User talk:Chuck Entz

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Again, welcome! -- Cirt (talk) 05:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

ἱστορία

Please stop undoing my corrections on this word. I am a Greek student and I should know that widstor is not Proto-IndoEuropean (the stem is probably, but not the word). I wrote a whole essay about the history of this word. You should look it up. Selasco (talk) 20:41, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

s > z misspellings

Just so you know, some of these may be valid archaic forms (17th Century or whatever). But I think it's okay to strike them without removing them. Removing anything is dubious unless it's patently invalid (no Google hits or something like that). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Spanish plurals

Please use {{plural of}} with nocat=1 for Spanish, this is because we use Category:Spanish noun forms not Category:Spanish plurals. It's an unusual and fairly unique case, so don't worry about it too much. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:58, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Don't worry about correcting me- that's how I learn. Chuck Entz 13:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

A couple of minor things

Hi Chuck, just a few minor things. 1) The alternative forms heading needs to go before the part of speech heading as per WT:ELE; you might want to look through that (again) anyway. 2) When you insert a Wikipedia link, the best place to put it is just below the language heading. Some put it just before the part of speech heading, which is also fine. Just not at the bottom of the entry. It's just, well, ugly :). Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 05:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomic names

I noticed your edit to Basella. If you like doing taxonomic names, take a look at {{taxon}}. It offers an approach for achieving some uniformity in such entries. I have only recently started using it, but appreciate the approach. I'm not sure what further improvements it should have, if any. DCDuring TALK 23:50, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I have edited {{taxon}} to eliminate the display of (taxonomy) before the definition, while retaining the categorization. A context like {{botany}} or {{microbiology}} can be added as appropriate. Are there other changes that would improve this template? I have been trying to standardize taxonomic entries by adding links to WP and wikispecies, "etymology" (often just suffixation, as with -aceae, -oidae, etc,), and an image from wikicommons. There is some disagreement about including binomial species names and whether we should treat species epithets used only in New Latin as Latin or Translingual. Personally, I favor leaving binomial species names to WP and wikispecies and treating New Latin words as Latin, but always including all taxons or rank genus or above as Translingual. There isn't any practical value to adding a Latin lowercase entry for a capitalized Translingual taxon either, IMHO. Thoughts? DCDuring TALK 14:16, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

• I am hoping you could help with some questions I have raised at Wiktionary talk:About Translingual#Translation of Translingual words. DCDuring TALK 14:59, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

cordaite

Could you check this entry for me (I am no botanist) and correct if you find anything wrong? Thanks. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 02:05, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Ancient Greek

There's not a ton of folks working on this language, so I try to at least say stop by and say 'hi' whenever I see someone doing so. Thanks for your help with the Ancient Greek request page; clearing it is rather a large task. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Could I be really whiny and ask that you use noun/adjective form instead of noun/adjective in {{head}}, as I've done on πέταλον? It's not that big of a deal at the moment, but when someone starts autogenerating inflected forms (no idea when that will actually happen, but it'll happen), it'll start flooding pages like Category:Ancient Greek nouns unless we separate them. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

New verb template

Since you've been adding transliterations, I assume you're aware that Maro rewrote {{grc-verb}}. Just thought I'd let you know that, if you like, you can remove the principle parts, as long as they're represented in the inflection tables. If you don't care to, you are of course not obligated to do so. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:48, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if you noticed or not, but your most recently edits to γνωρίζω were reverted, rightly in my opinion. We really shouldn't take out the principle parts if they're not represented by inflection tables. Cheers. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 11:26, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I've stopped doing those, mostly because it's less efficient doing two things at once, but also because I had the uncomfortable feeling I was doing some of them wrong. I don't know the verbs well enough to do those right.Chuck Entz (talk) 12:30, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

WT:AGRC

As a newish Ancient Greek editor you would be the ideal guinea pig for the new version of this page. I wrote it several years ago, and it had since gotten so stale that I had simply stopped referring people to it. I'm hoping the refreshed version is a bit more coherent, comprehensive, and up-to-date. When you have some free time, would you be willing to give it a read, and let me know what you think? I'm especially looking for questions that you have/had which are not answered by the page, things which are unclear, or advice which seems contrary to actual practice. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:22, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Circumflex

Fulfilling my job as an administrator, I thought I'd berate you about a minor breach of format. Accents aren't supposed to be reflected in transliterations. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Could you tell me where I did that? I seriously can't find it. I haven't been editing Greek much lately, and the few examples in my contributions log are mostly without a circumflex in the Greek.The only time I remember using circumflex in Latin letters was reproducing Old English passages in 19th century sources that used a circumflex instead of a macron. I certainly know better than to use circumflex in transliterations, but absent-mindedness is always a possibility. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

χοῖρος. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I didn't realize how long ago that was. I guess I just noticed it because of the edit to requested entries. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:37, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

admin?

Hi there Chuck. I notice that you do a lot of vandalism fighting. Would you be prepared to be a sysop - then you could use the "revert" function instead of "undo" (this also marks the edits as patrolled so the edits don't need to be looked at again by another sysop). You could also block vandals if you wanted to. If so, I can start a vote. SemperBlotto (talk) 21:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind that, but I don't know a lot about all the other stuff an admin does, and I would have to learn the rules behind blocking or deleting before I would want to start doing it.

As for reverting, I've mostly been undoing the obvious stuff and leaving the tough judgment calls for others. I find it a good way to use the time where I've gotten tired of one thing and haven't decided what I want to work on next. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:23, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I have started a vote at Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2012-04/User:Chuck Entz for admin. Adminship doesn't force you to do anything that you don't want to do. Many sysops have never blocked a user or deleted an entry ever. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

It is widely known that SB is bitter about the inactivity of other admins. --Itkilledthecat (talk) 08:10, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to sysophood. Please add an entry at Wiktionary:Administrators.

May I ask that you always have a second session open on Recent Changes whenever you are editing Wiktionary. You may mark good edits as "patrolled", revert vandalism and stupidity by either deleting new entries or by using the "rollback" function. You may block vandals at your own discretion.

Note: As there are times when no sysop is active, it would be useful if you start your patrolling from the time you last left the system. Cheers. SemperBlotto (talk) 07:14, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

time of asking

I don't see how this fails WT:CFI - it's an idiomatic construction, surely? In general, when the phrase is used there's no act of "asking" involved. 81.142.107.230 14:31, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I may have deleted that one by accident. It's restored, anyway. Sorry for the inconvenience. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:54, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

* in nl-noun

The template no longer supports * as a parameter. It was removed because it was often misused to mean both 'I don't know what this form is' and 'there is no such form'. Now, leaving the parameter empty means 'I don't know' and adds the entry to a cleanup category, while using - means 'I know for certain there is none'. —CodeCat 18:02, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

torc torque

Please before mindlessly reverting changes, either do some research or talk to the changing party, unless of course it seems like vandalism. I have already had a long discussion with semperBlotto about the torc/torque problems and he agreed with me fixing it. I don't feel like having the same discussion with each new admin who doesn't understand the rules of reverting. See Revert Speednat (talk) 20:02, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

• On the contrary. As discussed before, your (Speednat's) edit gives three meanings to torque where there are only two. I have reverted your edits. SemperBlotto (talk) 21:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Charlie Brown

Greetings. Thanks for the Peanuts reference, it is much appreciated. Also, well done on achieving sysophood. --WF's Lucy (talk) 03:51, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

deities

so those entries were encyclopedic and they were either duplicates of properly capitalized entries or miscapitalized. I have edited them accordingly and nominated the misspelled versions for deletion.Lucifer (talk) 23:48, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

They don't meet the CFI, but I presumed you may want to defend that as their creator therefore I left the possibility open to discussion. I am an inclusionist and perhaps it is salvageable so I think it's best that the community review it.Lucifer (talk) 00:07, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

ἄπυρος

Thanks for the correction of "<" to "From". Regarding my request at WT:RE:grc that ἄπυρος be added, please note that I added the request (01:18, 28 May 2012) before you created the entry (02:08, 28 May 2012‎), for which I thank you. I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 12:38, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Kamboj

Hi, I couldn't help but see that anon readding stuff to this entry, for the second time even! So, I've protected the entry so it can't be edited by newbies and unregistered users for 3 months or so. 50 Xylophone Players talk 23:13, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Good thinking. I have a feeling, though, that this anon will be back, absent the sun imploding or the End of Civilization As We Know It... Chuck Entz (talk) 05:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Heh...maybe, maybe. In that case I might just ban their ass...though three months kind of is a long time. We can but hope they're just gone off in a fit of rage perhaps hating the site, never to return. Also, a fair observation to make is all their bickering about us not being a Kamboj authority or whatever was in the edit summaries with not a single thing posted to your talk page here so perhaps they may not even really be all that wiki-savvy. 50 Xylophone Players talk 14:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

More Polynesian linguistics!

I spent a while constructing Proto-Polynesian out of boredom, and when I got back home I compared my chart against Wikipedia and it matched up quite well! So now I've decided to fill up Category:Proto-Polynesian language with some terms, but I feel like I'm forgetting a lot of descendants (especially with languages like Tongan that don't fit as well). If you're interested, please add descendants and link to the appendix pages in Polynesian etymologies. For an example of a good entry (in my mind, at least), see Appendix:Proto-Polynesian/qariki. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:13, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Also, would you mind taking a look at User:Metaknowledge/Proto-Polynesian personal pronouns? The fact that no extant Polynesian language that I'm aware of still has the trial made this a little hard, because the old trial forms replaced the plurals, and thus the plurals are basically guesswork. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:36, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I can't help you with the pronouns. My main focus has always been the nouns, and more specifically plant and animal names. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:19, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah well. In any case, if you want to work with those, that would be welcome. I was trying to find the Proto-Polynesian form of tapa/kapa, but the siapo/hiapo forms threw me off. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:34, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

'Okina standardization

Just to notify you, unless any concerns are raised, I intend to switch all Hawaiian and Tongan entries that are not already done from 'okina/fakau'a to ʻokina/fakauʻa. This is because only the US and Tonga have made any official effort to standardize; all other Polynesian languages will remain with 'okina. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:36, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Deletion of a scientifically recognised word

I'm afraid you deleted the word araneicide. However, this word has been found in a scientific journal, the Coleopterists Bulletin, specifically referring to a toxin that kills spiders. It was not a misprint and its etymology can be traced. See here. Likewise, it was found in a PhD thesis entitled The life history of and behavior of the subsocial amaurobid spider Badumna candida, which can be found here. I did not make up the word.—Giant Squid_Talk 08:21, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I've restored it, but your cites don't match your definitions: the cites refer to a substance that kills spiders, and I don't buy referring to a substance as "one". The "killing of spiders" sense is plausible, but you would need to cite it. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:37, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, understood.—Giant Squid_Talk 21:14, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

thank you

thank you for welcome. i am trying to develop the sanskrti wiktionary. in that way i came to english wiktionary. any hopw i am impressed the systamatic presentation of words. but i cannot copy them as many facilities are absent in our wiktionary. if you can help me we and that classic language will be blessed. for example in english wiktionary sanskrit words declensions are automatically getting. if i can copy to sanskrit wiktionary it will be a good help. do what you can do thanking you --Dvellakat (talk) 14:21, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

tops

I noticed that you reverted my addition without comment. Care to comment? Specifically, I added usable content for the end user. --JBrown23 (talk) 02:56, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The fatal problem was having a an entry in katakana on the page for a word in the roman alphabet. In general, we organize our entries by spelling, with all entries with the same spelling on the same page. We even have separate pages for the same term spelled with a hyphen as opposed to a space- including an entry in a completely different writing system massively violates that. You need to read WT:AJA to see how we do Japanese entries. I'm also going to put our standard welcome message on your talk page so you can read the introductory information about editing on Wiktionary. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:50, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

sanskrit

hope you know that i am working in mostly in Sanskrit. though i cannot understood fully what you meant, i stopped the silly corrections like visarga and etc in en. Wiktionary. there are many to correct in English. i am concerned about the rich language of Sanskrit where very few works. so be free about my interventions in English. i am here for some helps in sanskrit wiktionary. are you able do that? --Dvellakat (talk) 05:25, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Kine vs Shoon

Hi Chuck,

Given your revert of my changes to Kine, please consider Shoon, shouldn't a similar change be made there too?

Thanks.

WilliamKF (talk) 13:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Done, though it's not as straightforward here, since the suffix is still in a recognizable form. Even the revert was a judgment call, with which others might disagree.

At any rate, please remember that reverting isn't a punishment, it's only a variation on normal editing. I could have just edited the entry and removed the template, but I reverted to save time.

This particular revert wasn't an official admin action prompted by a violation, just an edit reflecting my judgment as a fellow contributor. I don't feel strongly enough about this to edit war over it, and I certainly wouldn't block you for changing it back. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

shoon

Hi! I saw that you removed the suffix categorisation for shoon. ?? Leasnam (talk) 14:05, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

See above. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though it's looking less so on second thought. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Was the reasoning because it deviates from the strict "-en" form? Leasnam (talk) 14:44, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I reverted an edit that put kine in the category because the suffixation was in early stages of the language and no longer present in a recognizable form, so presumably not morphologically significant to (early) modern English.

The editor who made that edit pointed out that shoon could be interpreted the same way, and I changed it, in order to be consistent. Thinking further, though, the loss of the vowel isn't enough for one to make the argument that the morpheme is no longer present, since it's quite likely a regular, productive change that would be recognizable to speakers. As I said above, the edit on kine was a judgment call which I don't feel that strongly about, and the the edit on shoon far less so. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:00, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. Although it is orthographically written differently, it is morphologically identical, and still analysed as an -(e)n plural. Leasnam (talk) 15:11, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Would you mind if I return the cats to both kine and shoon? Leasnam (talk) 14:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

shoon- not at all. kine- I can live with it, Chuck Entz (talk) 14:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

'uri

You know you can't do this, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 23:09, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

If I did, I forgot. I stopped once I realized you were deleting them Chuck Entz (talk) 23:12, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Talk:屯/Korean

Please undelete this many-day hard work. This way of sandboxing on the Talk subpage was agreed with User:Eirikr at the end of Talk:城 #Long lists of synonyms -- help differentiating. BTW, are you an admin. concerning Hanja edits? --KYPark (talk) 08:21, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Turkish-speaker advice needed on whether to delete some categories and templates

I recently nominated for deletion a block of categories and templates. These were for grammatical categories that would be wrong for most languages. I don't speak Turkish, however.

Your Babel box says you're a native speaker of Turkish, and you've been active on Wiktionary recently. I would appreciate it if you could look at the sections for the categories and for the templates and comment on whether they're useful, whether they should be deleted, and why (or why not). Chuck Entz (talk) 01:59, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually I'm not totally active but it's not a problem. Thanks for reminding. However, I'm uncertain at 2nd topic... Best regards...--Sabri76'^talk 17:50, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Etymological assurance

Both Proto-Polynesian *taŋata and Pipil takat mean "man". This is just a really weird coincidence, right? (I can't find the Proto-Austronesian or Proto-Uto-Aztecan forms for either of those right now, so this is the best I can do.) Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:37, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Yep. a coincidence. There are Takic reflexes of the same root, and Pollex traces the root to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, so any borrowing would have to have been thousands of years ago, before there was any chance for contact. I thought we had some Cahuilla entries, but I'm having trouble finding them. I guess I'll have to dig some more books out of boxes in storage and enter some Chuck Entz (talk) 05:46, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

That makes me feel better. It's still... unnerving. Like mama#English and mama#Aymara. It just feels... too right to be wrong, even though I can't believe it to be true in my rational mind. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:57, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Mama is a special case: labial consonants are among the first sounds that babies are physically/neurologically able to make, so they're heavily represented in the words for parents in the languages of the world: "ma" in Mandarin may mean horse and hemp, depending on the tone, but it also means the same as English "ma".

Another one that gave me pause is the Uto-Aztecan root for tobacco: something like *pipa. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:13, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

That explains a lot. Is pa the next sound, then?
That's a little striking, but not quite as bad, I should think. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know that there's a hierarchy. The sounds babies make aren't really classifiable beyond the major part of the mouth where they're made, and a lot happens to sounds as languages change. M, p, f, v, and b all show up a lot, though m and p seem to be the most common in words for parents. I think the phenomenon also carries over into words for infants, such as baby or bebé, and even, secondarily, to grandparents, such as baba (though probably not as much). I believe there are later stages where the infants' babbling progresses to include d-like and g-like sounds- and this is all before they have control over things like voicing and nasalization, and before they combine different consonants near each other. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:02, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

If only Freud was a linguist...
Do you know where I can read up on this? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:04, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know. This is all from a Child Language Acquisition class I took at UCLA a quarter century ago. I'm sure understanding has advanced quite a bit since then. It's important for linguistic theory, though. Language acquisition is a major factor in the mechanics of language change: For instance, the most stable forms are usually the ones that are typically learned directly from parents. If you look at all the irregular and strong inflections, they're usually basic, common household vocabulary. The stuff that isn't learned in childhood is much more likely to be regularized as the gaps are filled in by guesswork, or to be borrowed. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:18, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

In reply to tagging specific senses

This Wiktionary:Grease_pit#Direct_links_to_definitions might be what you described here? Wiktionary:Grease_pit_archive/2012/May#Tagging_Specific_Senses SebastianHellmann (talk) 00:46, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, the whole senseid thing was about what I was thinking of, and I was surprised that I hadn't seen it in use. I'll have to look at your system, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:39, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It is not a system, but simply an html anchor + css highlighting. SebastianHellmann (talk) 08:15, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

βαπτισμῶν and τὴν

Thanks for your helpful comments last month on WT:RE:grc. I have a couple of questions I hope you can help me with.

1. Is βαπτισμῶν just a short form of βαπτισμάτων (the genitive plural of βάπτισμα), or is it a different inflection?
2. What does τὴν mean? Τηνάλλως seems to be derived from it.

I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 11:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Good catch! I should have referred to βαπτισμός, a second declension noun, rather than βάπτισμα, a third declension noun (we already have both). As for τὴν, it's just the feminine accusative singular of the definite article (see ὁ for the whole declension). I created an entry for ἄλλως, just to round things out. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:13, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you. One thing though: Why, in this sentence: "Τὴν δικαιοσύνην, id est κατά τὴν δικαιωσύνην.", do both the uses of τήν (with the acute accent) have grave accents? I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 14:31, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, also, in that same sentence, what is the difference between δικαιοσύνην and δικαιωσύνην? I assume that they're the accusative singular forms of δικαιοσύνη and δικαιωσύνη, respectively, but are they ultimately equivalent? I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 14:37, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Got my foot stuck!

Hi Chuck, I added some etymology to Myrmecophagy, which you then reverted. OK, but I am at the moment adding several related terms (stenophagy, termitophagy and more) out of a need for them in Wikipedia. I encounter a need for such refs in WP, and I feel more comfortable in explaining their meaning with refs to their etymology. Do you recommend that I omit the Greek in all cases (perhaps half a dozen or so?) Cheers,

Jon

When you have live entries for the parts of the compound, it's better to have the etymology on those page. That way there's no inconsistancy between etymologies. Let's say I make a change to the etymology for the -phagy suffix. I'd rather not have to look for all the instances of that suffix in other entries in order to update them. It's unfortunately not all that uncommon for there to be multiple etymologies for the same thing that disagree with each other, which can only be confusing to Witktionary users. By the way, my computer is in the shop and I'm using some extra vacation time to check in from work, so I may not be very prompt in responding for the next few days. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah. Hmmm... I see. Okay. I certainly am thoroughly familiar with the multiple-maintenance problem. However, perhaps I am missing something; I am after all very naive about the facilities and the skills necessary for dealing with Wiktionary, so please be patient with me. Am I to understand that there are independent etymological entries for particular roots (steno-, termito-, etc)? If so, how does one look them up? (Especially if one is not a Latinophone or Hellenophone, as in my case.)

No problem about delays; here too I am on familiar territory, particularly at the moment!  ;-) Good luck with your situation! JonRichfield (talk) 14:24, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The roots were already there in the etymology section: myrmeco- and -phagy. Both of them were blue links, which means there were already entries for both of them. If you click on either link, it takes you to the entry, which, as you will see, already has an etymology (both do). As for which prefixes and suffixes have entries: you can type myrmeco- into the search box, or if you already have a link to a prefix or suffix, you can go to the entry and look for categories at the bottom of the entry. Clicking on the name of the category will take you to the main page for that category. As it turns out, whoever created the entry for myrmeco- didn't use a template, so it wasn't in Category:English prefixes. I fixed that. -phagy is in the correct category, though (Category:English suffixes). I have my computer back, so things should be back to normal (as soon as I catch up on my watchlist, anyway). Chuck Entz (talk) 04:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

staple

When undoing edits, please remember to mark them as patrolled. (This happens automatically when you click "rollback", but not when you use other revert mechanisms.)

Thanks in advance!
—Ruakh_TALK 20:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

rhetorical question

Why did you revert my edit there? I explained why in both the talk page and edit summary. The least you can do is respond.

And now you're just reverting me for no reason. I wrote the sentence at akilter and then reworded it like five minutes later. Are you just reverting everything I do?

In both cases, the new sentences were no better than the originals- actually worse. "Are your parents leprechauns, or just really short?" reads like a meaningless insult, even if it is technically a rhetorical question. The akilter sentence doesn't look right (the one reverted to isn't all that great either). As for reverting everything you do: when I see a suspect edit, I check other edits by the same editor to see if there's a pattern that might indicate trouble. So far I don't see such a pattern, just a few mistakes. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:02, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand, "Are your parents leprechauns, or just really short?" is an insult, that's perfectly consistent with being a rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions are often insults. And I think the replacement sentence is much more natural than what you reverted to. 76.100.115.189 02:06, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Why revert?

Hi Chuck, I would like to learn what was wrong with this edit? --Trofobi (talk) 09:18, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Sure. If you click the wikipedia link where it says "Wikipedia has an article about crossbones", it goes to a disambiguation page for several articles that aren't about the subject of the entry. At Wiktionary, a rollback isn't necessarily a disciplinary action, it also can just mean that, in the opinion of the person doing it, the entry is better without the edit in question. I had no doubt your edit was in good faith, it was just mistaken. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:06, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Stupidity

Hi,

I saw you had blocked some people and given the reason as "Stupidity". I've been reading up over at Wikipedia, and doesn't this go against the spirit of "no personal attacks" and "do not feed the trolls"? It seems like it would be better to just say "Vandalism".

Fast Clear (talk) 07:15, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's admittedly a complex issue. First of all, we're not Wikipedia, so none of those pages or policies necessarily apply here. Secondly, we have a lot more vandalism to cope with (in terms of ratio of active patrollers to vandals), and less good faith contribution from IPs (as a percentage of total good faith contributions) than Wikipedia. This makes our anti-vandalism gameplan a lot different. Sometimes, calling a vandal a vandal or their actions vandalism is in fact "feeding the trolls", and becomes a badge of honour. I use "stupidity" as a reason because I expect that nobody will boast about being called "stupid", whereas they will boast about being a "vandal" (you must know how adolescents are...). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I've only used that reason ten times out of all the blocks I've done. There was a case involving three individuals to whom I gave three identical blocks, and that skewed the numbers quite a bit. As Μετάknowledge said, it can be useful in taking the bad-boy/girl mystique out of acts by young vandals. You have no idea how often we see edits inserting "poop" and "so-and-so is gay". It doesn't seem right to equate those with filling pages full of hate speech and/or profanities, or with some of the more vicious acts of sabotage. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:16, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Interesting points. I'll say this: your system makes more sense than requiring multiple templated warnings as Wikipedia seems to do (and obviously there's less likelihood that someone will contribute positively anyway). Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. Cheers, Fast Clear (talk) 10:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

It may not seem right, but in guaging your response and personalising it you make it interesting. Human beings will not amuse themselves with things that are not intellectually stimulating or physically engaging, and no matter how dumb and slobby we are, that remains true as it is what we are. The best worded response might be the closest equation to *error*, as machinely cold and unresponsive as possible rather than humanly responsive, but then I don't see me reverting ten vandals in a row and if they were writing poop or something was it smart or what? RTG (talk) 14:56, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

wih

What's up with the Cahuilla section? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:23, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes when I keep editing when I'm tired, I forget things. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

It's OK. Actually, that's the only Cahuilla word you forgot a definition for. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:57, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

recons

Why are you doing this? Why are you removing the lang parameter? --Vahag (talk) 12:47, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I was cleaning up the entries where {{term}} tags an error due to etymology-only templates not having scripts. {{recons}} was the most convenient way of doing that. After I converted all of them, I realized that they were creating redlinks to a non-existant appendix, so I'm removing the lang parameter- which is how the "cons" documentation suggests to avoid the redlinks (it looks like you were using an empty parameter in {{term}} for similar reasons). Since these are all accompanied by an {{etyl}} with the correct language code, no information is lost, and since there's no link, there's no need to worry about which language section is linked to. I'm just trying to arrive at the best solution to avoid cluttering up cleanup categories without messing up the way it looks and works in the entry. I'm sorry if I've cluttered up your watchlist with cryptic edits, and I'm willing to redo all of them to address any other problems- I consider it my responsibility to fix my mistakes. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand. {{recons}} creates a link to an appendix, which will be red until someone creates an entry. {{term}} has the same behaviour. We do want the links, with a correct language parameter. What's the purpose of recons if it doesn't create links? --Vahag (talk) 17:05, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that it creates to a link to an appendix called "Iranian", because it's a family and not a proto-language. If you think we should have an appendix with that name, I'll be happy to go and put back all the lang parameters. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:11, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

No I'm OK with removing lang=ira and other family parameters, but not lang=xpr or lang=xcl, as those appendices may some day exist. Indeed, I have thought of making a couple of appendices for some unattested Old Armenian terms. --Vahag (talk) 17:17, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Would they exist with the same names as the mainspace language categories? This seems to be a bit of a gray area, since it doesn't seem like a good idea to create a code just for the purpose of having the right name for an appendix. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:30, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they will exist with the same name. It doesn't seem like a good idea to create a code just for the purpose of having the right name for an appendix: the sole purpose of {{recons}} is to create links with the right appendix name. What else does it do? Italicize the term and add an asterisk? I could do that without a template. --Vahag (talk) 17:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we should see about adding a switch to {{recons}} so it would otionally add something like "- Unattested Forms" to the appendix name. I don't think anyone has thought about how to treat unattested forms of attested languages. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:37, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

If the etymology says that the word comes from a family called 'Iranian', then it really means 'Proto-Iranian' {{proto:ira-pro}}, the reconstructed ancestor of that family. A family by definition can't have any words, whereas a reconstructed ancestor can. —CodeCat 17:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Not always. It can also mean 'an Iranian language, but we don't know which one, maybe Parthian, maybe Middle Persian, maybe Median, maybe Old Persian'. --Vahag (talk) 17:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

There is Appendix:Vulgar Latin/montanea, an unattested form of an attested language — Latin. No switch is necessary. Everything works fine, just don't remove lang parameters for non-family languages. --Vahag (talk) 17:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm almost finished removing the "lang=ira", so I can go back and re-add the other lang parameters I took out. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. --Vahag (talk) 18:03, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

new user of the year

I'd like to nominate you as new user of the year. If you accept, push the red button. If you have no red button, push the zit on your face. If you have no zit, or not enough strength to push things, click on "Edit" and mash the keyboard.

What- no lacerating wit, no double entendres? If this is all you've got for me in the way of invective, I should feel insulted! Chuck Entz (talk) 07:22, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Protection

I was just wondering...why did you move-protect wallet and a bunch of other pages? I mean, they obviously shouldn't ever be moved, but there wasn't any indication that anybody was going to move them Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 21:11, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Refer to WT:GP#Spam Page Titles. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:19, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Alligator . . .

1. The so-called 美洲鱷 (Měizhōu è), literary "American crocodile" (maybe refer to Alligator mississippiensis?), is not equivalent to alligator.
2. It should be noted that alligator (鼉, tuó) is completely different from crocodile (鱷, è).
3. If your knowledge is poor, please don't edit it. All right?　　——119.131.7.83 18:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I reverted you because you deleted the Min Nan section, not because of the details of the Mandarin or Cantonese edits. If you put back the Min Nan section- or at least explain adequately why it deserved to be deleted- I'll leave it to our Chinese-speaking admins to decide whether you're right or not about the rest of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:24, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Humane

You invited me to discuss this diff. I'll assume you are a natural English speaker or well versed. Think about it carefully, the word humane is synonymous in almost all modern usage with diminished suffering. True regard for health and well being does not actually include the imposition of suffering, unless specifically to promote health and well being, and that is so often not the case. Practically, and I mean that literally in practice almost all rather than in rhetoric and philosophy, all instances of use refer to diminished suffering wether truly compassionate or not. It is unfair, in that it is tainted information, not to make this clear. Excuses not to make it clear: don't feel like it, others don't and that's all. The facts remain. What say you? Examples, I'll go into references if you'd like but these are common knowledge, humane ways to *deal* with a criminal. Humane ways to experiment on or kill animals. These are the most common practices synonymous with usage of the word humane and in all cases they are about inflicting suffering and not at all about health and well being. Is there some reason not to make this clear in a short simple way? Sugar coated is an almost perfect synonym for this definition of the word humane. Should we deny it as though it weren't so? Or what? Is it not about all that? Are you merely insisting that we stick to what other dictionaries have provided? That's a copyright issue, or a reliance on outdated information. So, I doubt you reverted for spelling mistakes or formatting errors, what says you? RTG (talk) 14:35, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I think you're making a special case for those who abuse the term, when, in fact, they're not creating a new sense but just mis-applying the original one. Also, we try to maintain a neutral point of view in our definitions- "murderous" is as emotionally-charged as it gets. By the way, we use {{context|euphemism}} rather than "sugar-coating", since that's the technical term. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I find misuse of the term to be prolific and significant. Do you not yourself? When you see execution methods refered to as humane, do you equate it as abuse or even error? I doubt it... It's just common usage today. And so, it's there, and it is somewhat obscure here. I can't see any incorrectedness in this although wording and formatting may be debatable. Maybe it is some form of slang, but it is there and it is prolific, significant and therefore ought to be acknowledged. It's too comonplace to completely ignore is it not? So let's do something then at least? Do we define the word or describe it's definition? See what I done there? RTG (talk) 15:05, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Seems like a straight-forward revert, as the first and second part of the definition contradict each other. Sugar-coated does not mean murderous or injurious. Injurious (which you spelled wrong) is a rare words with two different definitions, so using that is inappropriate. Finally both definitions (murderous and sugar-coated) seem really unlikely; can you provide an example of this? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:07, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

It means bad things are happening to a lesser degree, not ensuredly bad things are not happening. The current entry does nothing to imply this. Nothing. My intention is to correct that. Care to help, or care less? RTG (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I think the problem has more to do with the part of the definition having to do with "health" and "well-being". I've always seen it as avoiding pain and suffering. This is highlighted best in the case of an animal with an incurably painful condition: the humane thing to do may be to gently put it to sleep, even though this is obviously not at all good for its health or its physical well-being. I've changed the definition accordingly. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:27, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your change to the definition. - -sche (discuss) 21:40, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Well those changes are a lot more subtle than I had in mind but I think I sort of appreciate them too. Maybe the word "regard" (having regard for) was a little too noncommittal as well, in that regard is merely a view rather than a concern. And in current practice the quality is too often a beheading in between trials by fire. Good stuff cheers. RTG (talk) 23:58, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

edits

Hello,

Please don't edit historical talk pages, closed or active discussions, no matter what templates they use(d). It's what other people said in the past. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:39, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Interlingua

Re. the Swadesh list for Romance languages: Interlingua is not a Romance language. It is a constructed language, intended as a simpler form fo Latin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua). It is no more a "Romance language" than Esperanto. Since it doesn't belong in this Swadesh list, I have eliminated it.Mwidunn (talk) 03:07, 5 November 2012 (UTC)mwidunn

Revert at bürgerlich

Hello Chuck Entz,

why have you reverted my edit of the entry on bürgerlich? Kind regards. --212.255.255.112 12:17, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not sure. It must have been a mistake. Feel free to revert my revert, with my apologies. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Revert Rhymes Depart

The ending pronunciation for the word depart matches the other rhymes -ɑː(ɹ)t, but you have reverted its inclusion. Why is that?

Look again: it's still there. I removed a couple of others that didn't match. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:09, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

A few phonology questions

Not just when I'm speaking my dialect of English, but in any language, I've found that there are a few common sounds I'm having a lot of trouble telling apart. I was wondering if you could help me distinguish them when I hear them or say them. They are: /ai/ vs /aj/ vs /aɪ/; /ei/ vs /ej/ vs /eɪ/; /nj/ vs /ɲ/; /a/ vs /ɑ/. Thanks! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Those are some tricky ones. The problem is that everyone has a different phonetic realization of these phoneme combinations- not uncommonly the same person will pronounce them differently within a sentence or two of the same utterance. It's also true that sounds aren't as discrete and tidily separated as we'd like to think.

• With the diphthongs, you start with the mouth in one position, and it moves to the other position- with lots of intermediate stuff in between. There's enough blurring there that there are different schools of thought on how to spell the same diphthongs: one person's /aɪ/ may be the exact same sound as someone else's /aj/. Semivowel approximants are tricky, because they almost cut off the flow of air, so they can vary from almost a vowel to almost a consonant. If you're starting with /a/ and ending with /j/, you'll probably have short /ai/ in between. To complicate things more, some people have more of a central articulation on the second sound, almost like /aɨ/. Basically, our brain is trained to take this vague sloshing from one sound to another and turn it into recognizable individual sounds. It takes training to overcome that and be able to recognize which sounds are really there (I'm not all that great at phonetic transcription, myself). I would recommend taking sound files and surgically cutting out different parts to hear how they process through the different sounds. I used to be able to do this with a cassette player: if you stop it at the exact end of the sibilance in the word "spin", it will sound like "bin" when you hit "play".

Now to some details:

• /a/ vs /ɑ/: Think of a Bostonian saying "park the car". That "ar" is a very pure /a/. You can confirm this by lopping off the second half of sound files for the words "I" and "ow": it should sound the same (unless the speaker is from the South- you can hear all the vowel sounds of Europe in endless combinations by listening to different Southerners pronouncing a few words with "monophthongs", such as "spoon"). Now think of "open your mouth and say ah". That "ah" should be a very pure /ɑ/.
• /nj/ vs /ɲ/: /nj/ is two sounds in different places of articulation, while /ɲ/ starts and ends in the same place. For most people, /nj/ tends to blur into /ɲ/ in rapid speech unless they're trying hard to enunciate precisely. Try saying "un" as it "sun", followed by "usual", first carefully enunciating the sounds with a pause between the words, then progressively shorten the pause until you're saying "unusual". If you're like me, you'll start out with /nj/ and end up with /ɲ/. The most iconic /ɲ/ in popular culture is courtesy of Curly from the Three Stooges- it's generally spelled "nyuk nyuk nyuk", but it's really something like /ɲəʔ/ /ɲəʔ/ /ɲəʔ/ (the /ɲ/ is somewhat syllabic, though, so it's hard to be sure what the vowel is). And of course, there's Russian нет. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm a little confused on the topic of /a/, though - did you make a typo or two there? As for the semivowels, does that mean that it's impossible to say /ea/ without accidentally saying [eja] along the way? And with /nj/, I was brought up in perfect IPA-cloud-cuckoo-land where monophthongs and dphthongs are separate things, not on a continuum. Is that fantasy wholly mistaken? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Contributing to developing the Bosnian Wiktionary and related

Hello,

I am a new registered user. So greetings to all. I have a specific question. I went through the Help pages, FAQs, etc. but couldn't find an answer to my specific question (Maybe I missed it somewhere). I have also gone to the Bosnian Wiki page but didn't find an answer either. Probably because I am not familiar enough with the way Wiki works. While visiting Dicts's website (http://www.dicts.info/uddl.php), I saw that Bosnian is available in the list of languages of the Wiktionary database. I have translated/localized several websites into Bosnian and have wide language related resources at my disposal.

My question is: is there anything that I could do to contribute develop/help on that Wiktionary?

I would be glad to contribute. Thanks in advance for your help and advice and best, Senad

First of all, welcome! Second of all this is a wiki. We accept and encourage assistance from everyone, as long as it's up to the standards agreed upon by the community. If nobody has done so yet, I'll go put our welcome template on your talk page, which gives links to several useful documents explaining how and why things are done here. There are quite a few things about formatting that one has to know before being able to make good Wiktionary entries.

As regards Bosnian, there's one very important thing you should know: after considerable debate, the community decided to treat Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, etc. as a single language under the name of Serbo-Croatian, but with two alphabets- Cyrillic and Roman. The reasoning was that, in spite of the use of the issue for all kinds of political and other agendas, the languages are simply too close together to be realistically treated as separate for practical purposes. It turns out that the most vehement arguments for this came from our main Croatian contributors, who had every reason to take the other side. I wasn't around when the decision was made, but I understand it got quite heated. The truth is, whatever was decided, someone was going to hate us to the death over it, so I assume the decision was to go with what made the most sense from a linguistic point of view.

If you don't want to participate in an operation that treats Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin as regional variants in the same way as we treat UK, US, Australian as variants of English, I'll certainly understand, though we certainly could use you. I don't know if we have any regular Bosnian contributors, but we can always use all the help we can get in every language. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, that's not quite true. The English edition of Wiktionary treats them as the same language, but I'm assuming you want to contribute to the Bosnian Wiktionary, right, Senad? Over there, they consider Bosnian to be a separate language. You can any questions you have about contributing there in Bosnian at this talkpage. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

(after edit conflicts)I just noticed, after writing all of that, that you were talking about the Bosnian Wiktionary. Since they're a separate wiki with a separate community, their policy regarding the separation of the language(s) is quite different from ours. I have no information about participating there that you couldn't get easier by just going over their. Their address would be bs.wiktionary.org instead of en.wiktionary.org. If you want to contribute to English-language entries about Bosnian words and phrases, you would do that here. For Bosnian-language entries about Bosnian words and phrases, you would do that there. I'm sure you would be welcome either or both places- you're certainly welcome here.Chuck Entz (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

United States National Forces

Hello, you just deleted a new entry for United States National Forces, generally citing WT:CFI, but failing to specify a particular reason.

The phrase is both attested and idiomatic.

Kindly specify your objections or re-create the entry.

Thanks.

(Please respond on this page, as I will monitor it.) Infoman99 (talk) 05:15, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

It's neither attested nor idiomatic. Please don't waste our time without even bothering to read the link presented to you first. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:21, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Lampooning problems

Hi Chuck, I was a bit nonplussed by your categorical reversion of the edits I had made to lampoon. Could you drop a hint at the major problems that motivated you, so that I could have a go at cleaning them up? The sense that I added was in fact relevant to a WP link I had made to the WK entry, so it does seem to me worth a bit of effort to fix it. Cheers for now. JonRichfield (talk) 15:07, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Some of the problems stemmed from applying Wikipedia methods and standards to a Wiktionary entry: first of all, citations aren't the same thing here. We don't use citations to reference works to verify content. We're a descriptive dictionary, so for us citations point to examples of the term in use that show it's used in the way the definitions say it's used. The template {{cite book}} is not the same as the Wikipedia version- it's used to display a properly labeled and formatted sample of text.

The other problems had to do with not paying attention to what was already in the entry: you added an unnecessary second etymology section, and your definition overlapped with the existing ones. There was an edit that fixed the etymology-section error, but the other ones remained.

This entry has problems with the definitions that need to be fixed by more drastic surgery than just adding another one, and it would have been too involved correcting the problems with your additions and restructuring the entry at the same time. A revert or a rollback here is more routine and less of a stigma than it might be on Wikipedia: we have fewer people here, so we don't have as much time to spend fixing problematic edits. I'm certainly not criticizing your sincere efforts to improve the entry- you just need to read up more on the differences between Wikipedia and Wiktionary, and on how we do things here. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

WT:WFW might be helpful? —CodeCat 14:59, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'll take it from there. Cheers, JonRichfield (talk) 18:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Various H-droppin' words: etymology

'I there, just thought I'd let you know that the etymology I added for those words that 'ave an H-droppin' wasn't directly by me as I copy+pasted from 'ave (In which I 'appen to find this revision was added by an admin). Thankyou :) Tony6ty4ur (talk) 14:47, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

To an English speaker who has heard words like 'ave pronounced, the fact that the ' means the h sound has been dropped because the speaker's dialect always drops it (rather than that the word is merely elided like whate'er or prolly) may be clear... but especially if, as Angr contends on RFV, "eye dialect" means "spellings which indicate a standard pronunciation", it's probably opaque to non-native speakers. It also seems no less helpful than [[droid]]'s note that it represents android without the an, or the notes in a lot of hyphenated compounds that they represent part1+part2. However, I now see that the note applies to enough entries that it should be templatised. - -sche (discuss) 16:09, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Superbus stress

I would argue that stress on the second syllable is in error; if the penult syllable is short, then surely the stress must fall on the antepenult syllable according to Dreimorengesetz (the three mora rule). As it is, superbus is written with no long syllables and therefore has its stress on the first syllable: /'su.per.bus/ - 60.240.63.244 01:11, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh nevermind, I just realised the r constituted an extra mora. - 60.240.63.244 01:12, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Your revert in page דעת

Hi, why did you revert my edit in https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%D7%93%D7%A2%D7%AA&diff=19034748&oldid=19034078 ? I added full niqqud (vowels) and you reverted it without explanation. --Thv (talk) 08:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know. It must have been an error, because I don't see anything wrong with your edit, and can't remember why I reverted it. My apologies! Chuck Entz (talk) 08:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Fixing up things

Hi. Thanks for sorting out some of those placeholder etymologies I've been forced to use! Equinox ◑ 03:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

My pleasure. There are times when activity has died down on the forums and I don't feel like patrolling or starting on a major project, but I want to work on something. It's nice to have a request category that I can work on in small pieces and quit when I get tired of it. Lately I've been working on the entries needing Greek script.Chuck Entz (talk) 03:51, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

По revert

A grammar reference should be politically neutral. Why not undo the revert or replace "to launch a strike at Iran's nuclear ambitions"? I have no opinion on the matter, but it will probably look a bit silly in the page for "по" in a few years.

Who's to say that Ireland doesn't have nuclear ambitions?

The problem was replacing something political with something goofy. If you want to come up with a new sentence that doesn't mention Iran or nuclear ambitions, fine. What you did just looks like someone sticking smiley-face stickers over the genitals in obscene pictures- obvious and clumsy. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:21, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

State

I reinstated the more expansive entries because the previous entry made it sound a if only the Bible mentions those figures. Pass a Method (talk) 18:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

But the usage in the other religions traces back to the Bible. Those entries need to be fixed, since they use "Old Testament" rather than "Hebrew Scriptures", but throwing in obscure terminology like Abrahamic doesn't address that. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:26, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

If our criteria is based on which scriputre mentions characters first then we would have to similarly mention the ancient mythologies or Zoroastrianism which influenced those usages. For your information, i used this as a reference. Pass a Method (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

"Influence" is a matter of ideas, not names. This is about the names- the rest is encyclopedic. There might be room for the kind of note you're adding, but not the way you're wording it. The Bible is a sacred text (more than one, strictly speaking), not a tradition (though traditions are definitely involved) or a faith. Islam isn't a sacred text, nor is Bahai, etc. We need to keep straight what we're talking about.

We also need to work out how to refer to everything Biblical, since such references involve competing faiths, world views, traditions, interpretations, etc. Our terminology is, of course, heavily skewed toward Christianity by virtue of our demographics and the traditions of English-language lexicography, but it needs to be replaced with something coherent and consistent- and also recognizable to our readers. That's not for me or you to decide unilaterally. It really needs to be hashed out in the Beer Parlour. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

pound town

the bro's website doesn't look like its commercial, it looks more like a magazine to me. is that one okay?

The main problem is that it's not durably archived, so it's useless as far as meeting WT:CFI, but it's also not a reliable source for anything having to do with lexicography. It's not representative of anything, just one person's idiosyncratic way of talking about things. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:25, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Referencing

Hi! Thank you for the welcome template. In your edit summary on 学, you said, "Wikipedia-style referencing not valid here". Could you explain what you mean by this? --Odie5533 (talk) 05:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

The edit summary was more to get your attention than to explain anything. It was mostly in response to your edit summary about removal of "sourced" content. Actually, it was a bit of an exaggeration: we do allow references for etymologies and usage notes, but referencing doesn't have the same central importance that it does at Wikipedia. We also don't have the same restrictions against original research that WP does. Having reliable sources doesn't give anyone a free pass to randomly dump loads of information where it doesn't belong.

The main problem I had with your edit was that everything was in the wrong place. Wiktionary entries aren't single units that you can add a Notes section to. All they have in common is the same spelling. Your Notes section should have been a References section nested within the Japanese or the Translingual sections, except that I'm not so sure it's a good idea to have the same etymology repeated in what's basically an alternative spelling of the other. I could be wrong on that particular issue, since I don't spend a lot of time with the Han character entries- I'm familiar with the issues involved, but not with current practices among those working on the languages here at Wiktionary. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and thank you for explaining it. It is very difficult to understand what one is doing wrong if no one explains it. The derivation of one character from another must be cited to a reliable source because it is not something that can be gleaned from attested usage quotations. By undoing my addition, you have removed any verifiable proof that the characters are even related to each other. After I wrote the etymology section, a user added a similar section to the previous form (學), but their addition was uncited. I assume it's based on something, but a casual reader might assume that it was made up with no evidence to prove otherwise, particularly with some of the opinionated statements. --Odie5533 (talk) 08:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Nuggeting

The verb "to nugget" is a common idiom in some vernaculars. Please restore the edit. Thank you. Jackstormson (talk) 13:15, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Rubbish edits from IP range

Hello Chuck,

What can you tell me about the IPs listed here? I just left a note at the topmost one's Talk page in the interests of informing the user of how to play nice here, but I then found that you'd already blocked the other two IP addresses. Have you (or has anyone else) tried contacting this user before? If so, and they're just pernicious and stubborn, perhaps an IP range block is in order... Cheers, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

The results of Geolocate are identical to those for all of the IPs used by that wizarding waste of time from England that we've all come to know and love. That, combined with doing bad edits on supernatural subjects, Japanese, Chinese, and almost always combinations of two or more of the above, and it's pretty easy to spot this idiot.

As I've said elsewhere, I've started to block him on sight on grounds of misusing multiple accounts (or disruptive edits, if I see he's already doing those). My reasoning is that he's been given instruction, pleading, warnings, threats, and blocks over a couple of years, but hasn't changed his ways in the slightest- so it's best to just stop him from editing as much as possible. Unfortunately, there are others who use the same ranges of IPs, so long-term or range blocks are out of the question. If we block him promptly, though, multiple shorter blocks will work just as well. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:46, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes, that guy. Understood. I'll give his current incarnation one more chance, and if the edit is bogus, I'll block him. (Or maybe "her"? Somehow I'm pretty sure it's a "him".) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:59, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Repeated edits

Wouldn't it be better to use the preview function and thus reduce the high number of subsequent edits in Wikisaurus:horse? Great job, by the way. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:48, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I do, but I always forget something after saving, and I'm paranoid about having something go wrong after I've got a whole bunch of changes. Also, I've been editing sections, and I tend to save when I switch sections. Those are all bad habits, I know, but I've been going through a bunch of WP articles and checking against WT and checking against Google Books, so I've been mostly concentrating on content rather that good editing practices. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the easiest way to do this is create a local plain text file on your computer, and edit it in Notepad. Each time when you think you are done with the entry, take a break and wait whether new ideas come to mind. When no more ideas and research come to mind even after a pause, you can copy it to Wiktionary. You seem to have made around 80 edits to Wikisaurus:horse in couple of hours, which is really quite many. --Dan Polansky (talk) 23:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

atom

why you changed it? give me a good reason for choosing indivisible as a way to say it in english. do you know greek dictionary Babniniotis? do you know anything about the history of science? by the way i am greek and living in Greece all my life

You may know Greek very well, but your English clearly needs work. To a fluent English speaker, indivisible is definitely the best word to use, as that is literally what the Greek means, as I'm sure you know — τόμος implies cutting, but is negated by the alpha privative, therefore it can't be cut, i.e. is indivisible. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:41, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

yes my english suck but that's a different issue. take a look at my comment here [[1]] and read some things about philosophy and Democritus. that 'definitely best word to use' needs to be reconsindered. i ll put my comments in the talk page and i wont tangle with the english version again. temnō is also used in geometry, it means to cut through or to be tangent with a line Wassermagier (talk) 01:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Your edit was clearly wrong, since Liddell & Scott had "unmown", and πώγωνος (pōgōnos) in the first paragraph- neither of which is compatible with "individual". On the other hand, the existing sense was an extreme oversimplification by itself. I haven't read the author(s) in question, but I think we're better off giving the whole range of meanings of the word, and letting those who follow a link from an etymology decide which sense applies. Going into the intricacies of what was meant in a particular text isn't something a dictionary should do. That's for a translation, or at least for an encyclopedia's treatment of the text and/or its author and/or its author's theories. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

make someone's teeth itch

Regarding http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_someone%27s_teeth_itch For what it's worth, I added the second reference in good faith as a valid and used usage. In fact, I stumbled across your page here whilst searching in hopes that someone had YouTubed the very clip from The Benny Hill Show (the original being more than a decade pre-digital, of course, and possibly pre-videotape). The scene had Benny watching after a particularly curvaceous dancer, shivering, then looking into the camera and saying, "Kind of girl that makes your teeth itch." Classic Benny Hill: seemingly simple statements which keep setting off new interpretations every five seconds for a while. If I ever do find a digitised version of the clip, I'll come back here and edit the link into this paragraph as a definitive reference. In the meantime, enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Btt_6qEu7U in memory of Benny.

Revert?

Hi,

I was wondering why you reverted my addition of the Japanese meaning of katai, as given at かたい… Japanese romaji are listed on here, as at tsuyoi and shiroi. Being pretty basic vocabulary ("hard"), I think the romaji needs to be added for this.

161.130.142.78 08:28, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the reason I reverted was due to all of the stuff that should really be at the kana entry, romaji entries are basically for referring to kana entries, and not as entries in their own right. The main thing that attracted my attention, though, was your including interwiki links for the kana spelling (i.e. [[ja:かたい]]): interwiki links have to match the headword exactly. If other Wiktionaries had an entry for katai, you would have had interwikis for that, but not interwikis for かたい- those go at かたい Chuck Entz (talk) 16:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I'll see if I can do that properly then. 161.130.142.78 19:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Can you use edit summaries in Wikisaurus, especially when you are alphabetizing things and when you are removing things? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:47, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

pensarci

Any reason for your vandalism on wiktionary page "pensarci"?

Not vandalism, per se- apparently an honest mistake. It really looked to me at the time like you were duplicating Etymology 1, but with etymology and definitions- which should only go on the main entry. A lot of people who know more about their own languages than about how we do things at Wiktionary don't realize the mess it can create when content is spread out over several inflected forms- it's almost impossible to keep everything in synch. I normally don't do reverts of languages I don't know well, but this seemed pretty straightforward. I'm sorry for jumping to that conclusion, and for not checking further to see if you really were an inexperienced new editor. By the way, there's at least one typo ("thnik"), so you might want to look it over again. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:51, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I fixed typo. And apologies for jumping to conclusion myself. By the way, do you know what would be correct way to refer to particular etymology? For example, "ci penso io" and "pensaci tu" both contain "etymology 2" verb "pensarci". Is there any way to show this? Anceurs (talk) 13:11, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, there isn't any. If you were to refer to "Etymology 2", someone could rearrange them and make Etymology 2 into Etymology 1, or add another etymology in between and Etymology 2 would become Etymology 3. The best you can do is refer to whatever it is that distinguishes the two etymologies (not easy in this case). Chuck Entz (talk) 15:56, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for butting in. This was a real mess. I've tried to clean it up somewhat, but I can't help noticing that Etymology 1 and Etymology 2 are the same! (I've deleted the so-called adverb that didn't have a definition.) SemperBlotto (talk) 16:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

cockpunch

For cockpunch I am absolutely certain that it is used euphemistically to refer to punching ones cock in another's orifice. How can we get that definition included?Bipalabras (talk) 01:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

You know the rules: three independent cites in durably-archived sources. The one you provided for this sense could have "punch" substituted and would make perfect sense: "may someone punch you in the mouth". No penetration required. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:06, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

virial

Chuck, I didn't get that. What the hell is that "common misspelling" "meaning" ("etymology")? Josh L. (talk) 06:52, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, I thought we were talking about the noun. You would look at viral to see the etymology of the adjective, because that sense refers to people who mean to write viral and get it wrong. We're missing an adjective sense under Etymology 2, which is where the noun came from- but that's not an etymological problem. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:01, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Nah, what I mean is that misspellings is a bullshit (sorry for my "French"). Or, while we still must consider them, we'd better devise some special marking for this stuff.
Hm... I just thought — if a misspelling is some sort of etymology, you mean that?? Josh L. (talk) 07:20, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

"Misspelling of" isn't strictly speaking an etymology, but I had to separate the misspelling from the correctly-spelled scientific senses, and the way specified by our rules is by etymologies. If you think about it, the misspelling isn't derived in any way from the same source as from the other senses, so it really is a separate, unspecified etymology.

As for why we have a "misspelling of" section at all: we're a descriptive dictionary, so we describe how people actually use words, not just how they should use them. If someone sees a reference to a "virial video" and looks up the words at Wiktionary, they need to know that the real word is "viral", so they can look it up under that spelling. If all they see is a reference to forces between microscopic particles and a figure in an obscure equation, it won't help at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:37, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

«for why we have a "misspelling of" section at all» — but we don't: that was an ordinary "etymology" section - with no noticeable differences pointing at that this is not a meaning of the article's word at all (Let alone the words "Common misspelling of" — cause they are not marking but only words in a row - without any formatting differences.).
«we describe how people actually use words»: WORDS. Another word misspelled is NOT the word of the article at all. IT SHOULD BE ISOLATED into a special reference.
«If all they see is a reference to forces between microscopic particles and a figure in an obscure equation, it won't help at all.» It will. It will help more than you think: it'll instigate people 1) to use their brains, 2) to realise that people (maybe including themselves) sometimes misspell something, and even maybe to realise that there are people who're inclined to do that, and/or there are words misspelled more frequently that others, and there are typos - which occur:) (I don't object the "misspelling" reference, to make it clear. I just tend to believe it should be out of the row - specially marked.) Josh L. (talk) 08:22, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you understand: Our entries include everything that's has the same spelling all on the same page. If there are words in other languages, they go there, too. In cases where there are completely separate words, such as wind (meteorological phenomenon vs. what you do with a string and a spool), we have separate sections for each (see WT:ELE). There's no place else to put the "misspelling of" entry. The definition line says says "misspelling of viral", so it's not like anyone is going to assume that it's a correct spelling. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:42, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

«I don't think you understand...» I think now I do understand: that Wiktionary is not a dictionary about words/ lexemes; it is rather something about letter sequences, huh? :/ Josh L. (talk) 09:45, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

No you don't. It's a dictionary about words/lexemes, which is organized by letter sequences. The OED isn't about alphabetical order, but the entries on a given page all start with the same letter. You wouldn't conclude that there's some kind of connection between "alpaca" and "alphabet" because some dictionaries have them on the same page, so why conclude that the "misspelling of" sense is connected to the "term in an equation" one? Chuck Entz (talk) 10:26, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Let me show.
I make a piece of text SOMEWHERE on the web. Then, having noticed a typo, I, instead of editing it (or being unable to), go to the Requested entries and REQUIRE the typoed word to be put onto the database. Is it that? Let's do an article on every typo, aha? Josh L. (talk) 11:25, 27 March 2013 (UTC) PS: Yes, I'm exaggerating - still it's in the same paradigm. Josh L. (talk)

adjust

If you are going to revert the edit I made, please may you take a look at the definitions here on this page. They could do with improvement. I don't really see why this got reverted, most other dictionaries don't break down the definitions like in the version you have reverted it back to, see http://www.onelook.com/?w=adjust&ls=a for how other dictionaries define it. I was tempted to add a comment to the feedback page, but last time I submitted feedback about a particular issue nothing was done about it.

Wikisaurus:alcohol (drink)

On Wikisaurus:alcohol (drink): For one thing, as of now, we don't use brackets in Wikisaurus headwords. For another, there is Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage, a hyponym of Wikisaurus:beverage. The entry Wikisaurus:alcohol links to Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage in "See also". Furthermore, searching for "ws:whisky" gives me the following pages:

• Wikisaurus:beverage
• Wikisaurus:horse (whyever, but you would probably know, having created the entry)
• Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage

Thus, a similar search should help you find whether a Wikisaurus page already exists.

A note on categories that you have been adding to Wikisaurus: I don't like them, but I will not ask their deletion via RFDO for the time being. They are in part made redundant by the hyponymy network, like:

• Wikisaurus:beverage
  • Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage
    • Wikisaurus:wine

--Dan Polansky (talk) 12:27, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I was aware of Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage, but there's a hole in our coverage: all of the items refer to specific alcoholic beverages like whisky or beer or wine. There are several terms that refer to the totality of consumable alcohol, as in phrases like "I don't drink alcohol", "he's been hitting the sauce/the juice quite a bit lately", "you've been drinking booze again", etc. That's what I was trying to capture, though I wasn't all that happy with the name I used. If there's a better way to include this information, I'd be happy to hear it.

As for the categories, they're sort of an experiment to work out ways to make it easier to find things. As it stands now, all the lists of entries are completely unstructured: in order to find if a topic is covered, you have to read all the entry names and figure out which ones might be relevant. Although you can certainly search for keywords, that method is dependent on using a search term that matches the title of the entry. If I were to search for "ws:Booze" I would get nothing. If I searched for "ws:alcohol", I might figure out that "ws:Alcoholic beverage" would lead me to what I want.

It seems far too easy for redundant entries to be created simply because people don't know the magic words necessary to find out that an entry already exists. We desperately need some kind of topic or theme page to organize entries that aren't, strictly speaking, -nyms of the same Wikisaurus entry. Given the countless ways things can be paraphrased, and the large number of synonymous terms that might be used in the entry names, strictly-text-based ordering and searching is pretty close to useless. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

It is not true that all the items of Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage refer to specific alcoholic beverages; check the synonyms section, which contains e.g. "drink". I have now expanded the synonyms section with "alcohol" and "booze", but there were synonyms even before my last edit. If you thought that Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage was incomplete, you could have expanded it. What you seem to be concerned with are uncountable broad terms for alcoholic beverages as opposed to countable ones. I think both can comfortably be hosted in one Wikisaurus entry.

People should not need to use any magic word to find a Wikisaurus entry; it suffices when they use the word for which they are seeking synonyms. If the particular synonym they have used is missing, the search fails; so much is true. Nonetheless, you say you were aware of "Wikisaurus:alcoholic beverage", so you did not really seem to have a problem finding the page. Moreover, there are links to Wikisaurus from the mainspace. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:59, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikisaurus:intimidate

As I noted in edit, the second sense shown for "intimidate" is not supported by OED or any dictionary I checked. That sense was not included in the original entry for "intimidate"; it appears to have been added by 67.186.211.126 at 21:02, 5 February 2007. Please delete the second sense or support it with an authoritative reference. Jwpat7 (talk) 18:43, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

If you doubt the existence of a term or definition, please submit it to WT:RFV. —CodeCat 18:47, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

WT:ES #withy

Do you agree CodeCat moved that aggenda to User:KYPark/withy? --KYPark (talk) 03:49, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry that it came to that, but, yes. Four screenfuls of text, including wholesale duplication of large parts of entries, lists of "possible cognates" that have little in common but superficially similar consonants, and long discussions about why you think everyone else is biased, wrongheaded, and out to get you. Maybe a couple of sentences out of all that has any relevance to Wiktionary, making it about 90% wasted space. It's bad enough that you bring up irrelevant topics, but then you add voluminous and elaborately formatted supporting material (most of it just for show), and no matter how anyone responds, you just keep going on and on about a given subject until your attention shifts to something else. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:56, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

By that unfair move, CodeCat in effect freed you from answering in the blind alley. Otherwise, why don't you respond to my last, most critical, conclusive talk at User:KYPark/withy? Simply I win if you give it up. --KYPark (talk) 06:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose that Chuck failed to respond because even on April fool's day he had more productive things to do. Please step back and evaluate the function and mission of Wt (and don't bother to tell us your evaluation; some of us have already done that and are doing very nicely thank you) then if you find your evaluation incompatible with what all the other idiots opposing you seem to think, then favour a more deserving enterprise with your talents. You will win and they will have learnt a lesson, and serve them right. Have a nice day. JonRichfield (talk) 10:51, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your nice advice indeed. --KYPark (talk) 11:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

exactly an example of WikiDenail http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/WikiDenial —This unsigned comment was added by 58.153.92.150 (talk) 13:55, April 18, 2013‎.

This is a descriptive dictionary: we include terms in actual use, not mini-essays about words someone would like to be in use. If you can provide three independent citations of actual use (with the same spelling) spanning more than a year in durably-archived sources, the entry is welcome (with an actual definition- if you want to hold forth or vent, get a blog somewhere else). Please note that wikis aren't considered durably-archived). A helpful hint: you can add citations to a non-existent entry, so that when you re-create the entry, others will know that it shouldn't be deleted. See WT:CFI for details. There was nothing personal about this- it just wasn't suitable for Wiktionary, as far as I could tell from the evidence I have available. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:14, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

cilemeatair

Hello, you reverted my references to 'cilemeatair'. The two items I'd put down as references are online dictionaries familiar to Scottish Gaelic users. Should I format references to online dictionaries (note, neither of these exist in hardcopy) as

cilemeatair, in Am Faclair Beag online dictionary. ?

Thanks for your advice! Thisissusanbell (talk) 15:43, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Giving a naked URL is not especially helpful. I have readded this specific URL in a better formatted way. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:01, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

That's great thank you. I'll follow that format. Thisissusanbell (talk) 07:43, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Egotism

I'm fairly new to wikiediting but I can't quite see why you removed my link to the swedish equilvalent of article: egotism. Care to elaborate? Bforsbe (talk) 16:27, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

{{se}} doesn't stand for Swedish; it stands for Northern Sami. This is why we have robots add interwiki links instead of humans. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Alcyonium palmatum

What do you think would encourage contributors to put in a vernacular "translation" into the translation table? Is what is there now good enough? DCDuring TALK 20:13, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Translingual entries are not actually supposed to have transtables. Those are stored at the English name for the organism. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:15, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

That can't be our policy, because it would be stupid. Not every taxonomic name has an English vernacular name, though many, especially mammals, do. It is more than possible that there would be a local vernacular name for a taxon, but no English one. DCDuring TALK 14:24, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

It is our policy. Go and look at WT:ELE#Translations.

Whether or not it is stupid is totally unrelated. If you disagree with it, raise the issue in the BP. If people seem to agree and there are no major complaints, then we can edit the page. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:41, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

rape culture

The word is not scientifically proven, but is based on a theory of radical feminists who after all have an interest in providing men in a bad light why I think you should make the reader aware of the fact in the advertisement. --89.249.2.53 07:05, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

There's really no such thing as scientifically proven (everything is falsifiable), also how and why would you scientifically prove a word? How would you scientifically prove the word 'house'? What would that even mean? Mglovesfun (talk) 08:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Words don't need to be scientifically proven. Theories need to be scientifically proven, but we're defining words, not theories. The way you randomly stuck those words in the sentence was ungrammatical and made no sense. You need to understand the grammar of what you're modifying before you add to it. Once you're able to make a coherent, grammatical sentence, we can look at whether your content is suitably neutral in tone. Hint: you might want to look up the words you use to make sure they mean what you think they do, and think about things like sentence structure and punctuation. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Protection of your userpage

Hope you don't mind but I made it so only autoconfirmed users can edit it. As you'll notice, another idiot was vandalising your page. User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 14:12, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Actually, it was the same idiot, using a different IP. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:42, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Interwikis

Thank you for the explanation, I mostly contribute in Wikipedia and I am not familiar with Wiktionary customs and rules. --FocalPoint (talk) 20:09, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Just sympathy

I just find it sad that everybody keeps irritating you, as I think that you are a good, intelligent contributor. No matter how many flies you swat, they just keep coming back. --Æ&Œ (talk) 02:19, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Why, Chuck Entz, Why.

I just dont understand the need to go and police the internet like you do! What makes you so important beyond us that you would delete pages? A simple apology might make it stop... You know, because that'd be the nice thing to do. But for now, just keep asking why? :) —This unsigned comment was added by 75.249.96.66 (talk) May 20, 2013 21:43.

I'm not policing "the internet", I'm policing Wiktionary. I was elected by the people here to be an admin, so it's my responsibility to enforce the rules and policies of this site. This is a dictionary, not a place to express your opinions. My only regret is using the delete reason of "Stupidity", since it obviously hit a nerve. I was completely justified in doing so, because defacing a dictionary to add an inane comment like that is a pretty stupid thing to do. You posted a comment insulting the people who freely donate their time and effort providing this resource, so you don't exactly have the moral high ground here. Please note: I never accused you of stupidity- just your actions were stupid. And you'll have to admit, obsessing like this over a single word on a single website isn't exactly the smartest thing in the world to do with your time and energies.

If I had known you would take it as a mortal insult, I wouldn't have used the word "Stupidity"- I'm certainly willing to apologize for that. I'm not going to apologize for deleting your comment, or for blocking you- yours was one of literally dozens of attempts at vandalism I had to deal with that evening. If I hadn't done it, someone else would have had to deal with it an hour or so later.

If you're willing to accept that much of an apology- fine. If not, you should realize that everything you've been doing is a minor nuisance, at worst- a click or two, maybe 10, 15 seconds, and it's gone. If you want to waste your time like that, I can't stop you- but I'm not about to alter what I do because of it. I don't get upset over such things, nor do I take them personally. If I had to spend a minute or two a day for the next 20 years dealing with it, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Nothing personal, but I've got a job to do. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Uhh.....

Who the heck is 5.70.215.243 (talk • contribs • rights) and how do you know? o.O User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 02:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

An English anime fan (probably adolescent or pre-adolescent) who's really into magic and everything supernatural- and East Asian languages. They don't really know much in the way of Japanese or Chinese (or anything else), but they insist on adding lots of entries, anyway. I think they run things through Google or Bing Translate to get the Japanese or Chinese, then create the entries. But that's not the only reason their edits are bad- their English-language entries are awful, too.

They've been driving Haplology and Eirikr up the wall with the sheer volume of really, really bad edits, and the Chinese editors have gotten pretty tired of them, too. I suggested that we start just blocking them on sight, because they've ignored suggestions, hints, pleading, threats, blocks, and just about every other way to way to get through to them that you can think of, with only minor changes to their MO. They've amply demonstrated that they're not going to stop, so at least we can slow them down enough to limit the damage.

After going through years of their edits, I've gotten a pretty good feel for their editing style and choice of subjects, but they also are the only IP that edits Japanese and Chinese who geolocates to Sky Broadband, London. There's another IP who uses Easynet in the UK that edits religious subjects in Japanese, but they're pretty much harmless.

In this case, the subject matter looked like what a kid would think about (probably their dinner), the timing was right (this is their second block of the day), and Geolocate matched, so I blocked them. And in case you think I was totally off base, you'll note that Haplology has since reverted both of those edits. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• FWIW, many thanks for your help in halting the anon idiocy before it gets very far. That is an intensely frustrating situation, not least as the one or two anons involved actually manage to enter correct information every once in a while (meaning we can't just nuke their additions automatically).

Now I see that other anons are persistent in vandalizing your page. My sincere condolences. I noticed PalkiaX50's note above about protection, but this edit by an anon suggests that the protection isn't configured quite right. I note that the page properties show that anyone is still allowed to edit your page.

Whatever the case, thank you again for your help, and good luck with the anons! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:19, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Eiríkr, I protected his user page, not this, which is his talk. I figure talk may as well stay open for good anon, if any come by. Though no one's stopping Chuck or some1 else protecting this too if need be. User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 04:26, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Like PalkiaX50 says, I can't protect my talk page, because it wouldn't be fair to deny access to anons who disagree with my reverts, blocks, etc. My user page is protected, though. As for this anon, it's a minor annoyance, at worst. I made my case in a message posted above, but I'm not about to change what I do because of any harassment campaign- in general, the more people try to manipulate me with garbage like that, the more stubborn I get. At any rate, carrying on a one-sided vendetta gets boring after a while, so I expect that they'll go away, eventually- with an occasional cameo reappearance every once in a while. They may be annoying, but I doubt they're so pathetically obsessive as to keep at it forever. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:56, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

-'re reverts

Hi Chuck, I was wondering why my edits on they're, you're & there're were reverted? Cheers CokeHanx (talk) 14:30, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Because you had all of them as derived from these + 're, which makes no sense. They're really from they+are, you+are and there+are, with elision of the a. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:03, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Telugu

I am curious why you reverted the edit for Telugu. If you believe that I made a mistake, let me know what it is. Xit vono (talk) 00:19, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not a huge problem, but the word nyelv doesn't seem to have been necessary, and being added outside the template made it look suspicious. See the Hungarian translations for some of the other language names. Still, I seem to have overreacted. Feel free to add it back- but check how other Hungarian translations are formatted. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:02, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm gonna revert it as I did originally. I decided to follow the pattern of other translations, such as bahasa Telugu and lingua Telugu, with only Telugu as part of a link. I checked hu.wictionary, where it had just telugu, but for Quechua it was kecsua nyelv. Xit vono (talk) 03:24, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Our JA anon -- shifting tack to target JA translations in EN entries

I've noticed a disturbing trend where our anon has started crapflooding EN term translations with mostly bogus JA listings. See Special:Contributions/96.26.200.203 for an example. I've gone through and cleaned up that lot; they were almost all execrable, but again not entirely, so nuking from orbit might be overkill.

I'd softened slightly on our anon and had reduced my penalty block to one month; this change in tactic increases my concern, so I'm going back to three months.

Just FYI, and TIA, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:29, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

New appendix

As a participant in an associated discussion, you are invited to contribute to the list of terms and criteria at Appendix:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English. Cheers,   — C M B J   11:03, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

oleifolius and other -folius

Sorry about the Usage notes/See also issue. It was a matter of copy-paste and I didn't even realize. Sobreira (talk) 10:10, 19 June 2013 (UTC)