sona pona:Notability

This is a wiki essay with advice from one or more contributors.

Notability is a measure of whether a topic warrants its own article, or mention on the wiki in general. Since Toki Pona is a niche topic in itself, the notability standards for sona pona are more permissive than those for Wikipedia; topics are judged by their relevance to the language or community culture.

Editors have varying opinions on what the wiki should include. Deletionists are often concerned with learners absorbing words and styles of speech that are not widely used or understood in practice, by which sona pona would artificially influence the language rather than covering it responsibly. Inclusionists have argued that within Toki Pona, presence in a learning resource or font may amount to notability, and sona pona coverage could provide better usage disclaimers, nuance, and citations than other resources.

Current standards include:

• Features that are not in standard use may still be notable—of historical significance, memetic in the community, circulated through many completionist resources, etc.—but must be marked and described as nonstandard. They should also explain what the standard style does instead and why.
• Additions to existing systems require a higher level of notability than new systems.
• Articles should not give undue weight to significantly less notable topics. For example, see Project:Word articles § Related words.
• A list may warrant its own article, even if not all of its items do, and even if the list does not form a coherent style of Toki Pona usage.
• User pages are not subject to notability requirements.

Word articles

Main article: Project:Word articles

This section needs work. If you know about this topic, you can help us by editing it. (See all)

Glyphs

See also Category:Words with sitelen pona glyphs detected in sitelen seli kiwen.

There is little data on usage of sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen glyphs in the community. Many are proposed by fontmakers or other Tokiponists for completionist purposes, but see little to no usage in practice.

On the one hand, these glyphs should not be given undue weight. On the other, readers may already be disproportionately familiar with them from font repertoires, dictionaries (such as Linku), and even personal experimentation with fonts. They could easily assume that such a glyph is in common usage, and that the wiki article is merely incomplete if the glyph is absent.

The current consensus is that these sorts of nonstandard and proposed glyphs may be included, but they should not be described as "the" glyph for a certain word, nor displayed in the infobox. A suggested exception is if a glyph was designed by the word's coiner, demonstrating that the word is intended to be associated with that glyph.

Below is an example sitelen pona section to fill in for a word with a nonstandard glyph:

==={{tp|sitelen pona}}===
The word {{tp|{{subst:PAGENAME}}​}} <!--predated/is not often used in--> {{tp|[[sitelen pona]]}}. A proposed glyph ({{sp|{{subst:PAGENAME}}​}}) was designed by <!--whom?--> in <!--when?-->, <!--why?-->. It <!--depicts/represents/is derived from/is composed of…-->. In practice, it is unknown whether this glyph sees significant use.