User talk:Cmh/Neologisms

Please discuss on current guideline's talk page

If you would be so kind, please discuss this proposal here so there will be a record of the debate. -- cmh 04:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Other coinages

Sometimes internal terms are not just used as section headings, but as means of organizing information. And they can be done by means other than "-ism". Thus, in Democratic peace theory one aspect of the ongoing edit war has been whether it is OR/neologismb to use the term "Absolute democratic peace" to describe the school of thought that democracies have never gone to war and probably never will. This meant to distinguish the school of thought that wars between democracies have been rare (perhaps vanishingly so), but that the reasons for this might change in a world of nothing but democracies.

Personally, I think that this sort of internal neologism is helpful, but an editor strongly disagreed, citing policy. If I am wrong, and this sort of thing should be ruled out, could this proposal be made clearer? If I am right, could we add a sentence? Robert A.West (Talk) 04:59, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be discouraged, especially where there is opposition. I suppose there might be situations where it would be the most agreeable solution, but we shouldn't make up terms if we can avoid it. NickelShoe (Talk) 05:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I yielded the point. I think it would have avoided clumsy phrasing elsewhere, but it wasn't worth inflaming an edit war over. Nevertheless, the practice is common in academic survey articles (which are, admittedly, not under OR prohibitions), and I thought it worth a query, since "fooism" comes close. Robert A.West (Talk) 05:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I oppose fooism as well when it's a coined term. NickelShoe (Talk) 05:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, one way to go would be to accept fooism where there is consensus of editors, but that may create problems if billions of sockpuppets show up to support an article with a particular title. I'm tempted just to take that part out (it was brought forward from the last version), but am worried that if there is nothing in this guideline about acceptable uses of neologisms we could be invalidating many existing 'pedia pages. Would it help to make a distinction in this discussion about internal terms in articles, vs. internal terms as articles? Perhaps we should indicate in the guideline that although both are frowned upon, neologisms can be discussed as a POV (with appropriate opposing POVs) within an article on the larger topic. -- cmh 14:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm okay with the guideline discouraging new terms using suffixes and whatnot but vaguely allowing for exceptions.

Although creating clearly understandable terms by adding common suffixes or prefixes (such as non- or -ism may be acceptable in some cases, it can be misleading. For instance, adding -ism to a word can sometimes be offensive, implying an affiliation is a belief system or political movement. Where editors disagree about the use of such words, it is best to err on the side of not using them.

Something like that, except better. :) NickelShoe (Talk) 14:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

But yeah, I think the guideline could talk about the difference between an article about a neologism and an article which uses a neologism. Say that articles about neologisms might should be deleted, but those which merely use it should be edited for POV and OR, something like that. NickelShoe (Talk) 14:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

New draft

How about that? I tried to incorporate Nickelshoe's edits concerning editor disagreements and how to remedy articles that use neologisms. Also, I found that the information about support for neologisms was equally relevant for articles using them. I therefore created a new section with that information and revised the content on 'neo articles' to be more specific about the problems with them. I put the 'supporting use of neos' section in the middle because if placed at the end it seemed to put the most important info at the bottom. I couldn't put it higher because it interfered with the intro to what neos are. Feel free to touch things up if they're rough. What do you all think? -- cmh 21:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I think putting it in the middle makes it look likes it's only relevant to the first section. I think it should go at the end. It supports the other sections, but it's not more important than them, IMO. NickelShoe (Talk) 02:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I feel this is starting to come together. I just read it over and didn't feel the need to immediately make lots of major changes. Do you think this is an improvement overall? I think so, I don't believe it is too contentious. -- cmh 02:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I really like it. NickelShoe (Talk) 04:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)