Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2016-11/Abbreviations

Abbreviations

Voting on: Editing WT:EL#Abbreviations, a subsection of WT:EL#Definitions.

Current text:

The “definitions” of entries that are abbreviations should be the expanded forms of the abbreviations. Where there is more than one expansion of the abbreviation, ideally these should be listed alphabetically to prevent the expanded forms being duplicated. The case used in the expanded form should be the usual one — do not capitalise words in the expanded form of an abbreviation that is made up of capital letters unless that is how the expanded form is usually written.

Where the expanded forms are entries that appear (or should appear) in Wiktionary, wikify them. Expanded forms that are encyclopedic entries should also be wikified and linked to the appropriate Wikipedia entry. When the expanded form does not merit an entry of its own, either in Wiktionary or Wikipedia material, wikify its component words and give a gloss (italicised, in parentheses) after the expansion explaining what the term means (see SNAFU for an example).

See PC for an example entry.

Proposed text:

For abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms (such as PC and SNAFU), the definitions usually use templates linking to the expanded forms of the abbreviation. For example, one of the senses in the entry PC may be a template that displays "Initialism of personal computer." (Additional formatting may apply.) Do not capitalise words in the expanded form unless that is how the expanded form is usually written. (In the previous example, don't write "Personal Computer".) Where the expanded form is an entry that exists (or should exist) in Wiktionary, link to it. Otherwise, if an appropriate Wikipedia article exists, link to it. When the expanded form does not merit either a Wiktionary entry or a Wikipedia article, link it to its component words. You may expand the definition with a gloss if appropriate.

Rationale:

Shorter text; it says the same thing, unless otherwise stated in this rationale.
Edited the part mentioning "encyclopedic entries", because it's not clear what it means. The concept "dog" may be explained in an "encyclopedical" manner.
Only one rule was removed, because it's not clear if it's true for all entries: "ideally these should be listed alphabetically".

Schedule:

Vote starts: 00:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
Vote ends: 23:59, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Vote created: --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:49, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

Support

Support --Daniel Carrero (talk) 02:50, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support -Xbony2 (talk) 16:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support — Salt marsh. 06:05, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support The new text seems better. It immediately exemplifies, and seems to have a better flow. Admittedly, such an assessment is probably subjective to an extent. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support — Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:35, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:52, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

Oppose Not an improvement. Shorter isn't always better, particularly when the text isn't very long to begin with. This, that and the other (talk) 14:06, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In the original text, the last two sentences are:
"(see SNAFU for an example).

See PC for an example entry."

This was needlessly repetitive; why mention "see (...) for an example" twice? In the proposed text, this was converted into:
"(such as PC and SNAFU)"

In my opinion, this constitutes one of multiple improvements in the shorter text. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 06:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose New form is a bit too compact, like dense legalese, thus harder to read. And other reasons which I won't go into. Equinox ◑ 09:49, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

Abstain: Doesn't make much sense. DonnanZ (talk) 13:31, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This may be of interest: As you can see, in the proposed text, I included this as the vote creator: "Additional formatting may apply."

At some point in the future, I'd like if we stated in WT:EL exactly how non-glosses are formatted (italic text, with bold link, with additional information between parentheses, etc.) A previous vote about this had a number of issues and failed, and can be revised and created again in the future.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we all agree that abbreviations in definitions are formatted like any other non-gloss. So, ideally, if/when an explanation of non-glosses is voted and approved to exist on WT:EL, we can remove the "Additional formatting may apply." about abbreviations and just say something like: "Abbreviations are formatted as non-glosses" (or maybe something shorter).

P.S.: As a separate subject, I don't think that abbreviations in etymologies should be italicized, unlike abbreviations in definitions, but I believe this can be discussed later. Both the old and the proposed texts are part of the "Definitions" section (not "Etymology" section) in WT:EL and they don't say exactly how to format abbreviations, so this distinction is moot. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 07:12, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Decision

Passed: 6-2-1 (75%-25%) --Daniel Carrero (talk) 15:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edited WT:EL accordingly. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 15:16, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]