Talk:beneficial insect

Deletion discussion

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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beneficial insect

This is not an idiom, and an easy to understand concept. No need to have the page beneficial X. Also need to delete beneficial bug for the same reason. Yurivict (talk) 07:47, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Delete. --Hekaheka (talk) 10:05, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Delete per nom. DCDuring TALK 11:00, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Delete per nom. -- · (talk) 05:14, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• If we do end up deleting this (and I don't think we should), we should at least have the relevant sense at beneficial, surely. ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

@Tooironic: We already have the relevant definition: "Helpful or good to something or someone." If we were define all the ways in which all beneficial things were beneficial we would have quite a long entry. If we were to have separate entries for all the things that might be termed beneficial, we would have quite a few entries. For example, we could have various types of insects at the family or genus level, each of which was beneficial to some other family, genus, or species in some setting in some way. DCDuring TALK 10:04, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

This seems like the sort of thing that could be moved, translations and all, to a collocations section or tab... Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2015/August#Adding_a_collocations_tab_or_section. - -sche (discuss) 15:13, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

• I have a feeling that this should be kept. Donnanz (talk) 07:44, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Delete per nom. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:57, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

When I first saw this I thought "beneficial to what?" and the definition made me think "who on earth thought of this wording?" Keep. —suzukaze (t・c) 19:24, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

That's exactly what I thought originally: what the hell is a beneficial insect, and beneficial to whom, or what, or in what ways? I wouldn't say it's as easy to understand as the nominator claims. ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:04, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

A beneficial X is an X that's beneficial. From that, I conclude a beneficial insect is an insect that's beneficial (as opposed to detrimental like a crop-eating locust). Looking at the definition, and Wikipedia, I see that's right — in addition to the bees and silkworms our entry mentions, Wikipedia mentions pest-eating bugs and several other kinds of bugs as beneficial. Delete per DCDuring. - -sche (discuss) 05:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes but you can have insects that are beneficial that aren't beneficial insects. For example, many insects are great sources of nutrition, and thus beneficial to eat, but are not considered beneficial insects. ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:38, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to see that usage in a work where the author did not define the term immediately shortly after first use or deploy it as a lure in a headline or title (as in a newspaper or a book chapter title). Can you find a dictionary that includes the term? (Don't bother with OneLook: among their references only a certain encyclopedia has it.) The WP article makes it clear that the group of beneficial insects is relative to some population of beneficiaries and some theory of benefit. DCDuring TALK 11:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

A cursory look on Google Books reveals lots of hits where the author uses the term without providing any kind of definition afterwards, leading the reader to guess what is meant. Isn't this where a good dictionary would come in handy? ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:42, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Replacing the need for basic text interpretation skills is not among the purposes of a dictionary. Nearly every collocation will have information that can’t be known from the collocation alone. Brown leaf doesn’t tell you the shade of brown, tall person doesn’t tell you how tall the person is and beneficial insect doesn’t tell you to whom it is beneficial. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:58, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

After e/c: What he said. DCDuring TALK 13:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but brown leaf and tall person are not specific things are they? A beneficial insect is. ---> Tooironic (talk) 09:59, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Are they actually called this?? If so, definitely keep, as I'd never heard the term before. Ƿidsiþ 09:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

@Widsith: The fact that you've never heard this has more to do with your experience in agriculture/environmental management than it does with the idiomaticity of this phrase; I can't see why you'd think that's a reasonable rationale to keep this. Delete per DCDuring. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Really? You can't think why a need for familiarity with some specialist area would be relevant to a term's idiomaticity? Surely the fact that its meaning is otherwise opaque is the crux of the whole argument. I think it clearly denotes a rather specific concept to gardeners and I think it's not at all clear to anyone that this phrase would be used. Why not ‘helpful insects’? ‘Propitious arthropods’? If this is used as a set phrase, then Wiktionary should be showing when it first entered usage and what kind fo currency it has. The fact that there is a Wikipedia entry explaining what this is increases my belief that we should keep it. Ƿidsiþ 14:53, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Widsith: Being a set phrase does not make it an idiomatic one. I presume you might also have trouble determining what exactly marine transgression and katabatic wind mean, but they are just as equally SOP, whether or not you've heard them before. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:47, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, well we just disagree there. I think set phrases are idiomatic by definition, though not all are in need of a dictionary definition. Of the two you mention, I certainly think we should define marine transgression and probably katabatic wind as well. (Edit: well what do you know. That one's been here since 2006.) Ƿidsiþ 19:20, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

• I think the most convincing reason why this should be kept is a point I made previously, that not all insects that are beneficial are beneficial insects, e.g. insects that benefit us by being sources of nutrition. Thus I believe this entry should be kept. ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:18, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
• Weak keep as a weak translation target. From "beneficial insect", I'd expect Czech "prospěšný hmyz" but it is "užitečný hmyz". "useful insect" is much less common. I also noted http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/2252/how-to-say-a-beneficial-insect, which suggests usefulness for a translation into Chinese; and the Wiktionary entry was created by an English native speaker contributing Chinese entries and translations. The advantage of having this as a unit in Wiktionary is confirmed by Google Translate: there, when I enter "益蟲" at the left, Google treats it as a separate unit and gives me the common cs:užitečný hmyz; but when I enter "beneficial insect" at the left, Google gives me the much less common cs:prospěšný hmyz. As for replacing skills: surely we don't need to replace basic inflection skills by providing inflection tables, right? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:48, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Deleted both per the discussion above.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:17, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

• Challenge: Above, I count 4.5 keeps: Donnanz, suzukaze, Ƿidsiþ, Tooironic, and Dan Polansky (0.5). And I find the 7 deletes: Yurivict, Hekaheka, DCDuring, Talking point (.), Ungoliant, -sche, and Metaknowledge. Does not look like consensus for deletion to me, not even if I count msh210 in the deletion camp and get 8 deletes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:28, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

  Challenge seconded. No one was able to counter the point I made which I believe proves it idiomatic. ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:52, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

  We've never been clear on cutoffs, but 8-4.5 yields 64% in favour of deletion, which is not unreasonable. And Tooironic, your point was countered, you simply didn't notice and/or accept it, but that just because you don't agree with someone else doesn't mean that your disagreement proves that it's idiomatic. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:40, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

  Well, there was a response but I don't think it disproved my argument. I don't see how deleting this entry makes us a better dictionary. Both myself and other contributors here have admitted to not even knowing the term and having to look it up ourselves - and we're native speakers... ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:36, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

  64% is not generally "unreasonable" but it does not reach 2/3. And all the keeps but for one provided reasoning, and therefore should not be diminished in weight. 5 deletes have "Delete per nom" or "delete" or "deleted" (msh210), providing no additional substance beyond the initial SOP claim; that is not wrong (no need for repetition), but they do not in any way outperform the keep comments as for substance. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:50, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• I would not have closed this as consensus for deletion, but both the !vote and the merits of the term seem close enough to me that I don't think it is a terrible misfire. I'm going to put an "only in" tag on the page pointing to the Wikipedia article, in case anyone comes here looking for this. bd2412 T 13:08, 2 November 2015 (UTC)