Wiktionary:Information desk/2020/June

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I just tried to swap to articles (µK and μK), and something went south. Help?

µK is with U+00B5 : MICRO SIGN

μK is with U+03BC : GREEK SMALL LETTER MU

Moving didn't work, so I tried swapping the content of both pages. The second act of that sequence was blocked by an "SLO" filter, and now I can't even undo the edit I did to the other article. Right now, they both redirect to each other ):

What can I do? — This unsigned comment was added by Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk • contribs).

@Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything: This is confusing and I'm sometimes slow, so maybe help me understand:

What content should be at the page µK (micro sign/K)?

What content should be at the page μK (mu/K)?

While Wiktionary does have some redirects, they are far more rare than (e.g.) Wikipedia. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:24, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Originally, the mu page said that it was a symbol for microkelvin, and the other one redirected to that.

I thought that it should be the other way around, such that the micro sign page has the content and the mu page redirects to it.

I tried to move the mu page to the micro page, but I couldn't, since the micro page was there already. I couldn't find a delete button,

so I decided to try swapping both site's contents. The second edit of this was picked up by some editing filter,

and I tried undoing my change to the other page, thinking that this filter was to prevent swapping of content,

but the filter also blocked the undo.

Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 01:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything: Thanks for explaining. Can you point me to any resources that use either <µK> or <μK>? That can help me understand if one form is used (and if so, which one) or if both forms are used. Note also that µ (micro) redirects to μ (mu). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@Koavf: I'm not sure, but, my question is mostly concerned with: Why was my second edit stopped? What should I do instead, if I wanted to swap two pages? Should I ask an administrator? What does "SLO" mean? Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 01:31, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything: The term "SLO" refers to Special:AbuseFilter/83 (note that you won't be able to view the details of this as you aren't an administrator). Without going into too much detail, MediaWiki allows users to set up filters that block potentially unhelpful edits, e.g. if someone writes the same character repeating more than seven times or if more than 80% of an edit is in ALL CAPS or if someone adds a link that includes a string like "freeMP3s.biz", etc. The AbuseFilter isn't perfect, so there's always a balance between vandalism, accidents, and good edits. It seems like yours was in the second camp. In the future, if you see two pages that you think should be swapped, definitely do contact an admin, as just copying and pasting the content of one page into another page is not allowed (it breaks the edit history and makes it impossible to give proper attribution to the editors who made the page). Good questions and your instinct was understandable, even if you were off base this time. Let me know if you have any more questions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:10, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

The symbol µ (U+00B5) is a legacy symbol that is kept in Unicode for backwards compatibility with ISO/IEC 8859-1, in which it was included because the Greek letter mu is the SI prefix symbol for micro-. As Unicode now covers the full Greek alphabet, it is not needed for other reasons than compatibility with legacy data. Any page whose title uses it should redirect to a page in whose title µ (U+00B5) is replaced by μ (U+03BC).  --Lambiam 18:31, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Font for rare Chinese characters

I'd like to install a font that will display rare Chinese characters such as 𠊎 (Hakka ngai/我) and 𰻞/𰻝 (biangbiang noodles). Any advice on where/how to download one? I use a Mac. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:40, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: The font test page at ctext.org has some resources (Hanazono font with instructions). There's also Adobe's Source Han and the open-source I.Ming. Hope that helps! --Frigoris (talk) 17:56, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest Hanazono but a version with biang hasn't come out yet. Try BabelStone Han (and install Hanazono anyway). —Suzukaze-c (talk) 04:25, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris, Suzukaze-c Thank you! —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Citing Corpus of Contemporary American English

I use COCA a lot to find quotations. I'm a little concerned that someone who wanted to verify the quotes I'm pulling from there may be hard pressed to do so. For example, this one I recently added at thing:

1993 November 24, The Rush Limbaugh Show (radio), Rush Limbaugh (actor):

Now I don't know how many of those male flight attendants are male lesbians -- you know... (Laughter) Well, it's a thing. I mean, there's a -- it's a -- there's a feminist professor down in Tampa who's discovered a male lesbian

It's seemingly impossible to look up this quote (if, say, you wanted to verify it, or see more context) via google. But if you know to search COCA, it becomes easy. Is it worthwhile to add some text to such a quote to indicate that it was accessed via COCA (or whatever other searchable online corpus)? Maybe, if using the {{quote-av}} template, some text like "Accessed via COCA" could be stuffed into the "footer" parameter? Or is it not worth the clutter? Unfortunately, COCA doesn't have permalinks for search results, so there's no appropriate value for the "archiveurl" param. Colin M (talk) 19:32, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I think adding that is a good idea, with the wording you suggested. Someone shouldn't have to listen to radio archives just to find your quote. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:07, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! I've made this change at thing for some quotes I added (senses 4 and 8). I'm not a huge fan of the formatting that resulted from using the template's "footer" field, since it adds a whole new line below the text of the quote. I'm all ears if anyone has thoughts on a better way to present the information. I was tempted to stuff it in the "publisher" field, but that seemed like it might violate the field's intended meaning. Colin M (talk) 15:20, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Lavabo

This entry states the term for this ritual comes from Psalm 25:6, "I will wash." However, Ps. 25:6 reads, "Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,for they have been from of old." (NRSV)

It is Psalm 26:6 that reads, "I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar, O Lord. . ." (NRSV)

That's true in the Hebrew and in the modern translations, but the Septuagint (Greek) and the Vulgate (Latin) divide things differently. The Douay-Rheims translation is from the Vulgate, so it follows the same numbering. Since this word comes from the Vulgate, it only makes sense to use that version's numbering. I added a note to the etymology to clear up the confusion. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:50, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Best way to search phonetic spellings with regular expressions?

I'm interested in being able to search soft rhymes, half rhymes, etc.

I'm reading between the lines with other rhyming software that it does this by searching a dictionary with phonetic spellings. I'd love a way to do this manually with wiktionary.

Any suggestions?

Wikitionary Newcomer Question

Hello, I am a newcomer on wikitionary. I want to know how wiktionary works. what are rules? What are you supposed to do on wikitionary also, I have used wikipedia before. Any support would be okay - Hamuyi

If you are familiar with Wikipedia, then you might find WT:WFW helpful. —Rua (mew) 14:50, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Okay. Thank you. -.-Hamuyi (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Template for uses other than figurative or idiomatic

I thought there was a template to create a sense with something akin to (not the exact wording) "For uses other than figurative or idiomatic ones, see blue and balls."

I can't find it. Anyone knows what I'm talking about? Alexis Jazz (talk) 15:01, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

{{&lit}} Chuck Entz (talk) 03:33, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Romanized pronunciation guide: Greek entries

I noticed that a romanized pronunciation guide is offered for Greek entries. As a Greek learner, I find this extremely helpful! I have found one minor problem, however. The Greek diphthong ει should be rendered simply as i, not ei. I attempted to make the changes on the page for the verb κλείνω but could not find the romanized guide on the edit page. I suspect that the problem is systemic and that it has been codified to all Greek entries. Can anyone point me in the direction to alert those in charge? Thank you! — This unsigned comment was added by Hafizense (talk • contribs) at 19:55, 22 June 2020 (UTC).

@Hafizense: Greek transliteration is handled by Module:el-translit. ει (ei) could be transliterated as i (and so could υ (y), which is currently transliterated as y) but I don't know if everyone would agree to it. — Eru·tuon 19:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

There's a difference between transliteration, which is for showing spelling for people who can't read the script, and transcription, which is for showing pronunciation. The "ei" is the former, while "i" would be the latter. With transliterations, the idea is to use different spellings for things that are spelled differently in the original alphabet- having several combinations of Greek letters transliterated as "i" violates that. The place to look for pronunciation information is in the Pronunciation section. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:00, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

For the transliteration used, see Wiktionary:Greek transliteration. Note this emphatic statement: The transliteration of Greek letters into Roman characters is not intended to provide a phonetic representation of a word.  --Lambiam 12:28, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Information desk/2016/October § Wrong transcription, though. PUC – 15:04, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Talk pages

Why are individual entries' talk pages so rarely used? Glades12 (talk) 10:36, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

There are over 6 million of them, and very few people have any one entry on their watchlists. If no one spots your edit in Special:RecentChanges it may be several years before anyone is even aware of any edits to them. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:32, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

So, the answer is simply that people don't use watchlists? The English Wikipedia also has over 6 million article talk pages, and an even more active community, but that doesn't make them nearly as rarely used as WT's. Glades12 (talk) 18:21, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

The answer is that pages are edited in different ways with different types of content, moreover by a different kind of and fewer people, so watchlists are also used differently. Fay Freak (talk) 18:55, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

There's less to talk about anyway. On Wikipedia you have BLP issues, which photo to use, fixing various issues. A Wiktionary entry is more simple in that regard, there are less controversial edits. Also, there are many talk pages like w:Talk:Ettrick Pen and w:Talk:Raymond G. Esposito Trail which have no discussion of any kind. Alexis Jazz (talk) 19:31, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, as someone experienced with Wikipedia but new here, I also find this strange. It seems like concerns are more often articulated in the main entry itself, either via HTML comments or templates like {{attention}} or {{rfc}}. Or on noticeboards like WT:Tea room. If the talk page were used instead, that would have the benefit of leaving an easily discoverable record of the discussion (even after it's been resolved), rather than it only existing buried in the article's edit history, or in the archives of a separate noticeboard. For certain discussions on Wikipedia like Requested Moves and Requests for Comments, they follow the model of having the canonical discussion on the relevant article's talk page, but also having a bot automatically list/tranclude active discussions on another page that serves as a directory of all active RMs or RfCs or whatever (so that it's also discoverable by editors who don't have the relevant article watchlisted). It seems like an effective approach. Colin M (talk) 19:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, RFV, RFD, RFC, and sometimes Tea Room discussions are archived to the relevant talk pages. The fact of the matter is that any conversation begun on a talk page attracts very little attention, because the ratio of pages to users is just too high for any of them to be monitored very closely. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 07:16, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Xingjiang

How should this word be added to the Xinjiang page? I'm not familiar with the way that misspellings (if this is a misspelling) are handled on Wiktionary. Geographyinitiative (talk) 06:57, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Usually, they aren't. But if it's common enough, you could add it under 'Alternative forms' with {{q|misspelling}}. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Couldn't find the violated norm

I would like to know which norm in Wiktionary I have violated by making this edit. Adithyak1997 (talk) 04:45, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

The edit filter analyzes the entire page, not just the part that you edited. There are several problems with that page such as the large HTML table that should be in a template, and the bad language section divider "--------". DTLHS (talk) 04:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

So, will I be blocked due to that edit? Also, should the language section divider be actually removed from pages? Adithyak1997 (talk) 04:53, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997: No, no action is taken based on the WT:NORM tag. It's just a way of keeping track of pages that have formatting problems (which are best corrected with an automatic tool because they can be hard to spot). — Eru·tuon 06:48, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for the information. Adithyak1997 (talk) 06:51, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

My edit was blocked due to SLO; how may I proceed?

Hi there! I'm new to contributing to Wiktionary.

I am working on some code to parse Italian entries, and as a result I'm finding a number of minor mistakes with some of the pages that I fix when I come across them. I found at least two cases so far of the wrong template being used ("pt-adj form of" instead of "it-adj form of") under Italian sections. The first fix was fine ([1]), but then the second fix (tranquilla) was blocked with the reason "Error: This action has been automatically identified as harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: SLO".

How can I proceed with the edit? EricNWaters (talk) 10:35, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Two things. Firstly, please read the question being posted just above this (I think it's related). Secondly, please use ~~~~ at the end of each comment that you make in talk pages, so as to identify that the comment has been made by you. It's a usual thing that is followed in talk pages of all wikis. Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:25, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@EricNWaters Please check whether the edit made by you was the one you tried to do. Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:28, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997 Well, it worked the second time. I see that you tried as well. I suspect a bot didn't like the fact that I had made the same edit to two different pages in a row. EricNWaters (talk) 10:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@EricNWaters: I think this can happen when a new/unfamiliar user is performing many edits in rapid succession. Equinox ◑ 12:28, 30 June 2020 (UTC)