User talk:ImperfectlyInformed

autistic

The words autism and autistic are not the same. One is a noun, while the other is an adjective. They do not have the same meaning. --EncycloPetey 22:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit new to this, but the new definition was sourced directly to a dictionary:

1. A tendency to view life in terms of one's own needs and desires.[1]

-- (added a couple years later)

I added the definition under the adjective, so I don't follow your argument. ImperfectlyInformed 19:31, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

WP vs WT

One of the important differences between WP and WT is that in a given language, say English, there are only about a dozen publishers of reliable definitions. All of them are references against which our definitions can be checked. I recommend OneLook.com as a gateway thereto. It is very easy for contributors to COPYVIO when using another dictionary. It is hard to imagine that copying a definition from a dictionary into another dictionary would be deemed "fair use".

OTOH, a definition from a non-dictionary source is often prescriptive, rather than reflecting actual use. We strive to be a real descriptive dictionary. That means that we place much more credence in citations of usage than a reference to a dictionary or other authority that might be exactly what WP wants.

We don't seem to know how to make this evident and justified in our documentation such as it is. DCDuring TALK 19:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't really agree with this legal reasoning. The fact is that many of these definitions date back for a very long time period, and the copyright over them is dubious. I'm skeptical that someone can copyright the actual definition of a word in the language. Dictionaries are more for convenience. In any case, I'm guessing you're referring to the definition of autistic above. I do want to restore the other definition since I don't we should be limiting our definitions to only the most common and modern definitions. For example, the definition on gay would be remiss if it did not have the (dated) definitions of happy, joyful, festive. Similarly, I want to restore the (dated) but still relevant meaning of autistic as "a tendency to view life in terms of one's own needs and desires", which is the definition in [2]. How would I do that?

Incidentally, is EncycloPetey a friend of yours? When he reverted my addition, he marked the edit minor [3]. This is certainly not consistent with Help:Minor_edit and seems rather unfriendly, as it suggests my edit is vandalism or something. Certainly not the way I would expect a long-term contributor and administrator to treat a newbie. ImperfectlyInformed 19:31, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

See also Help:Interacting with humans - the revert button marks things as minor (I'm not sure if there's a way to override that). While the definition of a word is not copyrightable (per se), it is possible that the wording of a definition is. Additionally, a large number of words definitions taken as a unit, such as a dictionary, may become copyrightable by virtue of the nuances of the wording of the definitions showing creative effort. (Or something like that anyway). It's best not to copy, just in case. If you want to restore the definition, you may have to find a citation of the word actually being used - other dictionaries do make mistakes (see dord), and (particularly the online ones) tend to copy each other mercilessly, so finding independent proof is important. Conrad.Irwin 19:39, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I've been on Wikipedia for a while and reverting there (using the undo button) has never marked edits on minor, nor does the undo button mark edits as minor on here. On Wikipedia, rollback is only for vandalism. So I'm not sure why EncycloPetey is marking reverts of good-faith edits as minor. It certainly doesn't seem good and it's not an accepted practice on Wikipedia. As far as an example, see eg this or most of these. ImperfectlyInformed 00:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)