User:Soap/SOP


 * See also User:Soap/essays.

RFD rationales

 * 08:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I intend to expand this soon. The one-line paragraphs are intended to be fleshed out with examples and elaborations.

I thought I was a strong inclusionist on sum-of-parts issues, since nearly always vote keep on RFD requests, including non-English ones, where the deletion rationale is that a given expression is the sum of its parts. But now I think it is because so many RFD requests are two-word expressions where both words have a relatively equal importance, whereas we have few RFD's for "pivot" expressions where a single word dominated.

Much of WT:SOP is open to interpretation, but I see the page as just an elaboration of the first two sentences:
 * An expression is idiomatic if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components. Non-idiomatic expressions are called sum-of-parts (SOP).

Much of what I write below is built on my understanding of the key word easily in the first sentence above. In short, I oppose the deletion of a phrase when I feel it would be difficult for a naive reader to figure out the intended meaning on their own.

"figure it out"
At some recent RFD's for short phrases, I've seen arguments for deletion on the basis that the meaning of the entry can be discerned by looking at the re levant subsenses of its constituent words. This may be easy to do for us long-established editors, but we don't write the dictionary for people like ourselves. We write it for people who need to look up words.

specific examples
If we assume that something the average adult native English speaker could figure out qualifies as easy, many longstanding entries could be deleted.

green hand
For example,  could  be constructed from one of the many meanings of green and one of the many meanings of hand, so long as we assume that our readers will know from context which of the many possible meanings of each word is the correct one. If we went ahead with this argument and deleted the entry, it could easily lead people trying to look it up to find the page instead, and assume that green hand must be a synonym or at least similar in meaning, when in fact it  is completely different and uses an almost opposite sense of the word green.

support group
could also be deleted. I'd even say could be deleted by the "just figure it out!" arguments of some (not all) of the people voting on these recent RFD's.

For example, as of 30 March 2023, (also known as red-green coalition) is up for deletion. In this case, the entry is up for deletion even though it has two very different definitions.

Indeed, it seems possible to construct a deletion argument for nearly any two-word phrase, even one that has multiple definitions. But by deleting these entries, we force the curious reader to figure it out on their own, defeating the purpose of a dictionary.

Marry the ketchup
The page   might be considered sum-of-parts, so long as we added a definition to  stating that it means to pour the contents of one condiment bottle into another bottle of the same type. This would be clumsy, and might fail to make the point that the object of the verb is almost always ketchup. (Imagine adding a label of ketchup to clarify that, which would be even more awkward.) So if we can agree that deleting marry the ketchup and merging the content into marry would be inappropriate, why are we leaning towards deleting  and merging the content into red-green? To me that seems even more inappropriate, as it would necessitate adding two distinct and equally narrow definitions to the red-green page something like (of political coalitions) consisting of an alliance between socialist and Green parties and (of political coalitions) consisting of an alliance between socialist and Islamist parties.

boykin

 * 07:03, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Our SOP policy may have been even more strict in the past. On talk:little boy we can see people arguing for the deletion of using various arguments; one person stated that the little-known word boykin means the same thing. But, even if this obscure word were actually used in daily life, it clearly does not mean the same thing as little boy, but only at best one narrow sense of it. little boy in turn does not mean the same thing as small boy (which we do not list). See also User:Soap/dolls for more on this particular example and words like it, ... this page is not complete and never will be because one could write a whole book on the intricacies of the differences in meaning between small and little, when to use them, and likewise for related words.

-ass

 * 09:05, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

As of Apr 5 there is a new, similar AFD for and about a dozen other words ending in -ass, even though there are three different meanings of ass in use on that list, and none of them is using the fourth sense, the animal. If we delete these words, someone unfamiliar with the word will need to first figure out which of the possible definitions of ass is meant on their own, and then which of the possible definitions of sick is meant on their own. But if they are looking the word up, they clearly dont know those things. Saying "figure it out" defeats the purpose of a dictionary.

And this argument applies as well to the other words on the list, ... i chose sick-ass beause i feel its meaning is the least predictable of all the words on the list, but to call the others transparent assumes that someone looking up a slang term in a dictionary is already familiar with such slang terms, which again assumes our audience is precisely the group of people that have the least need for a dictionary. For example, if we delete, even someone who figures out the general pattern of -ass words but is unfamiliar with individual words would be left thinking that smartass remark is just an emphatic form of smart remark. This says nothing of the fact that smartass is primarily used as a noun and, once deleted, we would give no indication of that.

collocations

 * 09:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

A few editors have proposed listing collocations for phrases or two or more words under the head noun of the phrase (or perhaps on both words in some cases). I see problems with this idea:
 * 1) If we add collocations with no definitions, we are simply presenting a list of words and telling the reader to figure out the definitions on their own. They most likely came here to look up an unfamiliar word, and we'd be essentially telling them that the word exists, but that our project assumes nobody would ever need to ask what they actually mean. This falls just barely shy of deletion, since a reader looking up a deleted phrase and a reader looking up a phrase we list as collocation-only still leaves with the same information: it exists! but we dont give them a definition.
 * 2) If we add collocations with definitions, people will oppose the new project, asking why we are cluttering the pages with information that used to be stored on separate pages.
 * 3) Collocations take up space, especially since some editors seemingly prefer to list each on its own line rather than separated into columns. This could lead others to support deleting them in particularly outstanding cases, or trimming the lists, both of which could be done with no discussion since there is no policy governing their addition or removal from an entry.
 * 4) Over time, the reason for the deletion of the collocations could be obscured, and instead of deleting them for cluttering up the headword pages, we might just say "collocations are bad", and then extend that to a variant of the sum-of-parts argument I've addressed above, preventing the creation of collocations and two-word phrase entries alike.

inclusionism broadly stated
I dont consider myself an inclusionist in general, but since SOP requests are so much of what comes up at RFD, I wouldnt refuse the label. I'd say that Wiktionary's entries are diverse enough that someone considering themselves an inclusionist in general would be basing it on a different rationale than my votes for supposed SOP entries, though, since my rationale would make no sense in arguing whether to keep words cited only in Usenet or Twitter posts, or entries from Wikispecies, or really anything outside the narrow SOP category that comes up so often.

One example of a phrase I voted to delete is have a whale of a time. To my surprise, the majority opinion was against me on this. What makes this phrase different from so many above is that it has a single pivot: whale. Most of the phrases being deleted as sum-of-parts, by contrast, have two pivots, meaning that an unfamiliar reader must do a lot more guesswork in order to figure out their meaning. By contrast, the meaning of have a whale of a time depends only on the meaning of whale.