Wiktionary:Votes/2011-04/Lexical categories

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Lexical categories[edit]

Voting on:

  1. Splitting the following categories:
  2. Renaming the foreign-language subcategories accordingly (for example, renaming Category:pt:Vulgarities to Category:Portuguese vulgarities).
  3. Renaming the following categories:

Rationale: This would make these categories nominally consistent with the existent categories listed below, among many others.

Notes:

  • The first and second proposals, in particular, nominally change the categories from "topical categories" to "lexical categories"; for example, Category:Pejoratives might currently include terms related to pejoratives, whereas the proposed new name implies that it will only include terms that are pejoratives. However, in practice they are already used as lexical categories, and many of them have adjective names (such as "Archaic" rather than "Archaisms") that do not lend themselves to interpretation as topical categories.
  • All three proposals further contribute to a standard view of "lexical categories" by assuring that the umbrella categories contain "by language", which is consistent with the existent umbrella categories mentioned at the rationale above.
  • This vote is not intended to forbid future categories' deletions or renamings via the usual community processes. For example, a vote would not be required to move Category:Suppletion by language to Category:Suppletive forms by language, or delete it, if a WT:RFM or WT:RFDO determined that any of such actions were desirable.


  • Vote starts: 00:01, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Vote ends: 23.59, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Support[edit]

  1. Support Daniel. 00:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 20:57, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support as way better than the current system. Dan and others are discussing (on this vote's talkpage) what some think to be an even better system than this, but this one is on the table now and I support it.​—msh210℠ (talk) 14:46, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support. —RuakhTALK 18:24, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Mglovesfun (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC) I've explained why on the talk page to save space on this page.[reply]
  6. Support Yair rand 19:13, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support--Brett 14:21, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support — [ R·I·C ] Laurent — 15:36, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

  1. Oppose Dan Polansky 09:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC) I have decided to oppose because adding "by language" to the names really is a worsening: it makes the name needlessly long by clarifying what was already pretty clear before. --Dan Polansky 09:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Advantages of mentioning "by language" (other than the standardization mentioned at the introduction of this vote) include: (1) Providing disambiguation between different categories, such as the topical "Category:Parts of speech" and the lexical "Category:Parts of speech by language". (2) Encouraging users to place only categories of individual languages within the umbrella categories. For example, a category named "Category:Rare terms" or "Category:Rare", judging by its name alone (and even by a number of contributions of multiple editors), contains rare terms, perhaps in English or regardless of the language. On the other hand, "Category:Rare terms by language" implies a need to clarify the language in question, which becomes an intuitive and easy task due to the existence of members named "Category:English rare terms", "Category:Portuguese rare terms", and so on. --Daniel. 13:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not convinced. Re 1: Category:Parts of speech by language should be called "Terms by parts of speech" (which is what it really contains; it does not contain parts of speech by language), and its subcategories should be called on the model of "Terms by parts of speech (Dutch)" or on your model of "Dutch terms by parts of speech". Re 2: The category structure already makes it clear whether the category contains only subcategories or also English terms. So I see no significant advantage; to the contrary, an example category given as an example is wrongly named. --Dan Polansky 13:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose Ƿidsiþ 14:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC) Don't really understand the objections to the current system.[reply]
    This vote isn't (intended to be) about changing the current system, but about renaming a number of categories to (arguably) be more consistent with the rest of the current system. —RuakhTALK 14:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain[edit]

  1. Abstain Dan Polansky 09:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC) I hesitate whether to abstain or oppose, but go for abstain right now. The good thing about the proposal is that it aligns some names with a naming scheme or algorithm already used elsewhere: it applies the naming scheme for lexical categories to categories that are indeed lexical. But what I see as a deeper problem is that there should not really be separate naming schemes for lexical and topical categories: something like "Trees (French)" and "Obsolete (French)" would be way nicer than "fr:Trees" and "French obsolete terms" I think. I am not even sure whether "French obsolete terms" is a good grammar as regards the order of adjectives; I would expect "Obsolete French terms", whyever. Furthermore, I do not know why "Category:Blends by language" is better than "Category:Blends", but I admit that this scheme has been used elsewhere before. Moreover, Category:Disputed usage → Category:Disputed terms by language and Category:English disputed terms looks suspect; are the terms disputed or is it their usage in some sense that is disputed? Compare to "Disputed usage (French)". To sum up and repeat, the proposal ensures alignment with a rather poor scheme. --Dan Polansky 09:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Abstain whatever suits one best, I guess. -- Prince Kassad 15:37, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Decision[edit]

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