Talk:conspiracy

RFC discussion: February 2007–November 2009

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conspiracy

Has Wikipedia-esque links. --Gobbler 09:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned it up bvut can someone check this def: conspiracy- the ability to have the material means and a motive to commit an act against the law.

probably said by some official, in purpose to give anyone with a real wiev of the goverment a hard hitting name.

Cleaned up --Volants 13:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

RFV discussion: November 2023–January 2024

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conspiracy

Rfv-sense A secret agreement.

This is distinct from the usual meaning of conspiracy, which is An agreement to perform a wrongful or subversive act; an instance of collusion.

Theknightwho (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

cited Kiwima (talk) 00:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

In each of those cited instances it seems like a rather facetious use of the word. I tend to agree with Theknightwho. AP295 (talk) 00:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree - these are facetious/tongue-in-cheek uses. We could definitely put the label “informal” on it, but I think it’s outright misleading to say it means a secret agreement with no extra qualifiers, and this seems to stem from one user not actually understanding what the word meant in the first place, given they initially added it as a new sense 1, thinking it was the main meaning. Theknightwho (talk) 05:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

And just after I had improved the prior lead definition. It seems like whenever one edits the "lead" portion of some popular article, editors always come out of the woodwork to see if they can't somehow contest it just for kicks. AP295 (talk) 06:44, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd rather just remove their definition and be done with it but I get the sense that I'm being tempted into an edit war so for now I'll leave it alone (or let someone else dispense with it) as long as it's not the lead. AP295 (talk) 07:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

What makes you think they are facetious or tongue-in-cheek. If you go to the sources and read the surrounding context, you will see that they are very much sincere. Kiwima (talk) 07:27, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@Kiwima A good example is the one that also uses the word “plot”: it’s tongue-in-cheek, because we don’t usually think of “plot” as a synonym of “plan”, just like we don’t usually think of “conspiracy” to mean “agreement”. Theknightwho (talk) 18:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho I believe the use of the word "plot" there is to emphasize the secrecy. It is using intentionally colorful language, yes, but I don't think that makes it facetious or tongue-in-cheek. I don't think the author means for their words not to be taken seriously. I suppose it would sound facetious to you if you have never heard "plot" or conspiracy used in this way, but I have heard it a lot, and I could find you plenty more citations also. 20:07, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@Kiwima The definition of tongue-in-cheek says “not intended seriously”, which is exactly how you described the use here. I’m really not seeing the distinction. Theknightwho (talk) 20:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho I said quite the opposite - I said that the author does mean for their words to be taken seriously. The use of colorful language does not mean you do not want to be taken seriously. Kiwima (talk) 20:43, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@Kiwima Sure, I misread your comment, but I still disagree: the use of the word “plot” is not just being colourful, because it has a specific connotation, just as the word “conspiracy” does. What you describe as colourful is exactly what is facetious about it: they didn’t just pick the words at random. Theknightwho (talk) 20:49, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks; the cites are certainly using this sense. If people are really hostile to this sense, the most I could see doing is merging it into the following sense, resulting in something like An agreement (especially if secret) to work together to bring something about. The verb, too, trivially has a corresponding sense, when people conspire to surprise their friend with a party or gift. - -sche (discuss) 01:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think examples in which the term is used facetiously reflect its proper use. It seems like a stretch to me, if I'm honest. It's not a conspiracy if you and I secretly agree that strawberry is the best flavor of ice cream, and nobody would call a surprise party a conspiracy except jokingly. AP295 (talk) 03:43, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

In fact, I much prefer the page as it was after I edited it, plus the quotes I've added. It was cleaner and less ambiguous and I think most of the edits since then have somewhat debased it. AP295 (talk) 05:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

sense 4 seems the weirdest to me, as it's certainly rare forconspiracy to refer to a non-secretive agreement. Sense 3 should certainly be kept, despite it being relatively unusual for conspiracy to refer to an agreement or arrangement that isn't immoral or illegal, or at least perceived as such. Perhaps we should merge senses 3 and 4 though? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:02, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Exactly, thank you. I misread your statement, but I suppose I don't mind merging 3,4 in a way that's a bit more specific than both alone. AP295 (talk)

I agree with Overlord that sense 4 seems weirder to me than 3. Generally though I'd say sense 3 is definitely playful or facetious but that by itself isn't a reason to exclude it—it could be worded something like "(humorous) Any secret agreement". It's not just sarcasm which we'd exclude. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:34, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I really don't think this is a very common usage. I've never heard someone actually make a joking reference to conspiracy either colloquially or in prose, aside from the references that someone added shortly after another contributor put that definition up. How they found four instances of that usage so quickly, I have no idea. At any rate, 1 should be kept (though I'd prefer it the way I added it, the modified version isn't too terrible) and it doesn't seem like anyone is contesting that. I'd rather the entry not come to include everything and the kitchens sink, but I'll withdraw from the conversation for now so long as 1 is unmolested. AP295 (talk)

At this point I have added 12 citations to this sense, in addition to the one that was already there. I agree this is not the primary definition, but the word is sometimes used loosely to mean a secret agreement. Just because this is not part of your ideolect does not mean that it is not part of someone else's. At this point, we have gone beyond RFV, because the citations clearly show that the word can be used with this meaning. If you want to argue that all 9 citations are facetious, that is something to bring up at RFD. I also added 3 more citations to the next definition (the one without the secrecy), which strikes me as odd, but it is clearly used that way by some authors. I am perfectly happy to combine the two definitions, and even to mark the definition(s) as "rare" (although, frankly, it does not seem all that rare to me when looking for citations, just much less common than uses where the secret agreement is to plan something immoral or illegal. I agree that if you and I secretly agree that strawberry ice cream is the best flavor, that that is never going to be considered a conspiracy, but if we were to agree secretly to promote strawberry ice cream and came up with some plan on how to do that, that could be called a conspiracy, even though there is nothing illegal or immoral involved. I'm not really comfortable with calling this definition "humorous", because, having read all the citations, I don't think the authors are intending their use of this word to be humorous. I am comfortable calling it "informal", because they are speaking loosely. I would remind people that Wiktionary is descriptive, not proscriptive - so even if you think people shouldn't use the word "conspiracy" in this way, the fact is, sometimes they do. Kiwima (talk) 05:33, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Fine then. Incidentally, describing the way words are used rather than prescribing their meaning is all well and good, but it seems as though a dictionary is just as useful or perhaps more so if it prescribes concise, orthogonal definitions rather than simply documenting all odds and ends. The media regularly prescribe definitions (and more odds than ends, usually), using such propaganda without apparent reservations. It's certainly a worthwhile distinction to point out, I might use those terms in something I've been working on as it's essentially how political media establishes various tropes and archetypes. That is, by prescribing idiomatic meaning to various words. A strictly descriptive approach would bastardize the language in the long term, making words vague or idiomatic. AP295 (talk) 10:30, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Modern lexicography is descriptive. You're not gonna win this one. Equinox ◑ 10:41, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not calling for a policy change, but surely this would debase the language in the long term, or rather make it very easy for others to do so. I suppose it's too much to ask for "benevolent dictatorship" of sorts, so I can understand the descriptive approach.AP295 (talk) 10:44, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Though, if it were my prerogative to curate the English language myself, I would take a prescriptive approach for the sake of quality (rather than subverting the language, as is often done in the media). I think that would be the best thing to do. It doesn't seem much a community service to enshrine various abuses of the language. For the moment I'm content to have replaced the prior 1, which was truly awful, so do what you must to the rest. AP295 (talk) 10:51, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Consider as an example the profusion of derogatory terms that the media has for one who asserts conspiracy: conspiracy theorist, tinfoil hatter, conspiratard, crackpot, crank, truther, conspiracist, conspirophile. All referenced on conspiracy theorist. If you didn't know better you'd think that nobody has ever attempted a collusive, furtive abuse of power. AP295 (talk) 11:47, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I could see combining 3 and 4; that seems to be what the OED does; their definition [in the 1933 edition] is "Example text.". I get why, to someone who deals with legal jargon, senses other than the legal sense would seem wrong or unserious; however, the OED has cites from the 1500s onwards, including in sermons and serious theological discourses (as well as in romances and poetry), which I've now added to the citations page, and while the one use qualified with "as it were" is arguably playing on the other/negative meaning, most of the rest use it quite straightforwardly as the normal noun counterpart of the neutral-valence verb senses (which we have as senses 2 and 3 of conspire). It's not {{lb|en|humorous}}, nor is it {{lb|en|rare}}, and as just shown, it's also not new, predating any of us having ideas about its wrongness. - -sche (discuss) 18:33, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Would The act of conspiring not neatly sum up 3 and 4, as in Special:Permalink/76647744#conspiracy? AP295 (talk) 19:16, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

"The act of conspiring" would cover senses 1-4. We could make that sense 1 and remove the current senses 1-4 or put them as subsenses, but I don't think that would help anyone compared to our current approach of diving directly into the different meanings of "act of conspiring". - -sche (discuss) 22:43, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd actually prefer that over having an overly-complex definition of "conspiracy", though there's little reason why we can't have a concise definition here. However, while I generally dislike vaguely idiomatic nominalizations, the act of conspiring as in 3,4 is not exactly the same thing semantically as an agreement with intent, as in 1. If there is another word specifically meaning "an agreement to collude or conspire" then I'd like to know what that is. I'd rather not use a nominal form of conspire to mean this but it does not seem very well represented otherwise and it's an important concept. AP295 (talk) 23:04, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

At risk of stating the obvious, keep in mind that searching terms like "conspire surprise birthday" and "conspired to help", "positive conspiracy" and so on are not going to give you an unbiased sample of how the term is used in literature. Even if you find a dozen such instances, this does not imply that it's typical. I'd have a hard time believing that you've read all the books you've cited. AP295 (talk) 23:51, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

wikipedia:Raven suggests that that "a conspiracy of ravens" is a rare usage and provides a citation, so I'll mark it as such. AP295 (talk) 09:02, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

RFV-passed, though if anyone wants to merge senses 3 and 4, let's discuss that. - -sche (discuss) 02:36, 13 January 2024 (UTC)