Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2007/October

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Inflected forms of Dutch adjectives

Dutch used to have a case system, but this has been abandoned for almost 80 years now. The only relict of this is the two forms an adjective can have: with or without e. For more information, see w:Dutch grammar#Adjectives. My problem is: how to format those, what category to put them in etc. Conventionally, the (least used) form without e is the lemma form. So the main entry would be groot. Then, at grote it should say ‘inflected form of groot’.

Now, formally one could say grote is the nominative neuter whatnot form of groot, but this is absurd. It simply is ‘the inflected form’, no more no less. However, the template {{inflected form of}} is some sort of backup template, not even categorizing anything. The new form-of discussion and related proposal would predict a template like {{infl}}, but that has been taken as well.

My proposal would be: {{inflect|groot|lang=nl}} which categorizes in Category:Dutch inflected adjectives, or maybe simply Category:Dutch adjective forms. Ideas?

Wait, shouldn’t that be ‘declined form of’ and the rest changed respectively? H. (talk) 10:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I would favor a language-specific template {{nl-declined form}} or whatever, which can wrap {{form of}} and add anything necessary (like maybe a link to an appendix which explains what an inflected/declined form means in the Dutch context.) -- Visviva 04:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I don’t like those language-specific templates. Who knows what other language has had a similar evolution? H. (talk) 21:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

What we have to keep in mind is that we're not only interested in the modern form of the language. Whatever template/Appendix/explanation scheme we develop must accomodate both the modern form as well as explain that there are obsolete forms from 100 years ago. I have to deal with these obsolete forms, since some of the best onomastics articles on Frisian personal names was written around 1890. There will continue to be a need for information about the Dutch language from before the spelling reforms (albeit a small need in comparison to the current form of the language). --EncycloPetey 05:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree, but this doesn’t help much. There is nothing against creating Category:Dutch genitive adjectives and putting obsolete forms in it (and the occasional form that is still used). However, I want to know what to do with the forms that are used now, and I think it is ridiculous to mark dikke with a multitude of definition lines saying it is the genitive masculine, feminine dative and whatever form of dik, since in modern Dutch, it is simply ‘the inflected form’. That’s how speakers of contemporary Dutch experience it.

Since this doesn’t seem to be a hot topic, I created Category:Dutch inflected forms and corresponding {{infl of}}. H. (talk) 21:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I would put the modern, current sense first, then list the others and mark them with {{obsolete}} (when you bother to add them at all). --EncycloPetey 21:16, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

new addition to WT:AC

A recent post at Talk:不是 prompted me to make an addition to WT:AC called WT:AC#Tone sandhi. If anyone's interested, please let me know what you think of the wording. -- A-cai 11:30, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The wording sounds fine. If the pinyin isn't going to display how the tones change, I think we should either describe the changed tone in a pronunciation section, or (if the sandhi rules are regular enough (I don't know enough Mandarin)) an appendix. Cynewulf 17:16, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I had been doing a pronunciation section for beginning level words (ex. 不错//note that the root pronunciation of 不 is [ pu˥˩ ]), but then I took a break from it. I think your suggestion of describing the rules somewhere on Wiktionary is not a bad one. Another option would be to flesh out the relevant section in Wikipedia (w:Standard_mandarin#Tone_sandhi), then point Wiktionarians to that section. -- A-cai 13:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I took a look at the explanation on the equivalent Chinese wikipedia article (zh:w:现代标准汉语#变调). It looks fairly complete. I'll translate it into English, and add it to w:Standard_mandarin#Tone_sandhi within the next day or so (unless somebody beats me to the punch :) -- A-cai 13:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

(The pronunciation section of course would show the tone change.) Because the rules are straight-forward, I agree with that choice if there is no room for flexibility. Indeed, we don't have settings for default romanization, so why this? But if the pinyin gets an actual entry, either would have to be allowed. DAVilla 14:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Davilla, if I understand your point correctly, you think that búshì and bùshì should both be allowed. I don't disagree with you. I'm merely suggesting that the wording in WT:AC recommend a consistent treatment of tone sandhi rules for Standard Mandarin. For the sake of consistency, bùshì is better. However, if someone wants to take the time to put in búshì as well (as I have done for many of the beginning words), there's no need to remove it. The best (and most cumbersome) solution is to put everything in there. I have modified 不是 and 不错 to illustrate what that would look like. -- A-cai 23:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I have adapted the relevant section of the Chinese wikipedia article for the English version. I also put a link to that section at WT:AC#Tone sandhi. Let me know if you think this is sufficient. -- A-cai 23:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Request for 'Request for Language' template

If there is not a Request for Language template, could we create one to verify that a language in an entry is correct? For example, Völundarkviða says English language; but I am unsure. If such a template exists, what is it? I was thinking {{rfl}} or {{rflang}} might work. Any thoughts? sewnmouthsecret 19:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I would use {{subst:nolanguage}} to mark these. The template must be subst'ed, but it puts in a statement that the page needs a language and categorizes it into a much-watched category. --EncycloPetey 01:42, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

w:Völundarkviða. English wikipedia. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 02:38, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

From which it is clear that this is Old Norse, not English. ... which seems to be a global problem with Category:Books of the Poetic Edda. -- Visviva 02:58, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

By Wikipedia's page naming standards(or whatever they call them) conventions, if there were a word for "Völundarkviða" that would be more recognizable to English speakers, then that word would have been used instead. Still it seems that the name means "The Lay of Völund". I'm not sure it should really exist on Wiktionary? The Wikipedia article should be enough, I'd think, unless we're going to have entries for all poems, books, etc. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 17:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

These words need have their language header corrected to ==Old Norse== and a link made to the Wikipedia article. These words are NOT English but I believe they are words in Old Norse so my proposal should cover out remit and at the same time not confusing words in different languages.--Williamsayers79 08:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Request For Quotes template and category

Traditionally a dictionary is written by first collecting a large number of citations and then writing definitions that cover those citations. We're sort of doing it in reverse by first jumping and writing a lot of definitions and then later going back and looking for citations to justify them.

What would be the opinion on adding a template {{rfq}} (standing for Request For Quotes since rfc is already used) which would populate a category of Requests For Quotes? That way we could tag words to go looking for citations for that need it. RJFJR 13:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I support this idea — such a tagging scheme is preferable to taking such terms to RFV, when their existence isn’t actually being called into question. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 13:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If we do this, I recommend making it {{rfcite}} and {{rfquote}}, to avoid proliferating 3-letter templates. --EncycloPetey 14:01, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I agree with EncycloPetey. Can {{rfcite-sense}} and {{rfquote-sense}} also be created, please? † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

What is the intended distinction between rfcite and rfquote? I thought "citations" and "quotes" were they same thing for our purposes. -- Visviva 14:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I think he means that {{rfcite}} and {{rfquote}} should both exist and should be synonymous (probably via one redirecting to the other). —Ruakh_TALK 16:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. It's not that we need separate tags, but that many people confuse the two. After all, our convemtion is that the section is called "Quotations" but the separate namespeace for them is called "Citations". It would help people to be able to use wither template without worrying about which is the correct one. --EncycloPetey 15:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm for that, as I've proposed it before. Note 3-letter templates are reserved. Another option to the above is a generic {{request}} template, which in many cases would be inline. But that idea hasn't gotten any positive feedback. DAVilla 14:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't this apply to every sense that does not have at least one illustrative citation? This is a little different from RFE and RFP; not everyone is in a position to add etymology and pronunciation info, but anyone who can access Wiktionary can also access Google Books and various other online archives. Senses that can't readily be verified in this way probably should be RFV'd rather than tagged with a weaker template. -- Visviva 14:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to hunt for citations, but I'd rather do important cases first. And this points out words that need citations (words without sufficient citations that are lemma form, etc.) RJFJR 15:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

RFV is sometimes a bit of a popularity contest: lots of words are brought there, and fairly few editors work on citing them, so generally the more appealing words (FSV of "appealing") get cited. If I don't really doubt that sense exists, but I'd like a better idea of when and how it was used, and it's hard to cite — say, it's a rare sense of a fairly common word, and there's no obvious way to frame a b.g.c. search to get more of that sense — then it would be nice to be able to add a low-pressure "A quotation using this sense would be nice, when someone has time and interest" template instead of a high-pressure "This sense will be removed in a month unless someone can present three quotations using it" template. —Ruakh_TALK 16:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. RfV should serve primarily for senses and entries whose existence in a particular language is in doubt. However, there can be cases where no one would want the entry deleted, but would want citations to aid in the writing of definitions and partitioning of senses (the sort of things the Tea Room is intended for). It would be nice to be able to tag such words and allow newcomers to go citation hunting without slogging through RfV page debate and without creating more RfV backlog. --EncycloPetey 15:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

In principle, I agree...{{rfcite}} and {{rfquote}} seem reasonable. Is someone going to be bold with these? Is there going to be a page equivalent to WT:RFV for these, or just a category? (Does that need discussion?) It may take a while for me personally to get into the habit of using the new templates, but then, those in the know, could just move them off WT:RFV (which I think is the underlying desire expressed here.) The preamble at the top of WT:RFV should be adjusted with whatever is ultimately settled upon. --Connel MacKenzie 19:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Just a category should be fine. I'd add it to the list of categories I keep on my User page for regular cleanup, particularly since I enjoy episodic citation hunting. (hmm... sounds like a disease) --EncycloPetey 02:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Noting categories in WT:ELE

This edit added a section about categories to WT:ELE. I don't specifically disagree with the edit, but there might be a better (e.g. noting the separate grammar tree and topic tree, or briefer, considering the TLDR problem) way to note categorization. Given the policy of voting in all non-trivial changes to policy pages, we should probably roll back the change, discuss it, and get a quick approval vote for a balanced, terse, non-controversial version. Rod (A. Smith) 17:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought we were not to edit the ELE unless a vote is passed that summarises the proposed changes.--Williamsayers79 16:01, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. The referenced edit was reverted [1], appropriately. If there is any desire to incorporate information about categories, may discussion occur here first. Rod (A. Smith) 18:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Without prejudice to the issue at hand, the idea of demanding a vote for any change to policy is a ridiculous pile of crap. We are a dynamic, rapidly-evolving project and our policies need to be able to keep pace with our praxis. If Wikipedia, with orders of magnitude more editors than us, doesn't find this level of bureaucracy necessary, there is absolutely no excuse for us to allow it here. -- Visviva 10:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, if there were no excuse for doing it, we wouldn't have multiple people advocating it. This is not Wikipedia. We don't have thousands of policy pages to keep track of, nor do we have the volume of editors. Neither do we have the same fluidity of page layout and content they do. On Wiktionary, style of page layout is critically important. What we have is a single-page style guide for all articles in the form of WT:ELE. In effect, a change to that page is a change to all page layout style across our entire project. Such changes should be discussed and voted in. That is established policy, especially in the light of past abuses of edits to that page. If you disagree with Wiktionary policy you can propose to change it, but please don't offhandedly dismiss the standard practices that have been developed by editors over the past years just because you don't know the reasoning behind them. --EncycloPetey 10:52, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Votes are necessary as EncycloPetey points out to keep formatting consistent. I spend way too much time than I care for fixing the dodgy formatting of contributers (and I'm not talking about inexperienced or new users here!) who blantantly ignore the ELE and other policies (albeit - mostly in draft) - thankfully these editors are in the minority and our only fall back to justify fixing or reverting odd layouts are the policies - therefore we must vote on them to agree as a community. Wikipedia is somewhat different because flexibility in layout must exist to larger extent because of the content being contributed.--Williamsayers79 11:19, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Layman/linguist labels

Is there any interest in having POS headers and other labels that have both a “layman” and a “linguist” view, customizable through WT:PREFS or WT:CUSTOM? Rod (A. Smith) 18:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't much like that idea, personally, primarily because it would encourage inaccurate presentation in the "layman" view ("If they preferred accuracy to familiarity, they'd use the 'linguist' view"), and secondarily because it would encourage overly complex presentation in the "linguist" view ("If they preferred simplicity to accuracy, they'd use the 'layman' view"). Also, assuming the "linguist" view would have more precise terminology than the "layman" view (such that a given "layman"-view term would typically have multiple "linguist"-view counterparts), it would make it difficult for laymen to edit POS headers and other labels: they'd have to know which "linguist"-view term applies. —Ruakh_TALK 21:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense. I hadn't thought about it from that vantage point. It seems that we frequently have difficulty striking a balance, but perhaps this is not the best way to address the issue. Rod (A. Smith) 21:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Logo

Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-modified.png <-- Any comments? I've put together this modified version of the logo. The main problem that I saw as undeniably needing changing is the capitalization ("Open Content," and also "Wilco" as I just noticed) and the poor resolution. You'll see the current logo Image:Wiktionary-logo-en.png is actually rather blurry. Since I had to completely redo the text to make those fixes anyway, I also altered the IPA (a common complaint); it's GenAm now as well, but, that's just because it's what I know. It can be changed if there are objections. I don't mind if people want to stick with what we have. It wasn't a terrible hardship to make. But if we like the idea, I could also make other fixes we agree (Give the definitions periods, and capitalize "a"s? De-italicize the "n.,"? "multilingual free" --> "free multilingual"? Come up with an alternative to "wilco" altogether?). What do you think? Dmcdevit·t 07:25, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, let's see. You've changed the long-time RP pronunciation to the US pronunciation, and you've used the IPA upside-down /ɹ/. I'm sure there won't be any contention over those changes. --EncycloPetey 16:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, dude, everybody knows the RP way is the right way. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 17:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Er, okay. But any useful feedback? Even if we ignore anything marginally contentious, surely we can all agree to correct the capitalization? Dmcdevit·t 06:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I think we should replace Wilco with wilco, at the very least. (It would be even cooler to highlight our multilinguality by replacing it with wil, but that might raise hackles). And making the definitions look a little more like standard Wiktionary definitions (capitalization, etc.), as you suggest, would be nice. Anyway, thanks for taking a crack at this. -- Visviva 07:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the "W" on wilco was already corrected in the version I linked to. I purged it just now in case it wasn't showing up when you viewed it. Dmcdevit·t 10:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm now pretty jaded about the logo. It seems that every individual has their own thoughts on what it should say/how it should say it. Trying to solicit help from meta & Wikipedia last year ended fairly disastrously. I think the "Queen's English" version we have now is actually preferable to the upside-down and backwards "r" version. While I would rather see a four-syllable version than the current three-syllable one, losing the (regular/comprehensible) "r" is too high a price to pay. GoogleLabs and Alexa both indicate the majority of our readers hail from America - where IPA is rare, and "proper r" IPA is inconceivable. Looking at Special:Prefixindex/Wikt, the (non-redirect) predecessor of Wiktionary is Wiktionarians and is followed by Wiktionnaire. Not sure if we want to emphasize that we have entries for forms (Wiktionarians) or just use the first non-redirect, non-soft redirect entry Wiktionarian. (As it is now, the first legible word on every single Wiktionary page is "encyclopedia." It might be better to say "...who contributes here.") But following it with Wiktionnaire much emphasize the multilingual nature better? Not at all sure about the narrow to broad switch ([] → //.) The "n." might work better before the pronunciation. (But then, it might not.) To repeat: everyone has their own notion of what is shoud say/how it should say it. I do wish you luck though, in devising something that satisfies most people's concerns. But I'm not holding my breath! --Connel MacKenzie 08:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not trying to raise a fuss about the IPA. I don't want people to get fixated on it to the point that we can't fix the other issues. If there's no consensus on anything IPA-related, we can leave in what we have currently, with the other updates. I've uploaded a version with the original IPA: Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-modified-RP.png. Our current WT:FAQ says that "Other pronunciations of "dictionary" are used in the UK, and this particular pronunciation is not really heard outside the UK (and is somewhat old-fashioned even there)." so I simply used a more common pronunciation. Dmcdevit·t 10:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

To be clearer, the issues that I identified and fixed were (assuming the RP version now):

• Blurriness: fixed; I don't imagine anyone will object.
• Capitalization of "Wilco": fixed; again, probably uncontroversial.
• Capitalization of "Open Content": fixed; since I've never understood why it was capitalized in the first place, and it conforms to no common rules of grammar, I don't think this is controversial.
• "open content" → "free content": fixed; I'm not sure if this has come up before, but "free" is more accurate, and preferred by most Wikimedia people to describe our projects (and even in our own logo for Wikipedia; the inconsistency befuddles me).
• IPA [] → //: fixed; conforms with our convention for English, also uncontroversial, I think.

If I'm right and those are all uncontroversial, we could make Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-modified-RP.png our logo today (well, after I resize it for the real logo size). I was hoping to get people to confirm that those were indeed all uncontroversial. Things I didn't fix that we might want to discuss at this time as well:

• As mentioned by Visviva, make the "a multilingual free encyclopedia" and "a wiki-based free content dictionary" to "A multilingual free encyclopedia." and "A wiki-based free content dictionary."
• Do we prefer "ɹ" or "r"? (I already know Connel's answer, but since it seems to be an issue...)
• Do we want to go with a different IPA altogether, or, if we keep RP, change it to the more common (I think) /ˈwɪkʃənərɪ/?
• Do we want to replace "wilco" with a better word, possibly a non-English one? Keep in mind that this is a logo, so absolute alphabetical accuracy is not as important (and impossible anyway, given the chance that a new word will be added closer to "Wiktionary" in the future) as stylistic elements.
• Conversely, change the definition preceding Wiktionary (though this seems less of an issue)?
• Do we want to change the "multilingual free" → "free multilingual"? Might be the first time anyone has mentioned this, but everyone that I've asked informally prefers the latter, not what we have.
• Change the "n.," in any way? Connel suggests moving it, we could also fiddle with the italics.

That's all I have; definitely enough to think about for now. I can put up versions with any of these other modifications if we want to see them. Text is relatively easy to change. Dmcdevit·t 10:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The work looks great. I just wonder that isn't this logo difficult to understand for those who don't yet know Wiktionary. "Wilco" is quite mysterious. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 12:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The only issues I'll raise with the latest version are: (1) I think "wilco" should be a little further left to line up under "Wiktionary". (2) Do we want to have "A wiki-based..." or "a wiki-based". Personally, I'd like the definition to start with a capital letter, but that may just be me. (3) The abbreviation n. universally means "neuter" on Wiktionary, so do we want to list the project as "neuter(ed)"? Otherwise, the latest version looks fine to me. --EncycloPetey 02:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Alignment fixed (in my file at least, so in all new versions to come, as well). Also, here is the mock-up with the capitalizatized/punctuated definitions: Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-modified-RP-punctuated.png, and here is that same one with the Dutch word wil instead if "wilco" as was suggested above Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-modified-wil.png (our article doesn't have IPA, and I speak none; that IPA is tentative at best, but a demonstration at least). As for the "n.," that's an interesting point I had not thought of. What do you suggest we do with it? There doesn't seem to be enough room to write out "noun" if we want to. Would you prefer to it entirely? Dmcdevit·t 07:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Here are some comments from me who has not been familiar with this logo before:

• I don't know what "wilco" or "wil" means in this logo, I think it would be better without.
• The text "a multilingual free encyclopedia" is impossible to read without knowing what it says. I think the letters could be made visible.
• I didn't recognise US pronunciation marks, I think [] is better.
• n. could mean something else than noun as EncycloPetey said.
• Other changes with "free" or order of the words, either way looks fine.
• Some blue shades would look great.
• When the logo is seen small [2] it's not recognizable. It's too complicated for a logo. The solution for that could be to have less text and divide "Wiktionary" on two lines. Some text with a lighter color could maybe be partly behind it, but that's difficult to know without seeing it. Everyone knows how to pronounce wiktionary, so that could be left out. "Wiktionary" could be the only black text and more visible than the others.

This is just what I think, but how difficult it is to edit that, could you make a "more understandable" version for comparison? :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 08:42, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

You ask about "wil" - I always assumed that this is the start of the next imaginary dictionary entry (Above "Wiktionary" is the tail of the Wikipedia entry). The new form looks good to me (I had only noticed - occasionally - its fuzziness). Like the British 50p coin, with Samual Johnson's definitions on the reverse, only a pedant would take the artist to task :) —Saltmarsh^Talk 14:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, a note about the logo when small: all those other more visible logos are actually alternate logos. Have a look at that small logo for Wikiquote, Image:Wikiquote-logo.png versus the one used on the projects, Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.png, and Wikipedia's Image:Wikipedia-logo.png (imagine it scaled-down) versus Image:Wikipedia-logo-en.png. The problem is that we don't have a convenient tagline and project name to take out of the logo to simplify it, since those pieces are embedded into our (perhaps overthought) logo. The solution is still for us to come up with a different simplified logo though, which uses less text and larger fonts. Perhaps I'll think about that next. Dmcdevit·t 09:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Personally.... I think just having a plain old logo would be so much simpler than all this. Considering that it'd be (near) impossible for a logo similar to the one we have now to actually look like a wiktionary entry....

But yeah, that's my my two cents. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 16:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone mentioned above, leaving out the pronunciation entirely. I think that is a good way to finesse the issue. Can I see what that looks like, please? --Connel MacKenzie 16:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Well there's the whitespace possibly-problem. Perhaps we could also use that real estate for something else. But here's a rough mock-up: Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-no pron.png. Dmcdevit·t 09:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I cannot find here any discussion, nor any vote, about the new global logo discussed (and selected after a vote) at Wikimedia level. This new logo would solve all above issues. A discussion would be useful: we have no idea of how other contributors feel about it. Lmaltier 16:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

If there is a good proposal taking the conversation to other places will be much more useful. I have been very puzzled about this logo and not understanding what it means. I just got this idea about five minutes ago but are the light grey texts supposed to be the entry before and after "Wiktionary"? (Even though I had had a quick look at Saltmarsh's message up there a little earlier I had still not understood.) It gets misunderstood. It would be good to simplify this a lot. I think only two texts, "Wiktionary" and "a multilingual wiki-based free content dictionary" (or "Free multilingual dictionary"). "Wiktionary" could be big, divided on two lines, and the darkest color (either black or dark blue). The other text could be another blue. They could overlap some, and where they do, the color could be a blue shade in between. If this logo was simple enough it would look good even on a Wikimedia home page. This is what I would very much like to see. :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 18:37, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

More logo conversation

1 WikiMedia's logo for Wiktionary

I think Lmaltier is talking about Image:Wiktprintable.svg, shown as a thumbnail here. Is that right, Lmaltier? Rod (A. Smith) 19:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. It is possible that 90% would reject it, but I don't think so, and it is impossible to tell without a discussion. Lmaltier 20:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen that anywhere. Where does Wikimedia use it? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 19:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It is used in several wiktionaries, e.g. in French, Italian, simple English (I don't know the complete list) Lmaltier 20:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

That was the leading choice from m:Wiktionary/logo. Several editors here seemed to disapprove of it. The last I heard about it was this. Not sure whether any subsequent discussion has occurred, but perhaps it's time for a vote. Rod (A. Smith) 19:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I was unable to read the last link you gave because the text there was yellow, practically invisible, and I don't know how to change it. But I think that logo is good. I'd support it here. But if there are many who disapprove then the current logo could be developed better. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 19:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Several other Wiktionaries are using it, including the Arabic, French, Italian, Korean, and Vietnamese Wiktionaries, so we probably should vote it in or out, formally. Rod (A. Smith) 20:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I got the text behind the latter link visible now, not very interesting page. :) A conversation and a vote about the Wikimedia logo and if it's not approved back to developing the other one would sound good to me. :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 20:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Right, Meta vote not withstanding, I think we can confidently say that that logo is not approved for en.wikt. Let's not confuse the issues of our current logo and tweaking it by making variations on the same theme, and the general theme of all Wiktionary logos. The scrabble logo clearly has no consensus here on en.wikt, though others have adopted it. We (the Wiktionary community) are in the strange position of being the only project with wildly inconsistent logos, but that needs to be dealt with on a crosswiki basis. Perhaps we can pursue that road next. Dmcdevit·t 09:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Shall I start the vote to get this forward? The discussion can still go on here. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 07:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd still like to hear more opinions and get a firmer idea of what the issues that people care about are. What would we be voting on at this point? Dmcdevit·t 09:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The vote question could be "What do you think if the English Wikipedia started to use the Wikimedia Wiktionary logo?" If we first knew that, we'd know if there's still a need to develop the current logo. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 11:12, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

That is ludicrous. That logo had very stern opposition here. --Connel MacKenzie 15:59, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't know. Lmaltier said he couldn't find conversation about it. Do you oppose it? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Right, Rhanyeia. (Note that ludicrous is just Connelese for “disagreeable, given what I know”;-) It's not at all clear how many editors once disapproved nor whether they might change their minds now that the new logo has had some uptake in other major Wiktionaries. Due process is to discuss the Wikimedia logo here, then to put it to a vote when the pros and cons seem adequately aired. Rod (A. Smith) 17:17, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Haha. I'm sure I could have worded that more harshly; are you suggesting I should have? Meta: destroyed any credibility that logo might have had, with the the voting manipulations. The color scheme is wrong (non-WMF colors.) The items depicted represent a trademark of a linguistics game. It didn't address the original complaints about the logo (reiterated throughout this section) that it was supposed to (and alleged to.) It has been rejected flat-out two or three times here, now. So yes, a proposal to suddenly adopt it, out of the blue, is ludicrous. --Connel MacKenzie 19:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Connel. I wasn't aware of any voting manipulation at Meta. That would be a surprisingly abominable tactic for the logo promoters to take. It seems that the trademark problem and the WMF identity problem could be addressed by having the logo use the colors described in wmf:Wikimedia visual identity guidelines. That way, the tiles would more closely resemble Mahjong tiles than Scrabble tiles. I've so suggested at m:Talk:Wiktionary/logo#Trademark infringement. Rod (A. Smith) 22:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

An example of a mahjong tile

I agree about changing the colors. English Wiktionary could show the way and take it with different colors, and maybe others will follow. :) I think it would be good with a coloring like on that tile with a blue shade. That would be consistent with logos of many other projects which have blue colors. Could someone try how it would look like? I'm not good at editing pictures. :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 07:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I invited the user who appears to be the creator to help: w:User talk:Smurrayinchester#Wiktionary logo. Rod (A. Smith) 16:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Would there be any support for suggesting both the RP and US pronounciations be included? RJFJR 19:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps, but I can't visualize it. There isn't space without drastically changing font size, or removing other bits. More significantly, though, one probably works best as long as we recognize it's not a prescription, just an example or a suggestion for the logo aesthetic. After all, once we start adding more than one, implying that there is more behind it, it becomes equally hard to justify these two, instead of, say, Indian, Australian, Irish, New Zealand, Scottish, Canadian, etc. (not to mention other American and British) accents as well. It's a can of worms. Dmcdevit·t 09:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. But the US way doesn't make sense to those who don't know it, me for example, :) so I think it's better not have it in a logo. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 11:12, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Many (if not all) of our UK contributors reiterated that they do not say "Wiktionary" with the three-syllable form; I think you are inadvertently misrepresenting what is or isn't a "UK" pronunciation. --Connel MacKenzie 15:59, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't especially after UK pronunciation either, any pronunciation writing is confusing somewhere and I think that part would better not be in a logo. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts: I think "wiki-based" is obscure and could be handled better by an etymology, "From wiki & dictionary" (or something more correct), to replace the controversial (on so many levels) pronunciation. Don't get me started on the /r/, you multilingual loathers.

No room for "and thesaurus"? Alas! Given that "dictionary" would already appear, how about "language reference" or the like, with due input?

Currently, the previous and next English words alphabetically are Wiktionarians and wilbe. Does that matter? I like the idea of Wikipedia coming immediately before, even if it doesn't actually. DAVilla 15:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Logo represents Wiktionary to the outside, to people who haven't edited it. The meaning of the grey texts is just a mystery and associates to Wiktionary. At first I hesitated asking what "wilco" means because I thought I should know, I thought it had something to do with Wiktionary and everyone else knew what. :) I was puzzled about "encyclopedia" too. I think to leave the grey texts out would be a good way to simplify the logo. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

To clarify a few of the issues which have come up: firstly, the Wikimedia Foundation Marketing Department stated that they specifically wanted a logo which did not use the Wikimedia colours (to make the logos more distinguishable at small sizes (see Meta:Talk:Wiktionary/logo/archive-vote-4#Changing colors). Secondly, the "Mah-Jong" part refers specifically to the (now-defunct) experimental logo Meta:Image:SmurrayinchesterWiktpyramid.png, which was arranged in a similar fashion to a game of Mah-Jong. Thirdly, the tiles are based more generally on anagram tiles, many of which are black letters on wood or ivory coloured slabs - I used the word Scrabble because of course this the most common example of anagram tiles. If necessary, a colour change shouldn't be difficult; I've still got the raw files, although communicating the change to the other Wiktionaries may take a while. 11:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC) 20:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Smurrayinchester, may I ask if you made an experiment here please? A version where the tiles have dark background, whichever color for now, for example brown or violet. If the Wikimedia logo is to be accepted here I'm quite sure it needs some change. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 07:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

2 Wood colours

No problem. I've created this dark-brown one, based on the idea of light text on dark wood (rather than dark text on light wood). The W will probably need recolouring, but it works as a proof of concept. Smurrayinchester 20:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much! :) What I have in mind is that the foreground would stay light, maybe as it was, and the background half of the tile would be darker. Could you look at the mahjong tile upper on this section and try its idea please? I think it would look great. But I also like what you did, that the letters became light and the tile is a bit darker. It would be great to see that with violet shades. :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 20:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

How about developing that picture on the right on, so that it would have a bit more light. The brown shades could be warmer and the letters could have yellow shading but not too much. White light could come to some part of the tile. The middle letter might need another color because brown and red are quite close to each other, maybe blue. Do you think you could try this please? :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 07:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I've created a couple of others, based on the Mah-jong tile above, Commons:Image:WiktprintableGreen.svg and Commons:Image:WiktprintableYellow.svg. Personally, I think this colour change causes more problems that it solves - all the other language Wiktionaries currently using the logo will have to change their colour scheme on the whim of the English Wikt. Given that the Wikimedia Attorney already contacted me to transfer copyright to the Wikimedia Foundation, I'd imagine that he's already had the image checked for copyright infringement. Smurrayinchester 11:41, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the Image:WiktprintableYellow is very good. :) May I ask for to see how it would look like if the side edge of the tile would be the darkest brown on the picture now (I guess it's too complicated to make only half of it dark?), and the middle W would be blue or dark brown please? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:12, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it's not impossible if English Wiktionary used different colors than others in case they don't want to take them. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:27, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm a latecomer to this conversation and am not reading through all of it, but shouldn't "free content" have a hyphen?—msh210℠ 21:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It has been rejected flat-out two or three times here, now. Really? When? Where? About the trademark: the logo cannot be confused with Scrabble tiles (no litte 1s...), it is more like Diamino or Jarnac tiles (and other games as well). Anyway, the principle of letters inside squares has been adopted by many games (including crosswords), and cannot be considered as protected. Lmaltier 17:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that the Wikimedia Foundation has already taken the various legal steps (transfer of copyright, withdrawal of trademark, etc) to use that logo - changing the logo now will probably cost the Foundation and will delay the logo by months more - I'm currently being deluged with requests from other Wiktionaries about using the logo, and many are restless about the delays. Smurrayinchester 13:40, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

3

4

I understand that there might be some problems with this. Anyway, I realised that the images are svg code and edited the colors (3, on the right). All the shades can be freely changed so if someone has suggestions please try to be very exact. I liked the yellow but tried the original blue color for letters because that might be easier to see. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 14:39, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Oooh that's bright. Maybe a little bit too much color saturation? — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 15:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I did some testing and I can tune the brown down a bit. It doesn't look so very bright on my screen, even if I turn the brightness to its highest level. :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's another version (4, on the left) which is a bit closer to the original. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 20:38, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

5

6

I don't think there's necessarily going to be copyright problems if English Wiktionary wanted to use different colors. Here's a yellow version (5, on the left below) which is quite close to Smurrayinchester's Commons:Image:WiktprintableYellow.svg. On the right below (6) the white light is the same color than the original's (1) whitest part. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 07:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

7

8

A version where half of the tile's sides are darker is below on the right (7). Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 14:19, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The one below on the left (8) has colors like the original Wikimedia logo (1) and the tiles have dark background. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 14:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

10

9

Below on the right one more brown version (9). Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 19:06, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Here are one new version (10) and favicons for the last two. I don't know much about copyright things but intuitively I'd think that if Wikimedia has the copyright, they could allow another color variety if they want. Wiktionaries already use different logos so it would probably be fine. My favourites of these alternate colors are 9 and 10. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 12:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Too many options creates TLDR. I would eliminate 7 and 9 as redundant versions of 6. Likewise, 10 is redundant with 5 and 8 is redundant with the WMF original. 2 has a strange pink foreground. Is that on purpose? Rod (A. Smith) 17:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Some versions need to be eliminated, yes. Because I prefer 9 over 6, and 10 over 5, I would like to keep at least one of them. Maybe we could have a little later a vote which had some varieties of Wikimedia logo? For example three different ones, and people could vote for which ones they'd support, and in which order? The original coloring would be one of them. How to decide which ones to take to the vote? How does the darker brown background of the tiles look? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 18:18, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

9 etc. have a strange darker layer behind the first. That extra layer makes the image look more like a sandwich than a simple tile, doesn't it? Rod (A. Smith) 18:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

If that's the only comment 9 and 10 will get then they won't go to the vote, so if someone would like to support them please say it. :) What about other things, how is brown color? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 19:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

As for the color, I think the only reason we are considering a change from the WMF logo is to differentiate from Scrabble tiles. Let's remove everything that most resembles Scrabble tiles besides the original WMF logo. That would be everything with a very dark foreground on light wood background, i.e. 3, 4, and 8. Sorry if it seems most of my comments are "oppose" instead of "support", but we do need to whittle down the options. Rod (A. Smith) 19:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

If we leave those out, and 9 and 10 (and probably 7 too, and I'd leave 2 out because I thought it needed developing on) we'd have 5, 6 and the original 1 to vote for. Maybe they could go to the vote as they are, or is the white light on 6 too white? It could be same than on 5. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 20:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I had a long look at Scrabble tiles both on Commons and elsewhere on the net. Their color seems to be white or light wood. I think the brown we are trying here resembles them some unless tiles have a dark background. I'll keep the letters yellow or blue and make versions 5b and 6b with a different tile color. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 13:16, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

5b

6b

11

11b

11 has colors closer to the original (1) in different order. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 11:04, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

12

11, 11b and 12 don't resemble Scrabble tiles, could one of them be accepted? (I have a feeling that 5b and 6b might be too colorful for this purpose.) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 18:07, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

12b

12c

12 is blue and Wikimedia asked to avoid too much blue so I tried 12b. It has violet but closer to grey than earlier. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 18:47, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I like - 1, 4, 8, 6b. I dislike - the rest. lol... I'll start by saying that I don't like the fact that the pieces are jumbled to begin with. That thought aside, with a lot of these, I think the colors are too strong or too weak or they don't work well together. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 21:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

La la la. Something new to look at a few steps down. The fonts aren't great, but I haven't been able to find anything great for most scripts. Also, don't bitch about the characters I used, it's just an example of something I think would look better than jumbled scrabble pieces :-D — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 22:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

12 looks pretty good, although Wikimedia has asked that logos do not use too much blue (to avoid confusion with the many other blue logos). Opiaterin's design looks good, although it would be impossible to turn into an SVG file, which is what Wikimedia really wants (too many blurry effects etc). Smurrayinchester 08:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I like 12 too. I wonder how strict Wikimedia is about blue. This logo has a distinct shape from logos of other projects, and blue is not very prominent color on Wikimedia's own logo. I tried grey and made 12c. :) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 18:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Archiving bot

Hi! Seeing as there is no specialized venue for bot requests, I will make one here. Per Dmcdevit's request, I would like to run my "famous" archiving bot on this wiki (starting with this page). The account is User:MiszaBot and detailed instructions can be found on w:User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo. Also, if it gets approved, please flag it as a bot - this utilizes the mechanism that minor edits by bots do not trigger the "New messages" orange-bar-o'-death. Thanks! Миша13 14:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi. There seems to be a little miscommunication. Dmcdevit's suggestion was to compare features between your rewrite and the original "Werdna" codebase (which included the rather significant changes for Wiktionary.) Specifically, does MiszaBot handle summaries and summary indexes such as WT:BPA? Or should I continue setting up the original Werdna code to run on toolserver? --Connel MacKenzie 15:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't maintain archive indexes, but it supports syntax for automatic archiving based on the month/year in which the thread belongs. I don't know what you mean by "summaries". Миша13 19:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

By "summaries" I mean, appending one line links to Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/headings with link-able anchors. Perhaps we could discuss/compare code over e-mail or on http://devanywhere.com/ or something? --Connel MacKenzie 19:49, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Is non-compositionality a criterion for an entry not a proverb?

W has entries for "apple blossom", "cherry blossom", and "apricot blossom". (I forgot to try plum, pear, and peach.) I saw no meaning besides the most obvious, which seems to be the normal use of a noun as an adjective to yield a noun phrase. Recognizing that space is not an issue, it would seem that creating such an entry may lead a searcher to believe that there is some non-compositional meaning for the phrase beyond the compositional meaning. That would seem to just waste users' time. Isn't it a disservice to keep such entries?

I did not see any policy about this, but then again I couldn't find where the non-compositionality criterion for proverbs was either. What am I missing? DCDuring 22:48, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

"pear", "peach", and "orange" are in W. "Plum" is not. Does this have to do with whether there is a Wiktionary entry in any language that uses a single word for the concept?

Nevertheless, is there any effort to discourage introduction of phrases with only compositional meaning in the language in which an original entry is made ? DCDuring 23:01, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

There is such an effort, although not always a successful one. I would say that "apple blossom," "peach blossom," and "orange blossom" should all be deleted, but I'm fairly sure at least one them has survived a deletion request recently. Our interpretation of "what is an idiom" remains in flux; you may find Wiktionary:List of idioms that survived RFD interesting. -- Visviva 01:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd support keeping orange blossom at least, as I found the definition there very surprising. (It had never occurred to me that "orange blossom" wasn't the same as "orange-colored blossom".) —Ruakh_TALK 04:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I would think the non-compositional meaning test had as a premise knowledge of all of the components. There are many plants whose names I don't know. But, given the name of the plant, I wouldn't have to think too hard to know what someone was talking about when they referred to its fruit, flower, blossom, root, leaf, stem, etc. DCDuring 17:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Of the ones listed above, only cherry blossom might be worth keeping, as I beleiev is has an additional meaning in the heraldry of Japanese crests. --EncycloPetey 02:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Should the fact that another language have a single word for something English only has a two-word translation for matter? I think not. Ideally, you wouldn't want a user to be looking for unexpected compositional meaning for a phrase when there wasn't any to be found in the language in which the user was searching. I would argue that every one of these was a waste of user's time. If the wiki software makes it hard to accommodate the exclusion of entries that exist for purposes of showing a translation from another language, I understand, but it still seems undesirable.

Once there is ANY extra meaning (additional sense or other), it ought to be included as an entry, as in the "cherry blossom" heraldry sense, once it actually showed as an entry. You could even argue that an entry like "apple blossom" should be included because it might be an alternate way of referring to "appleblossom" the color. DCDuring 17:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"Should the fact that another language have a single word for something English only has a two-word translation for matter? I think not."

Actually, that issue caused the first English monolingual dictionaries (heavily based on billingual dictionaries) to include all sorts of collocations that had no business be there, such as "band of soldiers" (latin cohors), so I agree with what's been said. They should be used in the foreign-to-English entries, but not the other way around (although they can, and probably should be mentioned at e.g. apple, cherry and blossom). User:Circeus 19:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

In the case of cherry blossom I am talking about an English usage in English treatises on Japanese heraldry. The term describes a particular charge used in heraldry. I am not advocating its inclusion simply because it has a translation. There have occasionally been marginal cases where I might favor including a term or sense because of translations, but this isn't one of those cases. --EncycloPetey 02:05, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

My bad, I actually intended to type "orange" rather than cherry, and forgot to correct it afterwards.

And of course, I mean that it is e.g. "orange blossom" → Italian zagara that should be mentioned in the English entry. Circeus 02:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I have very mixed feelings about this topic. Individually, terms like orange blossom (the white flower) have survived WT:RFD on their own. For the "signal-to-noise ratio" argument, I'm a little baffled. That is, I personally think that is a valid argument against all sorts of things, but not against genuinely valid entries like these. If anything, we might want to actually encourage reflexive entries from translations, specifically to increase that signal-to-noise ratio. Note that I'm not being biased or judgmental about that; I am merely saying that as the English Wiktionary written for English readers, we should bias our entries towards main English entries with translations listed. In my limited knowledge of botany, I did not know that an orange blossom is white; coming across it in a JapaneseChinese> translation, I too would have thought it meant a wedding dress that was orange in color. --Connel MacKenzie 20:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC) (edit 23:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC))

I think basically we just need to draw distinction between composites (like "cherry blossom") and sum-of-parts (like "band of soldiers", unless that has some idiomatic meaning of which I am unaware.) Being that the cherry blossom is a specific kind of flower, I'm all for including it, along with other such entries. (Note, of course, that I'm not talking about including every species of everything being included, but I can't think of any set of criteria for inclusion, at least none that can be easily or objectively reviewed.) — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 22:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Is the grounds for distinction between "orange blossom" and, say, "serviceberry blossom" that, in the orange blossom case there is a possible confusion that can be resolved by verbal definition (or color graphic), whereas in the serviceberry case there is not? It is very difficult to imagine anticipating all possible confusions that might be resolvable in this way, but it might sufficient grounds to at least prevent a proposed deletion. So that would mean that any color-and-fruit word compounded with "blossom" is a good candidate to stay, but any others could be deleted, like "apple blossom". I had not even noticed the color-and-fruit word problem before the discussion, despite having learned about the w:Stroop test.

I think you could make that argument for keeping orange blossom, but I wouldn't buy it. I could say "One of my tulips has an orange blossom." The construction has two meanings, but they're both valid. --EncycloPetey 02:05, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

O.K., fair enough. And I guess I'd never have looked up "orange blossom", anyway, since I thought that I did know what it meant. So, yes, delete all that don't have genuinely non-compositional meanings. —Ruakh_TALK 05:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

But those have different intonational patterns, which is why the page was kept. Or is there a general rule for noun vs. adjective modifiers that would eliminate or restrict the rocky chair test (which someone seems to have renamed)? I'm not sure why all the others were kept except perhaps lack of concensus. Other uses as you point out are not necessarily grounds for inclusion of the sum-of-parts definition. For instance, we do not (and should not) also define orange blossom as a blossom that is orange in color. On the other hand, we have apple pie, so it's not so easy to code these. DAVilla 14:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Then, if entries for terms like "orange blossom" are deemed valid because of the possible prevented error, we would have to include *both* compositional senses of the two-word composition. (There could be more senses 3 for orange and 3 for blossom would require as many as 9 senses, though some would be excludable. Would we need usage notes to explain why some combinations are to be excluded?) This would seem like an argument to take a stand against entries with only compositional meaning.

Revisiting what would make someone come to Wiktionary to look up orange blossom, how would someone even know to type in the words together? Presumably, they would come to a dictionary because the meaning they initially thought was right turned out not to fit, but they couldn't get the right sense from the context alone. An argument against.

MW3unabridged actually has 3 non-compositional senses for "orange blossom" (2 botanical, one alcoholic) and include the compositional sense as well, suggesting that they found it wise to include at least and only the most common compositional sense. W doesn't have any of the non-compositional senses. (:( They are not entirely consistent in this regard, including only a color called "cherry blossom" (not white !!!). A make-weight argument against.

I'd lean against including them if it were a serious issue, but I could be persuaded. DCDuring 03:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Please re-read my posting above. I didn't say that the entry was valid. What I showed was that both interpretations of the phrase were potentially valid depending upon the context in which the phrase was used. This should not be taken to mean that I favor having an entry for orange blossom—quite the contrary. Only cherry blossom seems reasonable to me as an entry, and that's because it does have a specific use that isn't simply a result of the combination; there is a specific artistic motif in Japanese mon that is termed a cherry blossom when discussed in English texts (see entry and quotation). --EncycloPetey 04:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a few other term's that have actually been quite a bit more controversial in Wiktionary's history, that have survived WT:RFD. Just to make sure I follow you, could you explain why we should not have an entry for "Egyptian pyramid?" Hippietrail's arguments against that entry never sat well with me. But perhaps you could explain it differently? (Actually, any of those similar entries that have been discussed already: touch-tone dialling, pulse dialling, missile silo, ballistic missile, tree frogs, green tea, fried egg, tidal wave, fictional character, leaf storm, forest fire, etc.) --Connel MacKenzie 04:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

For every one of the specific words cited I see additional meaning, a more specific sense, or a technical derivation (dialling, missile) that would warrant inclusion.

• Were it not for the golf use of fried egg (I'm sure that we could find more usages like that, too.), I would have been inclined to exclude it.
• "Green tea" is not just tea that happens to be green, except possibly to someone in the business of processing plant products, to whom green means a lot more than color.
• A "tidal wave" is a misnomer that needs a correct definition that is different from the compositional sense. Tree frog connects with a genus.
• "Fictional character" seems to be a weaker case, but the sense is more specific than a character who is fictional.
• "Leaf storm" is poetic and its meaning is obvious only to someone from a place with lots of deciduous trees.
• "Forest fire" is not just any old fire in the forest, but rather one out of control and large.
• "Touch-tone dialling" and "touch-tone phone" entered general speech as phrases, "touch-tone" being the good invention of old Ma Bell (AT&T), I think.
• "Ballistic missile" used to refer to, say, a thrown ball would strike people as incorrect or funny.
• "Missile silo", I suppose, might be restricted to "underground missile silo", which goes against the image of a typical silo, thereby requiring clarification.

Interestingly, I found that some meanings intuitively at first seemed merely compositional to me, until I focused on the question. It has made me realize how much idiom there is.

A non-compositional meaning test wouldn't really seem to exclude very many actual entries, but it would require someone to find the way in which the meaning was non-compositional or find a particular justification. It might have the effect of sharpening the wording of the non-compositional senses in the entries. I still personally have trouble including entries like those for our fruit-and-color-word phrases except where is some particular extra meaning, even a color description or a mixed-drink name. DCDuring 14:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

My apologies for such an open-ended question. But sampling that tiny sub-set of examples, can you point to any rule/wording/test that might help weed some of these out more easily? A couple years ago, we looked to the Pawley list for guidance; DAVilla later refined those items into specific tests, but we still seem to run into these issues over and over again. --Connel MacKenzie 22:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I would have found myself unable to exclude any of the entries you brought up. The only kind of justification I could think of for excluding phrases might be based on something connected to whether people actually looked up the phrase as opposed to the component words.

Maybe a more radical approach is required. I am reminded of looking up a quote in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations's index. They have it by keywords. Isn't that also how concordances work? Maybe a wiktionary well suited for looking up and otherwise handling individual words isn't ideally suited for handling phrases. That would mean that there would be have to be interwiki-type links to get someone from a single-word look-up to a phrase look-up and back. — This comment was unsigned. from c. 23:00 9 October 2007 DCDuring 15:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

And copied to Wiktionary:List of idioms that survived RFD, minus the jumping off a cliff. The page is barely more than a skeleton and could really use the examples mentioned above. DAVilla 14:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

One other note: the "fried egg" test refers to the fact that a scrambled egg is in fact, fried...and that a fried egg cannot ever be a scrambled egg (well, unless it's a really bad cook!) That is, the term "fried egg" doesn't mean just any egg that happens to be fried, but rather, fried in a fairly specific way. I don't know who added that golf sense, but I am pretty sure that was added long after the controversy blew over. --Connel MacKenzie 22:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Doh. Of course. Not all eggs that are fried are "fried eggs". I can see that I'm not thinking the right way to even notice the non-compositonality of meanings. I have to slow down, not rely on habit, and be purely logical about it. DCDuring 23:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Just a couple more comments, but then I shall quiet down on this topic for a while. I recognize it is important to hear lots of other people's comments on this; at the same time, I don't want it to get lost in the shuffle again. I actually agree quite strongly, that the "signal-to-noise ratio" argument is valid. Hypocritically, I personally have also advocated the "Pawley list" etc., for a long time. Traditionally, we've used categories, direct wiki-linking, related terms, derived terms and see-alsos for organizing phrases, idioms and set phrases. It would be more relevant if we had "previous three words/next three words" (within a language) displayed by the software on each page (or each language section within a page.) But this software currently doesn't do that...the closest thing is the {{rank}} for the top 1,000 English words (which never really went over well, with some people.) I have no idea how to measure what proportion of lookups are from the [Go]/[Search] buttons on the left column, vs. how many pages are reached from direct links (either other pages here, links from Wikipedia, links from ninjawords, links from about.com, etc.) Because of WMF privacy issues, there is no way to analyze the http server logs to find out. That leaves me to assume that very few external lookups for multi-word phrases succeed. Rolling with that assumption, the various entries in question would then be primarily reached from internal links, so checking "Whatlinkshere" from the left column (on any given page) will be a good indication. --Connel MacKenzie 19:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Pawley-list inclusionism vs. access

The Pawley list mentioned above would include "orange blossom" under criterion 11 (and probably others, like the intonation criterion mentioned above). One couldn't say "orange faded blossom" instead of "faded orange blossom". There would seem to be value to having such an inclusive listing. How will users gain useful access to the multi-word entries?

Looking up a word in a dictionary is a well-established user practice. How can the multi-word entries be presented to users who might benefit from them, without requiring them to scroll or pg-dn through things they don't need? At the very least, it would argue for making the less-used items at the top of an entry less space-consuming when first presented to a user. Some kind of "table of contents", preferrably in the whitespace on the right-hand side, would be nice.

I also like the idea of a concordance-style presentation of words as used in phrases that were included in a complete Pawley-style listing. DCDuring 16:03, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The example of "orange faded blossom" is a violation of standard English grammar. If one of the descriptors of a noun is another noun used in an attributive sense, then the non-attributive descriptor must preceed it. Therefore, that particular case is a grammar issue, not a definition issue. Pages already have the option of showing a Table of Contents. If you are not seeing them on a long page, you can adjust your user preferences to see them. I make use of them all the time for lengthy pages. --EncycloPetey 10:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Sometimes mistakes are the ONLY way I learn. I'm happy that there might be some basis for excluding some entries limited though they may be. I never cease to be amazed that speakers of a language speak and write as if they knew rules which they can't articulate and can usually not even recognize when pointed out to them. I know the same thing applies to, say, walking up the stairs or breathing but speaking is so close to our consciousness! DCDuring 11:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

We have an example of a right-hand TOC floating around here somewhere. Can anyone provide a link or code?

Multiple-word terms can almost always be handled as derived terms (although that does tend to flood the section). DAVilla 02:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Still, if you want an example thereof, see the Information desk. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 08:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

He's talking about NS:0. {{tocright}} isn't for NS:0. --Connel MacKenzie 03:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Sum-of-Parts Criteria?

[Taken from the RfD discussion of "series finale"]

Keep, as above. I've been thinking about this, and bottom line, I don't think we serve any useful purpose at this point by demanding a clear showing of idiomaticity from all polywords. This is particularly the case since we not yet achieved any general consensus on which types of phrases are idiomatic and which are not. Thus the results of RFDs for these phrases tend to be capricious and inconsistent, which is a terrible disservice to contributors. IMO a plausible claim of idiomaticity within the entry should generally be sufficient to stave off deletion. -- Visviva 06:10, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you suggesting complete abandonment of any SoP criterion? If not what you observe would seem to warrant some consensus-building on decision criteria for phrases. I would expect that it would be a salutary exercise. Also, I have observed that parsing the compositional meanings of these phrases points out missing senses of the component words, remedying what seems a deficiency in Wikipedia. 11:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Basically, I'm suggesting that we drop the hubristic pretense that we know everything there is to know about the relationships between words and phrases. There's nothing harmful about otherwise well-formed entries for possibly-compositional phrases; these are not remotely in the same class as spam/promotional/vandalistic/project-inappropriate entries which must be eliminated or sequestered as part of the healthy growth process. Although the number of n-grams in English vastly dwarfs the number of unary words, the actual risk that we will drown in such entries is vanishingly small. Further, by allowing entries which make some verifiable claim of idiomaticity, we provide space for such entries to grow and be improved upon, so that the presence or absence of idiomaticity can be ascertained more clearly over time. On the other hand, by making arbitrary and capricious decisions about deletion based on who happens to be paying attention this week, we prevent the natural growth and improvement of these entries and damage the long-term prospects of our project. -- Visviva 04:12, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. In my experience, the only frequent problem with non-vandalism SOP entries is that they tend to veer on the encyclopedic (discussing concepts rather than terms); and in questionably-SOP cases, we can always address this by removing the encyclopedic content rather than by deleting the entry. —Ruakh_TALK 04:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be suggesting, without coming right out and saying it, that there ought to be NO hubristic Sum-of-Parts restrictions on new non-unary entries. That would be a clear proposal. It would have the advantage of focusing efforts more on defining and verifying rather than excluding. Exclusionists would still have the option of "voting with their fingers" by simply not working on non-unary entries.

Another solution would be to draw a bright line at the most obvious place to draw one: exclude all non-unary main entries. Making that work would require expanding the treatment of "related terms" in the entry for at least one of the main words used in any phrase. Little would be lost in terms of findability. Something would be lost in linkability (unless the phrases were made headings?). The sacredness of the "entry" concept for phrases seems unwarranted, given the ability of search engines to find free text. Placing all phrases in word main entries would, IMHO, facilitate the addition of many senses of the component words, an area of deficiency. It would also allow quotations and etymology to do some double duty, providing support both to the word and the phrases using it.DCDuring 16:14, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Templates that categorize.

As we all know, we have a number of templates that automatically categorize the pages that transclude them. Usually this works wonderfully, but sometimes we want to transclude a template on a discussion or documentation page, for demonstration purposes, which frequently adds an inappropriate category. In general, I think it's pretty clear what kinds of pages — as in, what namespaces — a template is genuinely intended for; for example, context templates are intended for article pages, and shouldn't add non-article pages to categories. Does this make sense? Is this something I should set about fixing? —Ruakh_TALK 17:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't encounter this often; usually just using {{temp}} is adequate. Do you have a way of excluding the category if not in NS:0? Perhaps. --Connel MacKenzie 18:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is a huge problem, but it's a good thing to fix. Of course things get messy if you want to target more than one namespace for inclusion/exclusion. -- Visviva 10:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a fine idea: if we routinely use, instead of the includeonly tags:

{{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}||[[Category:...]]}}

(if namespace has a name, do nothing, else the cat) then templates can be used as examples anywhere. Very useful. And doesn't really add overhead, the parser has to parse the tags or the condition. (yes, the condition is a little more, but doesn't cause a template call or SQL query) If the template is to be used to categorize appendixes or something as well, this won't work, but that is not a common case. Robert Ullmann

I would be more selective in what is removed. Even outside of contribution space, there is a lot of content in the dictionary besides the main namespace.

{{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{TALKSPACE}}|Help|User|Wiktionary=|#default=[[Category:...|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}

Why a parameter to Category is required is beyond my understanding. I don't think there are any cases where we'd actually want something sorted under the first letter of its namespace. DAVilla 14:13, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Sigh, as usual you take a simple idea and complexify it :-). The vast majority of the templates that categorize are used only in NS:0, and if used outside as examples or for occasional convenience, should not be categorizing. Remember that one can always add an explicit cat. It is harder to de-cat the template (usually subst: far enough to get the cat, remove it, and leave the resulting mess ;-). Most of our categories should never have entries outside NS:0, except occasionally for indexes and such that you want to add with a sort key of (space) or * so they are at the beginning. (so you use an explicit cat anyway ;-)

The other thing really should be treated as a bug. Maybe we could get it fixed? Robert Ullmann 14:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's really rather silly to have to state either |{{PAGENAME}} or |&#32; every time. The first should be the default when no parameter is provided. The latter should be possible with just the pipe | as an empty parameter (or is it already?) DAVilla 02:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm for this. I've done it before, but was reverted over time, or even reverted myself to simplify. DAVilla 14:13, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

apocopate adjectives

I'd like to created a category for Spanish apocopate adjectives (gran, san, buen, mal, cualquier, un, algún, ningún, primer, tercer, cien, postrer). Is "Category:Spanish apocopate adjectives" a good name? Rod (A. Smith) 22:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Impatient, I created Category:Spanish apocopate adjectives. It's a wiki, so we can change the name if we find a better one. Besides the forms listed above, the short forms of possessive adjectives seem to me to qualify as apocopate forms. (Es el libro mío. vs. Es mi libro.) Does anyone disagree? Rod (A. Smith) 23:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree on one, possibly two, counts. The questionable count is dependant upon whether the apocope happened in Spanish or happened in Vulgar Latin, prior to the origin of Spanish. If the apocope occurred in Latin, then I think calling it a "Spanish apocopate" is misleading. Where I strongly disagree is in labelling the possessive pronouns as "adjectives". While the apocopate forms do function as adjectives, they are still pronouns grammatically and etymologically. I have a similar problem with dumping the apocopate numerals and determiners in as "adjectives" as well, but don't have an elegant solution to offer. The whole idea might work better as an Index or Appendix rather than as a category, so that the issue of adjective functions for other parts of speech can be addressed, but I'll have to give it some thought. --EncycloPetey 05:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer a more general name, if you can think of one you'd be O.K. with. English also has some adjectives like this, and "apocopate" doesn't apply to all of them. (Consider lone from alone, which demonstrates apheresis rather than apocope.) It would be nice to have a name that applies a bit more widely, something like [[Category:Language prenominal adjective forms]], maybe? Taking into account EncycloPetey's concern, we can broaden it even further, maybe something like [[Category:Language prenominal modifier forms]]? (Are determiners considered modifiers?) —Ruakh_TALK 01:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

For the Spanish category, the sought name would describe, roughly, "words each of whose attributive, prenominal form is shorter than its predicative or otherwise post-nominal form". Maybe it would help to generalize even more, though, and just try to capture the abbreviated aspect of the words without making the category declare the conditions under which the language uses the form. (E.g., roughly, "Category:[Language] syntax-driven shortened word forms") Does that make sense? (For what it's worth, es:buen calls buen Apócope de bueno.) Rod (A. Smith) 04:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The RAE calls it that too. I'm just wondering about the pronouns, specifically. The RAE labels mi with (Apóc), but I still wonder whether that didn't happen in Vulgar Latin. Comparison with modern French is no help because the French possessive pronouns are largely monosyllabic anyway. --EncycloPetey 05:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, French also has two sets of possessive pronouns, analogous to English's and Spanish's. Like English's and Spanish's, the long forms can be used attributively and non-determinatively; but unlike them, oddly enough, they still typically precede the noun. So, "brother mine" = "el hermano mío" = "le mien frère". (Of course, the French version is about as rare as the English; I don't recommend trying to use it in conversation. But it does exist.) —Ruakh_TALK 05:48, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll hold off on the pronouns, then, hoping for more insight. For the adjectives, though, it seems pretty safe to follow RAE's lead and put them in Category:Spanish apocopate adjectives. Coolio? Rod (A. Smith) 06:35, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I already use the {{apocopic form of}} template for ALL Italian apocopic words (with lang=Italian). This adds them to Category:Italian apocopic forms. SemperBlotto 07:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks, SemperBlotto. Although, a quick google books:apocopate vs. google books:apocopic and google scholar:apocopate vs google scholar:apocopic suggests that "apocopate" is significantly more common. I don't much care either way. Opinions? Rod (A. Smith) 09:54, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Semper's approach looks good to me. It nicely avoids the problem of specifying a POS. I have no personal preference in of apocopic vs. apocopate. --EncycloPetey 16:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. See Category:Spanish apocopic forms. Rod (A. Smith) 23:39, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Alternative spellings

Could we change "Alternative spellings" to just plain "spellings"? It seems a bit weird to describe obsolete/archaic/nonstandard spelling as "alternatives". --Ptcamn 09:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It was me who came up with the current heading way back when but for a couple of years now I've been wishing it were "Spellings" or "Other spellings" — Hippietrail 12:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether I agree, but if we do make that change, then I advocate moving "Hyphenation" to that section from "Pronunciation". Hyphenation is about where a word is broken when it wraps lines and is strictly a spelling issue. Such breaks do not necessarily (and often don't) fall where the break in pronunciation occurs, and has nothing to do with the way a word sounds. Consider felˑlow versus /ˈfɛl.əʊ/, for example. --EncycloPetey 13:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I think we should probably do away with "hyphenation" entirely and leave it to the . mark in the pronunciations to show the syllabation. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 15:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Um... except that the two don;t always match, as I noted above. You can't get hyphenation correct from the pronunciation because the written syllable breaks do not pair exactly with the spoken syllable breaks. Didn't you look at the example I gave above? The word fellow is hyphenated between the L's, but the syllable break comes after the pronounced L. Additional examples can be found in both English and Latin for any word containing X. The word exact is hyphenated as exˑact, but pronounced as /ɛgˈzækt/; the pronounced break comes in the middle of the X!

There are also cases where the difference in pronunciation between the US and UK results in a different location for the spoken syllable break between the two countries, but the written syllable break is the same in both countries. Example (off the top of my head): ecumenical, which can be (Received Pronunciation) /ˌiː.kjʊˈmɛn.ɪ.kəl/ or (US) /ˌɛk.jʊˈmɛn.ɪ.kəl/. But in both countries the hyphenation is ecˑuˑmenˑiˑcal. There are more drastic examples, but I can't recall a specific one at the moment.

In short, hyphenation does not match pronunciation and is in fact not really related. Written syllable breaks follow different rules from spoken ones. --EncycloPetey 23:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I get a bit spacey sometimes :) Also, when it comes to wiktionary I tend to think about single languages rather than all of them, especially English. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 00:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Word. —Ruakh_TALK 18:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like /ˈfɛ.ləʊ/ to me. Otherwise it would have to be a dark L. But your point still stands. DAVilla 02:25, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree, except insofar as this would further complicate the "alternative spellings" vs. "alternative forms" thing. —Ruakh_TALK 18:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Could we make the whole section just Written forms or Written variants to avoid the question of "spelling"? --EncycloPetey 00:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

That's a really good idea. As a /..er would say, +1. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 01:37, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

What about spoken variants that would be spelled differently? — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 02:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

If the spelling is different, and the pronunciation is also different, then wouldn't they just have separate pages? Can you give an example? --EncycloPetey 03:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Some examples I can think of: Bosporus vs. Bosphorus; aluminum vs. aluminium; like death warmed up vs. like death warmed over; burden vs. burthen. (Not all of these necessarily need to be handled the same way; but personally I think "Written forms/variants" is fine, because that's how the listing works. Some of the written forms/variants might have their own pronunciations as well, but that's incidental. Alternatively, we could shorten the whole thing to just "variants", which could cover a range of different things.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, I see what you mean. Yea, my preference would be to include such things in this section (whatever we call it). I do think that we need to specify written, though, or we end up throwing the door open to abuse of the section. "Variants" is just too vague for me to see it as a useful section header. In some ways, I prefer "Written forms" as I think about it. --EncycloPetey 04:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

In some places we are already using Alternative forms in place of Alternative spellings when "spelling" doesn't apply to all terms. DAVilla 02:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. My proposal is to do away with "Alternative spellings" and "Alternative forms" altogether, replacing it with "Written forms" or "Written variants". That way, we can use a single section header for the whole shebang. --EncycloPetey 03:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I think "variants" has similar problems to "alternative": it's not entirely accurate to describe an obsolete form as a "variant" of the modern form since they may never have been in use at the same time. --Ptcamn 06:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

In case not everyone remembers the earlier saga about this header name, let me point out that the header is applied to sets of words, none of which should be considered subordinate to the others (e.g. color and colour). Some names like "variants" imply to some readers that the listed terms are somehow subordinate to the entry. Such names should be avoided. Rod (A. Smith) 06:48, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

So, then what do you think about Written forms or Other written forms? --EncycloPetey 16:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest ===Other written forms===. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 09:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Ptcamn and favour =Spellings=. It covers a multitude of needs. Widsith 10:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

But "spelling" only applies to languages that use alphabets. It leaves out Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean, and a host of other major languages. Additionally, there are cases where the spelling is the same, but the written form is different. For languages that do use alphabets, consider cases where the only difference is in capitalization, without changing the spelling. It would be incorrect to say that Coke and coke are different spellings, because they're not; they're merely capitalized differently. There are some cases where this other form is used in the same language with the same meaning, and we want to be able to draw attention to this fact. I can think of several so-called "proper adjectives" which may be either capitalized or not depending upon the author and publisher's choice of capitalization. For instance, in scientific names of plants, the epithet (when derived from he name of a person) may be capitalized or not, at whim. So we can have Barbula johansenii or Barbula Johansenii. --EncycloPetey 16:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

How about in stead of "other written forms" or "other spellings" or something we just have "Variants"? I kinda like the sound of that word, anyway. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 00:23, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that both “variant” and “alternative” carry very slight disparaging connotations for some, whereas “other” seems to be completely neutral. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:22, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Variant? Disparaging??? I think you'd have to be pretty thin-skinned or emotionally unstable for the word "variant" to get to you that much, at least in this context.... — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 01:29, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

What I meant is, that both terms can imply subordination — variant more so than alternative, I think. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:41, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Another way to put it is that "variant" in English implies "nonstandard" or "rare", which is not what we want the section title to imply. --EncycloPetey 02:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I like ===Spellings===, ===Written forms=== or ===Spellings and forms=== for the heading.

The reason "other", "variant", "alternate", "alternative" and "different" should all be avoided is twofold:

1. Such a subtle bias for one form over another should be avoided without some evidence (in which case it should be noted within the section or said in a "Usage notes" section, or similar.)
2. These other forms should all have reflexive "===Spellings===" headings that point back to the correct spelling.

So, to have defective spellings claiming superiority (via a misleading section heading) over the correct spellings, is really problematic. If another spelling is rare, it should be identified as rare. But not in the heading, as that heading should be common to both entries. --Connel MacKenzie 02:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree about point #1, but I don't quite see point #2; it seems like a link to the correct/main spelling should be provided in the definition line itself. Either the "Spellings" section would only include the correct/main spelling, in which case it doesn't add anything new and has a misleading header, or it would include all spellings (or at least, all correct ones), in which case it could be a pain to maintain all of these. (Keep in mind that plenty of English words have gazillions of obsolete spellings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; I don't think there's any benefit to every single spelling's entry listing every single other spelling.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Consider vaporware vs. vapourware. Which one is correct? Depends on your audience, no? In a UK context, the wrong spelling should be used. But it would not be a NPOV to call it "the wrong spelling" so I won't.  :-)   Note that both entries should (and currently do) have "===Alternative spellings===" sections. --Connel MacKenzie 04:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think "obsolete" spellings have ever been considered valid "alternative spellings" on Wiktionary. I'd oppose any such expansion of scope. On the other hand, the genuine alternate spellings should match all around. --Connel MacKenzie 04:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

If we go with ===Spellings=== or some such, we can have a subsection for obsolete spellings that clearly identifies them as such. The OED includes such spellings by virtue of the fact that they turn up in old but well-known sources (like Shakespeare and Milton). --EncycloPetey 04:10, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I like the neutrality and broad applicability of "Written forms": variations in spelling (color and colour), capitalization (hell and Hell), writing systems (abeceda and абецеда; hanja; kana; Chinese traditional/simplified/bopomofo), pre-reform spellings (daß), archaic spellings (aethyr), abbreviations (first and 1st), alternate romanizations (Yale, McCune-Reischauer, Wu, Pinyin), and even alternate Unicode code points (I and Ⅰ; ㅂ (b), ᄇ (b), and ᆸ (p)). Combined with "Pronunciations", we would have the flexibility to show all written and spoken variations of an expression. I'm not certain about minor variations of a sign in a signed language, but I suppose we can work that out when it arises.

In short, I support changing "Alternative spellings" to "Written forms". Rod (A. Smith) 17:14, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

What if a "Written form" has a different pronunciation? Would we just make not of that in the other spelling's article, or what? I'm not sure how this is going to work. lol — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 18:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Could you please provide an example? Pronunciations that vary by regional accent use {{a}}. Those that vary by sense use {{sense}}. If one really varies by written form, but not by accent or sense, I suppose it could use a generic {{qualifier}}. Rod (A. Smith) 19:24, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Like...in Romanian nouns and adjectives that end with the definite article -ul. In formal speech, "patul" would be pronounced /patul/ but in everday speech and writing, it's written "patu" and pronounced /patu/. I can't think of anything else in particular right now. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 21:46, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

How does this seem? (unindenting)

Written forms

• (informal) patu
• (formal) patul

Pronunciation

• (informal) IPA^(key): /patu/
• (formal) IPA^(key): /patul/

Rod (A. Smith) 23:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

singularia tantum

Riemann zeta function and Basel problem are singularia tantum. Does that make them proper nouns necessarily? If not, what sort of inflection line should we use?—msh210℠ 21:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

If they were common nouns, we'd use {{en-noun|sg=[[Riemann]] [[zeta]] [[function]]|-}}, etc., so they'd display like mass nouns. They seem like proper nouns, though, so they should probably use {{en-proper noun|sg=[[Riemann]] [[zeta]] [[function]]}}, etc. Rod (A. Smith) 22:13, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. (The former isn't perfect, though, since not all singularia tantum are mass nouns; an example discussed recently somewhere was "block and tackle", which isn't a mass noun but doesn't seem to have a standard plural form.) —Ruakh_TALK 22:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

However it's handled, these cases are strange enough to warrant a Usages notes section to explain the situation. I'd certainly agree that Basel problem is a proper noun based on the research I've been doing. The Riemann zeta function isn't as clearly a proper noun, but I think that's what I'd call it too. The division between common and proper noun isn't always as clear-cut as gradeschool grammars would have us believe. --EncycloPetey 04:06, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

How about '''[[the]] [[Basel]] [[problem]]''' (''no plural'')[[category:English nouns]] or '''[[the]] [[Basel]] [[problem]]''' (''singulare tantum'')[[category:English nouns]]? This will leave it as a (common) noun in the category, but not list it as uncountable.—msh210℠ 19:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Other singularia tantum are podosphere, blogosphere, Internet (the capitalized term only), World Wide Web, fermat's last theorem, and doubtless others. Any of these might be called proper nouns (and that's how we list World Wide Web) or common; I guess EncycloPetey would say they're all proper (right?). So we have to decide whether we count them as proper or common; and, if the latter, then I think we need to add singulare-tantum functionality to the en-noun template.—msh210℠ 20:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Although not so defined, I could see podosphere and blogosphere being used with more plasticity as with biosphere or atmosphere, e.g. the "French podosphere" or a "personal blogosphere". All the others are names of specific entities to me, that is, proper nouns, even the math problems, which are not just the formulas and their equivalents, but the narrower way in which they were stated. For instance, the Basel problem didn't just ask the value of what can now be thought of as the Riemann zeta function at 2, it raised the question of its convergence. The Riemann zeta function isn't so much a utilitarian function like sin or ln as it is the problem of extending that function to the complex numbers. On the other hand, functions suffer the plasticity problem, so it's probably better to keep that last one as a common noun, with no attested plural. DAVilla 11:08, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Languages with more than one grammatical gender

This edit introduced substantial text and declared the project page an official policy. I don't see any vote for that specific wording, and the editor who introduced {{Policy-TT}} was a short-lived contributor, so I think the policy declaration was premature and a draft notice should be added. Right? Rod (A. Smith) 01:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. I see now the sequence of events. {{Policy-TT}} used to be for pre-policy think tank drafts. Then the template was merged into {{policy}}. I have added a draft notice. Rod (A. Smith) 02:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Refocusing the logo discussion

Current new consensus version.

I'm starting a new section here because it appears to me that the earlier thread (#Logo) got completely off-track. The issue here is not the scrabble logo. I think it is safe to operate under the assumption that that logo has no consensus here at the English Wiktionary, and that any effort to implement it would involve lots more discussion and negotiation. What we can do easily is fix up the status quo logo. I think the current up-to-date preferred logo version seemed to be (excuse the name): Image:Wiktionary-logo-en-modified-RP-punctuated.png (pictured). This has our preferred punctuation, a change to the capitalization of the opening words for the definitions and the defined words, a change from "open content" to "free content" and a capitalization fix there as well, use of /broad transcription/ markers instead of [narrow transcription] markers, and the general clarity fixes.

Perhaps this is all we'll agree on completely. The only other major issues outstanding are the pronunciation used, and whether we want to keep wilco or not. I have been (and will be for a few more days) out of town--hence the sudden dropping out of the discussion--but I'd like to get a vote so we can implement something with the uncontroversial changes at least, sometime soon. Dmcdevit·t 04:02, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thumbs-up to all the changes made by that version. (And thumbs-down to RP. ;-) It would also be cool to add hyphenation dots ("Wik·tion·ar·y"), if there's room. —Ruakh_TALK 04:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

To the headword or the pronunciation? Either way though, since we don't do that for any of our own words really, I'm not sure about it. Dmcdevit·t 08:09, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I meant, to the headword. And really, almost none of the icon reflects how we actually do things here; I thought the goal was for the icon to look like a stereotypical dictionary, which is nothing like Wiktionary. If you're anti-dots, though, that's O.K.; I just thought it would be cool. —Ruakh_TALK 16:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

favicon

The changes are improvements, but the basic premise of this logo is all wrong. It's formatted as if we list one definition after another, like a concise paper dictionary, without all of the things that make our entries interesting (etymology, alternate pronunciations, plural, hyperlinks, translations, related terms), and it uses the confusing n. abbreviation. All of those problems are because the logo tries to show a dictionary entry in a small space that cannot possibly support the required detail. Finally, it is completely illegible when it is scaled well down to the "favorite icon" size. The problems with the design, I believe, are insurmountable. The horse is pretty much dead. Let's stop beating it. Rod (A. Smith) 05:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

As noted above, none of the other projects simply scale down their logo for favicon size. The fact that we are the only project not to have created a favicon is not a point against the logo itself. Neither is the "n."—that is a feature that can be easily changed; if that is wanted, I can make a mock-up. So the issue is the concept. As it stands, I much prefer the current logo concept to the cartoonish scrabble logo. My point is simply that changing the concept for the logo is a potentially very long-term project; we should not suffer an easily-fixed flawed logo, even if it is only a temporary one. (That's code for: if you'd like a concept change, start that process, but let's get on with this, too, and not let it get bogged down in the concept discussion.) Dmcdevit·t 08:09, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Could you look at Image:Wiktionary-logo-de.png which I found on Commons please, it doesn't have "encyclopedia" or "wilco". Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 12:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

But it's devoid of context. There's a gray "Wikiworterbuch" floating above the rest for no discernible reason. --EncycloPetey 13:27, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it's not exactly perfect. Words "encyclopedia" or "wilco" do not create a context either for anyone who doesn't know what they mean on the logo. Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 13:52, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, they do. They create a visual context by their presence and the fact that we are only seeing a portion of them. This implies that there is more content both preceding and following the entry. Having a single gray word in another language floating above an Enlgish definition provides no context at all, nor has any meaning or reason to be there. --EncycloPetey 13:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean with "visual context" because when I saw that logo I didn't understand the context. I didn't mean that English Wiktionary logo would have the same word, I don't think there necessarily has to be anything above "Wiktionary". Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 14:06, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

favicon

Could parts of the two logos be together. Less text and an image, which could then be used as a favicon. I tried the image on the right above "Wiktionary" without pronunciation writing or "wilco", and it looked quite good. I didn't upload it because I'm poor at editing png pictures. I'd suggest this text:
Wiktionary
A wiki-based
free multilingual
dictionary.
Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 11:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

free encyclopedia.
Wiktionary
From wiki & dictionary.
n., A multilingual free
and open content
language reference.
wilbe contr.,

or something more correct. (Do compact dictionaries close definitions with periods? How are proper nouns marked?) Best though if it's printed on very thin paper and photographed. DAVilla 11:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is the test picture, I uploaded it. There's less text but what's there is the same than in Dmcdevit's version. There would be space to make it a bit longer, but "encyclopedia" sounds like Wiktionary is an encyclopedia, and "wilco" etc sounds like it's a short form for Wiktionary (Wiktionary language content :)? ) Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 12:15, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

primum non nocere

I just found the phrase primum non nocere in the quote:

"Legislators alas, never learned "primum non nocere" as MD's do."

So I'm pretty sure it is Latin for "first do no harm". But if I make an entry under Latin, what POS do I use? RJFJR 13:32, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Phrase. The only other option is Proverb, but that doesn't quite work. --EncycloPetey 13:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Copy violations

I note that on the RFV page the word 'dicacious' points to an entry which has the sole reference: "OED 2nd edition 1989". (which seems a perfectly sensible reference).

However, when I recently informally pointed to OED2 and mentioned that it had documented usages I was accused of advocating copyright violations. The exact wording was: "You (elsewhere) advocated using the OED2's citations as justification for an entry here - yes, that would be a copyright violation.". (Note: using, not, copying);

Can someone explain (or point to a page that explains) exactly where the line is drawn?

As an example of what I'm trying to ascertain: If in your normal course of editing here you discover a word the authenticity of which you are unsure, is it a copy vio to ascertain that the word exists by looking it up in a dictionary to check that it does exist? Obviously I know that copying the definition or any other text, verbatim, does constitute a copy vio.

I apologise in advance if this question seems obvious, or pedantic, but I take any accusation of copyright violation very seriously and no one questioned that accusation in situ. House 11:08, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

We have Dictionary notes (not for all entries, just a few notable ones), so no, of course it does not. DAVilla 11:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

So the accusation is, as I suspected, entirely spurious. Thanks for the confirmation. House 11:44, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the accusation, I just responded to your question. By the way, we don't use secondary references like the OED in our verification process except, possibly, to lend some credibility initially. Ultimately however the citations must be of use rather than mention. DAVilla 11:56, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Never fear, I was able to confirm the spurious nature of the accusation on the basis of your reply. Yes, I was aware that mention in another dictionary is not acceptable for CFI. House 16:54, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

It should be, though. It's a bit hard to include all words in all languages when some languages don't even have written literature that could be cited as evidence of use. --Ptcamn 04:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Which is one reason why we have the third criterion for inclusion: “[a]ppearance in a refereed academic journal”. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Dictionaries aren't refereed academic journals... --Ptcamn 22:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I know. I was making the point that literatureless languages whose lexeis are studied in refereed academic journals can be accorded entries under the third criterion. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 23:15, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The OED's CFI.

Since the topic comes up every so often, and I think people have mistaken ideas about the OED's criteria for inclusion, here's a relevant link: Choosing which words to include - Writing the Oxford English Dictionary. Make of it what you will. —Ruakh_TALK 22:34, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Seems very reasonable.

Of course, the policy for an organisation staffed exclusively by highly literate people who are professionally engaged in lexicography will be significantly different to that adopted by one where anyone can start adding words, sometimes maliciously, sometimes with a hidden agenda and sometimes incompetently or with inadequate research. Moglex 12:49, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"A common myth about the OED is that it contains every word that is or has ever been part of the English language. Sadly, this is not the case. The English language is far too large and diverse to be fully recordable in a dictionary, even one the size of the OED." Not anymore. bd2412 T 04:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:Portmanteaus

I removed gerrymander from Category:Portmanteaus because it contains the full etymon Gerry and I remember some wheel warring in the past that I thought ended with the criterion that part of each etymon must be dropped for us to call a word a "blend" or a "portmanteau". I cannot find any such discussion now, though. Does anyone else remember that? In any event, Scott Ritchie accurately notes that Category:Portmanteaus contains some words that include one of their etymons in full. What should our criterion be for inclusion in that category? (Whatever it is, it should be described clearly in the category page. And while we're at it, should we rename this to the more general "Category:Blends"? Rod (A. Smith) 23:07, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: renaming to Category:Blends: Yes, agreed. Re: counting terms that include all of one etymon: Wikipedia, Dictionary.com unabridged, and Merriam-Webster Online (click through to "blend[2,noun]") all appear to count such terms. Other dictionaries don't say anything that makes it clear they count such terms, but also don't say anything that makes it clear they don't. I think we might as well count them. —Ruakh_TALK 00:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a difference between a portmanteau (looser definition) and a blend? Regardless, I support renaming the category, although if there's consensus that portmanteaus don't include words like gerrymander then perhaps portmanteaus could be a (more restrictive) subcategory of blends. Scott Ritchie 20:28, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Portmanteaus are blends that also blend meaning. DAVilla 08:06, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the plural form of portmanteau portmanteaux? --Joe Webster 21:52, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Both the -s and -x -terminal plurals enjoy usage and listing in dictionaries. However, I agree that we ought to prefer portmanteaux. Every -eau word I know forms its plural as -eaux, which I believe looks a lot better than the -eaus form. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 22:43, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Picture-sound-based dictionary

Visual-based words: static words and dynamic (animation) words.

For example a static visual-based word, word DOG... on the picture that represents a dog we add written word DOG, with a rule of how it is spoken and by clicking on it, a sound file is played back.

Then there are activity-based words, which can't be shown on a static picture, but rather on a dynamic, that is animation, so when one need to learn the word RUN in any language, he is shown a number of animations where a dog is in the activity of running, a man is in the activity of running, a horse...

It would be the best if the company could make a software for computers and PDAs, where one could download it, and learn words daily while commuting.

Why do all this? Science have proved that humans remember best when target-material is SEEN, HEARD, SAID and DONE. Wiktionary can make words be SEEN and HEARD, the other two are left to a learner if one wants to.

77.105.60.185 14:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

That’s fine for concrete nouns, verbs, and — though you don’t address them — adjectives, but what of conceptually abstract words? Clearly a good idea though… † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:26, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a nice idea to start over on Wikibooks. We'd have trouble implmenting that here, since we cover all words in all languages. The picture of the dog would have to have thousands of labels. It sounds like you want a resource that teaches only one language, so Wikibooks might be the place to set that up. --EncycloPetey 14:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Well the is a product out called a visual thesaurus: makes a branching graph if you will from the word that is typed in connecting it to its synonyms. The further away from the word the synonym is, the less applicable. If the software you are suggesting is for learning a new language Rosetta Stone does a pretty good job of illustrating verbs and nouns both visually and orally. About the adjective dilemma, haven't you ever seen "School House Rock,"? It may sound silly but the animators did an excellent job illustrating the adjectives.--The Wandering Ensign 15:52, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Requests for quotation

As per #Request For Quotes template and category, I have created {{rfquote-sense}} (whither {{rfcite-sense}} redirects), which, when added to an entry, adds that page to Category:Requests for quotation (shortcut: CAT:RFQ). Use it for making requests for quotations to be added to clarify usage but when you are not challenging the existence of the sense (for which purpose a request for verification is most suitable). I’ll also create {{rfquote}} (whither {{rfcite}} will redirect) for whole words (rather than specific senses thereof) in the next few days, unless someone else beats me to it. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds great. I've just provided quotations for alible, the sole entry that was in Category:Requests for quotation. Got any more? ~ Jeff Q 14:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Upper case or lower case initial

It appears that all generally acknowledged religions are spelled with an initial capital letter. Some philosophical branches are also spelled likewise (e.g. Alternativism, Cynicism, Spiritism). However, anthroposophy, theosophy and spiritualism are not. Is there some hidden consistency in this? Is this something that requires intervention? __meco 08:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think over-generalizing is helpful. If those are recognized as noun descriptions of adjectives, then they are lower-case. If they are commonly recognized as religions, they will be in upper case. Dictating that they must be in upper case would be highly prescriptive, possibly advocating a position that isn't common in English. That is, widely recognized religions are capitalized because they are widely recognized. Capitalizing an adjective (or the noun derived from it) for the sake of "hyper-prescriptivism" would be advocating something that doesn't have any real basis, as reflected in English usage. --Connel MacKenzie 02:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. I'm surprised that the entries for "Alternativism", "Cynicism", and "Spiritism" have caps and that "theosophy" does not. I assume that we would go with whatever is more common, but indicate the other as an alternative (unless it is really rare???). It would be a matter for RfV, wouldn't it? DCDuring 21:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

B.g.c. found 335 instances of "alternativism". I could find no instance of it (when used alone) being capitalized except in lists, headings, titles, or at the beginning of a sentence. There were several instances of "Constructive Alternativism" and a few other noun phrases that saw it capitalized. "Alternativism" looks like a mistake. DCDuring

"Theosophy" and "theosophy" seem to occur roughly equally when used alone in the middle of sentences in books published since 1950. It was much often capitalized in the 19th century. DCDuring 21:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I could see a case for distinguishing "Spiritualism" from "spritualism". The movement probably deserves capitalization, though it would be a bit tedious to find instances on Google Scholar. Right now "Spiritualism" redirects to "spiritualism", which includes the movement as a sense. DCDuring 21:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Spanish moods: conditional

User:Bequw notes at Appendix talk:Spanish conjugation#Is the conditional really a seperate mood? that es:Wikcionario:Referencia/ES/Conjugación and the RAE describe the conditional mood as part of the indicative but Appendix:Spanish conjugation lists the conditional as a separate mood. Feel free to continue that discussion on the appendix talk page. Rod (A. Smith) 16:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:English adjectives that lack comparative forms

Are there actually any? I'm not sure that there are. Pretty much every adjective can be preceded by more or most. (For some it might not make sense, but that's a semantic issue rather than a grammatical one.) Certainly a good deal of those currently in the category are miscategorized, at least. I think it would be better if Template:en-adj didn't categorize such adjectives or display (not comparable), but simply not do anything for words with {{en-adj|-}}. Either that, or someone's going to have to go through and change the vast majority of these entries. --Ptcamn 01:54, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a legitimate benefit to telling readers whether an English adjective is generally considered not to be used comparatively, either for semantic reasons (for absolute adjectives) or for syntactic one reasons (in the case of certain adjectives used like determiners). For example, I am happy to inform readers that chief, first, and Sino-Korean are not used comparatively. We usually take an even more descriptive approach, though, and tell readers whether an adjective is never or only rarely used in the comparative in the wild. We don't lay down any rules, though, so readers excercising their poetic licenses can always choose to prefix such adjectives with "more" and "most". Rod (A. Smith) 05:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

For example, see equal, and also compare more equal. Algrif 10:22, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a great many adjective that are not comparable but they are vastly out-numbered by the majority of adjectives that are comparable. For this reason I believe it a useful category. I also think using {{en-adj}} to auto-categorise is the best way to handle this too - I suspect that there will be more adjectives which show comparative/superlative forms on the inflection line than the other way around.--Williamsayers79 19:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Are Technical definitions appropriate?

I was looking for some help in distinguishing between the terms "stage" and "phase" because in Psychology they seem to indicate different things, however here in Wiktioinary they are listed as synonymous. Doing some extra research, I found a dictionary of psychological terms (English & English, 1958) which defines and distinguishes the two terms. That aside, I was wondering how those "technical" definitions might be integrated in Wiktionary? Do they belong here? Do they belong in Wikipedia? Btw, I will try to check this page but I don't have an account here so you could also respond to User Jsarmi in Wikipedia. Thanks! -Jsarmi

I've been trying to incorporate some psych terms using APA Dictionary of Psychology 2006. There is a lot of jargon in every field. Some it is worth including here, IMHO. Psych is bad because authors try to use words that mean roughly the same thing in ordinary English and make meaningful distinctions. I have had problems with the words affect, emotion, feeling, and the phrase affect display. Some psychotherapists insist that "affect" should only refer to "affect display", whereas most dictionaries (including psych dictionaries) have no distinction between "affect" and "emotion". The use of terms like "flat affect" and "labile affect", which refer to "affect displays" in a context where the genuineness of the displayed affect is an issue is the source of their insistence.

As to "stage" and "phase", APA 2006 makes "stage" to be be a time period characterized by distinctive functioning and "phase" to be either a developmental 'stage' or a time division of some cyclical process. This is more or less included among the ordinary language senses as laid out in, say, Merriam Webster's 3rd unabridged. We might want to be able to reserve "phase" for cyclical phenomena and "stage" for developmental (linear) phenomena, but ordinary language and the APA Dictionary don't fully support that. The Penguin Dict. of Psych., 3rd ed. (2001) favors the sharper distinction.

My thought is that the ordinary meanings of the words are sufficiently close to the psych sense that maybe we should just work to make sure that the ordinary senses of the word that are consistent with the psych sense are included and not act as if there really is a distinctly technical sense. Specific word discussions belong in the 'Tea Room', but the general principles involved are 'Beer parlour' material. DCDuring 15:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I gather that in cases where the "technical" definition illuminates the meaning of a word, beyond what the common-use definition already represents, then it is appropriate to list such technical definitions. Otherwise, this might not be necessary or might be confusing. The conversation in about "stage" and "phase" belongs in the Team Room, but it this pair is a good example of when the common-sense (as synonymous) contradicts the technical sense (i.e. one linear the other cyclical). -Jsarmi

I have assumed that you are looking to include the cyclicality idea in phase. The fourth sense of the noun phase should probably be reworked into something that more obviously corresponds to normal English. It has the idea of cyclicality in it. The wording suggests to me that the author had some particular physical phenomenon in mind, but lost touch with normal speech in writing the entry. If you are looking to include yet another sense of the term, please put an entry in the Tea Room. DCDuring 15:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Protection of Template:third-person singular of

Although fortunately its being unprotected allowed me to make this useful addition thereto, perhaps {{third-person singular of}} should now be protected, seeing as it’s so widely transcluded. The same goes for {{past of}}, which is also presently unprotected.

Could the protecting administrator also add the nocap and nodot parameters to {{present participle of}} and {{form of}} please? Thanks. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:51, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

AF–ELE conflict

It seems from this revision by AutoFormat that it and WT:ELE#Etymology are inconsistent; either that or that nesting does not apply to multiple etymologies which share a pronunciation (homophonous pronunciation aren’t repeated under every etymology section, are they?). Which is it meant to be? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 12:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

What conflict? WT:ELE shows the Etymology n headers at level 3, not nested under pronunciation. The pronunciation is shown nested under etymology n. The case where there is only one pronunciation is not covered, we've mostly done this by simply putting it first at L3. In no case does ELE show Etymology other than at level 3, or show anything nested inside pronunciation. So it gets tagged. Right? Robert Ullmann 13:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah; looking again, there is no conflict. I thought that our formatting practices were different, that’s all. My feeling is: shouldn’t multiple etymologies which share one pronunciation be nested at L4 under the L3 Pronunciation header, in the same way when the situation is vice versa? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

No. In that case we invert the order and place Pronunciation ahead of the various etymology sections (which remain at L3). This reduces the shifting of POS headers and subsections to deeper levels, which is to be avoided (though it can't always, as you have noted). We went through a VOTE on this not too long ago. --EncycloPetey 16:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I thought that in such situations the etymology sections would (or should) go to level four. I guess I missed that VOTE; never mind. I take it WT:ELE is perfectly updated, yeah? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Heh. I don't think it will ever be perfectly updated... but it's reasonably so right now. --EncycloPetey 17:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Common gender

Under address - translations - directions for letters, i tried adding the Danish translation to the list. In Danish, address is common gender, utrum in latin. So i of course added the gender (u) in the nice brackets, but somehow it doesnt work like the rest of the genders.

Should i define the (u) somewhere? If so, where would i do that?

— This comment was unsigned.

We use English names — masculine, feminine, neuter, common — so we use {{c}}, not {{u}}, for common-gender nouns. —Ruakh_TALK 21:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikitext style

A small thing: we have fairly generally put a space after the # wiki-format character, while not putting a space after * or various combinations (#* for an example following a definition). The background is at normalization of articles, and a mention in the GP. The wikitext is more readable with a space following any/all combinations of the "stackable" characters. (*#:)

A user complained that AF was stripping the spaces after * in translations lines; this is/was a side-effect of it taking the line apart and re-formatting it; I changed it so that it would always re-write the line with the space. Some observations:

• all of the examples in WT:ELE, except for translations, show * followed by space
• however, this is not a Policy, and there is no reason why it ever should be
• the space/no-space never affects the rendering (appearance) of the page
• of course, no one has to change the way they are writing these

AF is presently formatting all stackable characters with the space, see curve for a largish example diff wikitext. This is "minor spacing", AF never makes an edit just for spacing. (In this case it was tweaking the gender templates as shown in the summary.) Connel might do the same with format.js, but I don't know if he has noted this yet. Neither is going to be trying to change the whole database. (;-)

(I'd say "tell me what you think", but you will anyway ;-) Robert Ullmann 13:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I had not (yet) noticed. FWIW, I add the space when manually editing (everywhere except translations.) But I don't think I'll bother adding it to reformat.js. Withing translations sections, the convention (forever) has been not to use them. Hopefully that university project that was using Wiktionary translations for Google Image searches doesn't make any assumptions regarding that space. Is this a good time to ask what happened to Tbot? Why aren't all translations being converted to {{t}} style yet? --Connel MacKenzie 04:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

About the spaces, I guess I'll start using them in new articles, but I probably won't go back and reformat old stuff, even if I'm doing other stuff in an article. Maybe, depending on my mood.

About the {{t}}, I've been starting to do that, a little, but I'm lazy and not a bot, so obviously it's not going to be efficient. lol — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 16:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting anyone bother reformatting sections they aren't editing, or whether they do this at all; the concern is if someone/something is working in the other direction (because they don't like the spaces, or simply don't know this is going on, hence the "head's up")

tbot needs two things: a bot vote so it can be flagged, and some careful work looking at the syntax people have used in the translations lines so that the bot can be sure it is converting correctly. (Example: text in parenthesis is mostly transliterations, but often other qualifiers. So it can't generally convert to tr=, unless I teach it how to recognize direct transliterations.) There is lots of interest stuff here, take ideas or questions to User talk:Tbot? Robert Ullmann 16:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

What language is this?

I went onto the Armenian Wiktionary page just for the heck of it and on their list of languages it had მთავარი გვერდი. Does anyone know what language this is? sewnmouthsecret 22:33, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

It appears to be Georgian. Rod (A. Smith) 22:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! sewnmouthsecret 22:37, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

ka:w:მთავარი გვერდი (mt῾avari gverdi) is Georgian for "main page". —Stephen 16:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Lost discussions

I didn't think I was out of the loop for any extended period of time, but apparently, the RFV/RFD/RFC pages have recently been destroyed/archived incorrectly. For example, there are many pages now, that are tagged with {{rfv}} that don't link to a section of WT:RFV. There is no link on their talk pages indicating where the respective discussion might be.

While it might be argued that subpages might be needed for discussions that remain open for a long time, the active destruction of consistent links seems to have happened without any discussion at all. If anyone knows where these have gotten to, please speak up. I'd like to understand just what you were thinking.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:54, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know, I was thinking something like "RFV is a megabyte long, I'll just go and delete it." Why don't you try helping out with closing RFVs instead of complaining? Cynewulf 20:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

My cleanup activities tend to glean untagged problems that need listing from the XML dumps - I'm sure you realize that, but it is worth mentioning. --Connel MacKenzie 21:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know, and I don't bug you about opening RFVs, why are you bugging me about closing them? Cynewulf 00:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Because they aren't closed! --Connel MacKenzie 01:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

"where these have gotten to" -- Have you forgotten about WT:RFVA? You know, the archive? We do still archive here, right? I'm done with May, Ruakh is working on July, who wants August? Cynewulf 21:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

That archive is for closed discussions. --Connel MacKenzie 21:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Visviva and Cynewulf, recent RFDs and RFVs (respectively) appear in an actual archive page. As a result, you can use [[Special:Whatlinkshere/articlename]] to find the discussion corresponding to a given tag. —Ruakh_TALK 21:33, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Again, archives are for closed discussions. It makes no sense whatsoever to archive items that are still hotly debated. --Connel MacKenzie 21:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe either of them did so. —Ruakh_TALK 00:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

How many months old does it have to be before it isn't hotly debated? Five months isn't enough? One of them was from January! Cynewulf 00:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Making it just disappear leaves Wiktionary open to vindictive edit wars & wheel wars resurfacing. --Connel MacKenzie 01:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any wars, do you? Other than yours, here, that is. Cynewulf 08:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Come off it! If you'd really like to, I'm sure people will comply. RFV only exists because of the wheel warring that used to go on. Honestly, I thought you'd been here for some of that. --Connel MacKenzie 18:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) RFV generates something like 200-250k of verbiage every month. Approximately nobody is working to make RFV smaller, and approximately everybody is making it bigger. Dumping all discussions on one page does not scale at all. Is there any reason we can't use individual subpages for each word, or at least for some short time period, other than "wikipedia AFD does it that way and we have to be different"? Cynewulf 21:35, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting something like that is quite different from actively breaking existing links! --Connel MacKenzie 21:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

You got a better idea? How many megabytes long does RFV have to get before somebody does something? Cynewulf 00:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Ahem. That was the point of discussing it in WT:GP! --Connel MacKenzie 01:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Grease pit archive/2007/April#Better, more, faster archiving. --Connel MacKenzie 02:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

10 months later (what's that doing in April? lemme guess, somebody wasn't archiving) and nothing has come of it: {{process}} was used about 3 times, Werdnabot is dead, that section was basically you making a proposal and DAVilla saying "ok here's a template", do you need any more items of evidence to convince you nothing came of that? Getting in the way of people actually doing things and shouting "This calls for immediate discussion!" when that discussion will just sit on a talk page for another year while things continue to grow further and further out of hand is not useful. Closing RFVs is useful. I'm not going to waste 10 seconds per section edit waiting for the page to refresh because it's a megabyte long. Cynewulf 08:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Funny you should mention that. In the last ten months how much time and effort has been wasted due to trolls (who feed primarily off RFV) not being blocked? The more I see RFV in action, the more I realize it has been an utter failure. while it seemed promising at first, it now serves only to massively propagate errors into the main namespace. I do miss the early days, when I could spend time creating new entries. As a question of scale, the amount of garbage coming in has increased enormously this year, while valid (English) additions have fallen to almost zero. I find myself in cleanup mode most of the time now. Are you are suggesting the garbage shouldn't be caught, so that RFD/RFV can be kept minimal? --Connel MacKenzie 18:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

WT:RFV took on its structure before w:AFD's structure solidified. It most certainly was not appropriate to use the subpage technique at that time. That would have been only added complexity, with no discernible benefit. Doing so now, can be discussed or contemplated, but this was not a very good way to "be bold." All of those pages are now lost-linked. --Connel MacKenzie 21:45, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

And Ruakh or I will get to all of them eventually. Care to help? Cynewulf 00:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I'd like them all relinked somehow, if you are going to do something this drastic. Either restore them all to RFV/RFD/RFC or leave soft links for each individual one that isn't "closed." --Connel MacKenzie 01:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Waitasec - even softlinks wouldn't work - unless you come up with a better holding area for "unclosed, old" RFV/RFD/RFCs. --Connel MacKenzie 01:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

There are many other things I'd rather be doing than cleaning up after your RFVs, if you'd prefer I let them fester another year then please just say so. Cynewulf 08:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

If you want to copy the RFVA subpages back to RFV, be my guest. I'll just delete the duplicates when I'm done closing out a month. Enjoy your megabyte-long page. Cynewulf 08:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually I had a better idea last night: [3] (May is completely done). RFV still takes 5 seconds to render, but now you don't have to think about where WT:RFV#tiger bomb is. (more evidence supporting subpages of some sort) Happy now? Boy was this whole argument pointless. Back to work! Cynewulf 18:03, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it wasn't pointless. Monthly subpages (for all future RFVs) is a good idea. With only a little template magic, this can be extended to a solution that makes you happy and keeps the conversations linked. --Connel MacKenzie 18:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

You know, last time Ruakh and I bothered to do any archiving around here, there was this same shitfest afterward. I had a thought. Yesterday, the son of a friend of mine wanted to get something to drink, but couldn't find any clean cups. Solution: wash some cups. "But I don't wanna wash cups!" (Cute kid.) Somebody's got to wash the cups here. I'm washing, you're bitching. Normal service will be restored after a while. Help or get out of the way. Cynewulf 08:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Cynewulf and Ruakh, thank you for tackling this thankless task (lest you think your work is unappreciated). I also understand Connel's point about having the rfv template in the entry link back to the appropriate section of the rfv page. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to have the rfv template keep track of when something is moved (like when it gets moved to an archive). What if we were to break up the rfv page according to language (ex. Template:rfv-ja for Japanese entries etc.)? Would that help? Perhaps that would be more of a hassle than it's worth, but it might be worth considering. Another thought: perhaps a date parameter could be added to the rfv template so that the word links to a file of the same date (For example: {{rfv|y=2007|m=10|This definition makes no sense!}} would link to [[Wiktionary:Requests for verification/2007/10#{{subst:PAGENAME}}]]). -- A-cai 11:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, autodating rfv tags would be nice, then we could automatically tell which ones are over 30 days old. Sadly the vast majority of rfv entries are English (or claim to be), separating by language wouldn't really help. Cynewulf 18:03, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree separating language doesn't seem likely to be helpful yet. As there are several options for converting {{rfv}} to an auto-dating (subst-only) template, perhaps this should now move to WT:GP to work out the various bot-conversion details. --Connel MacKenzie 18:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Grease_pit#.7B.7Btemp.7Crfv.7D.7D_needs_to_change. Cynewulf 19:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

IPA character for "s" as pronounced in Spain

Call me a weirdo, but I refuse to use "s" for the Castillian pronunciations of words, because the sound is definitely not the same as the "s" used in Latin American Spanish. (It's more like an s/sh/z blend.) However, not being a learned linguist, I don't know what symbol would be more accurate. Help, please? — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 15:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It's [s̺], but I'm really not sure that that level of phonetic detail is appropriate for pronunciations here. --Ptcamn 16:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It is for me :-D It's like ɾ versus ɹ in English. The former is linguistically incorrect and it drives me batty. — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 17:05, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

signs for sign languages, again

See user:Msh210/Sandbox. Please edit that page (as requested there).—msh210℠ 16:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

There are existing dictionaries for sing languages and I am quite sure that when you ask for it, you can get permission to have it. The writing system that is used is SignWriting and, it is the only script that is effectively used to write sign languages. There are even books written in SignWriting. You can ask at Signwriting org. GerardM 10:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Pinyin and romaji.

As far as I'm aware, it's uncodified policy here that if a Chinese word is inclusible, then its three pinyin forms (without tone marking, with tone number at the end, and with tone diacritic on the vowel) are inclusible as well, and if a Japanese word is inclusible, then one or more romaji forms (as documented at Wiktionary:About Japanese/Transliteration) are inclusible as well. (Wiktionary:About Chinese and Wiktionary:About Japanese do imply that there exist pinyin and romaji entries, respectively, but don't say anything to suggest the normal criteria for inclusion don't apply to them.) Further, as far as I'm aware, this uncodified "romanization exception" does not apply to any other language. So, two questions: (1) Have I stated this policy accurately? (2) Is there any reason not to start a vote to add this information to Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion? —Ruakh_TALK 03:28, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought we had decided at some point not to include multi-character words in the form of pinyin with tone numbers (we already have entries for all single characters, along with the pinyin toneless, numbered, and diacritic forms). I think we should apply this transliteration policy to any script for which a common transliteration system exists and it is demonstrable that a substantial amount of text has been published in a transliterated format. bd2412 T 03:34, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

WT:AJA does say explicitly that a romaji form meets CFI if the kanji or hiragana form does. WT:AZH sill needs a lot of work, but should say the same for pinyin/POJ/jyutping with or without diacritic tone markings, since the Chinese languages are often written this way (particularily chats and emails). They are not written with tone numbers except for language references, etc, e.g. mention. So the with-tone-number form should not be included. We have single syllable entries, which are borderline.

As to languages and transliterated text, I think not; that is all mention; if the text was written in Roman script fine; if it was transliterated, it isn't use. A good example is Sanskrit, which was published in the "West" in Devanagari up until (very roughly) the point where computers started to be used for typesetting (e.g. ~1960-70) but only for Roman scripts so a lot appears in IAST, now people have gone back to writing it in Devanagari (or another Indic script) as it should be. w:sa:मुखपृष्ठं Robert Ullmann 11:12, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Ruakh, I believe that bd2412 and Robert have accurately captured the current approach with respect to Asian languages. As Robert has stated, WT:AC is still far from complete. I have added to it when I think of things, but I'm sure I have left a lot of details out. Ideally, such a document would be written in collaboration with several experts in one or more Chinese languages/dialects. Unfortunately, I'm the only regular contributor that fits that description. The good news is that we have recently acquired a couple of semi-regular contributors whose language skills (in Mandarin) seem very promising. Hopefully, they will stick around and become even more involved. If that were to happen, I'm sure that I could work with them to improve our current documentation with respect to Chinese entries. -- A-cai 11:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: WT:AJA being explicit: you're right, it's in the "Considerations about Japanese language entries" lead text, where I somehow didn't notice it. Even so, this should be in WT:CFI as well, because WT:CFI (unlike WT:ELE) doesn't specify that language-considerations pages can override it, and IMHO it shouldn't be possible for language-considerations pages to override it, because the CFI define the project. —Ruakh_TALK 14:48, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

This does seem to be the de facto policy, more or less, but I am as bewildered by it now as I ever was. I simply don't see anything that makes pinyin and romaji different from the hundreds or thousands of other transliteration/romanization systems in use for various non-Roman languages. The claim has been made that Japanese and Mandarin are actually written this way, but with the possible exceptions of some Chinese children's books and texts transcribed for explicitly linguistic/FLT purposes, that doesn't seem to be the case. In any case, a vote would be good; as you note, the CFI define the project, and allowing language-specific guidelines to override CFI is not a good idea. If we really do want these language-specific exceptions, they should be written into the CFI. -- Visviva 15:04, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

To me, this is more about the layout and formatting in a broad sense rather than the criteria for inclusion. It's just that you need several entries spanning among several proper scripts for one inclusible word in those Asian languages, to format it full-fledgedly. From this point of view, limiting the CFI's scope to the word's inclusiveness itself and leaving this "formatting" issues to the ELE and complementing language specific guidelines will be completely justified. At any rate, I feel it's beneficial to discuss further about where the essential part of this issue belongs. ―Tohru 01:59, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

无量

Hi, A-cai. Does 无量 not also mean, more specifically, the number 10⁶⁸? Rod (A. Smith) 21:43, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually the term I've seen is 无量大数 for 10⁶⁸. However, I've only seen it on various blogs, nothing formal like an academic paper, dictionary etc..[4] To be fair, the Chinese Wikipedia article for w:十进制 (decimal) does list 无量大数 as being equal to 10⁶⁸. On the other hand, the history tab of the article only shows two human editors (one of them anonymous). I would feel better if we could cite something more authoritative. -- A-cai 22:00, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I much prefer authoritative sources. I don't have the reading comprehension of Chinese to do so myself, though. I had imported the definitions from w:Chinese numerals to here in order to remove the Mandarin-specific pronunciations from the Wikipedia article. Then you removed several (most?) of the definitions I imported. Removal sort of seems like a loss of information. Is there some way to restore those definitions with an {{informal}} tag or a note to the effect of "this definition is not yet verified"? Rod (A. Smith) 22:22, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to post your question on Beer Parlor to allow others to weigh in. -- A-cai 22:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki template

I have no idea if this has been suggested somewhere before, but here goes anyway. What would we think about a template that works something like:

{{interwiki|es|el|fr}} 

to add

[[es:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[el:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[fr:{{PAGENAME}}]] 

so that we don't have to do that manually? Is there already something to do that, has it been done before or it something that could be done? — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 02:31, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be done, and should generally not be done, manually anyway. It is done by bots. (See User:Interwicket) And if you change the format, you will break all the bots ... Robert Ullmann 12:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

The bots can sometimes be slow to add new links, and they can always be "fixed" :-p — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 14:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

The iwiki code itself (wikipedia.replaceLanguageLinks) is in the wikipedia pybot framework, so that would require coordination with the people working on that; then you have to make sure the several dozen bot operators are all updated (how many languages do you speak? ;-); there 170 language wikts (not counting Toki Pona and Klingon), some of which have conventions of their own; the code has to provide for the old function on the dozens of other MediaWiki installations that aren't MediaWiki Foundation projects ...

And then the bot probably will have to fix a lot of the manual entries anyway, because the codes ar sorted in self-alphabetic order on the language names, not alphabetic on the codes. (as you note in the example, but almost no-one recognizes)

VolkovBot is adding newer entries (both reflexive links) in between the Interwicket runs that update the entire en.wikt. Robert Ullmann 17:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't understand most of what you just said :D A couple of questions, though.

1. Why are there so many bots working on the same issue? Do there really need to be more than 2 or 3?
2. Are all of those 170 active? I know the Moldovan wiktionary and wikipedia are both closed.
3. Why the shit are they organized by the language name and not the code? That's so messy. Especially when it comes to languages that don't use the Latin alphabet? Wtf? :(

(I actually didn't mean to mix up the es and el in my example. I guess my brain was focusing on other things.) — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 18:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Shorthand

I went looking through the clean-up listings and started looking at the non-standard headings listings. One of the more common non-standard headings, at least at the beginning of the alphabet was "Gregg", with an external link. I thought the problem was the external link and removed that, but eventually the bot marked the clean "Gregg" header as non-standard also. Once I realized that I didn't know enough of the history, I stopped. I saw that the shorthand project was started in 2006 and had become an example of an over-ambitious (abandoned?) project by mid-2007. I now have a couple of questions about what I should do about the changes I made, about the short-hand headings, and about the non-standard headings in general:

• Should I undo my changes so at least everything is uniform?
• Is the shorthand idea something that will be retained in case there is a burst of energy in that direction?
• Wouldn't it make the header listing more useful if the Gregg header was on the list of accepted headers or if there was some indication of how the entries with those headers should be changed?
• Where do the mistaken headers fit on the priorites list for clean-up?

DCDuring 22:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up headers is a fairly high priority, but one must distinguish two cases:

1. headers that are wrong: misspelled, parts of speech that should be something else, language names that are either wrong or not the standard form we use (for example, "Jamaican" is not wrong, but we use "Jamaican Creole")
2. headers that are uncommon, experimental (possibly obsolete), or fill some need but aren't standardized yet (e.g. Root)

The higher priority is the first. A number of the second have been added to AF's control table so they are not tagged. Whenever they are dealt with (standardized or deprecated), they will either be marked as standard, or removed so that they will be tagged.

In the instant case, the "Gregg" header is overkill, the L4 section only has one bullet in it, "Gregg" should just be on that line. See abated. "Shorthand" is recognized. (User:AutoFormat/Headers#Other headers) Robert Ullmann 16:46, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

If the suggested "===Written forms===" header becomes accepted, I would expect the shorthand section to become a single "Written forms" item, prefixed with "* Shorthand:" or possibly "* {{qualifier|shorthand}}". Rod (A. Smith) 17:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good way to handle it. --EncycloPetey 02:39, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

You're talking about the ===Spellings=== thing? The "shorthand" notation is pretty far outside of what I'd expect in that segment. --Connel MacKenzie 07:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the new version of section is what I'm talking about. I support the rename to the very general "Written forms" precisely because such a name is flexible enough to accomodate such things as shorthand representations of words. Rod (A. Smith) 07:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC)