Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary
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This page documents an official English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that should normally be followed by all editors. Any edit to it should reflect consensus. Consider discussing potential changes on the talk page first. |
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This page's designation as a policy or guideline is being reviewed for consensus, and may be controversial. The present language is likely to fluctuate, and should be considered provisional until the issues are resolved. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. |
| Wikipedia policy |
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| Content policies |
| Biographies of living persons Naming conventions Naming conventions (categories) Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability What Wikipedia is not Wikipedia is not a dictionary |
Part of What Wikipedia is not.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide. The goal of this project is to create an encyclopedia. Our sibling project Wiktionary has the goal of creating a dictionary. It is the "lexical companion to Wikipedia", and the two often link to each other. Wiktionary welcomes all editors who wish to write a dictionary.
Both dictionary articles at Wiktionary and encyclopedia articles at Wikipedia start out as stubs — stub dictionary articles on Wiktionary and stub encyclopedia articles on Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic, however, they should provide other types of information about that topic as well. The full articles that the wikipedia's stubs grow into are very different from dictionary articles.
One perennial source of confusion is that a stub encyclopedia article looks very much like a stub dictionary article, and stubs are often poorly written. Another perennial source of confusion is that some paper dictionaries, such as "pocket" dictionaries, lead editors to the mistaken belief that dictionary articles are short, and that short article and dictionary article are therefore equivalent.
Wikipedia articles are not dictionary articles, are not whole dictionaries, and are not slang and usage guides.
[edit] The differences between encyclopedia and dictionary articles
[edit] Major differences
| Wikipedia | Wiktionary | |
|---|---|---|
| Articles are about: | a person, or a people, a concept, a place, an event, a thing etc. that their title can denote. The article octopus is about the animal: its physiology, its use as food, its scientific classification, and so forth. | the actual words or idioms in their title and all the things it can denote. The article octopus is about the word "octopus": its part of speech, its pluralizations, its usage, its etymology, its translations into other languages, and so forth. |
| Articles whose titles are different words for the same thing (synonyms): | are duplicate articles that should be merged. For example: petrol and gasoline. | warrant different articles (e.g. petrol and gasoline). |
| Articles whose titles are different spellings of the same word or lexeme: | are duplicate articles that should be merged. For example: colour and color. | warrant different articles (e.g. colour and color). |
| The same title for different things (homographs): | are found in different articles. For example: backup (to move backwards) and backup (save computer data). | are to be found in one entry. (e.g. backup). |
[edit] Minor differences
| Wikipedia | Wiktionary | |
|---|---|---|
| Inflections: | Per the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs), single-word article titles are usually nouns or verbal nouns (i.e. participles or gerunds), such as greengrocer and camping. Per the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals), article titles are singular. Other inflections, if they exist at all, are redirects. | Every inflection is a word/article in its own right, potentially with its own illustrative quotations. For examples: walk, walks, walked, and walking are all separate articles. |
| Adjectives: | Per Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(adjectives) adjectives are usually redirected to nouns or are disambiguation pages or simply don't exist | Every adjective is a word/article in its own right. |
| Language used: | Article titles are in the English language. | All words from all languages are accepted. |
| Proper nouns: | An article with a family name or a given name as its title is usually a disambiguation article, which links to all of the articles on people who are commonly known solely by that name, all of the places commonly known by that name, and all of the things known by that name. For examples: Hastings (disambiguation), Benedict, Bush
The article will use {{wiktionarypar}} to link to the Wiktionary articles on the proper noun and any common nouns that have the same spelling. |
An article with a family name or a given name as its title is an article about a proper noun, giving the etymology, meanings, translations, pronunciation, and so forth of that proper noun. For examples: Hastings, Benedict
The article will use {{wikipedia}} or interwiki links to link to the Wikipedia articles. Wiktionary is also case sensitive, so articles about (English) proper nouns are separate from articles about (English) common nouns. For example: Bush, bush |
Note that dictionary and encyclopedia articles do not differ simply on grounds of length. A full dictionary article (as opposed to a stub dictionary article, which is simply where Wiktionary articles start from) will contain illustrative quotations for each listed meaning; etymologies; translations; inflections; links to related and derived terms; links to synonyms, antonyms, and homophones; a pronunciation guide in various dialects, including links to sound files; and usage notes; and can be very long indeed. Short dictionary articles are artifacts of paper dictionaries being space-limited. Not all dictionaries are limited by the size of the paper. Wiktionary is not paper either.
[edit] Fixing bad articles/stubs
A good encyclopedia article can and should begin with a relatively short but discrete explanation of what the subject of the article — the person, place, concept, event, or thing that its title denotes — is.
However, sometimes, an encyclopedia article (particularly stubs) will be badly written. Its introduction will say something such as "Dog is a term for an animal with the binomial name Canis lupus." or "Dog is a word that refers to a domesticated canine.". Such articles are not dictionary articles. They are badly written encyclopedia articles, that should be cleaned up in accordance with our Guide to writing better articles. Simply replace the cumbersome phrasings such as "is a term for", "is a word that means", "refers to", with the very simple "is": "A dog is an animal with the binomial name Canis lupus." "A dog is a domesticated canine."
Sometimes, also, an encyclopedia article will be badly named. Its title will be an adjective or an adverb or an inflection of a verb that isn't a noun. Such articles are only dictionary articles if they discuss the word or phrase, rather than what the word or phrase denotes. If they discuss what the word or phrase denotes, then they should be renamed or merged to the title that adheres to our Wikipedia:Naming conventions. For example: "supermassive" is an adjective, and doesn't by itself denote an actual subject. Supermassive black hole is an actual subject.
[edit] Stubs with no possibility for expansion
All stubs should have the potential to develop into full articles. A stub that has no possibility whatsoever for expansion beyond stub status is presenting the verifiable information in the wrong way. Wikipedia should not have single-fact articles.
This does not mean that stubs that have no possibility for expansion should be copied to Wiktionary. They are still encyclopedia articles, not dictionary articles. Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia, and the solution for an unexpandable stub encyclopedia article on Wikipedia is not to create encyclopedia articles on Wiktionary.
Per our Wikipedia:Deletion policy, stubs that cannot possibly be expanded beyond perpetual stub status should be either renamed, merged, or refactored into articles with wider scope, that can be expanded beyond perpetual stub status, or deleted if it cannot be renamed, merged, or refactored.
[edit] Dealing with mis-placed dictionaric articles
Sometimes an article really is a mis-placed stub dictionary article, that discusses the etymology, translations, usage, inflections, multiple meanings, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, spelling, pronunciation, and so forth of a word or an idiomatic phrase.
If Wiktionary doesn't already have an article for the word or idiom (which is unlikely), it can be copied to Wiktionary using the transwiki system, by marking the article with the {{Copy to Wiktionary}} template.
However, after copying, the final disposition of the article is up to Wikipedia. If the article cannot be renamed, merged, or rewritten into a stub encyclopedia article about a subject, denoted by its title, then it should be deleted.
[edit] Wikipedia is not a usage guide
Wikipedia is not in the business of saying how words, idioms, phrases etc., should be used (but it may be important in the context of an encyclopedia article to discuss how a word is used: e.g. freedom).
Articles that have been heavily cut to avoid becoming usage guides include gender-neutral pronoun and non-sexist language. Articles with information on how a word is used include singular they, homophobia, sexism, and SNAFU.
By a simple extension of the latter, Wikipedia is not a hacker/computer usage or other slang and idiom guide. We aren't teaching people how to talk like a hacker or a Cockney chimney-sweep; we're writing an encyclopedia. See meta:Knocking her dead one on the nose each and every double trey for a historical example. But see also jargon file; articles, even extremely in-depth articles, on hacker culture are very welcome, and insofar as guides to some particularly essential piece of hacker slang is necessary to understand those articles, of course articles on that slang would be great to have.
Some articles are encyclopedic glossaries (i.e., more than simply lists of dictionary definitions) on the jargon of various industries and fields; such articles must be informative, not guiding in nature, because Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, or textbook.
[edit] Wikipedia is not a genealogical dictionary
There are special reference works known as genealogical or, more often, biographical dictionaries. These tend to focus primarily on the immediate family connections (parents, spouses, children and their spouses) of the article subject. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and as such focuses more on the actions and contributions of an article subject. This means that many genealogical details may be omitted, for a better-flowing, more rounded article.
Biography articles should only be created for people with some sort of verifiable notability. A good measure of notability is whether someone has been featured in multiple, independent, reliable sources. However, minor figures may be mentioned within other articles (for example, Ronald Gay in Violence against LGBT people).
See also Wikipedia:Notability (people).
[edit] Good definitions
| “ | First, those who collaborate on this opus must oblige themselves to define everything, without exception- Diderot[1] | ” |
"A definition aims to describe or delimit the meaning of some term (a word or a phrase) by giving a statement of essential properties or distinguishing characteristics of the concept, entity, or kind of entity, denoted by that term." (Definition)
A good definition is not circular, a one-word synonym or a near synonym, over broad or over narrow, ambiguous, figurative, or obscure. See also Fallacies of definition.
