Discussion edit

Moved from RfD edit

The concepts underlying this template and the related category are too subjective to be meaningful. Adding the tag to many articles becomes an expression of POV about the term. I have frequently found it added to expressions that I would not hesitate to use. Unless the expression can be given a precise definition based on objective criteria the tag should be abandoned completely. Eclecticology 17:23, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Would you agree then, to mark terms that have no citations within the last 50 years to be "obsolete" and terms with no verified citations in the last 20 years to be "dated"? Or should "obsolete" be 100 years and "dated" be 10 years? --Connel MacKenzie 08:27, 18 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
That kind of criterion only works if we are more rigorous and organized about our use of citations. What's more, negative criteria, i.e. ones bsed on something that's not done, are notoriously difficult to apply because the example that proves it wrong is often just around the corner. A word that may seem dated to you and the others in your immediate circle, may still be in common use in another part of the country. An older individual would feel it strange to have the vocabulary he uses considered to be "dated". Does the fact that John Lennon died in 1980 mean that the music of the Beatles is dated?
"Obsolete" does a little better, but this too is not a matter strict dates. A taxon from biology becomes obsolete from the time the name is replaced by a more suitable one. Some things are obsolete because they're not easily available, like turntables for playing records. The 1913 Webster uses the term "obsolete", and it is often (but not always) safe to assume that what was obsolete in 1913 would continue to be so 92 years later. The same goes for what they call "archaic". Eclecticology 11:24, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
I'd expect that around here, I'd fall into the category of "older individual"s. At any rate, I expect the dilligence of citation gathering to increase as the Wiktionary project matures. For that reason, I'd think terms tagged as "dated" would be clarified individually, without the harsh labelling as "obsolete." Are most nautical terms obsolete now, because clipper ships are so hard to find these days? Modern sailboats are certainly readily available. Are terms applicable to turntables obsolete? Is that because they were replaced by CDs? How long does a type of product need to be hard-to-find before terms about that product are obsolete?
I think that rather than trying to nail down hard-and-fast rules about obsolesence, it might make a lot more sense to leave the intermediate tag "dated" and let discussions ensue on those individual talk pages.
--Connel MacKenzie 17:02, 18 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
BTW, as to clipper ships etc., the dictionary tag for words referring to objects or concepts no longer in use (as opposed to words that have fallen out of use sua sponte) is historical. —Muke Tever 19:05, 19 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
I've removed the rfd template, since having it there causes the rfd notice to appear in the entry for the term itself. I'm not trying to cut the discussion short. I agree we need to discuss this. -dmh 16:47, 22 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • Deleted. Despite the controversy, there has been no big move to apply it. Eclecticology 00:18:53, 2005-09-07 (UTC)
I reinstated this temporarily to see what "What links here" turned up, in case anything needs to be cleaned up. This may already have been done, but I don't see any indication of it above. It appears that there are no actual entries using this template, but I'm not 100% confident that the "What links here" link is updated in real time. -dmh 03:51, 7 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • Deleted again. "What links here" does usually update in real time. Eclecticology 05:28:34, 2005-09-07 (UTC)
One question out of my vast ignorance: Is it possible to have this templated redirected to {archaic} (or whatever is supposed to replace this template) instead of simply deleted? In other words, if {dated} is used in articles (we can't expect every newbie to read this RFD page) can the {archaic} template be used instead automatically? Cheers, --Stranger 16:54, 9 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
Seconded (in fact, didn't I already say this someplace?) -dmh 18:16, 15 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

Anyone who would have bothered to look would have noticed that, while the template is not widely applied, there are dozens if not hundreds of entries bearing the tag ''(dated)'' or variants thereof. I've been moving these over to the more modern {{dated}}. As I note in the talk page, the category should continue to fill up, and it's a separate issue whether to have dated as an alias for some other category or as a category of its own.

This process will take some time, giving Ec plenty of opportunity to rationalize undoing it. -dmh 21:58, 19 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

As is increasingly the case, User:Eclecticology has not even taken the time to answer the point that, contrary to his original assertion that dated is not widely used, it's actually found in dozens if not hundreds of entries. Instead, he has systematically edited the articles I just changed — articles that he clearly had never even bothered to check previously — to remove the tag {{dated}} wherever it appeared. I emphasize "remove" because two more reasonable alternatives were available
  1. Change {{dated}} to {{archaic}} or some other more suitable designation.
  2. Better yet, leave the entries alone and change the template. As I've said, there's already a good precedent for such aliasing in {{UK}} and {{British}}.
Simply deleting the tag altogether simply loses information. -dmh 14:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

This template has been kept for now since people have continued to use it. I do intend to continue recategorizing articles where it is applied. Eclecticology 09:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

correct way to say something is dated in some countries? edit

Is there a correct way to indicate an entry is dated in some countries but not others?

There are many words in use in the UK that are no longer used in North America, many since the 1950's to 1990's. And probably vice versa. Facts707 23:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Correct way to note usage is dated outside set phrases? edit

Many words that may be marked 'dated' are in common modern usage within set phrases; but are indeed dated otherwise. For example fancy#Verb (4 - to imagine or suppose) is certainly dated in general and in its first quotation, but the second two ('fancy that'; 'fancy meeting you here') are not (BrE anyway). That's the example that brought me here, but I don't think it's at all uncommon for even otherwise-obsolete words to survive in certain phrases or colloquial sayings. For now I have used `lb|en|dated|or|in a|_|set phrase` which seems to produce a reasonable result: (dated or in a set phrase). OJFord (talk) 11:38, 29 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Return to "dated" page.