User talk:Equinox

Junk paleotaxonomy entries

You've added a few purported synonyms of Protorthoptera, apparently relying on WP, but without references. The WP entries for many higher taxa with many extinct members are often unreliable. I also doubt the value of entries for most higher taxa not in current use and not well attested in older uses. That would include almost all taxa that solely appear in WP in lists of synonyms. Such entries in Wiktionary usually also have no incoming links. I'm beginning to think that I could save myself lot of time by filtering new taxonomic entries that you have created.

There are numerous entries at User:DCDuring/MissingTaxa that are for extant taxa, that have numerous incoming links, and that I am far behind on adding. Simply bringing up to standard existing taxonomic entries (that have incoming links and are for extant taxa) would take up most of the time I can give Wiktionary. I can dip deeper into the master list of missing taxa on my PC to give you enough potential new entries to keep you busy for weeks, if not months or even years. DCDuring (talk) 17:44, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh, yea, Happy New Year. DCDuring (talk) 22:59, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@DCDuring: (Happy new whatever, let's get to business.) Okay, I want to speak to you about this. I'm no biologist, botanist or zoologist, but it's usually safe (I gather!) to add a taxon with a large comprehensive Wikipedia entry. Perhaps not so much with the "synonym" lists. I will trust you here, because for me they are "just words" and for you there is probably some history. But my position is that I'm going through a lot of pure word lists and sometimes the first letter is a capital and I think "lol oh this one must be a taxon"... I don't like to delete them out of hand either. Shall I dump the mystery taxons on your page again? Is that okay? I love you. Bye. Equinox ◑ 06:02, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Virtually any WP article on a taxon is OK, though I am not in love with entries for extinct taxa. (Taxonomic synonyms tend to be very low value. Synonyms that have only recently been superseded are good; synonyms in use in references from languages other than English are OK; but you wouldn't know about these.) Species and genera are best. Feel free to refer me to or give me lists of questionables. Are you working from on-wiki lists? If so, you could just mark them for review with one of the miscellaneous characters that we don't use for some other purpose. Also feel free to use any of the lists at User:DCDuring/MissingTaxa or its siblings and other relatives. I can provide you with longer sorted lists of missing taxa (say, those with 3 or more incoming links), instead of the more selective lists (those with 8 or more incoming links) now on that page. I can also make better lists (eg, sorted alphabetically, grouped by kingdom, rank, genus, suffix, etc). Some such groupings could make for easy, more complete entries, eg, families ending in -aceae or -idae can have simple etymology sections; Viruses and bacteria can have italics (i=1 in {{taxoninfl}}) for higher taxa. I think all taxa should have links to pedia, species, and commons. I'm happy to patrol for dead links; others do occasional runs to detect non-links. I don't want to overcomplicate your efforts, so pick something I could do that would make it easier for your taxonomic entries to be more useful and complete without too much extra effort on your part. DCDuring (talk) 14:14, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring: Update: As you may have spotted, I am not creating those Translingual taxon "synonym" entries any more. They are deferred. I assume the standard/modern names are fine, since I often see you tidying and expanding those ones. I will decide what to do about the "synonym" taxons at a later stage. Equinox ◑ 02:37, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. It is a question of priorities: what kinds of entries will look relatively "finished" soonest. DCDuring (talk) 02:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

until hell freezes over

You declared this to be a prepositional phrase about 6 years ago. Were you under that influence at the time or did you believe it. Do you believe it now? DCDuring (talk) 00:54, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring: Clearly it is. Until is a preposition, and a PP is a phrase having a P as the head. Compare until Kingdom come. (until further notice was, for some reason, an "adverb", but we know that's a wastebasket taxon — almost as bad as Phrase — so I've just fixed it.) Equinox ◑ 03:02, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Until is also a conjunction. I believe that most users would not think of it as a preposition when followed by a clause, whatever the more pointy-headed might think. DCDuring (talk) 12:57, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

SEO Weirdness

It may be posted from a cellphone in Mumbai, but I recognized the address given in that annoying bot post on Feedback- allowing for the fact that the street name is misspelled, it's actually in an upper-middle-class neighborhood 5 miles or so from here. There used to be a family on that street that went to my church decades ago. Small world! Fortunately, it's far enough away that I won't be tempted to go over and dump something on their lawn or TP/egg their house... Chuck Entz (talk) 00:11, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure they're vandalising Wiktionary as revenge for your granny winning the church chili cookoff 20 years ago. Equinox ◑ 03:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Capital letters

You reverted my edit because of removing capital letters, but I noticed that WingerBot removed them in the implicar entry. I don't get it. Would you be so kind as to elaborate on it a bit? I did a CTRL + F "capital" on the style guide and it still isn't clear to me. LearningFromTheCradleToTheGrave (talk) 20:06, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@LearningFromTheCradleToTheGrave: what about "A full definition should start with a capital letter"? There's some difference of opinion about whether definitions should always be capitalized, but having one start with lowercase and end in a period/full stop is definitely wrong. If you're going to change the style of a perfectly good definition because of your personal taste, at least don't introduce new errors.

Also, I can find no evidence that the definitions at implicar were ever capitalized, and WingerBot certainly didn't change the capitalization. There was the phrase "fix unnecessary capitalization in defns" in the edit summary for one edit, but bots more often than not use the same edit summary for the entire run. The entire edit summary said "clean up deverbal etymologies, split etymologies of terms with homophonous verb forms, fix unnecessary capitalization in defns, use mfbysense/mfequiv instead of just mf, clean up languages/surnames/suffixes, use {{es-verb-obj}}, use {{surf}}, add * before Usage notes, pronun/spacing/misc fixes (manually assisted)", which seems like more than would be required in any one entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:52, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I get it now. It should be either

a) Starting with a capital letter.

or

b) starting with a lowercase letter

One with a period and the other without. The page before I edited was a mess and mixing both styles. This shouldn't happen. Also, the style guide should be clearer. LearningFromTheCradleToTheGrave (talk) 21:03, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

And honestly, "A full definition should start with a capital letter" doesn't make any sense when thousands of entries on Wiktionary don't follow this guideline. Take a look at amar. What it felt like was that you were in cahoots and picking on me. LearningFromTheCradleToTheGrave (talk) 21:20, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

And again, if that is the case, let me know. I love Wiktionary. You can see my contributions and the entries I created. Whenever I have the time and the references (and sometimes it is not the case, of course), I put a lot of effort into creating them, I add the books and resources I used, and I try to make it all in the best way I can.

I don't think it is fair to rebuke users like that, especially users who care so much about doing their best. It doesn't feel right, and if that is how the sysops treat the users around here, then it is really a big disappointment. LearningFromTheCradleToTheGrave (talk) 21:26, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I spoke to you neutrally. If I were insulting you you would know about it. If you can't handle neutral speech then I can recommend a local softplay. Equinox ◑ 23:15, 16 June 2023 (UTC)