Talk:🦀

RFV discussion: July 2020–March 2023
Rfv-sense: Used to convey joy, excitement, or celebration. As an experiment to see what kind of citations would satisfy this. DTLHS (talk) 23:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Google doesn't index emojis and neither does Issuu, so this means it's impossible to attest emojis, even when they're used in books, magazines, and other durably-archived media. This has been in use since at least 2019 (it's inspired by the 2018 "" video), and appears easily citable off Twitter. It's doesn't seem reasonable that a whole area of language would be precluded from inclusion simply because the technical limitations of Google mean we cannot find "durable" citations. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 00:27, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Twitter citations added here, spanning 2018 to this year. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:34, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm torn about this. Surely there are books or magazines with extensive use of emojis that could be collated and scanned by eye, but it's undeniable that the burden of attesting emojis is vastly higher for purely nonlinguistic reasons. That said, we can't just switch to using Twitter to attest things, in part because tweets are easily deleted or removed, and in part because that would be a conscious choice to attest emoji usage on Twitter, which is often rather distinct from its usage elsewhere. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:53, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Citing this the old-fashioned way would require someone to manually read through every book and magazine printed in the last two years in the vain hope they can find three instances of the crab emoji being used. (I think I've happened upon the eggplant emoji in print once in all my deep-diving through Issuu). There's no way to cite emojis except through platforms that index emojis, and Twitter is currently the largest, most active platform that does. The "durably archived media, except Usenet" thing is unnecessarily hamstringing our ability to document emojis, and possibly other Internet slang as well. Seriously, it was a weird policy ten years ago. Now it's just silly. Almost no one is having conversations on Usenet in 2020. Google has nerfed Groups to the point it's basically useless. I can't find things anymore unless I know exactly which newsgroups to search. And you couldn't find emojis on Groups, even if Usenet was still being widely used.


 * Of course there needs to be standards. I'm not suggesting the one-year citation span be thrown out. I still think emojis should have to meet that threshold. But it's silly that emojis should be excluded simply because Google Books, Google Groups, Google Scholar, and Issuu don't let you search for them. Technical limitations imposed by the services we use to find citations should not limit how we document language. This isn't an impassable roadblock -- it's a problem in need of a solution. And that's where Twitter comes in. It's widely used. It's easy to search. It's freely viewable for almost everyone. Sure, tweets sometimes get deleted. But "durably archived" has never meant "freely accessible for everyone in perpetuity." Books go out of print. Libraries take titles out of general circulation. Books moulder or are destroyed in fires. Old newspapers get converted to microfiche, which can then become damaged and unreadable. New newspapers end up filed away behind paywalls. The good thing about Twitter is that there's generally a fresh supply of new tweets to replaces ones that may get deleted. It's not perfect, certainly, but it's the only reliable way to cite emojis, as it stands. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Would tweets archived by the constitute a "permanently recorded" medium? cc:  Graham11 (talk) 06:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No. As it stands, there is no consensus to treat webpages archived by the IA as durably archived. However, that consensus may change. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:49, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Apologies if this might be tangential to this RFV, but is there somewhere that documents the current consensus of what "permanently recorded media" and "durably archived" mean? As far as I can see, WT:CFI doesn't seem to expand on the meaning of those terms except to implicitly suggest that Usenet and "print media such as books and magazines" qualify.
 * And is there something about the way that Google archives Usenet that would lead it to be regarded differently to the Internet Archive? Or was Usenet's inclusion in WT:CFI a compromise measure of sorts rather than the result of a kind of consistent definition of these terms? Graham11 (talk) 07:12, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The status quo is neither ideal nor clear. In short, "durably archived" is limited to things that were physically published at some point (including songs and movies!), or are on Google Books, Google Scholar, or Usenet. These were originally supposed to be sources where only the destruction of civilisation as we know it could cause them to become completely inaccessible, although they have also served as a way to limit what the dictionary must include. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:19, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Is that disjunctive? Is a quotation from Google Books that only exists in digital form usable? 70.172.194.25 06:23, 30 January 2022 (UTC)


 * My practice for creating slang entries is to tolerate fewer durable citations if the word is mentioned in a reputable slang dictionary. People sometimes write about twitter words.  Are there any less ephemeral mentions to add to the citations page?  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:28, 24 August 2020 (UTC)


 * This is also found a lot on e.g. Reddit     – quotes: "🦀 Hey a good thing happened! 🦀", "🦀Little man is gone🦀", "🦀🦀London is gone🦀🦀", "🦀 no authenticator delay 🦀". – Nixinova [&zwnj;T|C] 20:26, 10 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Procedural note, the definition was split in June 2022 to separate "...possibly sarcastically" off as its own sense "good riddance!", and both the usexes and the RFV tag were reassigned to the sarcastic sense. Some sources do say the crab emoji is often used to celebratorily mark "good riddance" to someone, but IMO the examples they mention and our usexes seem indistinct from sense 1; people do lots of other celebratory things to signal joy at the good riddance of someone they didn't like. (Forbes, btw, misinterprets it in a little aside as "a metaphoric eye-roll, or crabby response" [when used re Elizabeth II dying]. And SheFinds has it being a mere astrological reference when used e.g. on Instagram by Ariana Grande, but there too it seems indistinguishable from an expression of joy, coming in the middle of a joyous post about how "it is so sincerely fulfilling to create in this capacity [...] to see people feel their most beautiful ! there is so much unique beautifulness that is everywhere on this planet and in all of you, it makes me sob [...] i feel so much intense love for all of you and gratitude [...]".) IMO, sense 1 seems reasonably widespread on the internet, sense 2 seems indistinct from it, and although I personally don't have a problem with omitting ephemeral-internet-only terms, I recognize that other people want to include them, and this one is fairly widespread across languages (a, b, c), nationalities, political orientations, sites and services (twitter, instagram, discord, tiktok, youtube, ...), etc. - -sche (discuss) 18:10, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this note. Sarcasm doesn't seem quite right, even—it's an expression of joy on the part of person using it, not well wishes to the subject, so sense 2 is semantically just a straightforward and non-sarcastic use of sense 1. I'm not sure they're lexically distinguishable even in principle, if there is any distinction it's a pragmatic and not semantic one. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

CFI-mandated discussion

 * Ends January 11, 2023, 23:59 (UTC)
 * Ends January 27, 2023, 23:59 (UTC)
 * Under discussion: both senses under 🦀; whether to keep one, both, or neither of these senses
 * Citations: Citations:🦀

Under the new rules of WT:CFI, we can have a discussion lasting two weeks to determine whether to count these non-durably archived sources as valid. Anyone care to comment? 70.172.194.25 22:49, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I would say the citations are valid, especially given the academic reference supporting it (Shen), and I don't think there's harm in having this entry. I don't think the two senses should be treated as distinct, though: the fundamental meaning (as the citations show) is celebration, the sentiment of "good riddance" is just a specific context for it. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:02, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

RFV-passed. One comment in support, none in opposition. 70.172.194.25 08:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Extended the deadline per Theknightwho's comment on the "OK sign" RfV. 70.172.194.25 22:55, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep, but the fad might be already dying down. It's a good thing we indexed the tweets when we did because it will probably be a lot harder to find uses soon, if not already. As it tends to be with memes. — Soap — 17:22, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

RFV-passed, the sarcastic sense was removed some time ago. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:26, 8 March 2023 (UTC)