Talk:anti-Putinism

RFD discussion: July–August 2022

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anti-Putinism

anti-Putinist

WT:SOP. Don't seem to be coalmineable either. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:21, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep both. Honestly, this highlights one of the biggest problems with WT:SOP. One rule of English is that if a prefix is added to a capitalized word, it will always have a hyphen to avoid lowerCamelCase. Although exceptions do exist (cf. nonCanadian), they're incredibly rare and generally proscribed. Since our policy erroneously treats prefixes like independent words, we've effectively banned all words consisting of a capitalized stem and a prefix (with rare exceptions). There's nothing that objectively makes anti-Putinism less of a word than antifascism, and deleting it would only worsen our coverage. If anything, I'd argue that WT:SOP shouldn't apply here, because anti- isn't a word on its own. Binarystep (talk) 00:14, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

SOP means sum of parts, not sum of words. See Talk:ex-Christian for another case where we deleted many hyphenated non-word+word combinations. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 00:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

In that case, why allow entries for prefixed words at all? There's nothing that makes nonmuslim less "sum of parts" than non-French, given that both predictably mean "not X". We've already established that single-word terms can't be SOP (hence why non-hyphenated entries are kept), my argument is that hyphenated prefixes shouldn't be treated like independent words. Otherwise, we're drawing an arbitrary line that doesn't benefit us or our readers. Binarystep (talk) 00:40, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

The line is not arbitrary: nonmuslim is a lot harder to split into its parts than non-French for someone not that versed in English. In the case of the latter, we can be sure that they'll have an easy time looking up the parts, which is not necessarily true for the former. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 00:46, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd argue that's an arbitrary line. Sure, non-French is easier for a non-native speaker to split into parts, but on the other hand, anyone who doesn't know Chinese would have a hell of a time trying to break 特級／特级 (tèjí)初 (chū)榨 (zhà)橄欖油／橄榄油 (gǎnlǎnyóu) apart, yet it's still SOP. I also don't think we should be so quick to dismiss the fact that non-French is lexically a single word. It doesn't make sense to label an entry as "sum of parts" if one of the "parts" in question doesn't exist on its own. Binarystep (talk) 11:37, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Be careful about the "doesn't exist on its own" part. There are plenty of languages with clitics that are only found attached to other words, but are syntactically independent of the word they attach to. Typically they attach to the first or last word of a clause. We even have one in English: we don't include "'s" forms because they attach to phrases. "John and Mary's parents" refers to both John's parents and Mary's parents, but not to John. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:27, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

The rule doesn't become arbitrary only because it doesn't apply equally to orthographies with different punctuation/spacing. We have to draw a line somewhere because house is obviously inclusion-worthy while This is a nice house. is obviously not. If you want to to attack any such line for being arbitrary just because it doesn't apply (or applies differently) to orthographies such as the Chinese one, then that's fine, but at that point we obviously stop caring about it being arbitrary or not. In terms of what is actually beneficial to our users, I think it is evident that our current policy (everything that contains some sort of separating character has the potential to be a SOP in orthographies that use such separating characters) is pretty much the optimum. Choosing the optimum is not an arbitrary choice.

As to the lexical analysis, I actually agree that there is no difference between nonmuslim and non-French but this is the much smaller bullet to bite, because otherwise, if we followed this train of thought and included SOPs just because they're lexically identical to non-SOPs, we had to include diamond mine, tungsten mine, uranium mine, ... for being lexically equivalent to coalmine/coal mine. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:15, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with the slippery slope at the end there. My argument only applies to affixes, so SOP compounds like diamond mine would remain unaffected. Binarystep (talk) 13:07, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

So what is the argument exactly? It seems like everything has been instantly debunked but yet there's somehow 3 people who find these arguments convincing?

• WT:SOP shouldn't apply here because anti- isn't a word - WT:SOP and prior consensus disagree, it's called sum of parts, not sum of words
• anti-Putinism and antifascism are lexically equivalent - irrelevant because what we care about is lookupability which clearly differs between the two; WT:SOP makes no mention of including affixed SOPs only because they're lexically equivalent to non-SOPs
• calling hyphenated SOPs SOPs is arbitrary because other orthographies have no hyphens - irrelevant; whatever goes on in Chinese has no bearing on whether its easier to split nonmuslim or non-French into its parts
• including nonmuslim and excluding non-French doesn't benefit readers - wrong; including hard-to-split solid words and excluding endlessly repeatable SOPs is exactly what benefits the readers the most — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

WT:SOP and prior consensus disagree, it's called sum of parts, not sum of words

And that's where we fundamentally disagree. Prefixes like anti- and non- aren't "parts" by any lexically sound definition. It's easy for people to get used to hyphens being equivalent to spaces in compounds (e.g. more-or-less), which leads to the same logic being erroneously applied to single-word terms where it doesn't fit (for instance, non-Canadian can't be written as non Canadian).

As for prior consensus, it's led to numerous unjustified deletions in the past. Kent State Gun Girl was deleted for being "non-notable", even though that policy only exists on Wikipedia (incidentally, the person this refers to actually is notable by WP's standards). Baghdad Bob and Comical Ali were deleted for being nicknames for a politician, even though such terms have always been explicitly allowed, to the point that we have an entire category for them. b*tch was deleted (without a vote, I might add) for being a censored form of an existing word, despite those being allowed as well (see Talk:f**k). That's not even getting into the number of terms that were deleted for being "SOP", even though they should've been allowed by one of the more obscure sections of WT:IDIOM.

I'd also like to point out that previous RFDs led to anti-Jewish, non-Japanese, and A-shaped through Z-shaped being kept, so the issue isn't as cut-and-dry as you're making it out to be.

irrelevant because what we care about is lookupability which clearly differs between the two; WT:SOP makes no mention of including affixed SOPs only because they're lexically equivalent to non-SOPs

WT:SOP has nothing to do with lookupability. The only thing it mentions is idiomaticity, which arguably shouldn't apply here because prefixes don't exist on their own, so single-word terms containing them can't be non-idiomatic in the first place.

irrelevant; whatever goes on in Chinese has no bearing on whether its easier to split nonmuslim or non-French into its parts

Whether a term can be easily broken into parts has no bearing on whether it's SOP or not, which is the point I was making.

wrong; including hard-to-split solid words and excluding endlessly repeatable SOPs is exactly what benefits the readers the most

How does excluding legitimate words benefit readers? Including terms like non-French and anti-Putinism helps people who look for those terms, results in a more complete dictionary, and harms no one. On the other hand, removing these terms prevents people from looking them up, reduces our coverage, and ultimately doesn't improve the site in any meaningful way. As you pointed out earlier, no one's scrolling through 150,037 adjectives or 385,980 nouns in their spare time, so having a large number of prefixed words isn't going to clog up the site for anyone. Binarystep (talk) 19:38, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I guess we have to agree to disagree because we're going in circles. You think anti- not being a standalone word has any relevance, I don't; that's the difference. I just wanted to add that the comparison to Talk:anti-Jewish is borderline dishonest because that was kept as a coal mine which doesn't apply here. Neither is Talk:non-Japanese an RFD discussion that really supports your case with only a single vote being cast by a person who famously lacks basic knowledge of WT:CFI. I further maintain that the wording of WT:SOP and prior consensus are on my side but after this RFD has concluded in keeping, the latter won't be true anymore. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:26, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Only one person in the anti-Jewish discussion brought up WT:COALMINE, and antijewish was RFD'd at the same time as its hyphenated form, only to be deleted for supposedly being a rare misspelling. Additionally, the lack of discussion surrounding non-Japanese would seem to indicate that most people who were active on RFD at the time didn't object to our coverage of the term. Binarystep (talk) 23:28, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

I disagree - you could write it as non-muslim without any issue. Theknightwho (talk) 12:47, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep both per the cogent argument from User:Binarystep. I would also be curious to see how other languages handle these combinations. bd2412 T 07:23, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

  From what I've seen, the issue doesn't exist in most other languages, since English is a bit unusual in the amount of words it capitalizes. For instance, the French words poutinisme and poutiniste are lowercase, so their corresponding anti- forms are unhyphenated (antipoutinisme and antipoutiniste). In fact, looking at the translation table for Putinism, English is the only Latin-script language mentioned that capitalizes the term (not counting German, which capitalizes all nouns, and doesn't capitalize the adjective putinistisch). I wouldn't be surprised if English is the only language that hyphenates anti-Putinism/anti-Putinist. Binarystep (talk) 09:29, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

  It is beyond me why you try to make cross-lingual comparisons here. We have Rechtsschutzversicherung but we don't have legal protection insurance. Does this mean there's something wrong? Should we delete the former or include the latter? Of course not. Inclusion follows orthography. It's trivial to look up the individual parts in case of the latter but not so much in case of the former. Exact same for antipoutinisme and anti-Putinism. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 09:49, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

  The difference is that legal, protection, and insurance are all individual words. On the other hand, anti-Putinism and anti-Putinist are single words, not compounds or phrases. I don't see any benefit in deleting useful entries simply because they were spelled "anti-X" instead of "antiX", especially since antiPutinism and antiputinism aren't compatible with standard English spelling rules. As I said above, this application of WT:SOP amounts to a total ban on prefixed capitalized words, something which only harms our coverage. Even if these words are easy to split into their components, I don't see what actual drawbacks there are in including them. Binarystep (talk) 11:17, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

  Again, whether the parts of a SOP are words or not has no bearing on anything. If you think it does, please point me to the section in WT:SOP where it says so. Community consensus (Talk:ex-Christian) has also reaffirmed this position. And secondly, the drawbacks are exactly the same as the drawbacks of any kind of SOP. All arguments against including red + <object that can have a color> also apply to ex- / anti- + something: it's useless and endlessly repeatable bloat that can trivially be looked up elsewhere. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:08, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

  The cogent argument is yet to be discerned. anti- not being a word having any relevance was instantly disproven. The difference in inclusion between nonmuslim and non-French being arbitrary and not of benefit to the readers has also been instantly disproven. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 09:53, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

A useful example regarding the hyphen/SoP thing: note nonatomic has two senses: non- + atomic and nona- + atomic. If spelled hyphenated (non-atomic) it is obvious, but unhyphenated it is not. Equinox ◑ 14:33, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep both per Binarystep. It’s very weird how prefixes work for English on Wiktionary. AG202 (talk) 13:51, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep. All words in all languages, and this is a single word. Andrew Sheedy (talk)

Meh. (Abstain, leaning towards delete.) On one hand, the meaning is quite SOP, and it's true you could prefix anything and I wouldn't want ex-Putinist and I'd be sceptical of re-denazify. OTOH, clearly many people feel these anti- terms have more claim to wordhood, and I just don't feel strongly about it. - -sche (discuss) 05:09, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

RFD kept: no consensus for deletion and this in fact meets WT:THUB (not). --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:29, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Beer parlour

See Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/September § Including hyphenated prefixed words as single words. Dan Polansky (talk) 09:35, 25 September 2022 (UTC)