Talk:birdloving

RFD discussion: November–December 2020

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birdloving

Is it okay to keep such adjectives when set solid, as opposed to hyphenated? - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 21:34, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:57, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. This isn't German Wiktionary. bd2412 T 01:06, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. Hi, @Sonofcawdrey. Would you like to keep the entry you created? -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 10:21, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

  If we're going to canvass the creator in every case, can we have a bot do it instead of Dentonius please? Equinox ◑ 00:52, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

  That would be difficult, because the version of the entry that is challenged may not have been the first one created. For RFV I actually consider it good practice to ask the creator, since they may remember where they found it.__Gamren (talk) 14:47, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

• Obvious keep ("all words in all languages") SemperBlotto (talk) 13:23, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
• Just the same as "Xlike". We need to be clear why we want to keep these, of which there are an open-ended number, all totally and transparently SoP wrt the suffix "-loving", apart from the lack of explicit component boundary. Is it because we want to record all those for which we can find the requisite number of citations, to show that they have somewhere been used? To help people who can't see that "birdloving" means "bird-loving"? Some other reason? Mihia (talk) 22:52, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Because it took me a while to translate Xlike. Because I don't want to have this discussion over every single word.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Mihia, by that logic we could say why bother to have -ly adverbial forms? We could delete all of them and leave only the adjectival forms. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 11:49, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

This sort of argument has been made many times, and I understand what you're saying, and this is why it is so difficult to exactly legislate, but somewhere between an "-ly" adverb and "grapefruitloving = fond of grapefruits" a line is crossed IMO between useful and sensible dictionary definitions and thousands of useless crappy self-evident entries. Mihia (talk) 12:01, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Is grapefruitloving attestable? If it is, we should have it. bd2412 T 02:04, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Keep, although bird-loving would be the form I would use. DonnanZ (talk) 12:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Keep. I don't see it as terribly different from e.g. trainspotting or motherfucking; some words just end up solidifying this way. Equinox ◑ 01:06, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

It is difficult to know where to draw the line, since even e.g. "spotting" could potentially be added to lots of nouns unhyphenated, but "loving" is a particularly blatant case where VAST numbers of nouns can potentially be suffixed with "loving", from "grapefruit[-]loving" to "algebra[-]loving", so we could potentially end up with thousands of nouns duplicated with fairly pointless "fond of X" definitions (admittedly depending on attestability as things work, but any presently unattested combination could be used tomorrow by someone). If these compounds were always hyphenated, e.g. "bird-loving", then we would exclude them as SoP, according to the decision that SoP rules apply to hyphenated terms in the same way as spaced terms. The fact that some people may, fairly arbitrarily, write them unhyphenated is not of any great lexical importance or significance, IMO, and it is just an awkwardness or inadequacy of our SoP rules that obliges us to retain them. Most dictionaries do not list thousands of "-like" or "-loving" compounds. Mihia (talk) 11:35, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

In the case of loving, I doubt there are thousands of them written hyphenless. Equinox ◑ 23:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Per Equinox, I just invested an embarrassing amount of time looking for attestations for catloving, and only found one (Google Books, at least, errantly returns lots and lots of instances of "cat-loving" for that search, particularly where the hyphen coincides with the end of a line). An attestation requirement is a powerful tool for dissuading the creation of entries that don't exist in real usage. bd2412 T 02:13, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@BD2412: Usenet has many uses of catloving. J3133 (talk) 02:58, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Then we should have it. bd2412 T 06:47, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

But why? Is it to record that this word has been written by someone without a hyphen? To help people who cannot see that it means "cat + loving"? Some other reason? Mihia (talk) 00:03, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Because it is a word. bd2412 T 05:37, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I feel that I am flogging a dead elephant here, but the observation that "catloving" is "a word" does not really address the question that I raised. For lookup purposes, these limitless SoP combinations could be handled by a hint, so that if someone types in e.g. "elephantloving", in the event that someone wrote it that way and the reader can't figure it out, it can be suggested that they mean "elephant-loving". I accept that documenting recorded usage of such words is a valid exercise. The downside of basing our inclusion or non-inclusion of "Xloving" on whether we can find three durable citations is that these words can be arbitrarily coined, or written unhyphenated, so, as far as lookup is concerned -- that is, someone encountering "Xloving" and wondering what it means -- it hardly matters whether our processes have discovered those three citations. Mihia (talk) 01:14, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

A machine can't necessarily know that e.g. "degloving" doesn't mean "loving a deg". Equinox ◑ 04:43, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting any change to the behaviour of an entry such as degloving. I was suggesting that people trying to look up e.g. "elephantloving", which does not (presently) exist, could be advised that they may want elephant + -loving. This would relieve us of the need to provide individual articles for a trillion potential "Xloving" combinations that anyone can arbitrarily write or coin, that mean no more than "X-loving"; and it would indeed entirely suffice if the only purpose of listing these combinations was to allow people to find their meanings, which I have acknowledged may not necessarily be the case. Yes, there might be pathological cases of "Xloving" where the hint would not be appropriate. Mihia (talk) 18:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I would repeat, there are not limitless attested combinations. There may well be people who love sloths or talcum, but I would defy you to find citations for slothloving or talcumloving. bd2412 T 18:22, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

"slothloving", at least, has apparently been used. And I would repeat that when someone can arbitrarily write "slothloving", or anything-else-loving, unhyphenated, if that is their style, then, for the purposes of looking up meanings, it does not matter whether such a word has previously been used to our standard of attestation. Mihia (talk) 18:50, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

"Apparently been used" does not equal "attested". Show me three sources in permanently recorded media. bd2412 T 05:25, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion, "slothloving" is a word (your criterion) that someone can write if they care to, irrespective of whether we can find attestations to satisfy our rules. Moreover, in my opinion, selectively including only "-loving" words attestable to our rules is potentially misleading, as it may imply that those not included are not valid words, which in my opinion will frequently be incorrect. Mihia (talk) 22:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

• Kept - yeah, calling this one early Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 11:51, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Lest we forget: Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclusion#Attestation_vs._the_slippery_slope " […] each term is considered on its own based on its usage, not on the usage of terms similar in form." -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

A noble idea, perhaps, but clearly unworkable in practice. Mihia (talk) 23:08, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mihia: And an idea used very selectively, too: strangely, I never see it applied the other way around. Inclusionists often argue that the existence of some entry automatically warrants the existence of some other entry. PUC – 19:10, 8 December 2020 (UTC)