Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-08/Common placenames get entries

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Common placenames get entries[edit]

  • Voting on: Amending Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion as follows: After the existing section "Given and family names", before the existing section "What Wiktionary is not with respect to names", and on a level with them, add a section entitled "Common place names", with the following text:
Place names (such as York and Thames) are words, considered attested if there are three different places of the same type (e.g., region, city, river) with the same name in the same language. Idiomaticity tests are as above (in the section "Idiomaticity"): New York, North Dakota, Stratford-on-Avon, Corello Street, and River Thames, for example, are not considered idiomatic, whereas York, Dakota, Stratford, Avon, Corello, and Thames are considered idiomatic. An example definition for such a word is "A common name for rivers.".
This does not preclude possible definitions corresponding to specific places (and entries for such definitions), which are discussed in the section, below, titled "Names of specific entities", and which may, per that section, be included even if they do not meet the criteria in the preceding paragraph.
  • Note that this addition does not preclude the subsequent modification of the section titled "Names of specific entities", which is under current discussion. Moreover, note that this addition is intended to add to, not reduce, the number of valid entries/senses.
  • Vote starts: 00:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Vote ends: 24:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Support[edit]

  • Support. I have some major reservations about this proposal:
    • It uses the phrase "places […] with the same name", but like previous proposals, it doesn't explain what relationship the name must have to the place. What does it mean to say that a place has a name? Does C-town count? (Possibly a bad example, since you can argue it's not idiomatic, but you see what I'm getting at. It's not the official name of any place, but I'm pretty sure it's attestable in reference to at least three.)
    • It uses the phrase "there are places". Does this imply that we only accept names of real places that currently exist? If so, why?
    • It seems seriously misleading to describe a name as "common" on the basis of just three places using it.
    • The whole concept is kind of weird, and perversely unhelpful: we'll only include a place-name if there are enough examples of it that we can get away with not saying anything useful about any of them?
    • What Dominic says below.
    But I don't think it will result in adding entries we don't want, and it may be a first step toward adding entries we do want, so I'm all for implementing this change, and seeing where it takes us.
    —RuakhTALK 03:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Ƿidsiþ 15:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC) ...I support, despite rather than because of most of the proposal's content! Ƿidsiþ 15:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support.but2RESTRICTIV'n'wordingUNclear--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 04:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

Oppose Ƿidsiþ 09:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC) as being too strict. Of course New York should have an entry. All words should be here, including placenames, including names of tiny places. What is the detriment to the project of having them? Ƿidsiþ 09:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • But this is a proposal to allow a new class of words, without banning any existing ones. (For example, New York would still be allowed, under the "attributive use" criterion.) I agree that we should allow many place-names that this proposal doesn't cover; but isn't this at least an improvement over the status quo? —RuakhTALK 15:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Huh, I didn't realise we HAD any current guidelines about placenames, but I see that they come under the "Names of specific entities" spiel. In which case.... Ƿidsiþ 15:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain[edit]

  • I haven't participated in the discussion since I just found out about this, so I am just putting this comment down without a vote yet. But this seems like another variation on the impulse to apply some notability standard (rather than attestation) to anything involving proper nouns. It doesn't matter how many physical things or places are named something; instead, word attestation is based on how well used and documented a word is in the language.

    Just as it is conceivable that a term that is used three times as a placename would not actually be understood as having entered the language, it is likely that there are many placenames that have entered the language on the basis of just one well-known place ("New York," mentioned above as not idiomatic(?) springs to mind). Attempting to determine wordiness based on the commonness of the thing the term refers to, instead of the commonness of the term itself in the language's literature, is the wrong way to do attestation. Dominic·t 00:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Abstain Mglovesfun (talk) 22:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC), The French Wiktionary allows any place names as CFI doesn't (not yet?) forbid this. I don't think they really add anything, but they don't take anything away either. We have a lot of place names here anyway, I sort of think that is vote will "make it official" rather than leading editors in any direction. As for etymologies, I've never really understood why putting (deprecated template usage) London + (deprecated template usage) -er is so much better than putting London + (deprecated template usage) -er. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Decision[edit]

Never properly started, and this issue has since been subject to a successful policy change. - TheDaveRoss 18:43, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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