper 01:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Wolfkeeper here. We have a hatnut at the top of doughnut; we don't need to repeat its content in separate sections of the article and for good measure in a see-also section at the end. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree that this information should be included under the conditions you mention: properly sourced and significant. A good test for significance could be whether any source on the topic (not the word) contains such information.

By the way, I feel generally that etymological information is stressed too much in Wikipedia. I don't mind even an entire section on etymology, but an article shouldn't start like this:

Etymology (pronounced /etɪˈmɒlədʒi/, from Greek ἐτυμολογία (etumologia) < ἔτυμον (etumon), “‘true sense’” + -λογία (-logia), “‘study of’”, from λόγος (logos), "speech, oration, discourse, word") is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.

Such awkward constructions make Wikipedia look like a paper dictionary and very hard to read. I was pleasantly surprised when I just saw that etymology does not suffer from this disease. At homeopathy the etymology kept being re-added into the first sentence until someone put an etymology box in the top right corner. Hans Adler 08:04, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

There's even a fairly strong argument that we shouldn't do per article etymology at all. The articles are about the topic, not about words used to describe the topic. And in many cases the article name is arbitrarily chosen; should we then have multiple etymologies? It's really clumsy. Meanwhile, the Wiktionary actually has the etymologies, and doesn't have this problem at all, since the Wiktionary is about the words, not the topic.- Wolfkeeper 00:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I've also found that a lot of the etymologies in the wikipedia appear to be wrong; Wiktionaries make more sense and are referenced.- Wolfkeeper 00:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that having the etymologies set out as shown in Hans Adler's example is not a good idea as it makes the lead section difficult to read. But I feel that a properly referenced etymology in a section of the article can be informative in some cases, for instance, when a particular term may be unfamiliar to many readers or where the etymology sheds light on the history of the term and its current meaning. It may be that some etymologies that are currently in Wikipedia are wrong. That is, however, not an argument for doing away with them altogether. They should simply be corrected and sourced. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

As I said, in cases where the etymology is typically discussed in sources that discuss the topic, it's clear that we should discuss it as well. That's certainly true for homeopathy. For doughnut that's certainly not true, so the case is a bit more complicated. Hans Adler 09:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I still think they should be removed and references should be made to the wiktionary. Doing anything else is just a waste of effort, we're duplicating a source that simply does this stuff better, and it sets up completely false expectations about what an encyclopedia is. People are looking up phrases in the wikipedia to find out what they mean, when they should be looking them up in the wiktionary. It's bad for wikipedia, and it's bad for wiktionary.- Wolfkeeper 15:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

In principle that's an excellent point. E.g. at Homeopathy we could use Template:Wiktionary instead of the etymology box. But then we would again be fighting against anonymous users who insist on adding the etymology. Hans Adler 15:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

What if the comprehensive etymology etc. in the lead doesn't appear in Wiktionary (compare current Phlox ←→ wikt:Phlox) or if there's no Wiktionary entry at all (Mount Carmel ←→ wikt:Mount Carmel) – expanding Wiktionary is a worthy cause, but that is an independent project. Linking to it is good, but a policy for articles here should be forged independently of it. As RL0919 commented here, articles should generally be about the subject and not about the word designating it; still, personally I enjoy learning about etymologies and appreciate being informed about an irregular plural and I'd prefer being able to do so without having to click my way into Wiktionary. Thus I'd prefer, while reading Hippopotamus, to have all this information right there in the article, only not rendering the first sentence practically illegible but rather separately, either neatly in a box or just elsewhere in the article. This way, the quality of an article in Wikipedia and the monitoring of its contents remain independent of contents and edits in Wiktionary (which I believe take place with little monitoring by Wikipedia editors). As long as linguistic information doesn't become the inappropriate focus of an article, its inclusion won't turn the article into a dictionary entry, but it will improve it by making it more comprehensive. Dan ☺ 21:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Source spam at Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge

A Philippines user has been jumping across IPs to constantly insert a book, Kites in History by a Jose Fadu;, among the References of Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge. The book has no relevant content to the article at hand that is not already sourced by more reliable sources.

Spams by 119.111.86.74 (talk · contribs): [2][3]
Spam by 119.111.86.72 (talk · contribs): [4]
Spam by 122.3.208.237 (talk · contribs): [5]
Spam by 122.3.211.251 (talk · contribs): [6]

I have reverted and explained to his various IPs why such an edit is contrary to policy and guidelines.[7][8][9][10] The user, however, exhibits WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT,[11] with the repetition of adding the irrelevant source.[12]

Note: This user was involved in the creation of an article on Jose Fadu, and very likely sockpuppetry in its deletion (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jose Fadul). As such, I suspect the motive of the constant insertion of Fadu's book into a Featured Article is primarily to raise the profile of the non-notable author.

I request administrator assistance to kindly inform this user about the use of sources and the standards of reliability. Jappalang (talk) 14:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If the editor is active again, make sure you leave warnings (e.g., {{uw-spam1}} to {{uw-spam4}}) on the IP talk pages, then report him or her at WP:AIV. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I noticed one of those edits (still have the article watchlisted, since my copyedit), and at first thought the book could be relevant as it might cover the use of a kite to run the first line across the gorge. It didn't take long to figure out that the book was self-published via lulu.com, which precludes its use as a source (and the article is already more than adequately sourced on that account).

(adding after accidental early save) I don't think there's anything more to be done at this point, given the IP-hopping, but the article remains on my watchlist, and I'll help head off any further spam of this type. Maralia (talk) 22:45, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Territories and crimes of the Russian Mafia - admin eyes requested

This article's infobox contains both an uncited 'Territory' list and an uncited and absurdly long 'Criminal activities' list. The Territory list is subject to random expansion by IP editors who take some sort of pride in adding their own nationality to the list. The 'Criminal activities' list is a menu-like offering that includes just about every crime that exists; this is also subject to random expansion as someone thinks up new crimes to add.

Some of the 'Notable Russian mafiosi' named in the article would seem to be still alive and thus subject to our BLP policies were they not gangsters and if crimes charged in the infobox are assumed to apply across the entire article. I'm not bothered by the BLP aspects, but since it is unlikely that either of these ever-changing lists can find support in reliable sources (and in part because the criminal activities list makes WP look rather silly), I've tried listing Territories as simply "Worldwide" and Criminal activities as simply "Various and sundry violent crimes, property crimes, public order crimes, political crimes". I keep getting reverted by IPs in Russia whose pride I assume I have wounded. Offending possibly dangerous people is above my pay grade here, so I'm requesting administrator involvement. Thanks. --CliffC (talk) 00:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Psychogeography

This article needs a good rewrite - although a few comments on the article have been left at Talk:Psychogeography#A rewrite is serously needed there has been no response. The problems involve passages that are probably in breach of WP:NPOV, WP:OPED, WP:JARGON, WP:NOT#ESSAY and bordering on WP:NONSENSE. They include:

The erotic charge of psychogeography was undeniable, the rousing sexual conquest of having fully explored and overcome the exoticism of the city.
But before succumbing to the truth of the impossibility of true psychogeography, Debord made another film, On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959), the title of which suggests its own subject matter.
The Situationists' response was to create designs of new urbanized space, promising better opportunities for experimenting through mundane expression. Their intentions remained completely as abstractions.
Though the path required to achieve this utopia is difficult and hindered by society and its own constructions, now as living agents that actively enforce restrictions where we may have once considered them arbiters of independence.
Pyschogeography has become one of the dominant approaches to the poetry of modern London, an idea big enough to unite poets who find themselves in warring camps.

Psychogeography#Psychogeographic maps is particularly badly affected and Psychogeography#Contemporary psychogeography is slightly better - at least the latter provides a couple of inline citations, though most of the claims it makes aren't backed up.

The article needs cleaning up and I'd appreciate some advice - I'm tempted to move the Psychogeographic maps section to the article talk page - at least that would move some of the clutter. Autarch (talk) 03:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] She Wolf / Shakira / Digital vs Top 200 albums Chart

Ok so here's the problem. A user keeps adding the french digital chart to the article She Wolf (album) despite the song having aready charted on the main French Albums Chart. When i pointed out that the rules as WP:GOODCHARTS, WP:BADCHARTS and WP:record charts but the response from the user was "Im french, i know what im talking about when i say the digital chart is not a component of the main chart". When i asked him to prove with a source he told me to prove that the digital chart is a component of the main chart... ??? The discussion was previously listed her [13] but i am moving the conversation to the content board as it is more appropriate here. (Lil-unique1 (talk) 22:10, 22 November 2009 (UTC))

if you check the history i accidently put that the argument is over the single. I meant the album. and so i've corrected this. (Lil-unique1 (talk) 22:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC))

My opinion --> [[14]] [[15]](talk • contribs) 22:20, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Language

[edit] Source spam at Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge

[edit] Territories and crimes of the Russian Mafia - admin eyes requested

[edit] Psychogeography

[edit] She Wolf / Shakira / Digital vs Top 200 albums Chart