Talk:Mormondumb

RFV discussion: August–September 2022

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Mormondumb

[1] Is this independent enough? All from the same Usenet group but by different people and 6 years apart. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 22:52, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Cited. According to WT:CFI, these count as independent uses, since they're all unique posts by different people. The fact that they're all from a niche group is irrelevant, and the word is also used in various places (such as /r/exmormon on Reddit) that have nothing to do with the newsgroup you linked. Binarystep (talk) 23:15, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Passed. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:17, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Wow, we should really change CFI to treat individual Usenet newsgroups as non-independent... This, that and the other (talk) 10:37, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Why? All that'd do is limit our coverage (especially of fandom slang, which is often restricted to a specific fandom's newsgroup), and it wouldn't benefit us, given that these are real words used by multiple people within a specific community. One of the biggest differences between Wiktionary and other dictionaries is that we aim to document "all words in all languages" rather than arbitrarily excluding terms we deem too insignificant to mention. I don't see why we should change that anytime soon. Binarystep (talk) 10:49, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Because three posts within one group demonstrates absolutely nothing with regards to a term having any currency in the language. - TheDaveRoss 15:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

It demonstrates that the term has some level of currency among people who discuss Mormonism. Specialized newsgroups exist the way that there are specialized journals and publishers. The same objection likely wouldn't be raised if this term was cited with three articles from three different authors published in the same religious studies journal over six years. Or if it were a linguistics term cited with three books from Oxford University Press, or an autism-related term cited with three books from Jessica Kingsley Publishers, or a Wicca-related term cited with three books from Llewellyn. I'll never understand why some people involved in a collaborative project to build a digital dictionary seem so Internet-averse. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 17:03, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

An internet community, like a Usenet newsgroup or a subreddit, is just that - a community, where highly specific jargon, in-jokes, and so forth can proliferate. The same is not true for publishers of books, and you would hope (!) that the landscape of academic journals was diverse enough that such terminology would appear across more than one journal. (I personally would be very reluctant to accept three cites from the same journal if that was all that could be found...)

If a term genuinely did have "some level of currency among people who discuss Mormonism" we would expect to find uses elsewhere online, which can now be admitted as online attestations subject to approval by the community. This, that and the other (talk) 01:32, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

If you google the term, you will find uses elsewhere online. For example, it's trivial to find uses on Twitter from as recently as May; 1, 2, 3. Usenet is the most CFI-"durable" source of uses, but not the only place uses can be found. (I still think it's an uncommon and often noncey term.) - -sche (discuss) 02:10, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

An internet community, like a Usenet newsgroup or a subreddit, is just that - a community, where highly specific jargon, in-jokes, and so forth can proliferate.

I still don't see the problem. We document plenty of terms from niche communities, including specific universities. Wiktionary doesn't have a notability policy. There's no reason we should only document the most widely-used terms, and doing so would directly contradict our "all words in all languages" slogan. If a term is only used within a specific community, it can be categorized accordingly. There's no reason to cover our ears and pretend the term doesn't exist in the first place.

If a term genuinely did have "some level of currency among people who discuss Mormonism" we would expect to find uses elsewhere online, which can now be admitted as online attestations subject to approval by the community.

As I mentioned above, there are uses elsewhere online. This isn't a Usenet-exclusive term. Binarystep (talk) 02:14, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

When it comes to first principles I prefer to come back to CFI's "general rule": "A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means." It is hardly "likely" that a person would run across a word used only on one individual internet forum and wanting to know what it means. Moreover, one would simply not expect that a generalist reference work like Wiktionary would include terminology used by one specific circle of people on one internet forum. On the other hand, Oxford University-specific jargon is well worth keeping because Oxford was so culturally influential that the terminology made its way into all kinds of published works. This, that and the other (talk) 12:28, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with WordyAndNerdy. Whatever issues there may be with Usenet or the internet in general (like ease of one person making multiple accounts), if we're accepting Usenet at all and the cites seem to be from different people, I don't see the cites being from one newsgroup over a period of years as being terribly different from all the cites of a word being from the same academic journal or same town. We have terms which only had currency at one university and don't even have currency there anymore, being obsolete (e.g. batteler, size); talk about not having any currency in the language! If a term is really restricted to one newsgroup, this should be indicated with some kind of context label or usage note, like we've labelled some "originally 4chan" terms, but in this case it seems like there are other citations on e.g. twitter and the wider web that establish that it's just generically rare but not newsgroup-specific. - -sche (discuss) 19:03, 25 August 2022 (UTC)