Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2014/August

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← July 2014 · August 2014 · September 2014 → · (current)

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Normalised spellings and CFI

For some languages, we commonly respell the words into a common form. This is done for Old Norse, Old High German, Middle Dutch, and other old languages. As it is now, CFI does not actually allow for this practice, but I think it should be allowed. So we should probably codify this practice as an exemption. Something along the lines of "for languages for which a normalised spelling is adopted, the normalised spelling itself does not need to be attested, as long there are unnormalised spellings of the same word that do meet CFI". —CodeCat 23:09, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Support. That's definitely the case with Old Church Slavonic or Old Russian. Most quotations of these in modern Russian use modern Cyrillic letters, instead of old letters, which makes the terms in old spellings difficult to attest. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Support, and for each language that normalizes spellings, we would have to detail the normalization rules on its "WT:About X" page. We can consider an non-normalized spelling to attest its normalized spelling obtained by following the normalization rules that we have listed for the language. --WikiTiki89 13:38, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that quotations should always be added in the original non-normalized spellings whenever possible, and known non-normalized spellings should be listed in alternative forms sections. --WikiTiki89 13:53, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

• Words should be added as they are spelled in attestation. This "normalized spelling" idiocy is another attempt to impose artificial uniformity where there is none, namely in attestations of all languages before the 19th century where there were usually no enforced rules of spelling. It will make Wiktionary completely useless as a resource because we would never know whether the added word was attested as such, or is a a guessed transcription according to a scheme devised by some wiki nickname. Any kind of "normalized" spellings should be used strictly as redirects to real spellings. -Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

  It does not impose uniformity, it merely makes it easier to find the entry where the definition is located. Also, all dictionaries do this, which nullifies your usual argument of breaking accepted conventions. --WikiTiki89 13:56, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

  If the point were in finding entries, then the normalized spellings themselves would be redirects, not the main entries. Instead, what is suggested is that all of the main entries be somehow normalized, regardless of how they are attested, containing all of the definitions, citations and so on for all of the spellings that they resolve to under some lossy scheme, and actually attested entries be soft redirects, and paradoxically listed as "alternative spellings" under the normalized entry (how can real attestations be alternative spellings to something made up?!)

  When it comes to ancient languages, all of the paper dictionaries have space constraints that require usage of a standardized spelling scheme to help look up entries. A single word could have a dozen different spellings. However, online dictionaries do not suffer from such limitations. We can have everything - the original script in Unicode and not Latin transliteration, citations, as well as a list of widely used scholarly transcriptions, normalization schemes, reconstructed pronunciations or whatever - but the latter not as full-blown entries, because they are not real words but reconstructions. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

  Online dictionaries have screen real estate constraints as well. I would not like to picture what an inflection table would look like if it includes all attested variant spellings. --WikiTiki89 14:29, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

  For ancient languages inflection tables are not that important. People don't use them to learn to speak those languages (except maybe Latin and Sanskrit, but that's insignificant). For them, much more important points are accuracy and reliability. Inflection tables which only contain attested forms in their original spelling are much more important than inflection tables containing reconstructed forms that were possibly never attested in those spellings. It's a difference between Wiktionary as a serious reference work, and Wiktionary as a conlang community. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

There's also the problem of unattested lemma forms. We have an entry for πρίαμαι (príamai), for example, but according to Liddell & Scott that particular form is not attested. That doesn't happen too often in Ancient Greek, which has an enormous corpus, but it happens very frequently in languages like Gothic and Old Irish. I've been creating entries for unattested lemmas in both of those languages, but I've been wondering if that's really such a good idea. Maybe we should put them in the Appendix namespace alongside other reconstructed forms. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:54, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

If the lemma form can be easily determined, then I think it is the best place to define the term. We can note on the page that the lemma form is unattested and I guess it makes sense to be able to mark or remove the unattested inflected forms as well. Inflection tables are still very useful, especially when all or most of the forms are in fact attested. --WikiTiki89 15:24, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Support. For Old Norse and Old High German, I expect that normalized spellings actually meet CFI, firstly because Norse texts are so regularly printed in normalized form, and secondly because print and online dictionaries (the former of which are sufficient verification, per CFI, of extinct or poorly-documented languages) invariably use normalized spellings. Another set of languages that already benefit from normalized spelling and would benefit further from having the practice codified are the indigenous languages of North America, which different dictionaries and text-collections have often used slightly different orthographies to represent. For instance, in many languages, some sources have represented long vowels with macrons (ā), or circumflexes (â), other sources have used trailing mid dots (·), and still others have used doubling (aa). Pace Ivan, I think it'd be hilariously nonsensical for e.g. one third of the inflected forms of a term or one third of a set of compounds that share a common element to use ā, while another third used aa, most of the rest used â and a few entries used a·, all because someone preferred to blindly copy and paste the idiosyncrasies of the different dictionaries the forms were attested in rather than think critically about them for a moment. - -sche (discuss) 17:51, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

To be fair, I don't think that Old Norse texts that are printed in normalized are allowed to attest the normalized spelling. The actual attestation should be of the original spelling(s) from when the language was still in use. --WikiTiki89 18:07, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Paradoxically, those spellings are much harder to attest. It's much like the scripts of Gothic: it was written in Gothic script originally, but everyone "normalises" it into a transliterated form nowadays. —CodeCat 18:12, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is why if we allow entries at normalized spellings in CFI, we must remember that normalized texts attest the term, but not the spelling. --WikiTiki89 18:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Those "normalized Gothic" texts are not attestations of Gothic language. That is not how the Gothic was written. Those are scholarly transcriptions made for scholarly purposes. They are equivalent to e.g. respelling any language in phonemic transcriptions. Nobody writes Gothic today. It's a dead language with small and fixed corpus. Those kind of transcriptions are not attestations of Gothic. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I disagree that only original editions of works can be cited; I don't see such a restriction in WT:CFI. Two editions are not independent of each other for the purposes of citing a single word/spelling (e.g. one can't cite both the American and British versions of Harry Potter and have them count as two citations of castle), but nothing I see prohibits citing different editions to confirm the existence of different words or spellings — e.g. citing an American edition of Harry Potter as a use of the word favor, even if JK Rowling's original used favour. The American edition is durably archived and verifiably uses favor several times (making clear that it isn't e.g. a typo). Likewise, the normalized editions of Norse texts are durably archived. (In most cases, they're far better archived and far more accessible — as copies exist in hundreds of libraries — than the original manuscripts, which are periodically destroyed by fires and in historical cases may even have been destroyed before any un-normalized editions of them were printed. But that's mostly superfluous to my point.) Consider also how many translations of the Bible have been cited to verify various words around here — CFI's prohibition against citing two "verbatim or near-verbatim quotations or translations of a single original source" only stops us from citing two editions of the Bible as citations of the same (spelling of a) word, it doesn't stop us from using two editions of the Bible as citations of two different words. - -sche (discuss) 20:17, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

What I meant was a reproduction of an Old Norse text printed well after Old Norse died out cannot count as a citeation of Old Norse. However, we can assume that an unnormalized reproduction reflects the original spelling and use it to attest spellings, and we can assume that a normalized reproduction does not necessarily reflect the spelling but still reflects the form of the word and we can use it to attest the term and its form, but not its spelling. --WikiTiki89 20:25, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@-sche: I think it'd be hilariously nonsensical for e.g. one third of the inflected forms of a term or one third of a set of compounds that share a common element to use ā, while another third used aa, most of the rest used â and a few entries used a· - Indeed it would be nonsensical from the perspective of someone who imagines that Ancient Greek, Gothic, Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic, Akkadian, Hittite, Old High German, Middle Persian, Old French and others were written by a single and unified speech community, who spoke a single language in a single point in time, as opposed to being spoken an written across many centuries (often millenia) by a diverse communities who never knew each other, who wrote in ill-fitting lossy scripts under the influence of traditional orthography not necessarily reflecting actually spoken sounds, and languages of documents X and Y who are today treated as parts of a single ancient language X would be in any other occasions treated as two completely separate languages, were they attested today.

I'm receptive to the idea of having both 1) reconstructed, template-generated inflection fitting some "idealized" model of a language as well as 2) listing only actually attested forms (I believe Old Irish conjugation and Old Persian declensions currently does that). But, simply ignoring all of the variation in order to fit them into some kind of imaginary order is a disservice to any serious potential users of Wiktionary. The only ones who would benefit from that would be non-serious users who could then claim that they "learned" some ancient language as presented by Wiktionary, even though such language never existed in the form it is being presented. It would be similar to many of our protolanguage inflection templates who present some kind of ridiculous Stammbaum-like picture of parent language dissolution reflecting a POV of a single linguist, which never existed as such.

Regarding the barely documented indigenous languages - they are a separate category. They are usually a living thing, and if one scholar uses â and another ā to represent what is indisputably the same sound, it makes sense to standardize on the most common notation and use others as redirects. But if some ancient language uses three different symbols for the [a:] sound, we cannot standardize it on anything because we don't have a clue whether those symbols meant the same thing (even though some, but not all, think they did). We can't make that kind of value judgments. If the original documents are still being published in facsimile editions, it means that no normalization is possible. There could be exceptions - e.g. Gothic with a tiny corpus and a small number of authors (one, is it? Ignoring Crimean Gothic). But for the majority it's not practical at all.

Anyway, this should all be discussed on an individual language basis. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:41, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

In modern languages too, such as French, there may be normalized (recommended) spellings, and it's sometimes very difficult or impossible to find attestations for these normalized spellings. When there if an official recommendation, I think that they should be includable. For old languages, the issue is more difficult. Of course, they should be included when attested (even when the olf spelling cannot be found), but not considered as the main entry (the other entry should be as complete as the normalized one). If a (normalized or old) spelling is included even when it seems to be unattested, the fact that no attestation has been found should be made very clear in the entry. Lmaltier (talk) 18:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Unattested lemma forms and CFI

Kind of a spinoff based on what Angr brought up. Currently, the common practice is to reconstruct the lemma form if it is not attested, and place the entry there. If several lemmas are possible, we generally include them all and choose one at random. This practice is primarily done with old languages, but it's easily conceivable that it could happen to modern languages as well. For example, if all we have for a particular English lemma is two attestations of fonges, one of fonging and one of fonged, then I doubt we would put the main entry at one of those entries. We'd put it at fonge, even though it's not attested. CFI doesn't say anything about this practice, but as it's so widespread both on Wiktionary and outside it, I think we should clarify and codify it. —CodeCat 18:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think English verbs are the best example of the phenomenon. I have worked on and observed cases where we have -ing forms and -ed forms as distinct entries, but do not have the presumed verb lemma form. In the absence of the lemma, the -ing form is often shown as noun and/or adjective and the -ed form as adjective. This seems to actually be a fairly common evolution, with the base and -s forms coming well after the -ing and -ed forms, if indeed they ever materialize in use. I cannot recall specific cases, but, if it is important, instances could probably be found. The best way would be by extracting the cases from the dump. DCDuring TALK 18:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I did include the 3rd person singular present as one of the attested forms in my example, and the past form could include the past tense as well. —CodeCat 18:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

So we're both operating without real cases. I'll rejoin the discussion when someone, possibly me, has a real case. DCDuring TALK 20:04, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Here is a real case: I cannot find the French verb arsenicaliser in its lemma form, but I can find it in a conjugated form : "Le praticien qui a le plus arsenicalisé le monde et dont l’expérience a le plus d’extension, de richesse et de certitude, M. Boudin, préfère actuellement l’acide arsénieux et se tient exclusivement à lui dans tous les cas : (…)" (Annales de la Société de médecine de Lyon, 1851) (it's undisputably a verb in this sentence) or "Nickel minéralisé par le fer & le cobolt sulphurés & arsenicalisés ;" (François Rozier, ‎Jean André Mongez, ‎Jean-Claude de La Métherie, Journal de physique, de chimie, d’histoire naturelle et des arts, 1777). Lmaltier (talk) 20:28, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Here are some more real cases: Passargisch, ostweserisch, and several of the other adjectives in Category:German terms with rare senses. - -sche (discuss) 22:23, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

There are plenty of real cases from extinct languages; I already brought up πρίαμαι (príamai), which itself is not attested, but other forms of it are (see [1]). Old Irish examples include ad·gnin, ailid, and claidid. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Need for entries or a field in the 'create a new entry page' that may just be cross references for all spellings.

There is a requirement for entries that may just be cross references, for all spellings that use characters that are not in the usual Romanised character set.

Just going to the <create a new entry> page is very frustrating. The cross reference might be an extra field on the <create a new entry> page, with the title something like <have you viewed ...>.

Repeatedly I am on a page but cannot search for it to get back to it or to get to similar pages in the index to get back to it.

<kephalḗ> is the Romanisation of <κεφαλή>, but you cannot search for <κεφαλή> using <kephal ...>. It is often very difficult to imagine what you need to do to get back to a page that you have accessed when using the etymology, especially.

I expect to be at Wikimania on Wednesday ...

Genevieve Hibbs

Tocharian question

@Ivan Štambuk and @Word dewd544 in particular since they seem to be our most prolific Tocharian editors: I see from kuse that the vowel letters that are normally represented as subscripts are represented by full letters in the entry name, but the headword line shows the subscript (in this case, k_use). Is this the best way to do this? "Kuse" and "k_use" correspond to two different spellings in the original script, don't they? If and when Unicode finally provides the Tocharian alphabet, we will presumably want to move our entries to forms written in the native script (hopefully retaining the Latin-alphabet entries as "Romanizations of..."), and if we want to do that by bot, it would be good to have entries under unambiguous names. Shouldn't the Tocharian B section of [[kuse]] be moved to [[kᵤse]] instead? The only problem I foresee is that sometimes it's "ä" that's subscript, and Unicode doesn't have a character for subscript "ä". For those cases maybe we could cheat and use "ₔ" instead. What do y'all (and anyone else interested) think? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:09, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes it should be moved, I wasn't even aware that subscript u sign <ᵤ> existed in Unicode until now.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:02, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

And are you OK with using "ₔ" for "_ä"? Are there even any entries that currently call for that? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:17, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. These issue should best be discussed on the about-page for Tocharian. We only have a few hundred Tocharian entries, and they need to be rechecked and referenced at any case. Unicode support doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon. If you feel like doing that, just knock yourself out... --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:21, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

We don't have an about-page for Tocharian. I don't have the resources to recheck and reference the Tocharian entries, but if I happen to see any subscripts in headword lines, I'm happy to move the info to a new entry name. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:33, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree that it should be moved as well. I think the reason I didn't use those characters originally was because I didn't know the others actually existed for use on here, and also just made them based on the format that was used for the few existing entries, from what I remember. But this way is better. Word dewd544 (talk) 13:52, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Cool. Is [[kᵤse]] the only one? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:31, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

OK, I've moved the Tocharian B section to [[kᵤse]] and, I believe, fixed all the links that were pointing to it. I looked through the lemma categories of both Toch. languages and couldn't find any others with subscript vowels, but I may have overlooked something. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Representing Old Irish "tense" sonorants

Anyone interested in Celtic languages or IPA transliteration (or both, or anyone who just wants to put their oar in) is invited to join the discussion I've just started at Appendix talk:Old Irish pronunciation#Representing the tense sonorants. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 01:25, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Lists of dictionary headwords

Are they subject to copyright? I am interested in creating appendices containing lists of headwords of some notable dictionaries that are still under copyright, as well as some additional information not contained in them. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Compiling your own list is not copyrighted as far as I know. —CodeCat 20:32, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Copyright is a matter subject to interpretation anyway... So let's not give a shit about it --Fsojic (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

But I don't want my own list. I want an enhanced lists of words or reconstructions exclusively from certain works so that the experience of browsing them could be simulated by clicking. Additionally, references which refer to them could back-link to such lists. It could also be good for verification and inspection of coverage. I prefer lists and tabular presentation over categories.. I recall a discussion a while back about Brian's hotlist which was kept, so I suppose it's not a big deal. But such lists would be exposed outside userspace, and that seems a bit more problematic, so I'm asking if it could be prohibited for some reason. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:08, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Intellectual property lawyer hat on. The namespace that a list appears in is irrelevant to copyright law. As far as I recall, Brian's hotlist is a compilation of headwords from several different dictionaries, and therefore can not identifiably impinge on the copyright of any one of them. I think that it would be problematic, at least, to list the headwords of a specified edition of a specified, in-copyright, printed dictionary. Such a list of words defined reflects the editorial judgment of the dictionary's authors, and is therefore likely to be covered by copyright. Doing so for one that was out of copyright would be fine. A possible workaround would be to make one set of lists of words defined in out-of-copyright versions of specified dictionaries, and a separate list containing a combination of words not defined in the out-of-copyright versions (which will basically be words that are new since their publication) but which are defined in unspecified "major dictionaries". bd2412 T 22:01, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. Thank you very much for this explanation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Can we automate Hiragana and Katakana transliteration?

I see we don't currently have automatic transliteration of Hiragana and Katakana. Is there a technical reason why we can't, or is it just that no one's gotten around to it yet? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:02, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

It's possible, but it would give incorrect results when they are mixed with Kanji. So the module would have to check for the presence of Kanji characters and return nothing if found. —CodeCat 12:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Mixed terms should rely on kana, e.g. 勉強する and 電子メール should use kana spellings べんきょうする (benkyō suru) and でんしメール (denshi mēru), if it only transliterated the hiragana/katakana part する　and メール, it would be a mess. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:00, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Would that be a lot of work? Obviously we shouldn't do it if it means listing every single one of the 6.3 kilosagans of possible Kanji characters, but if it can be done with less than 100 characters of code, why not? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Module:ja already does it (in Japanese headwords). It's not implemented in link templates, as the transliteration may be incorrect. Wyang (talk) 23:53, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

The automatic transliteration is used in Japanese entries and usexes ({{ja-usex}}) and some other templates. It's only not used in translations. For this to happen, the translations would need to follow the same format as entries, using spaces in multipart words or phrases with particles, capitalisation (forced with symbol ^ or automatic on proper nouns). Besides, many kanji translations don't have hiragana, which is needed for transliterations to happen. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:02, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The other challenge is that the Japanese transliteration is somewhat context-driven, as I said, proper nouns (which excludes language names, demonyms, month names, weekdays) are capitalised, verb with final おう are transliterated as "-ou", rather than "ō", there are cases when morphemes need to be separated ("." is used in entries), particles は and へ are "wa" and "e", rather than "ha" and "he". --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Block policy clarification

The current blocking policy page WT:BLOCK seems misleading. I propose to reduce the page content to the following wikitext:

:''See also '''[[Help:Interacting with humans]]'''''
{{policy-CFIELE}}
{{shortcut|WT:BLOCK}}

# The block tool should only be used to prevent edits that will, directly or indirectly,
hinder or harm the progress of the English Wiktionary.
# It should not be used unless less drastic means of stopping these edits are, by the assessment
of the blocking administrator, highly unlikely to succeed.

===See also===
* [[Wiktionary:Range blocks]] - when and how to block a range of IP addresses
* [[Wiktionary:Vandalism in progress]] ([[WT:VIP]]) for currently occurring or very recent vandalism
* [[Wiktionary:Vandalism]] (or [[WT:VANDAL]]) for vandalism of Wiktionary in general

As per Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-01/New blocking policy, the above text is the only binding part of the page.

Note that I placed "policy-CFIELE" there, so that the criteria for further modification of this page should be identical to those of CFI and ELE.

What do you think? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Special:Abusefilter is supposed to filter enough to allow to talk with the staying editors if they're wrong, and so encourage them toward perfection. How many valuable professionals could post their personal site in reference by ignorance, we can't treat all of them as some incorrigible spammers, it would contravene to WT:Be bold.

Moreover, I'm still considering that if the current WT:BLOCK had been applied with my known Wikimedia bot (3 millions editions and 21 flags), the blocker wouldn't have to refuse to assume any hurried arbitrary decision. I saw too much waste because of friendly fire by the past.

That's why letting a message was a sine qua non condition before forbidding indefinitely the open wiki. JackPotte (talk) 13:10, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Apart from that we could also recruit more patrollers, for example by giving this status to them automatically after 500 editions, like on the French Wikipedia. JackPotte (talk) 16:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:pedia

Template:pedia was redirected from one page to another earlier today, resulting in a number of pages being broken. Instead of Template:pedia redirecting to Template:projectlink/Wikipedia, I request that Template:projectlink/Wikipedia redirect to Template:pedia instead. Since Template:pedia is linked to from [ https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:pedia&namespace=0&limit=5000 thousands of pages], it seems the more likely target. Purplebackpack89 23:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Support it being at Template:pedia

1. Purplebackpack89 23:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Support it being at Template:projectlink/Wikipedia

Discussion

Did you even look at the page history? Template:pedia has been a redirect since 2007. —CodeCat 23:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

And when you moved it earlier today, it wasn't working on the pages I looked at. It shouldn't have been moved by you earlier today, and you shouldn't have deleted the page you did. You also shouldn't have edit-warred, and you should have provided better edit summaries. Purplebackpack89 00:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

That's because you reverted my move while I was still in the process of updating all the redirects to point to the new location. Your revert actually broke the template altogether because it ended up pointing to a deleted page. You should have taken more care before making changes when you didn't know what you were doing. You should also have taken more care to get the facts clear before posting erroneous and misinformed "polls" like you did, which do nothing but embarass you and waste the time of other editors who have better things to do than deal with you. —CodeCat 00:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

You coulda saved yourself the work of not updating all redirects by not making the move in the first place. Nothing will convince me that it was a good idea to make that move. Heck, things would have worked just fine if you'd let Template:pedia have the full text it did in my last edit. Nobody will ever use Template:projectlink/Wikipedia, because just adding Template:pedia is so much easier. Why don't we just have Template:projectlink/Wikipedia redirect to Template:pedia? Everything would be so much simpler that way Purplebackpack89 00:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:projectlink/Wikipedia is not meant to be used directly in entries anyway. Rather it's meant to be used through {{projectlink}}, which supports many other projects. {{pedia}} is just a remnant from before it was converted to {{projectlink}} back in 2007. All the projectlink pages are named beginning with PL:, including Template:PL:pedia, which Template:pedia was originally a redirect to. All I did was move Template:PL:pedia to Template:projectlink/Wikipedia. I am intending to move all the other PL: templates too, as they are properly subtemplates of Template:projectlink and are only meant to be used in conjunction with it. Having them as subpages makes that relationship more clear. I really don't understand why you are making such drama out of it. —CodeCat 00:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Because you broke pages, and they wouldn't have been broken if you hadn't messed around with the template. You probably shouldn't have deleted Template:PL:pedia either. Purplebackpack89 00:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It has no transclusions, so why would we keep it? It's useless. —CodeCat 00:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• By the way, it was COI for CodeCat to protect a page she was edit-warring on. For the life of me, I don't understand why CodeCat is still an administrator. She edit-wars frequently, she rarely explains what she's doing, and she protects things she's engaged in edit wars on. Purplebackpack89 00:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • You're just looking for reasons to get your right when I've already countered your other arguments. You're pretty much pulling the idea that I was edit warring out of your hat in an attempt to put me in a bad light while excusing yourself. If someone breaks things or makes other bad edits repeatedly, there is nothing wrong with edit warring. It's just un-breaking the wiki. Imagine if we had to start a discussion whenever someone kept re-inserting "poop" into an entry. It would be rediculous! —CodeCat 00:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
    • For starters, the last edit I made to Template:pedia wasn't a bad edit. I want you to look closely at it before calling it a bad edit. Secondly, I was acting in good faith trying to restore a template that was showing up as broken on a page. Somebody who inserts "poop" into a page is vandalizing. In one of those cases, it is acceptable to edit-war. In the other, it isn't. If you don't understand which is which, and you think it's OK to edit-war to revert good-faith edits without even an edit summary explaining why you did what you did, then you have no business being an admin. Purplebackpack89 00:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
      • To be fair, I think very little of what you do on Wiktionary is truly good faith. You mostly get on people's nerves and are obstructive almost on principle, and people have said so many times in the past. You've even driven away other valued and productive editors with your behaviour. So if I shouldn't be an admin, then I suggest you shouldn't be on Wiktionary at all. —CodeCat 00:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
        • I resent your accusation. I tried to fix that template because it was showing up as broken, not to piss you off. I vote keep at RfD because I believe the project would be improved with more articles, not to piss Mglovesfun off. Every mainspace and RfD edit I make is in good faith and with a view to improving the Wiktionary Purplebackpack89 00:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
          • Of course, but so are all of my edits. :) I never said that you did it to piss me off. That's not what the other editors who have complained said either. But good faith edits are not equal to good edits, and are therefore not exempt from being reverted. Having good intentions also doesn't prevent you from getting on people's nerves. A while ago there was User:KYPark who kept inserting rather outlandish etymologies at WT:ES, and would get very philosophical about the ideas while not really contributing or making any kind of point. He got upset when we started moving them to his userspace because he didn't understand that it didn't belong there, and after his behaviour continued for about a year or so, he got blocked, I think even several times. There was no discussion about a block, but nobody really minded that he was blocked because he had annoyed and frustrated so many people that nobody was willing to stand up for keeping him. They were glad he was finally gone. The reason I am telling all this is that something similar may eventually happen to you as well. You would do well to try to be a friend of the larger Wiktionary community, because all the good faith in the world will not help you if they are fed up. —CodeCat 01:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

From the edit history of Template:pedia it is apparent that Purplebackpack's starting assumptions (since amended) are mistaken. Template:pedia was not moved; it has been a redirect since 2007. And it was not CodeCat's updating of the redirect target but Purplebackpack's revert of that which seems to have broken some existing uses during the update that was being made. Purplebackpack's subsequent unilateral insertion of thousands of bytes of duplicated code also created quite a mess. Purplebackpack says "I was acting in good faith". As Wikipedia observes at w:WP:CIR, "[some users] believe that good faith is all that is required to be a useful contributor. Sadly, this is not the case at all. Competence is required as well. A mess created in a sincere effort to help is still a mess." - -sche (discuss) 01:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• Explain how the code insertation created a mess. Purplebackpack89 01:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
• Also, there are certain things that acting in good faith entitles you to. One of them is a clear explanation when you are reverted. CodeCat did not give one. Purplebackpack89 01:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I was more focused on undoing the damage than on giving an explanation. Fixing thousands of entries had a higher priority to me than satisfying one user. —CodeCat 01:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Maybe you shouldn't have broken them, then... FWIW, CIR isn't policy here or even on Wikipedia, it's merely an essay, and it's a bad idea, because it flies in the face of being BOLD, and taking chances with edits. It's also walking too fine a line, because it's impossible to understand why a particular editor did a particular edit. Finally, it requires a level of communication that is present on Wikipedia but not on Wiktionary; Wikipedia not only has fewer things that can be broken (since they don't use as many templates and lack a rigidity of article structure), it also is better at explaining to editors what's wrong. Purplebackpack89 02:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Furthermore, @CodeCat, your attitude that explaining your edits to other editors is of little or no import is disheartening, to say nothing of being wrong. You complain about me being hard-headed, but I've mentioned this to you at least half a dozen times, and other editors have mentioned it as well, and you've ignored them. It's very disingenuous for you to make a CIR-based argument when you have not been forthcoming about why you're right. Purplebackpack89 04:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• • • • (edit conflict) CodeCat didn't break anything- you did. You assumed bad faith, and didn't bother to ask or investigate. I'm not going to apologize for CodeCat- sometimes I vehemently disagree with her actions, and I've done my share of griping about it. I've even reverted a few of her edits- but only when things were seriously broken and she wasn't around to fix them, and only after carefully analyzing everything to make sure I wasn't going to make things worse.
      • You see, normal people would post a complaint on her talk page or in the forums first and demand to know why she was doing it. You, on the other hand, know better than everyone else and reserve the right to unilaterally step in and take over any time it sort of looks like someone might be doing something wrong- shoot first, and ask questions later. And then, when it's demonstrated that you were mistaken, you don't admit you were wrong, you don't apologize- no, you attack the person you interfered with for not explaining things so even you could understand. After all, you never make mistakes- the only way you could ever be wrong is if someone else misleads you into being wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:54, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
        • Chuck, I saw something was broken and tried to fix it. I did that in good faith, and felt I was owed an explanation for why my edits were wrong. Purplebackpack89 14:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• Now as before, I find the CodeCat pattern of discussion-free and summary-free edits to infrastructure objectionable. CodeCat hardly ever explains themsemselves, but require explanation for opposition to their edits. CodeCat lacks the maturity to understand that excessive change with little added value is bad. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
• PBP, for this and other edit-warring incidents you have been stripped of rollback and autopatrolled privileges. The latter increases the chance that someone without "COI" will notice any disputes with you, so you should be thankful, really. Further misbehaviour will be met by a block. — Keφr 08:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  This should be immediately undone, since the BPB vs. CodeCat incident had nothing to do with autopatrolling and rollback flags. Especially the autopatrolling should be returned back, since the mainspace edits of PBP are largely undisputed, and removing the flag will increase patrolling cost to the patrollers. Furthermore, the threat of a block is inappropriate, since PBP was edit warring with CodeCat on a page which CodeCat edited without consensus; a block or desysopping of CodeCat could be in order, given the long-term pattern of their editing behavior. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  Flags restored. We can't just punish one party in a conflict, especially considering that the reverts were (perceived as) legitimate, and that there is no pattern of (perceived) abuse of those flags.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  The reverts were perceived as legitimate by whom? — Keφr 09:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  By them, obviously, otherwise they wouldn't have done them. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  I stand by what I did. PBP may not have used the rollback button here, but the repeated combative and misinformed edit-warring is evidence that he cannot be trusted with it. Patrolling burden should not be a problem; PBP has made one edit yesterday, two the previous day, three edits two days ago, and previous 13 edits were on 3rd of August, so his edits are quite infrequent. However, the few edits he makes do need attention apparently. In my opinion a block is not only appropriate, but long overdue. This is not just a single incident, and PBP refusing to learn (from past mistakes and from everything else) is a huge red flag. And nothing prevents you from starting a desysopping vote. — Keφr 09:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  In Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2014/June#Purplebackpack89, in the hidden section "Rights removal", two editors supported flag removal while four editors opposed, two of which explained that since PBP has not abused the flags, they should not be removed. Again: since the editor has not abused the flags, they should not be removed. Furthermore, nowhere in this thread have you noticed that CodeCat refuses to learn. You have singled out the fairly harmless PBP, and conveniently ignored the editor who by my lights have caused actual damage in the mainspace, unlike PBP whose only damage are drama threads in Beer parlour, a fairly unimportant thing. In this very thread, the drama was sustained by CodeCat, who continued to respond to PBP posts. But again, the drama itself is fairly harmless, an attribute of an open wiki where people can actually speak up. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  Wasting people's time on futile discussions is not "fairly harmless". And again, if you think CodeCat's actions are so egregious, what are you waiting for? For any punishment to be effective, CodeCat needs to be desysopped first. — Keφr 09:35, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  There is no sound desysopping process. That is why Ruakh left before he would have to deal with CodeCat in this environment. The only desysopping process that we tried relied on the 2/3-supermajority consensus for desysopping. And this of course enables CodeCat to perform mass changes with unclear support, possibly even less than plain majority support, and be fairly sure they will not get desyssopped, since there probably is something like 45% or more of supporters of what they are doing; I have invented the 45% number and I do not really know the scope of support for their various changes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  "Nowhere in this thread have you noticed that CodeCat refuses to learn." What she has refused to learn is that the editing process would be a helluvalot easier for everybody concerned if she used edit summaries. She has repeated refused to even consider doing so. Purplebackpack89 14:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

As annoyed as I am with PBP's behavior and attendant whining in this incident, I disagree with removing his flags over it. I simply don't see the relevance. This reminds me a lot of the whole Gtroy/Acdcrocks/LuciferWildcat affair: in that case, improper harassment generated enough sympathy that he was able to continue with his prolific creation of subpar and often fabricated content far longer than he would have otherwise. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we should repeat the same mistake by letting him loose? As you see, there is enough strife in this community without stubborn ignoramuses adding to it. — Keφr 14:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• One thing's for sure: Kephir overstepped his bounds with his removal of rights. His "beef" against me has translated into HOUNDing and irrational admin actions, and this after I told him multiple times that interacting with me is unproductive. I am very close to considering he be forbidden from interacting with me for the good of the community. Purplebackpack89 14:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Practically this whole discussion is making me facepalm...stop getting so bent out of shape over such piddly little things... To precounter any (slightly) likely accusations, I'm not taking sides here.

• PBP: You thought CodeCat fucked things up, but in reality things only got messed up because you didn't let them finish the redirections and such that they were doing. Accept that you made a mistake and move on. I get that this was a somewhat more widely used/high profile, etc template not some obscure thing but maybe instead of, as Chuck said, assuming bad faith you should have posted to CodeCat's page to the effect of "Do you realise you broke this thing?" (since that's what you thought happened) before reverting. User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 14:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Where do you get the idea I was assuming bad faith? And you guys fail to acknowledge that CodeCat bears some responsibility for not initially communicating why she did what she did. Purplebackpack89 16:22, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Lots of errors in Old French nouns (and in verbs too, before I fixed them)

(This is a bit of a rant. No offense intended to whoever created all the mistakes ... maybe User:Mglovesfun?)

I notice a bunch of mistakes in Old French noun declension. Of the first 4 words I checked out, 3 had incorrect declensions.

• seror is mistakenly listed under suer; suer is the nom. sg. and seror the obl. sg. but WT has them reversed.
• empereor is the std form, but WT claims that empereür is standard and redirects the former to the latter when it should be reversed; it also messes up the nom. sg. (should be emperere not empereres) and obl. pl. (should be empereürs not empereres).
• ameor has the same declension as empereor (nom. amere - ameor, obl. ameor - ameors) but is listed with a totally different declension, broken in a different way from empereür.

A little more looking reveals

• chanteor has the same declension as ameor and empereor but is listed with a messed-up declension that is different from both the messed-up declensions of ameor and empereor/empereür; what a mess. Its etymology is also broken ... it lists a mistaken cantor instead of cantātor.
• BTW empereür's etym. is slightly messed up, listing a non-existent Latin word imperātōr with a stray long mark over the o.
• chaceor, robeor, troveor have the mistaken declension of ameor.
• compaignon and felon should have similar declensions; both are broken, each differently from the other.
• nonain and *ante (should be antain) again should have similar declensions and are broken, each differently from the other.

I'm sure there are tons more. How did this get so messed up?

BTW, the Old French verb conjugations were utterly messed up, too, and full of wrong-way redirects as well, but I've put a lot of work into fixing them.

I'd suggest in the future that it would be better to have no declensions/conjugations at all than completely wrong ones.

Benwing (talk) 09:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• Well, what happens with editors in the more obscure languages is naturally that less people know anything about them, so it is tough to find out if they are correct or not. The same happened with plenty of other editors. There was a guy called User:Razorflame who editted in tonnes of languages, but users better than him kept pointing out his mistakes in these languages, which made him move to other languages - before long he was editting in Kannada, and became the self-proclaimed Kannada expert (and since nobody else knew anything about the language, he was allowed to edit to his heart's content, doubtlessly filling this project with crappy Kannada entries). The same thing has happened myriad times, for example User:Wonderfool with Asturian - he claims to be married to an Asturian woman who knows the language, and since nobody else edits in that English, he becomes the "local expert". My suggestion (and hope) is to fix as many of the Old French entries as you can. It's highly probable that Mglovesfun has made plenty of mistakes, so we appreciate any new editors in less widespread languages like. Wonderfool too would appreciate other Asturians to correct his work. --Type56op9 (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  Maybe you can even get your Asturian wife to check all your edits. --WikiTiki89 15:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

CodeCat pushing original research

User:CodeCat is again pushing large-scale original research (OR) into etymology sections of mainspace articles, as well as articles for protolanguage reconstructions in the appendix namespace, but this time removing cited scholarship (which he added in several instances) and replacing it with his own fabrications (en example). In the past he objected to tagging his made-up theories with the template {{original research}} which he unilaterally deleted out of process having removed all of the instances of articles being tagged with it (en example). Neither of these were discussed anywhere and CodeCat never uses edit summaries. His behavior is detrimental to the both credibility of Wiktionary as well as discouraging for any editors involved in those areas who see their work undone in such dictatorial manner. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

We've been over this before. Wiktionary does not have a policy or prohibition against original research, and just because you say it's unwanted doesn't mean it is. —CodeCat 12:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

No we haven't been over this. Many have objected to this practice. And what you're doing here is something entirely different - bending different (legitimate and scholarly-supported) theories into something original and thus useless, but seemingly supported by references. And you do it repeatedly, without discussion, and when it's reverted you revert back to the disputed version containing your original research, claiming that the disputed version should be discussed first before reverting. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:38, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, because I disagree with your moves. You also disagree with mine. So we're at a standoff. That's why I called for a discussion, to form a real consensus on WT:AINE-BSL rather than to just edit war over it. This discussion is not going to get us anywhere as long as it's just the two of us. —CodeCat 12:41, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I object to CodeCat placing their unsourced original theories where sourced theories exist. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:54, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

As for Wiktionary:About Proto-Balto-Slavic, each sentence present there that is not based on consensus should be tagged "[disputed]" or the like, to make it clear the page does not represent consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Every single part of the Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstructions I created can be sourced. What is not sourced is the exact written form of the words. Instead, I converted them to use a common notation, just like we do for other reconstructed languages. I don't understand what is so controversial about it. —CodeCat 13:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay. I object to CodeCat replacing (or renaming) particular forms that are sourced with particular forms that are unsourced. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:04, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Just to put things into context here. Are you suggesting that if a source attests, say, Indo-European *teutā or *teutéh₂, and someone creates an entry with that name, then we are not allowed to move that to *tewtéh₂ even if no source attests it in that exact written form? Because that's the equivalent of what I've been doing for Balto-Slavic. —CodeCat 13:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct, just that by "even if no source" you probably meant "since no source". The sourced exact written forms should prevail unless there is an overwhelming consensus to the contrary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, I would say that we already have a consensus as WT:AINE already details how forms are to be normalised. Some of it I've written, but some parts of it were already there before (in particular the bit about laryngeals). There has not been any dispute about that practice, and it has been enforced by other editors as well, so I believe consensus can be assumed. So then I would conclude that there is, in fact, a consensus for moving those entries to the normalised form *tewtéh₂. Furthermore, there is also an established practice to normalise even attested languages, including most prominently Old Norse and Old English, but also languages with a prescribed standard orthography. So I can only assume that normalising spellings is a well-established practice for Wiktionary and if I was supposed to treat it as something controversial or disputed, I would have expected more evidence for that. —CodeCat 13:23, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Given my past experience with you, I don't believe a single word that you say about "consensus". So please deliver objective evidence of consensus; I will not consider any consensus claims made in the absence of such objective evidence. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:26, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

You can't prove a negative. Consensus exists through the lack of dispute. As there has not been any dispute regarding the normalising of spellings in PIE, consensus can be assumed. —CodeCat 13:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Re: "Consensus exists through the lack of dispute": Absolutely not. Either an overwhelming common practice or a discussion is a prerequisite for there being a consensus; both can be demonstarted by objective evidence. Since we now know that your consensus claims are based merely on your perceived "lack of dispute" and conventiently fit your long-standing pattern of mass editing without consensus, the need for you to provide objective evidence has been corroborated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

So then there is actually no consensus between us on what consensus is. That's going to be difficult. —CodeCat 13:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Re: "Consensus exists through the lack of dispute": That is an absolutely outrageous view of consensus. In any event, obviously we now have evidence of lack of consensus. DCDuring TALK 13:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

For what it may be worth: AINE and AINE-BSL before CodeCat edited them. The latter was only edited by Ivan before. — Keφr 14:40, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

What should also be looked at is how many of the entries that existed at that time followed the policy on those pages. I'm fairly sure that when Ivan created the page for PBS, it was when the dispute had already started, and most of the Balto-Slavic entries that existed at the time did not in fact adhere to the practices that Ivan was detailing. So it was not an attempt to codify practices but to establish his own as canonical in contradiction to what was already present on Wiktionary. The edits I made after that corrected that, while also inserting practices I felt were more reasonable, but were not established by anyone prior to that. For the PIE page, I believe at the time most of our entries (there weren't that many yet) also didn't adhere to the spelling norms on that page. So I probably edited the page to reflect the reality, although it's long ago so I don't really remember. —CodeCat 22:08, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

User:CodeCat: Maybe you should compile a list of those instead of saying "fairly sure". Apparently some people here do not take your "fairly sure" very seriously. Which is not necessarily the problem with those people. — Keφr 10:09, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

What you did is 1) changed the policy page removing the stuff you don't like and overriding it with your original research 2) mass renamed a bunch of pages, and edited the references to them in the articles 3) undid my reverts when I challenged those changes.

Your claim that "most of the Balto-Slavic entries that existed at the time did not in fact adhere to the practices that Ivan was detailing" is nothing but lies. Most of them were referenced except for the reconstructions that are a figment of your imagination and cannot be found anywhere in the literature, and which are not deleted due to your interpretation of "no policy against original research" = "I can do whatever I like".

And now again you mention spelling norms which this has nothing to do with. These different reconstructions represent completely different theories and cannot be unified under a single "normalized" spelling. I explained that countless times. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:32, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

This subthread ended up rather far off-topic, to put it mildly.

Interesting timing. Someone criticizes CodeCat on an unrelated issue, and suddenly an edit made in April becomes so urgent that it has to be reverted and debated RIGHT NOW!!!. Your choice of pronouns underscores the real reason for this: you and Dan have spotted an opening to bring out the knives and settle old scores. And now here's DCD right on cue to join the fray. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC) Your support of repeated mass editing not based on consensus is nothing to be proud of. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:19, 12 August 2014 (UTC) I think that you're into conspiracy theories too much. I wasn't an active editor in April (0 edits) and noticed this just today by inspecting edits from another editor that I had a discussion with. And yes it's pretty urgent because it sets a dangerous precedent. I don't get the pronouns reference. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:26, 12 August 2014 (UTC) As for pronouns, according to CodeCat's Special:Preferences, CodeCat is an "it". — Keφr 14:40, 12 August 2014 (UTC) I swear someday I'm gonna upload CodeCat's real life picture that I still have to Wiktionary to show the truth to you all. -- Liliana • 16:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC) @Kephir: The pronoun he can refer to both sexes. Personally I don't believe that CodeCat is anything but a guy. His notion of consensus is a textbook example of a bully, and I've personally never seen a woman who loved to program. I don't get the switch at all. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

• The so-called "normalized spellings" argument is a red herring, and an attempt to push a particular POV. Writing a instead of o, ź instead of ž, or writting a glottal stop sign ʔ or not is not merely a "normalization of spellings" - these represent completely different protolanguages, reflecting different theories by different linguists. Usage of innocent terms such as normalization is merely an attempt to trivialize implications of such edits. These differently reconstructed protolanguages in fact represent completely incompatible theories and cannot be reconciled via notational convention. It's not like w = u̯ in Proto-Indo-European, in the example given by CodeCat above. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • As far as I know, the majority of Balto-Slavic linguists accepts the existence of a so-called "acute" register for Proto-Balto-Slavic. The use of *ś rather than *š reflects a real phonetic difference in Proto-Balto-Slavic (that of PIE *ḱ versus *s + RUKI) and this difference is maintained in Slavic as *s versus *x/*š, and I'm not aware of any dispute about this either. I'm less certain about *o versus *a, but using *a in all cases seems like the more conservative approach, at least until more sources start popping up supporting *o. So far I've only seen Kortlandt's arguments, but his theories are hardly mainstream. —CodeCat 14:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

    Indeed they do, but most do not treat them directly as glottal stops - usage of ʔ by Leiden school is in a completely different framework (glottalic theory of PIE, PIE *H > segmental *ʔ) than others who e.g. claim that it was just phonologically redundant feature in long syllables, or perhaps not (when preserving the *V: vs. *VH distinction). I was referring to *ž from PIE patalovelars and not the RUKI-induced *š. Regarding the *a vs. *o - the only Proto-Balto-Slavic dictionary published since Trautmann's 1927 book uses *o, so it's pretty far extreme to impose *a like you've been doing. Different reconstructions = different theories, and NPOV requires us to abandon any attempts of notational "normalization" and treat all of the incompatible sources equally. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:26, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

    The use of a superscript glottalization symbol is not meant to indicate that it was indeed a glottal stop of any kind. It's just an abstract symbol that stands for the acute register, whatever its nature was. As for *ž, I realise that you meant that, but it doesn't make much sense to write *ž < PIE *ǵ but *ś < PIE *ḱ. We should use the same diacritic for both of them. And the sources I've seen so far mostly indicate the PIE palatovelars with an acute accent. If we indicate them as *š and *ž instead, then what symbol shall we use for the RUKI-induced variation of *s? Concerning *a versus *o, the problem is that if we distinguish them only sometimes but not other times, that's going to confuse users who may think there is real significance to this. They might think, quite reasonably, that if one noun ends in *-os and another ends in *-as, that this reflects some real difference rather than different theories. Therefore, I opted to not distinguish them in the normalisation, so that no false impressions are given about this. We could of course normalise in the other direction, but the issue there is that the *o versus *a distinction is not reconstructable in the majority of cases. —CodeCat 15:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• I think it's high time that the original research policy on etymologies be formulated and voted on. If at any point a legitimate and referenced scholarship that I added could be overridden by some anon on the basis of a WT:ES discussion I want to know it so that I know what I don't want to waste my time on. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:22, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Why should proto languages be exempt from all attestation rules? It's true that they can't be attested in the same way as attested languages but that doesn't allow us to just use invented forms. Wiktionary is no scholarly platform for linguistics, if you want that, go to Wikiversity. This isn't the first time CodeCat's behavior over here has been criticized - soon I'll be at a point where I am forced to take action in form of a WT:VOTE. -- Liliana • 16:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

What is consensus?

There is some disagreement about the exact nature of consensus in the above discussion. Specifically, the debate is over whether lack of debate implies consensus on a particular thing. My view is that it does, as we generally tend to follow the practice that an edit is ok until someone reverts it or complains about it. So my question is, in the absence of any discussion, can consensus be assumed? And if not, what should be done with the many unwritten and undiscussed rules that were never formally "consensusified"? Also, if I'm correct that consensus is needed for every edit on Wiktionary, what does that mean for the millions of edits on mainspace entries for which no discussion was made beforehand? Is requiring explicit consensus for every change workable? —CodeCat 13:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• This is a clarion call for instituting the BRD process they have at Wikipedia. An undiscussed edit is a "bold" edit. If another editor disagrees with that edit, he/she can revert it. At that point, you discuss. If no one disagrees with a bold edit, it isn't discussed. Purplebackpack89 13:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• A planned massive change cannot be claimed to be supported "by consensus" if there is no discussion and no evidence of overwhelming common practice, merely "lack of dispute", and the lack of dispute is caused by the fact that the change was not proposed in a public forum in the first place. As for the need of discussion, mass changes absolutely should not be put on par with single edits of mainspace articles. When specific claims of consensus are made without reference to a discussion or a vote where people expressed their agreement, the consensus is less certain but still possible, and can be proven by pointing out to a long-standing overwhelming common practice, sample of which can be provided by the claimant. When such a hypothesis of consensus is presented in a public forum, the rest of the editors can try to find a significant volume of refuting counterexamples to the putative common practice claim.

  The "dispute", "consensus" sequence is the opposite one: if I make an edit in a mainspace and no one oppose it but no one also becomes aware of the edit, there is no point in talking about consensus. It is only after there is at least a shred of dispute that talk about consensus and consensus forming becomes meaningful in the first place. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:06, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  • I think we should write WT:Consensus and have it approved by vote. —CodeCat 14:23, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
    • You should better write User:CodeCat/Consensus, so that everyone can know that, by your lights, a proposal that you did not even make is automatically supported by consensus since no one managed to dispute it. I think trying to write WT:Consensus could have some nasty repercussions, since it delves into meta-levels and infinite regress; it is this infinite regress that you are abusing here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
      • Wikipedia does fine with their w:WP:Consensus, and I think we need something similar. In fact, I think copying and amending it would be good. —CodeCat 14:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

This subthread ended up rather far off-topic, to put it mildly.

And by the way, crying abuse does nothing to hide your own past abuse and personal attacks towards me, which Chuck Entz helpfully reminded you of. So you're a black pot calling a grey pot black as far as I'm concerned. I've mostly learned to disregard your opinions and prefer to listen to more civil and trustworthy editors. —CodeCat 14:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC) Personal attacks? You mean when I opined that you are vising male toilets and have loads of testosterone in the system? (So do I.) Be specific. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:43, 12 August 2014 (UTC) See, there you go again. —CodeCat 14:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC) I am asking whether that is the incident you have in mind; you are making some vague accusations of which editors may not know what they are. Do you visit male toilets? --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC) And of course, the whole thing you are doing is ad hominem. When you run out of arguments, you pull that incident against me off your hat. Even if I were a very evil person, my argument could still be very valid, since the validity of arguments does not depend on the speaker. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC) OK, lovebirds, get a goddamn room and I'll write the policy myself Purplebackpack89 14:49, 12 August 2014 (UTC) Whoa! I wasn't planning on getting involved in this debate, but even asking CodeCat what toilets she uses is massively uncivil and inappropriate. CodeCat's gender is both none of our business and utterly irrelevant to the discussion. If I hadn't thought it would just escalate the drama even further, I would have blocked Dan for that remark. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC) Please explain on my talk page why this is inappropriate. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC) Dan Polansky while I normally tend to disagree with you I'd give you a barnstar for that comment alone. Good job! -- Liliana • 16:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• Let us return to the substance. The problem with w:WP:Consensus is that it is bullcrap not so great. Consider this: "Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus." That cannot be the case. A consensus is a state of general agreement. No one can be thought to agree with an edit of which they are not even aware of. As long as the edit is undisputed, it is not known whether it is supported by consensus, but in the absence of indication to the contrary, there is no need to revert the edit. Agreement and disagreement with an edit is only possible after the edit arrived to the attention of the person agreeing or disagreeing. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• Well there was opposition to you doing OR in etymologies but that didn't stop you from continuing to do so. Do you perceive stopped being reverted as "consensus was formed" ? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:40, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
• The sense in which we have "consensus" at Wiktionary when folks fail to object to something is reminiscent of a "consensus" of users in response to arbitrary changes of user interface on must-use systems such as some of those of the federal government or Google or one's IP provider. One of the points of a wiki is to elicit contributor commitment by getting beyond such supposed consensus to one based on authentic participation. That users continue to participate in Wiktionary despite unsatisfactory changes and unsatisfactory methods of enacting changes wrought by technical contributors is a tribute to the preexisting commitment those users have because of the wiki idea and their prior efforts. It is also a tribute to the burgeoning complexity of the way in which many aspects of Wiktionary are implemented, which concentrates power in those very few who have both the time and the motivation to enact that complexity. Whether that complexity is actually necessary rather than a way of increasing the power of the motivated contributors is now moot. We now are stuck with the complexity and are help hostage to the whims of such contributors.

So our "consensus" seems to reflect the realities of power, more than anything else, though laziness and weakness of commitment to the project may also shoulder some of the blame. CodeCat is simply making that explicit. DCDuring TALK 16:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Mostly the latter I think, as you can probably see by observing our "consensus-building" processes. You often either have the discussion stuck in nowhere because people are unable to agree on a minor detail, or complete lack of participation or "meh whatever" responses. And then someone uses a pretentions Latin phrase to justify reverting any changes. I am not surprised at all that CodeCat tends to bypass those venues. All this apathy can be really frustrating. — Keφr 10:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Insinuations may sound great, but do not belong on an open wiki and in an open discourse. The "someone" would be me. The Latin phrase would be "no consensus => status quo ante". The phrase "status quo" has been used over the years repeatedly by other editors as well, and has been an important principle that I have not introduced. As for e.g. Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2009-12/User:JackBot (to which you are untrasparently referring above, which is a poor practice), 6 editors participated; since the vote did not state the task for the bot, I would have opposed as per Ruakh and msh210 there; I don't know what you are complaining about. We do not need neverending repeated mass changes, especially those with significant oppositions; making many changes is enjoyed by immature juveniles, who avoid the real building of the real dictionary, unlike e.g. SemperBlotto or Equinox. I am sure the reusers and parsers of Wiktionary data (there are some) do not enjoy incessant changes either. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

• Blimey! How is it that the talk page of the article I'm editing on Wikipedia about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more collegial than this? I am tempted to collapse the entire last fourth of this month-subpage for generating "more heat than light". I will start blocking editors if they continue to speculate so incivilly about other editors' gender or genitalia; such speculation is not only irrelevant to our stated goal of making a dictionary but outright harmful to that goal, because it creates an exceedingly hostile environment that turns off potential contributors and tries to drive away existing contributors (it did drive Cloudcuckoolander to leave for a while, IIRC). It meets every criterion of our written blocking policy; it directly and deliberately hinders/harms the progress of Wiktionary in the way aforementioned, it has continued despite less drastic means of stopping it being attempted, it wastes everyone's time and it causes editors distress by directly insulting them and being continually impolite towards them.
  Some of you clearly feel that some of CodeCat's edits, and her tendency to implement them without discussion and even in the face of opposition, are also harmful to the project (and it was said above that they drove Ruakh to scale back participation in the project); if you would like to propose to desysop CodeCat, or block her if she continues her own behaviour, those options remain open [to all of you and to those of you who are admins, respectively], though continuing a civil discussion seems like a better course of action. (But, to be clear, CodeCat's behaviour and the misgendering above are not comparable.) - -sche (discuss) 21:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  Thank you. — Keφr 10:02, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

  I believe that many do not believe that we can desysop CodeCat without even more damage to the project, as the skimpy documentation for our system would make it difficult to maintain. I think this is probably a wrong belief, as shown by our operating successfully without CodeCat's presence after the last conflict, but who wants to test it for an extended period? I think our ever-increasing dependence on complex modules and relentless "tidying" of templates that would compete with such dependence has the effect of increasing CodeCat's power over the project. DCDuring TALK 22:07, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  I think DCDuring said we use too many templates and they're too complex. If that's what he said, I agree. Purplebackpack89 22:16, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• For the uninformed: -sche (sic) is one of the major enablers of CodeCat's editing without consensus, and himself guilty of repeated controversial mass editing without consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect certain pages such that sysop permissions are not sufficient to edit them

Users may be interested in [2], which creates a new protection level called "superprotect" for "protecting pages such that sysop permissions are not sufficient to edit them". The new protection was developed after a series of events on en.WP, and was applied to de.WP's MediaWiki:Common.js after a series of events there. (De.WP held a RFC on Media Viewer and found that consensus was for it to be disabled by default and opt-in rather than enabled by default and opt-out, a de.WP admin implemented that consensus via w:de:MediaWiki:Common.js, and an edit war occurred between that admin and another admin + a WMF person. Events on en.WP were similar, except en.WP admins didn't edit-war.) There has been some discussion of the new protection level at en.WP (permalink to current revision), though it has generated more heat than light, and there is a RFC on Meta.
You may also be amused by this; if you don't speak German, the key bit (after the initial post by Bene* in English) was BHC's reply "does Bene* even have the right to edit MediaWiki:Common.js now?"
- -sche (discuss) 19:04, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure that's a tool CodeCat would love. -- Liliana • 19:15, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

All power to the technocrats. DCDuring TALK 19:22, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I think the idea is to lock a page for a few days, during which nobody can edit, discuss what the right thing to do is, and then do the right thing when the protection ends. I can get behind that Purplebackpack89 19:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

What we really need is shadowbanning ;) Equinox ◑ 19:28, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, then we coulda banned Mglovefun so I wouldn't have had to read all his low-level digs of me. Purplebackpack89 20:25, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Was that comment really necessary? -- Liliana • 21:14, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes. It serves as evidence that PBP's favourite pastime here is not dictionary-building, but trolling. Of which I think there is abundance already, but whatever. Also, meet kettle, pot. Your remark about CodeCat above in this section was equally gratuitous. — Keφr 21:19, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Kephir, calling me a troll is inaccurate (witness how many entries I've created in the last 24 hours alone) and is evidence of your continual campaign to get me banned from the project for relatively innocuous edits. I have told you numerous times that interacting with me is unproductive. One more remark like that and I will request a one-sided interaction ban on you interacting with me. Purplebackpack89 21:28, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

A "one-sided interaction ban" sounds absurd. Googling the phrase only finds you demanding them in a few places. Equinox ◑ 21:30, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

But don't you agree with the general idea that things would be better off if Kephir stopped interacting with me? Purplebackpack89 21:35, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh c'mon. Do you really need to bring your seemingly-unlimited paranoia in here? -- Liliana • 21:40, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Paranoia, Liliana? Dude tried to remove my autopatrol and rollback rights less than 48 hours ago (see above discussion where he was shouted down). He has been targeting me for months since that disruptive pump thread a month and a half ago. He freely admits to monitoring my edits. And he just accused me of primarily being a troll, which is a flat-out lie. Purplebackpack89 21:44, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Since you mentioned that, you have edited a whopping number of six pages in main namespace in the last 24 hours; what do you want, a biscuit? As for you being a troll, your ban at SEW and subsequent lack of remorse for what caused it should be enough evidence of that.

Also, if you really thought that interactions with me are such a waste of your time, you could simply avoid having them and ignore me. Simple as that. — Keφr 22:15, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

How many new entries, Kephir? Three new entries in the last 24 hours (one of which had multiple definitions).

I cannot ignore you because you keep inserting yourself into my editing, even though I've asked you to not do so many times, and am asking you do so again. You have admitted to monitoring my edits, not to better content but to find dirt on me. A perfect example of this is your bullshit removal of my rights a day and a half ago, even though it was blatantly clear that the punishment didn't fit the crime, and you did not have a community consensus to do so. So, I ask you once more: will you voluntarily stop interacting with me for the good of the community? Because it's crystal clear that you continuing to interact with me is unproductive. Purplebackpack89 22:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Three entries? Whoop-de-doo. Wonderfool makes more in 15 minutes. What does it prove? "You have admitted to monitoring my edits, not to better content but to find dirt on me" — show a quotation of me saying that. — Keφr 22:49, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

In the only discussion I've only had with you on your talk page. If you were merely looking at edits for errors, it wouldn't matter who created them. I take it you're not going to agree to stop monitoring my edits, nor to stop using your tools in a way that results in a wheel war? What a shame. I thought you'd be the bigger man. Purplebackpack89 22:54, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I asked for a quotation. If you fail at reading comprehension, you should not participate in writing a dictionary. — Keφr 22:58, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Your quote "Also, stop randomly jumping accounts for no reason, it makes it harder to review your "contributions", for lack of a better word." would indicate that you have been "reviewing" my contributions. But quotation, schmotation. I ask you once more: are you going to stop doing it? Purplebackpack89 23:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I noticed two different accounts using the same signature at random. Did I "admit to monitoring [your] edits, not to better content but to find dirt on [you]" as you claimed? No. Lying illiterate troll. — Keφr 23:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)