Wiktionary:Votes/2025-02/Deletion of "Tennis player test"

Voting on: deleting the section Wiktionary:Idioms that survived RFD#Tennis player test. This is a guideline allowing multi-word terms designating professions, such as tennis player itself, to be included even when they may appear to be sum-of-parts.

Please vote "support" to support deletion of this section or "oppose" to retain the section.

In earlier discussion (linked below) it was suggested that the "tennis player" test is now superseded by WT:THUB. In fact, the archetype tennis player is itself not a "full" entry but only a translation hub. Also, it was pointed out that a large and indeed open-ended number of descriptive and apparently sum-of-parts profession names exist, all of which would seemingly qualify for inclusion under the "tennis player" rule.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 16 February 2025 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
• Vote created: Mihia (talk) 18:50, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Discussion(s):

• Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2024/December#WT:TENNIS

1. Support This, that and the other (talk) 04:16, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   To respond to AG202's examples, I would support deletion of Spanish actor de voz (at least) as SOP. Some others would likely survive (border guard as THUB, nail technician probably as THUB and possibly also on the polysemy of "nail", teaching assistant has a specific meaning in US universities which we somehow don't have, French guide touristique on the polysemy of guide as person vs book). We should consider each of these entries on its own merits, not include them all on this somewhat arbitrary basis. This, that and the other (talk) 07:59, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   @This, that and the other: No, per our current CFI rules, French guide touristique would fail since guide has always had the base meaning of English "guide (person)". It is SOP. Same thing goes for English nail technician. We also don't have any translations for it now. Again, I would support a more narrow reading of WT:TENNIS, but right now we're opening a can of worms to put common professions up for RFD. AG202 (talk) 14:59, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   I very much doubt that large numbers of entries will immediately be put up at RFD if this test is deleted. If, over time, any are nominated that we do want to keep despite being ostensibly SoP, it will encourage us to understand why we want to keep them (presumably above a plethora of others that "everyone" would agree are SoP clutter), and formulate a policy to properly do so (which we may in the process discover applies to many other phrases besides profession names). Mihia (talk) 18:28, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

2. Support. Svārtava (tɕ) 04:40, 16 February 2025 (UTC)
3. Support—the policy is somewhat arbitrary and allows for far too many clearly SOP entries; entries for “X player” (with X replaced with a sport) can be done for nearly every sport in existence. “X instructor”, “X specialist“, “X tester” (software, product, game), “X breeder” (cat, dog, panda) and “X analyst” (data, financial, business) are all further examples of this. I think AG202's concerns below are settled by the fact that most of the more popular professions will survive through THUB. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 09:08, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   @LunaEatsTuna: As it stands, things like English mechanical engineer would not pass THUB. But more importantly, you completely missed the second main point that THUB does not apply to non-English entries. AG202 (talk) 14:51, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   @AG202: On diving into the history of WT:TENNIS, it was originally not considered distinct from the "fried egg" test which was then written as: Terms that imply certain social knowledge that could not be derived from any of the constituents. This would work to save tennis player if tennis + player ("one who plays") -> tennis player ("one who plays tennis professionally") but "professionally" being an in-built part or a connotation of the meaning of "tennis player" has been challenged and debunked multiple times. So I don't think that English mechanical engineer is intended to be saved by WT:TENNIS as the word "engineer" in it already contains a sense restricted to a professionality. Svārtava (tɕ) 20:44, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   I feel like having an easy-to-remember rule is a recipe for WT:THUB apologia by opponents as well as people defending its namesake rather than take on WT:SoP accusations, which leads to "debunked" instead of arguments. But TAKASUGI Shinji there seemed to do a good job explaining WT:TENNIS (a test which proves added layers, not proves exclusivity of some kind), and the "debunkers" never attacked the test itself on its own turf of WT:IDIOM. Lumbering in thought (talk) 07:21, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

4. Support—Test is too broad and would allow virtually limitless SoP combinations. Mihia (talk) 11:53, 16 February 2025 (UTC)
5. Support MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 02:05, 18 February 2025 (UTC)
6. Support. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:06, 18 February 2025 (UTC)
7. Support. Whoop whoop pull up ^{♀️ Bitching Betty 🏳️‍⚧️ Averted crashes ⚧️} 01:00, 20 February 2025 (UTC)
8. Support, as the test is too broad and should be replaced by a better one that wouldn't allow useless SoP entries but would permit useful entries like those examples AG202 gave. Davi6596 (talk) 11:00, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
9. Support. Too many professions are simply SOP. If we're not careful we'll start including Gracie Fields' famous profession, 'the girl who makes the thing'. In my eyes, the reason tennis player is idiomatic has nothing to do with it being a profession and everything to do with it being more vastly more commonplace than tenniser. Perhaps we could formulate a rule to keep entries on that sort of basis?--Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

   Indeed, I recall that (relative commonness) being discussed with regard to something like English studies vs Anglistics (though I can't relocate the exact discussion) — as you say, if anyone wants a guideline covering that principle, it's something else than this guideline. Are there any such things we'd want to keep that aren't covered by THUB, I wonder? I assume rare single words don't automatically make more-common multiword strings inclusion-worthy, e.g. the marginal existence of "Discordian" doesn't create a need for the more usual "user of Discord" / "Discord user", nor "Redheadditor" "red-headed Redditor".) - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

   I gave some examples in my vote below. AG202 (talk) 15:16, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

   Considering the song's whole point is driving at the eponymous Thing-Ummy Bob, it seems questionable to stop at "the thing" without all its qualifiers. Lumbering in thought (talk) 20:37, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

10. Support per Mihia. PUC – 17:58, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
11. Support. Unfortunately took a while to vote, but here's the thing: the test was created with English entries in mind, because their translations were useful, and that's just WT:THUB. As for the words in other languages, they should be discussed case-by-case instead of getting a blanket keep. For example, I'd indeed like to delete French guide touristique, but as we currently define English actor (and thereform Spanish actor), actor de voz is not SoP; as currently defined, I don't see Yoruba onímọ̀ ẹ̀dá-èdè as SoP either. And if it does turn out these words are SoP, then I would want them deleted. Polomo47 (talk) 00:53, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
12. Support. I would support the inclusion of the examples that have been adduced on other grounds (fried egg test, THUB, etc.) or would support including them as collocations rather than full entries. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
13. Support: merely being a profession doesn't make something automatically worth keeping, and we shouldn't be suggesting it does. However, as I understand it, this test and most of the tests on WT:IDIOM are not policy (they don't mandate "we must include x"); with a few exceptions, the page is mostly explanatory, explaining (describing rather than prescribing) that de facto people often vote to keep entries for certain types of word; in that sense, it seems like regardless of whether we keep or delete the test, the people who want such entries will still vote to keep them, and the people who don't want them will still vote to delete them. (Arguably, WT:IDIOM could be improved by more often recording instances when terms were deleted despite meeting a certain test, to give readers of the page a better sense of how accepted a given test is...) - -sche (discuss) 04:34, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

1. Oppose: (For context, the THUB addition was added to tennis player in 2023) In general, though, I do think that having words like border guard, mechanical engineer, nail technician, teaching assistant, etc. are helpful to have in a dictionary since people are likely to look them up and dictionaries like MW keep track of some of them as well. Not all of them will pass THUB either. I could support a more narrow reading of WT:TENNIS, but I can't support a wholesale removal of it. This would also negatively affect the languages outside of English that can't rely on THUB for inclusion, so entries like Spanish actor de voz (“voice actor”), French guide touristique (“tour guide”), and Yoruba onímọ̀ ẹ̀dá-èdè (“linguist”). WT:IDIOM and similar policies are not just for English, and I continue to feel that most people forget about that fact when making policy changes like these. AG202 (talk) 07:44, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   I do apologise for repeating myself, but I feel obliged to counter the "THUB" argument on this page too. The thinking seems to be that we wish to keep certain ostensibly SoP phrases because they are "helpful", "useful" or "common", and that THUB is handy way of achieving this (which is something that certain RFD discussions already smell of). In my view, we should not be using THUB as a way of getting around SoP policies by the back door, in order that we can keep "helpful" entries. Instead we need a policy to define what kind of "helpful" and "useful" entries we wish to keep on their own merits. Mihia (talk) 20:06, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   As I wrote above, you yourself fell for the trap by mentioning WT:THUB, not taking on WT:SoP accusations and finding another idiomatic way (which I think the test lends itself to granularity well but regardless may fall under other tests) yourself which would have led to a more productive RfD. Lumbering in thought (talk) 07:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

2. Oppose: This just seems like change for change's sake. Having redundant reasons to include entries causes minimal harm. If there was some crisis of proliferating profession names that caused reconsideration of this guideline, that would be one thing; instead, it seems like this proposal was prompted by reading the guideline and imagining what hypothetical issues there could be with it. But it is already listed as a guideline/test, so if it had real negative effects, we'd see them already.--Urszag (talk) 16:24, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

   This seems like opposing change for the sake of opposing change. If a guideline is both redundant (i.e., useless), and liable to cause harm, why should it be kept? You don't seem to contest the lack of positive effects. Polomo47 (talk) 00:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

3. Oppose per AG202.--Saranamd (talk) 17:24, 16 February 2025 (UTC)
4. Oppose Strong in group-thinking and central coherence, neurotypicals go for social status and societal value provided by professions, not the activities their designations describe. It is doubtful that this applies for all one can be a specialist or instructor in, however, for example bullshit academia positions advertising some university institute, behind which there are basic professions like reader or professor, while a tennis player is not a player, so in my opinion LunaEatsTuna is putting out a strawman, we won’t add diaper engineer, epistemology expert, and C++ developer. Fay Freak (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2025 (UTC)
5. Oppose per AG202. Binarystep (talk) 07:16, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
6. Oppose per AG202 and Urszag. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:56, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
7. Oppose per AG202 and Urszag. There is a vast amount of harm this will do as THUB is a blunt instrument. I would have my own test of "the" definite article with the specificity self-contained (not "the tennis player over there...", instead "the effect of the tennis player on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere")/narrow idiomaticity. Lumbering in thought (talk) 20:47, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

   I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. PUC – 09:39, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

   In this WT:CFI quest, I'm building up an argument relating w:Article_(grammar)#Definite_article to the WT:Idiomaticity prong (tellingly as opposed to the WT:THUB prong) which references the WT:SoP guardrail that everyone in support of this deletion is harping on. Lumbering in thought (talk) 16:53, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

   Conclusion Lumbering in thought (talk) 08:01, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   I don't get what you mean. If you're suggesting that sono tennista refers to a professional tennis player in Italian but sono un(a) tennista refers to an amateur one, then you're probably correct but that is only an issue if we look at the role the indefinite article plays, I can't see how the definite article comes into play. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:33, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   (sono = I am) Simplified spectrum of least to most idiomaticity using no article usage, indefinite article usage and definite article usage: Here and here. Definite article at most requiring the reader to know the most specifics. Lumbering in thought (talk) 16:38, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

8. Oppose per above. Megathonic (talk) 23:59, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
9. Oppose. DonnanZ (talk) 00:22, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
10. Oppose. Close call. Imetsia (talk (more)) 21:13, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
11. Oppose - I think the test protect entries that have value and that the test is a useful practical expedient for decision making. Perhaps, it could be written more narrowly but I don't think it should be cut. John Cross (talk) 08:17, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

    Oppose Awdhi (talk) 16:10, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

    Not eligible to vote in this vote — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:41, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

12. Oppose Vergencescattered (talk) 01:16, 12 March 2025 (UTC)
13. Oppose I'm generally against removing large amounts of entries, but maybe we should narrow the test to make sure that Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach doesn't become a lemma. Tc14Hd (aka Marc) (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
14. Oppose per AG202 and Urszag. – wpi (talk) 17:11, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

• Failed: 13-14-0. Svārtava (tɕ) 18:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)