Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-06/Attestation criteria for derogatory terms

Attestation criteria for derogatory terms

Voting on: Updating WT:ATTEST regarding the attestation criteria for derogatory terms.

It is proposed that WT:ATTEST be updated by adding one of the following options as a new subsection 1.2.5. The text in option 2 that differs from option 1 is underlined.

Option 1

If a term is derogatory to an individual, group of persons, or geographical location, it must have at least three quotations satisfying these requirements added to it meet the usual attestation requirements within:

• two weeks of the term being created, or if this period has passed,
• two weeks of the term being nominated for deletion or verification.

Otherwise, it may be speedily deleted after that period.

A term is considered derogatory if it is apparently intended to:

• denigrate a named individual in any way; or
• denigrate an unnamed person, group of persons, or geographical location on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity, gender or sex, religion, or sexual orientation, or with the use of a demeaning or obscene term.

The speedy deletion of a term is without prejudice to its re-creation if the attestation requirements can be satisfied as described above.

Option 2

If a term is derogatory to an individual, group of persons, or geographical location, it must have at least three quotations satisfying these requirements added to it meet the usual attestation requirements within:

• two weeks of the term being created, or if this period has passed,
• two weeks of the term being nominated for deletion or verification.

Otherwise, it may be speedily deleted after that period.

In addition, where applicable, the quotations must be from two or more different sources. For this purpose, a particular website (for example, Reddit, Twitter, or Usenet) is considered as one source.

A term is considered derogatory if it is apparently intended to:

• denigrate a named individual in any way; or
• denigrate an unnamed person, group of persons, or geographical location on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity, gender or sex, religion, or sexual orientation, or with the use of a demeaning or obscene term.

The speedy deletion of a term is without prejudice to its re-creation if the attestation requirements can be satisfied as described above.

Rationale for the proposal

From time to time, large numbers of derogatory terms are created, usually by anonymous editors. Recent examples of such derogatory terms include Apefrican, Buttswana, criminigger, cumskinned, faggotface, jaboon, koala fucker, Mexicunt, negro fatigue, nigdar, Norgay, piss drinker, Porntugal, San Fransicko, suspook, teenaper, Turd World, Vladimir Pootin, and West Undies. These terms create the following problems:

• It is hard to tell whether such terms are genuine or hoaxes.
• The editors who create such terms are essentially pushing the task of verifying these terms to other editors. We are not the Urban Dictionary. The proposal discourages editors from adding derogatory terms unless they are willing to put in the effort of ensuring the terms are attested.
• Due to the dubious nature of these terms, they are rightly challenged at RFD or RFV. However, this clutters up these fora, and uses up the time and effort of editors in discussing and verifying the entries which could be used more productively.
• Arguably, the reputation of the project as a whole is lowered by the presence of such terms. There is no particular benefit in having many unattested derogatory terms; only those which are properly attested within a short period of time deserve to remain.

Please note the following:

• The proposal does not seek to ban derogatory terms from the Dictionary. Terms which are properly attested will remain in the Dictionary.
• The proposal applies only to derogatory terms as defined above. It does not seek to require all terms to be attested by at least three quotations within two weeks of creation or nomination at RFD or RFV.
• Option 2 is stricter than option 1, because it requires the quotations in an entry to be from two or more different sources. Since for this purpose each website (for example, Reddit, Twitter, or Usenet) is considered as one source, a term would be insufficiently attested by, say, three quotations from Usenet; at least one quotation would have to originate from another source.
• Please note that the proposals have been updated so that the three-quotations rule does not apply to limited-documentation languages (LDLs), as proposed in the discussion below. It is believed that this is not a significant change to the proposals, but if you feel otherwise, please amend your vote by 19 July 2022.

Instructions for editors

• If supporting the proposal, it is suggested that you vote either for option 1 or option 2, not both. However, if you do not mind either option you may vote for both of them. The rules below will apply to the result of the vote.
• If opposing the proposal, editors can oppose both options.
• If there is sufficient consensus for both options, the option with, in the first place, more “support” votes and, if there is a tie, fewer “oppose” votes, succeeds.
• If both options have sufficient consensus and have been supported and opposed by exactly the same number of votes each, option 2 succeeds.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
• Vote created: — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:03, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussions:

• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2020/September § Why are there so many N-word entries? Can't we consolidate them under the N-word page?
• Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English § Darky Cuntinent, see: Talk:Darky Cuntinent when archived.
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/January § Updating CFI for the Internet and Offensive Material
• Wiktionary:Requests for verification/English § Norgay
• Related RFVs for criminigger, Mexicunt, turdler, nigfant, nigdar, Apefrican, teenaper, niggerness, niggerdom, niggership, koala fucker, suspook, jaboon. See: their talk pages when archived.
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/June § Stricter attestation criteria for offensive entries
• Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2022-06/Attestation criteria for derogatory terms

Option 1

Support

1. Support as the proposer. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:34, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
2. Support. I agree that we should cut down on the amount of slurs being added by anonymous trolls, but deleting valid entries isn't the solution. Binarystep (talk) 04:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
3. Support This, that and the other (talk) 07:50, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
4. Support Actori incumbit onus probandi, and in our case to the adder. I furthermore support extending this policy to any class of entries clogging up RfV (as happened with certain constructed languages before they were banned to the appendix). MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 12:42, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
5. Support Prosfilaes (talk) 00:31, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

   ...your rationale being? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 02:53, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

6. Support Reasonable move, and also don't mind if this makes creation of a certain group of terms stricter (as also this won't really have much bearing on their inclusion criteria anyway). —Svārtava (talk) • 11:41, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
7. Support I was considering option 2 before, but now I feel like the extra requirement of that is not something I want tbh. I agree with the reasoning in a discussion below "Wiktionary's job is to document language, not to control it. […] you're proposing that we remove CFI-compliant terms solely because of their offensiveness, which would be a major overstep on our part." User: The Ice Mage ^{talk to meh} 16:59, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
8. Support Benwing2 (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
9. Support. Not that I think derogatory terms are special, I just think that speedy-deleting junk is a good idea. Thadh (talk) 22:31, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
10. Support. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:46, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
11. Support John Cross (talk) 19:20, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
12. Support - TheDaveRoss 12:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
13. Support with the updated wording. Theknightwho (talk) 15:50, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
14. Support (changed from oppose with updated wording). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 00:20, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
15. Support. --沈澄心✉ 06:49, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
16. Support, now that it doesn't threaten rare terms in LDLs and ancient languages. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:54, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
17. Support as this will make sure that these words meet the standard required of other words. An those that don't are removed quickly. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:13, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose We already have a mechanism for dealing with this. It's called RfV. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 20:01, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
2. Oppose Yes, and there is little point to be that butthurt about someone collecting words on the internet that one would have to tighten the rules—hey, is this denigrating something? I don’t know, shan’t care, have already outlined in the linked discussions that there is an infinite number of edge cases which you will have to quibble about. Instead of collecting lists of that which conforms the science but not your taste, the editors should quit bikeshedding and look at the regular words which are ill-defined. We are reminded of those people complaining about powerlifters performing not pretty enough in spite of following the sport by the letter – finish your sets, bro! Plus it has been left utterly unaddressed why this has to apply to other languages than English where there is yet a lot (of common slurs) to add and there isn’t the same community of anger-makers on the internet, in spite of me mentioning this. Fay Freak (talk) 19:19, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
3. Oppose The argument of reducing unnecessary labour is tempting but not tempting enough to go against our descriptivist principle. Some things are worth labouring for. brittletheories (talk) 20:01, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
4. Oppose Superfluous. If the cites exist; cite. If not, delete. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:41, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
5. Oppose Akonada (talk) 15:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
6. Oppose — We need not have some silly bias against certain terms based only on their usage context. Let all language be treated equally. PseudoSkull (talk) 00:17, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

   # Oppose because this option sets stricter criteria for derogatory terms in limited-documentation languages. However, I support deleting derogatory terms that can't pass RFV within two weeks. --沈澄心✉ 10:13, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

   @沈澄心: did you intend to oppose Option 2 instead of Option 1? Option 2 contains the stricter criterion that the quotations must come from at least two different sources. Option 1 doesn’t have this criterion. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:12, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Sgconlaw: "For terms in extinct languages, one use in a contemporaneous source is the minimum, or one mention is adequate subject to the below requirements. For all other spoken languages that are living, only one use or mention is adequate" per WT:ATTEST, but Option 1 requires "at least three quotations". 沈澄心✉ 11:34, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

   @沈澄心: ah, I see. Yes, the current proposal was formulated on the basis of the rule for non-limited-documentation languages and doesn’t take into account LDLs. I suppose LDLs can be considered in the future. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:40, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

   I think that might have simply been an oversight, rather than it being specifically intended such. —Svārtava (talk) • 10:28, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   Yes, it was not intentional, though I’d make two points: (1) Is it likely that there will be many derogatory terms in LDLs? (2) If the reasons for a stricter approach to derogatory terms are convincing, should they not apply to all languages? — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Sgconlaw: "Is it likely that there will be many derogatory terms in LDLs?" What makes you think there aren't? Many LDLs are normal languages spoken by millions of people, so of course they possess loads of derogatory terms. This point actually makes me consider voting against option 1 as well because it will be very hard if not impossible find three citations for every single derogatory term in Alemannic. This is not only because Alemannic attestations are hard to come by full stop (see WT:RFVN#häsch_du_morn_scho_öppis_vor for an extremely common phrase that I still wasn't able to cite) but because the type of text available in Alemannic usually doesn't contain derogatory terms, especially not racial slurs and the likes. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:33, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Fytcha: My point is that if derogatory terms are generally undesirable to include unless they are properly verified, perhaps this shouldn't be different for LDLs. In any case, I don't think the current proposal can be changed halfway before the vote is due to end on 19 July. However, if it is felt that there should be a specific rule for LDLs, I think this could be quickly discussed at the Beer Parlour to get a feel of the consensus on that matter, and a follow-on vote from the current one drafted to deal with that situation. Thus, I feel there isn't a strong reason to oppose the current proposal simply because of the LDL issue. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:03, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   It doesn't feel like a materially substantive change to amend the two proposals to take this into account, and I don't think anyone was trying to imply that LDLs should require 3 cites for derogatory terms anyway - they were simply overlooked. It's not helpful to anyone for this proposal to fail on procedural grounds, because even if you oppose both, it makes it much more likely they'll get re-proposed.

   Both options:

   If a term is derogatory to an individual, group of persons, or geographical location, it must have at least three quotations satisfying these requirements added to it meet the usual attestation requirements within:

   Option 2:

   In addition, where applicable, the quotations must be from two or more different sources. For this purpose, a particular website (for example, Reddit, Twitter, or Usenet) is considered as one source.

   Theknightwho (talk) 14:27, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   I honestly had assumed that this would apply primarily to English since it's the language that caused this discussion, but seeing the alternative framing with LDLs, I kinda agree as well. AG202 (talk) 14:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   Me too. The best thing about option 1 is that it doesn't impose stricter requirements for inclusion - it just means we don't give them the benefit of the doubt. It's a good compromise between those concerned that we should be recording all language, and those concerned with the firehose of shit that IPs have been adding.

   The fact that multiple people are expressing concern about this issue suggests it was something people hadn't considered, rather than something they were actively voting for. There's even a reasonable argument to be made that LDLs should be excluded from this altogether, given the difficulty in finding citations for many of them, but that may be a step too far. In any event, I'm holding off from voting for that reason, but will vote in support of option 1 if this issue is fixed. Theknightwho (talk) 14:39, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Theknightwho: well, if editors don't think that your proposed change is too extensive, I have no issue with it. I have updated the proposals as you suggested, and put a new note under the "Please note the following" section. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:47, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Sgconlaw Fab - thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 15:47, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Sgconlaw I think it would be best to notify all voters before the amended vote of the amendment to the proposal. What do you think? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 00:25, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Justinrleung: I don’t have the energy to message everyone separately; hopefully they are watching this page. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:18, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Sgconlaw: Could we just ping them here or on the talk page? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:02, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Justinrleung: sure, please go ahead. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:48, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

   # Oppose Basically the same position as 沈澄心. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:54, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

   Late Oppose, just for the record: this does not belong to CFI since it does not change the inclusion criteria, merely the procedure for requesting evidence that the criteria are met. The problem this was trying to solve is just a special case of reckless users creating unattested entries in volume. Such users need to be told to stop creating unattested entries, and telling them so needs to become a welcome cultural practice rather than something frowned upon. I don't see derogatory unattested terms as a bigger problem than other unattested terms, of which I am afraid we have many. And the great majority of the allegedly problematic terms listed in the rationale now have citations in the entries, which shows these were actually attested and not actually problematic. Recall that attested does not mean having attesting quotations in the entry. Thus, even the provided substantiation of the alleged problem has now been refuted, with the help of editors who did the work of adding the attesting quotations instead of fiddling with CFI. This bad addition is now unlikely to be ever removed from CFI, but I would be very happy to see it go. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:38, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

   @Dan Polansky: "Recall that attested does not mean having attesting quotations in the entry." Exactly, but thanks to this vote, some have now taken it upon themselves to speedily delete countless derogatory entries, some even containing links to Usenet search pages that clearly contain countless valid attestations. It's almost as if the result of this vote is being abused to get rid of such entries, regardless of whether they're citable or not. See User_talk:Chuck_Entz#Admin_vandalism. See also [1] for the damage this vote has caused. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:30, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Abstain

1. Abstain As the vote continues on, my opinion may change, but I don't feel like this does enough. All of the terms in question did end up being cited within two weeks because they were nominated at RFV and ended up being found anywhere on Usenet, even though they were added by people who joined just to add offensive terms. There will always be editors here who will focus on citing these terms no matter who adds them or where they're found. So this proposal wouldn't have done anything to prevent them being kept, hence why I suggested the multiple source addendum. However, for now, it's better than nothing, which is why I'm not opposing it. AG202 (talk) 13:19, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   Why shouldn't those terms be kept, if they all ended up being cited? Is it not the intention of the proposal to discourage anonymous users from wasting other editors' time by filling up a backlog of marginal but offensive terms? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:33, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

   This is not going to discourage them from doing so, if I'm being honest, especially if they know that they'll be cited in the end after causing discussion (2 weeks is too long). In terms of your first question, see my comments at Beer Parlour. AG202 (talk) 19:58, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Comment

I really dislike how wide the scope of this option remains, even though it is better than the other one. It covers all languages, so 'rare' derogatory terms in extinct languages may be completely excised from the site. There is no automatic protection for terms that are obviously in widespread use or any other measure to limit the restriction to obviously marginal terms. Extending the proposal from offensive to derogatory seems an unnecessary increase in scope. On the other some brake on the creation of marginal offensive terms is reasonably desired. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:33, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo The updated wording should address the first two concerns (LDLs and terms in widespread use). Theknightwho (talk) 15:51, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Option 2

Support

1. Support as the proposer. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:34, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
2. Support Take a look at the terms that went through RFV and the cites for them. They are by and large nonce offensive words created in one place to denigrate people that never spread out anywhere else except in those vile spaces. Should we really be giving them a platform to grow even more? I would hope not. Whether we like it or not, Wiktionary has had effects on the world around us, whether small or large, and just like other major dictionaries, we have our own standards that we can update as we see fit, and as such, this should be a welcome change to make sure that the quality of our entries and the effect that we have do not go on a negative path. And thus, as the one that came up with that portion of the proposal, I strongly support requiring that those terms be cited on more than one source so that we make sure that we're aligning with offensive terms that actually have currency. We obviously won't "end racism" with the more aggressive verification of these terms, but we can be more aware of the real-life negative effects that this project can have. I will also paste part of my comment in Beer Parlour: "[…] This is the sixth conversation, at the very least, about this issue, and I've listened and talked with so many people and changed my proposal and approach so many times, but [not much] seems to be changing, which is really unfortunate. There was a conversation that I read from two years ago about the image that we want to give our users and fellow editors, and I think that it's something that really needs to be taken into consideration. We have so so so so many policies about which words can and cannot be included at WT:CFI, but when it comes to offensive nonce terms that were made in the pits of the most vile, white supremacist places, but did not make it out of them, we're all of a sudden hesitant to require that they be cited a bit more aggressively, and honestly it hasn't sent the best message. It's truly sad and disappointing to me that there's more energy and time and resources being spent on preserving and debating words like Apefrican and Darky Cuntinent than getting words from actual African languages on here. Our coverage on them is so paltry, though I've been able to get more Yorùbá editors on here and increase coverage significantly, and I wish that instead of lengthy RFD, RFV, and Beer Parlour discussions on preserving words that were only used a few times in the most racist spaces, we could actually spend time on preserving some of our most impacted and endangered languages, which is why I joined this community in the first place. However, the longer I've been here, the less welcome I've felt." This statement still rings true now, unfortunately, as in related discussions I've had my own and others' experiences belittled and pushed aside in favor of preserving these terms, most of which are used to target our own community, even when I've tried to make compromises, which is truly evident of why we desperately need a change now. AG202 (talk) 00:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   Wiktionary's job is to document language, not to control it. As I said in BP, you're proposing that we remove CFI-compliant terms solely because of their offensiveness, which would be a major overstep on our part. Some of your comments also seem to suggest that these terms are being protected for the sake of defending racism, which is a gross mischaracterization of the issue at hand. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize, but your last sentence especially seems to imply that these slurs are being endorsed by Wiktionary editors, something which I don't believe to be the case (with the exception of IPs who exclusively add slurs).

   We have so so so so many policies about which words can and cannot be included at WT:CFI, but when it comes to offensive nonce terms that were made in the pits of the most vile, white supremacist places, but did not make it out of them, we're all of a sudden hesitant to require that they be cited a bit more aggressively, and honestly it hasn't sent the best message.

   As I pointed out before, what you're suggesting would be a drastic change to how our CFI works. Yes, we discriminate against certain words, but we do so for linguistic reasons (unattestability, SOP-ness, lack of use outside fiction), not because the words themselves are morally objectionable. What you're proposing is censorship, something which is explicitly forbidden by WT:NOT. Wiktionary's mission statement is to include all words in all languages, and while that goal has been harmed by our policies in the past, that's no reason to make the situation even worse. I believe we should strive to be the most accurate dictionary possible, and that means documenting all aspects of a given language, including the parts we'd be better off without. As for your point about endangered languages, I fail to see how that's relevant to this discussion. Our decision to include offensive words in English has no bearing on whether other languages are well-documented. There's no reason why we can't document Yoruba while still acknowledging the harmful words that exist in English.

   Regarding your comments about Wiktionary's impact, I still have yet to see any evidence that these obscure slurs have gained widespread popularity due to our coverage of them. In my experience, racists are more likely to just call me the N-word outright than dig through Category:English ethnic slurs until they stumble upon our entry for rockfish. And to be honest, even if those terms did somehow increase in popularity, I don't see how it changes much. Regardless of whether someone uses an obscure slur or a well-known one, the underlying racist attack still exists. Being called a dindu nuffin doesn't feel any better than being called a gutter ape. Additionally, and most importantly, acknowledging that a word exists isn't the same thing as advocating for its usage. I'm aware that some racists may interpret our coverage as endorsement and feel good about themselves as a result, but that's their fault for failing to understand what a dictionary is. Binarystep (talk) 04:39, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   Binarystep, unfortunately, I'm not looking at continuing this again. I don't have the energy or capacity to go through another fruitless discussion, and I had hoped you'd realized that based on the last one. And yes, we have had the issue of editors endorsing slurs and purposefully adding links to Neo-Nazi websites. That's all I will be responding to here. For anyone else, you can go read the very very very long Beer Parlour discussion. AG202 (talk) 11:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   You still have yet to address most of the points I brought up, including my most recent one, which is that your proposal directly contradicts WT:NOT's claim that Wiktionary isn't censored. If we have a problem with racist editors using Wiktionary as a means of promoting neo-Nazi propaganda, the solution is to ban the editors in question. Our job as a dictionary is to provide factual information, which should never be censored under any circumstances. What you're suggesting would be equivalent to Wikipedia deleting its articles for notable racist movements/websites/pundits out of fear that simply mentioning them will cause them to grow in popularity.

   Additionally, though I know this wasn't your goal, your proposal paves the way for future prescriptivist policy changes. Who's to say someone won't make a good case for banning obscure vulgarities or sexual slang? After all, one could argue that, much like the Usenet-exclusive slurs you wish to censor, such terms worsen our public image and make us more like Urban Dictionary. I also refer you to the various attempts to ban fandom slang, which have failed primarily because our CFI allows us to document any word as long as it's used in "durably archived" sources. Once we start making exceptions and allowing entries to be deleted for non-linguistic reasons, it becomes much easier to justify removing terms for being "too niche". Binarystep (talk) 13:33, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   What part of "I don't want to continue this" do you not understand?! I wish that you'd at least respect that, since we're not going to convince one another, hence why I mostly left your oppose vote alone. I'll also copy-paste what I said in Beer Parlour here, "I've already addressed the other points to my satisfaction multiple times, and unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be able to explain myself to your own satisfaction", which still rings very true. No amount of explanations on my part will ever convince you, and that's fine, and that's why I'm fine with you voting oppose. And I'll direct other folks to what @WordyAndNerdy said as well about censorship in Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2022/June. And I was the one who's brought up attempts to ban fandom slang at the RFD everypony and TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS ALREADY, so I am well aware of it. I truly do not want this to flood and obscure this page like we did with Beer Parlour, and if you reply again in an attempt to get me to reply to certain points on the proposal, I will collapse it or make it small text. I'm tired. AG202 (talk) 13:39, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   If you seriously don't want to continue the conversation, then just ignore it. It's quite rude to demand someone doesn't answer you just because you don't want to counteract the arguments that are being made. - Sarilho1 (talk) 21:54, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   My point was that I already had replied to the arguments made, you can go look at the very, very long Beer Parlour discussion for that, it went in circles and circles and flooded the space. And if we want to get into rudeness, we can certainly get into that some more elsewhere, as I'm not a fan of certain behaviors that have been expressed to me in crafting this proposal over the past few months. It bothers me to ignore it, because it makes it seem like I haven't responded to certain points or that I've ignored their points, when in fact I entertained them for so long already, hence why I keep directing folks to Beer Parlour. AG202 (talk) 22:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

3. Support I see this as comparable to the heightened scrutiny for biographies of living people on WP: like BLP, these are a magnate for trolls and vandals, and so IMO it's reasonable to make sure we're dealing with legit terms. If it takes 6 mos to delete a spurious synonym for toothpaste, little harm is done, but these hoaxes are intended to cause harm. I think an exemption should be made for old slurs, but we can deal with that if it ever becomes a problem. kwami (talk) 05:03, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
4. Support —Tibidibi (talk) 11:53, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
5. Support —Fish bowl (talk) 06:19, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
6. Support Benwing2 (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
7. Support John Cross (talk) 19:21, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
8. Support - TheDaveRoss 12:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose We shouldn't hold certain words to a higher standard than the rest. If a word exists, we should document it, and that includes offensive terms. The fact that a word is morally objectionable doesn't justify our pretending it doesn't exist. Whether we like it or not, these are real words that people have used, and pretending otherwise isn't going to make the world or Wiktionary any better. Our decision to include these terms doesn't mean that we're endorsing their usage or declaring our support of racist ideology. Our job as a descriptivist dictionary is to document language as it is, not as it should be. The fact that these terms are abhorrent is ultimately irrelevant to our stated purpose of documenting "all words in all languages", as such a goal necessitates the inclusion of offensive and reprehensible terms. According to WT:NOT, Wiktionary is not censored, and it should stay that way. Binarystep (talk) 22:47, 13 June 2022 (UTC) (edited)

   (vote hasn't started yet) AG202 (talk) 22:52, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

   Sorry, didn't notice that. My bad. Binarystep (talk) 23:46, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

   On its face, I agree with this view and I will likely vote this way. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:16, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

   Note the following statement under “Rationale for this proposal”: “The proposal does not seek to ban derogatory terms from the Dictionary. Terms which are properly attested will remain in the Dictionary.” — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:39, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

   I don't think anyone's claiming that this proposal aims to ban all derogatory terms. Option 2 would, however, ban certain derogatory terms despite them being properly attested, for the explicit purpose of censoring the dictionary. Binarystep (talk) 14:32, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

   For other folks reading this vote, see the conversation at Beer Parlour for more on the "censoring" point. AG202 (talk) 14:41, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

2. Oppose The same set of attestation criteria should apply to every inclusion-worthy term in a language. I'm not necessarily opposed to the concept of treating entire websites as a single source for the purposes of WT:ATTEST, but I think that, if introduced, this rule should apply equally to all terms. From a lexicographical point of view, there is no particular difference between a derogatory term that was only ever used on Usenet by 3 people and a non-derogatory term that was only ever used on Usenet by 3 people. This, that and the other (talk) 07:49, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   @This, that and the other I actually had considered that, but then I heard the points about fandom terms from folks like @Whoop whoop pull up & @WordyAndNerdy, and I wouldn't feel comfortable deleting harmless fandom words that are only documented on Usenet. AG202 (talk) 11:41, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   @AG202 Out of curiosity, when did I talk about that? That's not a topic I recall having made points on. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 20:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   @Whoop whoop pull up I think I may have accidentally mixed you up with someone else, apologies. @Lingo Bingo Dingo is whom I meant to tag. AG202 (talk) 20:09, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   @AG202 No harm done. :-P Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 20:13, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

3. Oppose as a confluence of the following arguments:
   • Having different attestation requirements for different words based on their semantic content is a non-starter. If we find exactly three Usenet posts saying "This person is a friendly simbyona." and another three saying "This person is a dirty kursayto." (with the context elucidating the meaning in each case) then the first one is, in the eyes of Wiktionary, supposed to be a word whereas the second one is not? There is absolutely no ontological difference between the terms.
   • The reputation of the project is hurt more if we impose stricter attestation requirements based on derogatoriness. Granted, we probably include more derogatory words than most serious dictionaries. Further granted, this does hurt our reputation in the eyes of the average person somewhat (not saying this is how it should be, but it descriptively is). However, being known for implementing inconsistent inclusion criteria based on words' derogatoriness is a worse reputation than having too many derogatory words, not least because for a dictionary, it is generally worse to have too few words than it is to have too many.
   • Nonceness is of no relevance. I personally have no doubt that some of the rare racial slur blends have been independently invented by separate users (i.e. the users have not heard nor read the term prior to using it) but I would take the same position regarding rare -ly, un-, re-, -er, -ness etc. constructions (e.g. intouchedness). This is of no concern because our mission is to document usage and to provide a reference with which to understand and analyze used language, not to venture into purely speculative inquiries into what may or may not belong to the lexical corpus of a language.
   • The proposal asks that derogatory terms be cited on at least two different websites. The issue is that currently no internet forum apart from Usenet is permitted as a source. The way I read it, even if a derogatory term can be found on Usenet, Reddit, and Twitter, it still would fail RFV because only the Usenet citations would count per WT:ATTEST. In essence, derogatory terms that can only be found on the internet will all be excluded, except if in the future the community comes to an agreement about how and which internet sources to allow. Even so, accepting the current proposal requires blind faith that we eventually fix WT:ATTEST in the forseeable future; however, this faith is misplaced.

   I have two more arguments but I decided to end it here because this has already gotten too long. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:43, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   @Fytcha To your last point, it's not just websites, it's sources in general. For example n*ggerness was cited in print, so it'd be kept regardless. And to your Reddit/Twitter point, that's still being figured out and there've been terms kept post-that change, see melanoheliophobia, that were primarily cited on Twitter & Reddit. And I could definitely see Wiktionary as a whole voting to keep these offensive terms if they were solely cited on Usenet, Twitter, and Reddit anyways. And so, as one of the people who fought for that change to WT:ATTEST, it's just a bit frustrating to see that mentioned here. This hasn't been blind nor misplaced faith if we have direct examples of the opposite of what you've mentioned happening. AG202 (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   @AG202: Yes, that last point was not worded well, apologies. For derogatory internet-only terms it is two websites, which currently means having to pass a (RFV) vote. This is a strong counter-argument not only considering that some seem to oppose non-durably archived sources no matter what (which would cause these terms to fail even if they have three durably archived Usenet quotations) but also because it will be very hard for such votes to be held neutrally and fairly (we are essentially talking about the most offensive words possible). For some, it is understandably an emotional topic, whereas others don't want to have wrong conclusions being drawn from their support to keep such words. I would be shocked if this vote passing won't lead to most of the derogatory internet-only terms being deleted in the long run, no matter how frequently they're being used outside Usenet. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 18:51, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

   Considering how Darky C*ntinent passed RFD and some of the rhetoric I've received in going through these proposals, I'd actually be surprised if they struck down offensive terms like that, but I do see your concern. Personally, I still am very iffy on some Usenet quotes in general since some are from 2021, but that's another conversation for another time. AG202 (talk) 19:15, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

4. Oppose per Binarystep, This, that and the other, and Fytcha. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 20:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
5. Oppose per all of the above. We should not hold terms to different attestation standards based on their subjective classification as "derogatory" or "not derogatory." Imetsia (talk) 23:38, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
6. Oppose as I wrote below the other option. Fay Freak (talk) 19:19, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
7. Oppose as this would prevent offensive words that have wide use on only one platform being able to be included. This would reduce the usefulness of Wiktionary. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:46, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
8. Oppose I don't think there should be stricter attestation criteria for derogatory and/or offensive entries. --沈澄心✉ 15:52, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
9. Oppose Anyone can find anything derogatory and I don’t think such terms should be held to a higher standard anyway. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:10, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
10. Oppose This goes against our principle of descriptivism and, along with it, our main goals. Attestability alone should decide. brittletheories (talk) 20:03, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
11. Oppose I think site-specific slang, however offensive, still counts as part of "all words in all languages". Thadh (talk) 22:31, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
12. Oppose Superfluous. If the cites exist; cite. If not, delete. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:42, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
13. Oppose Akonada (talk) 15:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
14. Oppose — We need not have some silly bias against certain terms based only on their usage context. Let all language be treated equally. PseudoSkull (talk) 00:17, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
15. Oppose ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:14, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
16. Oppose Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 15:01, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
17. Oppose It's not necessary to be stricter than normal for a certain set of words. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:51, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Abstain

1. Comment: was leaning towards supporting initially, but it's true this would cause a bit of inconsistency as the opposers point out. I don't oppose it if we set the requirement to disallow all Usenet-only words and requiring another independent source other than Usenet for citing such terms. —Svārtava (talk) • 11:41, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

   @Svartava2 I've considered this, see: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/February § Increasing the number of citations required for Usenet and updating CFI; however, it got considerable opposition there and I agree that it would limit fandom slang which is harmless. And so, I thought that this would be the compromise and was told to put this to a vote since it'd have "enough" support (surprisingly they haven't voted yet), but it seems like we were a bit too naïve to think that anything significant would change on this front for this website, though I can't say I'm surprised considering the environment. AG202 (talk) 12:07, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

2. Comment: Like one of my favorite American political commentators Bill Maher, I personally consider the term "COVID-19" to be an illegitimate nomenclature, because other diseases are named for locations too, like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, etc,., and that doesn't mean the Rocky Mountains are bad. In daily life, I do not use the term COVID-19 or its variants, and I always use the original term Wuhan coronavirus, called "sometimes offensive" by Wiktionary. (Nor, of course, would I ever imagine to use the Trump-popularized term "China virus".) I see the term Wuhan coronavirus as morally neutral, whereas I see the term "COVID-19" to be the result of a foreign-influence campaign by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and "China virus" as just absurd. In Taiwan, my Kuomintang-leaning professor (leaning pro-CCP in the climate of that time) felt that the equivalent Mandarin-language term 武漢肺炎／武汉肺炎 (Wǔhàn fèiyán) might be distasteful or perhaps politically incorrect. Also, I have communicated with friends in Wuhan who told me, in no uncertain terms, that I, a non-citizen of the People's Republic of China (PRC), should never use the terminology 武漢肺炎／武汉肺炎 (Wǔhàn fèiyán) or, in English, Wuhan coronavirus. As we all know, the entire nation of the PRC was recently designated by the thirty nations of the NATO alliance as a 'threat' to that alliance likely because of the level of control the CCP organization exercises over China and wishes to exercise globally. Now, what can happen with the wording of both proposals above is that they could be easily manipulated by the CCP regime to clamp down on dissent against their global soft power campaigns. So I count the time wasted trying to fix the white supremacist crazy entries like FaCIAbook and similar as gain, because the alternative is that the policy will be used by pro-CCP elements to further break the will of the English speaking world by denying English its own vocabulary. So-called offensive (I would say 'impolite') language is an integral and important part of English; the other dictionaries are not as descriptive as Wiktionary and lack r=these terms. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:22, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

   ...wait what? This isn't even really relevant and just gives a big feeling of yikes to me. (also COVID-19 is definitely not the only disease recently to avoid using a location as that's more accurate and less dehumanizing, see: Ebola, SARS, swine flu/H1N1, etc.) And don't even get me started on the claim that this would be "denying English its own vocabulary". This is not the place for the kind of rant that you've posted. AG202 (talk) 14:56, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

   The WHO changed its policy on the naming of infectious diseases in 2015 because it creates a stigma to name it after places. That doesn't mean we're going to go back and rename every disease that already has a name, though. Theknightwho (talk) 16:21, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

   @Geographyinitiative: I'm actually quite bemused by your comment here, because you previously rightly lamented the "hyperfocus on crudity", and asked "You care so much about internet racist slang, but 'discrimination' literally has no cites but one I just added. When will 'discrimination' as an entry be ready to be considered as a word of the day?" Well, this proposal is an attempt to address that issue. At the end of the day, as is pointed out above, if a derogatory entry is properly attested it will remain in the Wiktionary; the proposal makes this clear. Thus, even if there is some sort of concerted effort to remove certain terms from the Wiktionary it will fail unless the terms can't be attested to begin with. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:55, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

This is EXACTLY the place for the kind of respectfully-worded comment I've posted above. CCP propaganda, relevant to a NATO identified 'threat' to NATO (in their words), is pushed at every turn on Wiktionary: see diff diff for an example CCP propaganda forced on the readers. So the relevance of my above comment to this page is obvious to me at least: English language words and concepts (as Wuhan coronavirus) will be boxed out via the doctrine of political correctness on the basis that they are offensive, when in fact they are representative of a normative system of usage (until 2015). The idea is to say that I'm racist because I'm using the original term; I'm not- I just don't accept influence campaign to stop me from using the word. I wasn't racist then. I wasn't racist now. I will not be racist later. Just cite the words. I am against focus on the evil crazy words, but just delete them if cites can't be found! Easy! The extra analysis about the intent of the word is the dangerous part, and more especially if there aren't cites. This is exactly the place, exactly the time, and exactly the content you need to see. Bill Maher said Wuhan coronavirus was okay, but the 'window' can and will be moved on even historical terms, like Spanish flu. It's a problem; I suspect this policy would exacerbate not reduce it. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:37, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

English speakers as a whole have strongly favored COVID-19 or similar terms since it hit the pandemic stage. COVID-19 did not exist before 2015. The trends of speakers change all the time, that is how language development works. You are the one going out of your way to use the other term. There is no CCP-driven campaign BS. The diff that you've provided is not relevant to this instance. The usage of COVID-19 is not relevant to what's considered a NATO "threat", otherwise every country in NATO would not be using the equivalent translation for their language. Seriously. This is not the place for theories like that. AG202 (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

"There is no CCP-driven campaign BS." As regards to the use of "is" (present tense) in the quoted sentence, yes. As regards to "was" (past tense), Wiktionary disagrees. Wuhan_coronavirus#Usage_notes "Separately, China protested to the WHO and media outlets that such terms unfairly blamed and stigmatized China and other East Asian people in a racist manner." In my view, the campaign happened and succeeded. Now I'm a Trump supporter racist because I'm using the words China doesn't want. As low-brow but formerly loved political commentator Bill Maher, noted racist and Trump supporter, pointed out at that very time in the YouTube video here: "New Rule: Virus Shaming" (10 April 2020), a very large number of diseases up to whenever WHO started not doing it were and still are called by their location of discovery. I don't mean to get too political here, but I have to point out what's going on. Note that the example I gave above was irrelevant not because it wasn't CCP propaganda, it was irrelevant "to this instance". I don't mean to get people too angry so I will try not to respond to any more comments. I love you all. Thanks for your work. Take care. (Note: I will not continue the conversation beyond four posts from me; I have reached three.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:27, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

No one here called you or implied that you are a racist, but you have now referred to yourself as it at least twice. Also, no, I’ve already provided other examples of where diseases weren’t referred to by the location where they originated. Also, the Wiktionary usage note is poor and should be rewritten, but I’m not going to do that now. AG202 (talk) 21:25, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Well okay. I don't agree. Here's another irrelevant "to this instance": diff. Also: "They have accused Beijing of conducting a vast, secret economic and political offensive that is looting billions of pounds worth of advanced technology, trying to influence elections, and infiltrating academia." in China poses ‘breathtaking’ threat to West and bigger danger than Russia say MI5 and FBI --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:02, 6 July 2022 (UTC) (modified)

Once again, if that was an instance of CCP influence, so be it, but it has nothing to do with the proposal at hand, nor did it frame the proposal (all of the discussions are linked), hence why I said it’s not relevant to the discussion at hand and takes up space. Also, this proposal is not solely for English to begin with, and there have been RDFs for Chinese terms too, like it’d be absolutely ridiculous to say that the deletion of Chinese terms here by Chinese editors is evident of American intent to limit or deprive Chinese speakers of their language. And so, the inverse applies as well. AG202 (talk) 23:28, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Decision

• Option 1: Passed 17-6-1.
• Option 2: Failed 8-17-2.

Now look at what's happened. Users are using this as an incentive to mass tag entries for speedy deletion that were created over 7 years ago, like donkeyfucker or camelfucker, only because of the incentive this vote has caused to do so (and for no other reason whatsoever). Leaving my fundamental disagreements with this entire rule aside, I am starting to see the consequence of having the deletion be based solely on the date of the entry's creation. Normally I wouldn't comment on the decision section like this, but seriously, this is hurting Wiktionary, and I think it'd be worth at least giving this vote another look. Couldn't we at least have it be based on when the tag is instated, so that the entries can be given more of a chance? Keep in mind, the deletion of an entry means that the entire edit history is removed (unless undeleted by an admin), so even if the entry were recreated with citations, the old information that existed on these entries is no longer available. So yes, I do think this is harmful to the site. Allow that we at least give these older entries a little more of a chance than that. PseudoSkull (talk) 00:21, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I will add to this that I undeleted the entries I mentioned, and cited them. And both of these entries were pretty easily citable for me and usage on Google Books was readily apparent, so I think that this vote is encouraging people to lazily tag for deletion rather than take the time to cite the entries themselves. I hate to say it, I really do, but this is appearing more and more to be a very Wikipedic precedent... PseudoSkull (talk) 00:40, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

(Replying because you initially directly pinged me) I would go back and look at the rationale behind the vote in the first place. You think that the deletion of these terms hurts Wiktionary, but I personally think that having these nonce derogatory terms in the first place hurts the project, groups of its editors, and its readers. We disagree there which is fine, but that’s why we had this vote to see where consensus is and option 1 passed. I have gone through the painstaking process of finding durable and accurate cites for words like Mickey Mouse ring & yassification, but I’m not keen on doing it for offensive terms per my own principles. This vote is very much not my only reason for using this template, and I would highly suggest reading through my many comments on this issue to see where I stand. Nor am I doing it lazily; while the two terms in question may have been a misstep, I have been going through terms methodically, seeing which ones had cites or not and see whether or not they seemed citable to me. I do not care if you disagree, but please do not make judgements about my motives without at least asking me first. If you like, you can go through all the derogatory terms listed in the categories and add cites to all of them, but part of the rationale of this vote was specifically to avoid clutter and avoid long lists of RFVs. (Edit: will also quote Theknightwho here: “The policy specifically says that it's without prejudice to re-creation.”) Also, as a side note, it’s been interesting to see the same folks as the entry creators for some of these, especially IPs, from whom I’ve received rude and targeted comments after adding the template, only furthering my thought about some of the folks creating and furthering those entries and why we needed policies like this in the first place. AG202 (talk) 01:26, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: let the policy operate for a month or two, then raise any suggestions for tweaking it at the Beer Parlour and we can have a follow-up vote if necessary. Personally I think there is little loss to Wiktionary that unattested derogatory terms that were created some time ago are removed pursuant to the policy. If there are any quotations in such entries, I have moved them to citations pages. It remains open to someone, if they really want to, to maintain their own list of such terms, find the required number of qualifying quotations, and request for the verified terms to be undeleted. (Like @AG202, it’s not something I’ll be spending time on.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:33, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

@AG202, Sgconlaw That solution is fair, but please, if I may ask, be a little more careful for the time being. You deleted goatfucker, which had 4 definitions and a pretty lengthy translations section for an entry like this. As such, it had a pretty sizable edit history with many experienced users editing the page (though about half of the edit history was vandalism, I'll admit that much). I did shorten the definitions down to one because I felt like 4 definitions for this was unnecessary, but the edit history ought to be there in case we ever want some of those defs reinstated. Citations for this were also very obviously there. Also, with 662 page views in the past 30 days alone for goatfucker, 114 for camelfucker, and 23 (not so impressive but still) for donkeyfucker, it's clear to me that entries like this are, in fact, relevant to the dictionary, whether we like the terms or not (and they're pretty unlikable, with many being blatantly racist, so I certainly don't). I know it's a hard request given that this ruling seems to support free-for-all deletions of entries which are, otherwise from having no citations at the time, completely valid as entries, but I ask to at least try to be a little more gracious despite that. Given concerns outlined here, I will be bringing this issue back up in the near future. PseudoSkull (talk) 09:10, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: at the time I deleted it, it did not have any qualifying quotations, regardless of the number of definitions. I see that you have now added some quotations. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:03, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw No, you miss my point. Don't rely on a newly instated policy to do your work for you. An entry (on a moral level) shouldn't be deleted for reasons like this if there is a massive edit history, many translations, and several definitions, with over 600 page views per month. It's just wrong, and before this vote, such behavior would be classified as reckless. The validation of an entry like this should at least be taken more seriously in that case than deleting it. Can we not dig through Google Books even a little bit before deleting a page? Because that was all it took me to find that citations were readily apparent in a source we universally accept. PseudoSkull (talk) 13:42, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the page views for a derogatory term are the best thing to be praising... AG202 (talk) 15:27, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull @Sgconlaw Late-ish reply, but in the "real world", a new policy like this would generally not be applied retrospectively. The compromise approach that I've been taking is the one that PseudoSkull suggested (i.e. going from the date of tagging), which is achievable by listing those entries at RFV. It does mean that the switch-over to the new system takes longer, but it's fairer. With new entries, people are expected to know this could happen if they choose not to bother citing, but that doesn't apply to entries from years ago. Theknightwho (talk) 17:31, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

{{reply|Theknightwho}} I think it is reasonable to count the two weeks from the date of tagging. I don't think we thought through the application of the policy to entries created some time ago. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:42, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

The policy is what it says; that the supporters did not think it through seems apparent. The ideal course of action is to undo the policy, IMHO. The supporters did not explain why unattested offensive or derogatory terms are more of a problem than unattested non-offensive terms. My position is that unattested content is bad and a real problem since RFV is usually overloaded and administered slowly. When an admin sees a new entry suspected to be unattested, the normal course of action is to send it to RFV to request attesting quotations.

Once you send entries to RFV instead of speeding them, the only difference this policy makes is that it reduces the RFV period from a month (over 4 weeks) to 2 weeks, about half the period. RFV nominations usually survive for much longer than a month, often months, so the real problem is not the policy period but rather the low-rate administration of RFV.

That said, it would be advisable for admins to stop enforcing the policy until it is removed or fixed.

One can also do a bit of lawyering and point out that this policy as written should have very little impact. One of its items says "must meet the usual attestation requirements": since attestation requirements do not indicate where the evidence is to be located, an entry meets attestation requirements (WT:ATTEST) even if Wiktionary has no evidence at all and all the evidence is only somewhere on the Internet. This is one more evidence that the supporters did not have enough of lawyering mindset to be actually qualified to vote on what they apparently supported.

One should ask: is this policy designed for relieve RFV from overload, and if so how? It would have to support speedy deletions without RFV. Does this policy desire to support speedy deletions? If a term is freshly created and noticed, it cannot be speedied and 2 weeks of waiting are required. In such a case, is the admin suppossed to not list the entry in RFV so that it can be speedy deleted two weeks later? As soon as the entry is put to RFV, it is no longer a speedy deletion but rather somewhat speedied deletion, but the admin overhead remains: 1) tag the entry, 2) put the entry to RFV page, 3) close the RFV nom as failed if applicable, 4) archive the RFV nom to talk page. The RFV process has significant overhead, and that overhead is not reduced at all by reducing the period from a month to 2 weeks. On the other hand, if one desires to speedy delete old offensive or derogatory entries with no attesting quotations in the entry (which is not supported by the current policy since it only requires that the entry meets attesting requirements without indicating where the evidence must be located), the problem with that is that there is no notification to those who would like to salvage the entry by providing attesting quotations.

A somewhat useful policy would be very simple, and like this: The minimum RFV discussion period for derogatory terms is 2 weeks. It does not provide for speedying and somewhat reliefs the RFV page. It still requires notification of citors by using RFV process and never speedy deletion. This policy would be voted on and placed to Wiktionary:Requests for verification/Header rather than CFI. A text change:

OLD: Closing a request: After a discussion has sat for more than a month without being “cited”, or after a discussion has been “cited” for more than a week without challenge, the discussion may be closed.

NEW: Closing a request: After a discussion has sat for more than a month for non-derogatory terms and two weeks for derogatory terms without being “cited”, or after a discussion has been “cited” for more than a week without challenge, the discussion may be closed.

I added boldface to the period.

One can even go for one week to speed things even a little more: the nomination will still sit in RFV for one more week before it is archived, so even after closure a citer can add attesting quotations directly to the RFV nomination page and if the citer is an admin, they can undelete the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:15, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

One should also ponder that by being non-censored, Wiktionary contains a huge amount of attested derogatory and vulgar content, and no speeding up of attestation processes can do anything about it. Words that were unthinkable to be included in respected dictionaries around 1900 are to stay. There is going to be no deletion of nigger, faggot, fuck, unclefucker, etc. Content that many users will find offensive is to stay because it is attested in use, and there is hardly anything that can be done about it. I would hazard a guess that at any point of time the number of attested derogatory and vulgar terms in Wiktionary is going to largely exceed the number of unattested ones, where attested means that attesting quotations exist, not that they are in the mainspace or citation space. The notion that an unattested derogatory term causes real harm is bizarre; what kind of harm? If we allow that ideas can cause harm, Wikipedia is much more in danger of causing harm since it documents even dangerous ideas. For an example, Darwinian evolution by natural selection is a dangerous idea, one that has indirectly caused much more harm than a dubious word can ever create, not because the idea is incorrect but because it can be used and has been used to justify normative ideas that have caused real harm in 20th century. (Admittedly, the idea does not need Wikipedia to be spread.) Similarly, if we assume that Rohrschach test had any utility, that utility could have been harmed by Wikipedia's coverage by the test. And Wikisource can host all sorts of dangerous texts that are in public domain, containing all sorts of dangerous or odious ideas and proposals for action, full with articulation and erroneous justification. I cannot imagine how a derogatory word present in a dictionary could ever cause a significant harm anywhere close to comparable to that. Like, if a term insults a particular person, is the person going to feel harmed? A degoratory term implies that the person or group is bad, that is not even anything like libel since it is so generic; by contrast, Wikipedia runs the risk of spreading false allegations lacking verification, doing damage to reputation, hence BLP. Specific false allegations can cause harm, but "X is bad" without anything like substantiation hardly so. And if the term insults black people, is the added harm any significant given all the attested terms insulting them? But even if you want to have an analogue of BLP, make it so: restrict it to terms insulting specific people, not groups, and there would be so few of them that you can even allow speedying immediately with no waiting period and no listing in RFV, and that would really help relieve RFV, even though just a tiny bit since hardly anyone bothers to invent terms for specific persons. The policy could read A term derogatory to a specific person can be speedily deleted with no further process if the term entry in the mainspace or in the citation namespace does not contain evidence that the term meets WT:ATTEST. I cannot see how this would be controversial since there are so few of such terms anyway and this would be in the BLP spirit. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Let us get some sense of numbers:

• Category:English ethnic slurs: 507 entries
• Category:English derogatory terms: 5,075 entries
• Category:English offensive terms: 970 entries
• Category:English vulgarities: 2,480 entries
• Thesaurus:person of color: have a glance

Any complication of CFI and processes must pay for itself in some significant tangible benefit; we want editors to read CFI and process descriptions. Best action is to undo the vote, IMHO; next best is either let all derogatory deletions go through RFV with 1 or 2 weeks discussion period instead of a month or have all derogatory terms specific to a particular person be speedied with no ado and no waiting time unless evidence is in Wiktionary, a real analogue of Wikipedia's W:WP:BLP. Derogatory terms in Wiktionary cannot cause any real harm, unlike dangerous ideas successfully prescribing a specific cause of action. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:34, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky "Derogatory terms in Wiktionary cannot cause any real harm", according to your interpretation sure, but as someone who's the direct target of tons of these cites and words and have seen the real consequences of giving these words space that they never would've had, I strongly disagree. "And if the term insults black people, is the added harm any significant given all the attested terms insulting them?" this comment specifically feels especially gauche, just because there are common terms attacking us does not mean that we are fine with more. Going through some of the words and especially the cites found here, I would've never expected them nor been exposed to some of the straight up racist and horrific comments from the white supremacist depths of Usenet, and honestly, the response that I've received here for speaking out about it has only made the experience worse, and if not for my work with LDLs and expanding coverage of severely underrepresented languages, I would've quit the project when I first encountered this. I've also received very negative and targeted comments from certain folks since implementing part of this vote since I guess it feels like it's an attack on their ability to add slurs? (An example: [2], thankfully they've been blocked) This is also part of why there's so little participation from those communities. In my conversations off-line with editors who would like to edit for West African languages, for example, they're much more hesitant to participate in the project and put in the work to expand coverage and add terms, when some prolific folks, especially when they're in general positions of power. So yes, even if you don't perceive it, there is added harm (also I don't know if you're Black, but if you're not, please don't assume what we feel about this type of issue; you could always just ask). The question then becomes what is our actual goal with the project? Thanks to those numbers, we have more English ethnic slurs than we do terms in many African languages (with millions of speakers) combined. What's the image that we're giving readers and potential editors? We don't have to have all these terms. We don't have to give them this space; it's a choice. Is this the choice that we really want to make? I'll leave that to think about. See also: my reply to sche at Template talk:derogatory § Speedy deletion, my reply to Fytcha here User talk:Chuck Entz § Admin vandalism, and my comments at Beer Parlour for specific responses to policy points. (CC: @Fytcha, @Sgconlaw, @Theknightwho, @Tibidibi) AG202 (talk) 21:29, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky I think you should try making that argument about attestation requirements at RFV about an entry that you can't find citations for and see how that goes down. Given that, as you say, WT:ATTEST doesn't state where the evidence needs to be, it's clear that we shouldn't be failing/deleting any terms at all! Naturally, the process of verification and going through the usual process of attestation is just time-wasting pap. Validation? Burden of proof, you ask? What are those? Theknightwho (talk) 22:41, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Sure, RFV is a request for attestation evidence and if no evidence is provided within a time frame, RFV fails and an entry is deleted. But the term "attested" does not mean "having evidence in Wiktionary". Only attested terms can be included; if that woud mean "only entries having attestation evidence in Wiktionary can be included", that would result in deletion of nearly all Wiktionary content. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:02, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

This policy says that the term must “meet the usual attestation requirements”, not that it “must be attested”. The usual attestation requirements require that either one or three citations be provided, or that evidence is given that it is in clearly widespread use. The operative word is “requirements”, which entails more then the fact that evidence merely exists. That’s aside from the fact that we cannot rely on evidence, extant or not, if we don’t actually know that it exists in the first place. Theknightwho (talk) 07:22, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

My understanding of the term "attestation requirements" is that it refers to the terms of WT:CFI#Attestation, which says what "attested" means. I don't know what else "attestation requirements" is supposed to mean, especially when the term occurs within CFI, and therefore per default refers to other parts of CFI. CFI does not say anything about where the evidence is to be located, and in fact, we have historically allowed in RFV the evidence to be placed directly to the RFV discussion, less than fully formatted to ease the labor of citors. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:31, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, “attestation requirements” refers to WT:ATTEST, which is a policy that is well-understood from a procedural perspective, and means that this policy is specifically tied to the same standard to which we hold RFV already. In other words: there is no situation in which a term would fail RFV but still somehow meet WT:ATTEST under this policy, so if you have a problem with this, you must clearly also have a problem with RFV as a whole. You don’t get to pick and choose how strictly to apply the standard, just because you don’t like this rule. Theknightwho (talk) 18:28, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

@AG202: I am not black. Derogatory terms don't cause physical harm and don't kill, and are nothing like libel, and I don't see above any arguments or evidence in support of the statement that Wiktionary's having derogatory ethnic slurs causes harm, merely an affirmation of that being so, and no specific harm was even mentioned, just vague "real consequences". We will have many attested derogatory terms including ethnic slurs since the project has decided to be uncensored, and this vote does not change that, and in fact, this vote's second proposal failing suggests there will be no consensus to treat derogatory terms differently as far as attestation requirements. What this vote changes is that it fails to notify citors that there is citing to be done (by allowing speedy deletions without RFV), and it complicates the rules, and any rule complication has to pay for itself. If the desire was that deletions go unnoticed by citors, that may well be accomplished but does not seem to be a commendable purpose. It is not our fault that the millions of speakers of African languages do not expend their efforts on documenting their languages in Wiktionary; this is a vounteer project and every contributor decides on their own what content to contribute. The natural outcome is that only a handful languages have anything like half-decent coverage. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:02, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

You've utterly missed or ignored my point, and I explicitly mentioned the direct harm in that it's led to possible editors refusing to contribute to the project. There are more African language speakers who've had the idea of or wanted to contribute, but balked at these types of discussions in conversations with me, and stopped wanting to contribute. If that's not "harm" to you, then so be it. AG202 (talk) 08:38, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

That is not a harm that the Wiktionary causes to anyone; it is merely a loss of potential contributors. And if they were in earnest about documenting their language, they would not have to have anything to do with English offensive entries. I do not recall any registered editor of the project attacking other editors based on skin color, and skin color does not need to be reported anyway: we are online. I still do not see you responding to "we are going to have many attested derogatory words anyway". --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:04, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I already responded to that: "just because there are common terms attacking us does not mean that we are fine with more..." And in fact, I have had at least one registered editor make comments about my race, I won't name/link to them since they later apologized, but considering that you haven't been active until very recently, I'm not surprised that you haven't seen what's been happening. Skin color doesn't need to be reported, but it does form some decisions and opinions related to the project. "they would not have to have anything to do with English offensive entries": if it were explicitly limited to just pages, then there'd be less of an issue, but this stuff has permeated almost everywhere. This has been going on for months on end. And I don't know about you, but I would hope that we'd have a focus on making a welcoming environment where editors for languages that are severely lacking in coverage feel comfortable contributing to the project. Wiktionary is one of the only dictionaries (if not the only one) that has English definitions/coverage for these languages, and if editors don't feel comfortable because of issues/rhetoric like this, it's truly a loss. AG202 (talk) 14:54, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

The idea that a loss of potential contributors is not harmful to Wiktionary is utter nonsense, too. We strive to be welcome precisely because of the benefits that brings to the community as whole. Reprehensible to see an admin make that kind of point, quite honestly. Theknightwho (talk) 18:45, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

(outdent) Re: "this stuff has permeated almost everywhere. This has been going on for months on end": What do you mean? What stuff? Where did it permeate? This vote is about derogatory terms that are ethnic slurs; what other content or editor behavior has been problematic, and how is the vote proposal going to address that? --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:45, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I know that you just became active again, which is fine, we all need breaks, but at the very least you can make sure to review the discussions linked and try to find out the context for all of this. There have been numerous discussions at RFVs, RFDs, Beer Parlour (some of which are linked in the description of this vote), along with evidence of IPs existing specifically to create this sort of problem by spam-creating offensive terms. This vote proposal itself doesn't address that directly, obviously, as it's much more specific, but the reason I brought that up in the first place is because you claimed that having these terms and the climate around them "does no actual harm". I can't link to everything directly and I would literally be typing multiple long essays out if I were to restate everything that I've said/seen before; at some point, if you're going to making these bold claims, it's on you to make sure that you've gone through everything and read the context beforehand. AG202 (talk) 19:38, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

This vote does present evidence in support of what it aims to do, in #Rationale for the proposal. There is a list of terms there that are alleged to be problematic, and a great majority of them has been cited. I asked what "this stuff has permeated almost everywhere" means, and I have no idea; it seems to be some kind of hyperbole. Let's suppose that "this stuff" refers to ethnic slurs. The term "everywhere" is extremely broad and refers at the very least to all mainspace entries. It surely is not true that ethnic slurs have permeated almost all mainspace entries. It follows that you are making extremely hyperbolic claims. I am supposed to do my reading beyond the already refuted rationale for the proposal, but you are supposed to be free to make untrue extremely hyperbolic statements. I do not say that you have no point, but from what I can see, you have failed to make that point. If you decided to ignore the entries that are ethnic slurs and if you did not tell your friends about the ethnic slurs, what is the chance that they would run into the ethnic slurs by chance? Your friends could easily have contributed while hardly ever running into content that they find offensive to themselves. Ethnic slurs for black people are limited to the category and to Thesaurus:person of color, which can be linked from the mainspace without the mainspace emphasizing that it contains derogatory terms, or mentioning the derogatory terms. I don't think you have to write essays; it suffices for you to provide specific evidence of the problem, in the form of recently added truly unattested (as contrasted to having no attesting quotations in the mainspace) entries. The list of entries provided in this vote turned out to be unconvincing for the purpose of option 1. You may want to avoid mentioning the terms here since that contributes to their spread; I can admit that to be a problem since once a term enters RFV, it will be archived on the talk page even if it fails, which kind of contributes to the term spread. But then, someone searching for failed ethnic slurs would have to wade through the category of failed terms, which is full of non-slurs. I admit that the use of {{derogatory}} to actually tag the old derogatory entries and waiting for two weeks rather than deleting them outright is not all that bad, although it still makes it harder for citors to find there is work to be done; but that use of {{derogatory}} for old derogatory entries is not made mandatory by option 1. Under the interpretation that "meeting the usual attestation requirements" means "having attesting quotations in Wiktionary", option 1 makes it possible for an admin to speedy delete old derogatory entries in volume, and since only a tiny minority of Wiktionary entries contain attesting quotations, an admin could speedy delete almost all content from Category:English ethnic slurs. As a minimum correction, a follow-up vote should make the use of {{derogatory}} mandatory for deleting non-RFV terms together with two week waiting period after tagging, to give the citors a bit of a chance. And even if that is mandated, an admin can still pretty easily tag 1000 entries with {{derogatory}} in a day and delete them in volume in 14 days; that may not have been the intent of option 1, but is its logical consequence. So again, I see bad possibly unintended consequences of option 1 and I do not see how a prospective contributor who does not go out of their way to find ethnic slurs runs into them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:27, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky Is Beer Parlour not a public-facing forum for editors? It's linked at Wiktionary:Community_Portal which is suggested to go through for new editors on the front page, and is also the premier place for community discussion on Wiktionary. These convos have also taken the forefront on the very active Discord server (which is valid if you haven't seen it). I'd understand where you're coming from more if it were just limited to those entries (and RFV/RFD), but that's not how I came across them myself, nor how other potential editors have come across them. The statements that I'm making are not untrue; it's what has happened if you were here throughout this whole ordeal. I never ever said that they permeated all namespace entries as that just doesn't make sense, it's more the community spaces, which are supposed to be reflective of the community. AG202 (talk) 14:42, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

You said "this stuff has permeated almost everywhere": that's just not true, right? Okay, so the slurs were discussed in Beer parlour, and that is the problem that you have. Are you okay with speedy volume deletion of nearly all terms in Category:English ethnic slurs, as option 1 allows? Were other supporters of option1 okay with such a speedy deletion? Perhaps not nearly all: I have no positive knowledge of how many actually lack 3 quotations, but a random look suggests a large portion lacks 3 quotations, and can be deleted in one sweep, pursuant to option 1, in matter of maybe an hour or multiple hours of admin work. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:53, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

"Almost everywhere" in the context that I thought I had given, meant in community spaces, but I guess that that may have not been that clear. My overall point still stands though. Also, it was not just Beer Parlour, but that was a major part of it. I've actually also gone through that category as I've stated elsewhere, and systematically added the derogatory templates based on whether or not they're already commonplace (in line with WT:CFI for widespread usage), they already have cites (much much more than you'd expect do, partly as a response to these discussions), and how easily they'd be cited, along with who created them. It's not just adding the template to any entry willy-nilly, and I'd hope that others who are implementing it would do the same. So no, not even the majority of terms in Category:English ethnic slurs would be speedily deleted. AG202 (talk) 15:11, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Are you okay with the volume speedy delete or not? You say that you did not proceed by "adding the template to any entry willy-nilly", but that is exactly what option 1 supports. Is an admin volume speedy deletion in a short time something considered bad or is that part of the intent of option 1? --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Could you please stop trying to score pedantic points in lieu of engaging with the substance of AG202's arguments? It is completely irrelevant that slurs have not permeated literally everywhere on the site, and using that to conclude It follows that you are making extremely hyperbolic claims borders on the insulting, when the evidence is plain to see tat they have permeated a lot of places that users actually spend time in. That's aside from the absurdity of dismissing everything AG202 has said as hyperbole, while making the same slippery slope argument over and over.

Being brutally honest, quite a few of us are sick of the constant stream of diarrhoea that these terms amount to. We spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time dealing with them, because there are various incentives for certain users to create them, be it amusement or bigotry. Just because some edgelord thought up the same lazy pun as three other people does not mean that we should be spending our time doing their work for them. If they want it on the site, they should put up or shut up, regardless of procedural teething problems.

For all your wailing and gnashing of teeth about them getting deleted, you seem awfully blasé about the opportunity cost that attesting them carries, or that of potentially valuable contributors in smaller languages have decided not to participate due to the sheer amount of time we spend on slurs. Sure, though, Buttswana and Norgay are obviously far more important. Theknightwho (talk) 15:28, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Are you okay with the discussed volume speedy delete of a volume of derogatory entries created before this vote, often years before, or not? Would a volume speedy deletion without tagging pursuant to option 1 a problem for you? Re: "dismissing everything AG202 has said as hyperbole": not true, I criticized a specific statement as hyperbole, and hyperbole it was. Accuracy is important. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:54, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Replying here. For someone who claims that accuracy is important, there've been a lot of assumptions (what Black people feel about things like this for example), weird hyperboles ("Derogatory terms don't cause physical harm and don't kill, and are nothing like libel"), and not-the-most accurate statements on your part. And also, yes, it did feel that you were dismissing everything else that I was saying in favor of scoring pedantic points on specific statements (notice how the conversation shifted and my main points were pushed to the wayside). "Would a volume speedy deletion without tagging pursuant to option 1 a problem for you?" I thought my answer was clear here that A. this isn't really happening per the actual entries found in the category and B. "I'd hope that others who are implementing it would do the same." clearly states to me that yes, I would have an issue if someone randomly deleted words without actually verifying if they already match CFI, as I've said elsewhere as well. AG202 (talk) 16:16, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I made no assumptions about what Black people feel. "Derogatory terms don't cause physical harm and don't kill, and are nothing like libel" is not a hyperbole; it is a literally true statement. You are calling attempts to drive accuracy "scoring pedantic points"; that is not an argument but rather a refusal to engage in one.

"this isn't really happening": the question is very explicity not whether it is happening but rather whether it is considered bad since policy makes it possibe. If you do consider it bad, then you can probably see that option 1 as voted on is a problematic policy that relies on admins no taking full advantage of it. It is not about what admins have been doing so far but about what the policy says they should feel free to do: volume speedy deletion of citeless old derogatory terms even without tagging. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:49, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

But I am not even sure I read option 1 correctly. The bullets say:

• two weeks of the term being created, or if this period has passed,
• two weeks of the term being nominated for deletion or verification.

One reading is that "if this period has passed" (old entries), the 2nd bullet applies: this would mean that old entries must be nominated for deletion or verification. I am not sure how to read this. But if this is the correct reading (an if), the speedy deletion without tagging I was talking about would be not an issue, but it would also mean that old entries have to be nominated for deletion or verification, presumably via RFD or RFV, unless "nominated for deletion" includes "tagged by {{derogatory}}". But option 1 did not introduce {{derogatory}}, and it seems it meant RFD. So I don't even know whether I have been wrong all along but nobody told me that speedy deletions without tagging are not part of this policy. I really do not think this is a well written policy, and I think I saw some disagreement about what the polciy means among other editors. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:00, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Re: "opportunity cost that attesting them carries": that is up to citors. Citors are their own masters, and masters of their priorities. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:56, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Re: "sheer amount of time we spend on slurs": The time discussing this policy in Beer parlour and here and elsewhere was probably larger than the time spent by the citors of the slurs. The time spent by Wiktionary editors on slurs is minuscule compared to the total time expended on Wiktionary entries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:04, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I've already given my opinion on when we should be speedy-deleting, so stop trying to zero in on some "gotcha" that doesn't even apply to me. It's bad faith.

Accuracy is important, yes, which is why I have a problem with you repeatedly strawmanning what AG202 said about their experiences, while assuming that your experiences must be typical. Evidently from this vote, they are not. By the way, unless you're going to point out that I must be wrong because we don't have a literal straw man at hand, you should probably accept you weren't being particularly fair by taking a hyper-literal interpretation, and then using that to dismiss the whole argument. No wonder newer people don't feel welcome, if that's the response they get when they raise an issue like this.

I also have no idea why you think some IP spending 30 second adding some nonce word pun should lend it the benefit of the doubt, while simultaneously thinking it also doesn't matter that someone chose not to make valuable contributions. It's all very well to point out that citors can choose to spend their time on whatever they like, but that also entails that they can simply choose not to come back, or to not even bother contributing in the first place; something you evidently hadn't considered.

Since we both agree we're the masters of our own priorities, it therefore follows that you should respect that as a community we have collectively chosen to deprioritise this kind of schlock, by placing the burden of proof in the court of those who want to keep adding these terms. It's very simple. Theknightwho (talk) 17:09, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Just one thing: the question "Are you okay with the discussed volume speedy delete of a volume of derogatory entries created before this vote, often years before, or not?" was above unanswered and instead an evasible non-answer was given. How hard is it to say "yes", "yes, but X", "no", or the like? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:19, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

To quote myself above:

Late-ish reply, but in the "real world", a new policy like this would generally not be applied retrospectively. The compromise approach that I've been taking is the one that PseudoSkull suggested (i.e. going from the date of tagging), which is achievable by listing those entries at RFV. It does mean that the switch-over to the new system takes longer, but it's fairer. With new entries, people are expected to know this could happen if they choose not to bother citing, but that doesn't apply to entries from years ago.

Do you seriously need me to spell-out that I agree with that approach? I wasn't being evasive - I merely assumed you'd actually read the thread. Theknightwho (talk) 17:25, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Instead of replying "I am not okay with that, see above", you write a sentence pointing me to somewhere else. This is not a friendly debate conduct.

As for 'in the "real world", a new policy like this would generally not be applied retrospectively': If the policy did not want to be applied retrospectively, it could have introduced a cut-off date like 1 Jan 2022, but it did not do so. I don't see what prevents this policy from being applied retrospectively other than good-will of the admins. If the policy is not to be applied retrospectively, it needs to be changed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:33, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I did not answer you directly because it was a leading question, as you and I both know. Much better to let my opinion actually speak for itself.

I also never claimed that there's anything in the policy stopping it from being applied retrospectively, but was explaining my own approach, with the expectation that other users act like reasonable people. Teething problems are inevitable with any change like this, and being overly prescriptive carries its own pitfalls (e.g. the LDL issue, which was averted). Much better to assume the userbase are not idiots, and that abuses can be seen by the community for what they are.

Fundamentally, Wiktionary is already built on a high level of good faith, which is why we do not have the same approach to attestations as Wikipedia does to citations. However, there has been a long term pattern of abuse of that trust when it comes to the creation of many of these entries - at least in a collective sense - which is precisely why this vote was held:

• It is hard to tell whether such terms are genuine or hoaxes.
• The editors who create such terms are essentially pushing the task of verifying these terms to other editors. We are not the Urban Dictionary.
• Due to the dubious nature of these terms, they are rightly challenged at RFD or RFV. However, this clutters up these fora, and uses up the time and effort of editors in discussing and verifying the entries which could be used more productively.

The most important point of all, though, is the second half of the second bulletpoint:

• The proposal discourages editors from adding derogatory terms unless they are willing to put in the effort of ensuring the terms are attested.

Quite clearly, this is not a mandate for mass deletions, and anyone interpreting it as such is unlikely to get very far - as you and others have made quite clear. Ultimately, the context in which a rule exists is just as important as the text of the rule itself, because that dictates how it will be interpreted and enforced. Don't forget that. Theknightwho (talk) 18:00, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

"a leading question": It was not, I really wanted to know, and have clear answers. Since derogatory slurs are alleged to cause harm and seem to evoke strong emotions here, one might really want to apply the policy of deleting as many of them as possible as soon as possible but for those that are already cited. I don't like the policy, but it is not an unimaginable position. Rather than making assumptions about lead questions, it is much simpler to simply answer. And since that position is not unimaginable, it could have been the position of multiple supporters of option 1, and therefore, the volume deletion would not be in bad faith, it would merely reflect different policy preferences. I don't really think that mass deletion is unreasonable, it merely reflects different priorities. I therefore maintain that the policy needs an update. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:15, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Re: "the burden of proof in the court": RFV is the court and the burden is on citors to provide citations, not on the deleting admin that no cites can be found. Speedy deletes, especially volume ones, are no analogue of a court, and do not notify citors there is work to be done. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:35, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

You've misinterpreted me. I was using court in the figurative sense of "the ball is in your court", not in reference to a court of law. i.e. I was saying that this policy makes it the responsibility of those who want to add the terms to cite them. Theknightwho (talk) 18:03, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I fail to see how "the burden of proof in the court" does not refer to court of law, and how I am supposed to see that. I am not a mind reader. Plain speech is good. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:15, 17 August 2022 (UTC)