Talk:North Atlantic Treaty Organization

RFD discussion: April–June 2022

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization + non-initialism translations

Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord

Pohjois-Atlantin liitto

Организация Североатлантического договора

Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte

Organizația Tratatului Atlanticului de Nord

북대서양 조약 기구

北大西洋条約機構

北大西洋公約組織

Not dictionary material. —Svārtava (t/u) • 11:29, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

This doesn't seem any worse to me than European Economic Area, Commonwealth of Independent States, Warsaw Treaty Organization/Warsaw Pact. It does seem worse than European Union, African Union, Arab League, but not vastly so (and the meaning is less apparent from its components than with these other examples). Maybe you think all or some of these other entries should be deleted as well. 70.172.194.25 15:40, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I think there are many such terms out there, and which I and others bring to RFD as soon as they're spotted. Compare British Broadcasting Corporation which was deleted recently. —Svārtava (t/u) • 16:33, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Not too concerned but lean toward deletion, like most full names of organizations (especially ones that are somewhat clear from their component words, rather than being invented words). Keep NATO obviously, since it tells us what the letters stand for, but it could link to Wikipedia for the subject matter. Equinox ◑ 19:00, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Delete, I feel. We don’t appear to have a policy directly applicable to such entries (something that should be addressed), but I think the spirit of WT:COMPANY is relevant: “To be included, the use of the company name other than its use as a trademark (i.e., a use as a common word or family name) has to be attested.” In other words, there ought to be some use of the term other than its literal sense. Otherwise, there seems to be little point to have the entry when the reader could read the Wikipedia entry and get a far more complete understanding of the organization. — Sgconlaw (talk) 08:09, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

We probably should have policy on this, because organisations and their names aren't going to go away! I would potentially draw a line between orgs whose purpose is fairly obvious from the words (like, say, European Football Association, to invent an example) and those that involve made-up words, like Greenpeace (though I remember voting against that one back in the day too). Remember the goal here is lexicography; we are not supposed to be Wikipedia. Equinox ◑ 09:29, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Someone obviously overlooked the British spelling North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Anyway, it's important enough to keep. It shouldn't be the intention of his type of entry to provide a history of an organisation, which is Wikipedia's job, but to act as a reference. DonnanZ (talk) 11:18, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

What Wiktionary policy do you base your statement on? Equinox ◑ 03:44, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not based on any policy, but on a feeling that an entry like this with no more than a single-sentence definition, linked to a Wikipedia article for further reference, should be allowed to remain. I think this reply is longer than the entry itself. DonnanZ (talk) 09:14, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Weak delete; I think we should probably delete a lot of organizations' names, like Talk:Soviet Armed Forces, Talk:Democratic Party, Talk:Provisional IRA, as they're encyclopedia stuff, not dictionary stuff. - -sche (discuss) 03:30, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Weak delete with the understanding that many other organization names should be deleted as well as encyclopedic. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:23, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete, encyclopedic material not worthy of inclusion. Imetsia (talk) 15:29, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-deleted. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 19:16, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Further reading

• “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 12:16, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

RFD discussion: September 2022–July 2023

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization

I request undeletion. 1) It is in M-W as a "geographical name" and Collins; also Dictionary.com, but this is not a classic lemming. 2) The deletion discussion nomination "Not dictionary material" gives us no observable properties to work with. The name is covered by Wikipedia, but so are United Nations, Red Cross and Red Crescent. Being covered by Wikipedia is alone no reason for exclusion. 3) The principle could be to exclude all full multi-word names of specific entities, but we do not apply this to geographic entities, astronomical entities and biological taxa. All of them are covered in Wikipedia or Wikispecies. 4) We could want to delete transparent multi-word names of specific entities, but the NATO name is not fully transparent, unlike National Basketball Association, from which we know it deals with sports, whereas for NATO we do not know it is a military organization. It is semi-transparent by being an organization relating to North Atlantic Treaty. Even the kept Royal Navy is more transparent: it is a royal navy, we just don't know the country. 5) Fully transparent multi-word names of countries such as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland get a free pass, and it would be a natural extension of that to give a free pass to names of important international organizations, and NATO is as important as countries; this would cover United Nations Organization, European Union, OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (redlink), Warsaw Treaty Organization (recently deleted), and bluelinks International Court of Justice, International Maritime Organization, International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, European Free Trade Association, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization. From a purely lexicographical standpoint, NATO full name is not unambiguously includable, but it is no worse than the full name of the U.K. Undeleting NATO name would give a better consistency in what we do: we do consider importance of referents for human-related aggregates. 6) It was said that the spirit of WT:COMPANY is relevant, but I don't see that: this is nowhere close to being a company. And there are much fewer important international organizations than companies. 7) Whether this should be kept for translation I do not know. For Czech, the most usual term is Severoatlantická aliance, matching North Atlantic Alliance; the translations could be in North Atlantic Alliance if we had the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:35, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Updated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:22, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Undelete. The term is opaque (as Dan points out), and it also refers to something very notable. See also the discussion of § United Nations Economic and Social Council. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 20:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted. The vast majority of names of specific entities should be relegated to encyclopedias, there is not sufficient lexical value to bother including them in a dictionary. Keep NATO with a pointer to Wikipedia, people who are actually looking up "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" want an encyclopedia entry not a dictionary entry. We should also delete most of the class of entries which Dan has highlighted as blue links. - TheDaveRoss 13:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

People who are looking up "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" in a dictionary know what they are looking for, perhaps translations. These are in interwikis, but are not per se Wikipedia's remit. To capture the arguments: User:Dan Polansky/IA#Wikipedia-style generosity, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate lemmings, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate for consistency, User:Dan_Polansky/IA#Dictionary-style treatment. Or delete the full name of the U.K. and delete "X County" entries, when we're at it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

To get some data, I looked at page views for European_Free_Trade_Association, International_Court_of_Justice, nonadrenal, International_Maritime_Organization, nonaccrual, nonacoptic. The organizations are no blockbuster entries, getting units per day, but the nonX entries perform even worse. Whether the data is conclusive is unclear: people know to look for nonX entries in Wiktionary (it has so many of them), but they do not know to look for names of organizations (it has so few of them). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted until there has been a proper discussion or vote on the criteria for including or excluding the names of organizations. Dealing with the matter piecemeal is unhelpful. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I created Wiktionary:Names of organizations to track the subject. Precedents are listed, as well as some arguments and counterarguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:01, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I will add that NATO is as important as European Union and United Nations. EU is political and economic but not military; NATO is military but not economic. NATO is a quasi-empire, or 1/4-empire. Since we keep EU and UNO without explaining why, keeping NATO would be very much in keeping with that, even if we delete IMF, for instance. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:59, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Undelete per reasons already presented. AG202 (talk) 23:45, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Undelete in this form, although being a user of British English, I naturally prefer the "Organisation" spelling. DonnanZ (talk) 16:46, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Undelete. While I think the number of multi-word entries about organizations should be kept very low on Wiktionary, I think this entry would be helpful to readers based on WT:LEMMING, the subject matter's considerable notability and its somewhat unconventional name. Einstein2 (talk) 10:53, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I have undeleted this. As it's not clear to me whether the undeletion equally applies to the foreign entries (I would say no), I've temporarily hidden the translation table, to prevent any temptation from passersby to recreate those. This question remains to be settled. PUC – 16:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)