Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prithee

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Current guidelines do not preclude the inclusion of articles about words, whether the article discusses the word itself of the idea represented by the word. As long as a particular topic can be verifiably shown, with reliable sources, to be notable, then it is acceptable for inclusion. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:52, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prithee[edit]

Prithee (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Encyclopedia articles are supposed to be on a topic. However the prithee article is a purely a somewhat stubby dictionary article that has no realistic chance of expansion. The wikipedia is not a dictionary. Dictionaries are word based, whereas encyclopedias are based on general or abstract concepts, topics or things.

This article starts by stating that prithee is an interjection, but an interjection is simply a type of word. So the article starts off claiming it's a word. It's an article on a word, in a body of work that doesn't do articles on words.

This is not about a concept, it's just a word that means something like 'please' and which there already is an article on. (It's just a corruption of pray thee, which jumeans beg thee- I beg you, that's the whole article.) The article is well sourced but contains only English-language related references, which supports that this is only about a word, rather than any underlying meaning. There is an associated wiktionary article has coverage that is not currently as good but could be easily expanded with the material from here. The wikipedia is not a guidebook or usage guide for the English language.

Even if you were to think that it's a useful or interesting article to have, that it should be kept because its useful is an invalid argument in AFDs: Wikipedia:Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions#It's_useful.

The article has not "done enuff" to be encyclopedic (actually there's no policy either way to that effect anyway, there's plenty of stub articles that aren't dictionary articles), but this one clearly is a dictionary article.

Because of this, I'm calling for Transwiki.- Wolfkeeper 19:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Question: as far as I can tell, Wiktionary does not typically include some of the information in this article, for example "Prithee is the most widely known example of second person object enclitics" and "Because prithee eventually came to be used in the same context with the word you, it is considered to have developed into a monomorpheme." for example. How do we reconcile this? –xenotalk 20:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • If it's that important it should go in monomorpheme (which AFAICT is a red link- which should tell you where your energies should be going).- Wolfkeeper 20:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Generally, the wikipedia does best when it's about generalities, not specific examples. Is this word really important enough that it needs both an encyclopedia article and a dictionary article?- Wolfkeeper 20:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - This is not a dictionary entry. Much of the information included here is not transferrable to Wiktionary, as Xeno has hinted at above. Prithee is a very important word in the history of the English language which has much cultural and linguistic significance. Its encyclopedic relevance is similar to that of the word Thou, which has developped into a featured article. This encyclopedically notable concept should have its own Wikipedia article. Neelix (talk) 22:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it might be a lexicographically important word in the English language, but even important words (with very rare exceptions) don't get their own articles in the Wikipedia. I think that it could and should be included and mentioned from the other articles, but they can just as easily reference to wiktionary as to this article.- Wolfkeeper 00:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion thou should be merged into an article like Personal pronouns in Early Modern English, but I don't know enough about the subject matter surrounding this whether you could do something like that here.- Wolfkeeper 00:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Will this actually fit in Wiktionary? I haven't seen this sort of in-depth usage and linguistic commentary before. Maybe we need an etymwiki? - BalthCat (talk) 07:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There's absolutely nothing to stop you merging the article with other linguistics articles in the Wikipedia. Personally, I have my doubts, but the claim is that this is the most important word that has certain linguistic properties. If that's the case, it should slot into the articles on those linguistic properties just brilliantly.- Wolfkeeper 14:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This is far far beyond what Wiktionary will accept, and Wikipedia has hundreds of articles on category:words and category:phrases, despite Wolfkeeper's apparent desire that we should not ([1] etc).
    This is not a dictionary entry, it is encyclopedic coverage of a word. -- Quiddity (talk) 11:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Essentially none of the articles in those categories category:phrases and category:words are about words, they virtually are all about an underlying meaning. It just isn't the case, and I encourage anyone to go through those and find an article that is about the word or phrase, it's very difficult. Sorry, but this is actually a flat out lie that has now been used in multiple deletion reviews to misrepresent the nature of the Wikipedia.- Wolfkeeper 14:16, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Whether Wiktionary will accept this content verbatim is 100% irrelevant. What is important is whether this content is encyclopedic. It is not; it is entirely information on the history, usage, and derivation of a word, which is content that properly belons to dictionaries. Whether any specific dictionary would use this content word-for-word, however, is not our concern; it is the subject matter that is under consideration, not the specific wording. Powers T 14:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Sometimes information on the history, usage, and derivation of words is an enecyclopedia subject, from thou to nigger, because these matters touch on cultural history as well. This contains just such information as well. And no, if moving to Wiktionary involves loss of data, there's an encyclopedia subject worth keeping - by definition. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but that last bit is just bollocks. An encyclopedia isn't just a collection of dictionary articles with extra stuff in them that stops you deleting them, and if it worked the way you imply, then it would be. We can an add an infinite amount to any wiktionary article and stuff it in the wikipedia, that doesn't make it encyclopedic. What is allowed here depends on the policies, this one fails to meet the policies.- Wolfkeeper 15:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Smerdis of Tlön is arguing that the addition of nonsense to a dictionary definition makes it encyclopedic. Rather, I understand him to be arguing that if making a Wikipedia article into a Wikitionary entry requires the stripping out of encyclopedic content, then the article was encyclopedic.
I'm leaning toward keep myself, since the comments on grammaticalization make this, arguably at least, an encyclopedia topic. My only concern relates to the notability of this word. To wit: is this really about prithee per se, or about the grammaticalization of pronouns? But the references, especially Lindquist and Mair (2004), seem to allay that concern. "The best known example [of object enclitics] is prithee." (241) Cnilep (talk) 17:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only encyclopedic information in this article belongs in clitic or some other topical article. Everything else is just word history and usage. Powers T 19:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - So far as I can tell, here are the arguments that have been presented so far suggesting that this article should be deleted and my responses to them:
  1. It is a "dictionary article." - Not the case; the majority of this article moves beyond what is appropriate for inclusion in Wiktionary. All of the supplementary information is encyclopedic, not just the fact that prithee is the most widely known example of second person object enclitics.
  2. The article is "somewhat stubby." - Not relevant; stubs are integral to Wikipedia.
  3. It "has no realistic chance of expansion." - Not true; I have doubled the amount of encyclopedic information and sources on this article since this comment was made. Much more information can be added; there is a very realistic chance of expansion.
  4. "Wikipedia does best when it's about generalities, not specific examples." - Highly suspect; certainly no reason to delete articles about specific instances of things. The majority of articles on Wikipedia fall into the category of specific examples of more general concepts.
  5. It "is not about a concept, it's just a word." - The fact that the Word article is in the Concepts category should by itself demonstrate the fallacy in this argument.
  6. A user "has [some] doubts" that prithee in fact is the most widely known example of second person object enclitics. - This source should clear up any doubts: [2].

This is a valid article which should remain and develop on Wikipedia. If the only objections to this article's existence are those outlined above, there are not sufficient grounds for deletion. Neelix (talk) 23:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding #1, what is and is not a "dictionary article" is not determined by what Wiktionary would include. Powers T 00:17, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is determined by Wikipedia guidelines, which state that "terms with encyclopedic disputes connected with them" (such as the debate and extensive research into the differences between prithee and pray you) and other words "such as Macedonia (terminology) or truthiness" are valid Wikipedia articles. Neelix (talk) 01:02, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I actually searched through the literature in google books and elsewhere about encyclopedias and dictionaries and the only acid test I've managed find is that encyclopedia articles are straightforwardly translatable into any language, because while the topic in an Encyclopedia is identified by a word/phrase (the signifier) but is actually about the subject (the signified). Because you can easily identify any encyclopedic subject in many different ways, and in many different languages, then you have a test you can apply. For example, the English wikipedia does not include articles on Russian words because we cannot have titles in Russian. Similarly if you were to try to translate this into Russian, it would be essentially impossible, because prithee is only an English word, and you would presumably not be allowed to quote an English word in the title either.- Wolfkeeper 01:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Therefore I feel this fails the acid test; it's not a truly encyclopedic topic for an article because it's about an English word. This isn't to say that it can't be merged with other articles, there's no prohibition about any words from any language in the body of articles.- Wolfkeeper 01:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c, reply to ltpowers) This is one of the fundamental disagreements (misunderstandings?). You and Wolfkeeper have said before that Wiktionary's inclusion criteria is irrelevant. I think the people who originally wrote WP:NAD would completely disagree with that. The whole point of the policy is to determine whether valid/valuable content belongs either here or there.
The difference between "dictionary entry" and "encyclopedic content" isn't as simple as Wolfkeeper keeps trying to make it out to be. The policy specifically mentions articles on terms, such as SNAFU and singular they and sexism. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Even if we were to accept Wolfkeeper's arbitrary test, this article passes. An article about the word prithee most certainly could be translated into another language, just as the Thou article has been translated into French, Romanian, Russian, and Scots as an important and encyclopedically notable word in the history of the English language. Neelix (talk) 01:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thou hasn't been properly translated. If it had been translated it would be about French words that mean the same thing. Thou is still clearly an English word in the French Encyclopedia. The article hasn't translated properly, because it cannot be translated.- Wolfkeeper 01:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, are you saying it's OK to take the spanish 'you' and translate that article and put it here in the English Wikipedia? Is an article encyclopedic in one language and not another?- Wolfkeeper 02:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that's just because Wiktionary was a convenient available example of a dictionary, and an attempt to emphasize that plain definitions should go to Wiktionary. Since then, the policy has evolved (as have Wiktionary's inclusion requirements), and it now makes it clear that it's certain categories of content that is prohibited. This remains true regardless of whether or not the exact wording can be transwikied. For example, just because Wiktionary doesn't want extensive instructions on how to use a word doesn't mean that that information automatically becomes encyclopedic. It's still dictionary content; it's just dictionary content that Wiktionary (for some reason) doesn't want. Powers T 01:38, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/Redirect/Transwiki the relevent content to an appropriate language article such as clitic. Wiktionary should accept the vast majority of this content. There is useful content here but the best location for it appears to be Wiktionary and/or language articles rather than having an article in an encyclopedia which is a dicdef plus a bit more.--Michig (talk) 08:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This isn't a dicdef, it's an encyclopedic encyclopedia article about a word. Nothing in WP:NAD says that words qua words are ineligible topics for encyclopedia articles – I would hope that nothing is an ineligible topic for an encyclopedia article. Wiktionary already has an entry for prithee, which needs to be expanded, but transwikiing this content there would violate wikt:WT:CFI#Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia. +Angr 10:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, me, I would hope that admins wouldn't close reviews illegally. I would also hope that admins wouldn't pretend that the Wikipedia can cover any topic, when WP:ISNOT clearly states that isn't the case. I guess we can't have everything, and you shouldn't have this article, according to the policy you clearly haven't read. What wiktionary does with an article when it gets there is up to them, but there's certainly no policy against transwiking this.- Wolfkeeper 15:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're the one that seems not to have read the policy which you cite. WP:ISNOT says clearly "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject ... Descriptive articles about languages, dialects, or types of slang ... are desirable." Its point is that we should not just provide a definition of a topic's title but "...should provide other types of information about that topic as well.". Our article does this well and so the policy supports it. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:09, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It says that, and both are concepts; one is about what Macedonia is, the other is about treating gut opinions as if they were iron-cast truths. And those two examples are both nouns. This isn't a noun, and that encyclopedic articles should be noun topics is very well established.- Wolfkeeper 02:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not for things WP:MADEUP one day, including Wolfkeeper's idiosyncratic interpretations of policy. (Thanks for the personal attack by the way, you're just digging yourself further into your hole.) +Angr 12:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If anything, that an encyclopedia should cover words is something that somebody made up and stuffed into the relevant policy before anybody realised; where's that stated in the literature on encyclopedias? Clue: It isn't. Barring occasional mistakes no other general encyclopedias does that, because they aren't dictionaries either.- Wolfkeeper 19:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I also note your very cynical idiosyncratic interpretation of WP:MADEUP; it's a content policy, not covering policy discussions at all. Tell me, have you abused your admin priviledges again today, Angr, or have you just restricted yourself to slinging mud at users?- Wolfkeeper 19:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Prithee keep this fine article which continues to wax greatly by virtue of the numerous scholarly sources which may be found expounding upon its many aspects and history. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You mean like any well-referenced dictionary article?- Wolfkeeper 15:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, I mean an encyclopedia article such as found in the Encyclopedia of language and linguistics‎, An encyclopedia of swearing, Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories, Funk & Wagnalls standard encyclopedia of the world's knowledge, etc. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The wikipedia is not a specialist linguistic encyclopedia. There's all kinds of strange 'encyclopedias' out there. The wikipedia is a general encyclopedia.- Wolfkeeper 02:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The "Prithee" article is about a word and should be in a dictionary, not Wikipedia. When original research is deleted people do not argue that it should not be removed because good information will be lost. I do not claim that the "Prithee" article is bad, poorly done or immoral, only that it does not belong here because of established and useful policy.
Quiddity's claim that the article is encyclopedic does not belong in this AfD. The term "encyclopedic" is somewhat ambiguous. If Qiddity means comprehensive, there is no policy exempting dictionary style articles if they are comprehensive enough in their violation of Wikipedia's policies. If he means suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia, then it is equivalent to writing that the article is suitable on the basis of Quiddity's personal authority. What belongs in this AfD are specific examples of what makes this article encyclopedic or unencyclopedic.
There is no more cultural significance to prithee than there is to the average arbitrarily chosen word in the English language, less because it has been obsolete for many years.--Fartherred (talk) 17:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your rationale that the article should be deleted because it is about a word is inadequate because it is well-established by precedent and policy that we may have article about words. To sustain such articles, we need to demonstrate that the words are notable as a topic in themselves. In this case, we are able to point to numerous scholarly investigations and accounts of this word. These go far beyond a dictionary entry and so we're good. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sure no such policy states that articles on words are allowed. Please point to the policy that states that, or are you just making a groundless assertion in the hopes nobody notices.- Wolfkeeper 18:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a general rule, it's just two exceptions. And there's no rule that any word goes in; in fact WP:NAD gives whole classes that exclude this word.- Wolfkeeper 02:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
comment Colonel Warden's point is not demonstrated. There is scholarly work done on every single root word listed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, (c) 2007. For instance the word grass is revealed to most likely derive from the Old English growan through the Old High German forms gras and grass and the Old English graes through the Middle English gras. Even if every old lexicographical paper for the word grass were dug up and thousands of court cases in which the word grass appears were referenced; it would still leave the word grass without special cultural significance. It is just an ordinary word. So there is properly only the Wikipedia article on the concept of grass, with no disambiguation page for an article on the word. This precedent demonstrates that the mere fact that every English word has a derivation of interest to some lexicographical specialists is an insufficient cause to include the word as a Wikipedia article. Colonel Warden's claim that those he includes by the pronoun "we" are good may or may not be true, but it seems irrelevant; and his logic seems to be defective.--Fartherred (talk) 20:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • What precedent? Please provide some evidence to support your unsubstantiated assertions. We have presented numerous independent and reliable sources which testify to the notability and cultural significance of this topic. All you offer is your personal opinion of the matter but this is not a vote. Your position seems to be that all articles about words are necessarily invalid but this is clearly false as we have numerous articles and categories of this sort and policy which say clearly that they are just fine. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's still not a noun though; and non-nounal words are not permitted in general encyclopedias.- Wolfkeeper 02:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not just a "general encyclopedia", as pointed out in the first section at Wikipedia:Five pillars. The naming conventions are just that, conventions/guidelines/recommendations, with many (non-exhaustive) exceptions mentioned in the main policy page. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The five pillars page is not a policy or guideline, and the policy and guidelines there are elsewhere, are consistent with it not being a specialised linguistics encyclopedia. The wikipedia's articles in practice, are nouns or noun phrases. This one is not, and hence needs to be renamed or merged, or is ineligible here.- Wolfkeeper 05:57, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
comment I should have made it easier for Colonel Warden to find Grass (disambiguation). If he will simply check that page he will see that it is just as I stated. That disambiguation page has no Grass (word) article. He writes: "All you offer is your personal opinion of the matter..." Clearly neither the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary nor the Grass (disambiguation) page are my personal opinion. The derivation that I referred to is based entirely on the dictionary without quoting it. That is a fair use of the dictionary, because that is what dictionaries are for, providing meaning and derivations, among other things. The main page of Wikipedia gives 3,095,383 articles as the current number. A matter of hundreds of word articles is no great part of that.
Colonel Warden makes the unjustified suggestion that my position is that all articles about words are necessarily invalid. Perhaps he did not read my reference to Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis and Magna Carta in the "Prout patet per recordum" AfD which we both voted in before he misstated my position. Perhaps he simply fails to recall the "requiescat in pace" AfD that he participated in, where I referred to

the "The King is dead. Long live the King." article the only one that is a reasonably encyclopedic article about something culturally significant.

No problem, I helpfully preserved a copy of the AfD at User:Fartherred/AfD1.
I do not imagine that Colonel Warden will deny that every element of the derivation of Grass from earlier languages must necessarily involve scholarly research. But if He wants to deny that, I am willing to record his denial. We have a case in which we know that there were many scholarly works done on many words. Only some of them that were presented in the "Prithee" article are easily known by name to participants in this AfD, but the existence of the unnamed research is a certainty.--Fartherred (talk) 05:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wolfkeeper stated "wikipedia's articles in practice, are nouns or noun phrases." This statement is not true. Wikipedia has accepted articles about the words Amen, Humbug, Go, and many other words which are not nouns or noun phrases. What Colonel Warden was referring to when stating "All you offer is your personal opinion of the matter," if I understand correctly, was that no one has demonstrated that there is precedent in Wikipedia guideline discussions or AfD's in which it was decided that an article should be deleted for the sole reason that it happens to be about a word. In fact, the opposite has been thoroughly demonstrated: articles about words are so well accepted on Wikipedia that some of them have become featured articles (such as Thou and Macedonia) both on the English Wikipedia and on the other language Wikipedias (see for example History of the term Wallon on the French Wikipedia). If editors strongly feel that articles about words should be deleted from Wikipedia out of hand, it should be the established articles that are addressed (such as Thou and Macedonia), not ones just starting off like this one. Unless there is a reason which Prithee should be deleted which does not also argue in support of the deletion of the previously mentioned featured articles about words, then this discussion should be on a guidelines page or on AfD's for the featured articles. As far as the current arguments for the deletion of this article are concerned, this is not a standalone issue and cannot be treated as one. If we are not to follow the guidelines which exist and follow the precedent of accepting articles about words on Wikipedia, the AfD page for a new article is simply far too obscure a corner of Wikipedia for such an important discussion to be taking place. Neelix (talk) 20:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, I find it surprising and disappointing that what is simply an article on the definition, etymology and usage of a word is kept in the Wikipedia; that this isn't immediately laughed out of court. It's probably because the Wiktionary is uniformly pretty awful, and is failing to suck these articles away to where they should be.
Encyclopedias are on topics, not words. Words are not valid topics. That this is a word article is clear- it is not possible to translate it (including the title) into (say) French without changing the article completely. This clearly makes it an English-word dictionary entry.- Wolfkeeper 20:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Some editors look at the exemptions to the policy that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and think that they have a loophole that they could sail the USS Nimitz through. We should have some understanding of the allowable exemptions. The exemplary articles Macedonia (terminology) and Truthiness are really quite exceptional.
The use of the name, Macedonia, for various places in the region of the Balkans is integral to the complexities of the history of that area for many centuries. The lack of a single geographical location to associate with the name makes an article on a country named "Macedonia" difficult, and the name itself have been the subject of diplomatic dispute.
While politicians have probably been making high sounding empty statements since before recorded history, the satirical use of "truthiness" was the epitome of current comedic response to such statements. It was appropriate to put the article about that satire and people's response to it under the title Truthiness.
Other word article topics might not be quite so exceptional and still rate an exemption from the Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy but Prithee is not one of them. It is of interest to very narrowly specialized language scholars. The word's major cultural significance is that it was part of the language of Shakespeare. The way to address that interest is with an article on the Language of Shakespeare, not with a separate article on the word prithee.--Fartherred (talk) 00:28, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It seems agreed that there are some words which merit articles. The question is then how do we determine whether a word such as prithee is one of these words. We can't just give our personal opinions as these would tend to be the weak argument of WP:ILIKEIT/WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The test must surely be the same as that used to establish the notability of any topic — whether it has been given specific coverage by reliable sources. In this case, there are numerous scholarly papers which discuss at length the shades of meaning of this word and its usage in literature. These seem to provide the level of notability required. User:Fartherred asserts that you can find papers of this sort for any word such as grass. I had a look for similar papers about that word and couldn't find anything comparable. The test of notability thus seems to work well enough for our purposes. This is the way that other AFDs about words have been resolved and so we are not breaking new ground here. This case thus turns upon the quality of the sources provided. I consider that these are good enough and so we're good. If others dispute the quality of these sources then they should please explain why they are not satisfactory for our purpose. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would actually argue that neither Macedonia, nor truthiness are really about words. Macedonia is about a sense of nationalism, and truthiness is about people (mainly politicians) portraying bullshit as truth, and everyone really knows that. The truthiness article does have quite a bit about the word in it, how it won awards and so forth, but everyone really knew what it was about. It was even succesfully translated into French and used in the Canadian parliament. That's because it's not a word; it's the idea behind the definition that's important.
What is prithee really about? Well, it's used in Shakespeare... and that's about it. It means please, with extra shades of subservience. Big deal. This is not encyclopedic, it's just a dictionary article, it is no Earth shattering thing- unlike Macedonia people don't go to war over it, the word has never won awards, and it's no longer even used. If you want to know what it means, or any other word, a dictionary is the right place to go.- Wolfkeeper 16:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is not for us to decide ourselves whether a matter is a "big deal" or not. We judge this by seeing whether other third-parties have considered the topic sufficiently noteworthy to write about. If they have, then the notability of the topic is established and we have a ready supply of sources to summarise. This same principle applies, whatever the topic, because Wikipedia is not censored and it is not limited in size. Our topic in this case is not just the plain meaning of the word prithee but also encompasses its history, nuances and literary usage. Scholars have found this matter to be a fruitful topic and it is not for us to gainsay or second-guess them. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • And this word is covered as an article in other general encyclopedias is it? You can point to it in EB and so forth? I mean, it's so very important, they must have right......???- Wolfkeeper 18:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • In point of fact, they do not. The EB for example has an article called 'poetic diction' that mentions a list of words one of which is prithee. That's it. And that's encyclopedic, because there's a topic (which is not in itself a word), and they cover it correctly. Compare and contrast that with this article; which is just a dictionary entry.- Wolfkeeper 19:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia is not the Encyclopedia Britannica. They have but 73,000 articles while we have 3 million and counting. We obviously don't delete articles here if they are not in EB. I provided a list of other encyclopedias which feature this word above. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • But it's more than that isn't it. The EB defines what an encyclopedia is. They may be smaller, but they've had hundreds of years to work out what an encyclopedia is, and is not. They don't have articles like this one.- Wolfkeeper 00:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • And we are not a traditional encyclopedia. We are an online encyclopedia and we define and redefine that concept day by day. Welcome to the 21st century! –xenotalk 00:07, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's not what the policy says. It says we're an encyclopedia, it doesn't say anything about "redefining encyclopedias".- Wolfkeeper 00:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • EB doesn't have an entry for nose cone, let alone nose cone design. We do.
    We are not a "general encyclopedia". We incorporate "elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers."
    This is getting further and further away from dealing with Prithee.
    If you want to have a proper discussion about removing word articles from Wikipedia, please start one at the villagepump. If you think Wikipedia should be more like Britannica, with a general or narrow focus, start a discussion about that there too. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, the Wikipedia will have ~30 times more encyclopedic articles; and those would seem to me to be encyclopedic topics. But I'm not aware of any word articles in EB at all. It seems obvious that they should be in the dictionary.- Wolfkeeper 04:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think Wikipedia would be better with a policy that did not let numerous scholarly papers, in a field that grinds them out like sausage, establish suitability for an excemption to the not a dictionary policy. Until such policy is found or established, I think prithee has won its case. How does one put a frowny face symbol in this discussion?--Fartherred (talk) 04:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it has won it's case at all.- Wolfkeeper 04:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exactly what words were used in these 3 works from the 1700s to sell themselves to their prospective customers need not concern us in the 21st century. People actually know what the difference between a dictionary and what we do here is; well most people do.- Wolfkeeper 00:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Historical and cultural aspects of the term make it deserving of an article.--PinkBull 22:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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