Talk:enshittification

Coinage

Cory Doctorow has also been a tech culture writer for such a long time that I'm sure he's behind at least a couple of other coinages. As -sche notes, however, there's plenty of subcategories of Category:English coinages that currently have only one or two entries in them. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:45, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, is there a problem here? I'm not understanding why you posted. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:55, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

This was meant as a response to the edit summary exchange between The Editor's Apprentice and -sche. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:58, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Basically suggesting that someone could probably populate this category if they set out to do so. I might take a crack at it eventually. When I've finished the 100+ other things on my to-do list first. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 21:02, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

(Pinging @-sche as I didn't initially see this since I wasn't pinged.) If Category:English terms coined by Cory Doctorow can be filled out with multiple entries, then I agree it makes sense to keep the category. Though there are a number of subcategories of Category:English coinages with only one entry, I am of the opinion that they should generally be deleted and suppressed, along the same lines as the part of {{coinage}}'s documentation for the nobycat parameter added by Surjection. For the record, I was looking at a version of the page that was from before the Category:English terms coined by Cory Doctorow was created and so was not trying to empty the category at the time, but hide a red link. Note the creation was at 16:50 while my edit was at 16:51, one minute later. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Whuffie appears to be a fictional social capital invented by Doctorow in a 2003 novel that has since been used to describe things like China's social-credit system. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 17:17, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Some others Doctorow apparently coined: metacrap ([1][2]), lazyweb ([3]), outboard brain ([4]), Schneier's Law ([5]). WordyAndNerdy (talk) 17:33, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Good stuff, looks like there is some good reason to believe the category will have a fair number of entries and is worth keeping. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 02:03, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm of the mind that we shouldn't set a minimum number of entries that a category must contain before it can exist. Categories are unobtrusive. They're tucked away at the bottom of entries where most readers won't notice them. Wiktionary is a permanent work-in-progress. Categories that are sparsely-populated now can grow in time, and in the mean time they're still a useful tool for navigation. I rely on precise but sparsely-populated categories to find stuff all the time. (Yeah, I've made this argument before, LOL). That said it should be fun to give Doctorow some recognition for his contributions to our modern tech lexicon. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 03:03, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy: I just remembered poking fun of whuffie in the 2000s. Created. I'm not sure about lazyweb. – Jberkel 20:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that! Is The American Genius are reliable source for the claim Doctorow coined lazyweb? There might be others sources out there if not. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 03:03, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy: I did some more research (without consulting the lazyweb :)), it's not Doctorow's coinage. – Jberkel 07:22, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this and finding an answer. At least we have four entries in the category now. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Anon: Doctorow didn't coin this, see https://twitter.com/St_Rev/status/1676598397489250304 — This unsigned comment was added by 2001:7d0:8477:3d00:8d2a:7c50:ee18:14a (talk).

That is already cited on this definition. What do you want us to do? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Well removing "coined by Canadian-British-American author and blogger Cory Doctorow in 2022." seems in order. 66.68.107.242 19:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Note the part where it says "as a designation for a particular phenomenon affecting online platforms". FYI the original tweeter seems to have some kind of beef with "Cory fucking Doctorow" so I don't think they're a reliable source as to the history of the word. Ioaxxere (talk) 19:20, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

"the original tweeter seems to have some kind of beef" Disagree, it just sounds like they are annoyed it is incorrectly attributed to Doctorow -- it's stretching the evidence to say there is "some kind of beef". They provide proof of earlier usage.

There are two problems with the current state of the Wiktionary entry. Firstly, Doctorow did not "coin" the word. He used it in a new way, but this is not "coining" -- the coining was done before him. Secondly, unless read carefully, it misleads the user into thinking Doctorow was the first to to use the word at all. I've added a note to say this is not the case. Cagliost (talk) 12:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

@Cagliost Coinage can work on a per-sense basis: see shitgibbon for an example. Even if Doctorow didn't invent the sequence of letters <enshittification>, he's notable for being the one who created the word's current meaning. Ioaxxere (talk) 16:38, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Potentially could say Doctorow "independently coined it", although we don't actually know this. Otherwise it's a homonym, not a coinage. Cagliost (talk) 16:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

@Cagliost First, it is pretty ridiculous to claim that the word is incorrectly attributed to Doctorow when before his use of it (which obviously garnered huge attention and made this particular combination of letters a word people know and use sometimes) there were only 4 uses on Twitter in 6 years (so pretty much wasn't a thing). Second, he unambiguously coined it in the current sense as in the definition. The Twitter quotation uses it in a different, much looser sense ("the process of becoming shittier"). And yes, he didn't coin the word in the strictest sense, in the sense that he didn't come up with a completely brand new sequence of letters that had no chance of ever appearing anywhere else before. The word is pretty regular morphologically in the English language though, it's just the word shit with two affixes tacked onto it. You can do this with any other adjective, like engoodification. So when a word is used in a sense consistent with its morphological analysis (like in the Twitter quotation), even if the speaker isn't using it because they heard it elsewhere but is simply assembling it out of the building blocks available in the language and with a meaning that immediately follows from them, then the word isn't really being coined. As such, any earlier uses that could or have appeared anywhere aren't coinages, they are just uses of a word that doesn't (yet) have accepted use. However, if a word, which wasn't listed anywhere, didn't have any currency, and could only be found in a very few rare nonce contexts, gets intentionally used for the first time (so, anew) with a very definite meaning, then, for all intents and purposes, it is a coinage. But even if we don't accept that it's a pure coinage, before this the etymology said As a designation […] , coined by Cory Doctorow, so the entry did not claim that he wholesale coined the term, as you are suggesting it did. I think it's fair to leave the etymology as was (the mophological breakdown + coinage of this one sense by this one person) and to just add a new sense with this one quote. But this sense does have to meet the CFI, so if it does not, then we are left with the word having a single, coined sense at which point the word is just coined by Doctorow. lattermint (talk) 00:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Countable?

@Koavf why did you mark this as countable? I can't find enshittifications anywhere except for a single Hacker News post (which didn't even exist at the time of your edit) Ioaxxere (talk) 03:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Not sure. Seems accidental and it's uncountable. Good eye. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:42, 6 July 2023 (UTC)