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Requested definitions
Please provide definitions for the following terms missing in the glossary. Feel free to make new requests. Please strike out the any term that you provide definitions for.
Wiki-irony (hmmm- doesn't sound right, but i couldn't come up with a better way of saying it..) when an article does a "don't do this" (see sea of blue) and read this article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.183.188.99 (talk) 01:37, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
MNAA 'maybe not an acronym'. The place where spokes go. -- Harvestman
TINC
The Internet Namespace Cooperative ; There Is No Cabal ; Three Illuminated Nudes Conversing ; &c. Harvestman
ITHAWO
My conclusion for these cases : STFG (same as RTFM, but replace read by search and manual by google). The sense 'I thought he already was one' was explained by one of the users found by search, either in Google, either in WP: search (user talk and WP talk). So please search, and take note that some acronyms and terms do not have their place in a specialized glossary. -- Harvestman
WikiSlang
The baffling array of abbreviations used at IFD. I've noticed AB, OB, NI, and OR - there may be others.
An article or edit which carefully omits or plays down any company or product name but which is still nothing but advertising. Recent examples include: atmospheric water generator and everything by Puja seth, for example truck canopy.
As a relative newbie to Wikipedia, I've come across this term in a "how to" section. I assume I'll be able to find out what it means by further searching but I'd expected to find it in the glossary. If someone adds this, a comparison to the standard section of the page (i.e. where the navigation, search, toolbox, etc. live) would be helpful. -Jvasil 15:29, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The following were also listed as requests, but were unlisted by Menchi even though they have not been added to the glossary [2] (perhaps you could explain your reasons - IMSoP 20:51, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC))
What part do you want my "reasons" for? The 20-minutes-is-an-eternity part or the "to define"-doesn't-mean-I'll-finish-in-1-minute part? :-) --Menchi 21:17, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Apologies, I assumed other people would follow the same order of actions as me, and update the glossary before the list. Because obviously, I am perfect and therefore anyone behaving differently should be chastised and made to explain themselves! ;-) - IMSoP 21:24, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It's alright. You just took a peek into the tupsy-turvy world of mirror IMSoP's. :o) --Menchi 21:32, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
<pedantic>I think you mean IMSoPs, plural; not IMSoP's, possessive</pedantic> *<8-D - IMSoP 21:37, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Can we modify those links? I've never heard of a term such as dewikify. Correcting an overlinked page (possibly called de-linking) would be considered wikification, not dewikification. Dewikification would involve inserting poor formatting and/or removing proper wikilinks. RyanVesey05:59, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Stubify / Stubbify
It's not in the glossary. WP:STUBIFY leads to Wikipedia:Stub#Stubbing_existing_articles, but I've seen an editor (an admin, even) use it in an edit summary to mean "add stub template". I think it's a useful term in the former sense, and suggest we add:
Stubify or Stubbify
To remove much of the text of an article (because of bias, copyvio, original research etc), reducing it to a stub.
There's a question how it's spelled, one "b" or two: searching on "Stubify" in "Search everything" gives 1142 hits, while "Stubbify" gets 909 - very similar. PamD23:01, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Quite often I use ((tlx|Sofixit)) yielding a ((Sofixit)) link to Template:Sofixit. There is no camel case SoFixIt redirect to Sofixit, if I'd really want it I should create it.
Whining about missing features, or creating/using cleanup/maintenance templates/categories, often doesn't work as expected (nobody else cares about your pet peeves) and/or takes longer than simply fixing it with a WP:BOLDWP:IAR attitude — only outside of controversial mine fields of course, that would be the battlegrounding mentioned in the section above. Besides ignoring rules without really knowing them would be stupid, not bold.
Sofixit is one of the principles making wikis and other activities based on volunteer work tick: Without it twice as nothing happens, or folks not getting the idea end up creating guidelines for cleanup activities, where nothing is actually done in the main namespace. But I'm not going to add this suggestion to the project page without first proposing it here, because that would require a notable edit history, or something in this direction. ;-) –Be..anyone (talk) 20:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't find out what watchers are by searching help. I can guess/assume what they are but if they are important enough to be counted for each page, do they have any specific functions or purpose beyond the everyday-language sense of the word?```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Summertime4 (talk • contribs) 16:36, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to add this term: "DMCA takedown request." It has a straightforward meaning that does not require legal detail, but is not always plain from the way fluent Wikimedians and WMF Legal sometimes use the term. If this is out of scope or too obscure or inappropriate for the glossary, please say so or I'll add it at some point. --econterms (talk)
Under "Key article", User:Snowsuit Wearer has twice now ([3][4]) added the text that an example of a key article is "the heraldic arms of the subject". This has not been discussed anywhere, but the user suggests that "This does not need to be discussed, since it is just mentioning an existing practice".
Despite the claim, it is not a common practice to make the heraldic arms of a topic a key article in the category for that topic. Snowsuit Wearer has doggedly attempted to implement this approach with a handful of articles about coats of arms that he has been involved in editing, but it is by no means a widespread or common practice. I'm raising it here because the user appears to feel that it is unnecessary. But I can see no support for his position that this is a pre-existing practice. Good Ol’factory(talk)02:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it is. I have seen it in many instances, and the heraldic arms are of course the main symbol of the entity which it stands for, which can be seen in that we also always have it in the very top right corner of articles on countries and towns. The arms is a key topic for anything with has arms. Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 21:30, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Having "seen it in many instances" is not terribly convincing. I did a pretty quick survey, I looked at about 400 coats of arms articles, and I found your preferred sorting to be place in about 1% of them, and all of them were sorted that way by you. Please get a consensus in favour of this approach before implementing your suggested change.
To the substantive issue in question here: The coat of arms of a city is not a "key" article to do with the topic of that city in the same way that an article about the city is, even if it is the "main symbol" of the entity. It's a specialty article at best. An example of what might be a key article along with the main article is how Index of articles related to the Ottoman Empire might be a key article for Category:Ottoman Empire, along with Ottoman Empire. Coat of arms of the Ottoman Empire is not, most obviously because it can be contained in several of the subcategories of Category:Ottoman Empire and does not even need to exist in the head category when subcategories exist. If we adopted your view, there are so many articles that could be accepted as a key article. If the heraldic arms, why not the article about the flag of an entity? Why not the article about the head of state of a country for a country topic?
I hope this explanation makes sense. But if you continue to simply revert my changes here and on these select few articles without any other attempt to demonstrate or develop a consensus for your view, my next step will have to be WP:RFC or WP:ANI, because we can't just revert back and forth. Good Ol’factory(talk)06:58, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't count, if you have erased these sortings before making your count.
You should consider what heraldic arms are. They are the main visual identification symbol of the entity they stand for. They are akin to the name. What the name is for the ear, the arms is for the eye. So, in what way are they not the very essence of every entity? There is nothing which can be more "key" to a subject, beside the subject itself. And arms are (should always be) in the main category if the entity they stand for. Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 23:27, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't erase them, I kept them in the count, and they amounted to about 1% of the ones I looked at. Everything you have said about a coat of arms can apply equally to a flag. And to the head of state of an entity. And to a national anthem or song. And to a mascot, national bird, or national mammal. And to a patron saint. There's nothing special about a coat of arms that makes it any more special than any of these other symbols. Coats of arms are not usually in the main category, because there is often a subcategory, such as Category:National symbols of Turkey, which stuff like flags, coats of arms, and mascots are categorized. Q.E.D. Good Ol’factory(talk)23:45, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm very much on Good Ol’factory's side here. In most situations, the key article in a category is the one that has the same name as the category. We don't need to list all "important" articles about a topic at the top of the category. As far as the importance of coat of arms go, the general population of a place likely doesn't have much clue what the coat of arms of their city, state, country even looks like, so most certainly wouldn't consider it important. Official status doesn't matter; if the general consensus among people is that it's not important, we don't get to decide that it is. McLerristarr | Mclay101:37, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Snowsuit Wearer: You've mentioned that there are "many instances" where the coat-of-arms article is categorized as a key article. Can you point us to some of them, other than the ones that you've categorized? NewYorkActuary (talk) 07:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Look at any coat of arms article.
If you are against this, you do not understand the nature of heraldry and shouldn't have an opinion before you have read in to the subject. Good Ol’factory goes against what has been the practice and consensus for years. Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 12:39, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The issue should not be whether coats of arms are or are not key articles, but whether they should be. It is my firm belief they should be. Countries, cities, towns, families, they all have coats of arms that are equally important to them as their names. When arriving to a new town in many countries, there is a road sign stating the name of the town and has a picture of the coat of arms of the town. The coat of arms is normally a part of the official letterhead of all of these entities. They are not always as important in every region of the world, but they appear frequently in every civilized part of the world. Dagrqv (talk) 14:11, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably two issues are at stake here. The first is a discussion about whether or not it has been common practice so far. If it has, User:Snowsuit Wearer should come up with clear facts that go against the 1% count of User:Good Olfactory. The second, probably more important, issue is whether it should be done like Snowsuit Wearer proposes. Here I completely agree with Good Olfactory that coat of arms is just a single aspect of a town, probably less important than a town hall or a main street. A key article, if not the eponymous article itself, should be an article that is nearly as broad as the eponymous article and a coat of arms article is not that broad at all. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:14, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Why should I come up with proof for what Good Ol' Factory claims? I am not the one who claims there should be a change. The burden of proof lies on Good Ol' Factory. He claims "1%" but has not shown this. For the second question you raise, to make your argument logical, you also claims that the name of the town is less important than "a town hall or a main street". Because that is what arms is: the visual counterpart of the name. If I read about a town in a foreign country, I have no reason at all reading about its town hall or main street, I want to read about its name (including etymology), arms (its symbolism), historical importance and perhaps if it's the hometown of some major celebrity. Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 19:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The category, and the eponymous article, are not primarily about the name of the town but about the real-existing town with its buildings, its infrastructure, its government etc.. The name is just a single aspect and there is no reason why the visualization of the name should be singled out over other aspects. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
User:Snowsuit Wearer wrote: "I am not the one who claims there should be a change. The burden of proof lies on Good Ol' Factory [sic]." This is not true. It is User:Snowsuit Wearer who amended the Glossary definition of "key article" to include a mention of heraldic arms. That's exactly how this discussion was started – through an undiscussed and unilateral edit to the definition. For the user to now say that it is me that is the one seeking the change is, quite simply, false. Good Ol’factory(talk)09:29, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You clearly have a large interest in heraldry but few people do. I examined some of the disputed articles and the article about the place usually gets around 100 times as many page views as the coat of arms. For example [5] versus [6] for Coat of arms of the London Borough of Bromley, the latest article you set as key for a place category. The main reason for giving the special position at the start of a category is to make it easy for readers to find the key article about the subject of the category. A coat of arms is a niche topic for a place and for most people it does definitely not qualify as a key article about the place. This is a general encyclopedia, not an encyclopedia of heraldry. The key article for a category about a place is obviously the article about the place. There is rarely a second article which qualifies as key. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:42, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The key article in a category is usually the single one whose topic corresponds to the category name. There are a lot of other articles which are about specific aspects of the topic, but which are not "Key articles". The history, demographics, politics, flag, anthem ... oh yes, and coat of arms ... all fit well within the general category for the place, rather than in any subcategory (usually), but they are not "Key articles". It looks as if Snowsuit Wearer is in a minority of two in this debate (his/her supporter being an editor who hasn't edited in over two years until joining this discussion). Coats of arms are important, especially to heraldry enthusiasts, but they just aren't the sort of thing to be considered a "Key article", being only one specialised topic related to the category topic. PamD21:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Key articles are the one, two or maybe three which deals with the main subject for the category. The coat of arms of a town can therefor be seen as the coat of arms of the category of that town. Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 10:08, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There is a unanimous consensus that the glossary definition of "key article" states that the heraldic arms of a subject is a "key article" for a category about the subject after the sockpuppet comments (see SPI at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Snowsuit Wearer) and 2A00:801:210:754E:7B:63E:5CE2:FC7F's comments are discounted. Cunard (talk) 05:23, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Should the Glossary definition of "key article" state that the heraldic arms of a subject is a "key article" for a category about the subject? The answer will determine how such articles about coats of arms are categorized per point #8 under WP:SORTKEY. (See the discussion in the section immediately above for the full background.) Good Ol’factory(talk)02:55, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, the definition of "key article" should not mention coats of arms. The key article for a category is the single (almost always) article on the whole topic corresponding to the scope of the category. Coats of arms, history, political structures etc must be listed as ordinary members of the category. PamD06:30, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Whether there was a pre-existing practice to treat heraldic arms as key articles is in dispute. You are the editor who edited the glossary to state that they were, which is the very question being queried. For purposes of an RfC, it's probably best not to assume that either situation pre-existed and to instead focus energy what we should do moving forward and why. In other words, not just assume that doing one or the other would be in conformity with what was assumed to be the case previously. The purpose here is to establish the current consensus, not to argue about the existence of a (possible) previous one. Good Ol’factory(talk)11:15, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No. Snowsuit Wearer (nor anyone else in favour) has not provided any clear reason why this policy should be changed. He keeps falling back on his claim that it is already common practice, when clearly it isn't. Even if it is, he still needs to provide a reason why it should be like this. He tried to shift the burden of proof in the wrong direction. The burden of proof is on the person claiming something exists – in this case, the existence of the practice of counting coats of arms as key articles. (He obviously cannot count his own edits.) McLerristarr | Mclay108:06, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen it in some circumstances, even if I have made no real check on the matter now. Given the nature of heraldric arms as I understand it, I think this is most reasonable to have the coat of arm of the epynomuos entity of a category as a key article. Hum Hum (talk) 08:21, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, answering my own question. No one has provided a convincing reason for making a coat of arms article a key article. The key article is almost always a single article that has the same name as the category. There are occasional exceptions, but there is no reason to single out coats of arms as key articles over articles about national anthems, flags, national animals, mascots, patron saints, etc. All of these are articles that can be placed in subcategories for national symbols, where appropriate, or simply contained in the category as a regular article. Good Ol’factory(talk)08:51, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No of course not. All we've seen, in place of any actual arguments, is bad faith: false claims of a pre-existing state and sock puppetry. Cut it out. Herostratus (talk) 23:51, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, for the same reasons as stated by the other No-folks. Also, previous IP user, we have seen the things Herostratus mentions. Just saying "This is ridiculous," won't make them go away. — Geekdiva (talk) 14:28, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Related sockpuppet investigation
The pattern of participation in the RfC above – combined with other related edits – led to a sock puppet investigation, which resulted in User:Snowsuit Wearer, User:Hum Hum, and User:Skogsvandraren – as well as a handful of other accounts that did not contribute to the RfC – all being blocked: see here. The comments of Hum Hum and Skogsvandraren have been struck as sock puppet comments, with the comments of Snowsuit Wearer left. Good Ol’factory(talk)12:29, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Marcocapelle: good point. It's possible I suppose given that Snowsuit Wearer was involved in that discussion, but none of the participants in the CFD were recently identified as definite or likely Snowsuit Wearer socks in the recent investigation, and I have no reason to suspect that any of them were or are. I note that one of the participants has since been blocked for other reasons. It might be a good CFD to re-run at this stage, though. To me, it still seems like the sort of categorization scheme which is (probably) inappropriate. Good Ol’factory(talk)23:03, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Destination
We need a technical term for what I call destination and I have boldly created it. Comments welcome... a ping appreciated as I watch a lot of pages!
An example of usage is not having previewed the edit and checked the destination of the wikilink....[7] Is there another term that could have been used there? Open to suggestions, but I don't know of a better way to say this. Andrewa (talk) 21:56, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 106#Have we agreed to sign hattings? "But personally I'm with Monty and Jayron32 in archive 92 here. Yes signing hats is best practice. (Actually signing of the hat, not simply leaving a message inside the thread which sometimes doesn't make it clear you are hatting.) If someone repeatedly fails to sign hats it may be worth having a word with them. But generally speaking, if you don't dispute a hat, there's probably no need to worry about it just because it's not signed. Nil Einne23:37, 5 March 2014 (UTC)" (and plenty of other examples.)[reply]
Agreed that it's a noun, but not with the definition given in the entry. Rather, I see hat used in the same way as the gerund (i.e., noun) hatting in these examples (numbers are links):
1....still of the opinion that someone who engages in hatting on the refdesks -- a rather controversial hatting that many here would strongly disagree with...
2....controversial hatting should be signed with a comment, and that deletions should be noted with a remark at talk. It's never been decided that a hatting requires...
3.Maybe it's time we codified just exactly what our hatting and deletion protocols are, so that...
4.For "hatting" old debates, see WP:Closing discussions. ... Anyone familiar with the term "hat" for hiding a discussion must be familiar with the template.
5.I really don't think it's a good idea to hat other peoples' questions. ... Hatting other peoples' questions is a way to stir up more drama...
These examples use hatting as a gerund to mean, more or less, act of adding the template in order to effectuate it, rather than the content of the hatted discussion. The last two examples makes clear the equivalency of hat and hatting but the other examples use hatting in that way, too. Even your examples above, also conform to this same definition of the act, not the content. I have not seen evidence that hat is used in the way the current definition claims. Mathglot (talk) 20:28, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly "hat" can be and is used to mean "to collapse", i.e. the act, but constructions like "inside the hat" and "sign the hat" clearly refer not to an action but a thing - either the container or its contents. Thryduulf (talk) 21:44, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of your "inside" example, I would agree. However, examples of that sense appear rare. Even in the case of your "sign" example, I would say that "sign the hat" incontrovertibly refers to the action. After all, you are signing and taking responsibility for your closure action, not for the dozens of messages written by other editors previously. Mathglot (talk) 01:12, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In "sign the hat" the verb is "to sign", "hat" is the object you are signing. You are taking responsibility for creating a container and putting things in it. Search for "the hats" in Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces for lots of other examples of using "hat" as a noun meaning a container. Thryduulf (talk) 09:59, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]