Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Glossaries

A group of editors is working on coordinating

How are we justifying the goals of this project, given the clear statement at WP:NOT that: Wikipedia is not a dictionary? What are the differences between glossaries and dictionaries? (to me they seem to be the same thing... am I wrong?). Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Answering at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Glossaries. (Please link to ongoing threads when they are relevant. I only found that by accident!) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:16, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary#Wikipedia is not a usage guide "Some articles are encyclopedic glossaries...". Also see Wikipedia:Lists#Types of lists. Bubba73 (talk), 02:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please add anything relevant. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Important RfC: [[Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 14# Glossaries (September 2012)
• Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 12#Status RfC, in passing (July 2011)
• Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 6#Policies/guidelines (October 2009)
• Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 6#Policy (April 2009)
• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 57#Glossary articles and WP:NOT (Nov 2008)
• Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 22#Glossaries (Nov 2008)
• Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 15#Wikipedia is not a dictionary (again) (Oct 2007)
• Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 3#Glossaries! (May 2007)
• Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 8#What glossaries are (NOT) (Nov 2006)
• Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 7#Glossaries (Oct 2006)
• Portal talk:Contents/List of glossaries#Mass deletion/move of glossaries to Wiktionary?
  (Oct 2006)
• Category talk:Glossaries#Copy to Wictionary? (Oct 2006)
• Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Candidate lists to be migrated to Wiktionary (Aug 2006)
• Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 6#Slang glossaries (Aug 2006)
• Talk:List of Latin phrases/Archive 1#Move to Wiktionary (Jul 2005)
• [[Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 1]#Discussion] (and its first several untitled, hr-divided subsections) (March 2004)

Updated with some entries by me.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:49, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the old 2006 threads, we discussed the notion that "glossaries" and "word lists" were separate entities, and that "word lists" were suitable for transfer to Wiktionary:Appendices.

See

(not just get deleted, as was the fate of the former list of words ending in -logy when it was recently split into List of sciences ending in -logy and List of non-sciences ending in -logy (worth a deletion review to get it properly moved across, maybe? I have no time).

Discuss. ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 22:42, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Talk:Chinook_Jargon#re_.7B.7Btl.7CWikiProject_Glossaries.7D.7D and in general other discussions on that page on the word list the article contains.Skookum1 (talk) 18:40, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am thinking of proposing all the subpages at Category:Library of Congress Classification for deletion, as they are not encyclopedia articles, they simply repeat the classification. Wikisource has all this information:[1] as does the Library of Congress:[2]. Fences&Windows 00:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But they link to the relevant wikipedia articles (for example, navigate down to Georgia and you'll get a link to the country or the US state depending on which category you are in). Isn't that the point? That makes at least as much sense to me as trying to invent our own classification (see

Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge) Kingdon (talk) 02:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

But this means they're not articles about the classification, they are a mirror of the classification. Wikipedia doesn't really need all its articles categorised in yet another way, surely? If someone wants to do that, they'd be better off as a Portal. Fences&Windows 00:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A fellow editor has been busy working on the creation of numerous articles about the many types of (steam)

So, can I move it back to "Glossary of..." with any hope of not being challenged?

How far has the project got with getting WP to accept that glossaries are allowed? (Bearing in mind they are still not mentioned as an exception on WP:NOT, and the link from 'types of lists' goes to your ' draft proposal' page.)

I am wanting to create a similar Glossary of steam engine terminology, for the same reasons, but want to be certain that I can count on the support of the project in doing so!

EdJogg (talk) 09:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The main portal for these articles,

Portal:Contents/List of glossaries, is one link away from the sidebar/mainpage, and has been for a few years. However some editors have a [narrow?] interpretation of what Wikipedia should contain, and try to enforce that, so you can probably expect some discussion. But pointing out the history should be sufficient to bring them up to speed. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

Thanks. The Experienced Editor has now, I think, had a change of mind. This was probably as a result of me adding your project banner to the talk page, and my Fellow Editor reverting the page move!

Good luck with getting the proposal ratified, as this should make all our lives easier!

EdJogg (talk) 23:06, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are any of the Glossaries a featured list? Would like to consider getting

Members of this WikiProject are invited to comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Spanish words of Italic origin. I have jointly nominated both that page and List of Spanish words of African origin. Neither page seems to satisfy the definition of "glossary" at WP:LIST. Cnilep (talk) 17:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The word "aficionado" seems to be missing from the list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.75.171.121 (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering if some people could copy over all the glossaries to wiktionary that haven't previously been copied, or copy over newer versions, if their companion version on wiktionary is out of date. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 12:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See wikt:Category:Glossaries.

Eventually, all glossaries should be migrated from Wikipedia to Wiktionary where they properly belong. The fact that some glossaries remain actively developed here at Wikipedia is an unfortunate duplication of effort and probably just due to lack of awareness that Wiktionary compiles glossaries. --

dab (𒁳) 12:01, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply

]

Glossaries at Wiktionary, are good for browsing/researching the etymology, concise meaning, pronunciation, etc, of those specific words.

Glossaries at Wikipedia, are good for browsing/researching article topics in depth.

At Wikipedia, they are part of the forest of navigational pages, which is comprised of the closely-related tree clumps: Portals, Categories, Books, Topic Lists, Lists of lists, Indexes, Outlines, Timelines, and Glossaries.

Compare the usability of browsing via Glossary of architecture with that of wikt:Appendix:Glossary of architecture. They're not equivalent.

This is one of the rare instances where it makes some sense to create, what might otherwise be seen as, duplicate work.

HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have proposed renaming

This needs some attention - it's a list of words, very few of them defined, none of them linked to appropriate WP articles. Doesn't look very useful. PamD (talk) 22:31, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English words of Italian origin. Although the article links to this project I don't think it's really a glossary since it is based on the origin of the words rather than on their meanings. Borock (talk) 19:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I created

Hello Project!

I came across a glossary called

It's within scope, and yes, it's a mess. It's done up in 1995-style table markup.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:52, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Five years later, this is still a mess.

π, ν) 19:22, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The acceptability of glosaries as stand-alone lists is the subject of a current RfC at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary#Glossaries. G. C. Hood (talk) 23:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An AfD debate for this glossary is in progress at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glossary of terms in the Jean le Flambeur series. Readers here may wish to comment. The discussion is likely to close soon -- the AfD was initiated 23 February 2013. --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:57, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The

Dear Codrinb, how could the deletion of this article serve as precedent for deleting the other lists? The title of those lists does not contain weasel word and those lists are based on peer-reviewed reliable sources. Borsoka (talk) 16:05, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't find any guideline on a definitive method to alphabetize glossary entries (I suppose the same Q applies to Lists as well, but my interest is re glossaries). I did find at WP:Manual of Style/Glossaries that numbers s/ occur before letters and that foreign lang letters are alphabetized by their Latin equivalents. But what about special characters? (Do they affect alphabetization, and if so how?) Here are three examples (the terms are related to chess):

Which s/ occur first?

open tournament

opening

How s/ these three be ordered?

light square

light-square bishop

lightning chess

And s/ lowercase occur before uppercase?

black

Black

(If there isn't any definitive alphabetization method on WP, do I pick my own?! (IMO the method used in Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide is the least confusing -- it ignores any introductory 'a', 'an', or 'the', ignores any special chars at all [including blanks], then alphabetizes the remaining sequence of letters. [But Maltin sorts numbers as if spelled out, and as mentioned I know that isn't done on WP.]) Thanks! Ihardlythinkso (talk) 12:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, there is not such a guideline at this time.

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 February 12#Rules for alphabetical order
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Alphabetical order (version of 16:53, 6 March 2014).
• search for alphabetical order in Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives (209 results)
• search for alphabetical order in [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archives]] (149 results) see my comment below. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:09, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have an interest in this matter, and I have my own preferences, although I hope that I would be able to accept whatever is decided by "consensus". In previous discussions where I was involved, there was little interest expressed by other editors. Perhaps there will be a greater expression of interest after a guideline is established.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for responding, and for the links. (I need to read them. Meanwhile, it's surprising there's no definitive sort guideline yet. If the issue garners little interest, how will a guideline get to being established?!) Thx again, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 23:40, 6 March 2014 (UTC) p.s. Whatever methodology is chosen, please oh please nothing like what Quest uses for *telephone books*! (Has anyone ever figured out that methodology?! Completely unusable. I wonder how people ever find anything, especially those whose first lang isn't English!?)[reply]

I need to look into this too, but have other stuff on my plate. Please ping me about it at some point (a week?)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:28, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archives]] redirects to [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Archives]] as the former was created in error. Therefore I'm not sure the link above is useful and therefore I nowiki-ed it to remove this page from "what-links-here". Wbm1058 (talk) 01:09, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2014

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:

Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 17:06, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Glossary of anime and manga to be moved to glossary of Japanese media. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 08:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Just a heads up about an AfD. It's a glossary but wasn't tagged with this wikiproject's banner when nominated.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glossary of Australian Scouting terms — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:56, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A requested move discussion has been initiated for List of English words of Hindi or Urdu origin to be moved to List of English words of Hindustani orgin. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 16:30, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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@

WP:CV [3]. – Joe (talk) 16:58, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply

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Ah, well, that was simple :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 17:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   10:57, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Terminology of homosexuality to be moved to Terminology for homosexuality. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 21:00, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello. I recently started working on a glossary of cooking terms, and then discovered that there was a List of cooking techniques page that covered the same information. Should I rename this page to "Glossary of cooking techniques" and convert it to a template-structured glossary page? Or is that being needlessly pedantic? I'm a noob to to the glossary WikiProject, so I'm not fully aware of the benefits - I'm just looking for an interesting project. (I've also asked on the List of cooking techniques Talk page, so hopefully I will get some guidance either here or there.) Thanks! Jenniferz (talk) 23:34, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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List of historical anniversaries

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Conversion

The Glossary of ice hockey terms needs conversion to a template structure...I'm a bit lost, though, on how to do that. If there is a simple way that I'm just missing could someone let me know? Many thanks...Primergrey (talk) 20:54, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Primergrey, It should be quite quick and easy with the find and replace editing tool using regular expressions, but I am unable to compose the right regex for you. Maybe The Transhumanist can help. (the regex could be handy if recorded somewhere linked from this page). Or maybe there is a script for this? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:56, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The glossary looks fine the way it is. Nice and simple, and easy to edit. No need to make the format more complicated.    — The Transhumanist   07:23, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Glossary of graph theory terms

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Things with several names

How does one best deal with multiple alphabetically distinct (not adjacent in order) terms with the same definition?

Do we choose one term to provide the definition and all the rest get an internal glossary link to the defined term?

If so, how do we determine the one term which gets defined? The first alphabetically? The estimated most commonly used?

Alternatively, should they all be listed as multiple terms at one place, with the shared definition following?

A combination, where the definition is preceded by the "primary" term, but lists all the options?, but each optional term is alphabetically listed, with an internal link? If so, where does the listing of the options go? in a hatnote?

A possible solution:

• Each term is listed in alphabetical order
• The "Primary" (first alphabetically, or most commonly used) is followed by a hatnote listing all the other terms with the same meaning, and the definition. eg

  {{term|1=bar}}

  {{term|1=barr|multi=yes}}

  {{defn|1={{ghat|Also: foo (common), foobar (UK), fu, fubar, thingy, and whatsit}}

  [[Metasyntactic variable]] with arbitrary applications.<ref name="Whatever" />}}

• The other options each only have a hatnote glossary internal link to the primary term. I assume this should be in the definition template, eg

  {{term|1=foo}}

  {{defn|1={{ghat|See {{gli|bar}} }} }}

  etc

Rendering:

bar

barr

Also: foo (common), foobar (UK), fu, thingy, and whatsit

Metasyntactic variable with arbitrary applications.^[1]

foo

foobar

See bar

foon

What it is

fu

See bar

gizmo

Undefined device

ni

expletive

thingy

See bar

vorp

Sound effect

whatsit

See bar

etc.

Are there any obvious reasons why this would be a problem, or better solutions? Cheers · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:21, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems to work OK in practice so far. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:22, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of Romanian words with possible Dacian origin

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Glossary of manias

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Auto-antonym

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List of loanwords in Sri Lankan Tamil listed at Requested moves

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Requested move at Talk:List of loanwords in Sri Lankan Tamil#Requested move 14 April 2024

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1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Whatever was invoked but never defined (see the help page).