Talk:Greenpeace

RFD

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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Greenpeace

How is it different from any company name? Encyclo topic. Equinox ◑ 19:01, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm well I've worked for the non-profit organizations Scope and ChildLine. Delete, no difference. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:06, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. DCDuring TALK 19:25, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

It would be absurd to delete it. Greenpeacer would be accepted, and not Greenpeace ? The meaning of a word should not change anything to its includability (provided that it's actually a word). But these words, just like all other words, must be described from a purely linguistic point of view, the description should not be encyclopedic (definition, etymology, pronunciation, yes, encyclopedic data about the organization, no). Lmaltier 21:28, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't be absurd to delete it as we've deleted similar things. We could just use the link w:Greenpeace. Let's have faith in our sister projects, eh? I suppose according to the letter of the law, we should move it to RFV and try to cite it per WT:BRAND. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:42, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Lmaltier, you think we should have entries for every trade name, product name, brand name, service name, and company name? The mind boggles. Equinox ◑ 23:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

It's includable according to the first sentence of CFI. Yes, we should have entries for trade names, etc., but with one necessary condition: that they may be considered as words used in the language (e.g. IBM is a word, not IBM Corp., which is a name composed of two words, and there should be a large enough number of attestations not originating from the company itself, in order to show that the word is used in this language).

It's not Wikipedia's mission to study pronunciations, etymologies, anagrams, list of derived words (e.g. Greenpeacer, Greenpeace is the only possible place for this list), etc.

And, frankly, do you really find normal to accept Greenpeacer, and not Greenpeace? Lmaltier 08:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes I do very much. Greenpeacer is not a brand name or organisation. Equinox ◑ 11:28, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the applicability and force of the word "normal" as LMaltier uses it. Is this a reference to WT:CFI, our slogan, WMF principles, or some other set of explicit or implicit norms? Is it an empirical question? Or is it a matter of opinion, a subject for a WT:BP straw poll? DCDuring TALK 11:43, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I mean logical. Is it logical that a word such as Greenpeacer is accepted, and not a more basic word such as Greenpeace? The issue arises because, despite the general principle adopted by Wiktionary, many people still feel that words with some categories of meanings should not be included, because they are not included in usual English dictionaries. All names should be accepted, provided that they can be considered as single words (using the linguistic sense of word). Lmaltier 15:55, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

As logical as most real-world human decisions and activities.

We don't get very far by syllogisms alone. At the very least syllogisms need a number of axioms. A large set of axioms is likely to contain contradictions or leave questions undecided. Applying even the logical deductions to real-world situations requires casuistry, which Pascal unjustly scorned. In any event, without knowing the axioms it is impossible to know whether a given proposition is a logical derivation from them. DCDuring TALK 20:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

• Consider the following:
  • 2002, Jim Nollman, The Beluga Café: My Strange Adventure With Art, Music, and Whales:

    I mean it's certainly less polemical than having some Greenpeace types confront these hunters with Zodiacs and boycotts and insults in the media.

• The author clearly expects us to know what "some Greenpeace types" means, and I'll bet you get a mental picture of these Greenpeace types from reading that sentence. bd2412 T 23:41, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
• If it's a real word, then yes, we should keep it. The same goes for all other names of organizations or products that you can find the requisite number of citations for. SemperBlotto 10:29, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

We don't include definition lines of company names (as a strict rule, though I'm not sure I completely agree with that) although we do include words that happen to be company names, e.g. brand names that have the same name as the company, or alternate meanings such as Greek or Roman Gods after which a company is named. If this can be cited as something other than the organization, then it can be kept. If this isn't actually a company but an organization, then consider that we have Girl Scouts etc. DAVilla 05:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Keep as the name of a specific entity, in particular of an organization. I know of no vote, poll or Beer parlour discussion that would rule that all names of corporations, firms or organizations should be excluded. Nonetheless, there is a passage in CFI that alleges to exclude company names, a passage that does not have any traceable community support. The passage: "Being a company name does not guarantee inclusion. To be included, the use of the company name other than its use as a trademark (i.e., a use as a common word or family name) has to be attested." If some names of organizations should be excluded and some included, the quotation provided by bd2412 above suggests to me that Greenpeace should be included. --Dan Polansky 10:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete per common sense (cf. Equinox, above, 23:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)) and the CFI passage Dan quotes.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:55, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

kept. No clear consensus for deletion. -- Prince Kassad 10:30, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

RFV

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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No proof that this company meets WT:COMPANY criteria. -- Liliana • 22:42, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

• It already has three citations. That would seem to be sufficient. SemperBlotto 22:54, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • And it survived RfD in March of last year. SemperBlotto 22:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • What? The citations don't fulfill any kind of formatting guidelines, and it is not clear where they came from. For all I know you might've just made them up. -- Liliana • 23:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
    • "Greenpeace" is obviously attested even without recourse to citations in the entry: see google books:"Greenpeace". What you are looking for are citations meeting WT:COMPANY, but that is moot, as WT:COMPANY violates the consensus principle. --Dan Polansky 23:46, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
• WT:COMPANY is unvoted-on and controversial. Other than that, this term is obviously attested, and has even three attesting quotations in the entry. I still maintain that WT:COMPANY should be removed from CFI. --Dan Polansky 23:02, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Dan Polansky, instead of complaining, why don't you start a vote on removing the company name criteria? -- Liliana • 23:06, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I might, but I would rather see the supporters of WT:COMPANY start a vote on accepting WT:COMPANY and lose it. You know of the supermajoritarian asymetry, right? AFAIK there is no consensual support for WT:COMPANY. The best information about such a consensus that we currently have can be found at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/2011/April#Poll:_Including_company_names, AFAIK. --Dan Polansky 23:13, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
      • There is no such thing as a "reverse vote" that makes the opposite go into effect if the vote fails. Otherwise, the failure of the Serbo-Croatian vote would've meant that Serbo-Croatian as a header was banned from all of Wiktionary. -- Liliana • 23:22, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
        • I think you understand the problem. People should first agree to remove demonstrably controversial parts from CFI even if they agree with them, on the principle that CFI should track consensus. Until then, I see no point in me starting a vote. I do not take CFI as sacred; we should abide by CFI only to the extent to which it has consensual support. WT:COMPANY does not have consensual support, so we should not abide by it. The best procedure IMHO is to remove WT:COMPANY from CFI by a vote which even supporters of WT:COMPANY will support, and then the supporters of WT:COMPANY can try to get WT:COMPANY into CFI via a regular voted process rather than by an unvoted-on sneaking into CFI. I have seen no supporters of WT:COMPANY to agree to such a procedure, so I am not starting a vote. --Dan Polansky 23:32, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
          • This kind of thinking only proves that you're scared of people accepting the company names rule in a vote, which would result in the deletion of all those precious company names you love so much. -- Liliana • 14:12, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
            • If you believe that WT:COMPANY has consensual support, then it should be no problem for you to support its removal, so it can be voted into CFI via a fair regular process. If you do not support that fair process, chances are you suspect that WT:COMPANY cannot make it into CFI via a regular voting process. --Dan Polansky 16:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
              • I would, but understand the fact that I have other wikis to attend and simply lack the time to set up a proper vote at the moment. -- Liliana • 20:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
• I agree with comments by SemperBlotto (talk • contribs) and Dan Polansky (talk • contribs), above. -- Cirt (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the point in having this in a dictionary. The three citations don't even cover the usual (shaky) generic "the Marilyn Monroe of pop music" type of ground. Equinox ◑ 23:28, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a brand to me. DCDuring TALK 00:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

WT:BRAND: "A brand name for a physical product should be included if it has entered the lexicon." Greenpeace is not a physical product. Keep trying. --Dan Polansky 07:11, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

WT:BRAND doesn't apply; WT:COMPANY does. I suspect I would support removing the WT:COMPANY passage all together, but that's hypothetical as it's there now. So Greenpeace needs another attestable meaning. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:48, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Above, I've failed to realize that Greenpeace is not a company, so WT:COMPANY does not apply. WT:COMPANY says this: "Being a company name does not guarantee inclusion. To be included, the use of the company name other than its use as a trademark (i.e., a use as a common word or family name) has to be attested". --Dan Polansky 06:44, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Depends on your definition of "company". To me it would seem to be one. -- Liliana • 04:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Neither Wiktionary nor Merriam-Webster online have a definition of "company" by which Greenpeace is a company, unless you mean the sense "A group of individuals with a common purpose" with the example sentence "a company of actors", which AFAIK is not the sense used by WT:COMPANY. I understand WT:COMPANY as using "company" in one of the following two senses from Wiktionary: "An entity that manufactures or sells products (also known as goods), or provides services as a commercial venture. A corporation", "Any business, without respect to incorporation". Your personally invented broadened sense of "company" cannot have any bearing on a public regulation that does not define "company" and instead relies on the most prevalent relevant use of the term "company" by the language community. --Dan Polansky 08:56, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
      • IMO Greenpeace is a business (Chambers: "a trade, profession or occupation"), because it is a capitalist entity that operates to achieve a goal, even if the goal is (possibly) ethical rather than commercial. They publish advertising; they hire and fire employees; they have a unifying brand name. Okay, they don't manufacture metal widgets, but neither does Google. Furthermore, part of their organisation is Greenpeace Ltd. = limited company = a company. Equinox ◑ 23:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
        • Non-profits are not businesses, by my understanding of the word "business". Organizing people together to achieve a common goal is a characteristic of a human organization, a term broader than business. What capitalist entity refers to I have little idea; the term is fairly uncommon. The talk of metal widgets is off-topic, as Wiktionary definition of "company" quoted be my above refers both to products and services, so Google nicely fits the definition of a company. It all comes down to whether non-profits are usually ranked as companies; I believe they are not. --Dan Polansky 09:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
• I suppose any real-world facts are irrelevant to our scholastic debates on our definition of the word "brand", but, FWIW:
• — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 00:06, 15 February 2012.
  • Greenpeace may well be a brand (I don't know), but it is not a brand of physical product. But this I have already said in my post from 07:11, 12 February 2012 above; it suffices for you to read it again. You have a history of denying the "physical product" part of the CFI wording, accusing me of lawyering and literalism when I highlight the "physical product" part of the wording. So here I go again, highlighting what CFI actually says. Again, physical product is the keyword here; this is what I am pointing out with regard to WT:BRAND. --Dan Polansky 09:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
    • [1]​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:00, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
      • If you go to oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline/RequestManager, you can find the Trademark registration for Greenpeace in its full detail. Trademark Number 0900437 – registered 2006

Nice classification 41 – goods and services - Education, including educational services, providing of training, arranging and conducting of courses, training; publication, releasing, lending out and distribution of books, newspapers, magazines, CD-ROM's, video films and other publications, whether on data carriers or not; composing, producing, directing and executing of audiovisual programmes, among others via the Internet; film and video film production, arranging and conducting of congresses, seminars, readings and other educational activities; photographic, film and video reporting; organization of educational activities, among others concerning politics, political formation and training; arranging and conducting of workshops, courses and educational events with the intension to raise social consciousness about the environment and nature. -- ALGRIF talk 11:10, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

{{look}}

I consider this to fail the current terms of BRAND (and thus fail RFV), which differ from those which were in effect when this RFV began. Anyone disagree? - -sche (discuss) 21:04, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes. "All words in all languages" takes precedence - and this word has four good citations. SemperBlotto (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

You have it backwards: lex specialis derogat legi generali. - -sche (discuss) 22:17, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• Fails BRAND and COMPANY (wikilawyering on the status of Greenpeace as a company notwithstanding). Only the 2002 citation is acceptable which is not enough. I can't get my head around the argument that we should ignore COMPANY because it does not have consensus and not to start a debate because it was changed out of process. If any of that is true, it obviously needs debating, otherwise unwanted decisions are going to continue to be made. SpinningSpark 12:45, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• • I added three more citations along the lines of the 2002 citation:
    • 1989, Tom Rose, Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World's Greatest Non-Event, p. 82:

      Before the doors were opened the security guards were warned to look out for "Greenpeace types," not smartly dressed business women.

    • 2004, Matt Ruff, Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy, p. 222:

      You remember: the Greenpeace dropout who played chicken with the Soviet Navy.

    • 2012, Stephen M. Ringler, Fled to Mexico: If No One Knows They Were There Then It Didn't Happen, p. 191:

      He's an eco-activist maverick, with a Greenpeace mentality when it comes to protecting his little feathered friends.

  • I note that a Google Books search for the phrase "Greenpeace types" gets dozens of hits. I think we can call this cited. bd2412 T 03:10, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Closing as verified since there has been no further comment following the last batch of citations. bd2412 T 21:35, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I see this has been unclosed. I would point out that this is an RfV, not an RfD; this is not a question of what policy should we be following, but "do citations exist for this word". Once citations are provided, that question is resolved. If there are objections that the word, although cited, should still be deleted, then it should be taken to RfD. bd2412 T 22:02, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Striking. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:05, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Unstriking. It's a question of whether those citations are acceptable under the policy. It is not at all obvious what kinds of citations do. Are we in some kind of rush? The citations were added yesterday. DCDuring TALK 22:19, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Point of order: the purpose of RFV is to find citations which meet certain criteria laid out in WT:ATTEST, WT:BRAND and other policies. If a term were listed here on WT:RFV and an editor added three citations of it from blogs, we wouldn't pass the term, because even though it had three citations, those citations wouldn't meet our criterion, laid out in WT:ATTEST, that citations be durably archived. In this case, this term has citations, but it hasn't been discussed whether or not the citations meet WT:BRAND/WT:COMPANY. This is precisely an RFV question and not and RFD question: RFD asks "presuming that this word meets our CFI, are there other grounds for deleting it?" Here, the question that has been raised is "does this word meet our CFI?" (I did not unstrike the header, because I don't care enough whether this term stays or goes.) - -sche (discuss) 22:25, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Apologies; I didn't realize they were added only yesterday. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:28, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

It shouldn't matter if they were added five minutes ago, the point of an RfV is to bring out CFI-worthy citations. Supposing that this is in fact an RfV question, does anyone actually have any objection to the proposition that the three citations I provided demonstrate that this word meets the CFI? bd2412 T 22:33, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Just for the heck of it, I've added a few more citations to the entry. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:34, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Kept after allowing two weeks for comment. (Following procedure FTW.) No-one has disputed the validity of BD2412's new citations, and I, as stated previously, don't care enough one way or the other to dispute (or endorse) them myself. Hopefully RFD can be avoided (I predict an RFD would result in no consensus, or consensus to keep). Cheers, - -sche (discuss) 19:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)