[MD] Wikipedia, Social Negotiation and Meaning

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Michael]
Ultimately, there needs to be an authority that decrees a definition 
to be "accepted" (at least for the time being.)

[Arlo]
Who is the authority? MW? That's a company? The CEO of MW? The 
publisher? The editor? What happens when MW and RH offer differing 
authoritative "definitions"?

As I mentioned a few posts back, consider that for MW, the primary 
definition for "theism" is "belief in god or gods" (Michael's view). 
But for dictionary.com its "the belief in one God as the creator and 
ruler of the universe, without rejection of revelation". Cambridge's 
online dictionary defines theism as only "the belief that there is
only one god, who is completely separate from those things (the 
Earth, people, etc.) he has created, rather than being part of them".

Consensus is the only real authority, and this emanates from 
pragmatic activity within one's spheres of agency. For example, let's 
say I decide that the word "car" means "scooped ice cream in a pastry 
shell". I could walk into every store around and ask for a "car" and 
I won't get what I want. It's not because some "authority" has 
decreed that "car" refers to combustion-driven (or does it?) 
passenger vehicles with four wheels, but that people have negotiated 
a fairly stable (in the short term) meaning that allows them 
heightened agency. I could lobby for this change, keep plugging away 
on my use every day by saying things like, "man, this car would taste 
even better with candy sprinkles", and maybe eventually enough people 
would adopt this to negotiate a new meaning for the word, that would 
one then end up in MW.

Dictionaries, which track (ideally) norms of use, offer a quick way 
for linguistic outsiders to learn a great deal of a given language's 
consensus, which allows for the rapid expansion of agency within that 
domain. But dictionaries are not the authority, they merely report 
consensus norms. They represent a publisher's attempt to show as much 
a foundation of consensus as possible to allow those outside (to 
various degrees) the language quick entry into the dialogue.

Back to "theism", which authority do you think, or would you propose, 
as the authority to step in and tell us both what "theism" really 
means? What if the majority of people are using the word differently?

[Michael]
A place like wikipedia can't figure out if its dialog or authority. 
That's its real problem. One cannot be both.

[Arlo]
One HAS to be both. That's the point. The dialogue needs protection 
from those who would deliberately derail meaningful negotiation, but 
needs to preserve the negotiative aspect of meaning. The rapidity and 
openness of Wikipedia tilted the balance in favor of those who are 
disruptive to meaningful negotiation. Sources like MW (although a 
great deal of dialogue occurs behind closed doors) tilts the balance 
in favor of prescriptive meaning, which may or may not reflect the 
way language is really used. So while Wikipedia adds some peer-review 
to ensure the dialogue stays productive, other sources (like MW) 
should open the window on their negotiated dialogue and encourage 
participation outside a few editors.