Talk:abolishment

I don´t think it makes sense to put the word feminine there in full. It should also refer to the word after the colon. Suppose you give two synonyms as the translation. (An m, Année f comes to mind)

Hi, I was going to comment on what I did, but got off on a completely different track.

I noted at first that you had added the translations to Webster 1913:Abolishment. I moved them to abolishment because I would hope that these various Webster-bot articles would be eventually phased out.

This is the first time that this issue of the gender of translated words has come up. I do believe that it is appropriate to give this information here unless the grammar of the language makes it implicit. I have no strong feelings about whether the gender appears before or after the word, or even whether it should be bracketed or in italics. Where I don't agree is with using the abbreviations. Since this is not a print dictionary we don't share the same space limitations, and we can write these terms in full. In the case under discussion it was easy for me to determine that gender was intended, but others may find the "m" or "f" to be cryptic. I find already that many of the existing abbreviations from the old Webster are unclear in the absence of a guide to the abbreviations. Even with many print dictionaries that include such a glossary a compacted abbreviated presentation makes the reading that much more difficult. Eclecticology 01:23 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe it would be useful to create a glossary of these abbreviations. I don't mind to add the word genders, but I don't feel like writing them in full everywhere. Also I think they should always be in the same place. Behind the word to which they apply makes sense. I don't really think it is a big deal if you put them in front, but it has to be clear to which word they apply. I would prefer to have them all behind the words and I would like to have a standard way of putting them. (I'm planning to import them automatically into a GPL'd dictionary I'm planning to make myself, see the vortaro project on sourceforge)

Cheers,

Polyglot

Apart from the abbreviations issue, I'm quite adaptable to your suggestions, and I agree that it's important to provide for the situation where there is more than one possible translation.

The glossary idea has some merit, but simply linking to "m" or "f" would only lead to the articles about those letters. Linking the gender to the glossary, or finding some other way to show that an abbreviation is treated in the glossary may be more complicated than writing out the whole word. We should also consider that what's convenient for the user is more important than the convenience of the contributor. Even in the limited number of abbreviations that I continue to use (such as "cf.") I have had doubts about whether I'm doing the right thing. Eclecticology 08:55 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

what does cf mean? (I read it as CompactFlash). I didn't mean that it should be clickable. A glossary should just be available and referred to in the introduction/manual of the wiktionary. If you don't know what an abbreviation means you just refer to the beginning in a paper dictionary. It could also be a link on the page itself, outside of the article. In my own version of a dictionary I had started to put letters in the language of origin. (m, w, n in German, m, v, o in Dutch) But I think m, f, n makes the most sense.

I started to write them in italics, like you did.

The issue of "cf." proves my point. It is very common in academic English about any topic, and means "confer" or "compare". In adapting the Webster-bot material it has showed up mostly in the etymology section. Thus for "abolishment" one might say: "Cf. abolition" which would ask the reader to compare with what's said at "abolition". By not knowing what it meant you've convinced me to stop using it.

A reference to the glossary in the introduction or manual is next to useless. A person who has just Googled onto the "abolishment" page will still have no idea that such a glossary exists. I have no doubt the the paper 1913 Webster had such explanatory material, but it seems that most people who put it on-line failed to include it, or at least failed to inform users where it was. Eclecticology

In a Dutch dictionary this would be z. (zie, see). Isn't it possible to add a link to this kind of explanatory material? For instance in the side bar.

Polyglot 11:59 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

I suppose it's possible, but that would be up to the tech people. Eclecticology