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Additional reference information for all of this material is coming... Richard Myers 05:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
This article suffers from a couple of problems. First, if all this article intends to do is provide a single-sentence definition of a term, then each term should be added to Wiktionary [1]. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Second, on a related issue, why doesn't each term get a separate Wiki page? Say a person was writing an article on the IWW and they wanted to refer to the term "4-3"; how could they create a Wiki link to it, if the term is part of a long list like this? And if more than one term appeared in an IWW article, the author would be Wiki-linking to the same page over and over and over. Third, the importance of this article is not established. Unless it is established, I would argue this article is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Indeed, most organizations develop their own internal jargon. Why is the IWW's jargon particularly important? It may be culturally significant, but that should be established in the article. Fourth, only a few lingo terms have citations. I realize citations are coming. But Wikipedia advises authors to gather your citations ahead of time. That way, someone reading this article today can see the citations, and won't have to keep coming back to see if they've been added in the future. (This is sort of the "articles should spring from the head of the author fully formed, like Minerva from Jupiter" guideline. I'm showin' off my class-ee-cul ed-jee-cay-shun here.) Fifth, is this a list? If it is, the page should be retitled and restructured according to Wikipedia's rules for lists. But if it is an article, it also needs to be restructured to be an article. An article on "Wobbly lingo" would, I think, address why the IWW created its own jargon and discuss its cultural, organizational, political, social, etc. importance. Instead, this is just a list. But terms are defined, it's not a list, either. For information on how an article should look, see Editing Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a number of guidelines and suggestions for creating, completing and categorizing lists. See the Wikipedia list-making guideline, and make sure to read the subpages and Talk page. Sixth, not all these terms are IWW terms. Industrial unionism, for example, predates the IWW by many years (although I'm not entirely clear on the etymology of the phrase, I suspect it was a creation of the Knights of Labor). Many other terms are general cultural words and phrases ("balloon" for bedroll, for examples), and are defined elsewhere in Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Some may not need definition at all. For example, if I were writing an article on railroad union organizing and wanted to use the term "bull," I could just add "bull (a railroad security guard)" in parentheses. It doesn't take (or warrant!) a whole Wiki page. This could be a very worthy article or list with some work. Good luck! - Tim1965 14:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Steve O. from the Industrial Workers of the World has given permission for use of the official IWW jargon in the Wobbly Lingo article, as retrieved from the IWW website at: http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/dictionary February 2007. Richard Myers 12:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I removed the improper edit (in bold, below) from the article. It appears to be original research, and therefore inappropriate in this encyclopedia. But it may also be true. (I'm not taking a position, just preserving someone's comment.)
Wobbly (Sometimes shortened to "Wob") : A nickname of unknown origin for a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Many believe "wobbly" refers to a tool known as a "wobble saw." One often repeated anecdote has it that a sympathetic Chinese restaurant owner in Vancouver would extend credit to IWW members and, unable to pronounce the "W", {That is nonsense. What some Chinese cannot say is R. New immigrants are perfectly able to say eye doublew doublew - shown by practical test by two wobblies in Chinese Restaurant using an interpreter and a new Cantonese immigrant. The Chinese origin could be correct: Reading I W W if you have not completed learning the names of the alphabet but have learned that I is eye produces 'Eye wobbly wobbly' because W is a wobbly letter. Using initials avoids trying to say the Rs that are in the full words.} would ask if they were a member of the "I Wobble Wobble." [1]
Further analysis/research invited. Richard Myers ( talk) 02:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
References
I might be wrong in deducing from the article that Wobbly Lingo is organized, but I don't believe I'm wrong to perceive an implication that the words can be grouped together under one umbrella, namely the domain of the IWW.
Although I admit that some of the terms that I have heard before are from individuals who might be inclined to membership of that august organization, I believe that few, if any, of the people whom I heard using them in my younger days were either members or inclined to be.
Some of the words used are, in fact, common terms used daily by many people in several different parts of the world. I think of bloke, blue streak, mug, for example. And users of words not in the list, such as snap, mike, etc, would, I think, have formed part of Wobbly Lingo if it was organized thusly.
But my entire difficulty comes from one thing. Early on in the article is a suggestion that the IWW is an international union formed with members in several countries. In the context of the article as a whole, though, the IWW is a purely US phenomenon. Others might read the article and understand without my having said so, but yet others will not. So, it's worth making that point. Jones the Red 74.226.91.95 ( talk) 13:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Much of this page is duplicated in the section "Expressions used through 1940s" in the article Hobo. That article section also has better formatting, IMHO. I suggest a modification of this page's title and combining the 2 sections into a single lexicon. Liam Proven ( talk) 12:40, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
There seems to be quite a bit of overlap between Wobbly lingo and hobo expressions used through 1940s. Wouldn't many of the terms here be better placed there? — AjaxSmack 12:52, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. No prejudice against a new RM discussing the merits of expanding "Wobbly" to "Industrial Workers of the World", but I can't see any consensus in this discussion the "Wobbly" is ambiguous. Jenks24 ( talk) 13:55, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Wobbly lingo →
Glossary of Wobbly terms – "Wobbly lingo" sounds awfully informal. The proposed title is more
consistent with other members of
Category:Glossaries and probably more recognizable too. I checked to make sure the current title isn't commonly used in other sources; it isn't (see
"wobbly lingo" -wikipedia). "Wobbly" itself is slang, of course, but it's well-known and used in reliable sources enough that I don't think it's problematic on its own. And
Glossary of Industrial Workers of the World terms is a bit much. --Relisted.
Armbrust
The Homunculus 15:07, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
BDD (
talk) 23:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
The content has been merged back to Industrial Workers of the World#Lingo per the recent AfD. Chris Troutman ( talk) 20:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
This article was nominated for deletion on 25 August 2016. The result of the discussion was no consensus. |
This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Additional reference information for all of this material is coming... Richard Myers 05:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
This article suffers from a couple of problems. First, if all this article intends to do is provide a single-sentence definition of a term, then each term should be added to Wiktionary [1]. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Second, on a related issue, why doesn't each term get a separate Wiki page? Say a person was writing an article on the IWW and they wanted to refer to the term "4-3"; how could they create a Wiki link to it, if the term is part of a long list like this? And if more than one term appeared in an IWW article, the author would be Wiki-linking to the same page over and over and over. Third, the importance of this article is not established. Unless it is established, I would argue this article is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Indeed, most organizations develop their own internal jargon. Why is the IWW's jargon particularly important? It may be culturally significant, but that should be established in the article. Fourth, only a few lingo terms have citations. I realize citations are coming. But Wikipedia advises authors to gather your citations ahead of time. That way, someone reading this article today can see the citations, and won't have to keep coming back to see if they've been added in the future. (This is sort of the "articles should spring from the head of the author fully formed, like Minerva from Jupiter" guideline. I'm showin' off my class-ee-cul ed-jee-cay-shun here.) Fifth, is this a list? If it is, the page should be retitled and restructured according to Wikipedia's rules for lists. But if it is an article, it also needs to be restructured to be an article. An article on "Wobbly lingo" would, I think, address why the IWW created its own jargon and discuss its cultural, organizational, political, social, etc. importance. Instead, this is just a list. But terms are defined, it's not a list, either. For information on how an article should look, see Editing Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a number of guidelines and suggestions for creating, completing and categorizing lists. See the Wikipedia list-making guideline, and make sure to read the subpages and Talk page. Sixth, not all these terms are IWW terms. Industrial unionism, for example, predates the IWW by many years (although I'm not entirely clear on the etymology of the phrase, I suspect it was a creation of the Knights of Labor). Many other terms are general cultural words and phrases ("balloon" for bedroll, for examples), and are defined elsewhere in Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Some may not need definition at all. For example, if I were writing an article on railroad union organizing and wanted to use the term "bull," I could just add "bull (a railroad security guard)" in parentheses. It doesn't take (or warrant!) a whole Wiki page. This could be a very worthy article or list with some work. Good luck! - Tim1965 14:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Steve O. from the Industrial Workers of the World has given permission for use of the official IWW jargon in the Wobbly Lingo article, as retrieved from the IWW website at: http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/dictionary February 2007. Richard Myers 12:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I removed the improper edit (in bold, below) from the article. It appears to be original research, and therefore inappropriate in this encyclopedia. But it may also be true. (I'm not taking a position, just preserving someone's comment.)
Wobbly (Sometimes shortened to "Wob") : A nickname of unknown origin for a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Many believe "wobbly" refers to a tool known as a "wobble saw." One often repeated anecdote has it that a sympathetic Chinese restaurant owner in Vancouver would extend credit to IWW members and, unable to pronounce the "W", {That is nonsense. What some Chinese cannot say is R. New immigrants are perfectly able to say eye doublew doublew - shown by practical test by two wobblies in Chinese Restaurant using an interpreter and a new Cantonese immigrant. The Chinese origin could be correct: Reading I W W if you have not completed learning the names of the alphabet but have learned that I is eye produces 'Eye wobbly wobbly' because W is a wobbly letter. Using initials avoids trying to say the Rs that are in the full words.} would ask if they were a member of the "I Wobble Wobble." [1]
Further analysis/research invited. Richard Myers ( talk) 02:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
References
I might be wrong in deducing from the article that Wobbly Lingo is organized, but I don't believe I'm wrong to perceive an implication that the words can be grouped together under one umbrella, namely the domain of the IWW.
Although I admit that some of the terms that I have heard before are from individuals who might be inclined to membership of that august organization, I believe that few, if any, of the people whom I heard using them in my younger days were either members or inclined to be.
Some of the words used are, in fact, common terms used daily by many people in several different parts of the world. I think of bloke, blue streak, mug, for example. And users of words not in the list, such as snap, mike, etc, would, I think, have formed part of Wobbly Lingo if it was organized thusly.
But my entire difficulty comes from one thing. Early on in the article is a suggestion that the IWW is an international union formed with members in several countries. In the context of the article as a whole, though, the IWW is a purely US phenomenon. Others might read the article and understand without my having said so, but yet others will not. So, it's worth making that point. Jones the Red 74.226.91.95 ( talk) 13:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Much of this page is duplicated in the section "Expressions used through 1940s" in the article Hobo. That article section also has better formatting, IMHO. I suggest a modification of this page's title and combining the 2 sections into a single lexicon. Liam Proven ( talk) 12:40, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
There seems to be quite a bit of overlap between Wobbly lingo and hobo expressions used through 1940s. Wouldn't many of the terms here be better placed there? — AjaxSmack 12:52, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. No prejudice against a new RM discussing the merits of expanding "Wobbly" to "Industrial Workers of the World", but I can't see any consensus in this discussion the "Wobbly" is ambiguous. Jenks24 ( talk) 13:55, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Wobbly lingo →
Glossary of Wobbly terms – "Wobbly lingo" sounds awfully informal. The proposed title is more
consistent with other members of
Category:Glossaries and probably more recognizable too. I checked to make sure the current title isn't commonly used in other sources; it isn't (see
"wobbly lingo" -wikipedia). "Wobbly" itself is slang, of course, but it's well-known and used in reliable sources enough that I don't think it's problematic on its own. And
Glossary of Industrial Workers of the World terms is a bit much. --Relisted.
Armbrust
The Homunculus 15:07, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
BDD (
talk) 23:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
The content has been merged back to Industrial Workers of the World#Lingo per the recent AfD. Chris Troutman ( talk) 20:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)