Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2009/November

November 2009

w:template:talkback

Would there be any objection to importing this template from Wikipedia? --Yair rand 04:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't be objected to it, although I cannot say how used it will be, which might lead to a better choice of not importing it. Razorflame 06:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It might be nicer to not use a box as then it stands out more than any other part of a normal talk page, despite having less use than any other part of a talk page. If a box must be used it should inherit from {{request box}} or {{maintenance box}} (see Template:rfe or Template:rfc) so that the look is consistent, and it is reasonably certain to interact correctly with other layout features (particularly right-hand elements interact badly with naive boxes). I personally do not like to be pinged with such messages, I check my watch-list frequently enough that I will know if there's something I want to reply to. Conrad.Irwin 12:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I suspect most people check usertalkpages they post to for some time, but, for example, I recently responded on my talkpage to an old comment that I doubted was being followed any longer by the OP, so posted a note on his talkpage that was roughly ==[subject matter]== I've responded at my talk.~~~~. I could have linked to the section easily enough. Does that require templatification? Not imo, but I don't see the harm in it. I say go for it, but either with Conrad's modifications, or, better yet, as non-boxed text.​—msh210℠ 18:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, how about this? --Yair rand 19:36, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Also see {{Mytalk}} --Yair rand 19:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary on the WP Signpost

The Signpost apparently has a series in which each of Wikipedia's sister projects is featured with an interview of one of the locals. As a relative old-timer on both projects, I volunteered to write the one on Wiktionary. It is due to be published in the next issue, a few days from now. I would like to encourage anyone who is interested to read over what I have written and perhaps even make any changes you feel are appropriate. The current draft is here. Dominic·t 07:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:citation

Was just thinking - should this categorize, or does it already? Maybe in [[Category:English citations]], or citations of English words? Then by adding lang=fr for example, that changes it to French. It would be make our citations pages a lot more findable IMO. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This used to be the case, but Special:AllPages/Citations: is a more readable list than categories provide, see the deletion comment on Category:Citations. Conrad.Irwin 13:51, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

That index does not resolve at all the need for language-specific categorization of citations. I created Category:Citations by language a while back. As for the {{citation}} - that template is broken and the automatic generation of L2 section needs to be removed and replaced by normal language L2 (actually, there is little need for that template at all, and variant spellings for which the common set of citations is provided should prob. be grouped under some kind of subsections). --Ivan Štambuk 14:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Special:AllPages/Citations: is not particularly readable, and it doesn't allow for language sorting. I'm strongly with Ivan on this one, what's the downside to this? Nobody's forced to click on links at the bottom of the page. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:56, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

These changes are huge step forward (and are long overdue). --EncycloPetey 06:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I also added support for lang= to {{seeCites}} a while back to link to L2 section names for a particular language on the citations page (it seemed the most reasonable thing to do, to simply follow the layout of the main page entries). I'm also interested whether there could be an easy way to add support to transclude (via labeled section transclusions) citations for a particular sense (or the entire word or a set of associated senses, whatever makes sense in a particular case), directly in the mainspace definition line by means of some button or link or something that would expand to a drop-down list with show/hide functionality similar to the ones we have in the translation tables (but that would not be that much conspicuous). Could such list be "shrinked" into some kind of ^Citations superscripts or something? This would eliminate lots of problems with citations (discoverability, dissociation from the definition lines, waste of time with additional clicking..). Ideally this would be done on-demand so that large citation pages don't affect the main entry size. --Ivan Štambuk 06:00, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

That's definitely possible. I tried it on machete, obviously the wikimarkup would need to be adjusted and it could probably be put into a collapsible box. Nadando 06:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I wonder whether this kind of transclusion is advisable. Having one or two quotes transcluded into the entry is a good thing, when they're well chosen. A potentially huge list popping in doesn't seem such a good idea, although interconnectivity between specific senses might be, if we can figure out how to do it simply. --EncycloPetey 06:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking about a template for this. It could wrap around quotations in the Citations: namespace, giving each one a number. Then the numbers would be called in the entry, selecting from the citations as appropriate (no need for huge lists). This could eliminate the need to have sense duplication in the Citations space. Nadando 02:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea, but with glosses not numbers. Conrad.Irwin 12:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreeing with Conrad, I think we need glosses to keep things from falling apart if the senses get re-ordered, as they will. The glosses should at least provide a clue even if when the definitions are revised. As long as entries can be edited by anyone who isn't a certified expert in our largely undocumented ways, we can expect edits to mess up the coordination mechanisms available to us. As we apparently can't make our solutions bullet-proof, we need to try to keep them easily reparable. DCDuring TALK 15:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Categories for intergovernmental organizations

This is spurred by a RFDO entry that has resulted in a deletion and recreation of Category:ru:CIS. As I pointed out in the original deletion discussion (which was 2-0 in favor of deletion at the time of deletion and 2-1 at the time of recreation) I do not believe that as a dictionary we should have topical categories for intergovernmental organizations such as the CIS. The same reasoning also applies to the G20, the European Union, Mercosur, ASEAN, etc. At best, membership information belongs in the entry for the pertinent organization, and likely should be left to the relevant Wikipedia article which as an encyclopedia can deal with information such as changing membership in such organizations (such as Georgia's withdrawal earlier this year from the CIS) with more detail than Wiktionary can (and likely in a more timely fashion as well).

To that end, I'm seeking a consensus that Wiktionary will not have topical categories for intergovernmental organizations. — Carolina wren discussió 20:46, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Categories with "words"

Some categories uses "words" to actually designate some "terms"/"vocables"/"locutions", for instance: Category:Autological_words, Category:Compound_words, Category:English_words_spelled_with_macrons.

I'm just suggesting to list, vote and rename all of them "properly" (as we've already done on fr.wikt). JackPotte 23:25, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that words isn't the best choice, because plenty of entries are not single words. I think vocable might be a bit obscure. Term sounds pretty good to me. Equinox ◑ 23:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the benefit to users or anyone else of going through a voting process on this matter? DCDuring TALK 01:16, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Having categories with more accurate and consistent names. Equinox ◑ 01:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

OK for "Terms in...", let's call a cat a cat, as on the other wikis. JackPotte 11:15, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

"Compound words" is currently accurate, as only closed compounds, meaning space-free, are within the scope of the category. So "black hole" is not included, and all the terms are indeed words in the sense "space-free terms". --Dan Polansky 09:14, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but I don't agree, many examples like loan_translation include a space. Thus I'll rename these categories if nobody argues in 1 week. JackPotte 15:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Loan translation is not a compound as we use term here. We use the term specifically to refer to combinations of entire words that do not have a space, as Dan Polansky pointed out. If the term "compound" is used to include other kinds of terms in fr.wikt you might consider the advantages of correcting it. I strongly object to the proposed renaming, especially of the "compound words" set of categories.

Further, it will not make people receptive to any of your proposals if they are accompanied by ultimatums. DCDuring TALK 22:16, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

JackPotte, I am unclear what you disagree about. The term "loan translation" is not a closed compound, as it contains a space. Yes, there is also what some call open compound, which includes terms with spaces such as "black hole". But open compounds are currently excluded from Category:English compound words, as you can see from having a glance at the content of the category. Until there is a clear consensus to include open compounds within the category--which I oppose as I think it would make the category much less useful--the category should keep its name "English compound words", which accurately describes its content. --Dan Polansky 08:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen any English textbook refer to "compound terms." In English, they are called "compound words." Saying that you've made the same change on fr.wikt doesn't just seem contrived, it seems inappropriate. Do the proposed moves make more sense in English? --Connel MacKenzie 21:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: "I've never seen any English textbook refer to 'compound terms.' In English, they are called 'compound words.'": Yes, I agree. —Ruakh_TALK 21:58, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there any object to renaming the other two categories (Category:Autological words, Category:English words spelled with macrons) to use "terms" rather than "words"? I support that. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

+1 with Bequw: it's actually the fr.wikt state, which doesn't publish any "compound term" too. Sorry because I didn't need to speed anybody, let's just define a vote closure date, if no other argument are to be taken into account. JackPotte 21:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done Category:Autological_terms. JackPotte 14:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

What are the supposed benefits of this ? Where is the consensus? I can barely understand the meaning of every other sentence of the proposer. I don't understand how this change of wording is more accurate. The motive seems to have to do with some kind of drive for uniformity. What benefits does this uniformity have? I would like someone I trust to explain this to me. DCDuring TALK 00:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Please see the suite below. JackPotte 11:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Edits to etymology that remove "from" from them.

Hello there. I've had several people tell me that I should request the communitys' support in order to not have my edits rolled back. I went and made a bunch of edits that removed the "From" from some of the etymologies of some entries for words that began with re- dis- over- anti- non- un- and in- to make them all the same. The majority of them were made without the "From" in the Etymology section, so I believe that it would make it consistent to have them all one or the other. Since more than 90% of them don't have the "From" in the etymology section, I believe that removing the "From" in the etymology section would be the way to go. What do you think? Razorflame 07:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The logic behind keeping "from" is the idea that many people don't know what the word etymology means. "From" hints them that this section is about the origin of the word. Besides, I think the ety line looks more friendly with "from" in it. Keep it. --Vahagn Petrosyan 10:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I prefer to have from, From (deprecated template usage) break + (deprecated template usage) -able.. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Does that mean that you don't like the use of the {{suffix}} template? —Ruakh_TALK 11:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree 100% with Vahagn. —Ruakh_TALK 11:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

No but if I used suffix here, it categorizes this page (hence {{term}}). What I meant to say was !I agree 100% with Vahagn". Mglovesfun (talk) 12:06, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, O.K. :-)   For future reference, most of our templates — including {{suffix}} — only categorize when used in entries. So <u>From {{suffix|break|able}}.</u> produces From break +‎ -able., no category. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 12:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

BTW, see previous discussion at [[Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2008/November#Etymology sections are very concise]]. (Thanks go to Dan Polansky for tracking down the link!) —Ruakh_TALK 12:24, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I also prefer including the "From", though occasionally I'm not sure it's actually true; just because it is made up of the two parts, doesn't mean that that's where it originated. While, in this case, I don't mind particularly either way, in future you should ask people for reasons that the situation is as it is before deciding to fix it on a whim. Conrad.Irwin 13:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindenting) So everyone prefers to add the from in front of the {{prefix instead of not including it, because if I were re-granted the AWB rights, I would fix my "mistake" and make them all From first, unless people want them to change back to the way that they were. Secondly, CI, I've already learnt from my mistake, but I did not think it was a big enough of a deal to warrant its' own community discussion. Cheers, Razorflame 13:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I think they're better left alone, there are more important things to do - including (but not limited to) User:Hippiebot's, User:Visviva's and User:Brian0918's vast lists of entries we are missing. Many entries are missing basic information, like quotes, pronunciation, and synonyms. Formatting issues like this can just be ignored for now. Conrad.Irwin 13:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreeing with Conrad, I believe that many (but not a large portion) of the terms for which we show only morphological information in the etymology actually had formed in Middle English, Anglo-Norman, or some vintage of French, Latin, or even Greek (-ize verbs often are of Greek formation}. Once we track the formation, we would be entitled to validly insert "from". There is good, albeit undocumented, reason to not have complete uniformity. The presence of a "From" could be taken as a positive indication that the word was formed in Modern English and not another language. I suppose a comment in the entry confirming the verification of that fact or conclusion would be useful to prevent the "from" from being deleted, at least manually. DCDuring TALK 14:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, if the majority of entries can be given a consistent format now, future editors are more likely to follow the convention. While I agree there are many important tasks here, nipping a formatting problem in the bud is still worthwhile. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 17:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Razorflame, perhaps you could take care of Category:Translation table header lacks gloss? Missing glosses make me not wanna add translations at all. --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Is that something done with AWB? How would I go about doing it? Thanks, Razorflame 14:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The types of edits required are this and this. I don't know if AWB can help here. --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Nope, that can't be done via AWB. Razorflame 14:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• What is this gloss thing you guys speak of? Tooironic 23:47, 7 November 2009 (UTC) Oh wait, do you mean the translation explanation in the {{trans-top}} tag? I've stopped adding these for words with singular senses as, IMO, it's a waste of time. Tooironic 23:50, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

If someone is translating using ordinary edit, the gloss may be the only reminder of the sense they are translating. It is one of the many concessions that we make to the cognitive limitations of us imbeciles. DCDuring TALK 00:03, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It means that, when someone adds another sense, without adding a translation section, that all the translations don't have to be put under a {{ttbc}} when it is noticed that we have one table for two sense and no-one knows who added what for what (the history feature is only useful if this is caught within an edit or two). While it brings no immediate gain, it provides a much more stable foundation on which to build the rest of the entry. Conrad.Irwin 00:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Oooooh, I see. That makes sense. I guess I better stop being lazy and add them from now on. Cheers. Tooironic 01:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Archiving this page

Ok, I just have something to say about this page; it is too damn big. 744 KB is too big of a page for many people to load, let alone certain editors. I am certain that if you keep the size of this page down that you could possibly get more people engaged in actively editing in this section of Wiktionary. Just a thought, Razorflame 14:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Feel free. :p Conrad.Irwin 15:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Much better, but still a tad too bit. I would rather allow other more experienced editors or administrators to archive this page rather than me because I do not feel as though I am experienced enough to archive it, as I will probably not know which discussions are still active or not. Razorflame 16:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

We should really have automatic archiving of the "big" discussion pages (RFV and RFD spring to mind). Of course there'd have to be some new mechanism for linking, so that a semi-recent discussion wouldn't become unlinkable just because it had been archived. Perhaps somebody else has bright ideas on this...? Equinox ◑ 12:21, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

We should use sub-pages, as what we do with WT:VOTE - that way, if someone links to WT:BP#topic-name, the archive can be found by changing the # to a /. The problem is that it's (slightly) more effort to create a new conversation, but a BOT with the sole function of adding Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2009/November/subpage to the end of WT:BP every-time a sub-page is created would almost eliminate this (if it were watching recent-changes in real-time). If we were to do this, the bot would likely need to develop a few extra features over time, firstly splitting off new sections added the old way into new sub-pages; removing deleted pages; adding an archive template to manually untranscluded pages; and maybe automatically archiving sections a month after the last reply. If people want to do this, I am very happy to evolve (or help to evolve) such a bot. Conrad.Irwin 12:43, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

But are they going to install mw:Extension:LiquidThreads soon? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:19, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Possibly, it does mostly the same, except implemented as an extension - I'm not sure how it handles archiving now, initially it was just going to limit to X conversations per-page; so hopefully that's been made more flexible. Conrad.Irwin 14:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

See WT:BP#Beer Parlour below for related discussion about keeping Beer PArlor down in size.--Richardb 02:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Bot idea

I'd like to know if there would be consensus for me (or someone else) to write and run a bot to move sister-project links (eg {{wikipedia}}) and images that are above the first language header to directly underneath that header. Information above the language sections is really language-independent. The two main examples of appropriate above-the-first-L2 elements are {{also}} (which links to entries that could be in any language) and {{character info}} (which shows encoding related info). Images and sister-projects links are inherently language specific. Images are representations of language-specific definitions (I'll stear clear of images in templates such as {{stroke order}} or {{character info}} which actually represent the character and not it's definition) and the sister-project boxes link to language-specific projects (eg en.wikipedia.org). These elements therefore should be moved into the language section they correspond to, which, is as far as I've seen, always the top language section. This will maintain semantic order for the page and follow existing guidelines (eg Template_talk:wikipedia#Placement). Additionally, these offending elements mess with right-hand side Table of Contents. Are there any notable deviations that I'm currenlty not aware of? If there is concensus I would code up a bot and submit it for a vote. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 22:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea with one class of exceptions: links to WP disambiguation pages (and only dab pages) that actually exist. Such links should be in a more compact format than our big WP boxes. Those pages are more like our {{also}} links. They provide another opportunity for users to locate, for example, Proper nouns and Abbreviations which we do not cover. I am not sure whether this is desirable for other PoS entries. Perhaps something similar should be done for entries whose top L2 is not English, linking to a transliteration at WP, if there is one. I don't think we should ever to direct users from a landing page to a non-English pedia or sister project unless it is from the corresponding language section. I certainly doubt that we would want multiple sister project links above the first L2 header. DCDuring TALK 23:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd support that. And personally, I don't see a need for WP disambig boxes to be above the first L2 header. I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that banner blindness probably prevents users from seeing boxes up there, anyway. —Ruakh_TALK 01:19, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be a reason to get rid of everything above the first L2. We've got browser frame, site banner, site tabs, and the {{also}} row. It is the relatively empty middle of the "also" row that would be my target. I would favor preventing the also row from ever pushing the rhs ToC down, by forcing it to remain within a frame that did not interfere with ToC, if that were possible. DCDuring TALK 03:06, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but if you have an image above the first L2, so, as you note, it's not tied in any bot-readable way to any language, how will the bot know where to put it?​—msh210℠ 15:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Everyone I've seen has always pertained to the top L2 (usually English). It's pretty obvious if it doesn't pertain to the top one, and I think editors spot and fix these quickly. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I support the idea. I support that all English WP boxes that are now above L2 heading come under the L2 heading, including disambiguating ones, as they pertain only to English regardless of their being disambiguating.

Images: The bot should make the assumption that any image that is above the first heading in an entry that has an English section is an image belonging to the English section, as my experience wholly confirms this assumption; the exceptions will have to be manually corrected.

An alternative to {{wikipedia}} below L2 heading would be {{pedialite}} in See also section. But I propose to leave this aside: whatever the preferences regarding the two templates, robotic moving {{wikipedia}} from above L2-heading below it does not increase the number of {{wikipedia}} instances. --Dan Polansky 16:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The wikipedia links still pertain to only English so I think the proper way to make those links prominent on pages where wikipedia has definitions we don't is through a layout change in the English section or adding them to also somehow. The boxes shouldn't be left outside any L2. These possible solutions could be handled afterwards with no problem, assuming there's a consensus for that. For number's sake, out of about 12k {{wikipedia}} invocations that are above the first L2, about 1k are explicitly disambiguation pages. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

"Explicitly" meaning that that's how {wikipedia} refers to them? — or meaning that the WP page is categorized ina disambiguation category or has a disambiguation-page template?​—msh210℠ 18:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I meant "explicit" in the template call ({{wikipedia|dab=}}), so not perfect, just a rough estimate.--Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to specify a location that is just below the first L2 and just to the left of the ToC? That would be fine. Another location is alternative forms, though the header would be a misnomer. I am hoping to find a solution that doesn't take up vertical screen space either for the main flow of content (left justified) and the rhs ToC. Does or can the ToC have a maximum width with excess text wrapping to the line below at a reasonable resource burden? DCDuring TALK 21:32, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that could be done with some modifications. See this Sandbox version which works with the latest versions of FF, IE, and Chrome. Maybe an option could be passed into {{slim-wikipedia}} which would make it float next to the ToC and set the width to be variable rather than fixed. Do you like that? I do, it's prominent and still inside the L2. As for the ToC, its div tag can have a fixed width, but on overflow, the div will just present scrollbars rather than having the content wrap. But I don't think this is a huge problem because our Headers are generally just one or two words. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That is beautiful. Exactly what I had in mind. Thanks.

Does anyone object to that placement for WP links to dab pages? It seems adequate for users who might be searching for proper noun senses or encyclopedic senses of a word and consistent with the logic of our heading structure. Should it be limited to use with dab pages in that location? What should it be called as a template? DCDuring TALK 15:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Would something like {{temp|also|wp=}} work? generating "see also bing, bong, and Wikipedia articles" (for the disambiguation pages at least). Conrad.Irwin 21:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

{{also}} is for language-independent or cross-language linking, which is why I think that links to English (language-dependent) Wikipedia should not be on the same line with it, but rather should be somewhere below the "==English==" L2 heading: either in a box or in a pedialite link. An example of an entry with two boxes is "word"; an edit that the bot would make would be like this one made to "word", resulting in two Wikipedia boxes below "==English==" heading. --Dan Polansky 08:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Do you think that the two wikipedia boxes stacked on top of each other is a problem? They are almost identical (the disambig one says "articles") which is not ideal. Anything to be done about these? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I see no problem in having two boxes, but other people may differ. If the robot does not change the number of boxes, fine with me. If the robot keeps only one box in case there are more than one boxes, and it keeps the disambiguating one, fine with me. --Dan Polansky 18:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Building off Dan's comment: It should be possible to link to two different articles sith a single box, rather than stacking two boxes. Alternatively, the {{pedialite}} link can be used instead of the box, when the box template becomes cumbersome. --EncycloPetey 00:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Translations of the attributive form of nouns

Many English nouns may be used attributively as adjectives. In many cases the foreign-language translation is different to that of the noun sense. How do we show that? As an example, the translation table of (deprecated template usage) folklore has (deprecated template usage) folclore as an Italian translation - but nothing to point to (deprecated template usage) folcloristico. SemperBlotto 22:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Italian: {{t|it|folclore}} {{pos n}}, {{t|it|folcloristico}} {{pos a}} {{qualifier|in attributive use}}?​—msh210℠ 22:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Probably on folkloric xD However, in general this is a very delicate issue, because there are are also other adjectival senses that are not (or cannot be) expressed in English but can be relatively regularly derived in a FL, and that are being missed in the translation tables simply because they all translate as English attributive noun usage. E.g. "mother's", "of or pertaining to a mother", "like a mother" etc. I think that we should either:

1. include separate translation tables for attributive usages of English nouns, which note that these translate as adjectives in many FL
2. not add adjectives to the translation tables of English nouns at all, because of the cluttering and because these would prob. wrongly get generated as nouns on many FL wiktionaries that bot-generate mainspace entries from the English Wiktionary translation tables (I know this is not our problem, but still..). Also, in most of the cases, such adjectives are regular morphological derivations from the base noun, and could be listed in the FL noun entry in the ====Derived terms==== section. (In this case, folcloristico at folclore) --Ivan Štambuk 23:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

OK - I've added a second translation table to (deprecated template usage) folklore - does that seem reasonable? SemperBlotto 08:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. "Attributive use" might not be clear enough as a table header line; perhaps "adjectives (translating the attributive use of the noun)"? (Well, that's worded badly, but something else explicit.)​—msh210℠ 15:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

AWB please?

Hello. Can I please be approved for AWB use here please? Thanks, Razorflame 23:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done: Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage#Approved users. —Ruakh_TALK 23:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Same here please, although I don't know how to use it, I will need to know how. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

You should have access automatically as you are an administrator - if not you can authorize yourself. There is documentation somewhere on Wikipedia, I think. Conrad.Irwin 13:36, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Valencian -iste

First the background so you all can understand where I'm coming from. In the IEC's standard for Catalan, the suffix that corresponds to (deprecated template usage) -ist is -ista which is both masculine and feminine. That's not too surprising since while nouns ending in 'a' are usually feminine in Catalan, but the Latin suffix -ista this descends from is masculine in Latin and similar cases where a masculine Latin noun stem ends in 'a' are usually masculine nouns in Catalan. However, in the Valencian (AVL) standard, they allow either (deprecated template usage) -ista as the masculine singular or as a backformation (deprecated template usage) -iste. There doesn't seem to be a similar case of a to e backformation for other words ending in 'a' that are both masculine and feminine. (or if it there is, it is rare). Therefore I'm planning on writing some specialized templates for this situation. I don't need help with the coding, but a potential policy type issue relating to the coding came to mind as I was wring one of them.

The template I plan to use to generate the definition line for the alternate masculine singular form. Since that definition line will always have the {{Valencia}} regional context label, and never any other context label, my initial inclination was to have the new template include {{Valencia}}. The minor advantages of doing so are that in the unlikely event we change how we do regional context labelling, the change could be done via one edit to the template, or in the equally unlikely event of the acceptance of (deprecated template usage) -iste by the IEC as an alternate form for the masculine singular, the label could be removed with one edit. The only meaningful advantage is not having to type or paste {{Valencia}} into the wikitext.

As to the potential disadvantages, first off there is a mild side effect that having the new template include {{Valencia}} would cause it to be a member of Category:Regional context labels. However, the concern that brought me here to bug you with this is do we want context labels buried inside non-context templates or should context templates always be present in the wikitext itself? I don't think it would be a concern, but before I write the template and make use of it, I thought I'd get input from others. — Carolina wren discussió 01:53, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Bot request

Hello. I would like to propose a bot to be used here. I currently use it for interwikis, but I wouldn't mind reworking it to be used for AWB tasks. Here is what I would like to propose:

• My username: Razorflame
• My bots' username: Darkicebot
• Software used: AWB
• Proposed task: Both Prince-Kassad and hippietrail said that {{top}}, {{mid}}, and {{bottom}} templates on entries needed to be changed to {{trans-top}}, {{trans-mid}}, and {{trans-bottom}}. This task would easily be able to be done using Darkicebot and AWB, as it needs to be done, according to the two users above. If you would rather a human do it, I would also be happy to do it, but I would require AWB access in order to do it, a point of contention amongst me and Ruakh.

Thanks, Razorflame 06:00, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't AutoFormat already do that? --Yair rand 06:06, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Not that I know of. There seems to be a long list of entries on the What links here for the templates that need to be done, so....Razorflame 06:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

AutoFormat only does it when the gloss is present. It doesn't do it when a gloss is not present. Razorflame 06:11, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

No. Any mass conversion to {{trans-top}} needs a human to generate glosses and determine whether the translations need to be split to conform with senses. A bot would only create more work in Category:Translation table header lacks gloss. Nadando 06:13, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

1. AutoFormat does not add a gloss either and nobody seems to complain against that, 2. however AutoFormat only reads the recent changes, so we need a dedicated bot for {{top}} replacement. -- Prince Kassad 16:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

As Nadando said above, {{top}} et al can't be converted wholesale to {{trans-top}} et al because they aren't 1:1. Top is used for more than just translation sections and the translation sections using top can't just have the templates swapped, as trans-top has a different and more involved usage. This is work best done by humans, assisted by AWB probably but not done blindly. - [The]DaveRoss 17:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

It does say AWB right at the beginning. -- Prince Kassad 18:11, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

AWB is not a bot, it is a browser. This is a bot request. You don't need -- nor should you have -- bot status to run AWB in manual mode. - [The]DaveRoss 20:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Then can I turn this into an AWB request to use AWB myself on this account to do this? Cheers, Razorflame 16:16, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You don't need permission to use AWB, and you don't need a special account. As long as you know what you are doing and what you are doing is in accordance with en.wikt policies etc. you can just do it. If you are going to be doing a lot of edits quickly you ought to mark them as minor, but other than that no special consideration is needed. - [The]DaveRoss 22:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Ruakh gave me AWB access a few days ago, but took it back when s/he said that I needed to talk with the community before any big changes...Razorflame 22:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Huh?

What in the world is the Wikipedia logo doing at the top of every single Wiktionary page with a link to a page titled "Wikipedia Forever"? --Yair rand 05:19, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It's yet another (badly implemented) advertising banner. It's slowed my page loads down to a crawl on both Wiktionary and Wikipedia. --EncycloPetey 05:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

You can adblock this banner, if it bothers you. -- Prince Kassad 06:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I have my preferences already set to not show them, but it pops up for a fraction of a second anyway, and the loading delay prior to that is still a problem. --EncycloPetey 06:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If others are willing, I would suggest adding the following to MediaWiki:Common.css so that it looks less like we have been hacked (it is about the same, but a third of the size, and with internal link colour instead of external link colour). I have no idea who was responsible for this abomination, but I hope they're reading the comments from all-over the wiki-sphere. Conrad.Irwin 13:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

div.siteNoticeBig {
    height: 30px;
    margin-top: 3px;
}
div.siteNoticeBig .toggle-box{
    font-size: 1em;
    padding-right: 5px;
}
div.siteNoticeBig img {
    height: 20px;
    padding: 0px 10px;
    margin-top: 5px;
}
div.siteNoticeBig #forever {
    margin-top: -50px;
    font-size: 12px;
    font-weight: bold;
    color: #002BB8;
}

The banner has been removed do to IE6/7 breakage. Apparently there has been a huge amount of opposition to the banner: w:Wikipedia:PROPS#Abolish the silly headers, m:Fundraising_2009/Launch_Feedback, n:Wikinews:Water_cooler/technical#Ugly_Ass_central_site_notice. There is now a discussion going on to make alternative banners. --Yair rand 17:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The need for project-localized banners was raised earlier, by me and by others. I expect this is just a sign of being in a hurry; there is interest in making sure this happens. Please add your voice to the need for suitable Wiktionary banners on the launch feedback page. +sj + 11:56, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for clarification of policy / convention in re inflected forms of English multi-word idioms

What is the present policy / convention governing inflected forms of English multi-word idioms such as damn by association and fudge the issue? It was my understanding that we aren’t meant to give such terms full entries (or even soft-redirect entries), but that they should rather hard-redirect to their lemmata. This question stems from uncertainty in a discussion between msh210 and me. How are they meant to be treated? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

NVRM; Ruakh has resolved this confusion: Such forms are meant to hard-redirect, per Wiktionary:Redirections#Redirecting between different forms of idioms. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

An aside: the title of this thread should IMHO have been "Inflected forms of English multi-word idioms" or something of the sort, to be usefully short. --Dan Polansky 20:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If we have the technology to put a man on the Moon (or [your favorite technological milestone here]), we should have the technology to do word wraps in the floating right-hand ToC. That would get rid of one bad consequence of overly long section heads. DCDuring TALK 23:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Move to WT:AEN DCDuring TALK 17:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Could all entries have a non-bolded repeat of the word?

Hello,

I am a user. What I am finding is a need for your word entries to have a non-bolded copy of the word, so I can simply copy and paste it into my document. I don't look up words I already know how to spell or that the spell checker in MS Word already knows. So the words I am looking up need to be copied for speedy processing. But once I copy/paste, I always have to go back and un-bold them. This seems a waste of time to me. Giving me such a copy of the word would enhance the usefulness of the site.

Thanks for your consideration. — This comment was unsigned.

• Time and effort involved - masses.
• Would help - one person.
• Would piss off - many people.
• We probably won't do it. SemperBlotto 14:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, only certain browsers like Firefox copy the style of a word/links/whatever else. I'm not really sure what the big issue with unbolding a word is...lazy person. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Use Opera. It does not copy formatting. --Vahagn Petrosyan 16:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The title is non-bolded, though it might copy it out title-sized. Conrad.Irwin 16:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

they could use Paste Special, Unformatted. Even write a little macro so that is one combo-keystroke.Richardb

Darkicebot inflection testing

Hi there all. I am going to be testing my inflection bot Darkicebot for a while. It won't make too many edits. I just need to test it while I get it working properly. I am only going to be making an edit or two, stopping it, then repeating the process until it works. I plan on fixing all mistakes it makes in the meantime. Thanks, Razorflame 17:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Testing has been completed and a vote is now active. Thanks Razorflame 20:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I notice you have several templates lined up for use with the bot, but the VOTE only mentions Esperanto verbs - which languages and parts of speech will Darkicebot service? Conrad.Irwin 23:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've gone over the vote and added in the information which you are looking for. I've stated on the vote page that I will be creating Esperanto verb form-of entries, batch creating Esperanto noun form-of entries from a text file, and batch creating Ido noun plurals from a text file. Those are my goals. I will probably add in Esperanto adjectives, too, but I think that I will wait for that for a while longer. Cheers, Razorflame 23:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

My userbox

Hello there. After reading over two archives about userboxes, I noticed that you said that controversial userboxes are not allowed here on the English Wiktionary. I made User:Razorflame/Count so that I could keep track of how many edits that I have made here, and I don't believe that it was offensive towards anyone, much less controversial. Ruakh removed it from my userpage (made it invisible), and I went ahead and fully deleted it. I just wanted to ask here if I could be allowed to use this userbox as it isn't doing any harm to anyone. Thanks, Razorflame 20:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Not for the unaware: the relevant policy is (for some inconceivable reason) Wiktionary:Neutral point of view, which states that "All other [non–language-proficiency] userboxes are currently forbidden (though specific exceptions may be made, after discussion)." I believe Razorflame is asking for such a specific exception; if so, I'd be O.K. with that. The only POV it seems to reflect is that it's good to contribute to Wiktionary, which I think is a POV we can all accept. (Arguably it implies that quantity is more important than quality, but personally, I'd much rather a number-of-contributions userbox than a my-contributions-are-better-than-yours userbox.) —Ruakh_TALK 22:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see it as a good thing to boast about, the number of contributions is almost completely irrelevant. The idea of acheiving a high "edit count" can encourage people to make many edits of meagre substance - and while there are plenty of that kind of edit to do, I feel it is more useful to encourage people to make more beneficial edits. As some edits are considerably harder, and may take thousands of times as long as quick-fixes or javascript edits, the "amount of contribution" of two users with a similar edit count could be well over 100% different, it would seem misleading if they wear the same badge. The policy got co-opted into WT:USER, which while not voted on, is I think reasonably accepted - though we seem quite lax about signatures in some cases. Conrad.Irwin 23:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I suppose Conrad's right that it'd be inappropriately promoting quantity over quality, but I don't see that as a big deal. What I see as a bigger deal is the slippery slope toward infection by the bacterium Userboxophilis uikipedii.​—msh210℠ 16:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It isn't a question of being proud of your edit count or displaying a statistic. Both Stephen and I link to this site which keeps track of such things. The concern among the community has always been the problem of what's happened to UserBoxes on Wikipedia. There, the boxes have become silly, numerous, and (therefore) often uninformative. On a multilingual dictionary project like this, the most relevant information to have in a standardized format is language proficiency, with script proficiency just a bit behind that. Your politics, ideologies, diet, and other idiosyncrasies have no bearing on the project, and we chose to therefore limit the use of Userboxes. You are still free to describe yourself in text on your user page, just not to create userboxes or their accompanying categories. --EncycloPetey 02:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Ruakh is correct. Now, as it seems relevant to the project, I would allow. I don't think a discussion is in order on the merits of counting edits. If Razorflame is proud of it, and again as it's relevant to his contribution, he can ask for an exception. That would apply to a specific template, I think, unless he wants to be more general in his proposal. I doubt this has too be very formal either. 70.112.24.181 06:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't particularly like the idea of a contributions userbox. However, if Razorflame would like to display the userbox, it is his userspace after all which we shouldn't have too much say over. Ditto Conrad.Irwin and msh210's comments; let's not get into promoting quantity over quality please....... L☺g☺maniac chat? 15:23, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

How could it possibly be wrong for a user to have a labor-saving way of displaying their edit count? Any way individual users can motivate themselves to do something productive seems fine. Is there any metric that would provide the correct incentives in all regards? No. But all metrics have some value. I am sure I am not alone in using the zero target for the number of English-language or any-language entries in various cleanup categories, both community/official and user-created. (BTW, It would be nice to have some metrics for entry quality by language.)

OTOH, competitive edit counting seems to go in the wrong direction. DCDuring TALK 15:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The implication of this last point is clearly that we should forbid access to this site or have it destroyed. Just knowing that it exists is making my adrenalin flow.

The concern about keeping main user pages "plain" seems to befit this community's monkish approach to the project. The question of appearance is wholly distinct from the edit-count question, is it not? DCDuring TALK 15:54, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's pointless posturing and would personally oppose any loosening of the current userbox rules. Equinox ◑ 22:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I 100% agree with Equinox. Unfortunately, too often people here do mindless botwork in order to pump their editcount, when they should be focusing on missing content itself. Allowing editcount userboxes would amount to openly promoting that kind of degenerate metric. --Ivan Štambuk 04:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

If the mindless botwork were actually being done by mindless bots then we wouldn't have to worry about recruiting and motivating people. There are plenty of cases of one kind of flaw appearing in 100 entries. Getting a bot to do that is often not worth it. In fact the content gaps and the format blunders and the poor quality all need work. One good way for people to learn is to do a lot of less complicated word so that they get to see a large number of entries with the inevitable large number of good and bad features. Then they can proceed to more complicated work and eventually to noting new problems and making major improvements. It certainly would be nice if everyone was brilliant from their arrival here, but in fact we are stuck with defective human contributors, some deficient in people skills, some deficient in energy, some deficient in perspective, some deficient in humor, some deficient in language skills, some deficient in tolerance, some deficient in patience. DCDuring TALK 04:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

And you think that editcount userboxes would help foster a culture of newbies gradually turning eager to make quality edits after making 10^x trivial ones:) I'd say quite the opposite.. Lexicography if one of the most boring and ardous tasks imaginable, and the real motivation comes from "within".

God I'd hate we turn to Wikipedia with everyone posturing with their fancy "awards" and brag-articles.. --Ivan Štambuk 05:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Ugh yes. I don't care if anyone (newbie or not) wants to do the mindless botwork; it needs to be done, and it won't harm anybody. However, they shouldn't be showing off about it. This page has a lot more useful information on it than just user contributions, and I don't see it as a bad thing that should be forbidden linking to or deleted. I saw it before I started to contribute here and it was encouraging to see that so many people were dedicated enough to this project to contribute that much. (However, I don't like the column on that table that shows position change i.e. this user has moved up one spot in the last month. That gives the air that this is a competition :P) L☺g☺maniac chat? 15:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others#Category:US slang

I put a link here as it looks like a policy decision more than just a deletion one. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC) Move to WT:AEN DCDuring TALK 17:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikisaurus - inclusion criteria

Richardb thinks that Wikisaurus should have less strict inclusion criteria than the Wiktionary mainspace, and, without starting a discussion, has been entering his proposal directly to Wiktionary:Editable CFI and Wiktionary:Wikisaurus. I have reverted his edits, but I have no interest in keeping an edit war with him.

Please provide your input on what you think the inclusion criteria for Wikisaurus should be. I think they should be basically the same as those for the mainspace, with possible exceptions that are left unarticulated. --Dan Polansky 16:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

No, there should not be exceptions. Both Wikisaurus and the mainspace should allow all words, as the first sentence of CFI (before the table of contents) states it. Lmaltier 17:19, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

So you think the same CFI should apply to both and separately disagree with the restrictiveness of the current CFI? Or do think that since the current CFI is too restrictive that it shouldn't apply to Wikisaurus? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the same CFI should apply to both and separately disagree with the restrictiveness of the current CFI. Lmaltier 19:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Same CFI for both. They both a strive to be general lexical reference works. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

If Wikisaurus were to include references to appendices that have terms that do not meet CFI, we might be able to have our cake and eat it too. At present the recommendation to put such terms in appendices is transparently (to all but the most naive newbies) consigning them to oblivion. Wikisaurus could be a window onto such appendices, which might include common SoP terms and well as protologisms and unattestable colloquialisms that don't rise to the "widespread-use" exception to CFI. DCDuring TALK 23:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

This argument seems to fall into a broad category of arguments of the form, "the CFI are, or WT:CFI is, broken, but it's too hard to change them/it the right way, so let's 'fix' them/it in a way that doesn't solve the underlying problems". Such arguments most often come up with place-names; also frequently with personal names (especially, for whatever reason, in Chinese); and occasionally with languages that aren't well attested. I don't dispute that the CFI are broken — not that I have much of a gripe with any particular CFI, but collectively they do not have, and AFAICT at no point have they ever had, consensus, and they're riddled with ambiguities that we can't pass a vote to resolve one way or the other, and enforcement is very inconsistent, etc., etc. etc. — but I don't think that proposals like "let's let Richardb use Wikisaurus as a dumping-ground for garbage we won't allow in mainspace, because no one actually cares about Wikisaurus" are really very productive. Especially since, as it happens, one editor does care about Wikisaurus. —Ruakh_TALK 15:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Argument for altering CFI to meet current practice, for Wikisaurus

--Richardb 13:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

There is "Added Value" in capturing as many words as possible. But there can be a "Cost" in having a Wiktionary cluttered with entries of questionable value, neologisms etc. But in Wikisaurus, especially in the /more pages, there is good added value in just simply having a word (not a page or an entry), be it a neologism or a piece of technical largon, associated with other related words, with very little "cost". Especially once the more dubious words in the more contentious pages are hived off to the /more pages . Indeed, the /more pages are, of themselves, a kind of appendix, are they not ?

Further, I make a point that the policy and current practice, in regard to Wikisaurus "words" (not headwords/pages/entries), do not match. Either the policy is wrong or the practice is wrong. So, either we make an alteration to CFI to allow Wikisaurus the same sort of latitude as given to appendices, or we wipe out a considerable chunk of value in Wikisaurus by deleting all the single word content that doesn't strictly meet CFI as it is now. I know which I feel Adds Value and which Costs.

Additionally, Wikisuarus allowing some unattested words does serve a number of useful purposes.

1. It gives a space for protologisms, neologisms etc to go, without cluttering the main space. and yet they are still searchable. To some extent we lose creditability if a person sees a new word somewhere, comes to Wiktionary, and either can't find it at all, or finds it only in a list of "neologisms". Whereas, if he finds the word in Wikisaurus page, he is going to get a fair idea of what the word means through it's associations.
2. Equally, we make it pretty daunting for newbies to add a new word, having to meet CFI, formatting, template use etc. It's quite a bit easier to be able to put the new word they have discovered into Wikisaurus. and now all of a sudden, we don't just have a newbie reader, we have a new contributor, who actually has invested something into Wiktionary, and has some, very small, feeling of ownership, of sharing in the exprience of building Wiktionary. Some of these new contributors may go on to be very significant contributors. Instead of the first response to them trying to add a word somewhere is to be told = No, it doesn't meet CFI, it isn't formatted properly etc. I know in the past that we have lost a number of new, interested contributors, because of the "Wiktionay Police" approach of one or two over pedantic admins.

Allowing words in lists within Wikisaurus that don't necessarily meet full CFI(present) adds a lot of value, at little cost. So why stop it? Why have a policy that doesn't meet current practice?

PS. I have noted in the past, and I think it is still the case, that there are many archaic and obscure words in Wiktionary that only on the slimmest of measures meet CFI. I myself know I have added one or two words from Jane Austen works that I could not find in use (as opposed to in dictionaries) in any other book. Why should words like that be admitted, while we have huge battles over words like "Chillaxin" or "Boucebackability", clearly in widespread use.

Finally, I have also proposed another notionally very minor clarification change to CFI, which, if accepted, would quite possibly avoid this whole argument anyway, at least to a large extent. That is to clearly spell out that words need only meet ANY one of the CFI, not ALL of them. Too often in the past that too subtle little "or" in the criteria has been ignored. "No, it's not good enough that "chillaxin" has hundreds of thousands of hits on Google, it must also appear in print somewhere". If that clarifying modification, the vey clear reference to meeting ANY of the criteria, is accepted, then perhaps we don't have much to worry over after all. Except, of course, for the very top policy of all - all words in all languages!

--Richardb 13:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Richard, can you give an instance of a Wikisaurus entry at which current practice does not match CFI?

Well, since virtually all words meet CFI IMHO, I 'm guessing you are looking for an example where there is a clearly valid entry in Wikisaurus that is not in the Main namespace. How about off one's trolley in wikisaurus:insane. Google hits - "Results 1 - 10 of about 96,400 for "off one's trolley" ". Clearly a phrase undestood by most people in Britain. But no entry in Main namespace. Not even a mention in trolley. So, with very little effort, certainly no effort to ensure it meets CFI, a user has contributed a term to Wikisaurus that adds real value. --Richardb 00:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Really, it's about the way CFI is interpreted. If a word is a bit new, or a bit obscene, the bowdlerisers delete it on the grounds it does not meet strict CFI, clearly applying a much harder test than for many other words. Actually, as pointed out in the discussions on CFI, I feel things would be improved just by the clear expression that the CFI Criteria are to be applied with an OR, not an AND condition. Change that, and get the exclsuionists to stick by that change, and pretty much the argument about having lesser CFI for Wiktionary would be irrelevant. Though the /more pages would still be useful.Richardb 07:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the subpages of Wikisaurus entries ending in "/more" such as "Wikisaurus:breasts/more" can be left unregulated by criteria for inclusion, as is currently the case. I have added a sentence to that effect into Wiktionary:Wikisaurus.

Other than that, Wikisaurus should not become an inbox for malformatted and unattested content. If editors of Wiktionary wish to create an inbox for quickly added malformatted and unattested entries, we can create one.

Wikisaurus is a thesaurus and a namespace for semantic network, not a bin for malformatted and unverified content. Wikisaurus is striving at no less accuracy and being well-formatted than the mainspace. --Dan Polansky 14:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry - "Wikisaurus is a thesaurus and a namespace for semantic network" ???? When was that decided? Funny thing is, I thought it was for users, people. Please expand on your idea. Perhaps outside this immediaste discussion though. --Richardb 00:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Let me be specific. In this edit to Wikisaurus:die, I have removed "become brown bread", "get off one's twig", etc., as these terms have almost no Google hits. Do you wish that these unattested invented terms are included in a Wikisaurus entry?

I have to question your objectivity. Even if I use the precise phrase "become brownn bread", hardly the commonest form of usage, I get "Results 1 - 10 of about 18,800 for "become brown bread" from Google. So those 18,800 hits are, in your humble opinion, are not worth anything in support of the inclusion of the phrase. OK, in reality, there may be only a few usages there, but, nevertheless, if a non-English speaking person sees the phrase and looks it up on Wiktionary, what will they find. Nothing, or something helpful ?--Richardb 23:51, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

My mistake. I admit that "become brown bread" has gained 18,000, which it had not when I had removed it. I retract "these terms have almost no Google hits", as its use of present tense is incorrect; the terms had almost no Google hits when I had removed them. Nevertheless, the term "become brown bread" can be readded when it becomes clear that it meets CFI. --Dan Polansky 09:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

For a context, there was a vote on the "/more" pages at Wikisaurus: Wiktionary:Votes/2006-09/Wikisaurus semi-protection. --Dan Polansky 14:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It feels like this is at least the third time this discussion has come up. Historically it has been decided that we do care about the Wikisaurus namespace being more than an Urban Dictionary mirror. It will continue to be my vote that verification and attestation as rigorous as the main namespace be applied to all material meant to be used as reference material included in this project. The giant list of utterly dubious "synonyms" listed in the current incarnation are barely worth the bits they are stored in. - [The]DaveRoss 20:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Even i f they are "barely worth the bits they are stored in", they are still woorth more than it costs. But, what you really mean is "in my opinion barely worth the bits they are stored in". It seems that you, as with many other exclusionists, take the judgement that if you think it is not worth anything, then sod those who do think it is worth something. I believe there is more value in inclusiveness, and have made the argument. I cannot recall seeing a cogent argument for making this an exclusive, academic work.--Richardb 23:36, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Richardb, I can't see how you call this a good-faith proposal, when you ignore things I've generated for you like User:Connel MacKenzie/thesaurus. The truth here, is that you aren't interested in building a thesaurus, you are interested in dumping lists of obscene terms in the wikisaurus namespace. Since I've spent at least ten times the amount of time on wikisaurus than you have, I'm shocked to see you portrayed as "caring" about it. But I'm not surprised to see the same proposal now, that was rejected numerous times in numerous forms, in the past. --Connel MacKenzie 23:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the only person who's used the word "caring" in this discussion is me, and I can assure that you I did not mean Richardb. Since Amina left, the only editor putting much effort into Wikisaurus has been Dan Polansky. —Ruakh_TALK 01:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

How is having User:Connel MacKenzie/thesaurus any use to someone searching the Wikisaurus namespace ? And it is a total and slanderous misrepresentation to say --Richardb 23:36, 29 November 2009 (UTC)"you are interested in dumping lists of obscene terms in the wikisaurus namespace". I am interested in protecting the value that is in all of Wikisaurus, contributed by a great number of people. It just so happens a lot of commonn usage words and phrases are obscene. (and some times I put a few back after the bowdlerisers have been active). This is not an argument about ":obscene" or otherwise.. It's about Inlcusivness, or exclusion. I believe there is more value in inclusiveness, and have made the argument. I cannot recall seeing a cogent argument for making this an exclusive, academic work.--Richardb 23:36, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Responding to some of the postings above as regards whether the current practice of Wikisaurus matches CFI: The example given by Richardb—off one's trolley in wikisaurus:insane—has meanwhile been created in the mainspace, as it meets CFI. To demonstrate that the current practice of Wikisaurus does not match the principle of including in Wikisaurus only CFI-meeting terms, it would be necessary to list a considerable number of terms that are currently included in Wikisaurus and yet do not meet CFI; that a term is not yet in the mainspace does not prove that it does not meet CFI. To see whether a term meets CFI, the first thing to do is to search for it in Google books, and check further criteria. Whether a term is vulgar or obscence is out of discussion; CFI allows inclusion of vulgar or obscence terms. The demonstration is unlikely to be delivered, as there is a large number of entries that I have either created or cleaned up. That is, Richardb's claim posted in this thread that "...the policy and current practice, in regard to Wikisaurus "words" (not headwords/pages/entries), do not match" is untrue. I am unsure whether this subject is still relevant, though, since several people in this thread expressed their support for the principle of keeping in Wikisaurus only terms meeting CFI, while only one person disagreed. Unless some more people turn out to disagree, this thread documents that the principle has a community support. If it turns out that some Wikisaurus entries contain CFI-non-meeting terms, this can be easily amended by removing the offending terms from Wikisaurus. Let me remind that this discussion does not pertain to the "/more" subpages in Wikisaurus, whose content is, for now, allowed not to meet CFI. --Dan Polansky 08:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Move to WT:AEN DCDuring TALK 17:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration

The Collaboration of the week has been inactive for quite a while, probably because there isn't enough interest in it to have a new one every week. I think there were really some flaws in the concept in the first place, mainly that a new one was started whether the last was good enough or not. However, collaboration is very useful in building entries.

Therefore, I propose that a new project be started, that would work on one word, and not start a new one until the current one is about as good as it can possibly get. That means great and complete definitions, as many pronunciation guides as possible, audio files, synonyms and antonyms (and possibly a Wikisaurus entry as well), a good etymology section, example sentences, large translation tables with as many de-redlinked and well-formatted translations as possible, references and citations for everything. Basically, work on this word would not stop until the entry is as much of an example of a "perfect entry" as possible. This will probably take longer than one week per word. I don't know how we could decide whether an entry is "perfect" or not (Polls? Comments? Specific criteria?) nor do I have an idea for a name, but I really think that trying to get as many near-perfect entries as possible is rather important and that we often make quantity of entries too much of a priority over quality.

Any thoughts? --Yair rand 20:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea in general, though I would imagine a time-limit is necessary (we can always re-start the clock if there's still enthusiasm for a particular entry). The only really successful "explicit" collaboration we've had was User:Mutante's emptying of Special:UncategorizedPages went from tens of thousands to tens in a few weeks - I think it was successful because everyone could take part in their own way (even the people who contributed only to one language); there was a definite success criteria, and a strong driving force. If some definite targets could be set, and you were willing to whip people a little bit, then I can imagine this working very well. Conrad.Irwin 21:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

One of the reasons I suggested this is so we could have a goal, rather than a deadline. I like the idea of working on one word until it's done, rather than working on it until a certain amount of time has past. I think the simplest way would be some form of poll, maybe stay with the current word until a majority including at least a certain number of people (3,4,5?) think we should switch to a new one. --Yair rand 00:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I started a page for it in my userspace (User:Yair rand/Current Collaboration). Edits to it are welcome. I hope to move it to the Wiktionary namespace after a name is decided and there is sufficient interest in having a collaboration project. Personally, I'd love Wiktionary to have some entries that would just make readers go "wow". I think this is the best way to accomplish that. --Yair rand 05:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean like we now have for listen, parrot, etc.? That was the idea behind the Model Pages, except that the models were chosen to have a limited number of parts of speech and possible senses, to avoid confusion when using them as models. My most recent attempt at "complete" page was biceps. I selected that word in part because (1) there is a common sense often missing from other dictionaries (the informal sense #3), and (2) the word exists in several languages, so we now have a new Model Page that models additional languages beyond English. If we picked a few such multi-lingual entries for collaboration, that might spur more interest. That is, pick pagenames that ought to contain entries in multiple languages, even if the meanings of the words in those languages are unrelated. --EncycloPetey 03:46, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, those are the kind of entries I was talking about. The idea was really just to have some pages where everything immediately around it was just how it should be. I guess that really should include words in other languages that have the same name as the English word. --Yair rand 06:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

WT:APR

I decided to go ahead an make WT:APR active. Any feedback is appreciated. --The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 01:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Note the existence of {{rfap}}, which I think is the more conventional way of requesting an audio file for an entry. While I don't know, I'm guessing that the ease of use of that template and its automatic categorization are why WT:APR was {{inactive}} (as redundant).​—msh210℠ 17:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

This is more to get audio wanted immediately recorded. I am currently working on clearing the backlog at the category. --The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 06:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea. I'm not knowledgeable about pronunciation and sometimes have questions that relate to multiple entries, for which the rfp/rfap fora are not exactly right. DCDuring TALK 17:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Renaming of *Topics categories

Per the recent BP and RFDO conversations I was going to edit {{topic cat}} et al. to rename the "*Topics" categories to "All topics". If you have strong feelings that this isn't correct (e.g. if you think it should just be "Topics"), please discuss now before lots of categories are renamed. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 20:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

WT:EDIT allows editing of translation table glosses

In order to help try to clear the backlog at Category:Translation table header lacks gloss, I've implemented another feature in WT:EDIT which allows you to modify the gloss without bothering with that horrible edit-page bit [1] and [2]. More detail, transcluded from the talk page is below. Conrad.Irwin 03:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I should perhaps have mentioned that this feature won't work unless you click the "Enable" button that should appear after you clear your cache (ctrl+shift+F5). I wasn't planning to make this available "by default", as I'm not sure non-ediits will understand exactly what to do (even after we've fixed all the bugs). Conrad.Irwin 03:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Table Labelling

If you enable this feature, each translation table has a ± in the corner.

• Clicking on this brings up an edit box for the table's header.
• Type what you want in, normally the first few words in the definition (without linking or formatting)
• Click "Preview" - if you are not happy with the result, click ± again - otherwise click "Save" in the top corner

WARNING: This feature has not been well tested in all browsers yet. Please notify me on this talk page if you have any problems.

You don't have the current version of the translation table gloss editor.

Excellent. Very convenient. Now bug number 1: I can't edit Marxist, says "Could not find translation table". Also, I have a question: do you plan to develop this tool to cover cases like this, i.e. add new tables, and ttbcify the translations of the first one? It's unbelievably hard to do by hand. --Vahagn Petrosyan 12:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought I had fixed the Marxist bug a while back, I'll look again. I was planning to allow adding new tables (at some point) - I suppose I could try ttbc-ifying old ones, it doesn't look too hard for a computer, but it wasn't an immediate goal. Conrad.Irwin 12:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe once the backlog of Category:Translation table header lacks gloss is cleared out a bit we can start automatically converting {{top}} → {{top2}}/{{trans-top}} and {{mid}} → {{mid2}}/{{trans-mid}} so those 3-letter templates can be used fully as language codes. Also a quick scan shows that the majority of the entries in this category have a single definition line meaning there's lots of low-hanging fruit. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 15:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a good idea - I just caught most of the low-hangers from the "b" section of Category:Translation table header lacks gloss. I was able to do 88/120. So, this is only going to cut down the category from ~3000 -> ~1000. The rest needs much more attention, by far the most common remaining problem is that there is one translation table, but multiple definitions - perhaps we could automagically ttbc-ify all tables in that situation (or maybe only those with more than one translation, and ask people who speak the language of that one translation to re-name the table)? Conrad.Irwin 17:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I think we'd lose some valid translations that could be kept if the conversion was done manually. On a page with 2 senses and only one translation box, a human can look through the page history to find when the second sense was added. S/he can then keep all translations up to that point in history as valid for the original sense. Translations added after there were two senses would have to be ttbc'ed of course, but at least we're not dumping them all in there. Maybe this could be automated, but it seems a bit trickier. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 20:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Category:Translation table header lacks gloss

It'd be good to catch all the easy-to-fix problems in this category: (well, and all the others too!). To catch the easy ones, you just open up lots of tabs with pages from Category:Translation table header lacks gloss and add a short summary of the definition to the translation table using the ± button enablable above. Conrad.Irwin 17:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• !->Z: easy done Vahagn Petrosyan
• a: easy done
• b: done the easy ones. Conrad.Irwin
• c: easy done
• d: easy done Bequw
• e: easy done
• f: done the easy ones​—msh210℠
• g: easy done.
• h: done the easy ones​—msh210℠
• i: easy done.
• j: easy done.
• k: easy done Conrad.Irwin
• l: easy done.
• m: easy done
• n: easy done
• o: easy done
• p: easy done
• q: easy done Conrad.Irwin
• r: easy done
• s: easy done
• t: easy done.
• u: all done
• v: easy done
• w: easy done
• x: done by big V
• y: done by big V
• z: done by big V

Any advice about how to write a trans table gloss? Simply the definition given, or copy it? Help:Translation gloss?? --Volants 13:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

IMO, glosses should be short enough to fit in one line for most screen resolutions, and be particular enough to clearly correspond to a single definition/sense in the parent PoS. It is not required to define the term all over again and when the definition is medium to long in length it is appropriate to simplify it for the gloss. When there's only one sense for a certain PoS, the gloss can be trivial to produce, but as more senses are added one should take care to ensure that the glosses still identify unique senses. If someone else concurs maybe they can add something to Wiktionary:Translations or maybe WT:STYLE. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I've written my thoughts at Help:Glosses, I think we mainly agree though you emphasise quoting the definition more than I - please feel free to update the help page. Conrad.Irwin 16:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

The category is now down to 1,600ish from 2,900ish. Thanks to everyone, and I hope we can get the remaining gaps of "easy done" plugged in the next day or two (it only takes a few tens of seconds per-page, and is most satisfying)! Conrad.Irwin 16:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

What do we think about HTML "comment" glosses? For example, pond uses <!‐‐DefAtlOcean‐‐> (on the definition line) and acceleration has <!‐‐DefB‐‐>. I think if we are going to be having people add translation glosses w/o seeing the underlying wikitext (and associated HTML comments) then these "comment" glosses should be converted to normal glosses. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. The comment-style glosses are only useful for people editing the entire page (and/or robots) not for readers nor sectional editors. Conrad.Irwin 22:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Now that all the "easy" ones are done and we are down to ~800, I say we convert the {{top}}/{{mid}}s that are in translation sections to {{trans-top}}/{{trans-mid}}. It will allow more people to work on the problem(s). Also, since most of {{top}} ones are "easy" (one sense) after clearing out the easy ones, this category shouldn't be that much bigger. Anyone object? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 05:30, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I brought this up earlier, because I wanted to help convert all the {{top}}, {{mid}}, and {{bottom}} to their respective translation table templates, but people didn't want that to happen. I am all for it, though, espeicially now that we have an easy way to update/correct/fix them. Razorflame 05:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Can {{bottom}} be used with {{trans-top}} and {{trans-mid}} without any negative effects? Is it identical to {{trans-bottom}}? --Yair rand 05:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It appears not. It seems that {{bottom}} is not the same as {{trans-bottom}}. Razorflame 05:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

{{bottom}} is exactly, 1:1 identical to {{trans-bottom}}. I don't know why one doesn't just redirect to another. -- Prince Kassad 05:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Really? The </div> stuff in {{trans-bottom}} doesn't do anything? Why is it there then? --Yair rand 05:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm, good point. It's not displayed by default and easy to miss. -- Prince Kassad 05:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

What's the deal with the logo?

I was surprised to see that you guys are still using the old crappy Wiktionary logo since most of the other Wiktionaries have upgraded. (Especially since the vote was 3 years ago.) When I tried to find out why, I learned that "While there was a consensus to approve the logo on Meta, there is a substantial opposition to changing the Wiktionary logo entirely from, primarily, the English Wiktionary project, and therefore, the Wiktionary logo has not been changed at all." Now there is total chaos on Meta about what to do regarding the Wiktionary logos. (It looks like there are about 20 different proposals with little to no organization.) What's the deal guys? Why don't you just upgrade your logo instead of monkey-wrenching the process for everyone? It would definitely be an improvement over what you're currently using (which looks more like an HTML rendering mistake). Think it over. Kaldari 21:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

There was consensus on the English Wiktionary not to use the tile logo. There is not "little or no organization", nor is there any chaos on Meta. The mess on the logo page is completely due to User:Richardb's decision two days ago to wipe half the page and replace it with his own comments. That vote will begin as soon as the rest of the translations are complete. After that, and the vote deciding whether to use the winning logo, hopefully we will have a new logo, which will most likely be a lot better than the "upgrade" of the scrabble imitation logo. --Yair rand 22:10, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

That is bloody slanderous. I did not delete anything. I am NOT, NOT, NOT a deletionist!!!. All I did was

1. moved all the info about Voting into one section, under voting
2. researched the history of the matter, and put in a sectiion with a short summary of that history.
3. put my opinion, that, based on reviewing the history, there was a clear misrepresentation about the outcomes of previous voting. The traditional logo (as used by English wiktionary) had failed to gain much support at all.

I'd appreciate a withdrawl of the slander from Yair Rand. But I won't hold my breath!--Richardb 08:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
PS: Far from organising a vote, you couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. You have absoliutely confused the issue by the way you have handled it. No clarity at all.--Richardb 08:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Uh-huh. It seems from these edits (which were all yours except for an IP saying something about a Corel Word Perfect logo) that you did remove substantial parts of the page and you did replace parts of other people's comments with your own. Furthermore, you added all of your "History and explanation" to the top of the page overwriting what was there before, which is entirely inappropriate. --Yair rand 17:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Which consensus? AFAIK, no vote has been organized here. Lmaltier 19:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

From what I can see in the Beer Parlour archives, it was clear long before it could have come to a vote that nobody wanted the tile logo. More recently, a poll was held on Meta, and there were 71 votes to start from scratch rather than use the text logo or the tile logo. The point of whether the tile logo is better than the text logo is now irrelevant, as the logo vote will be starting soon, as soon as German, Japanese, Turkish, Lithuanian and Vietnamese translations of the voting page are added, the Russian translation is completed, and the French and Finnish translations are proofread. --Yair rand 20:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, when fr.wikt has organized a vote, its results were very surprising. A few negative comments don't mean that most users are negative. Lmaltier 22:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Wow, what an embarrassment. After 3 years of debate, Wiktionary still hasn't decided whether or not it wants Goatse.cx as it's logo. Why hasn't The Register written an article about this yet? Kaldari 19:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, what's the point of having a new vote on meta? Won't the results just be ignored again? It kind of reminds me of elections in Burma. Every once in a while they have an election, but since the military dictator never wins the election, they just keep ignoring the results. Kaldari 19:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

If you had fully read the voting page you would have noticed the section where it says that "Following [the vote], each language Wiktionary will hold their own vote on whether to accept the winning logo. In the event that less than 60% of the Wiktionaries approve of the logo, none of the Wiktionaries will use the logo." This way, we have a chance at unifying the logos and the result will not be ignored. --Yair rand 19:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Your stupid ad-hominem approach to pushing the process forward doesn't endear you to me. Equinox ◑ 00:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Bit strong there, Equinox. Although I do agree that Kaldari's points are not particularly helpful. The logo hasn't changed because there wasn't a consensus right? That's how the system works. At the end of the day, an attractive logo does not change anything about the project. People use wiktionary because they find it useful, not to marvel at its graphic design. If someone comes up with a logo that everyone really can agree on then all the power to them. But that day hasn't come yet, has it? Tooironic 02:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Right! By looking at those hundreds of kilobytes long "discussions" on meta on whether it's better to use logo with a line over here or a tile over there, one begins to wonder whether those people have anything better to do in their lives. WMF should hire a professional designer and get this "problem" over with, so that everyone can waste their energies more constructively. Building a "consensus" over sth that isn't the problem in the first place (picking a favorite logo is really the same as picking a favorite flavor of ice cream) will inevitably leave most of the voters dissatisfied, esp. when choice needs to be made from 30+ proposals. With these pointless votes, methinks meta is slowly turning into a giant self-purposing bureaucratic machinery, losing touch with the real world. FWIW, I'm perfectly satisfied with our "embarrassing crappy old logo" and more concerned with nailing down the 10k lemmata missing on Wiktionary that I have on my TODO list. --Ivan Štambuk 02:52, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"More recently, a poll was held on Meta, and there were 71 votes to start from scratch rather than use the text logo or the tile logo." In my research of the history of this matter, I did not come across this. I did however come across a reference to something like a a vote on English Wiktionary Beer Parlour, a vote of 71 votes to retain the traditional logo. Can you please give a link to your sources, so we can add that in to the history of the "logo project".--Richardb 08:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The poll on meta is here. There never was a poll in the Beer perlour on the logo; I think it was assumed to be unnecessary. --Yair rand 17:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Missing categories

I can't help noticing that the necessary templates like {{en-noun}} or at worst {{infl|en|noun}} (usually for less common languages) are missing from a lot of words. acceleration due to gravity (currently at rfd) is in the physics category, but not English nouns (or English anything). Entries with context tags like this, or rfc tags don't get listed in Special:UncategorizedPages (corrected link Mglovesfun (talk) 12:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC))which means they are harder to find. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

For Spanish at least there is Category:Spanish entries lacking inflection, but I don't know if any other languages have this. Could entries without {{infl}} or a standard inflection template be tagged by Autoformat? Nadando 22:33, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I think what you want is Special:WantedCategories. Besides Special:SpecialPages (on the left frame) Ullman, Hippiebot, and perhaps Conrad may have subpages that contain useful problem-entry lists. CM's haven't been run recently AFAICT and may not be runnable or may have been replaced. There may be more. DCDuring TALK 00:19, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Wanted categories are for red linked categories. I'm talking about English nouns that aren't in the category English nouns (as an example). Mglovesfun (talk) 12:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

User:Conrad.Irwin/English_nouns_without_categories is a list of all 7613 entries with ===Noun=== under ==English that aren't in Category:English nouns, Category:English plurals, Category:English alternative spellings, Category:English misspellings, Category:Misspellings, Category:Alternative spellings. It paints quite a depressing picture, containing things like tastier and antecedently which aren't nouns at all. :(. Conrad.Irwin 14:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and that's just the nouns in English. I find verbs and adjectives as well, of course. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup#Category:United States of America

A debate over on RFC concerning whether to use Category:United States of America or Category:United States. Result should affect other topical categories using one or the other of the two ways of referring to the country by name. — Carolina wren discussió 22:40, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

What's in a name?

Currently Category:Names is a topical category that exists betwixt and between our topical categories and our part of speech categories in terms of naming. There's the subcategories Category:Given names and Category:Surnames that use the part of speech category naming system (i.e, French given names and French surnames) and Category:Demonyms and Category:Place names that use the topical category naming system (i.e, fr:Demonyms and fr:Place names). It also has the topical category Category:Onomastics as its sole parent. There are also a few anomalous categories:

• Category:Australian names (for Australian names in English according to the description and currently empty)
• Category:German names (no description and currently empty)
• Category:Indian names (for Indian names in English according to the description and currently acing as a pointer to English female given names from India, English male given names from India, and English surnames from India.)
• Category:Irish names (for Irish names in English according to the description and currently empty)
• Category:Jewish names
  • Category:Jewish surnames
• Category:Names by language (currently empty, but a logical parent for the existing Category:Given names by language and Category:Surnames by language)

So, what to do? First off, while related, a good case can be made that Demonyms aren't Names per se. Unlike Given names, Surnames, or Place names, they aren't proper nouns and in English at least, generally do double duty as adjective and noun. So I recommend changing the parentage of Demonyms by replacing Names with Onomastics. That's easy enough to do (or undo) and if it were the only recommendation I had, I'd likely go ahead and do it without bothering the parlor. However, that leaves us with what to do with place names.

Changing Category:Place names and its subcategories over to the part of speech category naming system would be a lot of effort, and we'd end up with some extremely verbose category names such as English names of states of the United States for some of the subcategories. Plus, unlike the given names and surnames which combine to form a compound name that is used without commas (at least in English), place names generally aren't used to form compound names, so it can be argued that structurally they act differently. So here's what I'd like to propose:

1. Change Category:Demonyms from having Category:Names as a parent to having Category:Onomastics.
2. Change Category:Place names from having Category:Names as a parent to having Category:Onomastics.
3. Create a new category that would follow the part of speech category naming convention: Category:Personal names.
4. Change Category:Given names from having Category:Names as a parent to having Category:Personal names.
5. Change Category:Surnames from having Category:Names as a parent to having Category:Personal names.
6. Delete Category:Names and include in the descriptions of Category:Onomastics and Category:Personal names the relationship between the two categories.

The reason I want to delete Category:Names is that I feel that the category name is ambiguous, since apple is the name of a type of fruit, etc., plus once Demonyms and Place names are moved to Onomastics, elements used to form personal names would be all that are left in the category.

It might be worth renaming Category:Place names to Category:Toponyms to reduce potential confusion if Category:Names is retained, but it is not essential to the proposal, and renaming can be considered as part of the Gazetteer proposal that has been floating around these discussion pages. — Carolina wren discussió 00:46, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a good proposal. Category:Names , and all its topic and POS forms in various languages (like Category:fr:Names and Category:French names) are confusing and do more harm than good. That is why I gave the "Xxxn given names/surnames" categories "Xxxn language" as the parent when I created them a year ago. Only those categories with the new Template:namecatboiler have "Xxxn names" as a parent. Why not change it into "Category:Xxxn personal names"? This template does not include Category:Given names/Surnames by language either, though they would seem essential to me.

The Australian, German and Irish categories are accidental left-overs from the topic category days, and should be deleted. I would keep Jewish surnames ( but not Jewish names) and Indian names, in order to direct all the anon Indian contributors into correctly formatted entries.

If I were you I wouldn't hurry changing "Place names" into "Toponyms". We'll probably have a hundred more discussions about the CFI for place names, so anything could happen.--Makaokalani 15:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Unprotect WT:CFI

My argument would be:

We don't actually use the criteria listed there, because we can't! They're too vague. I can pick apart almost every sentence and show how vague it is. The "names of specific entries" bit has been cited ad nauseam, so how about "idiomaticity"?

An expression is “idiomatic” if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components.

For example, this is a door is not idiomatic, but shut up and red herring are.

Compounds are generally idiomatic, even when the meaning can be clearly expressed in terms of the parts. The reason is that the parts often have several possible senses, but the compound is often restricted to only some combinations of them.

It does actually say "expression", which we interpret as "more than one word". I think words with hyphens and apostrophes are ambiguous. For example rod-shaped, one word or two? don't, one word or two? What about l'ai or l'appelle in French? If those are one word, there's no doubt they can be attested. llámame in Spanish, is that one word or two?

I'm not convinced that expression does mean "more than one word", that's just the Wiktionary norm. I'd quite like a 24 hour period to edit WT:CFI, just because I don't think anyone actually knows what it means, or uses it seriously! Mglovesfun (talk) 12:32, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Editable CFI was set up to deal with these issues, one presumes that the proponents thereof will eventually instigate procedings to have the new version become authoritative, as and when the bugs have been removed. I personally would prefer a much less prosaic set of inclusion and exclusion rules against which words can be argued to match, with the rules being updatable by discussion at WT:RFD/WT:RFV, but I'm not sure how well this would work in practice. Conrad.Irwin 13:04, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm tempted to put {{rfc}} at the top of it, but I suspect I'd get a block for that. Whatever happened to Visvisa proposing some stuff to vote on? Or at least, that was the idea I had in my head. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:05, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

If you have a specific change you'd like to see, then by all means propose the specific change, have the discussion, and possibly put it for a vote. A 24 hour free-for-all of editing one of our core policy pages is a bad idea. The page is protected to keep more people from getting themselves in trouble for editing a page that tells them in a big banner they don't see at the top not to do so. --EncycloPetey 15:52, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's talk about sex, baby!

I don't think that Category:Sex and Category:Sexuality are redundant to each other, but they most definitely need some clean up. I also stumbled on Category:Sexual deviance which seems a bit POV. It might need renaming, but then again, to what? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

There are things that belong in cat:sexuality (like sexual orientations) that don't belong in cat:sex. Category:Sexual deviance should definitely go, though. I'm gonna rfdo it. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:15, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

What about stuff like Mile High Club, is that sex or sexuality? Certainly anything biological should go in sex. AFAICT stuff like penis and vagina should be in there, I'll have a quick look (so to speak). Mglovesfun (talk) 21:56, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I would say the Mile High Club should go in sex, but I can see how it could go into both. I think it best to reserve sex for sexual activities, aids, toys, etc. while sexuality should be for sexual preferences, gender identities, things like that. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 22:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Suits me. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:24, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Logo Vote

The Wiktionary logo vote is set to start 2009-12-07 00:01. The first round will continue until 2009-12-31 23:59 at which point the second round will last until 2010-01-31 23:59. Anyone who understands a foreign language that the voting page has not been translated into, please consider contributing a translation. Other Wiktionaries still need to be notified about the vote, so please help post messages into other Wiktionary Beer parlours (or equivalent). Thank you. --Yair rand 01:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

There are at least four discussions of the logo on this beer parlour alone. But you make no effort to connect them together, to put this announcement into the other discussions. And at the top of every Wiktionary page there is a link [Discuss new logo proposals for Wiktionary.], but you don't even mention this new voting schedule prominently on that on that page!!!! OK, way down the page I could eventually find a minute reference - I have added the schedule to the voting pages. --Yair rand 23:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC). Not even a sodding link to the voting pages! You need to do serious publicity if you want this process to have any credibility.

Again I ask, by what authority, and for what reason, are you running this vote (or rather, attempting to run it) ? It seems clear to me that you are pushing this all on your own, making lots of unilateral decisions, without ever once declaring why ? Please explain yourself.

Before your sudden pronouncement about the latest voting schedule, your last comment on the matter that I can find on Beer Parlour was "It is clear that this discussion is getting us nowhere. This apparently pointless debate is now over. --Yair rand 15:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC) " On that we can agree!--Richardb 09:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The schedule was suggested by Conrad.Irwin on the meta discussion page, it's right above the comment I added about adding the schedule to the voting page. The debate on the beer parlour that I managed to end was about whether it matters that the discussion was started on Meta, rather than here. An extra link to the voting page on the meta discussion page was not needed as they are sprinkled throughout the page. There's a link not only at the top of the page, but right above the current discussion under the words "Current Status". Further publicity on Meta isn't needed; the Wiktionaries are being notified through their Beer parlour equivalents. If you would like, for some reason, to post the schedule and a link to the voting page once again on meta, feel free. And no, I am not "running" this vote, even though it may seem like that as I might be the most active contributor to the vote; this is a wiki system. And what do you mean by "authority"? The reason for the vote is that 71 who voted for having a vote want it. --Yair rand 16:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Subidioms in the inflection line

I believe that this:

"to give what for"

shows, in concept, how multi-word entries what include idiomatic components should appear in the inflection line. One desirable alteration might be a fainter-appearing underline or perhaps simply an underline between "what" and "for". A faint underline could appear under all elements of multiword terms or even all terms if that were simpler or more resource-thrifty to implement.

I expect that HTML in the inflection line is really bad, if not explicitly forbidden. So I think this needs some technical support if we agree that this is a good idea.

This particular idiom illustrates the need fairly well. Linking to each individual word gives users no clue about the construction of this and may lead them to look to insert a question mark or to add an object to the preposition. DCDuring TALK 13:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Help:Writing definitions

I suggest a help page like Help:Writing definitions/Help:Defining terms/Help:Definitions, to give advice on good ways to go about writing good definitions. AFAICT, we don't have such a page, and there are a handful of very good definition writers here and a couple of very good help-page writers too. --Rising Sun 17:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I sure could use a page like that. DCDuring TALK 18:18, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I've started a page with three central principles (which can eventually be expounded upon with examples both right and wrong). I've also hinted at two areas I think ought to be included in the page, but which will require quite a bit of work to assemble. --EncycloPetey 05:32, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

It occurred to me as I've been writing, that the results look more like a page for the Wiktionary: namespace that for the Help: namespace. The Help: namespace is usually for technical issues, and I can't think of very many that apply to definition writing (other than the initial hash, no blank lines between defs, context tags). Should we move/redirect the page to Wiktionary:Writing definitions? What do other people think? --EncycloPetey 06:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wiktionary tutorial is badly in need of a rewrite. I suggest that this be made into a section of the tutorial. Right now all we have in it is basically of copy of the Wikipedia tutorial which is mostly irrelevant to Wiktionary. This would be a good starting point for redoing the tutorial. --Yair rand 06:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and no. The tutorial is supposed to teach the basic mechanics of a wiki, and not teach style or dictionary-specific skills. --EncycloPetey 06:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh. Never mind, then. --Yair rand 06:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Category:Lojban language

It would be rather rare to nominate every word in a language for cleanup, but Lojban needs it. The definitions are written in a Lojban style that I can't understand at all. This needs some sort of communal decision. Btw is Lojban actually used as a language? I suspect most constructed languages appear more often in dictionaries than in texts. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Lojban makes for a very sticky situation here. We need to have the entries written in English and they need to be as comprehensible, but unfortunately this is virtually impossible to do. With the languages that have the same parts of speech as English, it's very simple to explain because English words exist for those parts of speech and definitions. What are we supposed to do with a language with completely foreign concepts that English words aren't really well-suited for? How do we define a word for which we can't simply say "to do x", "a x", "having x characteristics", "in a x manner" or use English parts of speech? I can't think of any solution better than use what we currently have and assume anyone reading this has some understanding of the language. (And I don't have a clue whether Lojban is actually used as a language but I suspect the folks over at the Lojban Wikipedia and Wiktionary use it to some extant.) --Yair rand 05:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

ttbc (Translations to be checked) tags on translations

Please refrain from flagging translations with "ttbc" lightly, if you make any changes to the English entries, especially adding/modifying senses. Please respect the translators' work! They may not be available any more. I personally find it annoying and discouraging. It's a lot easier to change the English entry than to find and fix the translations into other languages! Anatoli 01:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know when this entry: that is going to be checked. I think there are nicer ways of handling the situation with new senses in the English entry. --Anatoli 01:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

What would you recommend? DCDuring TALK 03:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The original translations (the first that appeared in the entry) were the translations of the most common or default sense of the word, in this case "connecting noun clause" (that). If you can't contact the translators to verify, be brave and leave in the original sense. My point is, the translators have already taken the effort to "check" those translations, added their translations and not necessarily "watch" this entry or have time or desire to look at it again. Additional senses in translations may be left blank or with trreq tags (translation requests). Careful examination of the original entry may prevent from redoing a collective effort work. --Anatoli 04:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Those who move these words lightly to ttbc sections should be mindful that some languages have very few or no active contributors and may never be reviewed. Taos, for example, is a finished project, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever add any more. What we have now is all we will ever have for that language, since the Taos speakers do not want it to be written down or published and will not contribute. If Taos words are moved to ttbc, they will remain there forever. (Likewise, if anyone messes with Taos contexts, categories, or templates, they should be very careful, because nobody else is ever going to clean up after them.)

You should be careful about using ttbc, especially for minority languages. I think anyone who moves words to ttbc should also be heavily involved in the checking and restoring of at least one of the languages. That is the only way that you can have a sense of job that you are creating. If you don’t care to check ttbc tranlations yourself, don’t expect others to do it for you. —Stephen 08:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, English is not a finished project either. In one common situation English senses that are best separated are initially combined. When they are separated what should be done?

And, of course, there are many other kinds of errors in the supposed main definitions. The entries for the non-English words are often not much help because they are usually one-word glosses rather than full definitions (by policy as I understand it). They are sometimes glossed with obsolete terms or with highly polysemic English words. It could well be that translation should not be commenced for an entry until it meets some minimal quality standard in terms of having senses that are distinct, with usage examples that correspond. Without some kind of process to note entries and senses that are "ready" for translation (which noting may be wrong or simply changed because this is a wiki), there will be many cases where English entry changes make the glosses in the translation tables no longer match the senses. Should a new "trans" be set up that does correspond? How should the no-longer-corresponding transtable be marked? DCDuring TALK 11:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The ttbc tables' main purpose now seems to be "we don't know which table this translation should be in" rather than "we don't know how accurate the translation is", perhaps it would be better to reserve a translation gloss (something like "Other translations") which could be used for this situation - with a short hat-note much as ttbc already has to explain to anyone who does know how to fix the problem. Conrad.Irwin 13:27, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Is the problem really with the use of {{ttbc}}, or is it with the moving down to the "checktrans" box? Personally, when I radically alter a sense, I'll frequently tag the citations with {{ttbc}}, but leave them in place; if they're still fine, then it seems like very little work for a translator to remove the tag. Is that still problematic? —Ruakh_TALK 15:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It is not the use of {{ttbc}} per se, but the moving down to the "checktrans" box. When the words are contributed, they usually have the correct meaning for the existing definition. When you move words to checktrans, it strips them of all sense and syntax and they cannot be restored or used in any way unless a knowledgeable speaker restores them. For languages that have no or almost no contributors, it is tantamount to deleting the words in question. —Stephen 15:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Understood. Robert made a change to Tbot (or Autoformat?) a while back that makes it support the use of {{ttbc}} within the regular translations tables, so people should probably just take advantage of that when at all possible. —Ruakh_TALK 21:55, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

BTW, the glossless translation table I just found at surely reminded me that almost all of the {{checktrans}} insertions that I have done have been cases where there was no gloss. Translations sometimes predated additional senses, but in other cases translators blithely added translations to multi-sense words that did not have translation tables for each individual sense. I seem to recall that it has taken several senior contributors some time to make a serious dent in the number of glossless trans tables that remained until recently. If we add to that the translation tables using some variant of {{top}}, which seem to have glosses less than half the time, it will be quite some time before this problem is behind us. I also wonder why folks bother to translate any entries that have the Webster 1913 warning or otherwise show serious signs on obsolete wording (eg, only literary usage examples in the Webster's format). They do not meet the most basic standards of being satisfactory for translations that will not have to be subsequently reviewed and the work seems likely to be harder and less fruitful.

The best hope we have is the liberal use of {{trans-see}}. DCDuring TALK 01:30, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Plurals vs. nouns forms

As pointed out, one of the stickier issues on the Wiktionary. For example I've just now discovered Category:French noun forms which AFAICT contains only plurals, with about 10 exceptions. I think that the Catalan and Spanish noun form categories are also up for deletion, right? As pointed out by Carolina wren, we don't have anything close to policy on this? FWIW I think it's pure bureacracy, because I don't think anyone uses these categories to look for words. What do other people think? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, in French there are feminine noun forms of words like gardienne and tueuse, although I don't think they are classed as "noun forms" by any authority. I (along with, I assume, other French contributors) would be happy to get rid of this category, sticking with the Category:French plurals category. --Rising Sun 20:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah but paper dictionaries don't classify these at all, and most online dictionaries just redirect to the masculine singular. So we have something of a "carte blanche" to do what we want. Opi, Rising Sun and I are happy to delete Category:French noun forms and sort into the two categories above. Who says no? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I might have said no at one time, but I no longer see the merit it this category. Delete. —Internoob (Disc.•Cont.) 23:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, these categories for Western Romance languages are ridiculous... nouns that have corresponding masculine and feminine forms like gardien and gardienne are in the minority. To compare languages who have a majority of nouns with two forms, one being the lemma, to languages like Russian (12 forms), Lithuanian (14 forms) and Hungarian (which has well over 30 forms) is just silly. I actually put Category:Spanish noun forms and Category:Catalan noun forms on WT:RFDO a while back, but that never went anywhere. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, see Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others#Category:French noun forms. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

@R·I·C - It's more silly having a category named Fooian plurals that apples only to noun plurals and not adjective plurals in the Romance languages. However, I have no objection to having a properly named category for noun plurals, and a category for the feminine singular noun forms of those nouns that have two distinct gender forms, with the noun form category itself either deleted or used solely as holding category that should be empty save for the two subcategories. — Carolina wren discussió 02:53, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

What about a category like Category:Catalan nouns with both masculine and feminine forms? --EncycloPetey 03:01, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

What I'm interested in is a simple category for words like anglesa. The masculine form, anglès, has two common noun senses. In addition, (deprecated template usage) anglesa is also adjective form of the male lemma, so to me it makes sense to mark it as a feminine form. That's to avoid a third repetition of the shared meanings (The Valencian masculine singular is anglés), so that it doesn't go into the index which an independent noun entry would, and because of the parallelism with the adjective form. Also, the name you proposed sounds more like something for nouns like bèstia which take either either gender (and hence either masculine or masculine adjectives, articles, or pronouns) but have no change of form. Dual gendered nouns, either with ((deprecated template usage) anglès / (deprecated template usage) anglesa), or without ((deprecated template usage) bèstia) separate forms are typical for animate nouns in Catalan. The relative rarity of nouns with dual gender is due mainly to the fact that most nouns are not animate. There needs to be a category for noun forms like (deprecated template usage) anglesa, with my own preference being something like Category:Catalan feminine singular noun forms or even Category:Catalan singular noun forms if we were to treat word pairs such as cabra / cabrot as having a feminine lemma and a masculine noun form. (I don't favor treating cabrot that way because I think that those few nouns that don't use the -∅/-a paradigm of the adjective masculine/feminine forms shouldn't be classified as having forms.)

requesting a bot for manual of style enforcement.

Can I suggest we create a bot to remove the "----". First of all the correct to separate things in either Wikipedia or Wikitionary is to use == title ==, these markers will be shown in the Table of Contents.

The division lines doesn't make the contents any easier to read. Users just use them to stylize any dictionary terms they are interested, and the abuse is becoming so worse that it degrades wiktionary as a formal dictionary, nevermind launching projects, such as Visual Thesaurus...etc. aka Google Search result 1.97 million each page has about 7~8 abusive/per page, that is way over 60%.

some of the horrible usage can be seen below.

• -ware
• científico
• ex
• flamingo
• kan
• lupa
• mage
• mill
• school
• terra
• value
• Venus
• 雲, 海, स

--75.154.186.99 18:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

See WT:ELE and User:AutoFormat, the first is our layout policy, the second enforces it. Conrad.Irwin 18:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The reasoning behind the lines is simple, if people want to extract a language section from the dump, they have to merely look for ==English==.*(----|$). Without these, they have to scan the whole thing linearly to find the next language, which is much slower and much more complicated. It is a matter of personal taste whether the entries look better or worse without them, as we've been using them on every page for many years, I think a more convincing reason than "I don't like them" is called for. Conrad.Irwin 18:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't see anything horrible about this. Does this appears in WT:ELE? I think not, so keep them. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

They're, um, lines. Call me crazy, but I think we have better things to worry about as Wiktionarians than header dividers. Tooironic 09:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Uh, I don't think we even have a "manual of style". --Yair rand 06:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup project

Is there any single page for discussing specific cleanup project; orphaning templates and categories that have failed RFD, correct categories, templates, etc. Does this is exist? If not, surely it should. But under what name? Mglovesfun (talk) 14:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

No. When someone starts such a project, they create their own page for it and announce it in the WT:BP, but there is no other central place used for that. Such projects come along so rarely, that it hasn't been worthwhile to have another page for them. There is also a Category:Wiktionary Projects, but it doesn't seem to be much used. --EncycloPetey 15:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I went for Wiktionary:Cleanup and deletion process/Requests. Please anyone, add stuff from your "to do" pages so everyone can see. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

misspellings

I thought we used to have a policy not to include misspellings. Did that change, or was it never the case? —scs 17:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I think about this quite a lot. We include "common misspellings" but we have no criteria to define what that is, meaning that almost anything can be a misspelling of something. Right now, anything that goes on WT:RFD is just a pure vote. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Annoyances: "This page has been deleted" for capitalised words

I use OneLook as my dictionary portal. It gives a potted definition and a list of urls to the word in a collection of actual dictionaries. When the potted definition isn't sufficient then I usually use the Wiktionary link because the other dictionaries suffer from bloat, ads or other deficiencies.

Unfortunately there's a problem with Wiktionary that makes it very annoying to access. This is the fact that OneLook uses capitalisation for the word that they reference and Wiktionary shows a "This page has been deleted" entry.

Why is this a problem? Because I don't care two hoots that a capitalised word's page has been deleted. I don't want to stop there and read it, the same text (bar the word in question) for every reference from OneLook. What I do want is to go straight to the definition page. I don't mind if the page has a "capitalised: Redirected from Capitalised" line, I just don't want to have to be pointlessly told that a page has been deleted.

Should OneLook fix this? No, because there will be cases when Wiktionary does have an actual entry for the capitalised word, something that OneLook cannot be expected to know.

I would be very pleased if you would delete "This page has been deleted" from the lookup process. Hopefully, if you consider the amount of time that these pages get in the way versus how often they serve a useful purpose (ie. one that someone would thank you for) then you'll agree to the need.

Thank you, on behalf of all OneLook-referred users.

That isn't technically possible, since it's part of the Mediawiki software for all projects including Wikipedia. Yes, there will be capitalized entires, but these will often be the German noun. If OneLook relies on matching spelling, but does not deal with capitalization, then users will have to stop and read a German entry when looking for English. This really is a OneLook issue, not a Wiktionary issue. --EncycloPetey 19:00, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you understand what I am asking. Going to, say, a German word that is capitalised is not the problem; not once has this occurred. What happens is that the page that Wiktionary presents is one saying that the prior capitalised entry has been deleted and giving a link to the uncapitalised word. This repeatedly hinders access to the target definition yet I have yet to observe any useful purpose in being informed that a page has been deleted. My request is that this unnecessary obstruction be removed. 78.151.155.41 13:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I understood your question, but you don't seem to have understood my response. As I explained at the outset of my previous response, that isn't technically possible. Wiktionary has no control over that aspect of our software. Mediawiki controls that; we don't. The problem must be dealt with at either the level of Mediawiki (who develop the software for Wiktionary, Wikipedia, Wikisource, etc.) or it must be dealt with by OneLook. We can't make the kind of change you are asking. The simplest solution is for OneLook to recognize that there is a difference between lower-case and capital letters. --EncycloPetey 15:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Why can't we just put REDIRECTs in, instead of saying that the prior capitalised entry has been deleted and giving a link to the uncapitalised word ? --Richardb 23:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Because it's against the redirection policy at Wiktionary:Redirections, which should explain why it is unwise to use them that way. Equinox ◑ 23:27, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

It may be against the redirection policy that you have in your memory, but it's not against the policy as recorded at Wiktionary:Redirections. That states:-

• .... Work could redirect to work, although this is unnecessary.
• .... leaving a redirection for external links (such as those from other language Wiktionaries or Wikipedia, or mirror sites.)

So clearly we can have a redirection, and clearly it allows for redirections for links from external sites.--Richardb 06:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

But, surely, the question is, since If one enters the uppercase word in the search box, the software automatically redirects to the lowercase article (unless the uppercase exists). , then why do we have the page there with a deletion message. Just get rid of the page fully, and then it will automatically redirect. The deletion message is of no use, and is a definite hindrance.--Richardb 06:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I will email the OneLook guys again, and see if they can fix it on their end. The reason they capitalize everything like that is because Wikipedia does, the list Connel generates for them is appropriately capitalized. They just need to be told that we don't do it the same way. - [The]DaveRoss 00:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

unindent, for what it's worth, for those with javascript visiting http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Work will redirect to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/work?rdfrom=Work which contains a link to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Work?redirect=no to turn off this behaviour. The best solution would be for everyone who wants to link to us to link: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Search/Work which will work no matter what case Work has. Conrad.Irwin 12:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Are there good reasons why this is not part of the default? Obviously, if it is a OneLook only problem and OneLook can and will fix it, then any resource cost or implementation risk is probably not worth it. But is this an indication of a more widespread problem? DCDuring TALK 15:59, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Most wikis are not case sensitive (for a very good reason :p) so it is only a concern on wiktionaries, this javascript behaviour is the default on en.wiktionary for all non-existant pages where an entry exists at {{lc: {{PAGENAME}} }}, {{uc: {{PAGENAME}} }}, or {{ucfirst: {{PAGENAME}} }} as we can't easily query other case combinations. This exists only for those who follow broken links to the site (and note that most sites, when they re-arrange content leave simply 404 messages behind, at least ours tell you the existance of the right page - and visit it automatically if you have javascript). The expected user behaviour is to use the search box and not the url bar, which doesn't have this problem at all. Conrad.Irwin 16:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I was asking a question which I now realize you had already answered. The answer to the question I was trying to ask is: The default js already effectively directs users to an existing entry with different capitalization if the user's/portal site's capitalization does not yield an entry. Then can we infer that the user with the complaint is one of those without Javascript? Do we have information about what portion of relevant Web usage is via browsers without JS? DCDuring TALK 16:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The chances of people using a browser with javascript turned off is very small, I'd extrapolate at around 99% from [3] and [4]. Given that many large companies don't have the patience/time/money for supporting javascript-less users (Google, Flickr, MySpace, though Facebook recently added support) I have no concerns that we are being overly discriminating in making them click a whole extra time (particular given that they are following a broken url from another site). Conrad.Irwin 23:36, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

All three computers in this house have js disabled by default, it is the only way to browse. Anyhow this isn't our problem at all, the problem is incorrect URIs generated by third parties. - [The]DaveRoss 20:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

A dictionary is not for punctuation

The West Frisian word ús has two articles. The other one is for Us. This second article is unnecessary; it is not a separate word, and has no different meaning. It seems to exist only to show people that, in West Frisian, diacritics are usually not written on capital letters. Going by that, each West Frisian word that begins with an accented vowel would need a separate entry for its capitalized form, which is wholly unnecessary. Explaining orthographical rules, as this article's creator seemingly means to do, is not a dictionary's purpose.

Eal

Yes, I agree. Deleted. —Ruakh_TALK 17:05, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I also found Citations:; earlier, which I found really odd. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:50, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I completely disagree. People unfamiliar with a certain foreign language are likely to be unaware that an accent appears with one form and not on another, and remember that in some languages, accented letters are considered different letters entirely from their accentless counterparts. Where such a thing occurs, we should either have an entry for the accentless capitalized version, or a usage note on the page of the lemma. bd2412 T 15:29, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe that in Greek accents are also optional (usually left out) on capital letters... but at any rate, I don't think diacritics are punctuation. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Christmas Competition 2009

This year's Christmas Competition is announced and is open to all contributors! --EncycloPetey 07:47, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Genitive and Swedish

The question may seem ridiculous, especially as coming from a native. But: Do Swedish have a genitive case, or at least, should we claim so?. Why I don't know this? Well, when I started to add entries, I followed what layman knowledge I had, namely that possession is indicated by the genitive case. This is what is taught in school (at least when I went to school), this is what (most, afaik) other dictionaries state, this is what encyclopedias state (e.g. NE [5]), this is what textbooks claim even today, based on what I find on the net. But it has also been claimed that a more thorough analysis reveal that it isn't a case at all anylonger, and should be considered as a possessive form, just as in English (see e.g. this discussion on sv:wp, and this change here on wikt). One motivation is that it is so vastly more common to write the phrase The Queen of England's men as Drottningen av Englands män than Drottningens av England män, even though the latter still is in some very limited use. (The recommendation is actually to use the former, which would correspond better to a "possessive" analysis, even from those who aren't ashamed to call the form genitive.)

So: should we follow what is the academically correct description (i.e. contrasting a "base form" to a "possessive form"), or the description which is vastly more common (i.e. "nominative" versus "genitive")? \Mike 10:54, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Swedish is usually no longer considered to have a case system. In the possessive form of a noun, an "s" is appended, but this is nowadays used as a clitic particle, just like the english "'s", and not a case ending. Your example about "the Queen of England's men" is spot on, since your first example (Drottningen av Englands män) is overwhelmingly more common today. The second (Drottningens av England män) is seen very rarely and might even be considered wrong by many Swedish speakers. Some grammar texts still refer to this "s" as a case inflection though. This issue is discussed to some extent in the Swedish Wikipedia article on the genitive case. As a comparison, Norwegian and Danish have completely done away with the case systems and consider the "s" ending a clitic particle and not a case inflection, but Swedish has slightly more remnants of a case system. Freezer Twelve 13:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Phrasebook

I've made a start on this, but it's tough going. We probably need some discussion about CFI for the phrasebook versus "languages", as it were. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:CFI - has something gone missing ?

I thought this page used to have some sort of banner on it directing people who wanted to contribute ideas for change to Wiktionary:Editable CFI. There is no banner now. Am I just imagining this, or does anyone else remember there being such a "banner" ? --Richardb 07:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, according to the history page, CFI has not been edited since a month before the creation of Wiktionary:Editable CFI, so apparently there never was such a banner. --Yair rand 08:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, but you don't know how devious some administrators can be to cover their tracks. Of course I checked the history, and the visible deletes. Doh!--Richardb 08:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want to make changes to CFI, bring it up here. Duh. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

So, why do we even bother having the page Wiktionary:Editable CFI???. And anyway, your response does not at all answer the question. Richardb 12:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

You are just imagining it. I pointed you at Editable CFI from the beer parlour, maybe that's what you remember? Conrad.Irwin 12:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

OK. Seems a likely explanation for my memory. But then the question is, should we have a banner/pointer from CFI to editable CFI ? And if so, how the heck would we ever get that approved to be put up on CFI ?--Richardb 02:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)