Wiktionary talk:Votes/2022-01/Label for lower register

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Language[edit]

Is this proposal intended to apply across the board to all languages? As previous discussions suggest, we might have to take a different approach for different languages. Perhaps there should be a default labelling scheme, and then departures from that scheme should be approved on a language-by-language basis where necessary. — SGconlaw (talk) 10:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is for all languages, but naturally the community for each language would get to decide just how to apply this label or whether to use it at all. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 13:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Surjection I'm not sure if this vote would be all that helpful, especially if voters vote specifically based on their language or what they're most comfortable with, rather than taking into consideration all the editing communities, as is what happened with the RFM vote that sparked this. AG202 (talk) 18:14, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Likely, but there's hardly a better option. We'd need some way to add a "allow languages to have their own individual labels" option, but I'm not sure how to fit it in. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 18:53, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This vote is not exhaustive and thus incomprehensible[edit]

We are talking past each other, Surjection. I don’t understand the voting options, particularly what any option would exclude (from being done by editors), except perhaps “the status quo before the merge” and “the current status quo”, but only because these options are labelled thus, not by their descriptions.

Note also that many entries use the labels “low register” and “high register”. Fay Freak (talk) 21:14, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What about it is incomprehensible? — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 21:49, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Like everything but the exceptions said. What we are going to do and not do when a vote other than them passes. Actually I don’t think those exceptions are accurately described either. Status quo before the merge (of only categories) was labels “informal” and “colloquial” both existing, so it is ambiguous what is voted upon. If one supports cross-language label but abstains on what it should be called then nothing is changed, so I guess it is for future votes specifying the label? “Subvariety labels that would be created for every language as necessary” cannot be well imagined, since in the end the labels will have to be English, and also this is as of now allowed.
The section “it is expected that people will vote for their label of preference and support only "support, but abstain on label" if they have no preference. Those who think lower-register terms should not have a single cross-language label, or that they should be categorized as informal, should vote for the corresponding "oppose" option.” seems only confusing if it is supposed to add anything to the meanings of the vote options.
One thing that is confusing is that you try to divide people between support and oppose camps. Maybe you should only have support votes for certain states, even if certain ones are counted together.
And the two “oppose” options now are not mutually exclusive so one could support both these oppose votes. Fay Freak (talk) 00:39, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to know how you would structure the options yourself for this kind of vote, since I've never done it before. What the options are meant to mean are as follows:
* "Support label, option 1: colloquial" -> unmerging informal and colloquial; every language community decides how the latter label shall be used for their language, if at all
* "Support label, option 2: spoken" -> same as above, except the latter is renamed "spoken"
* "Support label, option 3: vernacular" -> same as above, except the latter is renamed "vernacular"
* "Support cross-language label but abstain on what it should be called" -> same as above, but whether the latter is renamed depends on which of the previous three options got the most votes.
* "Oppose cross-language label, but allow per-language subvariety labels" -> informal and colloquial are not unmerged. Language communities are allowed to create language-specific subvariety labels according to their own needs.
* "Oppose such a label entirely; categorize lower-register terms as informal" -> informal and colloquial are not unmerged, colloquial should be entirely merged to informal, and no subvarieties should be created for it either; it should all be labeled informal instead.
The options are supposed to be mutually exclusive on the basis that every editor could vote only once. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:57, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The whole vote is really confusing. In particular, the third sentence says "the two categories were eventually merged" without saying what one of those categories is (I guess "informal"). Overall the vote hardly mentions the word "informal", and I think it needs to make the (current and proposed) relationship between these terms much clearer.
And I might suggest rewording the options:
  1. Support separate labels "informal" and "colloquial" for all languages
  2. Support separate labels "informal" and "spoken" for all languages
  3. Support separate labels "informal" and "vernacular" for all languages
  4. Support separate labels, but abstain on what it should be called
  5. Oppose separate labels for all languages, but language-specific subvariety labels may be created
  6. Oppose separate labels for all languages, and language-specific subvariety labels are not to be created
Or even structuring the vote as two subsections:
  1. Should there be two separate labels "informal" and "colloquial/spoken/vernacular"?
    1. Yes, for all languages
    2. Yes, for languages where it is specifically requested and set up - elsewhere, no
    3. No
  2. If section 1 passes, what should the label alongside "informal" be called? (then the three options)
This, that and the other (talk) 06:38, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Surjection ^^ This, that and the other (talk) 08:00, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I reworded the options as proposed, albeit chose not to split the vote into two subvotes. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 09:50, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Any editor may only vote for one option[edit]

@Sgconlaw; also did you mean to oppose (as others did) for the oppose option? J3133 (talk) 18:00, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@J3133: yes. *Sigh*, so confusing. I meant to support the "oppose" statement, but apparently that was not what was response required in the instructions. — SGconlaw (talk) 18:24, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Vote counting[edit]

This vote calls for a binding policy decision to be made without a supermajority, contrary to past practice. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:39, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody objected to it during the earlier discussion period. The reason for this is because it's about establishing a consensus after an RFM, and merging the labels should have itself been a vote. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 17:33, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, I didn't notice that the usual supermajority rule is stated not to apply here. — SGconlaw (talk) 17:51, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • (@Fytcha, Benwing2) I strongly object to this, although I apologise for noticing it just today; RFM is definitely the correct place for such mergers, as suggested by "Requests for moves, mergers and splits". There is no need for a merger to be by a vote when we have RFM, like there is no point of trying to get any entry deleted by vote instead of RFD. The fact that as many people who are now participating in the vote did not participate in the RFM does not make the previous RFM consensus weak unless specified such in any project policy. Given the fact that this is unprecedented and that it should have at least been highlighted to be more noticeable, I would advocate ignoring this line. —Svārtava (t/u) • 10:26, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    No, there was a two-week period specifically so that objections like this could be presented, and at this point it is too late to do so.
    I don't see how anyone with a clear conscience could come to the conclusion that the RFM was legitimate in merging these labels. Merging categories or families of categories is not even mentioned on the RFM page (it says "merging temp categories", whatever that is supposed to mean). The RFM discussion was clearly English-centric and failed to consider how the merge would affect other languages, and had it happened at a more centralized venue, would simply never have passed. The 50-50 is a compromise, because I would've gladly had the RFM completely revoked and instead turned into a vote where a supermajority would've been required to merge the two labels to begin with. If I didn't think Benwing has the best interests of this project at heart, I would've already accused him of forum shopping for picking RFM specifically, but as is said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:52, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Svartava: As you've also pinged me in the BP, I want to clarify that I won't try to adjudicate on the administrative minutiae of this vote, especially as I'm an involved party, having cast a vote. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:55, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think a majority-vote mechanism would be useful for cases where it's legitimately disputed what the "status quo" that'd need a vote to change is. But this case seems even simpler than that: a decision was made by non-supermajority-requirement-ed RFM, so if enough people objected to closing this by majority vote as a vote, the obvious and correct move will be to then go back to the same non-WT:V venue the merger was made in, have all the people who voted here !vote there, and undo the merger via majority there... so it reduces bureaucratic overhead to just make that decision here. That said, this vote seems to miss an option for "don't merge the labels in general, but specific languages can merge them", which might cut the Gordian knot. It would require re-jiggering the module so that a label could categorize as X by default, or Y if langcode = foo, but IMO we should do that reardless so that things like "Doric" can categorize correct for Greek vs Scots, or so "Southern" can be used categorize differently for Vietnamese vs Korean vs English etc etc. - -sche (discuss) 03:00, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Surjection I also object strongly to the non-supermajority nature of this vote, and obviously would have objected to it at the time had I seen it. As the person who did the merger in the first place I'm really not sure why Surjection didn't do me the courtesy of pinging me, otherwise I would have objected at the time. As it is I feel like they are trying to act in a rather sneaky fashion (to say the least) by creating a vote that contravenes the standard vote policy, especially without making it extremely clear that this was the case. Obviously I am not the only one who feels this way, given the other comments above. To me, this entire vote is illegitimate for this reason. (It reminds me of Dan Polansky's prior attempts to unilaterally change voting procedures of admins by casting conditional votes.) It hardly helps to see Surjection accusing me of forum shopping and of not having the best interests of this project at heart. (Yes, they didn't technically make that accusation, in the same fashion of someone who says "I'm not accusing you of being racist, but ...".) However, this doesn't much surprise me given their past threats to act unilaterally "after the discussion has died down", and the fact that I have presented several compromises on this issue, all of which they have rejected. This whole business leaves an extremely bad taste in my mouth and makes me want to throw up my hands and leave the project; but maybe that is Surjection's intention, I wouldn't be surprised at that either at this point. Benwing2 (talk) 04:52, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In the interest of resolving this issue, may I suggest as follows. It is always open for a particular decision to be revisited to see if the consensus has changed. Since the current vote has not been formally closed, instead of starting a fresh vote we could extend the current vote for another month but applying the usual supermajority rule. This would establish conclusively where the consensus lies. — SGconlaw (talk) 05:10, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've been seriously considering leaving this project too over the fact that utterly destructive decisions can pass RFM without anyone thinking about the actual consequences of such decisions. It's clear that this project, despite what it claims, is not aiming to describe "all words in all languages"; only English coverage actually matters. Maybe Wyang had a point when he wrote "this site will always be a kludge". — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:37, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And your "several compromises" shtick is complete bullshit, and you know it. First, you proposed unmerging only for specific languages, i.e. language-specific label treatment, but then later on changed your mind and turned against it because "it is too confusing", while apparently Colloquial would not be any more confusing and Colloquial Finnish is so ridiculously over-verbose that there is absolutely no point; colloquial has no meaning when talking about Finnish other than to refer to the variety, and thus it is nonsensical to argue that it should categorize under informal for all languages. The second compromise and all of your other compromises since have been you wrangling about not using "colloquial", which is why this vote has those other options and why I've stated quite clearly that I'd rather have any of those as a label than to not have one at all ("my order of preference remains colloquial > vernacular > spoken >> (no distinction) out of the three main proposals"). You've straight up invited me to debate about which term to use ('Why are you so wedded to the specific terms "informal" and "colloquial"?') and then claimed, despite what I've said, that I don't accept any of those options because I've argued against them because you told me to. It is downright disappointing to see you act this disingenuous. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 12:33, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer that idea a lot and is what should've happened with the initial RFM. Additionally, iirc they were merged before the discussion even finished on it, nor was it announced that they had been merged until someone else made it clear in that discussion. That's what personally left a bad taste in my mouth upon seeing what happened. It also goes with the fact that RFM tends to be more hidden than Beer Parlour even if it's the bureaucratically correct place to have that discussion. It's just a part of the whole feeling I get while being on Wiktionary that unilateral changes are often made without actually considering wide groups of language communities, and then we have to deal with the fallout. AG202 (talk) 05:12, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I proposed having labels act differently depending on the language which at the moment does not require any technical wrangling, but that wasn't considered acceptable either for some reason. Absolutely no compromise has been accepted, which is why we are where we are now, because people cannot be bothered to read despite me writing that I want to "allow discussion on the voting procedure I went for". — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:41, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Surjection: I admit I should have read the instructions more carefully, but it did not occur to me that the voting mechanism could be changed. I also agree it was reasonable for you to assume that if the earlier decision at RFM had been made on a simple majority basis, then another simple majority decision could be used to alter it. On the other hand, presumably any decision made on a simple majority basis can be altered by a supermajority if brought here for voting. So let's say we go ahead and close this vote on a simple majority basis. It would be open to someone else to reopen the issue and have it voted on the usual supermajority basis, which would arguably be more conclusive. That's why I've suggested that we try and resolve the current situation by extending the voting period and applying the usual supermajority requirement. In that case, regardless of how the vote ends up, it will be conclusive. — SGconlaw (talk) 12:56, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If this vote is closed based on a majority vote, then it should be able to be overruled in the future by a majority vote or forum discussion. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Says who? Certainly not the voting policy which clearly states that "[a]ny future vote can override these rules by specific community consensus concerning that vote". — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 15:19, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This vote does not have consensus to change the rules, so it is a poll rather than a policy change requiring a vote to overturn. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Re "it should be able to be overruled in the future by a majority": as far as I'm concerned, sure. To my understanding the reason for the lower threshold is that the initial merger didn't have capital-C, vote-strength Consensus, so if it's causing problems, it can be unmerged by the same threshold it was merged by. If someone later proposes a re-merger, we can discuss it again ... although if we find ourselves having repeated merge-unmerge-merge-unmerge discussions we should probably make a strong effort to find another option, like per-language categorization. - -sche (discuss) 00:49, 9 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exactly as Sgconlaw said: “I should have read the instructions more carefully, but it did not occur to me that the voting mechanism could be changed”. If one sees Category talk:Colloquialisms by language, it was not made on a simple majority basis, it had a strong consensus for it; the only those who oppose were Surjection and Mahagaja, who pointed to Finnish and Welsh. I do see the point that unexpectedly, the majority votes who support this vote did somehow not show up there, but I do not think this vote is the best way to go. I am not opposed to having the labels act differently (from the module itself, not just a "social deprecation") such that for some languages the two are merged, while unmerged for the others; that really seems like a quite reasonable compromise, if Benwing2, Surjection can agree on it. —Svārtava (t/u) • 13:59, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Because it was in RFM. The BP discussion about reverting it has basically the same level of consensus (6-3 (+ 2 "oppose for English" votes which are not at all incongruent with the purpose of this vote if it becomes practice that "colloquial" is not used in English entries), vs. RFM 5-2). As I said, this discussion should have never been in RFM in the first place. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 14:57, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In the same RFM discussion though you can see that there were two more people who opposed the merger (also Benwing did not announce that they merged it which was an issue to me), so even there in the archived discussion it's clear that it was a controversial decision (RFM 5-4 really). AG202 (talk) 03:18, 9 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alerting[edit]

(Notifying BigDom, Hythonia, KamiruPL, Tashi, Luxtaythe2nd, Max19582, Hergilei, Shumkichi): Just letting y'all now about this change in policy, as it affects Polish as well. Vininn126 (talk) 12:59, 9 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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