Talk:丝

Min Nan

Need Min Nan pronunciation for this. Badagnani 22:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Min Nan: si ([ɕi˥˥]). A-cai 00:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It would seem appropriate to actually add this in the article, rather than simply on the "Talk" page. 24.93.190.134 08:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

It would indeed. It would also be appropriate to add similar information to 1,000s of other articles. Keep in mind, I do this in my spare time, and I'm the only Min Nan contributor to Wiktionary! In general, I'm giving priority to the most common entries. Therefore, I have steadily been adding Mandarin for words found in Appendix:HSK list of Mandarin words/Beginning Mandarin. I have also been adding the Min Nan equivalent to these words. I have mainly been focusing on compound words to preserve my sanity. I think a bot could (and should) eventually written to add in the Min Nan pronunciations to individual entries automatically. Here's how I think the bot would work:

1. find a list of Chinese characters (in traditional, since there aren't any decent on-line dictionaries for Min Nan which are written in simplified)
2. the bot would find the BIG5 hex value to contruct a command like this.
3. the bot would get the pronunciation information off of each query and then put the information into a list.
4. the list would later be read by another bot that does bulk uploading of edits to Wiktionary (I forget the name of that bot).

I think this would be a much more efficient way of doing it. I'm pretty sure we have a few programmers here at Wiktionary who could pull this off. Robert, maybe something you might be interested in trying :-)

A-cai 12:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

New format

The new format is confusing and doesn't look good. The two columns make things very confusing. Can this be worked on? Can it be restored to the original layout? Badagnani 09:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Graphical Significance and Origin

I strongly advise against the deletion of the Graphical Significance and Origin section, which is of great educational importance. Badagnani 19:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Simplified vs. traditional

Contrary to the most recent edit summary by Robert Ullmann, the template is quite unclear. I'm not sure how many times I need to restate this, but it does need to be clearly stated whether the character is simplified or traditional (the entry as it stands does not, although it did before). It needs also to present the alternate form of the character in a clear way (as it stands now, it isn't clear that the character given in parentheses is the traditional alternative, although you may think it is clear). Further, the use of a long parenthetical line with italics but no colons makes for quite a confusing template. See any Wikipedia entry or the previous manner of listing hanzi here at Wiktionary and you will see a much more clear way of laying these things out. We aim for constant improvement and in the case of these templates they are not clear or easily usable as it stands now. I ask for thoughtful consideration rather than the threat that seems just to have been made, needlessly. My comments are made in all seriousness. Badagnani 06:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Badagnani, I would encourage you to post a comment like this at WT:GP or WT:BP. The issue you're talking about (page layout, organization of the template etc) applies to all Han characters that will be affected by Robert's template, not just 丝. Regardless of the outcome, we want to ensure that the look of Han pages are consistent with Wiktionary formatting guidelines. In light of the fact that you and Robert seem to be stalemated on this issue, it might be helpful to have others chime in with a fresh perspective.

A-cai 12:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I've made the suggestion at two or three of those templates but I suppose there must be several more. I don't know which of the two places you mention I should present my suggestion. Badagnani 20:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

If you post at WT:GP, you will probably attract a more techie crowd. WT:BP is more for general users, so it would be a good choice.

A-cai 21:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)