Talk:United Nations Economic and Social Council

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RFD discussion: September 2022–September 2023

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Latest comment: 9 months ago50 comments11 people in discussion

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United Nations General Assembly

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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It apparently appears in two or three dictionaries- see Further reading there. I am unclear if WT:LEMMING would apply to this case as an argument for inclusion. (My instinct is to go with the authoritative dictionaries to maintain the legitimacy of Wiktionary in the eyes of the readers.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC) (modified)Reply

  • Keep per lemmings in the entry, although I nominated this and although they are not the traditional ones except Collins. I won't shed a tear if this is deleted since the name is kind of transparent and I would not vote keep without lemmings, but I still like the general lemming principle. We have no sound and comprehensive criteria for multi-word proper names, and lemmings help us include United Arab Emirates and World War II, for instance. We should sooner delete United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I think; it is no less "encyclopedic" and is not supported by lemmings. Admittedly, lemmings would have us include Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Central Intelligence Agency, so if you don't like that consequence, that's probably a delete from you. Later: I spoke too soon: the full name of the U.K. is supported by lemmings. Oh, well. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    We should not be including terms in non-LDLs just because other dictionaries have them. Theknightwho (talk) 16:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    That's a normative opinion, not a fact. I have more at User talk:Dan Polansky § Lemming test, lemming principle or lemming heuristic. The lemming principle is in the spirit of Wikipedia, which depends on reliable sources, whereas Wiktionary is full of opinionated people who love to think for themselves, which is quite attractive but is not without problems. The rationale "encyclopedic" is a blanket statement of ignorance, not a statement of principle. "Quasi sum of parts" is a statement of principle, and I see it here, but I defer to lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    You say yourself that there is nothing lexically interesting about these and that they are "quasi sum of parts", but want to include them solely on the basis that they're included in one other dictionary (Collins). If your principle is just to blindly follow what other publications have done, then my "normative opinion" is that we shouldn't do that. The major difference between Wiktionary and Wikipedia is that Wiktionary is a secondary source, not a tertiary one; that means we generally have to curate at the point of inclusion, whereas Wikipedia has far more scope to vary the manner in which something is included, proportionally to its notability. It also leaves us in the absurd position of including some terms in a class but not others, due to the (potentially arbitrary) decisions of other publications. No thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 17:40, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    That is not really absurd and appears unavoidable anyway. All dictionaries do it and the otherwise excellent OED is quite bad at it, with its apparently arbitrary inclusion of some proper names but not others, as per Beer parlour. One can ask: why should United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland be included while National Aeronautics and Space Administration excluded? I see no principle based on purely lexicographic concerns that differentiates the two. Do you see such a principle? And do you have sound comprehensive inclusion criteria for multi-word proper names? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    You not being able to see the principle does not mean that outsourcing it to other publications is a good idea. I look forward to seeing your nomination to undelete Talk:西線無戰事 and all the other novel titles that are included in the Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary. Theknightwho (talk) 18:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    No one has given us these principles, not me, not you, not anyone else, except perhaps those who say, delete all proper names or delete all multi-word proper names. Is "Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary" a general monolingual linguistic dictionary? And a single dictionary does not count for lemmings either. Outsourcing inclusion (not exclusion) would give contributors certainty that some of the content they will create would be predictably kept. What we have now is not really consistent either, randomly depending on who shows up in the RFD. Some want United Nations excluded since all organizations are "encyclopedic", some included. The lemmings would give us includable core around which we could ponder expansion into a more uncertain territory. I have drafted some inclusion principles on my talk page, but they are not wholly comprehensive and would probably exclude United Nations, which I don't see happening. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:21, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Yes, it is a general monolingual linguistic dictionary which we use very extensively, and you can see the entry here. The fact that you changed your opinion based on the inclusion by Collins alone also makes your point that a single dictionary doesn't count for lemmings irrelevant, anyway, and I shouldn't have to explain why the inevitable variability of who turns up to RFD doesn't justify doing things blindly instead.
    Let's be honest, here: you dislike the uncertainty, and would rather have an arbitrary line than a fuzzy one. If you don't trust our collective judgment in excluding these kinds of terms, then you also have no basis trusting our collective judgment in including others, either. Theknightwho (talk) 18:33, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    The full NASA name is in Collins and Dictionary.com so that's two; it is also in WordNet, but that does not count. If one argued that Dictionary.com should not count, I could perhaps be convinced and change my mind. The count of two does matter and was required in the failed vote. Predictably administrable policies are a widely recognized good, while you seem to be inexplicably dismissive about this good. Presumably, contributors prefer to be able to predict that the content they create will be kept. The notion that we should trust collective judgment of varying groups of decision makers, who do not agree on inclusion principles among themselves and each votes according to different inclusion principles and keep changing their minds as time passes, seems bizarre. Even with lemmings, the line would be fuzzy since we would include things beyond lemmings, but there would be a secure core. I created the vote that replaced the attributive-use rule with today's open-ended uncertainty, so it is really not about me personally. The derogatory use of "blindly" has no force: our CFI for geographic names has the RFD participants do things "blindly" for them, and that was presumably the purpose of the place name policy, which seems rather arbitrary from lexicographical standpoint but does exactly that which you dismiss: let us do things in a predictable manner. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Yet you do trust the "collective judgment of varying groups of decision makers, who do not agree on inclusion principles among themselves and each votes according to different inclusion principles and keep changing their minds as time passes" when it comes to the inclusion of terms not in other dictionaries, as I have already pointed out. You're just trying to sweep the fuzziness under the rug, but that doesn't make it go away - particularly as those very same points apply to the people that made those other dictionaries in the first place.
    Including things on a per-class basis is not the same as your proposal, because those are decided on the basis of what the terms refer to, while your proposal is decided on the basis of what other people have decided. That's why it's a useful signpost, but not a distinguishing characteristic. Theknightwho (talk) 19:29, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Sure, lemmings do not eliminate all uncertainty, just some. Better than nothing. Fuzziness remains as admitted: no sweeping under the rag given the admission. Deciding on the basis of what the terms refer to is non-lexicographic. It is not obviously better than deferring to others: both is predictable and both is lexicographically arbitrary. There does not seem to be anything lexicographical about Small Magellanic Cloud, but CFI has it included. CFI has "X County" terms included, lemmings don't. You may like the arbitrary referent-based policy better, that's up to you, that's not a matter of objective facts. You have not posted any inclusion principles and you have not even voted yet; you just ask us to trust inconsistent collective judgment. That's pretty empty handed, if you ask me. If that's the readers' and users' policy preference, I can't help it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    I didn't object on the basis that LEMMINGS doesn't eliminate all uncertainty - I objected on the basis that the removal of uncertainty is not justified by implementing arbitrary rules. The fact that you say "better than nothing" actually confirms my point that you're only doing this because you want to make the decisionmaking process simpler, ignoring that it removes editorial control from users and does nothing to solve the underlying problem. That is not a good approach. It was also soundly rejected by vote (and having checked, many users had the same sentiments as me), so please stop trying to force it.
    "Deciding on the basis of what the terms refer to" is an inherent aspect of the sum of parts principle, and the basis of several guidelines at WT:IDIOM. Fundamentally, those are all "arbitrary" too, in that we've decided that they best suit the purpose of what a dictionary is for (which is a normative judgment, as you say). However, there is a clear, qualitative difference between deciding based on the meaning of a term and deciding for each individual term on the basis of whether other dictionaries have included them or not: the former is based on a property of the term itself (and the classes it fits into), while your proposal is not, and leads to random inclusion/exclusion in cases such as 西線無戰事 (which is the title of a novel) - and before you object by saying that 西線無戰事 is only in one dictionary, I am obviously not just talking about that one entry.
    It's also all very well to point out that there are other arbitrary things as well, such as who participates in RFD discussions, but that's not persuasive because (a) the decisions are not random, (b) they're governed by Wiktionary policy (unlike other dictionaries), and (c) that objection also applies to any decision we make in respect of LEMMINGS, so it's self-defeating. Theknightwho (talk) 23:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    I disagree with most of the above. The SOP principle does not depend on classification of referents at all. Again, two lemmings are the minimum. I feel this is getting repetitive and unproductive. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Ignoring the primary point while misrepresenting what I said about the SOP principle is not an adequate response. You very clearly have no response to the major flaw in your proposal that it allows for random inclusion/exclusion based on the whims of other publications, and just don’t want to admit it. Theknightwho (talk) 10:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
The so-called major flaw is a real downside. But the upside is much bigger. What we have now is whim of randomly varying amateurs; whim of the pros seems much preferable. Just recently, Bank of England was deleted while non-SOP and European Central Bank was kept while SOP. Lemmings would have prevented that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:29, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
There is no upside - it’s just sweeping the arbitrariness under the carpet by making it look like it isn’t, which is a point you’ve failed to address with anything other than saying what we do is already arbitrary, while ignoring the difference between inclusion on a per-class basis versus a per-term basis and the difference in outcomes that creates. Nevermind the disdain you have just shown for your fellow users, which is a whole other issue. Theknightwho (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
The upside of improved predictability and consistency is as undeniable as the downside of partial loss of autonomy and gain of certain arbitrariness (attestation is still a requirement). Wikipedia is doing fine deferring to pros for inclusion and even for fact. I have no disdain: I am as much an amateur as others here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
It has “certainty” in the way that including every attestable string of more than 5 characters has certainty, but that doesn’t mean we should implement it. We are also a secondary source, not a tertiary one like WP (and you must not be familiar with how hotly contested AFD can be - notability is not straightforward). I haven’t even begun with the other flaws, such as the fact that other dictionaries copy from each other (making inclusion in two often non-independent), errors, the question of historical dictionaries (and other hybrid works), propagandistic material (plenty of those in Russian from the Soviet era), the inherent biases of the authors and so on. It’s not workable, and is - to boil it down - lazy scholarship. Theknightwho (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
(outdent) The lemming principle's arbitrariness is nowhere close to as bad and off topic as "include all 5 character combinations"; that's pretty much a non-argument. The principle is obviously workable; it is not ideal, but workable. I guess Wikipedia editors are also "lazy scholars" by depending on potentially erroneous authoritative sources instead of diligently doing their original research, which is much more work than taking over sentences from sources and rephrasing them. Whether we are a secondary or tertiary source makes no difference; our being a secondary source for WDLs (not always for LDLs) does not bar the lemming principle. And we would not even depend on them for matters of fact, merely for matters of inclusion. At worst, we would scope in too many redundant entries, no error of fact. Including a million entries for all the taxa from Wikispecies is the real elephant in the room, the king of avoidable redundancy; no one ever talks about that. About dictionaries copying from each other, the way in which they wary in their coverage of proper names depending on the name one picks suggests they are not trying particularly hard to outdo each other in covering anything anyone else has; the non-independence claim does not seem to be borne out by observable facts. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
If you agree that there are degrees of arbitrariness, then your argument that our current practice is also arbitrary falls apart, because it is self-evidently more arbitrary to include terms on a per-term basis than a per-class one. You also seem to have missed that I said that WP’s notability requirement is not comparable, because notability is hotly contested, and they don’t just include anything simply because it’s sourced. The latter would also be lazy scholarship. I also don’t care what Wikispecies is doing - another project making an error (and I make no comment on Wikispecies either way) is no justification for us making one too. Oh, and being a secondary source does bar the lemming principle, because other dictionaries are secondary sources. You realise that’s one of the things that distinguishes dictionaries and encyclopaedias, right? Theknightwho (talk) 12:13, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
(outdent) My complaint is above all that our practice is inconsistent and unpredictable since it depends on who comes to RFD and since RFD voters often state no usable criteria, instead throwing around the buzzword "encyclopedic". Our place name criteria are arbitrary, but that can be lived with; at least they are predictable. If adopted as a policy, the application of the lemming principle would be pretty straightforward and not hotly contested; in this we would differ from Wikipedia's AfD. We would at worst discuss whether a particular lemming counts, and we could keep refining our lists of accepted lemmings. Wikispecies is not making any error: it is their core business to document taxa. It is us who is making the error of avoidable redundancy to Wikispecies, which is not our lexicographical business. Right. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:33, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Predictability has no value if the outcome is arbitrary, and including things on a per-term basis instead of a per-class basis is a lot more arbitrary. We often self-correct mistakes, and we do not need a straitjacket like this which short-circuits productive discussion by simply deferring to people with inclusion criteria that we don’t even know. Theknightwho (talk) 12:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
To the contrary, rule design usually buys predictability at the cost of increased arbitrariness. To wit, the number 3 of attesting quotations is arbitrary: it could be 2, it could be 5, and it could be left unspecified and discussed on a per RFV basis. Setting it to 3 increases predictability. Any lemming principle acceptable as an approved policy would have to be overidable anyway, so there would be no "straightjacket". What about Wikispecies? Any point taken so far? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:30, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
I have pointed out that arbitrariness is not all-or-nothing numerous times now, and you have stonewalled that every time (except when you felt it convenient when I used a ridiculous example to prove the point). It’s very clear that you are not engaging in reasonable discussion, whether you realise it or not, so I’m done here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:35, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • @Dan Polansky (CC: @Theknightwho though I assume you already know this) The UK & UAE examples are automatically included with WT:CFI#Place names. If you’re going to argue that Place names shouldn’t be a policy, that’s a different discussion, but under our current policy, there’s a different between those and the full name of NASA. No comment at this point on the others though. AG202 (talk) 01:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Sure, but what I am investigating here are universal lexicographical principles, not those taxonomy-based arbitrary rules currently in CFI. "Exclude all multi-word proper names that name in a transparent manner", or exclude quasi-SOP names, sounds like a fine universal principle, but we do not intend to comprehensively enforce it. About the value of lemmings, let's consider the recently RFD-deleted Bank of England and the recently RFD-kept European Central Bank. The former is not quasi sum of parts (the bank serves the U.K., not England), while the latter is quasi sum of parts (it is the central bank of the EU and the meaning of European includes "of or pertaining to the EU"). The result is the opposite of what should be done, and lemmings would have prevented that. ECB was kept by near unanimity and BoE was deleted under the 2/3 threshold, so maybe it should have been kept. This happened because different groups of editors voted in the RFDs, and for BoE the deletionist ignored all the non-SOP objections and deleted the term anyway. Both terms are supported by lemmings: if both were kept, the situation would be better. One could object that we do not apply the "exclude quasi-SOP names" principle consistently, and the response would be, we mostly do except where overriden by lemmings. Dismissing lemmings would not improve the consistency all that much since we ignore the delete-SOP principle for place names; for states, this would be fine, but we include all those "X County" terms for no apparent reason. NASA is a more important organization than counties so if we include quasi-SOP county names, we can also include quasi-SOP full NASA name, together with quasi-SOP full ECB name. This leads us to classifying referents and not terms, and without lemmings, we now have to figure out which referents are large, important or powerful enough. One can also work with the lemmings principle flexibly, if one wishes: one may say that Dictionary.com does not count and that the sole Collins is not enough, and therefore NASA full name should be excluded; that's actually pretty convincing. If we had an overridable lemmings policy (overridable since otherwise it won't gain support), we could explicitly forbid Dictionary.com and make the lemming application more predictable and uniform. Without lemmings, what should be done for NASA? It is quasi SOP, but is it perhaps as prominent, notable or significant as ECB to warrant an exception? We can now ponder the principles to apply to NASA and "exclude all-SOP names" does not seem to be accepted without exception, as per ECB. One of the deleters of BoE said "the name of an institution, which in itself is not dictionary material"; to me, it is the nearly all lemmings that include United Nations, including OED, which suggest the "not dictionary material" to be blatantly incorrect. There are too many editors on the project who seem to love to arbitrate that names for some class of referents are not dictionary material even when almost all lemmings disagree. So all names of organizations are supposed to be gone, while nicknames of some individuals should be kept: that is absurd even from the point of view of prominence or importance of the referent. In any case, for those who see some value in the overridable lemming principle, NASA is weakly supported by it, and WT:NSE gives discretion to RFD voters. One may decide to require 3 independent lemmings, that's flexible; United Nations is supported by 6 lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Albanian Orthodox Church

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Alexandrian Orthodox Church

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Army of the Republic of Vietnam

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Assyrian Church of the East

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Bulgarian Orthodox Church

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Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

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These are the kind of long multi-word proper names that we probably do not want to include. There does not seem to be anything lexicographically interesting about them, and are covered by Wikipedia. Orthodox Church is perhaps more defensible. Past deleted proper names are in Category:RFD result for proper names (failed). The batch could be longer; this is a start to see how it goes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Keep the Latter-Day Saints one (not SoP), the UN ones (feel relevant enough that someone would look it up, though I wouldn't be devastated if they're gone), & NASA (LEMMING). The other church ones I'm ambivalent about, and then delete Army of the Republic of Vietnam. AG202 (talk) 12:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
I feel the LDS one should be deleted as well since it is very long and covered by Wikipedia anyway. The implied rule behind the keeping seems to be "include all attested multi-word names of organizations that are not transparent names", but that would still lead to a huge redundancy to Wikipedia since there are so many of them. Going by length of the name seems terribly arbitrary, but it's better than nothing. Another arbitrary aid are lemmings: org name in WP & not in lemmings => out. No purely lexicographical principles to aid the filtering come to mind. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
So now you do want to exclude things based on how many characters are in the string? This one has more value than some of the others, as it isn’t immediately obvious what it refers to, or why they differ from other Mormons. “Fundamentalist” is playing a role here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:51, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Number of words, to be precise. Yes, it's terribly arbitrary. If we are going to include all intransparent proper names of organizations, we are heading into a major redundancy. But I am actually happy to use lemmings instead of the number of words. There has to be some additional exclusion principle, I feel. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
I’ve had an idea: how about we consider terms on merit by discussing them, and then formulate a general policy once we can actually come up with one that isn’t arbitrary? How does that sound? Theknightwho (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Utopian. But if you can pull it off, so much better. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
The great thing about it is that it means we don’t implement arbitrary policies like LEMMING in the meantime. Glad you’ve come around to that. Theknightwho (talk) 14:21, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
As far as I am concerned, WT:NSE and lemmings walk hand in hand until you pull it off. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Delete, as with Talk:Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Talk:Soviet Armed Forces, Canadian Armed Forces, etc, the last two of which Army of the Republic of Vietnam seems directly comparable to. - -sche (discuss) 01:35, 16 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think it’s time for a general discussion about organization names at the Beer Parlour again, rather than trying to deal with this one entry at a time. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:05, 16 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

I created Wiktionary:Names of organizations to track the subject. Precedents are listed, as well as some arguments and counterarguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I'm confused to be honest as to why the LDS church name would not be SOP whereas the Assyrian Church of the East would be. The latter is a specific denomination and does not mean either a local church province (as the Orthodox ones can be read as) or the "church of Assyrians that's in the east". Any criterion that matches one goes for the other too. I also think attestable religious denominations ought to be included in general since it's not clear to me where the line ought to be drawn between minor ones that are encyclopedic and larger ones ("Roman Catholic Church" etc) that apparently aren't. So Keep both of those at least, I'm ambivalent on the rest. (Perhaps leaning keep on the Orthodox ones too, since they also represent distinctive practices and the precedent would otherwise logically lead to e.g. keeping Assyrian churches but deleting the sister Chaldean church since it happens to be in communion with the pope, which seems troubling.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2023 (UTC)Reply


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