Talk:starfucking

RfD discussion re starfuck

No evidence provided. Eclecticology 07:15, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Here's a couple cites for you. —Muke Tever 19:11, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, that quote seems to be of a parody of Starbuck's. BJAODN. --Wytukaze 19:19, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I get three results on that search, and yours is the last, while I was referring to the first two ("Nine percent says they’d be likelier to cheat on their partners if they could sleep with a celebrity. After all, starfucking doesn’t really count as cheating anyway." [1]; "Of course, such a choice deprives one’s clients of the opportunity to “starfuck” human celebrities at company gatherings." [2]) —Muke Tever 23:50, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

As long as starfucking and starfucker — which are attested — stay, this can go (or better, move to Wiktionary:Requests for further citations) -dmh 16:45, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

• Okay, so these cites can be found on Google Print. Now what's so difficult about putting those properly cited quotations right there on the page for the word? It is not up to others to do your homework for you, or to go around proving your case for you. Putting a link to the source on this page does no good either since all these discussion will be deleted eventually. Put the quotation where it belongs. I'm strongly inclined to start taking a harder line on this sort of thing. I think there is a need to start considering the credibility of material on this project. Eclecticology

I've been considering the credibility of material from the beginning of my involvement with Wiktionary. I've defended dozens of terms here, but none for which I didn't see clear evidence that someone was using the term for meaning. I also put quite a bit of effort into fleshing out CFI in order to make our unwritten customs about attestation more explicit and to open up the debate about how to improve them.

Taking a yet harder line on deleting entries that don't have supporting quotes directly attached to them is likely to have a further chilling effect on new entries. New entries and new senses of existing terms are precisely where online dictionaries, and Wiktionary in particular, have an inherent advantage over the rest of the world. Discouraging this is just shooting ourselves in the foot. Suppose that wob as in web mob turned out to be the next big catch phrase. Unlikely, but possible, and if it did happen, we'd have the scoop, as long as we keep the contributed information around.

• I don't agree about the "chilling effect". Partridge and other lexicographers have taken great pains to document the slang material that they include. Having that documentation from the beginning makes life a lot easier for future generations. If the addition of new entries of that sort is slowed down that's fine because I'm more interested in quality than quantity. Why is the scoop so important? That's about as silly as those people stand in line overnight so that they can have the first tickets to the next Hollywood blockbuster. After the movie has been shown the first time it will still be there for many future screenings. If you see it a few days later it will be the same thing. Eclecticology 04:29:03, 2005-09-11 (UTC)

Let me put it this way: today I wanted to make sure I was using "equivocate" in the accepted sense. Did I check Wiktionary? No fucking way. I went to dictionary.com. If — speaking as a user and not a contributor — I were confident that every definition in every entry of Wiktionary was supported by reliable citations, I would have no qualms in using it as a primary reference. But that's not what Wiktionary is, nor will be in the foreseeable future.

• It says something when you don't even trust the material on the project where you have chosen to participate, and for reasons with which I easily agree! Then you do an about face and promote making it into the kind of thing that you would not use. So what is Wiktionary? If it's not going to be a reliable reference; if we aren't aiming for something of that sort why are we all wasting our time? Eclecticology 04:29:03, 2005-09-11 (UTC)

It's not an about face. I'm just saying that Wiktionary is not presently reliable as a dictionary of reference. This has much more to do with what words are present or absent (there's a good chance a random word I run across is missing) and the definitions given (there's a a non-zero chance that a definition just reflects some urban legend about "correct usage" or is otherwise out of whack). Further, I don't see that it will be such any time soon, so I don't see a particular sense of urgency in trying to bring it up to OED-ish standards. I particularly don't see the harm — and in fact I see benefit — in including terms which would not yet meet the standards of other, less nimble dictionaries. That's not to say I want to let in all manner of crap, or that I don't see any point in trying to improve Wiktionary, but I suppose by now either you believe that or you don't.

I see Wiktionary much more as an opportunity to gather interesting lexicographical material in a collaborative and extremely flexible environment. Much of the result will be half-baked, some of it will be outright crap, but bits here and there will be well-researched and either entirely novel or not easily available anywhere else. We don't know in advance what will turn out to be a gem, and anything at all has a chance of being improved. It's presumptuous to pretend otherwise.

Speaking for myself, Wiktionary has also been a major learning experience. For example, thanks to the discussion of tidal wave, not only do I now know much more about tide-related terms than when I started, I also know quite a bit more about how social forces shape usage, and in particular about how a notion of "correct" usage can easily overpower any rational basis. I've also learned more about how to collaborate in a group (and how not to :-) and how to present an argument — how to legislate, if you will — in an environment in which the stakes are, ultimately, rather low.

And, of course, I've had endless opportunities to polish my deathless prose. -dmh 19:56, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Given the actual state of affairs, I don't see an legitimate reason to delete an article that hasn't had its citations attached yet. Mark it as needing further work? Sure. Move it to a quarantine area like Wiktionary:Requests for further citations? Maybe, though after writing this I'm less sure this is a step forward. Delete it, in a unilateral attempt to get a contributor to follow a policy for which there is no consensus? Um, no, thank you.

If we see the problem as how to continuously improve the quality of Wiktionary, rather than as an argument over who should put in citations, I believe we'll make a lot more progress. I'm quite willing to fill in blanks in the work of others. I've done it quite a bit and may yet do it quite a bit more. Missing citations should be a call for any contributor to attach them, not for a sysop to gun the entry. I for one would most likely make more contributions, and more completely documented contributions, in such an atmosphere. I believe that this was the whole point of Wiki* from the beginning of the Wiki concept itself. -dmh 06:17, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

• It is about continuous improvement, and that depends on having material referenced. I believe that almost everything should be referenced (not necessarily with citations) even if it's only to say that it's from the 1913 Webster. I don't care who puts the references up, and I'll certainly add some myself. I know too that if I just put an rfc or similar notice nothing will happen; I might as well wait for Jesus' resurection. If it means taking flak for gunning these articles I can do that too. If a deleted article was meant to be there it will be back, and in better shape as happened with cankle.

Sigh. First, it's simply not true that RFCs will languish for lack of attention. Time was, I would troll through them pretty consistently tinkering and fixing. I generally do give a perfectly legitimate article appearing on RFD higher priority, since an RFC article will still be there, but this is hardly a justification for RFD, any more than it's justifiable to call 911 to get a cat out of a tree. In fact, I strongly resent repeatedly having to choose between ignoring an RFD and seeing a perfectly good term deleted, or trying to make sure I've jumped through all the right hoops — which change from fire drill to fire drill, if I may mix metaphors — in order to keep a term in.

Personally, I generally err on the side of keeping the term in, but this has had an undesirable side-effect. It has given the ludicrous impression that the proper way to get attention for an article needing cleanup is to put it on RFD. This is why I have refused to supply citations for well-attested terms like webinar and instead simply pasted in an existing definition. If you want it cleaned up, put it on RFC, or clean it up, as time permits. Misusing RFD, in contradiction to PDG and CFI, much of which you wrote yourself, has had a decided negative effect on continuous improvement.

There are two obvious reasons for this: First, it's hard to improve on an article that's not there, and (speaking of proving a negative) it's harder still to prove that an article that re-appears would not have been cleaned up had it stayed around. Second, the uncertainty as to whether an interesting new word will persist discourages entering new words (This is partly why I now have User:dmh/field sightings. Who knows which of those will get arbitrarily gunned if I enter them into the main body?), and the sheer amount of time and effort wasted arguing about the obvious point that RFC is preferable to RFD, absent a compelling consideration such as vandalism, has detracted from actual cleanup.

Tell you what. I can't promise I'll be able to devote much time to Wiktionary in the next few months, but if you start moving terms of questionable attestation to RFC, instead of deleting them, I'll check your user contributions for them and make a particular effort to bring them up to speed. I'll also do what I can (probably not too much as I doubt I carry that much weight) to encourage others to patrol RFC in general.

How about it? It can't possibly be less fun than the status quo, can it? -dmh 18:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

• To return to this specific request, I will be deleting starfucker which has no attestation at all, and starfuck. The latter has one trivial reference above which is a parody of "Starbucks", and another where the link leads to a "not found" result. I will, however be keeping starfucking. I will move the citation above to the article, and further clean up the article to reflect the fact that the citation that is already there is not consistent with the definition. Eclecticology 04:29:03, 2005-09-11 (UTC)

One nit (actually, more a bone to pick). A starfucker is one who sucks up to celebrities for personal advantage, but not necessarily to the celebrity's disadvantage. The case quoted is a good example. The lawyers got a ton of money and the celebrity was acquitted. Win/win. I wouldn't charactarize that as "preying", and so have restored the original definition, though it occurs to me I may have just written a better one. -dmh 18:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

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The last comment was not an RfD issue but one about the correct definition. It is better placed here. The "personal advantage" is key to this definition. Whether the star derives benefit is irrelevent. Eclecticology 04:29, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

A pretty definite opinion for a term that doesn't even officially exist. -dmh 01:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)