Template talk:ws

Comments

I would like to see the template extended with a link to a Wiktionary entry, in addition to Wikisaurus entry, like I tried in the template {{ws link}}. It currenty looks like this:

• Template:ws link

It can look differently. The point is to be able to get to Wiktionary for those many words that will at the beginning miss a Wikisaurus entry.

--Dan Polansky 14:09, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

There is no need for them to have to go to the wiktionary page. That's what the tool tip is all about. All they have to do is hover over the word and the definition according to wiktionary (when we can get it from there) is listed. Again, no link is required A link to the wiktionary page is given for the header word and when we get wikisaurus running properly there will be a link for all of them. Why do you feel we need yet another link? Amina (sack36) 19:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure why I feel I need links to Wiktionary, but some estimated reasons follow. Wiktionary provides some information about the word that the Wikisaurus does not have. Also, the tooltip may get out of date. When I want to see other definitions of the same word, the tooltip does not help. Tooltip does not let me click through the words in the definition and see synonyms entered to that word in Wiktionary. Also, I suspect that entering tooltips is going to be a lot of work that some contributors may omit, or want to omit, at least at an early phase of the growth of Wikisaurus. In any case, when I was creating and verifying some Wikisaurus entries today (or yesterday), I found the Wiktionary links useful and convenient. They resemble the links to non-English Wiktionaries as found in translation sections.

Well, if you do not like the idea, never mind; let it be. --Dan Polansky 23:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I can see you thought a lot about this. Let me explain my reasons more fully. Wiktionary is a dictionary. It contains a great deal more than just a nuance of a word, which is what wikisaurus is all about. People needing to look things up in wiktionary from wikisaurus will at best be daunted and at worst get the wrong nuance. That is why I put the definition into tool tips. I would have put a link in that would automatically pull up the correct definition but was told that the definitions positions change too much for that to be feasible. Giving them access to all the words will only serve to give them fodder to misuse the words. As for keeping current, how is everything else kept current?

The tool tips aren't meant to be an in depth access. The in-depth access is to type the word in the search field and hit enter -- may I point out that is a great deal less than what it took for them to find the wikisaurus word!

The synonyms that are listed in wiktionary that pertain to that headword definition are also listed in the word in question. They should be the first words listed! The words listed for synonyms will be on their own page along with a great deal more. Why would you want to see two or three words buried in among so much other non-pertinant data when you can click once and get many more matching words?

I have a trick that helps put the synonyms out faster if you're interested.

You do bring up one haunting reality. Entrants may not want to enter all those definitions. I have been working on this one and I only have a half solution at best. One of the add-ons you can put on Firefox is "ScribeFire". It lets you pick up entire pages of information and hold it in an area that can fill 90% to 30% of your browser window. It also scrolls. Anyone with this app can load the definitions for a section of synonyms that are similar (ha ha) and drag and drop the specific definition that fits the synonym they're working on. You can even stack up several words at once. There is a lot it can't do, though, so the search (and pondering) continues. ("Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?") Amina (sack36) 02:26, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, the solution with having links to Wiktionary replaces user's typing with hyperlinking, which is the point of hyperlinks in the first place. In general, in a knowledge base without hypertext, users can just copy and paste words into the search field, but hyperlink makes it so much faster.

I don't see how having the links to WT harms, apart from creating visual noise. There is a general advantage of having projects that provide complementary information hyperlinked.

As Wikisaurus is an embryo project, entering as much shallow information as possible should be encouraged. The idea of entering tooltips goes into a different direction; it drastically increases the cost of creation of a new entry.

That's how I see it. --Dan Polansky 09:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

One more idea came to mind. I can still see some Wikisaurus entries whose items in lists link to Wiktionary. The change from this state to one in which they only link to Wikisaurus is an abrupt one. Under the original design of Wikisaurus, someone must have thought, just like I do, that linking to Wiktionary is convenient. Creating a compromise, combining linking both to Wikisaurus and Wiktionary, could work well at least in a transitory phase. If, after the Wikisaurus is extensive, the links to Wiktionary become unwelcome, removing them is an easy edit at one place: this teplate. --Dan Polansky 14:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't like the text "WT" aesthetically, but aesthetics isn't the root of my concern. I'm still of the opinion that all words should link to Wiktionary, and that Wikisaurus pages (whose titles may or may not be single words) should be linked separately. There will always be a dictionary entry for a word, but there may not always be a thesaurus entry for a word, nor should there be for all words. For instance, beer and ale have different definitions, but there need only be one entry in the thesaurus. There are several definitions for well, but none of them is a primary definition, and so there shouldn't be a thesaurus entry titled "well". Linking all words to Wikisaurus is based on an invalid assumption that each word constitutes a Wikisaurus entry, which has been argued against at length. Links within Wikisaurus do need to be made, but they need to be made between Wikisaurus pages rather than words. A page or entry is a concept, not a word, and the two are not one-to-one. Not all but a few of the synonyms may lead to different concepts, as will hyponyms such as "types of beer". The majority of listings, especially slang terms, will not. DAVilla 16:55, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

At DAVilla: I like the changes you have done to the template.

It's only a temporary measure, and a suggestion. I don't think it will last the year. DAVilla 17:32, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

At Amina: Not yet specifically mentioned is that WT has quotations and example sentences, which help a lot to graps the meaning of the terms.

--Dan Polansky 12:19, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Rendering

The current rendering of this template (and its ws beginlist and ws endlist companion templates) is into bullet list. The current markup makes the following options possible. I have just tried changing the template to render comma separated list and it worked like a breeze.

Options:

• table
• bullet list
  • tooltips
  • number of columns
• plain comma separated list
  • tooltips

--Daniel Polansky 08:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The customization of the rendering could even be in the {{ws header}}, using a drop down list, so the user could choose the presentation as he needs in the particular case, quickly switching between one way and the other way. --Dan Polansky 09:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course the comma separation worked like a breeze. That's what we went away from. Having it in columns makes it much easier for the seeker to find words. You recently showed us a Moby that was comma delimited (because it was meant for computer use, not human eyes) and the thing was almost impossible to read. Amina (sack36) 16:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Alternatives

Alternative Appearances

No.	Appearance	Description	Note
1.	beer	Link only to Wikisaurus.
2.	beer     [WIKISAURUS]	Link mainly to Wiktionary, and optionally to Wikisaurus, using "[WIKISAURUS]", with a definition in the tooltip.
3.	beer   [WS]	A variation of 2.
4.	beer—[WS]	A variation of 2.
5.	beer — [WS]	A variation of 2.
6.	beer	Link only to Wikisaurus with the proper wiktionary definition loaded in mouse over.	This gives both areas equal access without muddying the page. --Amina
7.	==sense alcohol== [ws|wikisaurus:beer|definition]	as #6 but includes a link at every sense to the wiktionary equivalent.	This adds a real, hard link to the wiktionary for every sense given. This is what you were aiming for, right? --Amina

--Dan Polansky 11:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Amina (sack36) 16:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC) First, it is against policy and can get you banned for messing with other people's messages. What you have down there is not what I wrote and it's not what I meant. My vision of wikisaurus has ALWAYS had a link to wiktionary! Had I meant "comment-link" I would have put "comment-link" and you literally wiped out a row of my opinion. The comment-link line you have is ridiculously complex making it hard for people to join in on the work. Don't ever presume you know ahead of time what I want!! You'll note I wasn't so cavalier about your post!! Amina (sack36) 00:39, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I have only tried to merge the content of the two tables. I am sorry that I have upset you. Please, edit the rows that correspond to your ideas in the table above as you see fit, changing the description so that they express your ideas, or create a completely new table if you prefer it that way; I won't merge the tables again. --Dan Polansky 09:14, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

This is the original post: You left out a few options:

Alternative Appearances

No.	Appearance	Description	Note
1.	beer	Link only to Wikisaurus.
2.	beer WIKISAURUS	Link mainly to Wiktionary, and optionally to Wikisaurus,
3,4,5		almost indistinguishable from 2.
6.		{{ws|wikisaurus:beer|definition}}	Link to wikisaurus with the proper wiktionary definition loaded in mouse over. This gives both areas equal access without muddying the page.
7.	<wiki>==sense alcohol==	==sense [beer|alcohol]== {{ws|wikisaurus:beer|definition}}	as #6 but includes a link at every sense to the wiktionary equivalent. This adds a real, hard link to the wiktionary for every sense given. This is what you were aiming for, right?

Amina (sack36) 16:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Amina, your exact original post can be read here[1]. It differs in some details from what you have reposted. For instance, in the original post, you wrote "indistinguishable from 2."—probably meant as a hyperbole, while the post above says "almost indistinguishable from 2. ". --Dan Polansky 08:07, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Disabling hyperlinks

For a discussion on how to disable hyperlinks to mainspace, leading to the markup {{ws|beautiful woman|-}}, see User talk:Conrad.Irwin#Wikisaurus - hyperlinks in ws template. --Dan Polansky 15:33, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Capability to link to anchor links and senseid (id)

As I write this, no variation of syntax in a value for the "link" parameter seems to succeed in getting "ws|port" to link specifically to "port#Etymology 4" (regarding homonyms ¹port, ²port, ³port, ⁴port, where the last equals fortified wine). Analogously, linking to a senseid via an "id" parameter would be useful. If anyone is able to improve this, it would be great. (I don't know how and probably also lack the necessary access/permission level anyway.) Quercus solaris (talk) 05:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Concerns about parameters

@Benwing2 @This, that and the other I'm a bit concerned about {{ws}}, since the parameters are now significantly diverging from the usual link templates in a way that's not intuitive at all:

1. The main issue is the fact that parameter 3= is being used for tooltip text. I appreciate that this was a holdover from the old version of the template, but tooltip text is a really bad idea because it's completely inaccessible on mobile, not particularly noticeable to those who actually are able to view it, and it's rubbish for general accessibility (e.g. screen readers). In all cases, we should be using {{q}} to convey this information, as we do everywhere else.
2. This has resulted in an IP adding link=, which completely inverts how things work compared to normal link templates, since it now means 2= only refers to the display text if link= has been specified, whereas for all other templates 2= always refers to the link target no matter what, even if the display text changes. The only other major template(s) which work this way are the translation ones, but even then they use alt=.

I've added a couple of temporary tracking categories to see how much these parameters are in use, because I suspect it's not very much (Category:Thesaurus entries using parameter 3 of ws‎ and Category:Thesaurus entries using parameter link of ws‎). I couldn't find more than a handful of uses via the searchbox, in any event.

I strongly suggest that we bring it in line with the standard link templates, which is what people are used to. Theknightwho (talk) 18:21, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho yes, I agree that this template needs an overhaul.

It's very easy to find entries using the hover text: even such basic entries as WS:good use it (look for the dotted underline). In my experience, the hover text seems to be used in two ways:

• To display a simple gloss. These should probably be converted to the same way we display glosses in mainspace, although I would argue that the “fancy quotation marks” would be inappropriate in Thesaurus space and should not appear.
• To describe the semantic relationship of the term in more detail. For example, at WS:copulate,

  {{ws|en|get the dirty water off one's chest|Especially after a period of abstinence.}} {{qualifier|UK|idiomatic}}

  These could be displayed using {{q}}, but this template is currently used in thesaurus space to actually display qualifiers, not descriptive text. The big issue with displaying this kind of text in the Thesaurus entry is that sometimes, the tooltip text can be very long and would disrupt the layout of the Thesaurus page. However, I can't see a good alternative. Displaying the text on hover is clearly not appropriate.

Unfortunately I suspect a manual audit of all uses of the hover text is needed.

At very minimum, the parameter names need standardisation with the mainspace link templates. Fully on board with that. This, that and the other (talk) 00:20, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@This, that and the other Yes - looking at the tracking categories, they show 521 pages using parameter 3=, and 3 pages using parameter link= (though both of those could go up). I'll have a think about how best to handle the hovertext - it should be possible to do something bespoke if needs be, so long as it doesn't get in the way of the usual parameters. Theknightwho (talk) 00:26, 30 December 2023 (UTC)