Talk:e-rights

its the greates craze in the greater san francisco bay area, who agress? any bay aryans out there?

• I haven't lived there in a while, but I visited recently. Don't recall much fuss over this. It does, however, appear in the short title of a late 1990s act of (US) Congress sponsored by Senator Leahy. -dmh 18:55, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Moved from RfD page

May possibly merit a definition depending on outcome of e-book etc., but this isn't it. --Dvortygirl 00:18, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Agree with Connel's deletion. We do not need an unlimited number of these terms. Eclecticology 03:14, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

Why would there be an unlimited number of such terms? There seem to be few enough that we have time for a flame war over each one. Just as an experiment, I took the first ten English terms that showed up on "random page" and searched for them with "e-" in front. Many got google hits, but almost all of those were false positives since google doesn't actually distinguish '-' from a space in its searches. The results:

• e-Homo neanderthalensis — nada.
• e-official IRA — nada.
• e-poke salad — nada.
• e-transistor radio — nada.
• e-landed — nada.
• e-mains — There appears to be a specialzed sense relating to some form of racing.
• e-sibilant — nada
• e-optical character recognition — nada.
• e-murse — nada.
• e-vicariously — One hit ("In a very real psychological way, it is you on that screen, living e-vicariously."), which I would gladly classify as a nonce.

From here, the e- prefix doesn't look like the kudzu of the lexicographic world it's made out to be. -dmh 21:32, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • Sorry about the late signature(s). Deleted. --Connel MacKenzie 03:35, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • It's back again. I still favour deleting it, but we don't need to act hastily about anything that could be controversial. I like to wait at least a week before taking action on some of these. Eclecticology 17:16, 2005 Jun 18 (UTC)
    • As noted on the talk page it appears, among other places, in the title of an act of (US) Congress. The only basis I can see for deleting it is dislike of e- terms, which is not a valid reason. -dmh 15:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There are other things listed here on RFD that the US Congress said/says that is not Wiktionary-worth. A very recent example being Effects of poverty in the united states. The point of deleting it is to remove worthless constructs. You stick "e-" in front of anything and you have a term that I will be suspicious of. This one (my most sincere respect for Mr. Leahy aside) seems far too contrived to be useful to anyone. As per Talk:E-rights, I think it is also worth noting that any meaning in the "Bay Area" today is likely to conflict with the meaning used by the US Congress six (or so) years ago. I think it is unlikely that either the meaning from last decade or the meaning currently in vogue in the Bay Area will be used a year from now. We can wait and see, but for now this should be marked as a protologism/neologism/garbage term, or deleted from Wiktionary. I think if we come up with a better general method of marking garbage as garbage, we might end up with a lot less contention on rfd. (Individual talk pages might get lengthy, but that is probably where such discussions belong anyway.) --Connel MacKenzie 17:24, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Effects of poverty on the United States fails for not being idomatic — someone might want to look up effect, or poverty or even on or the, but if they can get that far and understand English grammar, they'll have no problem with the whole phrase. I do agree that much of this discussion should revolve around how to notate an entry and not over whether to have it at all. As to "e-rights" being of no use to anyone, it's apparently of use to authors, as in this from the Science Fiction Writers of America (hmm ... shall we dismiss this as "science fiction"?):

A writer or artist does not sell "books." A writer creates a work, and sells rights to that work. The type of rights sold might be book rights, magazine rights, movie rights, foreign language rights, or e-rights. The writer usually retains ownership of his work. He sells only the right to reproduce that work in a given form.

Really, it's a useful term. People use it. You may not like the term or its derivation, but I honestly don't care. Someone reading a passage like the one above might want to know what e-rights are, and I don't see why we shouldn't tell them. -dmh 18:03, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You said "Really it's a useful term." I cannot agree.

You said "Peole use it." I agree. A small group, for only a short period of time.

I don't see why we shouldn't tell them either; I do object to listing this term as a valid word. It is not. It is an improper construct (as are all e-terms) and promoting it with no caution whatsoever encourages further misuse. Since we have no effective banner to plaster over the top of the page, a interim solution is to just delete it.

--Connel MacKenzie 18:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What, then, is a "proper word"? -dmh 18:36, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note: Readded {{rfd}} as I think we can all agree that this is still under discussion. And hey, what better banner do we have for dubious terms?  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 18:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A proper word is a term that has one or more accepted meanings by the general adherents of a particular languge, that follows established rules and conventions of that language. --Connel MacKenzie 18:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK, so who are the general adherents of English, and what are its established rules and conventions? Would those rules and conventions include, say, using an abbeviated form of a term as an affix in derived terms? -dmh 21:20, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why, you are right. e- should be listed as a valid term, as well as rights. And in a dictionary they should be listed separately.  :-) BTW, dmh, how would you (in your most descriptivistic manner possible) define a "proper word"? --Connel MacKenzie 22:24, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't. The point is that trying to define a "proper word" is neither necessary nor useful. What is useful is to report where and when a word has been seen. It's also fine to include "usage notes" providing guidance. They can take a while to hammer out, but they're useful nonetheless. -dmh 05:32, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 20:49, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)>

Man, Connel, you are as determined a prescriptivist as I've seen here.

Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 22:24, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard of this term before today, but I see that it has fairly widespread use [1] [2] [3]. I think that these e- terms should have a fairly high bar to reach before we consider them a term deserving an entry, and I believe that this term has reached that bar.

The main issue with the e- terms is whether they are understood as a word, or if they are merely a constructed form that people simply understand because of the parts from which it has been constructed. Once it reaches a certain momentum, it no longer matters whether the term is simply a construction, since it would also be understood as a term in a widespread manner. In this case, it seems clear that the term is understood within the publishing industry and within the field of copyright law to have a specific meaning that is more constrained than simply electronic + rights. Some other terms that have been sufficiently developed in the public consciousness would be e-book, e-publication, and e-zine. e-quaintance this is not.

</Jun-Dai>

If someone wants my support for this term they would do well to add in verifiable quotations. Eclecticology 06:54, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

I've removed the RFD here. There is no serious question whether the term is in use, and there is no legitimate reason to hold terms like this to any higher standard than the thousands of other terms people have quietly entered without supporting evidence. -dmh June 27, 2005 19:14 (UTC)

• rfd restored. Still no verifiable quotations. I do agree that the term should not be held to a higher standard, but that is a reason for raising the standards on the others rather than lowering them on this one. Eclecticology June 27, 2005 19:33 (UTC)

• • That's not true, actually. The quote from the person or persons claiming to be "Tina Morgan", but who in fact could be anyone at all, is eminently verifiable. Chase the link and it's there. The Leahy bill is also quite verifiable. Seek and ye shall find. We've been experimenting with other notions of verifiability, but to what end? All the talk of "verifiability", "reliable sources" and so forth is basically the wiktionary equivalent of a busted taillight. It's used as a procedural pretext for challenging a term that the challenger doesn't like, generally precisely because people are using it.
  • This challenge is extremely selective. Is there any doubt at all that "e-rights" is used by writers, publishers and other interested parties to mean "rights to publish in electronic form"? Of course not. The issue is whether there is enough documentation to meet some disputed interpretation of CFI. I used to routinely hunt up such documentation, but I'm growing tired of this. When a referreed conference paper and quotations from three or four separate continents wasn't enough with e-dictionary, it became clear that any reasonable amount of support could be challenged until the challenger got tired of challenging.
  • Frankly, I still don't understand this obviously powerful desire to bar the door against an arbitrarily selected handful of terms, but I don't suppose I really need to. E-rights is clearly a term someone could run up against and not know what it meant. That seems like a fine reason to have it in a dictionary, but if you or Connel really really don't want it, fine. Gun it.
  • I'm not going to jump through any more hoops trying to support it, and I'm going to try to avoid jumping through hoops supporting anything else. If I have good quotes handy, I'll certainly point to them. If I see an RFD on a term I'm cleaning up anyway that's clearly in use, I'll remove it. Beyond that, I'm going to try to avoid wasting effort. This is obviously very important to you, so why should I continue to fight it? -dmh June 27, 2005 22:26 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai June 27, 2005 22:38 (UTC)> It strikes me that if Britannica and ASJA are willing to use the term without putting quotation marks, it probably belongs in here. I'm not really keen on dragging Leahy into the mess, since that would imply that our President should have a fair say in what goes in our dictionary, and I'd really hate to do that. In any case, there are lots of terms that should probably be removed before this one (including Wiktionary). This isn't really a matter of raising or lowering standards, unless we've made the decision to prescribe usage. I have no problem with doing that, but it should be a clear and conscious decision, and we should be up-front about that. </Jun-Dai>

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