Wiktionary:Votes/2022-06/Updating CFI for names of organizations

Voting on: Banning the creation of most full names of organizations by updating WT:CFI.

Proposed text:

Rationale:

1. Full/official names of organizations (e.g., Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Order of Friars Minor, Ku Klux Klan, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Nation of Islam, צבא הגנה לישראל, European Union, Greenpeace, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Commonwealth of Independent States) are not supposed to be dictionary material given their zero lexicographical worth; and as such they belong in our sister encyclopedia project, Wikipedia.
2. As a dictionary, we already have entries for shortenings such as abbreviations (Antifa, Nazi), acronyms (NORDEFCO, AFRICOM), clippings (Arab League, Friars Minor), initialisms (WTO, AITUC), etc. of any names of organizations, because they are lexicalized; these entries not only contain the full organization name in their definition or etymology, but also have a link to the Wikipedia article.
3. Moreover, because such entries are properly categorized, any duplication caused by the existence of the nonlexicographical proper nouns is redundant and undesirable, as well as problematic due to erroneous or creative translations.

Further reading:

1965, Philip B. Gove, The Nonlexical and the Encyclopedic, page 110:

Names of organizations, social, fraternal, religious, academic, etc., will be omitted (Phi Beta Kappa, Boy Scouts of America, Ku Klux Klan, Carnegie Foundation, Federal Farm Loan Board, Royal Academy)

Notes:

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 29 June, 2022 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
• Vote created: ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 04:33, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Recent RFD nominations like:
  • Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English § European Stability Mechanism
• RFD results like:
  • Talk:North Atlantic Treaty Organization § RFD discussion:April–June 2022
  • Talk:Royal Canadian Mounted Police § RFD discussion:February–March 2022
  • Talk:British Broadcasting Corporation § RFD discussion:February–March 2022
  • Talk:Soviet Armed Forces § RFD discussion:December 2021–January 2022
  • Talk:Centre de la sécurité des télécommunications Canada § February–March 2021
  • Talk:Real Academia Española § December 2019–August 2021
  • Talk:United States Marine Corps § RFD discussion:October–November 2011
• Wiktionary talk:Votes/2022-06/Updating CFI for names of organizations

1. Support. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 00:00, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
2. Support, though I feel there should be some criteria for determining why United Nations and League of Nations are exempted from the rule, as this may then be applied to other organizations. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:29, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   I exempted the United Nations and the League of Nations from deletion because they are/were (the only) international organizations representing the whole world, in contrast to the countless number of smaller regional orgs. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   How does that change the lexicographical worth of those terms? - Sarilho1 (talk) 22:35, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   They’re way more significant, so better to include them. And if you want me to define ‘significance’, you can consider the fact that there are pro-EU and Euroskeptic countries (the latter can choose to quit the EU), while the same isn’t true of the United Nations. There’s hardly anything special about ‘European Union’ that it should merit a dictionary entry. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 23:44, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   That's not a argument for inclusion nor is your definition of 'significance' relevant. - Sarilho1 (talk) 08:08, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   Your reasoning basically boils down to "UN and LN big". I don't at all think it's a good reasoning, and needing an organization to attempt to cover the entire world in order to be here is way too high a standard. 191.255.100.241 22:28, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

3. Support as I feel this is at least an improvement and as I commented at the talk. Though, somewhat agree with Sgconlaw and sche. —Svārtava (talk) • 12:03, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

1. Oppose. See my comments at Wiktionary_talk:Votes/2022-06/Updating_CFI_for_names_of_organizations. While I appreciate the update to include Èkìtì-Parapọ̀ and similar groups, the proposal is still vague and confusing, as for example Republican Party failed RFD, but yet parties are able to be created here? We have a ton of flexibility with place names at WT:CFI, but yet European Union, African Union, and Commonwealth of Independent States would be deleted under this new policy? I can get wanting to limit entries like British Broadcasting Corporation or Soviet Armed Forces that are much more limited in scope, but deleting the entry of a union that almost acts like its own country (it has its own legislature) and has its own pseudo-geographical borders while wanting to keep general party names does not feel right, especially with our current place name guidance. AG202 (talk) 00:47, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   As you said, these international organizations have pseudo-geographical borders: they do not even have all states as member, either because of the unwillingness to join/admit, or due to suspension. They are not placenames, they are organizations. Keeping full names of them is unbecoming of a dictionary, and we already have our sister encyclopedia project for them. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 23:36, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   Schengen Area is a geographical area and looking at WT:CFI again, it does seem like this conflicts with this line: "Cultural and geographical regions and dividing lines", but yeah, there are a lot of things that we include that'd be "unbecoming of a dictionary", like I don't think any other major dictionary includes fandom names or almost every place name imaginable (neighborhoods of any city or village that you can think of!), let alone the whole offensive term debacle. While I agree that some of these are more encyclopedic than others, I don't think that deleting things like European Union is the hill to die on when the website is so freeing in many many other areas. AG202 (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   I think fandom names are not lexicographical material; all toponyms on the planet are dictionary material (and we already have a policy on placenames!); any offensive terms are certainly lexicalized (whether editors or readers want to have them or not is a different issue). But those have no bearing on the current discussion about organizations. Yes, Schengen Area / Schengenland are entry-worthy, but certainly not the organization that it’s associated with. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:50, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   I was quoting the CFI policy on place names to show how freeing it is. It would be very strange to delete European Union while keeping any neighborhood possible. AG202 (talk) 15:12, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

2. Oppose. I feel like this proposal is unclear or redundant and it doesn't establish a proper policy on how to evaluate terms. Furthermore, it uses vague terms like "zero lexicographical worth", that just open a Pandora box of different interpretations. The special exceptions are particularly confusing, since it's not even clear why United Nations is lexicalized, but say European Union is not. The discussion in the talk page didn't clarify these points either, so I can only imagine that this will devolve in a WT:RFD debate over if the terms constitute WT:SOP. I don't get what is the rationale to keep names of political parties, seems just another arbitrary exception. Finally, as a side note, I believe there is a strong argument to delete political organizations that don't denote place names like United States of America, Russian Federation, French Republic, etc., if this proposal passes with the current wording. I'm personally fine with that, but I feel like this point should be taken into account before casting a vote. - Sarilho1 (talk) 09:49, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   It should be noted that the official/formal names of countries such as Qing Empire, Republic of China, People's Republic of China are synonyms of a placename (China), and aren’t organizations. Similarly, United States of America is a country name, and Russian Federation is the official name of modern Russia. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 23:36, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   I disagree with that note. They aren't synonymous with place names. The place names are the ones that also hold the sense of a political organization, thus by this definition they should be deleted and only the geographical sense should be kept. - Sarilho1 (talk) 08:10, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   Wrong. A pure geographical sense is generally rare, and placenames that are substantially big (barring names of continents) denote names of random territories and polities. China, India, Egypt, etc. has had various definitions throughout history, and today they are synonymous with the polity ruling these lands (parts thereof, or beyond). (And remember, there are two Chinas at present! — the ROC and the PRC.) ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:50, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   It doesn't matter if pure geographical senses are rare or not. The point is that the senses that should be kept, in accordance with WT:CFI's PLACENAME are the geographical senses. The formal names that point to the political organization that controls the territory ought to be removed. The fact that this proposal doesn't address that is very disappointing. It just sets half of the policy (and with many unreasonable exceptions) and I believe that to be more harmful than setting no policy at all. - Sarilho1 (talk) 08:34, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

   Well, we can decide about formal names of countries later. This vote has already been criticized for being too broad. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 20:56, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

   I would add my own note, namely, that the text "zero lexicographical worth" is part of the rationale. We only vote on the proposed policy text; the rationale is merely there to try and convince us. This, that and the other (talk) 13:26, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

3. Oppose. Policies should contain administrable, principled standards. Rather than saying that particular individual entries are expressly exempted, it is better to derive a principle as to why we permit them. (Sgconlaw and Sarilho1 make similar points above). In this case, we should permit organization names if they act as discrete lexical units. That's an actual principle that can be applied and interpreted in future RFD discussions. Substituting arbitrary judgments for actual legislation is a bad idea, as the "non-permanently-archived" vote illustrates. Imetsia (talk) 20:29, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   The exceptions are well-defined, and not arbitrary. Nevertheless, do you want me to elaborate further? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 23:51, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

   The exceptions are well-defined, but the reasons for the exceptions are not. - Sarilho1 (talk) 11:10, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   We already keep generic names for political parties that contain the relevant senses. The 2 US political parties were RFD-deleted coz they were stub entries. And keeping the only 2 true international organizations doesn’t make any difference. The main objective of this vote is obvious, and there is no need to oppose it because you happen to have one or two minor objections (minor things can always be amended in the future if the community wishes: so no need to thwart this proposal). ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:50, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

4. Oppose per my arguments on talk. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 04:42, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
5. Oppose as already expressed by others. Imetsia captures the downside quite well. I think CFI needs a section on organisations, but I would only vote for it if it were not so prescriptive. This, that and the other (talk) 13:26, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   So what kind of section on organizations would you prefer? Opposing a vote for some (allegedly) minor issues doesn’t help to improve the project. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:50, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   I was quite favourable towards the text that was proposed at the very beginning - namely, that organisation names are generally not included, but exceptions may be made case-by-case at RFD. I didn't think a lot more needed to be said. After the discussions on the talk page, I can now see value in a certain level of additional guidance, but writing into CFI that specific terms are explicitly allowed or disallowed is a step too far for me. This, that and the other (talk) 01:56, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

   You were opposed to the proposal right from the beginning. At first the proposal was criticized for not being specific, and now it’s the opposite. I’m clueless. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 20:56, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

   You're far from clueless - I think you read my opinion exactly right. In the beginning the proposed text was high-level, straightforward, and not prescriptive (good) but vague and contradictory in its wording (not so good), and I would have supported it if it had been fashioned into a simple statement of guidance or intent. But as soon as you said "All existing full org names will be deleted and the creation of new entries will be banned", my mind was made up to oppose the proposal, because I am against such a blanket ban. And now we have prescriptive carve-outs for individual terms set in policy - even worse. This, that and the other (talk) 11:56, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

6. Oppose expressed by me at the discussion page. Inqilābī has attempted and failed to present a reasonable rule distilled from the inconsistent past voting behaviour of editors, and a bad rule can be worse than whim. Fay Freak (talk) 14:31, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

   This is merely your misguided opinion. I’ve added an additional reading (“The Nonlexical and the Encyclopedic”) so that you can have a better understanding on what a dictionary is supposed to be. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 22:01, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

7. Oppose The relevant points have mostly been brought up. Terms like British Broadcasting Corporation should go while ones like European Union should stay. Until better differential diagnostic procedures are proposed, I will oppose. Further, I plain like the translation hubs on some of the entries. brittletheories (talk) 17:27, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
8. Oppose Numberguy6 (talk) 00:03, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
9. Oppose Disastrously formulated. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 13:43, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
10. Oppose didn't read the text but got unwelcome canvassing via email. idk why? oh well —Fish bowl (talk) 20:41, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

    Yeah, I invited you to participate in the vote. I don’t understand why it is ‘canvassing’. This isn’t the first time I asked you to participate, anyways. Sorry for bothering you. However, thanks for voting! ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:01, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

11. Oppose Just more stupid rules about proper nouns which should all be deleted. DTLHS (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

    @DTLHS: All proper nouns should be deleted? Or all stupid rules about proper nouns? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:59, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

    @DTLHS: You do realise that this vote seeks to delete a good deal of proper nouns from the project, right? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 23:19, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

12. Oppose I'm sorry that, having solicited my input, its creator will find I'm not supportive, but while I appreciate the attempt to implement some rules here... as others have said, this isn't a good formulation, e.g. keeping League of Nations and United Nations Organization but not European Union, keeping political parties even though they are no more lexicographically interesting than companies (there must also be company names which have applied to more than one company, especially if they're generic like Standard Steel, yet I see no reason to keep that or something as transparent as "Labour Party") and they have accordingly often been deleted at RFD (so this would undelete a bunch of previously deleted organization names?). Perhaps in discussion we might come up with some better guidelines, or perhaps inability to decide on any means we'll just continue to let RFD sort it out til someone gets troll-y / POINT-y and creates a ton of these... - -sche (discuss) 01:32, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

    I specifically mentioned those political parties because they are in most cases clippings of the actual full name. For comparison, Arab League isn’t the official name of the organization, and transparency isn’t really the criterion to decide the inclusion of these proper nouns. But then I get the input that these terms aren’t really desired by the community… ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 23:19, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

13. Oppose — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 01:57, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
14. Oppose I am particularly concerned at the glee expressed in deleting translations on the talk page, which clearly do serve a lexical purpose. Theknightwho (talk) 12:00, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
15. Oppose I feel like some structure would help here but deleting European Union goes too far. Apart from anything else the EU can be used to refer to a geographic area. John Cross (talk) 11:06, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

    @John Cross: Isn’t the inclusion of EU sufficient? Because we are a dictionary after all, and we can leave full names to our sister encyclopedia project, Wikipedia. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 19:07, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

    In my view, it isn't. John Cross (talk) 19:10, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

    I just don’t see why it’s a concern. I find these legitimately useful, anyway. Theknightwho (talk) 23:25, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

16. Oppose I disagree with the first point in the Rationale (emphasis mine): "Full/official names of organizations ... are not supposed to be dictionary material given their zero lexicographical worth..."
    • "Not supposed to be dictionary material", according to whom?

    WT:NOTPAPER. In addition, so long as our entries avoid falling into the encyclopedic trap -- describing the thing referred to by the term, rather than the term itself -- and we focus instead on the names as terms -- looking at the derivation, pronunciation, date of first use, sense development (if any), and other lexicographic details -- then I see no particular reason not to treat these as "dictionary material".

    • "Zero lexicographical worth", according to whom?

    As a translator, I'm often curious about how different languages construct the names for things. Some of these names are arguably idiomatic, as the choice of this word or that as a translation for part of the original name can be arbitrary.

    ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:43, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

17. Oppose The 'zero lexicographical worth' does not apply to Ku Klux Klan or Greenpeace. Now, many organisation names do verge on being sums of parts, which is probably better grounds for rejection. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:38, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose There might be some desirable, principled criteria for limiting the number of less-than-highly useful proper noun entries, but this proposal doesn't have them IMHO. DCDuring (talk) 14:04, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  @DCDuring While I appreciate your oppose vote, the fact remains that it's over a week late. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 03:19, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Failed: 3-17-0 Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 11:07, 29 July 2022 (UTC)