Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2013/February

Template Tiger

The famous Template Tiger has now been updated to include English Wiktionary. This is a tool on the German Toolserver, which allows you to analyze the usage of templates. For example, the most used templates here are {{t+}} (used in 371,300 places), {{t-}} (319,175) and {{term}} (79,627). For the latter, the most commonly used parameters are positional parameter 0 (used in 79617 places) , 1 (38947) and 2 (30680) and named parameters lang (67763) and tr (8958). Some less commonly used parameters (perhaps spelling errors?) for this template are leng (9 places), ang (8), lanf (4) and lanh (2). Template Tiger helps you to find those places. Take some time to check it out. --LA2 (talk) 14:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Very interesting. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 14:46, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

This is really helpful for finding template errors. Thanks a lot! -- Liliana • 14:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! BTW, the links relating to {{t+}} are broken, but you can correct the URLs manually by changing + to %2B; for example, the parameters report is at http://toolserver.org/~kolossos/templatetiger/template-parameter.php?template=t%2B&lang=enwiktionary. —Ruakh_TALK 15:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, a few things seem to be broken, but they're mostly workaroundable, so it's still very helpful. (And we can presumably contact the owner with requests for fixes.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

There’s something wrong. It says there are 468 transclusions of {{pt-verb form of}}, but [1] shows that there are thousands. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

How exactly does this relate to Special:MostLinkedTemplates? Is it that Tiger only has first-level, direct uses of each template and MostLinkedTemplates includes indirect links? If so, what matters for exercising caution is MostLinkedPages. DCDuring TALK 17:10, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the current numbers are much too low. The data will be updated. See this discussion. --LA2 (talk) 09:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't Template Tiger work on the unexpanded wikitext of the XML dump? DCDuring TALK 11:46, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Lucifer is back

User:LightningNightling is evidently Luciferwildcat, Gtroy, Acdcrocks, etc. i.e. another block evasion. Equinox ◑ 00:47, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, I blocked him as being WF - then realised who he really was. Still blocked though. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:08, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

71.142.79.73 (talk)? - -sche (discuss) 09:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Could very well be. LW has used 71.142.69.216 (talk), 71.142.72.103 (talk), 71.142.72.131 (talk), and 71.142.74.66 (talk) (I keep a database for such trivia), which also show on Geolocate as AT&T Internet Services in Pleasanton. This IP missed a couple of things here and there that LW would know, so I'm not absolutely certain- but it's easy to overestimate his memory for details. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Kinda sad that somebody so passionate about editing has been blocked. I haven't followed this saga; is he profoundly inept? Does he add intentionally bogus entries? Is he just an unmitigated ass who creates busywork and unhappiness for others? Curious, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Removing restoree from rollback message.

Our current default rollback message is:

Reverted edits by $2, restoring last version by $1. If you think this rollback is in error, please leave a message on my talkpage.

Rukhabot has gotten a few messages from people complaining about rollbacks that restored Rukhabot-edited versions. These editors are apparently confused by the edit-summary, and mistakenly believe that Rukhabot has reverted their edits. This confusion seems needless; it's useful for MediaWiki:Rollback-success to mention the restoree, in case it's not who the rollbacker thought it was (e.g., in cases where two different IP addresses make bad edits, it's easy to accidentally roll back only the second, thinking that we're rolling back to an earlier version than we actually are), but I don't see the benefit of MediaWiki:Revertpage doing so.

Any thoughts?

—Ruakh_TALK 06:50, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it's because it says "by". Is there another way we could phrase it so that it's less ambiguous? I wouldn't object to removing it altogether but if we can rephrase it instead I think that's preferable. —CodeCat 11:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Unneeded, sometimes helpful to the rollbacker. If it's causing any confusion, I'd support removing that bit. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:11, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Support. In addition to the problem you mention, the message is too long. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 17:12, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Periphrastic forms in inflection tables

This has come up a few times before but I'm not sure if it has ever been discussed thoroughly. Many languages form certain tenses, moods and voices of verbs using auxiliary verbs and other additional words. All Germanic languages do this, using have to form the perfect or past, become to form the passive, shall to form the future and so on. Romance and Slavic languages also frequently use such constructions. For some languages, the conjugation tables include such forms (Serbo-Croatian and Slovene kupovati, Finnish ostaa), while others focus only on the individual word forms (Dutch kopen, Swedish köpa). Some take a compromise approach, listing only the "formula" for producing the compound tenses but not each form individually (French acheter, Latin emo). I think both approaches have advantages, but in the case of the Slovene verb, the only two finite verb forms that are synthetically formed are the present and imperative, all others are analytical. This leads to a table that is full of forms that don't actually contribute much to the user's knowledge of that verb in particular, and act mostly as a distraction from the more important details (the word forms). Personally I would prefer it if descriptions of such analytical forms are kept to grammars (in an appendix or on Wikipedia) and that the tables only focus on words. What do others think about this? —CodeCat 17:05, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

My preference is that analytical forms be kept in the table if they don't cause too much trouble, like the past tense at זײַן (zayn). Especially semi-analytical forms, where it is two separate words, but it might be difficult to explain how one of them is chosen (like the subjunctive at weli). The Latin solution is an excellent one because the compound passive tenses would take up so much room, but are so easily explained. With Slovene, you might find that the most successful way to present compound verb forms is to link to an explanatory appendix, but I don't mind leaving them in by what I've seen at kupovati. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree. And I think that tenses traditionally shown in conjugation tables in the language should be kept. But not tenses never shown in such tables, such as, in French, être en train de + infinitive, or être sur le point de + infinitive. Lmaltier (talk) 19:03, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that is very helpful. It's rare to find agreement on such things in all materials, and many languages don't even have much material to base such a tradition on. Besides, blindly following other authorities isn't always in the best interest of Wiktionary. Sometimes we can do better. —CodeCat 19:23, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

But people familiar with the usual treatment of that language ought to feel comfortable with our treatment of it when it comes to inflection. Lmaltier is quite right. I assume that Slavic standards are somewhat codified in the literature, although I'm not personally aware of it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:00, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

A good example of following what's expected is the choice of which form to make the lemma. Latin and Greek references go with first-person singular present indicative, while modern Romance languages tend to prefer the infinitive- which is what we do, also. When we have reasons to depart with the norm, we do (for example, omitting "to" in English verbs), but mostly we stick with the consensus of modern works on the specific languages. We might as well do the same when it comes to inflection tables- in cases where such a consensus exists, of course. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:23, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Smart quotes in Template:l

Smart quotes were replaced with straight quotes in {{term}} in this diff per Wiktionary:Grease pit/2012/July#Template talk:term#Smart quotes. Ruakh said

Don't be bold. I, too, support straight ASCII quotes, but this also raises the question of other templates that use curly quotes ({{l}} and {{onym}}, obviously; also reference-templates), as well as the many entries that use curly quotes in their own wiki-text. Are we establishing a policy of using straight quotes? A policy of using straight quotes except in citations? Should we have a bot modify all existing curly quotes? I don't think it makes sense to modify {{term}} without thinking these through.

Quite right too, {{l}}, {{onym}} and all the new l templates like {{l/en}} should use 'straight' quotes too. But I don't think the previous discussion is enough for a clear, irrefutable mandate on this. So... here I am talking about it again. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:31, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

• Jeezum crow, don't we have better things to worry about around here than whether our quotation marks are straight or bent? Support not giving a flying fuck. —Angr 19:30, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer that we consistently use the straight quotes, because it facilitates better formatting of alternative glosses, allowing each separate gloss to appear in its own enclosing pair of straight quotes. Whether this comes up as often with {{l}} and {{onym}} as often as with {{term}} I don't know, but consistency helps. (deprecated template usage) term looks better than l (“gloss1", "gloss2”), though my eyesight is poor enough that I can barely tell the difference. I for one have vastly prefer the ease of typing straight quotes to the aggravation of getting the right edittools character set open and using it. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Just a note... I don't think {{l/en}} should have any quotes at all. —CodeCat 20:44, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I oppose having templates generate straight quotes. Curly quotes make the entries look more professional. I don’t mind if they are changed, as long as they are properly tagged with spans so I can edit my CSS to fix them. Oppose having a bot modify all existing curly quotes. Support giving a few flying fucks. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:51, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Ungoliant. It's not very important when you look at the screen, but it's more important when you print the page. Why deliberately trying to look less professional? However, if people prefer straight quotes for their own edits, they should not be rebuked. On fr.wikt, we routinely use «  », and this is not an issue. Lmaltier (talk) 21:03, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I support straight quotes, but more than anything else I support creating an entry for (deprecated template usage) flying fuck (as I write this, it's a redlink). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:09, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Redirected to the only phrase it's ever used in. —Angr 22:34, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I see we're about as likely to come to consensus about this as about our logo... - -sche (discuss) 22:31, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

@Codecat: I don't know where quotes come up in templates besides in glosses. As it stands now {{l/en}} doesn't support glosses and is not intended to, right?

@Ungoliant: I like the ease of input, but am by no means opposed to curly quotes for appearance. Once the mass (How big?) of existing straight quotes was converted, I suppose any costly intelligent parser operations wouldn't be a problem as they would not be run very much. Would conversion require "costly intelligent parser operations"? DCDuring TALK 22:39, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

@DCDuring: Exactly, but Mglovesfun did add glosses and genders to some of the templates, which I don't really agree with. —CodeCat 01:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: "where quotes come up in templates besides in glosses": One case is reference templates for citing other dictionaries (and whatnot), many or most of which wrap the entry-title in quotation marks. And it wouldn't surprise me if some quotation templates wrap titles of short stories, news articles, and so on in quotation marks. —Ruakh_TALK 02:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Are there uses of those that can involve something like the multiple glosses, which can easily occur within {{term}} in etymologies, where it is sometimes informative to know that, say, the Latin etymon had several of the modern meanings for the English derived term? DCDuring TALK 03:45, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Let's be honest, no one is going to print out dictionary entries with the kind of structure we have (it's sad, but true). So for what it's worth, it makes no difference whether we use straight quotes or smart uotes. And given that the straight quotes are infinitely easier to type in, I'd prefer using these. -- Liliana • 05:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The “let’s be honest” argument implies that anyone who disagrees with you is necessarily lying. Also a pleasure to see it followed up with at least one self-evident fallacy stated as fact. —Michael Z. 2013-02-04 17:32 z

Sorry for my glib response. I’ll address your assumptions and assertions.

• Typographic apostrophes and quotation marks are clearly discernible in the desktop and mobile computers that I use. I have been using them in my web publishing work for over a decade, and now increasingly in my routine email, discussion, etc.
• Wiktionary and other large open-source projects do get re-purposed in print, and in many other forms that we cannot predict. We’re building a database of knowledge, not just a series of web pages.
• No one is making you do anything. If entering typographical characters is hard, just use neutral apostrophes and quotes, and allow someone to improve the presentation in the future. You can also enter Sampa instead of IPA, or sound-out respelling, or omit the pronunciation until someone else improves an entry. Willfully dumbing down the typography in our project is contrary to our collaborative operating principals of constant and perpetual improvement.
• Some editors have taken the care and time to use correct typography. They are willing to edit your entries and bring them to higher standards of writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Deciding to undo this work, and to use templates and bots to bring the quality down, is a slap in the face for these editors.
• Using good typography is not difficult, certainly not “infinitely” harder. Modern browsers support smart-quotes typing in text input fields (it’s built in to Mac OS and Safari, there are extensions for Firefox and Chrome). Typographic marks and diacritics are accessible from the default Mac English keyboard layout, and sort-of usable on Windows and even DOS. Or you can paste text in from a word processor. Or you can make a custom keyboard layout for yourself on Mac OS or Windows.
• Correct typography doesn’t have to hurt searching. Typographic marks don’t interfere with search in Google or on the page in Safari (searching for Let's finds let’s). Strangely, Chrome is fine with quotation marks but bamboozled by apostrophes. Firefox has some catching up to do – its search isn’t even case-insensitive (should we stop using capital letters?). Smarter use of search terms will always get better results anyway.
• Professional-quality typography makes a difference. Directional quotation marks are clearer and easier to read, especially in nested quotations. Our examples should be good examples. Craftsmanship, care, and professionalism give the reader confidence in the source, just like other aspects of writing, grammar, and spelling.
• We are going to use standard English typography anyway, according to our guidelines for reproducing quotations.

 —Michael Z. 2013-02-07 19:58 z

Excuse me. Where is the policy favouring neutral typewriter-style quotation marks over normal typographical quotation marks, and what is the justification for it?

(Also, if we are to adopt the quaint pre-ASCII conventions of manual typewriting, why aren’t we also using the figure 1 to represent the Latin lowercase letter l? Perhaps we should use the combining underscore in place of italics, because my cousin reads Wiktionary on a teletype and everything but the italics displays perfectly for her.) —Michael Z. 2013-02-04 17:02 z

• I'll add my voice to those who vastly prefer the more professional look of regular ‘bent’ quotation marks, as opposed to the straight ones. Ƿidsiþ 16:54, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I’d like to design this dictionary on the basis of reason and evidence, not just personal preference. There are a number of reasons to allow typographical apostrophes and quotation marks, and also some more reasons to prefer them. It confounds me that participants in an English-language project which uses Polytonic Greek and cuneiform, and has rejected Sampa in favour of IPA on every page, can’t tolerate the use of standard English orthography!

If after a proper discussion we decide that the advantages of typewriting outweigh those of typesetting, then I will abide by it.

But it’s completely unacceptable to me that despite the lack of any policy, an ad hoc majority is using templates and other powerful technologies to dumb down the basic English in this project, after some of us have put in the care and the labour to write and edit text to a good standard. —Michael Z. 2013-02-07 18:34 z

I would very much like it if we could make it policy that each individual gloss be enclosed in its own quotes. There are numerous cases where multiple glosses are appropriate, indeed almost essential, in etymologies. I find the lack of such separation to be not just a matter of appearance, but one of avoiding user confusion. A bot that inserted quotes, smart or dumb, wherever there was a comma in a gloss within {{term}} and left a {{rfc}} of some kind would be quite handy for correcting the deficiency and would address the smart quote problem that I personally have. To me this matter trumps the "smart quotes" matter as it applies to {{term}}. No one has yet identified any other templates that are subject to this internal quotes usage. DCDuring TALK 18:55, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!

It just occurred to me that I benefit from Wiktionary so much more that I can ever return. Therefore I want to say thanks to every single person who is and has been working on this great project. Your work is highly appreciated. Caudex Rax ツ (talk) 13:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

WOTD

We're running dangerously low on Word of the Day nominations. Quick, everyone suggest something! (PS, Astral, if you get tired of setting WOTD, let us know.) - -sche (discuss) 19:18, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

WP links

WP linking was recently brought to my attention over at ニゴロブナ (a type of carp). I'd added WP links to both the JA and EN Wikipedia articles, in imitation of other JA entries I'd seen, and on the assumption that users landing on the ニゴロブナ page here on the EN WT could arguably be assumed to be English readers interested in Japanese. Another editor removed the EN WP link, and commented that EN WP links should only go in EN entries.

However, this raises some issues.

In usability terms, linking from a JA entry to an EN WP article provides the user a clear and easy way to get more information about the JA term in an English encyclopedia article. Including EN WP links only on EN term entries a) increases barriers to finding relevant information, b) requires that the relevant EN entry exists, and c) requires that users know to click through to that EN entry to find the EN WP link, or alternately to click through to the JA WP entry and then find the EN WP link from there.

Case in point, there is no single English term that corresponds to JA ニゴロブナ -- this fish is the w:Carassius auratus grandoculis, a type of carp, for which we have no Carassius auratus grandoculis entry here on the EN WT.

Is there any strong objection to including EN WP links in entries for other languages? If so, why? Granted, in cases where an entry in another language shares the same page as the EN entry, it does make sense to have the EN WP link only in the EN entry. But for cases where the script of the lemma guarantees that there will never be an English entry on that page, such as with almost all Japanese lemma forms, I'm quite in the dark as to why including EN WP links would be frowned upon. I can see no harm in doing so, so long as the links are correct, and including such links makes the entries more complete and makes relevant information easier to find. Discoverability is a key concept in UI design, and I think we might overlook that sometimes.

Curious, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:52, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

As in interim and possibly less contentious measure in the narrow case of taxonomic name entries, which are supposed to be Translingual and often appear in running text in languages that do not use Roman script, let me recommend {{taxlink|Carassius auratus grandoculis|subspecies}}. In-line links to sister projects would also work.

I also have not understood why it should be essential that users be compelled to go to an entry in an encyclopedia which they are likely not to understand. Is this supposed to be punishment for not yet knowing Japanese or not wanting to? This is particularly odd where the language in question does not have as good an entry or indeed any entry at all. The "prohibition" can most charitably be viewed as a consequence of particular assumption about who the user of the entry might be and a patronizing assumption of what would be best for them. DCDuring TALK 21:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems obvious to me that links to WP are bridges to the encyclopedic world. And that, here, they should preferably be to the EN WP, wherever possible, as this is the language chosen by the reader of the en.wikt page. And I disagree with in cases where an entry in another language shares the same page as the EN entry, it does make sense to have the EN WP link only in the EN entry. Each language section should be considered in isolation. Lmaltier (talk) 21:43, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you guys want to know about the Japanese word ニゴロブナ or about the English term nigorobuna? What punishment? What are you people talking about? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, and your comment reminds me that some folks use tabbed languages -- in which case, each entry appears as a separate "page" for UI purposes. So yes, I agree that "each language section should be considered in isolation.". -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:11, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Note that if there isn’t an entry for a taxonomic name, {{taxlink}} should be used, which links it to Wikispecies. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 22:36, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Eirikr regarding WP links. - -sche (discuss) 22:37, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I was the second person who removed the WP links and I left an edit summary Eirikr was referring to. I strongly object to linking foreign language entries to English Wikipedia. This would be a bad precedent when all foreign language entries may get English Wikipedia links. Besides, in this case we have an English entry with an English Wikipedia link and the Japanese Wikipedia page has an English page linked. In any case, people can find encyclopaedic info in another language (here English) if they want to, why should Wiktionary be concerned about it? There's plenty of linguistic info, which already makes entries look cluttered or encyclopaedic to many users. The entry should be concerned with the target language info, IMHO. If the current definition is confusing or insufficient, it can be expanded, there's also "usage note", if just a definition is not enough, example sentences, whatnot. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:08, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, this is my fault, eh? :) Well, I think Anatoli said it much better than I ever could, and that combined with DCDuring's taxlink template, we should be fine. Lmaltier's assumptions are rather faulty, I'm afraid. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

No-no, sorry, if I made it sound like it was all your fault :). I meant that you deleted the WP link, Eirikr reverted it, I put it back with an edit summary because I thought your edit was correct. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:39, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

We should make an exception for when the English WP has an entry about the word itself (w:Wissenschaft, w:Saudade, w:Sehnsucht, w:Hiraeth). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 02:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Ungoliant for terms like w:Nemawashi or w:Wabi-sabi, and in general I don't think it's so bad to use WP links as long as they are used very sparingly. In rare cases, some terms have a cultural context that you need to know about in order to understand how how the word is used, like 法螺貝 which I think benefits from a link to w:Horagai (although the clutter at 法螺貝 simultaneously illustrates the dangers of adding WP links.) You could put that in a usage note, but it's already at WP, and the link takes just as much space or less. Sometimes the WP page just has really helpful information that would be a little challenging to find otherwise, like w:Radical 94 which I added to けものへん, although maybe it belongs at 獣偏 if anywhere. --Haplology (talk) 03:32, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I would agree to having links to WP, if there is no English word for it (or an entry), like in the case of けものへん (yes, it's better to move it to 獣偏). Our strict policy often disallows important terms, even linguistic ones to be created and kept safely (or there is disagreement on what SoP and word means). Perhaps real, not numeric names of Chinese character radicals should be allowed - e.g. kemonohen, dog radical or radical 94. If not, then it should be OK to have WP links in the Japanese entry or any other external reference to this term. Disagree with Ungoliant about linking to WP if they describe the word. We could link on the loanword, couldn't we? Why should we link to the English WP on Wanderlust#German or 空手#Japanese, if we could do the same on wanderlust#English or karate#English? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:59, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Of the four examples I gave, only Sehnsucht was loaned into English. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:09, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

So, if there is an English article about this loanword, one can link Sehnsucht#English or sehnsucht#English to the English WP, not Sehnsucht#German, no need to link to English WP articles about longing, yearning, etc. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:20, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I see what you mean. By the way my example about horagai was wrong. It seems that the shell was named after boasting, not the other way around, and the expression is literally "blowing a boast" but "blow" could mean "boast" so it's "boast a boast"... which all gets very confusing. There are moments when writing an entry that it just feels too short, as with defining 侘び as "refined simplicity," which reminds me of describing humans as "mostly harmless," lol. I'll leave the WP links on the English entries whenever possible. --Haplology (talk) 07:55, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Reading and re-reading this thread, I am left still uncertain about quite what the objections are to including EN WP links in entries for other languages. As best I can tell, the objections seem to boil down to:

1. clutter
2. a concern that links to content in English somehow do not belong in an entry for a term in some other non-English language

• Regarding clutter, this is a concern I can begin to understand, but I think it's moot in this case. WP links as I've been adding them are aligned on the right of the page, same as images, in a block 250px wide. The text of the entry itself is all left-aligned. This layout is visually pretty clear -- read the entry on the left, look at the stuff on the right for additional information. Haplology mentions the Japanese 法螺貝 entry. This includes more than one EN WP link as the JA term itself has more than one meaning: either an aquatic mollusc, or the mollusc's shell as used as a horn. Both senses are distinct, and there is quite a bit of encyclopedic information about each that does not belong in the WT entry -- that's what the Wikipedia articles are for, hence the links.

• Regarding links to English content in non-English entries, I confess I remain baffled as to why this matters. This is the EN WT; ostensibly, our target audience consists of English readers, who are also ostensibly interested in the terms and/or languages in the entries themselves. We may link to the WP article in the source language to show the term in context in that language; we may link to the WP article in English, our target language, to provide the user with more information in English, i.e. the language that we can safely assume that the user reads.

Usability is important to me, and poor usability reflects poorly on Wiktionary. Many of our feedback comments from frustrated users ultimately boil down to poor usability -- where it is not obvious to the user where to go for the information they are seeking.

Anatoli comments, "Besides, in this case we have an English entry with an English Wikipedia link and the Japanese Wikipedia page has an English page linked. In any case, people can find encyclopaedic info in another language (here English) if they want to, why should Wiktionary be concerned about it?" As I initially described, requiring the user to click through various other non-obvious links in order to find information is poor usability. Why not just include the EN WP link within a given entry? This way, it is obvious to the user where they can go to read more. Moreover, assuming that the user does click through to the JA WP article, if they don't read JA, they might be overwhelmed or intimidated and fail to notice the "English" link on the lower left. Again, poor usability, where we wind up frustrating users instead of providing them with, and clearly leading them to, relevant information in formats they can absorb.

Wiktionary is ostensibly about providing users information regarding the entries we editors include here. To that end, entry completeness should also be one of our goals as editors. Anatoli asks, "Do you guys want to know about the Japanese word ニゴロブナ or about the English term nigorobuna?" I suspect that many users look up terms in a dictionary in search of a definition. If a user stumbled across the Japanese term ニゴロブナ and looked it up here in Wiktionary, and all they found was "1. nigorobuna (Carassius auratus grandoculis)" and a link to just the JA WP article, as in this former incarnation of that entry, they would be right to be frustrated. There's no mention here that this is even a fish, let alone what kind or where it's found or what it looks like. Given that this EN WT user is looking for a definition written in English, providing only a link to the JA WP article is less than helpful. Given also that this term is Japanese, and ultimately about a fish only found in Japan, it's a bit strange and unintuitive to expect the user to click through to the English entry to find out what this word means. Again, poor usability.

Another of Anatoli's comments suggest that perhaps he's concerned about *all* entries requiring EN WP links ("this would be a bad precedent when all foreign language entries may get English Wikipedia links"); please note that that is not what I'm proposing at all. Requiring this would mean a substantial amount of additional work, and I suspect that many WT terms have no corresponding EN WP articles.

However, if EN WP links are optional, I fail to see what possible harm there could be even if all entries in all languages included EN WP links (again, this assumes that the links are correct and that the articles are relevant). Providing an easy way to link to related information was one of the core reasons for inventing HTML in the first place. Effectively erecting barriers to finding relevant information by removing such links strikes me as completely antithetical to the underlying reason for Wiktionary's very existence: helping users find information. I'm deeply concerned here that practicality is being sacrificed for ideology.

Apologies for the tome; I felt I needed to articulate my concerns. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:23, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

PS: To clarify, Anatoli, please do not take this as any personal attack. I think very highly of you as an editor, and I appreciate your work. I just disagree with you about EN WP links.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:34, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

That's OK. I've lost interest. I have expressed my opinion. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

What could be the objective of WP links? Certainly not the objective of giving complementary information about the word, as we should provide this information here, and Wikipedia does not provide information about words, anyway. The only possible objective is to provide a bridge to the encyclopedic world, as Wikipedia is not about words, but is an encyclopedia organized by topic. And the preferred language of en.wikt readers should be assumed to be English. This is why links to EN WP make sense. Lmaltier (talk) 18:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Not sure where to put this: it's in response to the original question. I roughly agree with Lmaltier's "objective is to provide a bridge to the encyclopedic world, as Wikipedia is not about words, but is an encyclopedia organized by topic. And the preferred language of en.wikt readers should be assumed to be English". However, I think it would be useful for those who do read the foreign language to be able to read its WP article on the topic. So I don't see anything wrong with linking to either or both, such as exist, and some benefit. That said, I think two {{wikipedia}} boxes will be ugly, so putting the links as bullets (or even combined into one bullet) sub "External links" seems the way to go.​—msh210℠ (talk) 04:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

• I disagree with the categorical statement that Eirikr quoted (or paraphrased?), that "EN WP links should only go in EN entries"; but certainly the bar should be much higher for enWP links than for FL WP links, and the former should go in ===External links=== sections, not in right-floating boxes. (Setting aside inline links, of course, which are another matter entirely.) The entry for French (deprecated template usage) chien should link to w:fr:Chien, but should not link to w:Dog. This is because, firstly, part of the reason for linking to Wikipedia is to cover uses that we would never include (such as the name of a certain video game character), and obviously only w:fr:Chien is relevant to that; and secondly, no one needs the link to w:Dog. English-speakers already know about dogs. The link to w:fr:Chien offers more cultural context (does it describe the chien as a wild animal or a domesticated one? as a pet or as food?), more images of chiens (compare the images at w:fr:Chien with those at w:ja:イヌ), more sentences that use the word chien (as well as chienne and chiot), and so on. A link to w:Dog would offer none of these things; it would actually discourage the recognition that the French word is not perfectly equivalent to the English translation we've provided.
  In the case of [[ニゴロブナ]], where the referent is a Japanese fish (to the point that even enWP gives the Japanese name for it), I think the link to enWP is very helpful, and should be included in an ===External links=== section, orsince the enWP article's title is the scientific name, perhaps we could simply linkify that in the def. But again, not in a right-floating box.
  —Ruakh_TALK 05:33, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • That makes a good deal of sense.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:44, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes, that makes sense, especially for imperfect entries. But providing a WP link as the single bridge to the encyclopedic world (and excluding all other encyclopedic external links) also makes sense. Some readers may get a Wiktionary page while they actually look for encyclopedic information. I don't think that providing both links is a problem, but I would avoid floating boxes too. Lmaltier (talk) 06:56, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I do prefer the right-aligned floating box myself, but I'm happy to admit that that's mostly a subjective aesthetic perspective. For consistency's sake, though, I think we should put any and all WP links in the same place and in the same format -- I'm concerned that using the floating box for the source-language WP link, while putting the target-language (i.e. EN) WP link at the bottom, would be potentially confusing, especially for longer entries where the EN WP link might be off the bottom of the screen. Since WP is part of this whole MediaWiki / WikiMedia thing, ===External links=== doesn't seem quite right, but I'd be fine with ===See also=== instead. Would this version of the 煮頃鮒 (nigorobuna) page be acceptable? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:46, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

"External links" is where to put WP links, not "See also", per policy.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks msh210, I'd missed that, and the only places I can recall seeing * {{pedia|something}} used have been all in ===See also=== sections. I've changed the header in the 煮頃鮒 entry accordingly. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Index:All_languages

I have reformatted this page as a table, and added some information that I couldn’t find anywhere in one place. Please check my work, especially the language & script codes we use for Chinese and Korean languages. Thanks. —Michael Z. 2013-02-04 23:57 z

I checked all the codes and automated all of the script codes that were feasible to do so. Should we also list indices for appendix-only conlangs here? We have quite a few, in various states of completion. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:51, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I would segregate them into their own section at the bottom of the page, but yes, I think it's OK to have them in this centralised index of indices. - -sche (discuss) 05:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, if others want to integrate them into the main list, I'm OK with that, too. - -sche (discuss) 05:33, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

uncountable noun and countable noun - get deleted, can we include such terms in CFI?

In my opinion, we should not delete these terms but "deletionists" seem to be more active in this period. I'm not so worried about my own input in these entries, in my opinion, they should be kept and RFD and CFI should be reviewed to allow terms included in other authoritative dictionaries. I suggest to keep grammar terms, medical terms (something else?), which are defined elsewhere (make a list of dictionaries recognised as important), so that SoP rule would not be applied to such entries. Does someone care to set up rules and a vote? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you suggesting a rule that presence in other dictionaries trump our current attestation rule also, or our current idiomaticity rule only?​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:04, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Only idiomacity if there is a dispute. I'm not suggesting here to include any unattestable words. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think these terms would pass anyway. They aren't the usual terms in English; the usual terms—the fixed phrases—are mass noun and count noun. "Countable" and "uncountable" are more often used as predicates, as in "the noun dog is countable; the noun milk is uncountable". Using them as attributive adjectives just isn't idiomatic. —Angr 15:23, 7 February 2013 (UTC)