Wiktionary talk:Policies and guidelines

Proposal (moved here from the article)
I've taken the top of the Wikipedia tree of policies and guidelines, and I'm going to edit it down to make it the top for an organised set of policies and guidelines for Wiktionary:--Richardb 07:24, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why do we need a top down structure? (moved here from the article)
Policies in Wiktionary are not easy to find. There are lots of dicussions, but little in the way of "agreed" policies. Wikipedia finds it necessary and useful, and I believe it will help to have greater organisation and structure to the way Wiktionary works.

Like everything else, these policies and Guidelines will be developed by the editors, and subject to constant change, but they may settle down to a useful set with a bit of consistent work. Anyway, I'm willing to give it a try.--Richardb 07:24, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The top down structure has two starting points:-
 * By category - category:Policies - Wiktionary Top Level
 * By a (more) structured, but higher maintenance document - Map of Policies and Guidelines - now replaced by Index to Policies which lists policies alphabetically by topic.

Cleared out some stuff from Beer Parlour
The Beer Parlour is often over-full, unmanageable. Previously I have been suggesting that a lot of the deeper discussion should be taken out of Beer Parlour and moved in to Committee Rooms / Policy Development pages.

This time I've got a bit tougher. I've moved several chunks of discussion out of Beer Parlour into various Policy Development pages, and put an index to these at the top of the Beer Parlour.

I make no apologies for being an activist for dragging people toward proper policy development, instead of endless unresolved discussion. I was partly prompted by  exporessing some frustration with the lack of policies.

I'm sorry if I trod on the toes of people who are active contributors. But, please believe me that my intentions are the best. We all have our own particular ways of contributing. Developing the Policy process, and Policies, is my particular thing at the moment, whenever I can spare the time to come on to Wiktionary.--Richardb 06:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC)


 * As one of the long-winded targets or your complaint, I'd like to thank you for taking the initiative. I fully support (at least in theory) what you've done and what you are doing to this page, migrating discussions to actual policy pages.  It is a tedious (and mostly thankless) task.  Bravo!  --Connel MacKenzie 15:04, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Contributions moved elsewhere
 made a contribution on 20-May-2005. This was outside the existing discussion structure, and has been (temporarily) moved to page Proposal for Policies and Guidelines/Jun-Dai pending integration with this page.

Policy Implications tagging
I've added a new tag which I hope removes some controversy, mainly it seems with EC.

I was tagging some pages as Policy Think Tank pages, becuase they basically defined policies, though they were not designed for that purpose. EC reverted some of these.

I can accept that putting the POLICY BANNER in them may have confused users who were just looking for How To pages. So I've introdcued (in progress) a new tag to indicate pages which have Policy Implications, but which are not primarily Policy PAges, and where the banner would be confusing or annoying.

See the article for explanation.

I hope this is a workable compomise, or better still, a welcomed improvement.--Richardb 23:40, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I have looked at some of these, and the first thing that I ended up at was Stranger's tretise on Abbreviations, which I have put in RfD. We probably need to distinguish between rejected policies and those proposals from one individual that did not elicit any significant response, especially when that individual has since stopped editing.  I'll comment on the rest later. Eclecticology 19:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Upgrade to Semi-Offical, and name change
16-May-2006 Richardb I gave notice in Februrary that I would upgrade this to Semi-Official policy. Enough time has passed, so here goes. Also changing name to "Policies and Guidelines - Policy". I will leave the redirect in place, and, over time, cahnge all the references.

Removed from the main page
I removed Wiktionary etiquette and Writers rules of engagement from the main page as they are not helpful, if someone creates these pages please readd them to the main page - TheDaveRoss 06:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Abortive, half-baked change to Policy Development methods by CM
In late January 2007, CM did some destructive work to try to impose his own idea of how Policy should work in Wiktionary. Not only did he apparently do it unilaterlally, he also did not dso most of the necessary work. He didn't even bother to put his ideas to discussion on this page, or make the necessary changes in the Project Page.

I fully intend to roll-back most of CM's destructive effort. If CM does not understand how Policy is developed, (and he shows no signs what-so-ever of so doing), then he should keep out of the area that defines how Policy is developed.

If CM objects to this characterisation of his approach, perhaps he'd like to point to some examples of where he has contributed to the actual development of some of the policies. and perhaps he'd like to look a teh complexity of policies that have been found necessary in Wikipedia.

But mostly CM should stick to the techo stuff and the rowdy atmosphere of the Beeer Parlour, where he can shout all he likes. Just don't come jackbooting over the work by more thoughtful people who are prepared to discuss and develop ideas by consensus, not just try to shout the loudest.--Richardb 11:54, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I'v e posted a discussion about this in Beer PArlour WT:BP

Template or Category Guidelines?
Where are the guidelines about how to use templates? Which templates for which purpose? Requests for new templates? (Same for Categories?) I would also like to know the rules about acronyms? -- IrishDragon 03:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you try Templates? Requests for new templates (or any technical questions, such as those about templates) are best posted in the WT:GP.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:51, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

No mention of need for references/or not?
This is only page I searched (including links right on top) but it seems like the place that should mention whether or not words need references or we are supposed to take it on faith that the person is right and change it if we think something else is better, whether or not we look up references first. Just confusing to wikipedia editors used to WP:V. Thanks! :-) Carolmooredc 16:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary works somewhat differently than the 'pedia in that respect. Many of our editors are native speakers of the languages they edit, and thus are authoritative sources for such entries in a very real linguistic sense.  So, no, sources are generally not required here, although they are encouraged in many cases.  However, if there is a dispute over something, then sources may of course be brought forward.  Although, truth be told, we rather prefer to look at citations than references in such cases.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This falls apart for tings like Etymologies though doesn't it? Conrad.Irwin 20:56, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're right. So, there are definitely some things which are more dependent upon references than others.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Definitions: descriptive? or proscriptive?
A question: are the definitions in Wiktionary intended to be descriptive (showing how words are used, for better or worse), or proscriptive (to guide users in using words better)? 97.113.65.54 21:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC) (WP:J.Johnson)


 * I think you're confusing the words prescriptive and proscriptive. The definitions should be descriptive while there are also usage notes which describe common prescriptive views. Of course there ar many contributors and points of view are usually at various points along the contiunuum between the two resulting in some inconsistency as is pretty usual in the wiki world. &mdash; hippietrail 03:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

big changes needed
This page needs a big review, but I'm probably going to get blocked if I edit it! --Volants 14:12, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Status change: policy draft
I have changed the status of this document from official policy to policy draft. By doing so, I have reverted this change by Richardb of 11:59, 16 May 2006, and this change by Connel MacKenzie of 08:41, 28 January 2007. The document contains redlinks and contradicts current common practice. For instance, the document says 'Formal "Voting" on a policy is discouraged, but may be used to better judge how sentiment is leaning at a particular point in time' while at the same time it said on top of the document 'This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. It should not be modified without a VOTE.'.--Dan Polansky 07:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

RFD discussion
This page is outdated and completely contradicts common practice regarding policies. -- Prince Kassad 13:11, 27 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep I'm not an established editor, so this should count as Weak keep but I found this page very useful. As a newcomer from enwiki, I found the rest of the help pages (the tutorial especially and Welcome, newcomers) a bit patronising and more importantly: only about mark-up and some Wikietiquette. This page led me to the WT:Copyright policy (it's tough to gauge how copyright applies to dictionaries-how much can you be inspired by a copyrighted definition). If the page is outdated, it can surely be improved, there's no need to delete it.' I personally found it far more useful than the tutorial and the welcome page put together. Puchiko 22:37, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus and discussion. --Chicken is fun (talk) 15:57, 1 October 2013 (UTC)