The Ethics of Dictionary Editing
July 18, 2007
This post is about all the non-technical aspects of editing the LGF Dictionary.
The basic underlying principles of our work are:
Altruism, even-handedness, impartiality, and reality-acknowledgement.
In practice, what this means is:
Only add those words to the dictionary that are in actual use by a “wide strata” of LGF users.
Or, to phrase it more negatively and cruelly:
Do not add words that are just used by you yourself, or by just you and a small clique of your friends.
Do not add words that were used only once or twice.
Do not add words that were coined by you or your friends and which did NOT subsequently “catch on.”
Do not add words for the sole purpose of trying to cause them to become popular or enter into the lexicon.
Etc. I’m sure you get the gist.
Always keep in mind that we are the guardians of neutral knowledge, and we shouldn’t abuse that power to push our own private agendas (which is the exact trap that Wikipedia has fallen into). Entries into the dictionary should reflect actual common usage in the real world of LGF comments — not what we wish was actual usage. As frustrating as it is, sometimes the cleverest and most excellent neologisms fall through the cracks at LGF, and never get used widely.
And yes, I realize that there is currently a category in the Dictionary called “Brilliant Witticisms Posted Once or Twice on LGF But Which Never Caught on (Yet, at Least),” which violates this principle. If we get a majority vote, then we can simply remove that entire section, as it contains only five entries anyway. Alternately, if everyone agrees, we can keep that section and move it to the bottom and use it as the place where we post self-congratulatory wish-words, or words that people pester us to include but which normally wouldn’t make the cut. I leave the vote up to the admins.
So, how will this work?
This is what I propose should be the system:
If you get the urge to add a new word to the dictionary, then create a new post titled,
“I nominate [word].”
…with a short paragraph outlining your rationale for including the word. Then, each admin will leave a comment on that thread voting “Yes” or “No” on the word (appending an argument if the vote is “No”).
Since we’ll have 9 or 10 admins, if you then get 4 additional “Yes” votes (plus your own vote, totalling 5), then you can say that you’ve gotten a majority approval, and you can go ahead and add the word.
As for how to create a new post: it’s quite simple. Once you’re logged in, across the top of the window is a blue menu-stripe, containing the link “New Post.” Click that link, type in the title, type in the post-body, and press “Publish.” Voila! A new post.
OK, that’s all I can think of for now. If you have any questions about the issues raised here, drop a comment on this thread.
Entry Filed under: Suggestions. .
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1.
vxbush | July 18, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Zombie, perhaps we should also note when we edit an entry by adding a post noting which words we worked on? Just so we can highlight it. (Or does WordPress keep track of diffs on pages?)
2.
zombie | July 18, 2007 at 10:57 pm
vx:
Yes, I was going to suggest that very thing, but didn’t want to make my post too complicated.
Anyone reading this: Once you make a change to the dictionary, make a post (or at least a comment) informing the rest of us what change you just made.
3.
Noam Sayin | July 18, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Two things:
Is there a schedule of words you need added to the dictionary, but haven’t yet had the time? I’ve watched people over the years suggest certain words be added, and I know you’ve been busy.
Also, maybe we could set aside some spot for words we think might get used frequently enough to warrant entry. Such as the case with Dinnerjacket, suggested above. It would be valuable to find the first use of such a word in order to make the definition a little more informative.
This would largely be hunches on our part, and we can always toss them out if they don’t catch on. But it might save us a great deal of searching later on if we have some of the info up front.
Just suggestions.
4.
zombie | July 19, 2007 at 12:09 am
3. Noam Sayin:
Yes, I do have a backlog of suggested changes submitted by people over the months and years. I will be posting them soon — in fact, those changes are the very reason I “wiki-ized” the dictionary in the first place, because it will be time-consuming for one person to implement them.
I will probably post a “mega-nomination” thread sometime soon, containing all the old suggestionns. As people chip away at it, they can leave comments on that thread saying what they’ve completed, and then I/we can edit the original post to “strikethru” the completed entries.
As for your comment, “It would be valuable to find the first use of such a word in order to make the definition a little more informative”: that’s the whole point behind the dictionary, and the original motivation for creating it! Writing the definitions is fun and easy — I could have done that myself. The hard part is researching where and when the word originated. But that is exactly what we need to do: eventually, every single word should have its derviation spelled out to the best of our knowledge. See my existing entries for Islamofascism, lizardoid, and moonbat for examples:
Islamofascism
lizardoid
moonbat