Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-10/Phrasebook CFI

• Voting on: replacing the following text in Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion:

Phrasebook entries are very common expressions that are considered useful to non-native speakers. Although these are included as entries in the dictionary (in the main namespace), they are not usually considered in these terms. For instance, What's your name? is clearly a summation of its parts.

with the following text:

The Phrasebook contains phrases that, for the most part, would normally be ineligible for inclusion, but that we include in order to help readers converse in an unknown language in everyday situations. For a Phrasebook entry to qualify for inclusion, the phrase must appear as an entry in at least three independent, durably archived phrasebooks, or otherwise qualify for inclusion as an entry.

• Vote starts: 00:01, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23.59, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

• Vote created: -- Prince Kassad 14:59, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
• Discussion:

  Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#the entire Phrasebook.

  Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2010-10/Phrasebook CFI

1. Support SemperBlotto 09:30, 4 November 2010 (UTC) - yes, let's get rid of all the crap
2. Support Mglovesfun (talk) 10:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC) on the 'better than nothing' principle.
3. Support Ƿidsiþ 10:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
   • Not sure it's the best criterion for phrasebook entries, but I can't think of a better one. (Even if I could, I might vote for this one.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:06, 4 November 2010 (UTC) Striking, having read DAVilla's tempering comment (below).​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:51, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
4. Support Bequw → τ 22:19, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
5. Support — lexicógrafa | háblame — 21:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC) per discussion on the talk page, which seems to allow for translations into languages without written works — lexicógrafa | háblame — 21:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
6. Support The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:40, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

1. Oppose, as this policy prohibits phrasebook entries in languages where there are no printed phrasebooks. --Yair rand (talk) 00:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

   And normal CFI prohibits entries in languages where there are no printed vernacular works - so would you also vote against our current CFI? -- Prince Kassad 09:26, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

   I can't speak for Yair, of course, but there's an important difference between the current CFI's not allowing languages that don't appear in print and this new rule's not allowing phrasebook entries for languages that don't have phrasebooks: We know how the former rule is enforced, but don't know how the latter will be. That is, we know from experience at ] that languages with few written works — and even those with many but with few Googlable — will be given more leeway, and not necessarily be deleted if they seem to fail RFV. But we don't know that this new rule will be enforced similarly laxly.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

2. Oppose —Stephen (Talk) 18:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC) Per Yair rand. This would prohibit phrasebook entries for Navajo and thousands of other languages. It only permits phrasebooks if phrasebooks already exist and therefore are not so much needed, and even then only the phrases that are IN those existing phrasebooks. And if normal CFI prohibits entries in languages where there are no printed vernacular works, that rule is misguided and as badly conceived as this one is. For most languages, including Navajo, there is little or nothing available online in print. It is shortsighted and ridiculous. And for what purpose? We have lots of Russian entries here that can be found nowhere else online. It’s what makes our Russian section so valuable. And many of the entries that can be found elsewhere do not have good modern definitions, or full definitions, as our entries have. Are all entries in all languages to be deleted if they cannot be found elsewhere online? And are all definitions to be deleted if those definitions aren’t found anywhere else online? —Stephen (Talk) 18:28, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
3. Oppose. Although I do feel we need some guidance on this, and while such entries should almost definitely be included, I wouldn't want to cut all the way back to this before coming up with whatever better criteria it seems we all feel are needed, and which could very well never come about if more creative entries are not allowed, and if we are not forced to compromise and think through our decisions. DAVilla 04:50, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose --Anatoli 06:02, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
5. Oppose First sentence is fine, as a nice wording change, but enforcing CFI for phrasebooks is too demanding, as per comments above. Obviously prefer for good references to exist, but currently seems excessive to demand them. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 19:38, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose. First, because of a possible copyright issue (very often, precise phrases are coined for the book purpose, even when they appear in several phrasebooks). And because creating phrasebook entries as separate pages doesn't make sense, in my opinion. This is why no phrasebook is organized alphabetically. Readers have to get a general idea about a situation. This is similar to a thesaurus. Phrasebooks entries should be At the hotel, etc. to be useful. Lmaltier 20:25, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose. What Stephen said seems sensible to me. 50 Xylophone Players talk 20:34, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
8. Oppose — Beobach972 03:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC) per Stephen
9. Oppose Any kind of dependence on the obsolete paper medium is pointless. --Ivan Štambuk 18:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

   Where does the proposal say that the phrasebooks must be paper? --Yair rand (talk) 01:13, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

   Presumably, Usenet phrasebooks would count as well. CFI just asks for durably archived, not necessarily printed sources. -- Prince Kassad 01:14, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

10. Oppose I refuse to vote to limit our potential based on what phrasebooks for travelers find useful. — opiaterein — 19:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

1. Abstain Phrasebooks are weird. I've never seen a phrasebook that really made it possible to look up a phrase you wanted to say; and I can't imagine saying half the things phrasebooks tell me how to say. The Modern French Phrase Book (Leamington: W. Enoch, 1841) tells me how to say “I have bought a doll”, but not “… for my niece”, “My sister is ten years old”, but not “…-er than me”, and “Voila une petite souris”, but not “… USB pour votre ordinateur”. I think phrasebooks are potentially valuable in the same way that textbooks are, but not in the same way that dictionaries are. If we want to include a phrasebook-y component, that's well and good, but it's not going to be like any other phrasebooks out there, so it probably doesn't make sense for us to model it after them. (And that's even ignoring issues of alternative forms, sentences-that-are-identical-but-for-one-slot, and the odd limbo of a phrase that meets the phrasebook CFI but that has no phrasebook-CFI–meeting translations.) But I'm only abstaining, not opposing, because we do need something to get us started, and hey, it might as well be this. —Ruakh_TALK 20:11, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no substitute for knowledge of the language or an interpreter, no doubt. Phrasebooks like textbooks and dictionaries are just another useful tool. What is particularly attractive is that you can get a feeling of the language without a lot of effort. The difficulty of the language form the learner's point of view and the quality of the material are very important but there are limitations, so they are never perfect. I opposed the CFI in the current form but not opposing wiki-phrasebooks in principle. Demonstrating some patterns in useful phrases may help some learners but not all. BTW, some phrasebooks are designed and tested on people without any linguistic knowledge. --Anatoli 05:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

It would be good to do better than paper phrasebooks. However, currently, it's much worse: paper phrasebooks are organized in such a way that they can be used and be of some help, our phrasebook is not. Lmaltier 10:42, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Appendix:English phrasebook > Appendix:English phrasebook/Religion. I personally like to know what I'm talking about before I make such statements. — opiaterein — 19:45, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Fails.​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:46, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

• Just looking at the oppose votes, I think perhaps I misunderstood what this was suggesting. When I read "For a Phrasebook entry to qualify for inclusion, the phrase must appear as an entry in at least three independent, durably archived phrasebooks", I interpreted that to mean not that the phrase in Navajo or whatever must be citable, but rather that the phrase in general is something which can be shown to be in phrasebooks. You don't have to find three cites of "I don't speak Middle French" in Xhosa, you just have to show three phrasebooks in any language that consider this phrase necessary. That's what I think the criterion should be anyway. Ƿidsiþ 15:29, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

  I intended it to be like this as well, especially since the CFI is already like this in some cases. But apparently, none of the oppose voters seemed to get that. -- Prince Kassad 16:20, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

  That point itself had no bearing on my vote, so "none of the oppose voters" isn't entirely accurate. — opiaterein — 17:22, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

  I don't see why your intent should be relevant to their votes, since the vote was on a specific proposed textual change to a policy document. All they had to "get" was what the proposal means, not what you had intended for it to mean. —Ruakh_TALK 17:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

  I got his, and this was one of my reasons for oppsing the proposal (see above). Lmaltier 17:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)