User talk:Eclecticology

2004

Discussion with Długosz

I noticed on your user page, Tracking, integrating and adapting the Webster 1913 material to suit our purposes.

I threw together a little Perl program that I've been using to help me start entries from the w1913 material. I copy the definition to the clipboard, then run the script, which reads the clipboard and puts the results back on the clipboard. Then I paste that into the new wiki page, and take it from there. It doesn't have to be always right since it is meant to be interactive. But it handles most of the common things just fine, and takes the tedium out of supplying the template boilerplate stuff.

I'm happy to share, if anyone is interested. Naturally, I'm interested in any better tools, too. Since the w1913 material has not been converted in bulk, I'm guessing no acceptable bot exists.

—Długosz

reply on his page

I've been getting the entries from <https://web.archive.org/web/20031202023927/http://www.bennetyee.org/http_webster.cgi> but would not mind a better source. I'm unsure of some of the notations for non-ASCII characters, and some stuff just came through as ?'s. I'd be interested in whole pages only to get the Legend and other material that's missing in the processed copies! Splitting up is not a problem as my script is not automatic in the first place; I start by selecting the relevent part of the definition.

Re quotes: I don't like a lot of the quotes there, being without context it just shows the part of speech, rather than illustrating the meaning. Also the bible quotes and shakespere quotes are too archaic to understand. I've been replacing them with more modern literary quotes, and using more extended blockquotes to give some context.

—Długosz

reply on his page

Re ASCII is limiting: I use the following when processing the entries. I add them as I see them, rather than just doing it algorihmically, in case there are any more surprises.

$input =~ s/\[eth\]/\x{f0}/g;
$input =~ s/\['e\]/é/g;
$input =~ s/\[(?:\^e)|(?:e\^)\]/ê/g;
$input =~ s/\['o\]/ó/g;
$input =~ s/\[a\^\]/â/g;
$input =~ s/\[u\^\]|\[\^u\]/û/g;
$input =~ s/\[`a\]/à/g;
$input =~ s/\[.a\]/a/g; # not sure what that should be
$input =~ s/\["e\]/ë/g;
$input =~ s/\["i\]/ï/g;
$input =~ s/\["o\]/ö/g;
$input =~ s/\[\^o\]/ô/g;
$input =~ s/\[ae\]/æ/g;
$input =~ s/\[=o\]/ō/g;
$input =~ s/\[=a\]/ā/g; 
$input =~ s/\[=i\]/ī/g; 
$input =~ s/\[=e\]/ē/g; 
$input =~ s/ -- /—/g;
$input =~ s/\[R.\]/(R.)/g;

Any idea what the dot-a should be?

For typing accented characters, I just pick them from the Character Map applet. For IPA characters, I can type them directly, except for secondary-accent whose key sequence conflicts with Mozilla's input window, and ʤ which is annoyingly missing. I type those by using the character map in SC Unipad.

re quotes: OK, I'll leave the old ones. As for Doyle, I like it because it's public domain and even though it's old it's still readable, understandable, and interesting. Many of the words are used in a paragraph with sufficient redundancy that it's easy to understand them from context. I started my vocabulary list from Doyle, so that's what I have handy. I suppose there are other books in public domain that meet the same criteria; maybe someone should make a list.

—Długosz

I don't need to know what the code numbers are for any character. I was wondering what .a meant at all in the Webster scan. You are saying it's an a with a dot over? It also worries me that some marks come before the letter and some after: do they mean different things?

It looks like the site you showed me has most of the marks shown properly, so maybe I can learn them more reliably from there.

The code U+0227 isn't in the Code2000 font, and that's supposed to have everything. It's not in the Unicode 2.0 book. The Latin Extended B block (0180-024F) was added later.

I must say I don't quite understand the list above (what it's used for), but the ".a" I would guess means the swedish letter "å" (no idea about how to encode it though...) \Mike 10:21, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Google

Can we stop wrangling over Google hits? From the continual "Google hits don't count" comments I'm seeing, I suspect you may misunderstand what I'm doing. I do not just put a phrase into Google and say "Hmm, a few hundred hits. Must be a word." I actually look at the contents of several, until I can satisfy myself that either

• They all seem to be from the same source, or otherwise spurious
• There seem to be a number of separate usages in a variety of contexts

The second item may be the main source of contention. If there are several different usages of the same word or phrase, it is highly unlikely that the phrase is just a meaningless coincidence (provided you've taken into acount the relative frequencies of the constituents, etc. — I wouldn't argue that "into Vancouver" is worth an entry, though gets has over 9,000 hits). Trust me. I have a math degree :-).

In most cases, I will also have searched for variations of a term. To cite an infamous example, "monkeys humping a footbal", "monkeys humping", "humping a football" and "monkeys humping a baseball", "monkeys humping a beachball", "monkey humping a football" and probably others.

I realize that finding hits on Google does not answer every possible lexicographical question about a term. It can, however, quickly establish a prima facie case that the term carries distinct meaning. That's enough to create an article and let the Wiki process do its magic.

In short, if I make some remark in a discussion page or wherever that "Google indicates" something, it means I've actually perused the content of at least a representative sample of those hits and not merely noted a number. Conversely, if I put in an rfd with a note like "no support" it generally means that Google (and BNC where appropriate) turned up nothing at all, or turned up only trivial usages. Please take this into account when replying.

-dmh 19:55, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Quotations vs. Examples

(I may move this to my User page. There is also some discussion on CoreyCohen's page).

There seems to be some contention over the use of direct quotations from published sources, as opposed to constructed examples. In my opinion, neither is inherently correct or incorrect. They simply serve different purposes.

Lexicography is founded in usage. Usage tells us that decimate no longer means "kill every tenth soldier in a legion" and hacker no longer exclusively means "person intensely interested in technical details". Given that usage is fundamental, one could argue that only well-documented quotations have any place in a dictionary.

This would be fallacious. Not even the OED follows this rule. In point of fact, quotations are often of more use to the lexicographer than to the reader. Indeed, the whole point of lexicography is to distill the essence of words out of an undifferentiated mass of quotations. It is only in rare cases that there is little to add beyond the original source material. The entry for hierophant might be such a case, but even there the later usages are not particularly helpful.

Occasionally a quotation will provide a particularly apt example or definition. One example would be the one given for hapax legomenon, which not only nicely defines the word but helps dispel the curious misconception that a hapax is unique in a language, however one may define that. Again, this is the exception. In the real world, people use words in sentences precisely becuase they expect them to be understood without definition.

One of the major uses of quotations is to establish that a word or phrase has seen use at all. Such a supporting quotation may well be useless in constructing a definition, but no matter. That's not its job.

In many cases, it is best to separate the concerns of supporting a definition and explicating it, and this is where contructed (read, "made-up" :-) examples come into play. Examples can be constructed to illustrate fine points of usage. For example, many words can be used in both noun and verb senses, and the similarity can easily be illustrated by example

Do you support this product?

Do you offer support for this product?

Finding two such minimally differing usages in the wild seems like much more trouble than it's worth.

Examples can also illustrate subtle grammatical points:

I am only one religious among many religious in my church.

compactly reinforces that the apparent adjective functions as a noun while also illustrating the invariant form.

The process of constructing examples also helps flush out idioms. If you can't construct a novel example, the non-novel construction is an idiom.

Finally, constructed examples tend to be more legible as they lack the surrounding citation of date, author and source. They also tend to be more concise, as they are constructed for the sole purpose of illustration.

This is not meant to imply that all constructed examples are perfect, or even adequate, or in all cases better than direct quotations. A concise direct quotation that also fulfils the illustrative role of an example and lends authority to a definition is better than a constructed example. Unfortunately, these take considerably longer to find, when they exist at all, which is one reason the OED was produced significantly more slowly than Wiktionary. -dmh 20:31, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 18:46, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)> I was actually just thinking about this very issue. It seems to me that quotations provide some use to readers for a couple of reasons. Quotations are generally able to give a reader a better sense of what contexts in which one might find a word. Consider a word like "ambulate". Since this word is primarily used in medicine or by fairly wordy people, you might get the sense from a numbero of quotations with it that it is not the normal word to describe the action provided in its definition. You would certainly see that it is appropriate in those contexts quoted, however.

As it is not in the nature of context-providing quotations to be concise, and the value of quotations are somewhat in their abundance, it might be worthwhile to establish a separate page for them, so that people can feel free to provide new and illuminating quotations the help flush out appopriate contexts for a word in ways that a simple definition cannot. This way the example sentences and the quotations will not be at odds or seem particularly redundant. The quotations section will simply be a supplement to the entry. Also, while I think this will be quite useful for English speakers looking up English-language words, I think it will be incredibly useful for both people learning English, and English speakers learning foreign languages (if you've ever learned one, think of how inadequate most dictionaries are at providing context for words. For them this is mostly a space limitation. We have no such limitation).

It could look something like this: Forget_-quotations (Forget_-quotations). Any thoughts?</Jun-Dai>

2005

Dictionaries

Wow, you say in the beer parlour in the discussion on binomial names that you have around 50 dictionaries. I haven't counted mine lately, but I don't suppose I have more than a couple of dozen, or maybe three dozen or so if you include specialist works. I'm curious - what do you have? — Paul G 15:23, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It didn't sound boastful at all to me - just impressive. It looks like you are a serious lexicobibliophile (to coin a word). Mine are mainly standard English dictionaries (Chambers and the second edition of the OED), a single monolingual dictionary (French), maybe a dozen bilingual dictionaries, many crossword and Scrabble reference dictionaries, and a couple of mathematical dictionaries. On top of that there is Brewers 20th Century and no doubt a few others that I don't recall right now.

Bold Letter Language Names in "Translations" Section

Should we really give language names in bold letters in the "translations" section? There is now reason to emphasize every single element in a list (here of languages, but holds in general), especially one which doesn't convey any entry-specific information. Bold letters always catch the readers attention and hence should be used carefully. Ncik 07 Apr 2005

A wider and more general discussion on layout is needed indeed. However, bold language names in the translation section annoy me so much that I will remove the word "bold" from the layout guidelines again. If you object, please do so in the thread I started about this issue on Wiktionary_talk:Entry_layout_explained. Ncik 09 Apr 2005

Re: Declension tables, etc.

"I am at odds to understand why you need to use the Unicode template in the declension tables when simply putting the word will be just fine."

Well, to tell the truth, that wasn't exactly me but Stephen G. Brown who created a declension table for комар article, and if you have any question regarding it you had better inquire him rather than me, the only thing I did to the declension table of комар article was correction of accusative case of the newly put table; And the reason to put everything in Russian under Unicode, I believe, is to make stress marks be a little be closer to letters, for, thus far, the stress marks for Russian text are floating around 7th sky in the air.

"I do have mixed feelings about using the stress marks since they are not normally used in Russian texts, and we really have not used this to show stress in any other language. I'm sure you have your reasons for doing this."

I don't use stress marks, I don't need them.

I think the whole message is dedicated to nobody else but Stephen. --Dennis Valeev 04:57, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

init/abbr/acron

Hello Eclecticology,

I see you noted my plurality mistake with Category:Abbreviation which of course should have been Category:Abbreviations. I've corrected a template or two that propogated the singular form.

While I traverse the rest of the list, would you please be so kind as to not dewikify the headers/templates of such entries? You are (probably inadvertantly) also removing the link to Category:Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms as well as the dual categorization of these types of terms.

As stated at WT:I2T, this is one of the most powerful uses of categories; specifically categories within templates. Both views of short terms are provided by this method. Simply removing the wikification and adding one or the other category back in manually is not very helpful. In this case, I guess I really don't understand what the objection is, either.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:05, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

One of the advantages of removing the wikified heading is that it rids us of that long-winded and redundant Category:Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms. Linking to the relevant sub-category should be enough. That long name can then be kept as a sort of meta-category. With some 1100 templates already, many not used at all, it would be a great advantage to reduce their number. Eclecticology 20:43, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

Um, as you are very well aware, I am quite actively deleting unused and lesser used templates (despite how much effort it takes to clear them off.) However, these THREE templates are used hundreds of times.

Although the category may seem redundant to you, there really is no other effective way of listing the information from that category. (BTW, now that it has achieved some sort of momentum, I'm adding an alphabetical index to that page.) Additionally, the sub-categories are useful themselves, but do not provide the needed reference that the consolidation page does.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:51, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't at all complain about the three (or four) separate categories. Only about showing the combined category in addition to the relevant separate one. Eclecticology 20:55, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

My point is that both the sub-category and the parent grouping are relevant categories. For most categories this is not the case, but for these four...

I guess I still don't understand your objection. A term can reasonably appear in a half dozen separate categories, right? --Connel MacKenzie 21:09, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Of course an article can be in several categories, but when a category is a subset of a larger one there's no point to have a direct link to a circle of categories with ever larger sets of contents. A lion belongs to the category of cats, then of carnivores, then of mammals, then of vertebrates, then of animals. Is it necessary to mention them all? Eclecticology 21:21, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 21:23, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)> My main objections are that (1) an abbreviation is not a part of speech, and by marking them as such we are skipping over what part of speech the abbreviated term is functioning as and (2) the other very common form of abbreviation, contractions, was left out of the title.

But I confess I'm also a little confused as to why these terms need to be simultaneously in the sub-category and the master category. The reasoning that it provides two places to view the indices (thus preventing the user from making a second click) doesn't seem sufficient to justify the category-bar space taken up by the practice. Was there another reason? </Jun-Dai>

The original list had the convention of combining them all under "abbreviations." Someone later came along and provided a distinction between the terms. That distinction, although technically correct, makes any actual human use of the list incomplete. People think of shortenings generically (I know I do) and when looking for a term in a list are not likely to admire the distinction between initialisms and acronyms. I find the distinction highly annoying and prefer the single list only. Others prefer it sub-divided. I thought that was clearly explained on one of these pages, but I do not see it now.

One other note: Special:Recent changes is (thankfully) not showing the majority of my null-edits. I do not know if that is because the article itself is not changing, or as a combination of marking them "minor" and leaving the comment blank. But I am making my way through these lists - don't panic. --Connel MacKenzie 21:32, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Do you find these satisfactory now? --Connel MacKenzie 07:39, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Abbreviations vs. part of speech

<Jun-Dai 22:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)>

Ec., you are right in that romaji is not a part of speech. The difference here, however, is that every abbreviation is, in fact, also a part of speech (e.g., NATO is a noun, AWOL can be an adjective or noun--according to AH--, and snafu a noun, adjective, or verb). This is only really a problem when the abbreviated form has a life of its own outside of what it is an abbreviation of. When that is not the case, it would be sufficient to mark that it is an abbreviated form of x, and provide a link to x. This, of course, means that for every article NATO there should be an article North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Romaji, on the other hand, is just a listing of corresponding terms, and doesn't actually define a term itself. Kanji, similarly, should not define anything that functions as a part of speech (i.e., it should define readings, a list of compounds formed form the character, etymology, and base meaning), and when a kanji is used as a word, that should have a separate level-three header. This is why I object to the "Japanese Kanji" formatting currently used for kanji articles, but that's much bigger fight with people that aren't interested in listening to me.

To me, the main question is where the abbreviation info should go. I would suggest that it belongs both in the definition and the etymology sections. </Jun-Dai>

Language considerations

<Jun-Dai 6 July 2005 23:02 (UTC)> Let's see. I agree that Language cons. . . is too wordy. It stemmed from the Language considerations page or section (I've forgotten exactly what I was thinking at the time). That said, I don't really know what the about in Wiktionary:About Japanese is supposed to mean. It seems unnecessary. Why shouldn't we just shorten it to Wiktionary:Japanese, Wiktionary:Japanese romanization, etc.? </Jun-Dai>

Colour category

Hi there!

I noticed that you have been revising some of the English colors categories to simply the Colors category. On the Colors page, it mentions that...

Note: Colors should not go in this catagory, they should go in a "<their language> Colors" which should be a sub catagory of this one.

Just wondering if that applies only to languages other than English, or for those in English as well. What do you think?

Sally Ku 15:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Serbian Translations

I have a few minor points about adding the Serbian translations to English words.

1. Use *: instead of :* at the beginning of the lines for the separate scripts. This will avoid adding in the extra blank lines. 2. Normally script names are not capitalized in English unless they are based on a proper noun. Thus "Cyrillic" instead of "cyrillic" and "Roman" instead of "roman" 3. I think that "Roman" instead of "Latin" should be preferred for that script. This could be the subject of some controversy. "Roman" script is the usual British term, while "Latin" script is the usual American term. This would normally mean that you could safely use either one. In this case, however, there are ambiguities. "Latin" when used alone can refer to either the language or the script, but there is no "Roman" language, thus it seems reasonable to me that "Latin" should refer to the language, and "Roman" should refer to the script. To add a further complication "roman" without the capital can refer to the regular typeface as opposed to bold or italic. My first point was a matter of practical effects, but I apologize if the other two make it sound as though we have as many problems with English usage as you are accustomed to find in the Serbo-Croatian complex of languages.  ;-) Eclecticology 18:37, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for the tips. I'll try the *: next time I add some new translations. I used to not capitalize "Cyrillic" and "Latin" (or "Roman"), but someone kept correcting me and telling me that it should be capitalized and so, I started capitalizing them. So, should I keep them capitalized, or try to go back and change them? --Dijan 07:18, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Small Wiktionary projects

Hi Ray, I'm picking your brain over smaller wiktionary projects - specifically as to how many there are. I can make out 69/70 active wiktionaries and 100 more that are not (that's from m:Special:SiteMatrix). I'm writing a paper that mentions number of projects and, while I realise quantity is not as important as quality, I'd still like to get it right - or just not wrong by a magnitude of 100 :)

Do you monitor smaller projects? If not, does anyone else, specifically? I chose a few at random and some seem like pure potential - however I'd look at tlh:Main_Page if I were you to check out the recent changes - I'm not sure if this is just someone experimenting or vandalising - photo of a penis etc.

Basically my question is: in your opinion, should the number be considered closer to 70 or 170? I'm over on Wikipedia or email me: cormaggio at gmail.com (I should probably have asked this, in a general sense, on the foundation-l list - I'd prefer to do this myself than you feeling you have forward it for me) Thanks, Cormac/Cormaggio 62.252.192.8 16:54, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Ec/Ray (sorry, I know you better from the mailing lists), I appreciate the rapid response, even if mine is not :) I had no idea that :tlh stood for Klingon - that explains quite a bit. So Meta stewards are the ones to talk to about small projects? - that's good to know. All the best. Cormaggio 12:37, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Category:Nationalities

We seem to be editing at the same time today.:-) I am still visiting my brother in Germany until tomorrow, or we would normally be in very different time zones. I have been puzzling over "people nouns" and "people adjectives" for a long time now, and think that I have a solution by simply using "nationalities" for both categories. I would also hope to restrict the full language names for most categories. Thus "bs:" would replace "Bosnian" in most cases. One effect would be to limit the use of Category:Bosnian language to words about rather than simply in the Bosnian language, or as a meta-category. Finally, I have always felt that any "proper nouns" or similarly named category to be virtually useless. They could get very big without telling people much of anything about the words in the list. I tend to remove it when the word has a better place. Leaving it tells me that the word needs more work. I hope that this does not create too big of a conflict for you since I know that your efforts have been very productive. Eclecticology 10:13:23, 2005-08-26 (UTC)

Hi, yes, I'm really sorry if I've changed your edits that day. I didn't know that you were editing at the same time, until the notice. About the Category:Nationalities, I agree, and I think it's a really good category. However, I think we should just keep the proper nouns category. This is because it can get very confusing if it's just combined with common nouns. In Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian, sometimes nouns that are proper in English and common in those languages. I think it's just better categorizing if we leave the proper nouns category the way it is right now. I think we should also keep the Bosnian language category the way it is right now, but I do agree that other categories inside it be canged to "bs" for simplicity. Bosnian language (the main category) should be left that way, because people who are not wiktionarians here, the people that come for information, might find it confusing and possibly can't find what they're looking for. So, the main category should not be changed, but categories that go inside it should be changed. I think that any entry that is about Bosnian language should simply be placed in the main Bosnian language category. I kind of like to think that the Bosnian and Serbian categories and entries belong to me and other language specific wiktionaries (and I know they don't). This is simply because I do put a lot of time into it just for the fun and for resources for myself and others, and it's kind of hard to see someone change what you're worked for really hard into something that you didn't want or into a format that you don't agree with. If you do not agree with me on anything I've said here, I'm sure that we can come to some agreement about it. Just drop me a line on my talk page about this if you agree or not and if you have any suggestions. Thanks for being so friendly! (Some people here don't seem to be very friendly, or maybe I just haven't had the time to get to know others here.) --Dijan 18:01, August 27, 2005 (UTC)  :)

exceeding remit

This isn't urgent; I know you have other things on your plate. I created Wiktionary:Policy_-_Miscellaneous because I didn't know where to park some things. Some of us -- strike that -- I am anal and worry intensely about doing things correctly; I find comfort in the rules. So I created this for my own comfort in spite of your wisdom regarding Instruction Creep. And because, for example, the lesson on apostrophes was a hard one to learn and I would hate for that lesson to be lost deep within the bowels of an unindexed BP archive - only to be relearned again at a similar price. But if you don't like it, I can undo it and refile the conversations into the BP archive and this policy page can be deleted. Whenever you get a chance, please let me know. Cheers, --Stranger 22:09, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. Telephone call removed from archive; apostrophe conversation put back into archive. Wiktionary_talk:Policy_-_Miscellaneous and Wiktionary:Policy_-_Miscellaneous can be deleted. Otherwise doing okay? Cheers, --Stranger 23:44, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

User:24/rfd

I've stumbled across this. Is this yours? Can it be removed? --Stranger 18:46, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

• Wiktionary:Bureaucrat_log - found something else whilst dusting. Looks out-of-date at best. Is this needed now that we have a separate administration section? Cheers, --Stranger 03:58, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Homework and burdens of proof

Since our latest dicussion has been both fractious and fragmented, and since these two concepts seem to be fairly central to our disagreement, I wanted to briefly and clearly lay out how I actually see things working. I certainly do not wish to make deletion impossible by imposing an impossible burden of proof or a prohibitive amount of work on someone wishing to see a term deleted. On the other hand, I do agree with the general policy of erring on the side of inclusion, and I believe that challenges should have to meet a modest standard — easily met in the case of obvious garbage — in order to reduce the overall noise level. This seems reasonable enough, and enough different from the characterization of "proving negatives" and "doing people's homework for them" that it's worth detailing explicitly. So ...

• A person making a challenge should first do a simple (and easily verifiable) search of the usual suspects -- other dictionaries, google print, web and groups. This generally takes a small number of minutes.
• If this turns up nothing, or only mirrors of Wiktionary, then a simple "basic search turns up nothing" is enough to establish a presumption that the term should be deleted. At this point, it seems fine to request further support (if none was given) and start the clock ticking.
• If it turns up something, but the results do not support CFI, a simple statement of this, together with a specific reason like "quotes aren't independent" or "quotes don't convey meaning" is enough to establish a presumption. Most if not all blatant garbage is caught be these two.
• Otherwise, the term probably should not be deleted. The term might well benefit from having quotations attached, but the searcher is not obligated to cut and paste them (though it would be nice, if quotes seem to be needed). A simple "search shows ample support of CFI" in RFD ought to do.
• And that's about it. All the challenger is being asked to prove is that a search was done and either supported or did not support including the term. The homework required takes a couple of minutes and is completely voluntary. If no one does a search and challenges, the entry will continue to exist in peace.

This process has already worked, for months at a stretch. Garbage got deleted, interesting new terms got kept, and no one had to go to extremes to "enforce a policy". In the wiki world, a process like the above is swimming downstream and seems to work well in practice. Trying to impose a stricter policy is swimming upstream, and as far as I can tell is not working particularly well, even on its own terms. -dmh 23:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

self-promotion

This is out of my league, policy-wise. And since you seem to be around (judging by recent changes), I ask you to address this with Brettz9. I'll monitor his/her user-talk-page so I'll be informed if I made a mistake or not. Thanks, --Stranger 17:25, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
>>>
I found the following on Wiktionary_talk:List_of_protologisms
title: New opportunity for idea creators

Just letting you all know if you may be interested to check out http://allyourideas.com which I just started and aim to offer more flexibility to people who wish to offer new content (than has thus far been allowed on Mediawiki sites, to my knowledge).

I removed it with the comment: self-promotion

>>>
I received this on my user-talk page:

Hello,

Although I understand your conern about self-promotion, I think there may be 3 reasons why this is not:

1. This is for another GNU license wiki (no particular "self" benefit--I don't try to identify myself there either)
2. This was on a talk page (though I wonder whether even the main page would be ok, as others put related references on such pages)
3. I thought it was relevant for the protologisms page, in that it would be relevant to those who felt constrained to expand upon their ideas at Wiktionary (since we are not supposed to start individual pages, etc. for protologisms)

Thanks... Brettz9 17:10, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I would leave it. It's not commercial spam. It's rather inobtrusive. And they allow content we seem to shun. Don't worry about having made a mistake or anything, though, --Stranger. It's good to have the spot lights on the issue. So it can be discussed over here. Polyglot 21:50, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Poly, Ec took it to a whole different level. I was only concerned about Wiktionary becoming a repository for: "Hey, here's a cool link!" It's one thing to say, "George has an interesting link" and quite another to say, "My webpage is an interesting link."

But, you're right. I didn't know Brettz9 was a regular contributor, I thought it was one-off thing. I was focusing perhaps a bit too much on tidy-ing and getting rid of unneeded rubbish. In looking at The Broader Picture, as Poly recommends, you're right, it's not like we have 20,000 of the things.

I have no personal objection to Brett's website. I just saw a "this is my website, come and visit" and I thought this violated some policy. When Brett "wiki-mailed" me, I thought it was above my head and called upon Ec as he seemed to be the admin "on duty" at the time. Cheers, --Stranger 00:59, 10 September 2005 (UTC) (Ec, I'll let Poly know I answered him on his user-page.)

List of languages

Ray,

Could you please tell me which languages should go? I have compiled a recent list of "level two" headings at User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo2#Level two language headers. It is not clear which of these can or should go. I do not know where to find a list of which of these (even those with only one or two terms) are not artificial languages. Of the artificial languages, I do not know which ones are "allowed." If you could reply with a finite list either here or on my talk page, (or perhaps Beer parlor?) of the ones that "should not" be allowed, I can assist in hunting them down. It would be nice to have an offical list of the conlangs that we've seen here, but that we simply don't want, rather than to continue with the current ambiguity.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:39, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

It looks like you've been working hard with the level 2 list. The question of which artificial or constructed languages to accept is really still undetermined. The number will be somewhere between five nbased on the list at Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion and the 24 which have an ISO 639-3 code. See Wiktionary:Requests for deletion under "Novial". Any language that is not on the longer list should not be accepted unless the proponent can come up with some extremely convincing evidence. This leaves 19 languages in a relatively undecided state. Some of them have been discussed before, but I could be open to reconsider under the right circumstances. In particular, I would make a linkage to the principles of verifiability and no original research. Romanica and Ekspreso are definitely out, but with over 600 entries for Romanica alone, plus redirects from the decapitalization process it will take a while to get rid of these.

There are some weird things on your list, but once you clear out the known items, including typos, there shouldn't be too much to re-check. As somebody said, "There are the known knowns ..." :-)

Eclecticology 00:39, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I did the first pass on this list over a month ago. This is after the first round of cleanup (second round just begun.) Knowing Romanica and Ekspreso are cetainly on the hit list is very good information. By my list, I am much more concerned about the entries in those languages, rather than the translations. (I can almost see keeping the translations for the obscure conlangs - or rather not expending effort to chase them down until there is a more automated way of doing so.)

It is a little surprising that in less than a month, five new misspellings of "English" were entered as level two headers.  :-)

Anyhow, from the entries on the second half of that list, (level two "languages" that have less than 50 words entered) which of those is a conlang, and which are genuine languages is giving me trouble. We have no list anywhere...only an exhaustive list of allowed languages (including zero conlangs.)

I shall take the liberty of adding Romanica and Ekspreso to a "known prohibited" section of that list.

What I'd like to know is, what can go, from the following list:

aari afrikaans akkadian alabama albanian arabic aragonese aramaic armenian asturian baagandji balinese bambara basque belarusian betawi bosnian breton brithenig bulgarian burmese cantonese catalan celtic chamorro chickasaw chinese chuvash cornish croatian czech danish deutsch dutch ebonics esperanto estonian ewe faeroese faroese farsi fijian filipino finnish flemish french frisian fula ga galego galician gallegan gallo gamilaraay german gilbertese gothic greek greenlandic guarani hawaiian hebrew hindi hindu hungarian ibu icelandic ido indonesian interlingua interlingual inuktitut irish islanti italian italiana italiano japanese javanese kapingamarangi karelia karelian kashubian katakana kirwanda klingon korean kurdish laitin latin latvian lingala lithuanian livonian loglan lojban luganda luxembourgish macedonian makua malay malaysian maltese mandarin mangarevan manx maori marathi marshallese mongolian nahuatl nauruan navajo neapolitan nederlands nepalese niuean norwegian norweigan novial occitan ouchish palauan pali patois persian philipino piemontese pinyin pitcairnese pitjantjatjara polish polynesian portuguese prefix preterition protuguese punjabi quechua quenya rarotongan rohingya romanian romany rotuman roxhai russian samoan sanskrit sardinian scandinavian scots scottish serbian seri sicilian sindarin singlish slavic slovak slovene slovenian slovio solresol somali swahili swazi swedish tagalog tahitian tamil tatar tetum tibetan tokelauan tokipona tongan tuamotuan tupi turkish tuvaluan ugaritic urdu vaasa vaduz veps vietnamese votian waage welsh westron wolof yiddish yucatec zulgo zulu

--Connel MacKenzie 04:04, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion#Constructed languages, I'd just like to say THANK YOU. That is a much better place than I was thinking of! --Connel MacKenzie [+] (contribs) 23:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Gutenberg frequency lists

While I have you here I would like to comment on you Gutenberg frequency lists. These could be useful, but having them in blocks of 10,000 makes them slow to download. Since they are all Wikified it means that the software needs to check each one of them to determine whether it should be red or blue. If the list is reasonably stable it could be interesting to put a Gutenberg ranking on the page for every English word. Eclecticology 00:39, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

That is a very cool idea...including the ranking on the individual pages. Perhaps I should try several different formats on the top 20 to 50 entries? That'll have to go to the beer parlor. for more comments.

I was very concerned about the page size too, intially. Now that several other languages (fr:, la: and others, I think) have replicated the list for comparison on their Wiktionaries. But from what I can tell, those pages get very, very few hits. And when they do, the pages are static (cached.)

Now that I've seen what I expected to see with them, I suppose de-wikifying them (the large lists) would be a pretty good idea. If the gurus see these pages getting lots of hits, I'm sure they would just go ahead and dewikify or delete the lists. Performance lately has been catastrophicly bad...ever since the fundraiser. (I noticed a massive performance degradation the last time we had a fund raiser too.)

What I use (and tell other to use) is User talk:Connel MacKenzie/Gutenberg for entering new terms. This has the benefit of being broken down into lists 100 times smaller, plus links for auto-template propagation. (Since those are HTML links, there is a lot less overhead - certainly no wikification checks on the URLs.)

One thing I've noticed about the Gutenberg frequency lists: there are no typos. The unusal capitalization on some of the legalese at the top of every Gutenberg book threw only a handful of words off. In a dictionary of 100,000, essentially <0.1%! Entering redirects for those words from those three sentences seems harmless enough for right now. There are also a handful of odd abbreviations from that same text that show up. But that is a tiny number compared to the all-capital words. But from what I've seen in the frequency list, there just aren't any misspellings in the most popular 10,000 words. And only very obvious typos in the top 20,000 words. (i before e, except...)

I guess I could run the ranking again with the rank number, excluding ALL CAPITAL WORDS, and listing them only de-wikified. Sometime soon, I guess. --Connel MacKenzie 04:04, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

delete

How do you delete pages? --Dangherous 13:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

And why are you deleting them? --Dangherous 13:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for bugging you, but why isn't it a valid language? What if someone wanted to learn it? Sorry again --Dangherous 13:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Can we vote on Romanica? Who cares if it just hangs around? I don't see the harm. This is just one of the few things which puzzle me about you, Ec. Most things I follow you on (if I don't actually agree) but this, I can't see the logic.

I was gonna raise this on RFD but I can't find the conversation at the moment and I suppose I should go through and get caught up on the discussions there. But it's such a big job, and I've been putting it off. I came here to ask if you would mind terribly if I went through and removed some of the "obvious" junk from the list when/if I do go through it. (Like that list of pictures that are already deleted.) I know this is on your dishwashing list, but . . .

And while I'm here on your user page, have we decided to keep talk pages and delete the RFC page list or is that still being talked about? That's another thing I should review to get caught up on: BP. Don't ever get sick, Ec, we need you too much.

Cheers, --Stranger 19:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

"when you don't take out the trash it just piles up and people start to think it's important" Yep, this makes sense to me; I'll start eliminating when I come across them. Thanks!

As far as the other stuff you mentioned, I'll have to think about it, which means I'll get to it later. --Stranger 21:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

2006

Jahbulon

Was wondering if this is going to come to a head any time soon. It's been up for deletion since at least 18:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC). The block on editing the main article has been there even longer. Are there issues preventing the consensus, something like 10-4 for delete, from engaging the process? I'm asking you because you are at least somewhat familiar with the article. I am more quickly found at wiktionary Grye 00:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for helping with the unblock on this page. Given the slowness to come to any resolution as to the RfD issue, it is nice that we can at least make edits and try to reach a consensus as to whether this is indeed a legit word or not. Also, thanks for the clarification on copywrite with the picture from the Macay book. Blueboar 01:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Uh, user Muke Tever used a cite from an admin's comment that it would not be deleted on the Discussion page, as tho speaking authoritatively for all admins. A comment there would be helpful... Grye 00:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Because you seem to have a transwiki history, I wonder if you could help with the issue of this word on Wikipedia, it's having been transwiki'd (poorly), & it now reappearing there & still as a dictionary entry. Any thoughts? Grye 14:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Template:obsolete

Hello Ray,

I saw your edit to the template, and replaced it with the previous value "subst:"'d. I think it is often used with a trailing colon also.

Are these "line tagging" templates falling out of favor? I was hoping to use this particular one for Webster's Dictionary auto-conversions/imports.

--Connel MacKenzie T + C # 18:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion. I was working on replacing the "dated" category from various articles, and often replacing it with "obsolete". I was really reacting to nested templates when I edited the obsolete category. It had a "cattag" in the category description. I didn't see the "subst." in there though. Am I missing something?  :Eclecticology 20:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

You won't see "subst:" anywhere; it is a Wiki function that replaces the template tag with the actual template contents. To welcome newcomers, we don't type {{welcome}} --~~~~ but instead {{subst:welcome}} --~~~~ so that they see some of the basic editing features right away. The minor drawback with that method is that you don't see the changes until after the entry is saved. So I didn't know that by entering {{subst:cattag|Obsolete}}, I had hosed the parenthesis. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 20:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Ahhh! The penny drops. :-) I'm sure that you will appreciate that some of us luddites never learn these tricks until they're slapped in the face with them. There's probably a place where they are listed?? Still, I feel more in my element tracking down the origins of some old word. At times tracking down new techniques can require a lot of effort to figure out that putting a comma in the right place can make a world of difference. Then too, we luddites have a role in maintaining wikiability, and hopefully a counterweight to techies that sometimes seem to go in the other extreme. Eclecticology 22:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

If I sound too didactic, it is mainly because many other people besides yourself read your user talk page. Features like "subst:" are described somewhere on meta, (I can't seem to find the page right now) so perhaps we should have a section on WT:I2T about the technique. The documentation on meta was not very descriptive, as I recall.

It is interesting to watch Wiktionary evolve. Other Wiktionaries (fr:, nl:, de:) seem to use templates very extensively to compensate for the encyclopedic nature of the media wiki software. Unfortunately, at least to me, it means editing entries is becoming an art form of utilizing the right templates. As much as I enjoy the convenience of templates, I have to admit that some of our templates are now monstrously complicated, especially the Latin inflection templates. It will be pretty interesting to see what happens in the next year. Hard to believe I've only been contributing here one year! --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 03:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:blend

I see you've moved this to Template:portmanteau. I don't think this was the right thing to do.

"Blend" has the same sense (more or less) as "portmanteau", but is the correct term used in language and in etymologies in print dictionaries (for example, Chambers). "Portmanteau" was created later by Lewis Carroll.

Although more people will know what a portmanteau is than a blend, I think "blend" is the appropriate term to use.

Also, is it possible to say "portmanteau of X and Y"? I don't know... just wondering.

I'll check what the OED does.

What do you think?

— Paul G 16:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm in favour of using blend. Ncik 21:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:MediaWiki custom messages

There is a series of "Redirect messages" on this page that were written up by User:Emperorbma more than a year ago. They don't appear ever to have been used since by anybody. I was about to simply delete the lot of them. Is there any technical reason for keeping them? Eclecticology 02:58, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:MediaWiki custom messages certainly doesn't hurt anything. As I recall, I learned about the "msgnw:" keyword from that page. (We should probably use that instead, on WT:I2T.) This seems to be just the sort of arcana you were asking about the other day?  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 03:06, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, you meant Wiktionary:MediaWiki custom messages#Redirect pages? Yes, those seem like they can go. --Connel MacKenzie 03:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

MILF

It is definitely worth splitting the etymology here, not only as a matter of principle. I also don't understand why you (still) object to having proper POS only headers, especially in this case where it is undebatable that both words are nouns. Ncik 01:01, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Do you know (how I can find out) who protected MILF?

Let's discuss, then. Just tell me where. BP? Ncik 14:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Your Japanese templates

Well, I have used your templates for かんちょう under "Japanese hiragana", I also put the entry in the more traditional way under "Japanese" so we can compare the two systems. Have a look and see what you think. Gerard Foley 13:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

This was one example for discussion purposes only. I did this one to highlight the problems with this format (Your box one).

Problems are:

1. Hard to read
2. It doesn't make it obvious where the main entry is (putting the main entry on the hiragana page will make the page very long, and the title should be how the word is normaly writen, so the main entry for いつ(when) will be at いつ and not 何時)

You can see that the list under Japanese is very compact, easy to read and use, and obvious what to do to get to the main entry.

I would like to point out that I did not come up with any of these layouts. I only made the templates.

Gerard Foley 19:29, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Quick_index

I've This is currently the oldest thing on the RfD page. Although my instinct still favours deleting it I know that you felt something could be done with it. Could you please look into it. More generally, I find that a lot of stuff in the Wiktionary name space is a mess. A lot of this arises from new ideas or cleanup programs that people got bored with and abandoned. Eclecticology 21:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

My view on its usefulness has changed, I guess. I don't agree with the philosophy of deleting stuff just because it is a relic; at least, I think that was my objection. Now I feel you are right - it should just go.

The Wiktionary namespace will be much cleaner once the Index: and Appendix: namespaces are made into formal namespaces. Right now if I start moving stuff, I'd just be clogging the main namespace with these pseudo namespaces. I'd rather wait on moving stuff until we discover what "gotchas" await for the entries that are already there.

The Wiktionary namespace cleanup is one thing I'd like to get to, but not this year. Next month, perhaps. All the moving, tracking down WhatLinksHere, correcting pointers and finally the deletions pretty much should all be done manually.  :-( The upside is that the other cruft there will get more attention in the process.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 22:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Looking at Special:Allpages I see that the pseudo-namespaces still have never gotten official status (or they'd appear in the drop-down box.) I think I saw you mention recently that they are official now; are they supposed to be official now? --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Some points concerning page format

I will change the en-verb template to look the same as en-verb2 (ie with past tense and past participle in different columns; but probably require the form to be entered only once), and adjust the existing entries. I will replace all occurrences of Template:conj: The language it is used for should be mentioned in the template name, and a corresponding (en-)decl template might, wrongly, be used for adjectives. I am glad you removed the English nouns category tag from Template:en-noun. Connel and I have been merging the Transitive and Intransitive subsections of Verb sections; splitting them is not the way forward (but maybe this should be discussed in the BP again). Ncik 04:02, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I have changed Template:en-verb. It now displays two colums instead of one for past tense and past participle. But you still only have to enter the form once. If past tense and past participle differ, the verb is irregular, you have to use Template:en-verb2 (and, in the unlikely case I haven't done it already, do some formatting yourself), and should add it to Category:English irregular verbs. Is that an acceptable compromise for you? Ncik 18:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:en-infl-irreg

Please do not delete this again. As you are well aware, a certain contributor stalks my entries. If you find no entries referencing the template, either he has just performed another vandalism round or the WhatLinksHere is malfunctioning (again.)

At this point in time, while the name of the templates is still in discussion (as well as most other aspects of them) it is not fruitful to delete the active templates. My (and others) Javascript relies on certain things being in place. Template:en-infl-irreg in particular.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 00:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Leave it if Connel's Javascript needs it (Connel: Update your Javascript). But don't use it. Connel must have realised by now that it is unsuitable for the irregularities of many irregular verbs. He also agrees that it is bad to require editors to identify grammatical properties of words. Ncik 04:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't recall saying either of those things. --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:41, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Help - starting a new page

Shouldn't this also say you can start a new page from the search box? SemperBlotto 20:01, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

2 questions

Hello Eclecticology, I just wanted to ask you, how long the votes on en usually are held. The linked one has started at the 2nd of december 2005.

Because of:

• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Neutralizer
• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Crink
• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Methodology
• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Grye

and

• the 5th vote hasn't been made by an registered account. (some don't know that wiktionary is not wikipedia or even wikinews) (besides have a look at this)

I wanted also to ask you kindly to sysop User:Amgine.

Many thanks in advance, best regards, --birdy _{(:> )=|} 21:01, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Quick contributions review

Could you take a moment and review the recent edits by 66.220.115.44? I'm reverting them, but am wondering as they appear to be censorious if something more should be done. - Amgine/^talk 00:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Entry layout explained

Just to let you know, I reverted this page back to your version. Gerard Foley 01:18, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree references for obscure words are starting to become more essential. I also think we should try and prevent Wiktionarys 2nd edit war. Do we have a 3RR policy? Gerard Foley 01:48, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Rereverted. Though it is desirable, 'References' is not an essential section. I don't even know what this section is meant for. Is it derived from Hippietrail's Dictionary Reference section? Is it supposed to include quotations/citations? I suppose User:Chimerical05 got the idea to add empty ===References=== sections to pages he created because of the 'essential' classification on WT:ESE. Ncik 02:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

You are being unjust. I follow and indeed did participate in the BP discussion about the 'References' section (or is there another thread I missed/are we talking about different things?). As far as User:Chimerical05 is concerend, I'm talking about pages like this one: [1]. Where else could he have gotten the idea to add the empty References section to his articles from than from what you said about its essentiality on WT:ELE? The fact that he created perfectly acceptable articles apart from the pointless 'References' header just proves that this section is not essential. Also, considering how long we have managed without having a 'References' section shows that it is not essential . Maybe you having a look at essential will solve the problem we have.

I have also - as you'll be aware of - engaged in endless debates about the so called PoS headers and whether terms like Abbreviation, Idiom, etc. should be permissible.

I would like to ask you to have a word with User:Amgine and User:Gmcfoley for engaging in an edit war with me. Neither of them has participated (at far as I can see and remember) in any discussions about the disputed topics (they regard you as some kind of authority I suppose, and might need to be enlightend about the fact that being a longtime contributor, admin, or even bureaucrat doesn't make anyone's edits any more or less valuable, right or wrong). I think I will be allowed to revert an edit of yours twice, just to make my point. I wouldn't revert repeatedly if I hadn't good arguments for doing so and hadn't thought about it for awhile (at the same time being aware that the same probably holds for the other person as well). Ncik 16:03, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Language considerations

I don't know whether you noticed when reverting my edits to Language considerations, but I moved the "Wiktionary:About LANGUAGE script" pages to "Wiktionary_Appendix:LANGUAGE script". This seems more appropriate since the only thing those pages do is giving a list of script symblos (usually an alphabet) for various languages and were indeed linked to by "Wiktionary_Appendix:Writing systems and alphabets". As far as I remember, the "About" pages were intended for providing guidelines on how to deal with peculiarities of languages that make it impossible to stick to WT:ELE. I see no point in insisting on a script-language split for those pages before they even contain any content. It makes it only more difficult to initiate discussions on conventions for languages other than English. Such a division should only be considered if these pages get overly busy (which we are far, far away from). Ncik 14:23, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Category: Diseases

I see that you recently created this category - the plural now being the standard for categories - are you intending to create a bot to transfer other all the entries in the Category: Disease? Or are we going to need to do this manually? Jonathan Webley 12:58, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Nomination

I just noticed Semper's comment on the nomination, which is pretty much what I'd feared; my contributions are not up to the standards required by the community. So I'm withdrawing my nomination from the admin page. - Amgine/^talk 22:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Review edits of:

• User:Parrot3989822 Special:Contributions/Parrot3989822
• User:Saturn070 Special:Contributions/Saturn070

Probably vandals in need of a block, imo. - Amgine/^talk 03:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: blocking Username vs. IP. If a username is blocked, all IPs used previously by that username are also blocked (when the IP attempts to edit they will receive a message akin to "This IP was used by "Username", who is blocked..." and an auto-generated block created.) - Amgine/^talk 21:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Orthography

Quoted words belong in quotation marks or need to be italicised. I'm saying this because of your change to perinaeum. I'm slightly surprised about that edit since you didn't object to me reverting an analogue edit of yours to Template:altspellpar. Ncik 03:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

OHG.

What is wrong with you and Ncik? OHG. is the Webster's abbreviation. Without the period, it would be a normal abbreviation, but with the extra period, it is an indicator for a failed conversion/import. That is why the entry exists. Please move that entry back.

Thanks bunches. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:47, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Conduct unbecoming a bureaucrat

Your absurd one-sided support of the vandal Ncik has passed beyond acceptable.

You write of trying to calm situations down. You write of trying not to alienate people. You write of trying to keep communication open.

Then you act in a very one-sided manner. With no communication. Ignoring all communication attempts. Ignoring facts. Assisting breaking internal functions.

Nice. You reap what you sow.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 09:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Minor bug

I've found a small bug:

User Jon Harald Søby (talk) deleted this article after you started editing with reason:
    tosh
Please confirm that really want to recreate this article."

--> ...confirm that you really... ?

I thought you could change those things. Cheers. — Vildricianus 09:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Latest Primetime contributions

Would you like to help? We have quite a lot to look at, verify and format properly. SemperBlotto 11:24, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

• Hey Eclecticology,

  Thanks for reducing the block. Anyway, the blocking message still appears whenever I try to edit a page. (I'm having to use an open proxy right now.) I think my IP address may still be blocked.

  See ya',

  Primetime 19:49, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Your friend is back.

After a week hiatus, your friend or apprentice is back. You said recently that his replacement of existing templates is POV. It seems to me that he is ignoring that, and is continuing to replace entries with User:Uncle G's templates with his own. If you wish to permit this, there should be no double standard where you instruct me not to replace occurances of his templates with text, or User:Uncle G's.

---

• http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=read&diff=prev&oldid=844784

The reason is that Ufundo replaced the existing blue boxes (which is no surprise because the text inside was formatted badly). Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Which you had previously edited in a non NPOV manner. http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=read&diff=642089&oldid=640595 --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

• http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=birdie&diff=prev&oldid=844793

Admittedly, I should have been more careful with the noun here. The verb was wrongly classified as irregular by the template so it had to go. Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

What you say about the verb is incorrect. That is not regular in US English (and I doubt for UK/CW English.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

• http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=cold_read&diff=prev&oldid=844794

Verb wrongly categorised in Category:English irregular verbs by the template. So it had to go. I corrected the categorisation manually. Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

What you say about the verb is incorrect. That is not regular in US English (and I doubt for UK/CW English.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

• http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=physic&diff=prev&oldid=844801

Again, wrong automatic categorisation by template. Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

What you say about the verb is incorrect. That is not regular in US English (and I doubt for UK/CW English.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

• http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=deal&diff=prev&oldid=845090

Template:sb is a very early version of the current Template:en-noun. I have now nominated it for deletion. Template:irregverb is deprecated, as it automatically categorises verbs as irregular, which should be avoided. You have repeatedly agreed with me on this. Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I must've been looking at http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=deal&diff=next&oldid=487805. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with this one? Ncik 01:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Could you please support your assertions about US English with references? I very much doubt them. Being a non-native speaker I have probably seen more lists of English irregular verbs than you have. There is a rule saying that verbs ending in "c" (possibly "ic" or maybe even depending on spelling and pronunciation /ɪk/) form their past tense, past participle and present participle with an additional "k", explaining why you won't find any of "traffic", "magic", "physic", etc. in any irregular verbs list. Similar for words ending in "e" with a final /ɪ/, /i/ or /iː/ sound, which are regularly inflected like "pee", "guarantee", "birdie", etc. The problem with "cold read" is that it is a phrase, not that read were not inflected irregularly. Ncik 01:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

---

As is his usual style, he has commingled "good" edits with his POV edits. He seems to finally be depricating older versions of his own templates as well.

Second sentence is correct. Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

As is the first. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

---

He is restarting his edit war tactic for the ===Proper noun=== heading. How many times has he been told that the third level heading is not for parts of speech only? The last BP topic was very far from reaching a consensus - he gained one supporter by ignoring the solution of identifying parts of speech on the definition line(s).

• http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=randy&diff=prev&oldid=845089

--Connel MacKenzie T C 20:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

The Proper noun heading should be abolished for the same reasons '(In)transitive verb' headers were abolished. Ncik 22:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Your opinion that it "should be abolished" is your POV, which is far from neutral. Discussing such a change is obviously the way to approach it; not corrupting individual entries with changes you clearly do not have consensus for. You know this concept has met significant resistance in the past. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

There is no agreement to abolish the "Proper noun" heading, nor for that matter the "(In)transitive verb" heading. Nevertheless, the latter only remains useful when a verb does not have both characteristics.

Headings such as "Proper noun", "(In)transitive verb", "Phrasal verb", etc. bring several problems with them: First, they require contributors to have more grammatical knowledge compared with the simple POS headers (and so might not add a new definition for fear it might end up under the wrong header or, not much better, add it to the wrong section). Second, it is not clear why and what additional grammatical should be added to them. We could as well have "(Un)countable noun", "(In)transitive phrasal verb", "(Not) comparable adjective", etc. headers, which, like the current exceptions, is highly unsystematic and irritating. A good bad example is "Wellington": The boot has wrongly been classified as a proper noun. That's why tagging individual definitions is necessary. We should aim to keep things simple and make it possible to add information in small bits. We also don't want users to have to know that when they are looking up a noun they have to check below the "Phrasal verb" header whether there is a "Proper noun" section. Ncik 01:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

It is also pointless to put the single word "transitive" into a template.

As always, the template can be used to change the appearance of the tag and for categorising (not relevant now due to the size of the resulting category, but maybe in future intersecting categories). Ncik 16:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Each of the other items above needs to be considered separately. Connel it does not help your position when you begin the discussion with a sarcasm about apprenticeship. Eclecticology 03:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

• Ncik, while there is some merit to the distinctions you wish to make regarding Proper nouns vs. POS, the community is far from "sold" that the distinctions you wish to make are valid. That's why prior discussion is so important for fundamental changes. Having said there is some merit to your argument, I am not convinced that we should change the way distinguish proper nouns. The last time it was raised for discussion, only one other person saw it the way you do. If it really is a distinction that is important to people speaking English as a second language, the importance really needs to be spelled out a lot clearer.
• I agree with Ncik regarding template:transitive. It is not used for much now, but allows for flexibility in the future.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 16:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

---

• Nick, regular verbs in English ending with the /kuh/ sound are spelled with "ck" not "c". The inflection(s) if normal would be trafficed, trafficing but those are incorrect. The words here on the English Wiktionary that are labelled as English verbs that end in "c" are:
  • sic, magic, panic, havoc, mimic, lip sync
• and I assert that those are all irregular, based on what I was taught in elementary school. The regular verbs in the English Wiktionary ending in "ck" are:
  • clock fuck tick hack neck back attack stick suck shock tack rock check knock snack squick pick whack sack dock rack thack chock hock huck reck snick bedeck deck fleck knack lack peck shack slack smack stack track wrack barrack flack hijack feck transwiki:Doubletrack bollock tuck lick cluck unlock thwack cockblock chiack shuck highjack schwick gimmick coldcock uplock uppluck roadblock bushwhack spatchcock deadlock defrock upchuck carjack
• and although the above list indicates that some cleanup is needed, it illustrates the point of regular English verb inflection.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 17:30, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to add some thoughts here without prompting.

On the matter of ===Proper noun=== and co., it is my personal opinion that these could all be got rid of. That said, I can see why we might want to keep ===Proper noun===. I see no compelling arguments for the others. In England, there is a tradition of, when being taught the parts of speech, having "proper noun" listed alongside "noun" and "adjective" and so on. From this perspective, it shouldn't be unreasonable to assume that many people would understand the distinction. Does anyone have any stats on how many problems we've had with these headers regarding incorrect listing under headers and the like? Similarly, English, to a small extent, does treat proper nouns differently from nouns. The capitalisation differences being a case in point, but also by virtue of the very fact that they're proper nouns. You don't say "the Wellington" or "the The Hague", for example. However, as I stated, I'd prefer proper nouns to be listed under a ===Noun=== heading, but this is a matter of whether we adhere to cultural traditions or not.

As far as -c -> -ck goes, I'm in two minds again. It is a very regular rule in English that a -c verb becomes -ck in all but the 3rd person singular present inflection. I can't actually think of any exceptions, unlike with most of our other regular rules. However, it's not intuitive to even a native speaker of English. If you search on Google or something similar, I suspect you'd find many instances of "paniced" or the like. I'm being lazy right now and not searching, but I can recall instances of "paniced" and "magicy" for "panicked" and "magicky" (of all things) from chatting on IRC within the past few months. The question is: Do we want our templates to merely indicate a grammatical rule, as might be expected, or do we want it to work as a flag so users can see an unordinary rule as well?

This might be one of those "move to beer parlour" moments. --Wytukaze 01:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Any further discussion on English irregular verbs on Category_talk:English irregular verbs, please. Ncik 12:01, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Some compromise on tagging "policy" pages.

see Wiktionary talk:Proposal for Policies and Guidelines for a compromise / improvement which we might be able to agree on.--Richardb 23:43, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

---

Hey Eclecticology,

I've responded to your comment on my talk page.

See ya',

Primetime 05:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Reply

No worries, the only reasons I filed the RfA were based on the fact that I couldn't get the godmode rollback script to work properly and I was sick of hearning Connel and Dvortygirl telling me to.

As for bloody, I suspose I've rarely heard it in the vulgar context but that might be just my memory, I think you're right about including it in a vulgar context.

As for a beer sometime, sadly I have this thing called the Liquor control act that would prohibit that for another year, however I would be open to a meetup sometime. I'm also in the 604 area code if you want to try the telephone :) -- Tawker 09:26, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Irregular verbs

Please see User talk:Connel MacKenzie#Irregular verbs (again) and comment. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Any further discussion on Category_talk:English irregular verbs, please. Ncik 12:00, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

User:Primetime

To keep you up to date,

I'd taken a hands-off approach to User:Primetime's edits since he's been back, until now. His rate of copyvio flood is impressive. Looked like about 4 medium sized entries per minute...I am not quite as fast at deleting the entries as he was at loading them (with no reference, unusual punctuation, etc...all the characteristic signs of pure copyright violation.)

Considering the speed with which he was adding chapters to give the only riddles remaining are which sources is he copying from. That is, did he leave any out?

Do I need to maintain the list of his entries I'm deleting, or do we rely on the deletion log for that? Right now I'm leaving give so you can review it. All his new entries from today I am trying to delete. Aren't we supposed to delete all contributions when a pattern of copyright violation has been uncovered? If so, I'll need significant help clearing it all.

(Sidenote, he just created an account User:Primetim%D0%B5 which has also been blocked...now for three days...perhaps I should adjust the User:Primetime block to match.)

I'm going back to deleting his contributions from today.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 06:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Your reverting of my expansion of WT:ELE's Entry name section

I think adding some extra information in small print for the more advanced editor or the interested newcomer (or even, as a reference, for the long-time contributor!) is a very good idea. Reading your edit summary "We don't need an exhaustive list here" leaves me wondering whether you have a "there" in your mind where such information could be collected. Ncik 12:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

RfU

Could you please unprotect Template:Fa? I don't see a reason why we'd keep it protected. It should redirect to the lowercase version. — Vildricianus 11:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for tackling Map of Policies

Ok, so you're not so bad on policies afer all. Thanks.--Richardb 12:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyright violations and their consequences in Wiktionary

Can I please have your opinion on this copyright violation and deletion issue: User_talk:Connel_MacKenzie#steal. Ncik 16:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Portion previously unnoticed reply that got archived before being noticed, restored here 02:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC):

I have acted in good faith with regards to my understanding of US copyright law. If you wish to restore portions that I have deleted, I cannot stop you. --Connel MacKenzie T C 02:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Nobody is questioning your good faith about this. An excess of enthusiasm for a task does not imply bad faith. Copyright law as it relates to dictionaries is more muddled than it is for most other forms of writing. Many of these definitions have been around for a long time, and can probably be traced individually to a public domain original, or sometimes there can be only one way of defining a word. Coincidentally identical definitions are not copyright violations, but that argument is difficult to sustain in all but the shortest definitions. A fair use argument is also available, and is quite appropriate in many situations. If that is done, however, sources must be cited; in many countries that have a fair dealing provision that is a legal essential. While single instances of fair use are not likely to cause problems, patterns of such claims can. The amount of material of this sort that one user can add before he's noticed is limited, and probably not enough to cause problems if he is stopped when he is discovered.

Primetime has not been as responsive as he could be when confronted, and it would seem that he has also engaged in sockpuppetry in order to continue adding un sourced material. That's more than enough reason for an indefinite block, but at the same time I see no need to indiscriminately delete all his edits. If you think there is still a copyvio in an article rewriting the offending parts, or giving proper credit should be enough. Copyvios in the history should not be something to worry about; this material is not likely to interest the average passive user, and the history will also show what we have done about the copyvio. The derivative work argument seems stretched, and I think it would be an error to make this argument when the problem parts of an entry are really just a small part of everything that is there. Eclecticology 10:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

---

New comment:

Eclecticology,

It was no "excess of enthusiasm" but rather application of exactly the instructions for dealing with copyright violations. Those instructions exist only on Wikipedia, our WikiMedia sister project, as they are absent here, but still equally applicable.

The "derivative work argument" is not at all stretched. All the meanings that had been listed on steal were copyright violations. Not some. That makes all the work derived from them "derived work." As the WikiMedia servers are in Florida, in the United States of America, they are subject to US copyright laws. With this it seems apparent that you wish to endanger all of Wiktionary pointlessly, when there is ample public domain material to draw from.

Such an egregarious copyright violation makes me suspect your account has been compromised.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 02:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is different since it is not structured as we are. Each possible derivation as well as fair use must be considered seperately for everything that is running text, that is each definition of sense, etymology, usage note etc. I understand your concern but our situation is not the same as Wikipedia's. Futhermore we have much better possibillities of fair use than Wikipedia because of the merger doctrine. As long as we act in good faith there is not much anybody can do... We probably should have a clearly defined policy that we follow though. --Patrik Stridvall 10:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Patrick, the Wikipedia article you linked clearly describes the idea-expression divide, which clearly does not apply here. In this case, we have ample PD sources to use, but instead the restored text is that of a flagrant word-for-word copy of a copyright source (without attribution.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

You have to go to the Idea-expression divide article. Quote, emphasise mine, "Some courts have recognized that there are particular ideas that can be expressed intelligibly only in one or a limited number of ways. Therefore even the expression in these circumstances is unprotected, or extremely limited to verbatim copying only. In the United States this is known as the merger doctrine, because the expression is considered to be inextricably merged with the idea. United States courts are divided on whether merger constitutes a defense to infringement or prevents copyrightability in the first place, but it is often pleaded as an affirmative defense to infringement."

Almost every definition of a sense is "inextricably merged with the idea" so it applies to use to a much larger extent than Wikipedia. We should avoid too much verbatim copying to be on the safe side though. It makes it easier to claim good faith if nothing else. --Patrik Stridvall 10:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Open Proxies

We have a massive list on meta of confirmed open proxies, do you want me to start putting blocks on them as per the consensus on the beer parlour? -- Tawker 02:06, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Help:Starting a new page

Could you please lift the protection from that page? Ncik 03:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Ncik 12:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

WT:EC up for deletion

I've listed WT:EC, which User:Connel MacKenzie created as a redirect to this page, for deletion. Please comment there, if interested. - dcljr 03:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Tawker's request for adminship

Hi, it's me again. It looks to me like Tawker's adminship has ample support and he has been around long enough not to be entirely unproven. If you have no further objections, let's enlist him. I know him through IRC, and he seems to have an excellent grasp of the sort of technical details and tricks that still elude me. Thanks! --Dvortygirl 05:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Template:R:Century 1914

Hello Ec, I have a question: is it safe (in terms of copyright infringement etc.) to rely on the Century Dictionary when adding information to entries? Although the site says it's in the public domain, I'm not entirely sure. Cheers. — Vildricianus 16:51, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

This was confusing me. But then, I may not have enough understanding about copyright. — Vildricianus 13:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Any copyright on republished public domain works is limited to the any additional formatting that was not present in the orginal work. So anybody can't just take what is on their site a republish it as they do have a some limited copyright on the formatting. Note that in many cases any additional formating is not copyrightable at all, several courts have held that it must be creative in some way. However, we are not interested in any additional formatting they might have added, so it is not a problem for us. If you find anything useful you can just take it and adapt it to our formatting, even if it is several paragraphs long. --Patrik Stridvall 17:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Ec for your answer; it has certainly shed some light on the matter. I completely agree with you about the quality of this dictionary versus Webster (of which I have never been fond). I had already created Template:R:Century 1911 in order to refer to the correct version. — Vildricianus 19:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia Canada

Sadly with me trying to break out into the design industry right now, and now that I've involved in the Communications Committee and OTRS, I'm not sure how much time I have for anything else right now. I think once we have the thing up and going, the enthuasiasm will relift, but most are uninterested in paperwork. As for legal members, I'd say anyone that admits their name. At least initially, let's avoid membership fees, to try and rope people in. Plus, we won't have any operating costs, besides postage to register us as real. -- 70.26.123.156 19:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you active in the forming of the Canadian WM chapter. I know I'm interested, especially in a Vancouver based subchapter for meet ups etc. Would you be interested in such activities. On a side note, I've put up a note on BP about a bot I have that can automatically revert common (and obvious) vandalism, if you want to see the source code let me know :) -- Tawker 04:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

My promotion today

I was temp sysop'd today Anthere (steward) mostly due to the fact that we had a repeat repeat vandal and nobody else was around to do it. Noting the fact that Stewards shouldn't override bcrats on projects that have bcrats I requested the steward provided promotion be removed pending you doing it. Not sure if you want to wait a little longer, I started on the open proxy list and I'm halfway through it and it is possible that a similar situation might come up again and constantly changing permissions might tick off the stewards -- Tawker 01:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ec. Tawker has posted the same to me on my talk page. He says he needs either you or I to "hit the promote button". I'm not clear what this is about - could you explain what is happening? Thanks. — Paul G 08:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I've just realised that I did this after prompting from Expurgator (aka Wonderfool), not noticing that his posting on my user page was from him rather than from you. Sorry about that. If I'd noticed, I wouldn't have taken much notice of what Wonderfool thought I should do.

Anyhow, it's done now. Maybe we can put Tawker on probation (that is, keep an eye on what he does) for the first few weeks. — Paul G 07:11, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

"Canadian terms"

Connel had created a list of Canadian terms @ Category:Requests for audio pronunciation some of them I haven't really heard of, for example supply teacher - would you be able to take a look and see if any of the words you could create anything but a basic definition for. Do you think it might be a good idea to make categories of users from a specific country to discuss such regional terms etc? Cheers -- Tawker 03:17, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I thought it was a little odd, some of the words like Molson muscle I'm not totally sure about, possibly an eastern based term. I've always used TOC for substutite teachers, I might just create it as a redirect. Do you want to create a project page that deals with country specific terms?

On a second side note, do you think we should add HNIC to Wiktionary, I was looking through some of the stuff thats being transwiki'd and I think it might fit although its a little borderline -- Tawker 04:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, "supply teacher" is a Britishism too, meaning a teacher who is supplied (by an agency, perhaps?) to stand in for another temporarily in his or her absence. I wonder how many of the other Canadianisms are used further afield than Canada. — Paul G 07:12, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Quotation templates

You may want to have a look at Wiktionary:Quotations/Templates. — Vildricianus 10:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Automation: certainly, by means of a category. That would however not show the contents of the templates, and for now I'd like to keep the manual list until we are using these templates on a slightly larger scale and until we have more of them. Somewhere in the near future, I'll have the possibility to add more quotations in a consistent and less time-consuming manner than is now the case. — Vildricianus 21:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

My block

Hey Eclecticoloy,

What do I need to do to get unblocked? It's been over a month now. I promise that if I'm unblocked I won't copy anything from any copyrighted publication.

See ya',

Primetime 01:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

You probally should note his re-creation of deleted material deleted by SemperBlotto, I deleted a couple times then protected the page (after this being the belief of multiple multiple users). After such, Primetime went to make a "revenge" vote on my Wikipedia RfA (and was subsequently blocked on Wikipedia) - Primetime needs to show some accountability before this block should be lifted -- Tawker 10:20, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Two of my pages that I created a while ago were deleted without going through an RFV. I then recreated them with several references and quotes. They were then deleted again by Tawker. I voted against Tawker on Wikipedia, and Tawker appears to have taken that very personally. My username was not blocked on Wikipedia, however. In any case, what does this have to do with Wiktionary? We're not Wikipedia, and I certainly have a right to vote either way on an RFA, either here or on Wikipedia.--Primetime 10:39, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Hindi categories

Hmm, I fail to see the value in the category changes you made. As you can see from Category:Hindi language, most of the subcategories are in the more natural and easily readable format, and I just finished moving some from the Category:hi: type format. I don't see any policy on which way they should be and in the absence of that, I think the more easily readable format (and easier to type in fact) should be the one used. - Taxman 17:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

abstract

You might as well give an explanation why you reverted all my changes there and even removed the translations. — Vildricianus 11:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Could you perhaps take a moment to respond to this? I've been wondering for a month. — Vildricianus 22:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I can't see how that's relevant. You plainly reverted my changes without letting me know anything. How the heck am I supposed to continue spending my time here if someone goes on reverting behind my back? I'm not arguing the changes I did to abstract - I agree they may have been too drastic - but you could at least have let me know something. (Also, it was Connel who added the ttbc's, so that's not an argument). — Vildricianus 09:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

New admins

Just so you know, I created three new admins today (see Wiktionary:Administrators). — Paul G 15:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

...and two more today (actually three, because I accidentally didn't press the button on one yesterday). These were the five people for which there were outstanding sysop requests. After reviewing the votes (none of which were against) and comments (none of which were negative) and looking at the work they do, I saw no reason not to grant them sysophood and so have done so. — Paul G 09:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Mediation request

Good afternoon -

I have been contacted by a Wiktionary user who is in a dispute with a Wiktionary admin and is unsure how to ask for further help. Listening to his/her story, it appears that mediation might be in order. However, I do not participate enough in Wiktionary to really understand the personalities involved or to be sure that I know all the relevant policies. (I spend most of my time on Wikipedia.)

This user has apparently been blocked by the admin and is unable to ask for mediation directly. As I understand it, both the user ID and the underlying IP address were blocked. He/she contacted me through Wikipedia email because of my participation in one of the policy pages there.

I have no idea what his behavior has been on Wiktionary. I have not done any investigation nor formed an opinion on whether the block was appropriate. (Again, I don't spend enough time on Wiktionary to know the policies well enough to be sure that I deserve to have an opinion.) The user's conversations with me have been polite and reasonably articulate.

I would like to pass this request off to someone who can assess the case impartially. Is it appropriate to ask you to look into this matter? If not, could I ask for a suggestion? I'd like to get out of the middle of this dispute. Thanks. Rossami 18:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. It would probably help if I included the user's Wiktionary ID. The user says he/she used account user:Pce3@ij.net. The user has also sent me a fairly long email with his/her side of the story. I can pass that along if you think it's appropriate. Thanks again. Rossami

WT:BP#Vote for User:TheCheatBot format

You showed a particular interest in the former iterations of this project in the past. I'd appreciate it if you'd offer your comments on this round, at WT:BP#Vote for User:TheCheatBot format. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:13, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

WikiSaurus formatting page

I wrote down where I am at on the formatting and put together this page to debate and establish WikiSaurus formatting policies, have a look. Wiktionary:WikiSaurus Format - TheDaveRoss 08:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back

I do wonder, do you recognize the site, after being away for over a month?

Besides cosmetic changes, some highlights of this past month:

1) External links are redirected (for anonymous users and default skin) to the correct uppercase/lowercase entry, making the majority of #REDIRECTS no longer necessary, perhaps.

2) Formation of WT:GP - the Grease pit (for technical discussions.)

3) First full run of TheCheatBot (plurals - other bots not yet discussed nor active, nor ready)

4) Patrick Strivall and Scs's toolserver pages

5) Improved WT:BP archiving

6) User:Primetime copyvio tracking activities crossed over to Wikipedia, where Jimbo personally banned him. I'm unsure if his account has met similar fate at Wikisource, Wikibooks, etc., yet.

7) Various new admins

There are several things that do need attention, the sooner the better, I think:

1) Namespaces need to become "real." Appendix:, Index:, Thesaurus: (Wikisaurus?), etc.

2) Renewed discussion of CFI regarding multi-word terms.

3) Various category issues (perhaps just the normal confusion; hard to say.)

Welcome back, again.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 18:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

---

I've lost this conversation on my own page, (I saw you comments in the diff though.) The Transwiki: namespace is probably "needed" the most. It is "transwiki:", "transWiki:" and "Transwiki:" right now, with thousands of 'bot entered new terms recently.

Thesaurus/Wikisaurus is still up in the air. The last "vote" had "Thesaurus" favored by quite a margin, with good reasoning behind each vote. From the looks of the Namespace manager tool, you may need a clean space to move into, so that may be an additional technical reason to choose "Thesaurus" over "Wikisaurus". But since that is so controversial, (to the original progenator, at least) then perhaps that one should wait.

The idea of presenting Brion with a long list to be done, is that he may shrug and install the tool properly, so that you and Paul can then use it at a more leisurely pace.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 05:09, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Wonderfool's request

Please see User_talk:Paul G#Changing username regarding Wonderfool. I'm not going to rush to change his username just yet, but his request looks reasonable enough to me. What is your view? — Paul G 06:09, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

socialist

I've rolled back your change to socialist. The inflection templates and the gender templates have received broad acceptance. You may be alone in your opposition to them now, unless perhaps you brought Ncik back with you. Numerous technical questions regarding templates (in general) have been satisfactorily answered. For consistency, they cannot be beat. For performance, they remain exactly equal, for page views. For functionality, they remain notably superior; users such as Ncik can have them displayed as boxes, while everyone else can see them correctly (via Wiktionary preferences.)

Your input on the Category confusion is appreciated. But your too-long absences are a very noticable disruption.

--Connel MacKenzie 02:54, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I see others have also corrected your changes to socialist. The inflection templates have enough momentum now (becuase of the endless flame/revert/wheel wars that led to their development) that they are recognized as straight-forward corrections to plain text.

Yours is the first "complaint" about the preferences page I've received, WRT purpose. It is a magic page for setting your Wiktionary preferences. Do you still not use the Monobook skin? If so, I can understand why it may not seem to be clear (as most of the page elements should be missing.) If you switch to "Monobook" for a few minutes, you can see what that page should look like. Since you are the first (only?) person to use a skin other than Monobook, no one has reported the problem before now. (And I forgot to test this, before now.)

--Connel MacKenzie 05:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

• To clarify, I thought your comments on the CJKV categories seemed helpful. But your opposition to Category:English nouns remains inexplicable. Please clarify why you made such a drastic (unwanted) change to that template. I have rolled that change back. --Connel MacKenzie 16:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Language category indices

I don't understand your motivation for this edit. Does that language alphabetize entries based on their last letter? Rod (A. Smith) 23:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

BCA

I just removed BCA from Category:Stamp collecting, but I see that you removed all references to stamps from the article, as well as the mention that this was formerly Malawi. The overprint. "B. C. A.", (It should probably be moved.) did appear on a set of Rhodesian stamps in 1891. The name changed to Nyassaland Protectorate in 1907. Eclecticology 17:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Hiya, yeah I put all that info on the British Central Africa page and made BCA a simple link. Although I got rid of the philately stuff, since similar things could be said of most country names. B. C. A. could perhaps be added as well, and the two forms linked together via =Alternative spellings= headings. Widsith 18:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

CheckUser nominations

Hey Ec, On something between a whim and a desire to get things done, I kick started the CheckUser voting process, please see CheckUser. - TheDaveRoss 16:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:WB:RFA

Hello Eclecticology. I wanted to let you know that a new policy concerning administrators has been enacted on en.wikibooks. Under the new policy, we are asking admins who have been inactive for over a year to give up their adminship. This isn't a punishment, and is not supposed to be seen as an insult: we are trying to clean house, and take stock of the admins that we do and don't have available to help.

If you have any questions or comments, please send me a message at wikibooks, or join in the rfa discussion there:

b:WB:RFA

b:User talk:Whiteknight

Thank you. --b:User:Whiteknight 17:42, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

2007

The Photon Belt

Hi. I notice you added the bit on the photon belt in toroid and am curious if you would like to help ressurrect the deleted article on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:User:Eep²/The Photon Belt for more info. Thanks. -Eep 12:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

template:en-noun and regular possessive forms of modern English nouns

There is currently an active vote at [[2]] regarding whether regular possessive forms of modern English nouns should have their own entries or not. As part of this it has been suggested that the {{en-noun}} template might be modified to show the possessive forms in the inflection line of modern English noun entries (irrespective of the outcome of the vote). Your comments and/or votes are welcome until the end of the vote on 5th August 2007. You are receiving this note as you have edited template:en-noun and/or template talk:en-noun Thryduulf 17:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Please rename me

Wiktionary:Changing_username#User:Edmundkh. Thanks! --Edmund the King of the Woods! 17:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

connexion

Hi there,

I was just wondering why you removed {{alternative spelling of}} from connexion?

Thanks,
—Ruakh_TALK 15:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Isn't "Out-of-fashion spelling of connection" just another way of saying "(dated) Alternative spelling of connection.", except that the latter is formatted correctly, adds the right categories, and links to an explanation of the term "dated"? —Ruakh_TALK 20:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Hullo there. I wanted to point out that connexion is still used in writing by some people. Therefore out of fashion wouldn't be particularly appropriate, would it? Just my take, thanks.

--Neskaya ^talk 20:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Circumventing WT:RFV

Hello, Ec. As you know, *wintard was rejected by WT:RFV.[3] When you restored the entry for it, [4] you circumvented a process that contributors are compelled to follow. If you'd like to change some aspect of WT:CFI, please discuss your suggestion somewhere appropriate, e.g. in WT:BP. Otherwise, please follow that process. Rod (A. Smith) 20:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Conversation continued at WT:BP#WT:CFI, WT:RFV, and "durably archived". Rod (A. Smith) 17:36, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

New sysops

Glad to have a bureaucrat back. User:Medellia and User:Hamaryns need sysop flags. Possibly also User:Saltmarsh by the time you get this message. DAVilla 04:40, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, User:Dvortygirl got it. DAVilla 16:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My name change

Hey, I've been waiting for more than one week! --Edmund the King of the Woods! 07:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Canada

Are you still interested in getting the Canadian chapter incorporated? I have already done some work on draft by-laws, (see Wikimedia Canada/Incorporation) but that has not drawn a lot of interest or participation. A federal corporation could be set up fairly quickly if there are at least three people willing to be the original directors. If you are interested, is there a third person (perhaps from Quebec) who would be both willing and able to serve as an original director?

In many respects I would prefer more democratic representation on the Board, but waiting for people to accept that kind of responsibility should not become an excuse for doing nothing. After all WMF did start with 3 directors, and was able to adapt when people were willing to accept more responsibilities. Eclecticology 08:58, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, just seeing your message. I've been busy for the last little bit wrapping up Wikinews' Ontario election interview series.

I've read over 90% of the by-laws, they seem pretty sound to me, great stuff.

Sure, I guess I could serve as a board member if needed. Stéphane Thibault has probably expressed the most interest, of those from Quebec.

Do you mind me sending out a message to foundation-l and wikipedia-l, asking for additional people willing to take on the responsibility of being a board member? -- Zanimum 18:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

There's also Montrealais, he's an admin that's run as an NDP MP candidate in Quebec, and he's an admin on Wikipedia who's done TV interviews. Granted, he's never interacted in any way with Wikimedia Canada. -- Zanimum 18:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

H2SO4

Hi. I was about to enter this, when I was notified that it had been deleted by your good self, even though the content was "good". Is this because of lack of common usage, or what? In UK quotes can be found, and the educated general public know what it means and use it in conversation (not everyday, admittedly. lol). - Algrif 12:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Open requests at Wiktionary:Changing username

Hello, mine is one of several open requests currently at Wiktionary:Changing username. If you have a moment please have a look. Thanks. Jerry lavoie 03:20, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

2008

Account rename

I've had a rename request on Wiktionary:Changing username for a few months now. I've already asked all the other 4 Bureaucrats on their talk pages too, but I'm still waiting for a rename. You are my last chance: could you please rename me? —Zachary ^talk 22:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

…3:24 P.M. E.S.T. TOPICTemplate:ECLECTICOLOGY

By David George DeLancey;/Eclectic - a selective method

                        /ology    - a combining form denoting
                                  - a speaking or saying

a doctrine,theory,science, also first of all in motion or thought.

Discription of (Finance) two combining words established in the presence of,Find and noun ance the first three letters are Fin mentioning that they possibly derive from the words Find Figure and final wich all represent the noun ance. Such as ancient final a figuration and a finding cabability towards another.

It is a mentioning in history that Aristotle may have coined the terming Finance,my curriousity is how and is some of the above a possible sequence. also noting it is very possible the terming ordinance exsisted before Aristotle and since order and find are relatively compairable,along with the word or term usage ancestor meaning something from and of as ance-stor,stor is by it self in a dictionary as well as ance.

Till next with D.G.DeL-Dorchester Mass Art Economics History 3:40 P.M. E.S.T.

G'day Candidate!

First I thought I'd offer a thank you for being brave / foolish enough to put your hat in the ring as a candidate for election to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees! - I wonder if you might have any time, interest, and enthusiasm to record a brief 10 / 15 minute audio interview about yourself / the reasons for your candidature / your wiki philosophy etc. etc. ? - I've been promoting a project on the english wikipedia called NotTheWikipediaWeekly - which is a grassroots effort to promote good communications through (semi) regular 'podcasts'.

If you have a couple of moments free, would you mind taking a look at this page and signing up if you're interested! It'd be great to chat with each and every one of you, and I hope you'll be amenable to this idea! Let me know if you've any questions at all, thought perhaps my english wikipedia talk page is the best spot.

The best of luck, and kind regards,

Privatemusings 05:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully you might be available?

For a brief audio conversation via. Skype (or the regular telephone service, should skype not be suitable) to talk about your candidacy in the Board of Trustees election. Per the above thread - I've now started recording short interviews with cnadidates, and will be publishing a podcast on 6th June in a bid to help inform potential voters about you and your ideas for the Wikimedia Foundation.

It would be great to have your participation! You can sign up for an interview time here - or uf you have any questions, please don't hesistate to contact me and I'll try and help! cheers, Privatemusings 05:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps an image?

I've just red your presentation concerning the WMF elections. I think it's well done and your opinion is quite good. What about an image in the margin that underlines and intensifies your presentation?! In my opinion illustrations help a lot to memorise people (and their ideas) ... just an idea! greetings, Gujoh

It's a bit strange for me that you are candidating for an important position within the "wiki-system" and, at the same time, do not write a very short comment on my suggestion at least. In my opinion, COMMUNICATION is a key-word of the wiki-movement, a principle that should be well internalized - especially by the leaders/ responsible persons ... but probably, you are just stressed out by the elections, I can understand that very well ;)) ... greetings, Gujoh

It's all right ... thanks for your comment here ... best wishes (also for the elections)! Gujoh

Well done

We've reached the end of a long and well fought campaign. Let me offer my congratulations and we'll see what the results bring soon. Swatjester

hello

I am very, very fond of making Grand userpages, and i see yours is slightly dull. If you would like (and please specify exact specifics) i can make your userpage/talkpage very, very nice looking to your exact wants. All free, i will do it just because you are a loyal user who hasnt taken a break in a while. If you would give me the pleasure of modding your userpage to your specifications, i would be greatful. Please respond on my talk page. Cheers,

The2DeadlySins^Pride_Envy

Wikimedia Canada

Hi, Eclecticology. I noticed that you made an edit to the old draft of the Wikimedia Canada bylaws. Are you interested in trying to get that project up and running again, or were you just clarifying a point? I've been thinking about trying to contact the major contributors over the last couple weeks, as it looks like we're getting somewhat closer to at least getting Foundation approval, and we really do need to get a Canadian chapter up eventually. --Arctic.gnome 07:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

rename account

I would like to rename my account to a new name; "Niduzzi", as my current name ("Izzudin") is already in use in id: and ar: by others. So I can't unify my account. Thanks! Izzudin 06:26, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

A plea from a Definition article on Wikipedia

Not sure where to go here. Perhaps you will know.

Some Wikipedia article you might know how to serve:

• Definition has no dedicated editors. It is a start class article.
• W:Lexical definition is a stub. Nothing there.

This situation might prove useful to Wiktionary.

Thank you.

Cpiral (talk) 18:14, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2010-04/Voting policy

I urge you to vote. (I don't know which way you'll vote, but I want more voices, especially English Wiktionarians' voices, heard in this vote.) If you've voted already, or stated that you won't, and I missed it, I apologize.​—msh210℠ 17:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

welcome back

​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:07, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Vote on formatting of etymologies

There is the vote Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2011-02/Deprecating less-than symbol in etymologies, which would benefit from your participation, even if only in the role of an abstainer. Right now, the results of the vote do not quite mirror the results of the poll that has preceded the vote. There is a chance that the vote will not pass. The vote, which I thought would be a mere formality, has turned out to be a real issue. You have taken part on the poll that preceded the vote, which is why I have sent you this notification. --Dan Polansky 08:25, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Voting

Responding to your post in Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2011-02/Deprecating_less-than_symbol_in_etymologies on 20 March 2011:

I have made changes in the past for which I had no formal mandate, but I really don't like it. Like, I have been moving {{wikipedia}} to {{pedia}}, moving images from above ==English== to below ==English==, removing boldface from image captions, and, recently, I have mass-removed {{derv}} as I think the way it was deployed was outright horrible. But I actually dislike this practice. People should be able to reach an explicit agreement instead of making sneaky changes in the mainspace. I should be free to replace sneaky practice with an explicit agreement with other editors. People who block votes qua votes create an incentive for me to practice stealthy editing in order to get anything changed, which I hate. I happily abide by the preference of people who want "from" instead of stealthily pushing my "<". In the absence of a poll, I have little information based on which I could stop pushing "<". What you seem to be trying to do by your blocking votes qua votes is forcing people to never make an agreement like adults, playing their little tricks in the mainspace instead. --Dan Polansky 07:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Responding to the other post of yours from the same voting page:

My mistake: you are right that the sentence is actually true, as the premise simply does not hold. Nonetheless, you seem to be saying that people should be able to make an explicit agreement only if some practice is "the best". I have questioned the notion of "the best practice" and argued that making an explicit agreement to drive on the left is a good thing even if driving on the left is no better than driving on the right. I think your implicit assumption that without votes people are not forced to abide by some practices is outright wrong: you only need to check blocks and pesking people for failing to abide by "the practices that the community has decided" (IMHO without a vote the community has no decided anything.)

You seem to assume that voting makes policy and guideline documents long, but this I cannot confirm. WT:ETY has not been voted upon; not a single vote contributed to the making of WT:ETY AFAIK. The growth of CFI and ELE has largely stopped after it was locked to be modified only by a vote. If all policies were forced to be created solely by voting, there would be very few policies indeed, and the ones that would be there would be very short, as every sentence could be a matter of contention. From what I have seen, it was the treatment of guidelines and policy pakes as any other wiki page that made them long ("anyone can edit", and "be bold".) People were rather bold in adding content but not so bold in removing it. I for one feel rather nervous when I have to remove something; I feel much less nervous when adding something to a wiki page. --Dan Polansky 08:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your response on my talk page (diff). I continute the conversation here, under the assumption that you actually want to discuss the matter. After you no longer want to discuss the matter, just stop responding or tell me to stop responding, as I am able to discuss a matter for ages. (Should go without saying, but I've had some unpleasant surprises on the weekend, so I am saying these things to be on the safe side.)

Re: "Does the positioning of the images before or after the heading matter?" It does matter to me, and it does make a difference in the user experience of the web site. This is true of a formatting disunity especially when its effect is compounded with other formatting disunities. You seem to be saying that unification and polishing of minor things do not matter. But lack of unification is unpleasant for the user of the dictionary, and often is merely a result of people pushing their arbitrary preferences instead of giving in, as has happened in the discussed vote. Minor or not, these things still generate disagreement. If these things do not really matter to people, it should not be too difficult for people to whom they do not matter to give in to the majority preference. But it seems that these things actually do matter to voters, enough so for some of them to oppose.

I remove boldface from an image caption (as I think it really has no place to seek there), and another person returns it. Yet the remover can be in a small minority. At first, there is an overwhelming practice of having no boldface in image captions. Then some people start adding boldface and when I remove it they put it back. What we have is a disagreement over a minor formatting issue. Such disunities in minor formatting issues accumulate over time, creating an unpleasant dissonant experience for the user of the dictionary. Many of formatting disunities do not bring any benefit.

I do admit that some disunities should be allowed and supported for a limited period of time. But if a disunity continues to last for 4 years, someone should IMHO try to do something about it, and gauge the community preferences. If the community preferences as disclosed in the poll are rather clear, the issue seems ripe for a vote. It was me who has tried; it was my peace of mind that was disturbed by my trying to find how to explain what I was doing; it was my anxiety that I am going to be pesked for sending poll and vote notifications.

An example of a useful vote on a minor formatting issue is this: Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-03/Bolding letters in initialisms. The creation of this vote was originally opposed by vote-dislikers (who are not too many but are rather vocal) for being "too much bureaucracy". This can be still seen in the vote from some remarks in the vote. However, now when I see the like of "Armoured Combat Vehicle" in the mainspace, I feel perfectly free and justified to remove the boldface without any hesitation, and just refer to the vote.

Re: 'Blocking people for most of these "infractions" is simply not warranted.' Oh absolutely. The point of the vote was that we can quickly converge to "from", not to block or harangue people. I may have a look at how to change the wording to make this clearer. I am eager to find wording of a vote that allows me to convert "<" to "from" (many of the "<" have been entered by myself during the course of my adding etymologies) while giving no mandate to peskers and blockers. But the wording is still going to be a wording of a vote. If you again oppose this another vote per its being a vote (and if other vote-dislikers do the same), then I really do not know what should be done. --Dan Polansky 07:44, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I have written a rather long response, which I am unsure is a good thing, but neither am I sure it is a bad thing. Even then I have left large parts of your response uncommented. Maybe futher cuts in my response would be in order.

Re: importance of image position and "That the image position position matters to you does not mean that it matteers in any absolute sense. I mostly would never notice it": Some people have such type of cognition that they do not notice disunities and minor deviations such as wrongly positioned images. Other people have such type of cognition that their attention is disturbed by each page using a different convention for placement of images. The former type has IMHO no business in blocking efforts of the latter type in reaching an agreement. From your comments, it seems that you are of the former type, and that you are blocking efforts of the latter type to achieve agreement, also by asserting that "polls are evil". If a subject really does not matter to you, you should not be opposing proposals for unification.

Unifying the positions of images after a discussion and a follow-up vote is not a "tyrrany of the majority"; it is a reign of majority also known as democracy. Oligarchs are all too eager to speak of "tyrrany of the majority" so they can continue their reign of a small minority. Wiktionary even has a brake against the rule of mere majority by requiring supermajority. But even supermajority can be unjust. There is not a single method of government that is guaranteed to be just. However, supermajoritarian democracy fares well in comparison with other methods.

Re: "It may then take a couple years to achieve what you want, but it would happen without the divisiveness of a formal vote.": The disagreement about the use of boldface in image captions is already there even before someone ponders to start a vote, as attested by the reverting edits in the mainspace. Where is your evidence that it was only after the formal vote that disagreement occured? Why is it that the disagreement in the main namespace was "nondivisive" while the formal vote was "divisive"?

There is absolutely no evidence that formatting disunities can be resolved without polls and votes in finite time. If you can state examples in Wiktionary, please do so, so I can look at them and see how the unity was achieved. Otherwise, in the absence of evidence pointing otherwise, I surmise that formatting disunities do not converge at all, unless some oligarch resolves them by claiming that "the community has decided".

Re: "I suppose someone who cared could rummage through the archives and find it": No rummaging is needed at all. I have updated the link in the vote. The archiving structure of BP discussions make it very easy to find a discussion if you know the year and the month. There is also a search button at the top of Beer parlour, into which you can enter "Bolding letters in initialisms" and which finds you the discussion in a sec.

Re: "The voted text does not say that anyone other than the eight supporters would be prevented from bolding": The voted text says this: "Voting on: Whether, within the definitions line of initialisms, the first letters of the initialed phrase should be bold or not". It clearly refers to Wiktionary rather than to the eight voters. There are no votes in Wiktionary that somehow per default only govern those who have taken part on the vote.

Re: "What happens when they do? Are their reasons respected?" What do you mean by "are their reasons respected"? What is it for a person to respect reasons of another person? If people want to start using boldface in spite of the result of the vote, they have to start a discussion, in which they will have the opportunity to convince editors that their reasons are right. If they fail to convince other editors, then their reasons have no bearing on further practice. Right or wrong, reasons have only bearing on practice to the extent to which they succeed in convincing other people.

Re: "Or will there be a closed vote = closed mind expression of group think:" I am not sure I understand what you mean by that; it reads like some sort of poetic or figurative expression rather than plain language. The results of the vote can be overriden by another vote. If someone comes with new reasons, he may try to sell the reasons in Beer parlour. The existence of the vote alone does not guarantee that people in Beer parlour are going to be ignoring the person, thus having "closed mind". However, the person still has to sell the reasons. I do not know what you mean by "group think". I have found this in WP: "Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive in-group whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas". In Beer parlour and in votes, I have seen people freely exchanging ideas rather than staying silent in order to minimize conflict. If you would be willing to rephrase that question in plain English that facilitates clear thought, I may try to give a more specific answer without needing to guess. (Unless it was just a rhetorical question that does not seek to be answered.)

Re: "Maybe the person has a legitimate reason for bolding in those particular circumstances. Will he have to run the gauntlet of those people who argue that everything was settled with the vote?" If the person has legitimate reasons, the person can try to sell them in Beer parlour, which may lead to a new vote.

Again, sorry for the long response, and thank you for your attention.

--Dan Polansky 10:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Forced user renames coming soon for SUL

Hi, sorry for writing in English. I'm writing to ask you, as a bureaucrat of this wiki, to translate and review the notification that will be sent to all users, also on this wiki, who will be forced to change their user name on May 27 and will probably need your help with renames. You may also want to help with the pages m:Rename practices and m:Global rename policy. Thank you, Nemo 13:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users

Dear Eclecticology,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

Removing powers

Hi there. SO you know, a vote has been started to Remove your admin and bureaucrat powers. --SimonP45 (talk) 11:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Hope you all feel really bad now. Marcus Cyron (talk) 18:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Not at all. That's exactly why it was a good idea: to prevent an inactive account with considerable capabilities from being hacked and misused in the absence of its owner. I would hope someone would do the same for me under similar circumstances.

I do feel bad that he passed away, and for the loss to his family. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:51, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz did he pass away? I don't see a source on his user page. Rolando 1208 (talk) 21:22, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, he did. It was announced elsewhere at the time. It's been over 7 years, so I don't don't have the details handy. Why do you ask? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:52, 27 December 2023 (UTC)