Wikipedia:Encyclopedic dictionary articles
 | This proposal has become dormant through lack of discussion by the community. It is inactive but retained for historical interest. If you want to revive discussion on this subject, try using the talk page or start a discussion at the village pump. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Encyclopedic dictionary articles in Wikipedia are about a word, term or phrase, rather than being about an idea or thing. They are not encyclopedia articles, but some are nevertheless very popular and rarely deleted. They should only be kept in Wikipedia if they go far beyond their treatment in Wiktionary |
The Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopedia; however a small number of articles are about word, term or phrase and are not truly encyclopedic.
Definition[edit]
An article is an encyclopedic dictionary article only if it is simply about a word, term or phrase and mainly covers the history (etymology) and usage of the word, and cannot be rewritten to be encyclopedic per WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary.
Examples are articles about a swear word, idiom and foreign words.
Notability[edit]
A word is deemed sufficiently notable to be in Wikipedia if it is in Wiktionary.
Article size[edit]
A word should only be described in Wikipedia if the treatment is greatly beyond what can be put in Wiktionary. As a guideline, there must be at least twice as much text.
Article naming[edit]
Unlike encyclopedia article, any part of speech can be covered by the name, but the article name must end in '(word)' '(term)' or '(idiom)' and may not be the primary redirect if a true encyclopedia article has the same name, but should be pointed to by disambiguation pages or the encyclopedia article of the same. However, it may be the primary redirect if the article name isn't shared with an encyclopedia article or disambiguation page.
Article lead[edit]
All encyclopedic dictionary articles must make clear what term they are about in the opening sentence.
Tagging[edit]
All encyclopedic dictionary articles must be tagged at the top to explicitly and unambiguously indicate that they are not encyclopedia articles:
{{encyclopedic dictionary}}
which would produce something like:
- This article is an encyclopedic dictionary article which is an extended dictionary article about a word, term or phrase.
Linking[edit]
Linking to these articles from encyclopedia articles is acceptable, but should wherever possible use italic linking style text to indicate their unencyclopedic nature to the reader.
Relationship with encyclopedia articles[edit]
Disadvantages of encyclopedic dictionary articles[edit]
Encyclopedia articles are typically fairly straightforward to translate to distant languages. However, encyclopedic dictionary articles usually translate poorly into foreign languages, because the word generally has multiple meanings and there is very typically no single completely equivalent word in the foreign languages. Thus encyclopedic dictionary articles are particular and represent knowledge specific to just one language, although there are rare exceptions.
Overlap with encyclopedia articles[edit]
Because encyclopedic dictionary articles cannot be translated easily and so any more general material must be moved out into encyclopedia articles wherever possible, and minimal overlap to all other articles should be maintained, but without impacting readability.
Status of encyclopedic dictionary articles[edit]
These articles can be considered second class citizen articles in the Wikipedia, but in some cases are very popular. In future they could be moved into a separate Wiki, and in the meantime must not interfere with encyclopedic articles.
Multiple terms[edit]
An encyclopedic dictionary is only about a single term, but terms may be covered if they the name is virtually identical when written (or otherwise lexically related). Two different terms (synonymous terms) that mean the same thing must be kept in separate articles or covered in encyclopedia article if that can be sensibly done.