Template talk:R:She Literally Exploded

RfD discussion for the category with incorrectly capitalisation

This discussion was not for the template per se, but rather for an empty category of the same name but with incorrect initial capitalisation (Category:the proscriptions of She Literally Exploded), which I had forgotten to tag with {{delete}}. However, some pertinent points were raised in the discussion about the category itself, so I præserve the discussion hereat, lest the category itself be nominated for deletion in future. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:30, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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No content. No explanation. SemperBlotto 08:39, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why we would have any category, especially not a visible one, for pop usage guides. I thought we were no kind of "scriptivist", except "de-". DCDuring TALK 11:00, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The idea could be useful for an Appendix and/or Usage notes, but not as a category. -- Visviva 11:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

See Template:R:She Literally Exploded. DCDuring TALK 11:12, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The book is here. (and this is interesting too) Should not be a category. The title reminds me of one of my favourite comic strips: (son comes home from tough rugby match) Father: "how did it go?" Son: "we literally killed them!" Father: "um, do you know what 'literally' means?" "No." "Good!" Robert Ullmann 11:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete. I created this, but then moved all the content and explanation to Category:The proscriptions of She Literally Exploded (the only change being the capitalisation of the initial (deprecated template usage) the). I forgot to tag the old spelling with {{delete}} afterwards, that’s all. Sorry for the inconvenience. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete both. —Ruakh_TALK 15:04, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Is there a worthwhile BP discussion to be had about how to descriptively take advantage of the copious pro- and prescriptive advice of the numerous usage guides without getting into copyvio and other problems? In usage notes and entry talk pages folks like to say "many authorities" have this or that recommendation but without references. We should be able to do better. DCDuring TALK 15:13, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, as Connel has on his user page:

“…I happen to know for a fact that God doesn’t care whether you split infinitives. But some people do, and that’s a simple fact that no statistical table will change. A good descriptivist should tell you that. In fact, my beef with many descriptivists is that they don’t describe enough. A really thorough description of a word or usage would take into account not only how many people use it, but in what circumstances and to what effect.”

Of course, that’s all well and good, as long as we can back up with references our usage notes that tell our readers, for example, that some people dislike split infinitives. Our usage notes should either: 1) reference objections by other usage authorities; 2) show than a usage is a bone of some contention by quoting logomachies undertaken in durably-archived media (Google groups is surprisingly fairly good for this); and/or, 3) at the very least, explain entirely the rationale within the usage note itself (as, I believe, I did for miscellaneum).

AFAICT, what I’m doing with She Literally Exploded is not copyright violation: I’m not quoting anything, but rather giving the gist of the objection and then marking whence I took the objection; AFAIK, intellectual property governs the expression of ideas, rather than the ideas themselves.

The category is useful because SLE’s proscriptions are those which the readership of the Daily Telegraph (numbering a considerable 882,413 — more than any other British newspaper — in October 2007) find most infuriating; any writer or announcer who gives two hoots specifically about the DT readership will therefore want a handy category which specifically lists those usages to avoid when addressing the DT readership.

FWIW, I don’t agree with that many of the proscriptions SLE makes, finding them at times fussy and founded on no good reason; however, they object, so that ought to be noted. Counterarguments to the proscriptions of usage authorities, when extant and reasonable, ought to be included in usage notes as well, allowing our readers to decide for themselves which usage rationale to adopt.

† ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:04, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

• Delete both. Not appropriate. Cirt (talk) 09:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Why is such a category inappropriate? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:41, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
    • IMO, it is inappropriate because categories should be for core properties of an entry, and this is not a core property. The short reason for this is that allowing a category for any accidental property of a word or sense leads to massive category bloat and makes the system unusable. There are hundreds if not thousands of usage guides which are or have been important in a given context; we can't have a separate category for each one. It makes much more sense for the entry to go into Category:Disputed usage and the details of the proscription(s) given in the entry itself. For central control, a list would be fine, or one could use the automatic list generated by Special:Whatlinkshere/R:She Literally Exploded. -- Visviva 03:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
      • Personally, I don’t see a problem with having a category for each usage guide; even if they did become too numerous, we could create a supra-category such as Category:Usage guides: and then have all those categories as subcategories thereof. If the 1 cat./usage guide idea is considered inappropriate, then all of SLE’s proscriptions could be shifted to a category like Category:Problematic usages for the Daily Telegraph readership which would also include the advice of authorities like the DT’s style guide &c. Using Whatlinkshere wouldn’t work in the long term because once all of SLE’s objections have been noted on Wiktionary, {{R:She Literally Exploded}} will be subst:’d because the template will no longer be necessary for further transclusions and its continuing existence will do nothing but slow down page-loading times be requiring an additional template call. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 03:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

RfD discussion for the category proper

Please note that two links in the following discussion have been redirected to the RfD discussion section above this one because they were formerly red-linked (the refered-to content is identical). † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

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See :Category talk:The proscriptions of She Literally Exploded. The main point, IMHO, was made by User:Visviva:

IMO, it is inappropriate because categories should be for core properties of an entry, and this is not a core property. The short reason for this is that allowing a category for any accidental property of a word or sense leads to massive category bloat and makes the system unusable. There are hundreds if not thousands of usage guides which are or have been important in a given context; we can't have a separate category for each one. It makes much more sense for the entry to go into Category:Disputed usage and the details of the proscription(s) given in the entry itself. For central control, a list would be fine, or one could use the automatic list generated by Special:Whatlinkshere/R:She Literally Exploded.

The key point here is "for core properties of an entry" - this is not a "core property" of any of the entries - I haven't read this book She Literally Exploded nor have I heard of it before, but even Wikipedia doesn't have an article on it, so IMHO it can't be considered for a category here. IMHO, this information about these proscriptins is based kept in a user subpage (or possibly an appendix). --Jackofclubs 12:32, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

• Delete. The less publicity given to the Telegraph's nonsensical style guide, the better, IMO. Ƿidsiþ 12:35, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

And my response to Visviva in that discussion was:

Personally, I don’t see a problem with having a category for each usage guide; even if they did become too numerous, we could create a supra-category such as Category:Usage guides: and then have all those categories as subcategories thereof. If the 1 cat./usage guide idea is considered inappropriate, then all of SLE’s proscriptions could be shifted to a category like Category:Problematic usages for the Daily Telegraph readership which would also include the advice of authorities like the DT’s style guide &c. Using Whatlinkshere wouldn’t work in the long term because once all of SLE’s objections have been noted on Wiktionary, {{R:She Literally Exploded}} will be subst:’d because the template will no longer be necessary for further transclusions and its continuing existence will do nothing but slow down page-loading times be requiring an additional template call.

To Ƿidsiþ: It really doesn’t matter how “nonsensical” you or I consider the Daily Telegraph’s style guide to be (and be sure, I often do); if one has the task of writing something for the Daily Telegraph readership, he had best avoid “infuriating” them (as said style guide claims these many words do). This category lends a helping hand in such a case. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Each of the world's myriad usage guides is important in certain contexts: violate Strunk & White, and you may have a mob of writing teachers on your hands; violate the Chicago Manual of Style, and you may lose your US copyediting job; violate APA style and you may flunk your linguistics class; and so on. But if we documented each of these using categories, the "Categories" listing of the entry would become unusable, just as it was for some English entries before the advent of HIDDENCAT. A supercategory wouldn't solve this problem in any way that I can see.

If these proscriptions are truly relevant for a person writing for this (rather arbitrary) demographic, IMO the best thing would be to have an appendix, titled "Appendix:Considerations for writing for the Daily Telegraph readership" or whatever. Such an appendix could include both these proscriptions and any others which may be relevant (e.g. those which pertain to more general UK or journalistic usage). The appendix could even be linked from Usage_notes for relevant words.

To put it another way: it seems like you want to use categories as tags. Although the lack of a tagging system can be frustrating, that approach just isn't viable. -- Visviva 06:17, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

• Delete per me. :-) -- Visviva 06:17, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I see your point about usability of the category space. How about applying HIDDENCAT (?) to this category, which can be linked from the appendix you mention; the R template which includes this category can then be edited to include a link to said appendix. That done, I think everyone can be made happy. That sound OK? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:20, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

That would be fine with me, I think. -- Visviva 04:36, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Where does the actual content of the proscription go? Does the Daily Telegraph limit itself to proscribing entire headwords? It would seem that the likely content would belong in an Appendix. A category would seem to have no value to general users at all. Hidden categories cannot have value because the do not see them. What value does the editing community get from this hidden category? DCDuring TALK 10:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete and check entries in the category for copyvios I don't see the dictionaric value of a plain list of words and phrases mentioned in a style guide. While incorporating the usage notes of a style guide into Wiktionary would be dictionaric, it would also be a copyright violation, and this particular style guide isn't in the public domain. Carolina wren 06:46, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted category and removed category from Template:R:She Literally Exploded --Jackofclubs 08:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)