Talk:Gold digger

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Dictionary content[edit]

This title was originally a redirect to Age disparity in sexual relationships, expanded in 2005 to a disambiguation page pointing to topics related to the literal meaning of the phrase (Gold mine, Gold prospecting) as well as the slang term. In 2008 it was returned to a redirect; by that time Gold digger had emerged as the disambiguation page.

In 2014 User:JackofDiamonds1 replaced the redirect with an explanation of the slang term. In 2016 User:Dwarf Kirlston mentioned the Gold digging page on Gold digger. In 2017 I redirected Gold digging to Gold mining, where I also added a hatnote directing to the Gold digger disambiguation. Shortly thereafter, User:Editor2020 reverted my changes without additional comment.

The current content seems to run afoul of two Wikipedia policies, Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary and Wikipedia:Verifiability. (Although verifiability could presumably be remedied by citing slang dictionaries or the like, I think such changes would themselves run afoul of the exclusion of dictionary content and the spirit of Wikipedia:Notability; see WP:WORDISSUBJECT.)

Presumably other editors disagree with me. I think it's best to discuss here rather than spread it over various talk and user-talk pages. What say you? Cnilep (talk) 04:51, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's a previous discussion and research by me over at Talk:Gold digger#Repeated deletions, please take a look at it if you can. You recently added Trophy wife - but there I include many many related terms such as Sugar Baby and Mistress and japanese compensated dating, all of which have wikipedia articles and that would be clunky to include in the gold digger see also I believe.
I find it funny that you wrote that I included gold digging in gold digger "in 2016". Although we are in 2017 today, I think it's been a week since then (28 of december).
To be clear I did not know about what appears to be something like an edit war (?) by multiple editors here in gold digging, although User:Ouizardus referenced a similar problem happening in the gold digger article.
I do understand that wikipedia is not a dictionary - but I wonder. Ethnic slurs - whose entries seem to be mostly definitions - are included in wikipedia to a large degree. See for example List of ethnic slurs and the large number of blue-linked "words" - right? "coloquialisms"? "slang terms"?
I think "ethnic slurs" is furthermore a very related example to this one, which is a bit like a "misogynistic slur".
Thank you for explaining your reasoning, I understand now your edit in gold digger.
--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 15:46, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I'm doubtful that notifying User:Jackofdiamonds1 and User:Editor2020 would necessarily be useful, although they definitely participate in the controversy. Also User:Ouizardus, who never edited I believe but who commented on the Gold digger talk page. These three seem to argue or have argued in the past for the inclusion in some way of the coloquialism. Involved against the inclusion, beside yourself, is also User:Cuchullain, apparently.
--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 15:46, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
PPS: I did not yet look at the wikipedia guideline and policy pages, I'll be looking at them shortly. I hope to understand better the wikipedia policies and guidelines.
--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 15:56, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
PPPS: there's perhaps a relevant category for it with somewhat similar terms- "Category:Sexuality and gender-related slurs" - I found it through bitch
--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 16:02, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary#When a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject section seems to be to the point: it is not so much that Wikipedia does not include words, but that they must be notable. Dictionary definitions are not proofs of notability. At the moment the current article here at gold digging is not demonstrating notability for sure.
--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 16:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I like the direction of the recent changes, moving away from the phrase as a phrase and to the phenomenon it describes. Thank you for your contributions. Cnilep (talk) 02:23, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your thanks :) So nice of you! --User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 02:03, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Transactional blue link[edit]

@Editor2020:I object to your edit [1], not all of it, just transactional being blue linked to "Transactional sex" - Sex might not be involved in gold digging, and transactional does not only refer to "mistress"/"lover" situations. Romantic sexless relationships can still be gold digging, and still be "transactional relationships". However other blue links don't seem very appropriate either. Financial transaction, Business don't seem very appropriate. The closest I could find that had the same general meaning was Quid pro quo - but I think maybe best is just leaving it without a blue link. What do you think?--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 23:54, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think it works, but remove the link if you want.Editor2020 (talk) 01:34, 30 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Stereotypical[edit]

@AlAboos: I would like to discuss this edit [2] believe it is indeed related to a stereotype the idea that gold diggers are women, or that women are gold diggers. It's not merely that women are the "usual" tipification, but that men maybe even can't or couldn't be "gold diggers", that a different word would have to be used: like "fortune hunters" for example.

I searched around for "male gold digger" and found this article in forbes [3]. So it seems males can be identified as gold diggers as well.--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 16:30, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dwarf Kirlston: Thank you for reaching out to a rookie Wikipedia enthusiast. I understand that we are moving away from gender stereotypes in general, but gold digger has always been associated with women due to social injustices women experienced over the past several centuries. I am confident there are cases of male gold diggers, but they are not as many cases to qualify both genders as such. Fortune hunter is a different coined term and perhaps needs its own page. It is not as familiar as gold digger to begin with nor does it trigger the same reaction - it sounds more like people looking for oil in public land to me. I think it is important that we do not let our opinions redefine words beyond what they mean for both genders. AlAboos (talk) 20:30, 10 March 2017 (UTC)alaboos[reply]

@AlAboos: It seems we agree that there was indeed a past stereotype. And as you say perhaps the stereotype is going away, is today already weakened. I'm having a hard time finding a phrasing that communicates this... Maybe instead of "Gold digging is a type of transactional relationship[1] in which people, usually women, engage in romantic relationships for money rather than love. When it turns into marriage it is a type of marriage of convenience." Something like (proposed edit 1)"Gold digging is a type of transactional relationship[1] in which people engage in romantic relationships for money rather than love. When it turns into marriage it is a type of marriage of convenience. Historically it has been a stereotype for women." or in the same place (proposed edit 2)"Historically it has been a stereotype for women, but recently it has also been used for males." Moving it into a new independent phrase. Maybe a source would also be needed here, especially for proposed edit 2, english usage would have to be attributable to a source. So right now I am favoring proposed edit 1. What do you think?--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 11:14, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dwarf Kirlston: I rather have stereotypical removed but will not object if it stays. It will not in any way change its meaning for the reader.

Requested move 6 March 2018[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: consensus not to move Gold digging and no consensus to move Gold digger at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 06:02, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]


– The page describes characters commonly known as "gold diggers", so this would be a more accurate name. Gold digging should be a disambiguation page, most likely. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 02:43, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose first, Support second - moving the dab makes sense, as most uses are proper names, but this article is about the practice or action of gold digging not the person (WP:GERUND) and should remain. I might support a move to gold-digging in the first case, if that is more unambiguous and supported by usage. -- Netoholic @ 03:36, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Beyond the lede, the article refers entirely to "gold diggers" and not "gold digging". "Gold digger" is usually used to refer to a person.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 05:41, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Swimming naturally uses "swimmer" pretty often throughout the article, but like this one it is primarily covering the activity, not the person. -- Netoholic @ 05:47, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both. Gold digging treats "a type of transactional relationship", ergo the gerund. Though many of the items on Gold digger use an upper-case D, not all do. The status quo, with the upper-case title redirecting to the sentence-case page, works appropriately and satisfies WP:TITLEFORMAT. The suggested changes would require additional disambiguation per WP:DIFFCAPS, since the two titles differ only in capitalization. Cnilep (talk) 06:14, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose first, Support second - moving the dab makes sense, as most uses are proper names, but this article is about the practice or action of gold digging - as above verbatim In ictu oculi (talk) 22:49, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I note the previous move 01:21, 7 August 2012‎ Ego White Tray (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (48 bytes) (+48)‎ . . (Ego White Tray moved page Talk:Gold Digger to Talk:Gold Digger (Kanye West song): Need better disambiguation that this, especially with several other songs of this name). That user retired almost a year ago, so it's not worth pinging them IMO. Andrewa (talk) 04:12, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose both. Dicklyon (talk) 19:32, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 23 August 2019[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved as requested. "Gold digger" had to be moved, and WP:DIFFCAPS supported the proposed destination "Gold Digger"; no supporting reasons were given for the alternative "Gold digger (disambiguation)". -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:26, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]


– I have edited the article to address the concerns in the previous RM that it is about the relationship rather than the person. I think it makes the most sense to name the article about the person rather than the action. The disambiguation page would be moved per WP:DIFFCAPS. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 14:42, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Leaning oppose, as I believe that the specified relationship is more important than the kind of individual who engages in it. bd2412 T 15:36, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Bd2412: All the refs use the term "gold digger" rather than "gold digging". In fact, a Google search for "gold digger" gives 24.5m hits while "gold digging" only gives 1.5m. The term is far less widely used or popular, and WP:COMMONNAME says that articles should use the most commonly used name.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 16:02, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support As a far more natural title. As nominator says, it's very rare for sources to talk about "gold digging" as an activity. It strikes me as an awkward sort of back-formation from the much more commonly used "gold digger". Colin M (talk) 17:06, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support first proposal but move Gold digger to Gold digger (disambiguation). The regular noun form is a better article title than a gerund form in this case. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:09, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose proposal. Not opposed to changing the context from the action to the person, but there is no reason to create a new "primary" for a few reasons. First, the modern use of the word is based on the actual people who do gold mining, so that in itself has a very strong connection to the term. Secondly, I see no value in making the same word with 1 capital letter difference lead to two different targets. I have no objection to adding a disambiguation to the proposed article. --Gonnym (talk) 20:43, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support first proposal but move Gold digger to Gold digger (disambiguation) as per Rreagan007's suggestion above. --John B123 (talk) 08:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most of the articles on the disambiguation page are named "Gold Digger" or "The Gold Diggers". Per WP:DABNAME, "The spelling that reflects the majority of items on the page is preferred to less common alternatives."ZXCVBNM (TALK) 16:47, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Referring to the person is preferable to the action, particularly because gold digging can also be used to refer to mining or otherwise panning for gold. Would support Rreagan007's proposal to Gold digger (disambiguation), which might make more sense. Doug Mehus (talk) 01:18, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support. I'd have bet my life that an article called Gold digging would be about digging for gold. Red Slash 00:13, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Short description[edit]

Dicklyon, regarding this, this, this and this, societal bias forms definitions. This term is almost always used to refer to women, and that should be reflected in the short description. Yes, short descriptions should be short, but they should also be accurate. Simply stating "a person" without "typically a woman" is not accurate enough, just like it wouldn't be for the first sentence of the introduction, as it leads readers to believe that this term is applied to men (or even non-binary people) just as much as it's applied to women. It obviously isn't. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:23, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By contrast, the short description for the Bitch (slang) article that I referenced in my edit summary states, "Pejorative slang word for a person, usually a woman." Short and accurate. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:27, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Bitch" is a female dog, hence the application to women. Golddigger can be either sex, as sources make clear. I disagree that you need to reflect the "typical" bias in the short description, and I'm not the only one who objected; so why do you just keep putting it back? Dicklyon (talk) 02:15, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Bitch" can also refer to either sex, as the Bitch (slang) article makes clear. The key, as it is in the case of this article as well, is what the term usually refers to. That is why I've re-added the emphasis on women to the short description of this article; I explained this above. As for you "[not being] the only one who objected" and "keep putting it back," the only other person who has objected so far is an IP. With regard to the short description, I re-added the emphasis on women twice. With regard to people tinkering with the lead sentence to remove the important emphasis on women, I've reverted that as well. What you refer to as bias in this case is the terminology. It's sexist terminology, sure, as made clear by this 2013 "Working with Words: A Handbook for Media Writers and Editors" source, from Macmillan Higher Education, page 294, but it's the terminology. The term is almost always (not just usually) applied to women. I can add academic material to the article in that regard. For those who are somehow unfamiliar with the term gold digger, why should they be led to think that they are coming to an article where the term equally applies to both sexes? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:57, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
English literature is full of examples of male gold diggers. I've removed the offending phrase as quite unnecessary bias. Tony (talk) 04:12, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The "English literature is full of examples of male gold diggers"? Sources? And "Offending phrase as quite unnecessary bias"? I stand by what I stated above. With this edit, you removed the WP:Due weight description out of the lead sentence. See the RfC below. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RfC about wording in the lead and short description[edit]

The consensus is that the lead and short description should include "is a person, typically a woman" instead of "is a person".

Cunard (talk) 05:35, 17 November 2019 (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.

Should the lead and short description include "is a person, typically a woman" instead of "is a person"? Or should the lead only include "is a person, typically a woman," and the short description not mention gender? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

  • Yes to including "typically a woman" in the lead and in the short description. Like I argued in the Talk:Gold digger#Short description discussion above, societal bias forms definitions. This term is almost always used to refer to women, and that should be reflected in the lead, if not in the short description as well. This is the same with regard to slut, bitch, cunt, and a variety of other Wikipedia articles, where we note what the term usually refers to. In the case of those other three articles, the term usually refers women as well. The fact that relaying that these terms usually refer to women, like the reliable sources make clear, may offend people is not a valid reason to not accurately reflect the literature/the definition of a term. Wikipedia is not here to right the great wrongs. It is here to follow the literature and with WP:Due weight. Having this article state "typically a woman" also reflects the article's content, which then adheres to what WP:LEAD states about summarizing the lead. If I were to significantly expand this article with academic sources, the article would overwhelmingly be about women because the literature is. That stated, the Slut, Bitch (slang), and Cunt articles are all about the term, while the Gold digger article is currently framed as being about a type of a person. Still, so much of the content on this topic is about the term. So maybe the article should be reformatted to be about the term. An alternative option could be to leave the lead sentence as gender-neutral and then have a third sentence in the lead note that the term is usually applied to women. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes to lead and short description - Agree with Flyer22 Reborn's reasoning above. --John B123 (talk) 08:33, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes to both per reasons given by Flyer22 Reborn. Additionally, if anything, the right thing to do is to tell our readers the truth about how the term is used - generally in a misogynist fashion. I also support adjusting the article to make clear that it is about the term, not any purported 'type' of person. We do have other articles about words like that. -Crossroads- (talk) 02:57, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes to both Agree that it would be appropriate to mention the misogynistic history of the term. Comatmebro (talk) 04:53, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes Per this source, possibly unreliable, the term was originally specific to women - this has now changed. I personally would prefer removing the "typically a woman" from the opening sentence and adding a third sentence to the lede, something along the lines of "The term "gold digger" has been historically gendered to only refer to women, with multiple dictionaries defining the term as specifically applying to women. While the term can refer to a person of any gender in modern usage, the term still remains relatively gendered." There's lots to add to the etymology, might have a crack. SportingFlyer T·C 05:28, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, in lead with citation(s), unless someone can find some reliable sources that indicate the ratio is not as heavily swayed as is generally believed. tsilb (talk) 16:30, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]


The discussion above 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.

Wiki Education assignment: Black Sexual Politics Writing Intensive[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 8 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CardamomEnthusiast, Chmw8, Dsgm3r (article contribs). Peer reviewers: SophieVMoon, Elawson123, Karleeseek, MichalyLong, Bem2c4, Elaineamery, Jcrg34, Kailynhill721.

— Assignment last updated by Cjcarney (talk) 19:42, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]