Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary
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Part of What Wikipedia is not.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, or a jargon or usage guide. The goal of this project is to create an encyclopaedia. 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 encyclopaedia articles at Wikipedia start out as stubs — stub dictionary articles on Wiktionary and stub encyclopaedia articles on Wikipedia. However, the full articles that the stubs grow into are very different. One perennial source of confusion is that a stub encyclopaedia 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.
The differences between encyclopaedia and dictionary articles
| Wikipedia | Wiktionary |
|---|---|
| Articles are about the people, concepts, places, events, and things that their titles denote. The article octopus is about the species of animal: its physiology, its use as food, its scientific classification, and so forth. | Articles are about the actual words or idioms in their title. 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 are duplicate articles that should be merged. For examples: colour and color, squash (plant) and marrow. | Different words warrant different articles. For example: "colour" and "color" have very different etymologies, and are two individual words. |
| 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 in its own right, potentially with its own illustrative quotations. walk, walks, walked, and walking are all separate articles. |
| Article titles are in the English language | All words from all languages are accepted. |
| 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
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 also is case sentitive, so articles about (English) proper nouns are separate from articles about (English) common nouns. For example: Bush, bush |
However, note that dictionary and encyclopaedia articles do not differ simply on grounds of length. A full dictionary article (as a 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; 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, too.
Fixing bad stubs
A good stub encyclopaedia article can and should begin with a short explanation of what the subject of the article — the person, place, concept, event, or thing that its title denotes — is.
However, sometimes, a stub encyclopaedia article 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 stubs, that should be cleaned up according to 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, a stub encyclopaedia article will be badly named. Its title will be an adjective 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.
Dealing with mis-placed dictionary articles
Sometimes an article really is a mis-placed stub dictionary article, that discusses the etymology, translations, usage, inflections, meaning, 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 (which, with Wiktionary now having over 116,000 English language words is less likely now than it used to be), 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 refactored into a stub encyclopaedia article about a subject, denoted by its title, then it should be deleted.
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, and sexism, 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.
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 in exchange for a better-flowing, more rounded article.
Biography articles should only be given for people with some sort of achievement. A good measure of achievement is whether someone has been featured in several external sources. Minor characters may of course be mentioned within other articles (e.g. Ronald Gay in Persecution of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered).
See also Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies.
Good definitions
"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.