User talk:Robert Ullmann/2008

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hinder

Happy New Year! When you have a moment, could you please add Swahihi translations to the entry for hinder (both verb and adjective)? Thanks. --EncycloPetey 01:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. No word I know of for the first adjective sense; no slang for buttocks; Swahili doesn't really have slang or euphemisms, people are okay with the everyday words. There is Sheng, but I don't know what to do with that yet ;-) Robert Ullmann 14:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn;t know the Citations namespace was fully operational. Having a model to follow will help as well. --EncycloPetey 17:15, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Day lists

Any chance this could be expanded for all namespaces, not just NS:0? Template:, Appendix:, Category:, Index:, MediaWiki: and Wiktionary: seem pretty relevant, but User: and others are useful too, for completeness' sake. --Connel MacKenzie 18:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

As you've probably noted by now, it is all namespaces. Robert Ullmann 14:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Help remembering

Robert, was it you who proposed something about including or not inclluding gender of adjectives in Translations sections? If so, do you remember where the discussion happened? --EncycloPetey 22:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't recall the discussion. Why wouldn't we? We do it consistently for nouns. Seems an exact parallel? Robert Ullmann 14:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It concerns marking the gender of adjectives in Translations sections. We do it routinely for nouns, but I recall a discussion about whether this should be done for adjectives. --EncycloPetey 22:53, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the rationale was along the lines that nouns typically have a single, fixed gender, so including the gender is reasonable, but that adjectives typically alter their gender to match the accompanying (sp?) noun, so any gender given would only apply to the form in the Translations section, and not the adjecitve as a whole. I'm fine with either option, but couldn't remember whether there was a discussion at some point, and whether anything was decided. --EncycloPetey 23:34, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

{{proto}}

Some commas seem to be out of place (see e.g. etymologies of krava) with regard to usual display logic of {term}. I left a remark on the talk page some time ago.. Could you please fix it? Thanks. --Ivan Štambuk 23:02, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

This has not been updated with the format, CSS etc that is used for term, I'll try to get to it. (Lots of stuff right now; but tx for reminder here) does need work. Robert Ullmann 23:24, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool. I've been working to expand and update Wiktionary:About Latin, and wanted to include a section demonstrating how to give etymologies for Latin words from PIE roots. I'll keep the template on my watchlist. --EncycloPetey 23:34, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, fixed to use term, with all its CSS magic. Robert Ullmann 17:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Albanian

Just noticed (while checking a foundation-l discussion) that these code templates, als and aln, were interchanged, and fixed them. FYI Robert Ullmann 16:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. By the way, I've attended to most of the obvious Invalid L2 headers, and created a number of new ISO template yesterday. Thanks for generating the updated list. --EncycloPetey 16:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Mazanderani

Thank You for your kind efforts, I don't know why some languages who have less speakers must have 2 letter code but mazanderani hasn't it, Also there is no solution to using a keyboard layout for it, since it has it's own vowels, and can not be used by persian keyboard and even arabic script, It sucks me to using mzn, i would prefer to using mz! But ok. However no principle could make a language to be unappreared since there is a strong nation behind it! --Ali1986 18:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Funny, you don't look like a bot

Spacebirdy (aka geimfyglid) found me the right doodad to wiggle to make you a bot even though you are already a sysop. We thought perhaps we should tell you. In case I'm not there tomorrow (I won't be) when you want this silly thing undone, please advise Hippietrail that Special:Userrights is the place to go. I'll try to check in online tomorrow morning before heading off to work, just in case, and if you email me I should see it whenever I get up. Good luck, and don't do anything I wouldn't do. --Dvortygirl 00:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, very interesting. Bot deletes do *not* show up in RC. Useful. They still are in the Deletion log as they should be of course. Thanks! Now we can decide if we want a sysop bot. Robert Ullmann 08:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious

What is an RFC and which ones did you author? Not a vandal just curious. 85.114.141.208 22:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

in the internet, they are the standards and proposed standards, etc; "Request for Comment". See rfc:1090, rfc:1154, rfc:1183, rfc:1707 (and others) (think I've got the numbers right!) Robert Ullmann 23:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Interwicket

Hi Robert

It seems that your interwiki bot Interwicket only updates interwikilinks on the local wiktionary. Can you also add the newly found interwikilinks to other wiktionaries? I am running a comparable tool from the toolserver, but because I only have a botflag on the Dutch and Romanian wiktionary, I only update the links on the Dutch wiktionary.

Regards, Annabelleke 14:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this supposed to work with Wikispecies, too? We have a vast number of redlinks that could probably be blued. Are there issues about this? I have just started inserting {{wikispecies}}, but in-line links are at least as valuable, IMHO. DCDuring TALK 16:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Laurent Bouvier

Hi Robert, could you unblock Laurent Bouvier. I know he's not registered as a bot, but what he's doing is very useful. Otherwise I'll have to spend hours doing it myself. I know there's policies about bots, but can you let this one slide? He's done some harmless bot work before, and is very trusted on the French Wiktionary. Please take this into consideration. Thanks. --Keene 12:46, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It needs to be run as a bot; just running a-c flooded RC with 2000+ changes in less than an hour. There should be no trouble getting approval; or it could be run by an existing bot account.

Simply going ahead and running it w/o discussion or announcement on BP/GP is a problem.

I can and will unblock him as soon as I hear from him that he understands this; not a problem. (And I haven't looked at his fr.wikt talk page yet today). I'd suggest he create User:Laurent Bouvier Bot and identify the task if he wants to run this himself. Then if there is something else in the future, it will be easier.

Yes, it is a fine idea; but if you did it yourself you'd need KeeneBot set up as well. Robert Ullmann 12:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've kind of given up hope on KeeneBot. Wasted too many hours trying to configure it and set it up. --Keene 13:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

There's an inconsistency here. Connel runs bots here all the time without a flag. What he does is just as relevant as what Laurent Bouvier does. Being an admin shouldn't give you extra priviliges. --Keene 01:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Fiji Hindi

On 10 November 2007, after some discussion about the name used for ISO/SIL code (hif), you suggested that it may be better to standardize the name as "Fiji Hindi". After much research and discussions with writers in the language, I have found that the correct name for the language is indeed "Fiji Hindi". (See the Wikipedia article on "Fiji Hindi" for some of these references) As you had offered earlier, can you then please change all occurrence of "Fijian Hindi" within Wiktionary to "Fiji Hindi" Thanks Girmitya 01:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Bird

I replied on my talk page. :D --Neskaya ^talk 03:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

More variations?

Robert, old buddy, old pal - that magic you did with pulling up the variations of words, could you do that for words of four letters (although not necessarily four-letter words)? By the way, the list you pulled up before seems to be missing words with the character ǐ in them - let me know if you can figure out why. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:57, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

User:Robert Ullmann/Variations4. Because "ǐ" isn't in Appendix:Variations of "i". Robert Ullmann 13:19, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Oops - totally my bad. Thanks for generating the list! bd2412 T 16:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much confirms my suspicion - there are no combinations with enough hits to reach the template limit of nine, which is the de facto standard I've adopted for generating an appendix (although I suppose since longer words take up more space atop the page, it might make sense to lower the bar a bit). Even so, I won't even ask for five-letter combos.

(But then again, we may get a slew of them once we get a significant portion of the Vietnamese language). bd2412 T 21:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Mycenaean

A discussion is afoot at Wiktionary talk:About Ancient Greek#Mycenaean.......Greek? Redux. You have been invited because you participated in a previous discussion, I thought you might have a particular insight or interest in the discussion, or simply because I wanted to spam your page and irritate you. Check it out. Atelaes 09:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Appearances and Stupidity

As to the substance of the "stupidity" discussion, I had assumed that you (or whoever) were justified. My curiosity got the better of me and I confirmed it.

However, if I understand the situation correctly, I think we need some better boilerplate than "Stupidity" for the edit summary. It seems to inflame some of these would-be "contributors" and may make for a bad appearance in the (probably rare) cases where they make some kind of appeal to higher authority. A wikilink to a (protected?) page explaining WT philosophy, policy for entry inclusion, user accounts, blocking, and whatever else may be appropriate might work. More specific explanations of deletions (citing chapter and verse) might be helpful. The embattled feeling among those on patrol is likely to make for angry, brief edit summaries. Isn't there a way to get a keyboard short-cut to insert some good generic edit summary by default with minimal effort? As a newbie I felt that I had to fight my way onto Wiktionary much more than I had to to get onto WP. There are many differences between WP and WT that account for the differences in new user experience, but it will not help us to have bad cosmetics in our interaction with newbies. DCDuring TALK 18:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Kenya

Isn't Kenya having a civil war right now? How are you still online? 79.202.68.61 02:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

"civil war" is overstating it just a bit; there are a series of demonstrations (peaceful, until the police start lobbing teargas to incite rioting ...) because the outgoing president just faked election results (quickly exposed) and had himself sworn in again in a furtive ceremony. Now we are trying to pry him out so we can have our country back. There were more serious events in the first week; we've had 651 (confirmed) deaths, including 28 shot by police; there was a prayer service for them yesterday that ended when the police tear-gassed it.

but a lot of things are working, the net is okay most of the time; even easier to use, not so much traffic from the cyber cafes that aren't open ;-( ... I was off the net for 24+ hours a few days ago. we're mostly okay Robert Ullmann 02:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Leodensian

Hi! I was wondering why you removed my source for Leodensian? The school also publishes a magazine of that name which is no doubt connected, if that is relevant. But the word (in both definitions) is definitely real (hence I wonder why you would delete the source). Thanks, Harris Morgan 23:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC).

Actually the magazine is Leodiensian. But it's the same theory at work. Harris Morgan 01:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC).

You removed the rfv-sense tag out-of-process; supplying a "source" is not sufficient or valid; it requires several independent citations of use. The definition needs work, it is too narrow. Follow the link in the box to the RfV page, and note that it is as yet unresolved. The "Source" header is invalid; and we don't use ref tags. So I cleaned all that up and put the rfv-sense tag back. Robert Ullmann 06:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

"Missing" pages very long

Hello Robert. The next time that you run your bot to generate these very useful lists, could you consider creating a list for each letter - they are slow to load, even with broadband. Cheers SemperBlotto 09:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll second that - maybe even split the letters with lots of hits into multiple sections. bd2412 T 22:08, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

okay, done. The "keys" are most of the single letters right now; I can add more in between if needed. Robert Ullmann 15:09, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

About block earlier

That's alright. The deletion of that former redirect is not what upset me. It was Connel that upset me by just blocking me for no apparent reason when I didn't do anything wrong. It's as if he just plain decided for himself to just plain block me. I hope someone talks to him. If only there was a rule saying that any user who blocks another user when the blocked user did nothing wrong, that user responsible for blocking the innocent user will be blocked, also.Kitty53 22:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind,

but I created User:Robert Ullmann/ to try to help find /Rat Patrol. Please delete it if you object in any way. --Connel MacKenzie 08:12, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

articles

Robert, why is it that no one ever warns anyone before deleting any Wiktionary articles?Kitty53 22:13, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Missing page updates

I was combing through your missing section looking for work to do and it seemed that many if not most of those listed have been fixed, any chance that an updated version could be generated and posted? - [The]DaveRoss 04:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been waiting on the new XML dump, which has now arrived. It will take a bit of time to digest. Also someone requested I divide the list up into more pieces, so I'll be doing that too. Robert Ullmann 12:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Addition of Translations section to FL entry

I was curious what you had in mind by adding a Translation section to oblika that points to the FL wiki? I've been generally getting rid of Translation sections in FL entries but this is the first I've seen linking to the FL wiki (just saw mokry now too). Thanks, --Bequw → ¢ • τ 17:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Cross-wiki wanted list

With all these wanted and missing reports, do you think it would be much trouble for you to generate a list of words that Interwicket would add (say) 4 or more interwikis to? Or even full diffs, if that wouldn't be overwhelming. Cynewulf 05:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

extend bot vote

Thanks for your comments on the bot vote. I'm trying to implement the changes you're suggesting. Yes, I assumed AutoFormat would sort out {{see}}, but I was wrong. One problem some users have mentioned is that the bot doesn't add the language section in the right place alphabetically, and so AF has to sort it out. But this could create lots of extra work for AF (will that be a big problem if/when the bot goes into many-pages-created-per-minute bot-flagged stealth mode?). If it's a strain for AF, then maybe you could email me part of a code which alphabetically sorts the language sections? As for the {{see}}, I guess there's a code to put it at the top of a page...but then there may be a problem of having two lots of {{see}} at the top of the page. Regards, --Keene 12:43, 18 February 2008 (UTC) p.s. Maybe the vote should be extended until such a time when these niggly problems are cleared up. --Keene 12:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(partial answer) The language sort is part of the AF structure, not a separate piece... don't worry about the "strain" on AF; it's a bot, and it doesn't get tired ;-) do note it adjusts to load, and sometimes munches the category slowly when there is lots else to do. {see} is complicated: it isn't just a matter of moving it to the top, it has to be added to the existing see (as you note), but only if it isn't a duplicate. Could be coded somewhere, but I've never seen the code you are using (except one small part). Robert Ullmann 15:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:nav table

Hello. Could you add Kashubian and Upper Sorbian to the list? Thanks in advance! Maro 20:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Statistics

Would it be easy for you to count the number of occurences of the abbreviations "sth." and "sb."? (standing for something and somebody, respectively). They look like some kind of hold over from print dictionaries where space is precious. I just don't think I have the energy to fix them all but I don't actually know how many there are. RJFJR 02:45, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Other relic abbreviations from print dictionaries are "cf.", "q.v."/"qv", "a." (for adjective). All past links have been replaced with full words but they they still appear frequently un-linked. I'm sure there's others we could root out and replace with full words. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

List for sth. and sb. is at User:Robert Ullmann/t12. I could turn the replace on, but a number of these could use some help, see korjauttaa for example. Also use of so. and various without the "." And antimony is a false drop, it uses "sb." in an HTTP link.

There are lots more cf.'s (hundreds), and a few q.v.'s; I can also list those if desired.

I could include the full line in the listing, so we can see if auto-correction would be okay. Think I'll do that. Robert Ullmann 15:54, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, much easier to see what is going on. Lots of variations. Should I include so. and s.o.? Robert Ullmann 16:15, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Since it is showing the details adding those sounds good. abade is apparently using sb. as an abbrev. for subject. Is this the full list or just a sample? If it is full I could probably do it manually. RJFJR 17:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

It is the full list for "sth." and "sb."; I'll add "so." and "s.o." in a few minutes. Robert Ullmann 18:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Even with attempting to eliminate "so." at the end of a line, still gives a lot of unwanted hits. Robert Ullmann 18:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll go through and do them manually. Of course, it won't show up when you rerun until we get a new dump. Anything else you want to check for before manually expand the abbreviations? RJFJR 02:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I went through and manually expanded the abbrevs in t12. RJFJR 03:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: quote from RJFJR. "'sth.' and 'sb.' ... look like some kind of hold over from print dictionaries where space is precious."

Hi, RJFJR. Those abbreviations aren't merely for saving space. In most paper dictionaries that use them, you will occasionally see the words somebody and something spelled out in definitions. The difference? When spelled out, the word something, or somebody/someone is part of the expression in the text. As in, "hush, there might be somebody in there!" or "would you like something to eat?" When abbreviated, the word is akin to a parameter, it cues the reader that an object-noun or a person-noun can be substituted into the expression, like "to pull sb's leg," or "to take a stand against sth." (Sorry if my butting in's a problem.) Snakesteuben 17:35, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I assume this site has a convention for making the distinction I mentioned? What is it? Thanks. Snakesteuben 17:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Another notation used to distinguish a placeholder like "one", "something", and "someone" is to put them in parentheses on the inflection line and elsewhere. If our inflection lines don't have the inflecton for verbal phrases, there usually is plenty of room to spell it out instead of using the abbreviations (which should be highlighted if retained). It may be that we should highlight the placeholders and take readers to an appendix mini-article on placeholders and their interpretation. I would hope we could make it more constructive than what we do with plurale tantum, which doesn't have such important information as whether it means the construction refers to a singular or plural (or both) entities or takes a singular or plural verb (or both). DCDuring TALK 17:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks much, DCDuring. Those look like excellent points, though I confess I'm too new around here to understand everything you're saying. Robert, whenever you have time to answer, if there's no procedure in place, do you think a general discussion somewhere is warranted? (Note I said if, Sir, that's something else I don't know!) Snakesteuben 16:07, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Entries with non-standard headers

Hi!

One of the users added a plenty of words in the Northern dialect of the Crimean Tatar language. I want to give a correspondence in the standard written Crimean Tatar for each of these words, as I have already done here. But your bot marked the page as an "Entry with non-standard header". So I have a question: how and where should I place literary correspondence for dialectal words? Alessandro 10:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Not counted

I have inserted bracketted material (almost always somewhat meaningful) in numerous entries and have noted bracketed material in others. The list is large for making frequent manual updates and I don't have tools to do an automated one. Could you update this at your convenience? Can the list be subdivided readily?

Also, as a student of human motivation I know that rapid feedback and a sense of completion work for many. When doing scut work like this they are potentially valuable. Converting redlinks to blue offers feedback as does a list's disappearing as the work progresses. In this case a speciallized rfc tag in the entries would allow disappearing lists. Because the list is long it would be nice to break it into pieces so that someone could work "until they do all the "M"s, say. Obviously this motivational factor applies to many list-based tasks.

Finally, some of the entries have no English. Either that would be a good heading or we need to actively recruit someone with appropriate language skills and resources to work them. DCDuring TALK 10:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, I'm familiar with all those issues; it was just a quick and dirty list. I'll add some code from other programs I have presently. There is no red-to-blue in this case of course. Robert Ullmann 15:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added code to generate a much friendlier format. Robert Ullmann 15:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been chipping away at this and trying to keep the list updated. There are many entries I am sick of looking at, but don't know what to do with, especially non-English. Perhaps another run would provide some more motivating entries. It might also provide some problem/opportunity statistics for publicizing on BP or info desk or somesuch page. DCDuring TALK 16:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Need a new XML dump to find any new ones. Need a new XML dump for lots of things. Robert Ullmann 16:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. I hope the Sloan money can help keep the XML dumps going at least. DCDuring TALK 18:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I imagine you'll have twenty or so people crawling down your throat to get things done when the dump finally does hit. I'll be one of them. ;-) -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 19:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Winner

By default, you are the winner of the recent Competition. Thanks for playing. --Keene 22:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

A bot to update "see also" templates?

Hey Robert, since you can pluck all the variations for a given string of letters, could we get a bot to update the {{see}} templates atop all of the corresponding pages? bd2412 T 08:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this is a topic better suited to the Grease pit. bd2412 T 18:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I remember proposing something like this a while ago, which led to a discussion about it. I can't remember where to link to it though. Thryduulf 21:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Code problems

I've tried jiggling the code around a few times to overwrite in case of a redirect, but get different error messages each time I tweak it, leaving me rather clueless! Could you possibly modify the code at User:Keenebot2/code in the right place instead? Thanks, and sorry for being a little pesty with the bot. --Keene 18:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

L2 Switches

Just reminding you that all the entries marked Slovenian need to be switched to Slovene. Hopefully, there should be another switch coming up soon (Tamazight). Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I've been doing these by hand already (bit by bit), because the majority of these have no category tags at all. --EncycloPetey 14:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I can just wait a while, and then run program to check that we've got them all. Note that the program also finds all the translation table entries, section links, etc. (It was used for Scots Gaelic a while ago.) Robert Ullmann 14:11, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The Translations table listings will be a definite bot job. I haven't attempted to get all of those, and there are hundreds. For the record, most of our "Slovenian" entries were added by Drago (aka WF). --EncycloPetey 14:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

{{proto}}

Hello Robert, I added auto-categorisation to {{proto}} a while back to categorise articles under Category:xxx:Proto-Language derivations. This is all well and fine but there are many times when categorisation is not desired. Could we add a parameter such as notcat=1 to remove the categorisation? This would be handy when using {{proto}} is stating cognates etc.--Williamsayers79 20:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

See the documentation page for {{proto}} - use lang= (i.e. empty lang parameter). --Ivan Štambuk 20:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent this solvews it! Cheers --Williamsayers79 08:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Arcarius

Phew.. A one year block... It was not the intention of my edit, but I respect your decision Jcwf 00:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

This user has a known sock, with similar edits; and has been warned on both accounts. Permanent ban would be entirely appropriate. It is not your fault, and I do thank you for find it. (We really must go back through all the edits...) Robert Ullmann 00:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

This user has been identified as 75.178.x.y without using checkuser permissions but only public logged edits. Also ID'd as User:Matricularius by proper CU request. Robert Ullmann 00:31, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually no Robert: 75.178.x.y is me Jcwf 01:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Um, sorry, misreading things; TDR confirmed that you were different. Can I blame it on being 3 AM? Sorry again. Robert Ullmann 10:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I have tried to 'un-spank' some of the Arcarius legacy but there is more, much more... Jcwf 02:37, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Good. How did this stuff get through? We must do better at patrolling. Robert Ullmann 10:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I think because people ignored the Dutch entries, even though they contained plenty of interesting English text. By the way, my IP is still blocked, although I do have the ability to log in. Could you please unblock me? Jcwf 16:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. Robert Ullmann 17:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Matricularius

Finished getting rid of User:Matricularius's whacked examples, User:Arcarius and User:Fastifex still need checking. - [The]DaveRoss 03:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Good. Also see User:Robert Ullmann/t12. Think that is mostly Fastifex. Robert Ullmann 16:52, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Tbot entries (Norwegian)

Hi there! I just came to see this category! Just wondered, can I start to check and fix the entries and then remove the tags, or is this being checked in any other way? Norwegian is my mother tounge, so I should be able to see whether it's ok or not. --EivindJ 10:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes please, that is just what is needed, a native speaker or someone with reasonable fluency. Just make sure it is reasonable and remove the tag. If there is something seriously wrong, then both our English entry (translation table) and the no.wikt entry should be looked at as well. Thanks! Robert Ullmann 12:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll see what I can do with it (: --EivindJ 12:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

But I will not make any other attempt to add logical things on your wiki. Hégésippe | ±Θ± 10:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Norwegian language templates

So, I've been discussing Norwegian language with User:EivindJ, an admin from the Norwegian wikt. Based on our conversation, I've set up {{no}}, {{nno}}, and {{nob}}. The first is the proper L2 for words which are the same in both the Bokmål and Nynorsk dialects, and the second and third are for words which are only in (or have different meanings in) the respective dialects/languages/whatever. I just wanted to double-check on the allowed formatting. Since Norwegian is a commonly known language, I thought it was unnecessary to link it, but many people are unaware of the dialects and figured they should be linked. Is this a problem? Should the whole thing be linked, or not at all? Will your bot accept linked and unlinked L2 variants? Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

No good. The name (for lots of reasons) needs to be linked or unlinked. nn must be = nno, nb = nob

We've used no for Norwegian, and nn for Nynorsk. If we really want nb for "Norwegian Bokmål" that is probably okay, but seriously confusing (a tag of "Bokmål only" would be better), In any case no = nor, nb = nob, and nn = nno is required. (did you know these are 639-1 codes; therefore we don't use the -3 codes? ;-)

And it isn't "my bot"; partial links will break lots of things. Robert Ullmann 23:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and 1/2 my family is from Norway, my mother is fluent. So this is not strange to me ... Robert Ullmann 23:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it important that Norwegian remain in the title. How does it look now? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it's good now, with no, nn and nb (not nob and nno) ... we clearly need to differ between Bokmål and just Norwegian, but today we're far away from doing so. Thanks Atelaes (: --EivindJ 23:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

no, it is just fine, except for a few stray entries. Understand that 99.9% of Bokmål == Norwegian. The only issue is a few words that can't be in any way considered Nynorsk. We don't need to "differ between Bokmål and just Norwegian".

Norwegian is no, Nynorsk (perfectly good name and used in -1 and -3) is nn. nor must = no and nno must = nn must be the same. nb = nob might be Norwegian Bokmål if you like. No parens in language names here or SIL or ISO. Robert Ullmann 23:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you might consider reading the conversation at User talk:EivindJ, to see why I want it this way. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:37, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I have. And you note that almost everything in the no.wikt is just Norwegian.

Think about it this way, an equivalent situation in American English would be:

• English (African American Vernacular)
• English (American Book Standard)

(not picking on Af-Amer. or whatever ;-). Do you get that Bokmål means "Book Standard", e.g. the ordinary written and spoken Norwegian, while "Nynorsk" is an encoding of several closely related previously-unwritten dialects? Not of course invalid for that.) Robert Ullmann 23:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

deleting old redirects

There are bunch of old redirects at special:allpages/Talk:Transwiki:, most of which are remnants of a script's having moved those pages to the appropriate [[transwiki talk:]] page, and therefore have no history (except possibly someone's later snapping a double redirect). In fact, I wuldn't be surprised if all the talk:transwiki: pages had no history. Now, I know you delete redirects form the conversion script. Are these talk:transwiki: pages queued for deletion also? Can they be? (I assume you have some automated or semi-automated means of doing the conversion-script remnants. If you do them by hand, then forgive and forget my request: I can do it myself as well.)—msh210℠ 21:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

You think I am doing the CS ones by hand? Every 20-90 minutes a few 24 by 7? Not likely ;-) Something similar might be useful. Note that it isn't just Talk:Transwiki:, it is a lot of other CS Talk: pages. (A large mess.) Should consider going through them as well. (although the transwiki ones are also mostly broken). And Talk:Appendix: ... etc; several classes that had talk pages created before the namespaces existed, and then were move by the CS script. Robert Ullmann 15:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

This has been added into delcv.py, and the bot is slowly munching on them. Robert Ullmann 15:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Romaji transliteration

Hi Robert, I'd like to add romaji examples at Wiktionary:About Japanese/Transliteration for the following rule, but I cannot understand it because I'm poor on Japanese grammars.

The letter を, when used as a particle and pronounced "oh", should be transliterated as o instead of wo.

When used in proper nouns, including person and place names, it should be transliterated as o unless it is customary to transliterate that person's or place's name as wo.

Do the rule mean 'wo' in the next example should be transliterate as 'o'?

• 本を読む (hon wo yomu)

Thanks, --Eveningmist 04:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Slovenian

Would you be willing to come up with a list of every entry which uses "Slovenian" as an L2 header? Apparently EP's been correcting the ones you link to on the invalid L2 report, but doesn't have the means to find the rest of them (and neither do I). I have high hopes for completing the list this next time around. Many thanks. (Btw, I'm sorry I didn't get to IRC in time to get trouted. :-)) -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I just tweaked the program to report all the cases for language=="Slovenian", so they are all there now; the new ones are the ones following polh. Robert Ullmann 15:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 16:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I've taken care now of all the obviously incorrect L2 headers on the latest /invalid list (Slovenian, References, and various typos). You deserve to hear thank yous more often for keeping track of this, so thanks! It makes it very easy to find and to fix problems with L2 headers. --EncycloPetey 17:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Autoedit

Oh thanks! I might just do a few more because they are some of the first entries I did and I have noticed some other mistakes as I have been going through them. Pistachio 12:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks :-D Pistachio 21:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Space in template:t

Thanks for fixing the code in template:t. Regards. —Mzajac 16:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ta Wikt bot

Hello Robert Ullmann. I am User:Sundar in English and Tamil Wikipedias and the Tamil Wiktionary. I saw your message to Ravi concerning the bot-created articles in Tamil Wiktionary. As I wrote up SundarBot that uploaded articles, let me answer your questions:

Firstly, while there could be some unforeseen bugs in transcoding to Unicode, there's no junk uploaded by the bot. Secondly, we got the glossary from Tamil Virtual University which developed that dictionary from numerous public domain sources, volunteer effort, and fully funded by the Government of Tamil Nadu. Also, we believed that words of a language can't be copyrighted and are naturally in the public domain. The bot took the meanings from www.tamilvu.org, transliterated them to Unicode (from TAB encoding), categorised them, formatted per wiktionary conventions, added pronunciation where one exists in the commons, and uploaded it to Tamil Wiktionary citing TVU and providing a link to their page. Errors from the original source have since been corrected by users too. Being words of a language (actively encouraged by the creator for wide public use) compiled using public funds copied with proper citation, processed and value-added in Wiktionary is fair-use according to Tamil Wiktionary editors. Also, let me state that we didn't use any style or artistic product of TVU. -- 122.167.242.183 14:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Silly 3-letter acronyms

Hi, Robert, I was very pleased to hear from you.

I absolutely 100% completely agree with your conclusion.

But basically, you two guys are both right. On our (meaning you and me together) explanation, we just need to swap out the acronym ISO in favour of RFC. Yeah, it's confusing. I'll put some more on the central page.

Thanks! Winter 13:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

--- Ah, so it's not nno Norsk, .no how, nor way? Thanks for the chuckle.

Winter 14:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Translation bars

You've created the translation bar template and you supported the show tag right after the title text, what's your opinion to the new messages on Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Translation bars? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 16:17, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

(West) Frisian

I hope you realize that there is a problem with the term 'West Frisian'. In the 13th century a big flood separated the most westerly part of Friesland from the rest, allowing the counts of Holland to annex it. In 1928 the two parts got reconnected by the afsluitdijk. In the mean time the dialects west of this dike (on the North Holland peninsula north of Amsterdam) lost most (but not all) of their Frisian character and the region became Dutch speaking. The local dialects (now of nld, not fry) are known as Westfries. fry -by far the biggest surviving part of the macrolanguage is more propery called Westlauwerfries although it is usually just called Fries (in nld) or Frysk (in fry). To call it West Fries is confusing Jcwf 16:53, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Jcwf. OK, guys, I give up and will leave this to those more knowledgeable than myself. Winter 17:02, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

"Fries" and "Frisk" are not English language terms. Wiktionary doesn't deal with problems of naming schemes of other languages. From w:West Frisian language: West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside of the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian, which are spoken in Germany. Within the Netherlands however, the West Frisian language is the language of the province of Fryslân and is virtually always just called Frisian: Fries in Dutch, and Frysk in Frisian. The 'official' name used by linguists in the Netherlands to indicate the West Frisian language is Westerlauwers Fries (West Lauwers Frisian), the Lauwers being a border stream which separates the Dutch provinces of Fryslân and Groningen.. We must use the most traditional/prevalent/non-offensive (whenever there's a conflict) name in English. Read the ethnologue entry: "Westerlauwers Fries" is a dialect of Western Frisian. --Ivan Štambuk 17:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Temporary access expired

Hello. I have removed your sysop status from sw- and rw- wiktionaries. Thanks for your help on these projects. --Dungodung 10:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Mandarin

Hello,

If it goes in Category:Mandarin language, then why do they occupy Category:Chinese language? I would have thought that Chinese language should be dialect neutral, dealing with the written form in traditional, simplified, and archaic. The dialectal forms would be subcategories...

Shouldn't Mandarin language be a subcategory of Chinese language ?

70.51.9.57 12:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

They should go in Mandarin language, not Chinese language. (Although both would probably be fine.) and yes, Mandarin language should be in Chinese language. Robert Ullmann 12:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. A moment's inattention. 70.51.9.57 10:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Dutch gender

Hi Robert,

I added some stuff on the gender issue to the 'Category: incomplete gender..' whatever page. Maybe it would be useful to make it possible to give a parameter g=f/m to the nl-noun template? (Would you know how?) I think the compromise that the Taalunie has worked out is about as good as you'll get it and has the force of law for both Flanders and the Netherlands. (That'll shut up extremists from both sides and yep we have them..) Note that the Taalunie has carefully avoided the term common gender because that would have been a strong pro-North bias. This Northerner thinks that is a wise move. Jcwf 03:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC) It's Category:Dutch nouns with incomplete gender

Re: must be substituted

Thanks much for the catch!

Durnit. Forgot. Feh. I think I had even figured that out.

While I'm here, is ! (that's a bang; hate this font) a special character in wiki markup? A good Samaritan changed the name of one of my templates, and it now includes one. But now I seem to have trouble linking to the template talk page. Is it just me?

Thanks again.

Winter 12:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

What template? Why would some add ! to it? (it only has wiki-markup meaning within a table) Robert Ullmann 12:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I see, "now" is used in context frequently. But you shouldn't have any trouble with {{now!}} ... Robert Ullmann 12:41, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, just me. Thanks!

Wouldn't be easier to use something like {{#time:Y-m-d T H:i:s}} UTC: 2024-04-25 UTC 15:19:54 UTC in the template? Robert Ullmann 12:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably. I just pasted that from the wikipedia site. (Honestly, I was annoyed that I couldn't find the same type of thing over here, and just wanted to use it, immediately, rather than frob with it.) Winter 13:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

(From my talk page) Or is there a reason why the headword shouldn't be exactly = the title?

Probably not; no case comes to mind immediately. But I should ponder a couple things before I act. Winter 13:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

And a new question. I'm trying to build a regular verb form conjugation chart. It's easy to add letters to the page name. But in a couple cases I need to subtract letters. Like page name/infinitive = "skriuwe," and I want to make "ik skriuw." How would I do that? Thanks again. Winter 13:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

You can't ... (yes, I know) ... most templates do this by requiring the "stem" as a parameter. (I put "stem" in scare quotes because it isn't necessarily the true stem, but rather the common prefix, or suffix in the case of Bantu languages.) Robert Ullmann 15:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

---

Hi, Robert. Me again. What if anything is the Old Frisian code for Template:infl? Thanks! Winter 14:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to be an -3 code. -2 puts it in "gem", but that is Germanic NEC, so not useful. I think this is yet another case where we need an extension code. (I wish I could somehow find out who in WMF does this for all the projects, I have been trying, but it is one of those very hard to find things ...) So for example we use fiu-vro, we can code gem-ofr or some such. Robert Ullmann 15:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

april fools

You defaced a wiki page in the sake of april fools day? This is why people constantly site Wiki as in inaccurate source of information. If I could, i'd revert the page, but it's locked. I don't care how many RFC's you written..this is irresponsible and childish behavior. Dewdude 17:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

If you understood a fraction of one percent of the history of that page, you would know better. And why, pray tell, were you looking at it? Robert Ullmann 17:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

There's some chance you'll wonder about that last WRT me also. I was looking at it because I'm nosy and meddlesome. (Though I'm occasionally mistaken for a troll, sense 2, that's never my intent. Well, almost never, and not here.) And I edited the entry because, as a big fan of the show, I've actually used that term, and the one I've entered as related. I'm pretty sure pop culture terms like that are permitted, right? If not, Sorry! please delete. Winterxx 2008-04-2 T 08:55 UTC.

Well, that would have to be another entry; the definition doesn't go there. And would probably get RFV'd: you'd need to show independent use. See, for example, embiggen, where The Simpsons is not sufficient by itself. Robert Ullmann 11:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Pity that some people have to take Wiktionary too seriously, I think we should leave it as you left it - thanks for the chuckle, even if it was belated. Conrad.Irwin 11:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: signature

You are going to use a different username?

If I wanted to do that, would it be permitted?

Snakesteuben 13:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I don't get your other point. But it doesn't matter. I've said elsewhere that perhaps Karma is telling me to keep on-line life separate from real life.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I'll point it out to you as well. Though I hadn't seen the page the recent message pointed me to, I had seen this one, dealing with changing a username.

In general, avoid requesting a change. It is much easier to create a new account, or even easier, change your signature (in your preferences), which will change your "public appearance". Bear in mind that renaming a user is resource-intensive and at all times done with reluctance.

I believe you should change the part in bold. I think it's misleading, since apparently it contradicts your true policies.

Why? I think "chang[ing one's] public appearance" requires more than merely adopting an alias that "bear[s] a clear resemblance" to one's previous "public appearance." Just one woman's opinion, but I certainly find it ambiguous, and, well...

Again one woman's opinion, but I think it's arbitrary and rather stupid. Just put your blasted mouse over the name, and the username pops up right there as a tooltip. Sheesh. As wiki-savvy as you people expect everybody to be around here... Many of you admins simply BLAST people who don't understand the ins and outs of this place. But, no, nobody's expected to be smart enough to read a tooltip.

Sorry to rant in your space like this, but I really want to say, somewhere, that I totally don't get it. And I don't think I ever will. Thus, I'm not entirely sure I'll ever really fit in with wiki-culture. And that's another reason I'm pretty sure this for the best. I should maintain my distance. Snakesteuben 16:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Edit:

Many of you admins simply BLAST people who don't understand the ins and outs of this place.

I should make it clear that I have never noticed you personally doing this, Robert. Also, I'm not really upset with any person or persons who are parties to this discussion, or anyone on this project--just the policy and implementation thereof in general.

Snakesteuben 16:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer.

OK, first. A true or false question. Please answer honestly, and preferably from your gut without thinking/rationalising too much.

True or false: "On en.wikipedia.org, men are usually permitted to substitute their RL names in signatures, even if their user names are dissimilar. By contrast, women, if noticed, generally are not."

Not in any way true here. Not a hint of it. Robert Ullmann 17:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I respect you very much, Robert, and if you give an answer, and claim you are confident in that answer, I will take you at your word. And if asked in the future, I will say so. (However, I make no guarantees regarding further inquiry as applied to me in particular, since you yourself, most conveniently, happened to furnish a specific example of disparate treatment on an individual basis. ;-) ) Snakesteuben 16:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Note that Ric Opiaterein is very well known here, and it probably didn't occur to anyone to question him using just "Ric". It most definitely does not have anything to do with men and women being treated differently. Robert Ullmann 17:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I fully understand what is happening / has happened here. Someone pointed you to a page suggesting that signatures should be identifiable as a username, right? And that page is not a policy page, just a guideline. And you immediately starting removing your pages like you had been bitten? (maybe you misunderstood, maybe someone else; some disconnect there)

Have you been on wikipedia, where there are lots of strict policy rules about user's pages and such that self-appointed enforcers go around checking? We have strict policies too, but pretty much only about main-namespace content, i.e. what we are building.

WT:CHU has been re-written a bit and is better, but also is not policy, just guidelines and a request page to get the attention of our 'crats.

Whichever user name you like is fine, it just would be good it the .sig you write is clearly associated (yes, one can always find out, but I/we want to be able to just read discussion pages, not got poking into .sig attributes ;-)

I thought about that workaround. But you made an excellent point here:

are you using a common username on more than one project?

In fact I am. I have 16 other ids. (I haven't encountered this issue with any others--yet.) It would be a bit of a hassle to keep track of a different username for just this site. And I wouldn't want to change them all because, believe it or not, this account has actually built up a bit of good will on a couple of the 17! Snakesteuben 16:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry this seemed like a big deal. Please ask for whatever help you like. Robert Ullmann 14:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again for the offer and the explanation. One more thing. A best friend advises me to ask whether you've ever heard of the name Winter/Wynter. If not, how about Autumn or Summer--or Rain/Raine/Rayne or Sunshine/Sunshyn. So I'm asking. (It's not just peer pressure; she's a professional mediator. <shrug>) Myself, I don't see the relevance. And even if it were relevant, I imagine you're old enough to be acquainted with some people born in the 60's besides just me.

I was born in 1960. I've met women (or younger girls) named Autumn, (Winter,) Summer, Rain, and Sunshine ;-) Not sure about the spellings though, they were all introduced in person. (not sure I ever met a Winter in person; but certainly know of the name; as in hearing about a FoF.) Robert Ullmann 17:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, one last thing. Gheheh. Let me make it clear that I completely understand why you (en.w..org) have to adopt rigid policies. You have tons of users over here, with varying backgrounds--and varying motives (everybody speaks English.) Other projects have the luxury of smaller, more convivial user groups with more in common. You can't relax the way they can. And I know yours is in many ways a thankless job, that sometimes doesn't make you new friends.

We are pretty small compared to the 'pedia. You'll find that the group works fairly well together, if a bit larger than some. Robert Ullmann 17:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Really. I get that; and I admire you and the others for what you do. I just think that policies, guidelines, rules, advisements, regulations, advisory opinions, recommended rulings, pronouncements, edicts, mere dictum, etc., etc., ;-) should be applied equally and consistently to all users. Snakesteuben 16:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

And something that is a guideline doesn't have to be always followed. There are exceptions when people need them/really want them/have a reason that differs from the rationale for the guideline. You might have just said you wanted to use Winter as your RL name, and maybe put the username in ()'s or something. Or not. Robert Ullmann 17:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Please note Ric's signature line at User talk:Ivan Štambuk#PIE - to read. Something like that is just fine in any case. Robert Ullmann 17:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

---

Hi, Robert. ACK (Both meanings; but the interjection seems to be missing.) Sorry I lost track of this thread. You've been spoiling me with those courtesy pointers. ;-) Thanks for all; I grok the rest of it now. And I'm more sure than ever that much/most of the off-site badmouthing is mere rumour. BTW, I'm sure you've never bothered to look at that silly profile, but I share neither your dignity, nor a such a heavy premium on my time, so I did. I think one of your admirer's jewels, "dump your boyfriend and write RFC's," could be pretty good advice for some. Kindest regards, Snakesteuben 09:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Deleting files.

Thanks for the comment. I will be more careful from now on!

Winged eel 13:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: cross-country

I just made a reply of my own. Mine hit right after yours, so I had to redo it. 70.173.20.111 17:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

"Of"? Not arguing with you; I'm just curious about the usage. 70.173.20.111 17:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Often "Of or pertaining to". Makes it the definition of the adjective. It isn't "travel", it is "of or pertaining to travel". Yes, I know, arcane. Robert Ullmann 18:00, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Not complaining, if it made the def stay in. It just looks odd. (And could somebody please provide a def for "road trip" - though again it is kinda self-defining - and about 99 other terms I don't see here?) I'm writing on Simple English Wikipedia, trying to give Wiktionary links where there are no entries to cross-ref on Simple English, and I keep landing on blank pages when I check the links. The unchanging link color fools you. - I am registered on both English and Simple English Wikipedia, so don't worry about that. I just hesitate to do it here. 70.173.20.111 18:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation for Mandarin

After consulting A-cai I'm going to add pronunciation to 1500 Chinese Mandarin entries using my bot in the next few days. My bot has been modified to omit any entries, which have multiple etymology sections, multiple pronunciation sections or include other pages. This behaviour has proven to work fine for Icelandic entries, where multiple etymologies can been met. --Derbeth ^talk 23:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Auto link fix

Looking at your bot's (I presume) recent work, would be willing to feed it Special:WhatLinksHere/First_person? Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The deletions are automated; the edits (based on things that couldn't be simply deleted on the first pass) are mine. Mind you, set up so I can usually type only a code for the form of the edit ;-) "First person" will show up in the queue soon. Robert Ullmann 01:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Poke!

-Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

languages with no ISO codes

User:Maro recently created Category:Old Polish language and start adding Old Polish nouns to it (like deżdż). However, the lack of official ISO code renders it impossible to use usual templates such as {{infl}} or {{proto}}. How should these be generally handled? Creating something like {{pl-old}} ? --Ivan Štambuk 19:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

We need to sort this; give me a bit; I was trying to find the WMF "language committee" but have since learned that they are only concerned with codes needed to create projects. Robert Ullmann 18:13, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Main page

Cascading protecting won't prevent editing of the WOTD will it? We often get more activity on those words as a result of being featured, and it would be sad to lose that. --EncycloPetey 21:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

This is the way it was before. The WOTD entry itself is not transcluded, it is linked-to. It is still editable. Robert Ullmann 23:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --EncycloPetey 00:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Aegenwulf TOC

Hi, you removed the TOC from the above page- could you please explain to me when a table of contents is needed, and when to leave it out, or at least point me to a policy/guideline page explaining it? Thanks. J Milburn 18:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

TOCs are automatic; if the entry has more than 3 headers it shows up by default. If you put in in explicitly you prevent user defaults from operating correctly. Robert Ullmann 18:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, alright. I thought Wiktionary standards were to put them in manually. Dunno where I got that idea. J Milburn 18:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

vandalism

Thanks. The internet filter at work no longer allows me to access the Block screen because the "weighted phrase limit is exceeded" (whatever that means). --EncycloPetey 18:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Too many disallowed words in the reason list? I had been wondering why you didn't block first ;-). Robert Ullmann 18:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:t

This template seems to be producing odd output - for "language" we get el(el) for Greek, eg:
    * Greek: θάλασσα f (thálassa)
seems to be the same for all languages. Can you help? —Saltmarsh^Talk 09:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Purge your CSS cache (.tlc { display:none}) has been in common.css for a month now... Robert Ullmann 11:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

More (incredibly dumb) template questions

Hi, Robert, I hope all's well. But it's the pest again. ;-)

Hi! I'm mostly okay ;-) There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers.

Annoyance one, substituting templates inserting headers

On the uh, feature, that some templates, if not substituted, create an "edit this section" link which takes the user to the edit screen for the template... Y'know that thing I forgot to document myself here, so you had to dig me out of (another) hole. <blush>

Just to check my understanding, does this happen every time a template creates a header between equals signs, no matter how it does it? Or is it something else entirely?

1. I assume there's no slick trick to get around this problem, like making one template substitute another one, or is there?
2. No one wants confused users ;-), but I'm so tired of NOEDITSECTION, turning off section editing on the entire blasted page. (And the users are attached to these year-old templates that save a few keystrokes -- or cost a few one if you count the shift keys.) I saw a reference in bugzilla to something called "NOEDITTHISSECTION" but I couldn't get it to work, either there, or here where I assume all the latest and greatest code resides. Does it work?
3. Is there any way to make a template throw an error on the preview screen/in the text if it's not substituted?

1. one template subst another? only if the first is subst'd (so that doesn't help). You just have to type subst: ...
2. which is why we absolutely prohibit "NOEDITSECTION". (if you see it anywhere, tell me ;-) We need the headers in the page wikitext anyway for various things that process the wikitext
3. possibly I could work out some magic, but anyone who knows enough to put the magic in a template knows enough to subst: it. Note that you can use "what links here" to see if the template has been left included somewhere

3. (hope it's OK if I butt in here). I may be misunderstanding the question, but this seems like what the deletion templates on Wikipedia (used to) do. A couple of approaches to the problem are presented at w:User:Pathoschild/Help/Template_special_effects. I just checked the first method given there, and it still seems to work OK. Just replace "subst'd" with null and "not subst'd" with the big angry warning notice of your choice. -- Visviva 14:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

---

Thanks, Visviva. Excellent. Yes I think that will be helpful. Much obliged. Winter (Snakesteuben 04:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC))

---

<sigh> OK, now, Robert, sweetie, put down your tea/coffee/Jolt cola whatever before you click the next link. I don't want you to choke.

Do you think that any of the poor souls conspiring to create this entry might have any concept of "magic" in templates? Well, perhaps if you consider 13 template-included "NOEDITSECTION" directives to be magical. (No kidding. That's the real count in that entry. It's in all the language templates, all the POS templates, and the translation templates.)

The question isn't what links here, but what doesn't link here, and/or to all its brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts.

This is what happens when users are allowed to run wild and unsupervised for a year--which seems to be about how long the current state of affairs has existed.

Winter xxx (Snakesteuben 04:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC))

Annoyance two, parsing last character of stem parameter

I really have made a fairly diligent search, but I can't find any model code where somebody checks for the identity of the last character of a parameter. (I have found one that returns true if a given character occurs anywhere in the string, but that's all.) Could you tell me where to find out how to do that? (I need it for that regular verb conjugation thing, to account for a d/t suffix variation that I, and no one else on this planet, call da fat cheapskate rule.)

*sigh* you simply can't do it. (Yes, I know, it would be very useful). What we end up doing is using the "stem" without the final, and then the final as a separate parameter (which may be null as well). What did you find that tells you if a character is in a string somewhere?

Just to say I'm not ignoring you. I didn't save that darn link unfortunately. I'll have to plough my history. I'll get back to you. Winter Snakesteuben 06:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

---

Apparently, it doesn't exist after all. I must be cra Chalk it up to more evidence that I'm crazy. Maybe it was a figment of my imagination. Or perhaps its non-existence is retroactive in a cartoon-laws-of-physics sort of way, for if you can't do it, I now know it never could have been done. Winter (User:Snakesteuben 14:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC))

Simple question one, simple one-letter template names

I see that I can't make a simple template by the name of "g" on this site (it's the abbreviation for common gender in West Frisian and some other languages). Is either "o" or "û" contraindicated for any reason?

since this is the English Wiktionary, all our descriptive terms are in English, so this gender is "common", abbreviated with {{c}} ;-) Likewise n, m, and f.

OK, I imagine you get my point. But just making sure, I'll state it explicitly. If I'm on the Dutch site, and I type {{n}}, it gets magically converted to o. If I do the same thing on the fy site, û appears.

Likewise, {{o}} entered on fy becomes {{û}}, and vice versa. Template "Noun" exists on both sites, and the terms "Haadwurd" or "Zelfstandig naamwoord" appear as appropriate. I've noticed similar behaviour on every other site wiktionary where I've edited, except this one. I'm reading your answer to say that that English wikipedia has made (or has effectively made, i.e., the consensus is obvious) an affirmative policy decision on the matter. On this site, any possible benefit from goodwill and/or prevention of stupid single-character hard-to-detect brain-dead errors is outweighed by countervailing considerations. (I feel no need to know what those considerations are. I wish only to confirm that they exist, and I'll drop the matter.) Snakesteuben 02:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and here {{n}} gets magically converted to n. Guess what? lots of wikts have English template names that convert to the local language text. And on the English wikt, guess what? We have English template names that convert to the local language text. English. Robert Ullmann 02:54, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

(shall I be less snarky? It is perfectly reasonable for other wikts to have English and their own language names convert to presenting their own language. It is not reasonable for the English wikt to try to convert all the other languages into English. There are 7000+ others, in how many does "o" become "n"? In how many does "o" become "f" or "m" or something else? It may be reasonable for other wikts to consider English as "special" and provide conversions; but what language do we consider "special"? French? Latin? Mandarin?) Robert Ullmann 03:00, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, shall you. ;-) I quite liked your first answer, to be honest. And of course you're right. FCFS is not an appropriate way to allocate such resources. I guess I touched a nerve, and I'm truly sorry about that. But I really didn't mean to get your shorts in a knot! (This time ;-) ) Snake Stubborn 2008-04-20 T 05:50 UTC

Question two, different spelling, upper vs. lower case

On that fy-NPL template above, you asked me if there was any reason the entry couldn't equal the page name in every case. The one weird thing is that fy words with diacriticals are spelled differently depending on whether they start with an uppercase or lowercase letter. I thought about it. But with full case sensitivity, I couldn't think of any reason there'd be a gotcha lurking there, but I wanted to ask you before I messed something up yet again. ;-)

I don't see any reason why the headword would not = PAGENAME, given, as you say, the case-sensitivity of page names

Thanks again. You have the patience of a saint. Do you have a fan/groupie page anywhere? If not, you need one. Winter (Snakesteuben 13:11, 19 April 2008 (UTC))

You're welcome! Robert Ullmann 13:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

heroe

Has turned up on the Wiktionary:Categorization list under Swahili. --EncycloPetey 15:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Email

I went ahead and enabled my email. Though, I fail to see why there'd be any reason to communicate secretly about an inherently open project. What did you want to email me about. Language Lover 21:48, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

honour

Hi Rob. I saw this and marked it as patrolled...it all looked good to me. I don't understand how this is "merging"...? Widsith 14:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Content (in part) from honor, which which was then changed to "alternate spelling of honour". Connel would have had conniptions ;-). User would not get that we don't merge those. Robert Ullmann 14:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Haha, I see. Well obviously the edit on honor was bad, although the changes to honour do seem generally beneficial.. Widsith 14:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and I did leave those. (as you can see) Robert Ullmann 14:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Language templates index: Wiktionary:Index to templates/languages

Hello Robert, just to let you know that there is a mistake on Wiktionary:Index to templates/languages, it is listing {{krl}} as Finno-Ugric but is actually for Karelian. I'm not sure if I should edit the list to fix it right now as it probably do with an update anyway.--Williamsayers79 14:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Updates take a new XML dump, which is long overdue, as the dump process is broken in several ways ... :-( you can fix it if you like, as long as the template is correct I wouldn't worry. Robert Ullmann 15:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the update, I'll make the fix and wait for the updated. Regards, --Williamsayers79 15:27, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Update to mising?

I'm not sure how much work is involved, so will you be doing an update to User:Robert Ullmann/Missing soon? RJFJR 00:58, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

As with language templates (just above), I need a new XML dump. Long overdue, and the process is still broken. Once I get it, it is a one-line shell command and let my box munch it for a little while. Robert Ullmann 08:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

XML dumps broken

I've noticed that you mention the dumps are broken. Where can I find out more?--Brett 12:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The basic report of status is [1]; I've tried figure out how I can help Brion Vibber fix something, but to no avail.

The problem is that it works by having several (2-4) threads each pick up the least-recently dumped of the hundreds of wikis (150 languages x several projects) and generate a number of dump files:

• various small tables
• main space articles and templates
• all pages
• all pages with the entire edit history

noting the last is not diffs, but an entire copy of each revision! It compresses each with bz2, and the all history again with 7z. The en.wikt only takes a few hours, including about 40 min for the dump we really want (NS:0 + templates). The en.wp takes a month to dump.

You may see the problem here if you've ever been in a queue in a bank waiting for (say) 4 tellers: if there are four people in front of you with longish transactions, they will tie up all the tellers. So at any given time, the current state is most likely all the threads working on humungous 'pedia dumps.

The solution(s) are fairly simple: restrict one or two threads to smaller wikis, separate out the "all history" as a separate task, do only 7z for it and not bz2. (But really, fixing the DB and the dumps to do diffs would be a lot better! I can't figure out why it was ever done this way?) I've tried to get Brion's attention, but he is just (apparently) too swamped to be helped? Robert Ullmann 12:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Fan (fe)mail!

Snapdragon... ;-)

To a couple folks who've been especially helpful/nice to me during my first few weeks at en.wikt: Thanks! :-)

Right. Anonymous greeting cards don't work with edit logs, not to mention Sinebots floating around. (Yeah, OK, I forgot to sign ... again!) Snakesteuben 13:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Code

Do you have any idea why this has happened, or if there's something to do about it? Best regards Rhanyeia♥♫ 08:50, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

poke

Wiktionary:Categorizing#Swahili

AF and tsort

I'll take a look through that list first chance I get, but it won't be until tomorrow now. In many cases I suspect that just moving the brackets after the : will work, but I'll note any regular patterns I spot.Thryduulf 14:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Mismatched syntax

Whether or not we strike them, I find sections easier to work with. Particularly if there is more than one person on the job, it means people are more likely to work from places other than the top of the list. Thryduulf 16:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll add in sections on the next pass. Robert Ullmann 16:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Cheers. Thryduulf 19:04, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Autoformat bot question

Hi, Robert. I've been (confusedly) hunting down and destroying entries/additions that look like this:

[[West Frisian]]: {{t-|fy|lithium|xs=Frisian}} (See, e.g., bottom (labelled line 143) of this page.)

Now that I've figured out where they're coming from ;-), I presume they serve some greater purpose and I should ignore them? Thanks (and sorry if I messed up any statistics or anything) Winter (User:Snakesteuben 13:09, 4 May 2008 (UTC))

It is Tbot that is adding the xs= (to generate a section reference); as of the last time it looked at the entry fy was = Frisian. These will all get fixed automatically, don't worry about it. (In the mean time the incorrect section ref just lands someone at the top of the target page, no big deal.) AF is just sorting the language under "W" Robert Ullmann 13:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure. So look and entry aren't necessarily contemporaneous. Gotcha. And of course, by destroy I meant "replace /xs=Frisian /xs=West Frisian." (With curses of "What's wrong with me? Why in blazes didn't '(?<! )Frisian' hit that three hours ago?!?") Winter (User:Snakesteuben 05:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC))

lc/uc Κινέζικα, Ιταλικός

Thanks Robert - Greek adjectives for countries and nouns for language names are all lower case (eg French γαλλικός and γαλλικά) - Κινέζικα/κινέζικα may need looking at, later. —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 13:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Question

Hey, why is it that even innocent users get blocked? It's just not right.Kitty53 21:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello? Robert? Where are you?Kitty53 20:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm here. You are complaining about what? Robert Ullmann 22:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Kitty53, please read the response you were given last time you asked this question (it's on your talk page). Conrad.Irwin 22:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Categorizing#Swahili

• poke --EncycloPetey 23:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Mutante has managed to get a complete list now. See [2], although the indexing may still be in progress. --EncycloPetey 13:53, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

These may be the last few: sawa sehemu shule sikio theluji upanga --EncycloPetey 14:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

αήρ

Mea culpa - I have reverted the article - but will look close tomorrow. It is not in my largest Greek lexikon - but checking in Πύλη should be - —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 15:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Arabic Wiktionary

Hi Robert

We were removing content that was imported from GPL-licensed lists, because GPL is not compatible with GFDL.

We are trying to get these lists licensed under a dual GFDL/GPL license, but till this is done, we cannot use the content on Arabic Wiktionary.

It's all under control :).

--Lord Anubis 15:39, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Citations

Can I ask why you're dumping a ton of citations from the 'pedia while the vote to decide if that's allowed is going on? Seems like that's going to be a lot of mess if the vote doesn't pass (and it also seems like a lot of the citations you're getting could be gotten from more respectable sources). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 18:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with Citations from Wikipedia, it's just whether they count towards CFI that we're voting on. Ideally we'd cite every use of every word everywhere - but that's not possible.... Conrad.Irwin 19:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me, but the present vote is about WMF jargon. Nothing whatsoever to do with ordinary everyday words that happen to be used in Wikipedia.

And certainly there are other sources, I am hunting words that we are missing and should have, not adding any that can't meet CFI easily. (albeit a few on the ragged edge, but that is why we want to find citations) Robert Ullmann 22:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Citations:ethernet Robert Ullmann 23:47, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Template talk:t

I've tried one of the customizations you claim IE8 doesn't support, and it works for me. Please see [3]. Do you have any proof it doesn't support generated content? —Ms2ger 09:48, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Take it easy ... we tested the version of IE8 we had a month or so ago, and it did not; reviews I found on the web concurred. We'll keep tracking it; thanks for the specific versiont test. Robert Ullmann 15:52, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Mondo botto!

If you guys want these I can post, oh, 7 or 800 more...

Winter (Username:Snakesteuben 12:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC))

So presumably you would convert that to a similar file with English entries and translations for pagefromfile.py? That seems like a good idea. Perhaps you might try a half-dozen? Robert Ullmann 15:52, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No, I thought someone over here might like to take the en-->fy job that I made and ran on our site, and swap it around into an fy-->en for use on en. And maybe glean info in the process, since many, if not the majority, of the plant entries are missing here altogether.

I guess not. That's cool. :-) Winter (Username:Snakesteuben 17:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC))

Maybe; I'll look at the file again. (not right now ;-) Robert Ullmann 15:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

know-it-all

well that's what it says in one of my dictionaries. I just used a different word. Besides that other definition explains very little and it is not a pejorative which is an abusive insult 143.235.214.222 15:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Copying a dictionary is not allowed; it is a copyright violation, and we can't have that. Robert Ullmann 15:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

And it most certainly is a pejorative. Robert Ullmann 15:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't put words in my mouth. I said I reworded it. 143.235.214.222 15:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Note this IP editor is on the school network from which we get lots of this disruptive behavior. If you are not the troublemaker, create a login; users on 143.235.x.x are routinely blocked for this junk. Robert Ullmann 16:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

User:Robert Ullmann/Chinese indexes

Hi, Conrad.Bot's current task is for fixing links to the bad Wiktionary namespace pages, I'm currently collecting the list of pages that need fixing so I can do them all in one pass as opposed to coming back round for each redirect. Your page seems to have the same general purpose, so I'll not replace the links on it - though I intend to fix the few links from other pages to the "Wiktionary:Chinese index" pages - is this ok?

Yes, and I've blanked the page so that you won't see the references in any case.

Secondly, once it's finished delinking them, there'll be another couple of hundred pages to be deleted. As I'm assuming that we could do without two automatic deletion processes flooding Wiktionary, would you be able to append them to the list that your current delete bot is doing - or should I just wait until you've finished and delete them then myself? Long time no IRC, yours. Conrad.Irwin 23:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Can be done either way. Exactly how is the set of redirects identified? Robert Ullmann 11:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I ran the following to get a table of all links to be fixed on all pages (using ReferringPageGenerator(redir_page)), and then saved it to a file, did some grep filtering as on User:Conrad.Bot. It is now running through the list of pages and fixing all the links it found on each page. Conrad.Irwin 11:29, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

def CrossNamespaceGenerator(gen):
    for redir_page in gen:
        try:
            target_page = redir_page.getRedirectTarget()
            if redir_page.namespace() != target_page.namespace():
                wikipedia.output(u"\03{lightpurple}%s => %s\03{default}" % (redir_page.title(),target_page.title()))
                yield (redir_page,target_page)
            else:
                wikipedia.output("(%s => %s)" % (redir_page.title(), target_page.title()) )
        except wikipedia.IsNotRedirectPage:
            pass
        except wikipedia.NoPage:
            pass

gen = CrossNamespaceGenerator(AllpagesPageGenerator(firstPageTitle, namespace, includeredirects = "only"))

Yes, I see, but the interesting bit is what the filtering was? (all from "Wiktionary:" to "Index:"? what subset?) Robert Ullmann 11:36, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

This list matches the original list (which is formatted [[page]] : [[redir]] > [[target]], one link to a redirect from a page per line) filtered with |grep Index: | grep -v Ullmann/Chinese | grep -v Hungarian (though I didn't get Hungarian right the first time). I have another (much shorter list) of pages that got through the filters described on User:Conrad.Bot that are not to the index pages. Conrad.Irwin 11:44, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Good news!

Hi, congratulations with the deletion process, glad to know that it is actually going somewhere (it feels endless!). Just to help spread the joy that we have a new dump for the delectation of any automatons at your disposal. All thanks to brion who (it is rumored) may have fast-tracked enwiktionary. Conrad.Irwin 00:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was prodding Brion in email; one of the threads was/is stuck on commonswiki, he apparently restarted the other telling it to do task enwiktionary first :-) Robert Ullmann 16:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Given name categories

Thank you for your kind message. Changing the names of given name categories isn't really such a catastophe as I made it sound like in Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/Others#Category:Armenian names. Contributors who mix up categories will also mix up the language, so those entries will have to be cleaned up anyway. Changing the names would provide a good opportunity to think about the context of the subcategories. I've been planning to take it up in the Beer Parlor for a year already... Please tell me when the names are to be changed. I could help manually with small categories.

I took the liberty of changing "Greek" into "Hebrew" in your template talk examples. "Greek" means "from modern Greek", right? - it's always mistaken for Ancient Greek, and I don't want to remind anybody of the existence of such a category.--Makaokalani 09:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

{{en-noun}}

Answer on my talk page. H. (talk) 10:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Portuguese conjugation templates

All the variant templates (-ar verbs, -er verbs, -çar verbs, -ger verbs and more) are based on Template:pt-conj for basic organization. ...however, the Template:pt-conj was apparently designed to contain just only one form for each conjugation, and to provide an automatic link for each one.

Thus, some verbs (the ones which have more than one form) just can't have their own links. Here are some examples...

• aceitar: aceitado, aceito
• amar: amamos, amámos.
• ir: vamos, imos
• limpar: limpado, limpo

And, some verbs just don't have a certain conjugation at all (colorir and falir don't have a first-person singular present), leaving an ugly blank space with brackets [[]].

So, I was doing exactly what you said. - using other templates for each reason - but first, I need to delete links on Template:pt-conj and reallocate them in the right places at the other templates... Daniel. 01:19, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem is you break all the pages that simply use the basic template. You are making life very hard on yourself, it is much easier than that. First rule: don't break it, fix it. Take me a few minutes. Robert Ullmann 11:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, all done. If you want to use more than one linked word in a cell, link them in the calling template (just for that cell). If you want a cell to be blank, use "-" in the calling template. Robert Ullmann 11:38, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The only one case of defective verb by now is abolir (which was on the Category:Portuguese verbs needing conjugation some hours ago). Sorry for the trouble and thanks for your help; I just couldn't rely on variant templates to do this work, and don't knew how to do something like that. By the way, I removed links from abolir - and I'm going to do a few more templates for regular verbs, just following your fixed Template:pt-conj. Daniel. 14:05, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Invalid L2's

Would you mind if I removed invalid L2's that have been dealt with? I ask this because of the lag between the current dump and the last one, and it's much easier to see what's been taken care of and what's left to do if I clear out all the Engish's. Bear in mind that, when I ask if I can do it, I am asking if you'll keep your bot from undoing my clearing. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

that's okay, I have no plan to run it again until the next dump Robert Ullmann 12:13, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Template advice

So, I recently updated the Ancient Greek declension templates (they're now much prettier, and collapsible). While the initial switch was fairly easy, as they're all routed through a few baseline templates, I still have to go through each individually. This is because I decided that I'd put control over what goes in the title in the hands of the higher-level templates. I've been meaning to go through all the templates and write some instructions, cleanup, categorization, etc., so this works out ok. I figured that, since I'm going through them all, I may as well link all the inflected forms while I'm at it. And this is bringing up the problem I need your help with. Ancient Greek sometimes uses macrons and breves to indicate vowel length. However, since these are fairly rare, I decided they shouldn't be included in the entry titles. So, that doesn't seem too hard, right? Just do what Latin does, have two parameters, one with macrons, and one without, link the one without. Easy. However, that makes for a lot of inputs, as Ancient Greek templates often take three parameters without macrons (compare one input for typical Latin), which makes for six parameters with macrons, which is really too many. Add to the fact that most of the time we don't know (or are simply too lazy to enter) the macroned version, it seems like a bad idea to make the macroned version necessary for grc templates. So, what I came up with was to have optional macron parameters. But, I can't figure out the code (and I'm starting to wonder if its even possible). The code as it stands right now is: {{{NS|{{{1}}}ᾰς}}}. So, {{{1}}} is a necessary input, one of the basic stems for the template. The normal output of this template is to attach ᾰς to the end of that stem. However, if the nom sing is irregular, you can manually specify it by inputting NS=. So, if we add linkedness to the equation, we get {{#if:{{{NSv|}}}|[[{{{NS}}}|{{{NSv}}}]]|[[{{{1}}}ας|{{{1v}}}ᾰς]]}} (with the v signifying the vowel length marked parameters). However, as you might guess, the pipes within the links are throwing off the if statement. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em. If you like, I've got a testing setup with {{grc-test}}, {{grc-test2}}, and User:Atelaes/Sandbox, if you care to screw around with ideas. I'm thinking that if we can't get it to work properly, I'll just incorporate the macrons and stuff into the pronunciation section somehow. Sorry about the lengthy post. This would be much easier if you were on IRC. Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:39, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I have been sick, with limited time I've wanted to look at things.

Lose template "notred", use class="inflection-table" in the table header

In general do the conditionals either inside the links, or entirely outside. The pipes will only "throw off" the if conditional if something isn't nested properly.

I looked at it a little bit, but not in detail yet. Robert Ullmann 03:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. About the class="inflection-table" bit, where does that go, exactly? And may I also ask what it does? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I see what it does, and I believe I know where to put it, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. I'm thinking I must be doing something wrong, as it works fine for me when it's used in the Latin templates. I've inserted it into {{grc-test}}. Any ideas why it's not working? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it is working from here (looking at /sandbox) Robert Ullmann 04:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I got it working after I left the comment. Sorry. However, I am working on the leftover coding, and am having some difficulties. If I can't manage to pull it off, I'll drop you another note.  :-) -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I think I've got everything working ok. Would you be willing to take a look at the code, as I have to imagine you'll see problems that I'll miss, and I'd like to catch any problems before I install this code in the hundred templates used in nearly 3,000 entries. Note that the full code is only in place for the genitive singular position. In the real templates I'll take the time to put it everywhere. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

You still have {notred} in there. Robert Ullmann 05:32, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, you have no imagination. The new code is now in every position. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:00, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm still waiting of a review of my code. *gives impatient look* -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:42, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've been thinking about it, and now must look closely. Must get my kahawa na maziwa now, then I'll look a bit later ;-) I am feeling much better now. Robert Ullmann 07:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

{notred} was helpful in reducing the repeats of parameters. Suppose we have {{grc-cell}} (exists, but not used at present), such that

{{#if:{{{NS|}}}|{{#if:{{isValidPageName|{{{NS}}}}}|[[{{{NS}}}|{{{NSv|{{{NS}}}}}}]]|{{{NS}}}}}|[[{{{1}}}ας|{{{1v|{{{1}}}}}}ᾱς]]}}

could be replaced with:

{{grc-cell|{{{1}}}ας|{{{1v|{{{1}}}}}}ᾱς|{{{NS|}}}|{{{NSv|}}}}}

maybe like that? As I said, I need my kahawa first. Oh, and rm the "clear:both" I think, you spec width? Robert Ullmann 08:00, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

grc-cell (or whatever you want to call it):

{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{#if:{{isValidPageName|{{{3}}}}}|[[{{{3}}}|{{#if:{{{4|}}}|{{{4}}}|{{{3}}}}}]]|{{{3}}}}}|[[{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}]]}}

I think, just wrote that w/o test. Robert Ullmann 08:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent idea, thank you. It works perfectly. I think I'll start implementing the new code. If you feel like giving the template a final once-over, I wouldn't be offended ;-), but if you think you've done everything you could for it, then let me thank you very much for all your time and effort with this. Also, would it be a huge amount of work for you to get one of your bots to look through the dump for any entries which use the following characters: ᾰ, ᾱ, ῐ, ῑ, ῠ, ῡ, Ᾰ, Ᾱ, Ῐ, Ῑ, Ῠ, Ῡ? Any that do will likely have to be changed for the new template. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

user:Robert Daniel Ullmann

Is this user name too similar to yours? 86.152.210.92 01:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a problem, as it is your "real" name (and therefore not an attempt to troll). (I say "real" because what is a "real" name? If someone styles himself "Mark Twain", is it a "real" name? ;-)

Might confuse someone occasionally, but so what? Is a small world. Robert Ullmann 03:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The linked website looks like a commercial (rather than a personal) website to me. SemperBlotto 11:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Word origins question

Is it a good idea if I try to add word origins for common words like water, e.g. it being from Greek hudor, Old English waeter etc. Or is that too complex for the reader?? I'd be interested to know, as I'm willing to help out here. AP. --82.42.237.84 18:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

That word really had excessively detailed etymology...simplified it a bit. Detailed discussions and list of cognates are generally reserved to appendix pages, where there are no space limitations, or the etymology sections of ancient languages. --Ivan Štambuk 19:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks, that was just an example, however, it was for any word in general that I was asking about. Thanks anyway, Ivan! AP --82.42.237.84 19:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Odd case

Here is a case where a bad edit was made by [4] AutoFormat. It's an unusual case because the header should have said "Conjunction" but had been mistyped as "Conjugation". --EncycloPetey 03:06, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow, are we starting to hold AutoFormat to the standard of sentience and conscious decision-making now?  :-) -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Shall we hold EP to that standard? (first edit to fix it ;-) Be happy it usually manages to reduce the various atrocious misspellings of one or the other to the correct case. Robert Ullmann 11:23, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back

I was sorry to read that you were sick. Glad you're getting back. I've found many ways of amusing myself, but not counted, missing, and wp citations are three of my favorites. Also, I hope that I've been processing the trans table problems correctly. Do the corrected items get processed quickly so that I can interpret their non-return to the queue as an indication of success? DCDuring TALK 17:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Sysop right into Wikamusi kwa Kiswahili

Hello, Robert Ullmann. I'm Swahili Wikipedian, now I want to make Swahili Wikamusi better. In order to make Sw:wikt. better, I need sysop right as I did ask in meta. Please see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Permissions#Temporary_permissions_for_emergency_or_technical_purposes

Youu'll find it! See you around.--Muddyb Blast Producer 07:45, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I saw you are also request for temporary sysop right. It's quite interesting. Sasa naona Kiingereza basi. Tujitahidi kuiboresha ile Wikamusi. Naona ulifanya mawili matatau, lakini kwa sasa haujashiriki kwa muda mrefu sana na badala yake umeacha Bot ikiendelea na kazi za kutafsiri makala zile. Nahitaji kujua kitu kutoka kwako, unasemaje? Tafadhali jibu hapahapa...--Muddyb Blast Producer 09:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

(um the difference between TZ Kiswahili and Kenyan is going to be interesting, good to have both working on it). Yes there are a number of things that need to be converted, so they are available in both languages (various documentation). I write things in English because I am not fluent, and the vocabulary for a technical subject eludes me (Kenya does pretty much all University level stuff in English, as with all official business, technical reports etc.) what is "documentation"? (um, makala perhaps, but I wouldn't have recalled that) or "technical" or ... ;-) (Come to think of it, I never read or write Kiswahili, it is all verbal!)

I haven't done very much as I've been trying to get a group set up to work on it; I now have several people at KU who will be adding a lot more words presently. Should be starting from tomorrow or Monday.

Bot? (Kompyuta needs a lot of updating before it is run again.)

asante sana Robert Ullmann 12:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. But I sent you an E-mail, did you see it?--Wikipedian Activist (talK 2 mE) 13:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

So, where I can get that Python wikipedia bot "framework" and it's set up?--Wikipedian Activist (talK 2 mE) 13:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

See meta:Using the python wikipediabot and meta:Bot Robert Ullmann 13:33, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ended unsuccessfully. See this: *http://sw.wiktionary.org/wiki/Image:Result.JPG

Then delete that image. See you.--Wikipedian Activist (talK 2 mE) 16:09, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Your now an admin into Wikamusi kwa Kiswahili! See here. Cheers,--Wikipedian Activist (talK 2 mE) 15:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I sent you an E-mail, did you see it?--Wikipedian Activist (talK 2 mE) 12:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

CSD request

Dear sir, could you kindly CSD the pages User:Xenocidic and User talk:Xenocidic for the reasons noted in the delete template? Thank you in advance! xenocidic 12:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. Robert Ullmann 13:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again =). xenocidic 13:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

cites-from-WP project

A while back, I asked someone to analyze the enwikt and enWP dumps to see what titles they have that we don't. (Q.v.) I'm not sure how you're going about your current project of cites from WP; but does your project subsume my request? — i.e., will you find, by your method, any word that my method would find?—msh210℠ 19:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Without going through the steps with the titles, yes. It just looks for lc words not in the wikt. In the process, finds spelling errors in the pedia, as it is essentially doing a spellcheck.

But it would take it a very long time to go through any large percentage of the pedia; I do not have a dump. However, given that every other article (non-stub) seems to contain words to look at, there is plenty to keep it busy. I am still playing with how it might work. Robert Ullmann 19:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Another thing my request would find is phrases, which I'm guessing your method does not. Correct?—msh210℠ 19:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Correct. Robert Ullmann 14:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Duesentrieb just suggested to me that you can find phrases such as good fellow by examining links such as [[good|good fellow]]. While you've probably thought of this already, I thought I'd point it out just in case.—msh210℠ 20:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Will you be checking from time to time for the addition of these words, and then removing the citation from the "New words from Wikipedia" category? SemperBlotto 13:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

OK - I've just read the blurb. Sorry to bother you. SemperBlotto 13:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they are supposed to disappear automatically, but for a WM bug (which I will add to bugzilla someday ;-) ... the cat is only added when the entry does not exist. So a purge on the Citations: page will remove it. Editing the template will cause the job queue to regenerate all the pages. I did this a little while ago. Robert Ullmann 13:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Template documentation

Done.Hakeem.gadi 11:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

{{context}} and categorisation

What was the problem with DAVilla's edit? it's the result of Wiktionary:Grease pit#High time we subcategorize Category:Context labels. I was actually just starting to apply it. Circeus 14:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Because it is totally the wrong way to do it. See the WT:GP, and please clean up any cruft already added. Robert Ullmann 15:01, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

re: the categorization It's certainly significantly more straightforward than having to wade through Category:Context labels and removing the primary category saves from being utterly unable to ever know when new ones are created. If we can't add newly created templates to the category because there's no simple way to tell a new one is uncategorized, it certainly detracts a lot form the point of having subcategories to make the precise template easier to find

re: avalent It wasn't in Category:Grammar templates, so I didn't expect it to be a grammar term; I'm an amateur linguist and that is at best a rare word: I've never seen it used anywhere before. Wouldn't that just be {{impersonal}} for all practical purposes anyway? Circeus 15:53, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably the other way around: most uses of impersonal would better be avalant. But as you say, that is a much less familiar term.

I'd prefer to use something like User:Robert Ullmann/Context labels as a management tool, this is what we do for language templates. We can produce an index as we do with them, that shows the cats, and the ones that are missing. (sorry must go out right now) Robert Ullmann 16:04, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I kept {{weather}} as a legitimate template and redirected the two uses of {{avalent}} (sleet and rain) to the widely used {{impersonal}}. Oddly enough, snow addresses the issue in a completely different way.

Regarding that list, what is {{personal}} supposed to be for? It's not used anywhere, and it's hard to tell because it's ambiguous. Is it a variant of {{endearing}}? Nevermind, I was thinking of {{personel}}, a typo. Circeus 16:50, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering if you could use your list to built a list of context templates where several templates feed into the same category? Or more generally where the label and category are different? Circeus 15:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Victrola victrola (not the Julie Andrews movie)

Your "Conversion script" deletion of Victrola seems (tho as non-admin here, i can't view the del'd rev's) to have be based on the fact that it was a mere Rdr. I assume the division of the proper noun and common noun into separate entries that i've effected amounts to correction of the mistaken combination of two words in one entry.

If i'm in error, i'd be grateful to know about it. --User:Jerzy·t 18:46, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly right; they should have been two entries. Thanks. (Note use of {{see}} at the top.) Robert Ullmann 11:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

import-export

I renamed the template. I agree the INCOTERMS are very useful indeed. I will add them soon. Maybe I can make it in my sandbox. --Jackofclubs 11:37, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there a bug? INCOTERMS isn't here, but incoterms is. I read somewhere that editors aren't so fond of redirects. Uppercase INCOTERMS is less common than lowecase incoterms in the field, but the former is still used and understood by many. --Jackofclubs 11:40, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I should probably have written it in lower case, it is usually Incoterms or incoterms. I suppose I just think of it as an acronym rather than a contraction (is a bit of both), and when I was in that business INCOTERM wasn't uncommon. Robert Ullmann 11:49, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Another thing, with regards to capitalisation, I think it would be better is if the incoterms themselves (not the acronyms) were all capitals, i.e. Free On Board instead of free on board, because that is how they're usually written. However, I can't move that page to the desired destination. Is capitalisation that important here? I'll add the full incoterms when I know which spelling is preferred. Thanks Robert. --Jackofclubs 12:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The user made a copy and paste redirect and did not even actually redirect the template. Mind fixing it with a proper move-over? Circeus 01:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About Chinese characters

Hi Robert,

Glad to be of use – I’ll try to update the page so it’s accurate and useful!

BTW, this came up because I was interested in variant forms of Chinese characters; see discussion in the beer parlour: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#Variant_forms_of_Chinese_Characters.3F.

Nbarth (email) (talk) 16:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Done! Hope it looks ok: Wiktionary:About Chinese characters.

Nbarth (email) (talk) 18:13, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, very good. Now to expand with various other details ... (;-) tx, Robert Ullmann 23:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Grease pit#High time we subcategorize Category:Context labels

Hi,

Could you maybe try to be a bit kinder in your dealings with DAVilla? He makes valid points, and while you may not always agree with his conclusions, needlessly antagonizing him is probably bad for your blood pressure and his, and makes the discussion awkward for other editors to contribute to. (It can also come off as slightly hypocritical sometimes; for example, with this template thing, I don't have the impression that you tend to wait any longer than he does before making changes. The main difference is that you agree with your changes and don't consider them controversial — you feel that you're fixing things — which is absolutely fine, since other editors are generally very happy with your changes even if we don't agree with every detail of all of them. But when you turn around and get angry at DAVilla for a similar kind of thing, I suddenly find I have a bad taste in my mouth.)

—Ruakh_TALK 19:35, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi ... I hate to keep bashing DAVilla, but he does not learn. I may seem to make changes rapidly, but they are often (usually) considered for weeks. (I spent many, many, many hours in/about The Nairobi Hospital working on {{context}} before I did *anything*!) In this case, he made a change after ~3 hours that was bad, and ill-considered, and then again when that was undone. If he ever wants to do any serious engineering, he must slow down.

I get angry (although exasperated would be a far better word) because he does not learn. He wanted me to look at some way of handling "class" or whatever for internet slang a few days or so ago; I have been looking at it, but haven't had time because I have spent two days of wikitime cleaning up this crap.

There is a perfectly simple way to do the cats if we want to pay the overhead in every NS:0 entry just to get the temps cattted, but DAVilla will not SLOW DOWN to find it. Even though it is fucking obvious if one slows down and considers how it might be done. Robert Ullmann 23:14, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

More template stuff

Bet you're getting really sick of me bugging you about templates, huh? So, I want the templates to have an optional "Notes" section. Basically, an extra row where an editor can stuff notes about the declension, such as "note the irregular dative singular" or "singular declension follows the etymon language pattern, but plural follows standard Ancient Greek declension" or perhaps stick a link to an appendix explaining the declension. My initial instinct was to start the conditional in the last cell which normally occurs, and insert the line break and start of the new row in the positive option, and nothing in the negative option. The idea being that if the editor enters notes, the new row for notes comes into existence, but the default behaviour is for it to not exist. Thus:

|"Content of last cell" {{#if:{{{Notes|}}}|
|Notes:{{{Notes}}}|}}

However, the problem is that the parser interprets the pipe signifying the new row as a conditional pipe, so I get a line break if {{{Notes}}} exists, and "Notes:{{{Notes}}}" if it doesn't. Is there a way around this, or have I simply reached the limits of what the MW software can do? Many thanks in advance (said sarcastically if you don't help me ;)). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

If you really want a row in the table, you can use the explicit HTML inside the conditional. But it would probably look better if the notes followed the table, but inside the collapsing box. See {{rel-bottom}} which supports a note= parameter. Is probably best to use note= and have the "Notes: " part of the text given in the parameter as/if desired. Robert Ullmann 09:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

*sigh* I demand that next time I ask you a question and there's an obvious, simple answer that you make it sound really technical and complicated so I don't feel so stupid. If you like, take a look at the inflection of ἔτος (étos) to see some of the cool things I'm doing with these new spiffy templates (check the code that produced it). :-) Thanks again. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Nice! :-)   Maybe the note should be left-aligned, though? —Ruakh_TALK 11:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Not counted

Thanks. Good time for maintenance, since business is off. DCDuring TALK 11:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

re: piped links

Thanks. I knew about the piped links generally and knew that it automatically truncated content in parens. I just had never had never run into the truncation of content after a comma before. That must have been one of the more recent changes to the MediaWiki software. (Well, recent to me anyway.) Thanks again. Rossami 19:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

WT:BP#Bot flag request for User:EivindBot

Hallo! It looks like we have a willing suspect onto which we can offload the Interwicket code to share with other Wiktionaries. Is this something you are willing to do (presumably via the pywikipediabot SVN would be the best way to do it in the long run - though maybe just copying the files across manually for now), how much work would need to be done to "translate" it, and is there anything I can do to help? Conrad.Irwin 22:57, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

SoP

Hi. I notices some editors use the term SoP, which I don't understand. (eg. Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification#traveljunkie. Would you mind letting me know? I can't be the only person this has happened to, so perhaps an entry should be created that explains it or something like that?

(The reason I'm asking you seemingly out of nowhere is I saw you active on recent changes.) Thanks! -Oreo Priest ^talk 21:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Sum Of Parts. Meaning that the term isn't more that the sum of its parts, does not in any way have any idiomatic meaning or paticular meaning not immediately determined by the parts. Robert Ullmann 22:40, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

BP Category annoyance

There is a redlinked category to which BP is assigned whose name equals a category name that you refer to in a contribution to the page, about Rhymes. It does not seem to arise from the most obvious source, an in-line neglect of the colon before Category. (It just occurred to me that what looks like a colon might not be a colon.) Is there a template in operation on that page that caused the result? DCDuring TALK 15:25, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

You mean GP. Yes, it is a temporary cat to catch the deprecated uses of parameters in {{rhymes}}, since the discussion includes an example, it is showing up. I'll either take it our of the template or add an NS:0 conditional (in a few minutes). Robert Ullmann 15:29, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, GP. Obviously not urgent, but I should have made that explicit. DCDuring TALK 15:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Weird spacing issues

So I'm writing a template for the inflection line of Ancient Greek numerals, {{grc-num}}. However, I'm having some issues with spacing when the {{{car}}} parameter is used, as you can (hopefully) see at δίς. Any thoughts? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:43, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Spaces before and after | in templates and predicates are ignored. You can either use &#32; or the nowiki tag trick shown (see my edit). I also used wlink to make it a bit simpler (is one template call either way, and this way the predicate is inside ;-) Robert Ullmann 14:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

This has been a learning experience. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:10, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Glad to help. I tried to make it more technical by using big (and more precise) words like predicate. Robert Ullmann 17:12, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there an advantage to using &#32; over &nbsp; or will these work effectively the same? I've used the latter most of the time. --EncycloPetey 02:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, multiple spaces (whether represented as space or the numeric reference) act as one, but sequences or mixtures of &nbsp; and the ordinary spaces will add unwanted space:

* x    y
* x    y
* x    y
* x    y
* x    y

• x y
• x y
• x    y
• x    y
• x    y

Use &nbsp; when you want its proper function: a single uncombined space that is not a candidate for a line break. For example, see {{t}} where a break before the FL link is not desireable. Robert Ullmann 15:30, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Yet more template stuff (this time it's not entirely my fault)

Take a look at τέσσαρες (téssares). Any idea how to get these templates to play nice with each other (i.e. have {{cardinalbox}} not push {{grc-decl-blank-num}} way down)? I don't even know where to begin with that. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

As I ponder the issue further, I realize that it won't work anyway, as something would have to give for users without widescreen displays, and many of the numerals use the full adjectival inflection box, which is full screen. So, nevermind. Sorry to have bothered you. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

As it says in its doc, it should be placed right under the L2 header ... it should also be changed to use class="floatright", not explicit align, clear, or margins. Robert Ullmann 15:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I put in more than 9 hours coding and documenting on Saturday, and am glad with the help debugging it. --EncycloPetey 16:58, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Interwicket are go!

Hi. I was going to ask you before I started running it, but peer pressure and all that means that, after an hour of IRC discussion, sv:User:Conrad.Bot is adding interwikis to the Swedish Wiktionary using the code from User:Interwicket/code. If you want me to stop, I'm happy to do so, but Dodde would like someone to run it, so you might be asked to take over ;).

Summary of changes:

• Home = 'sv', also replaced 'en' with home in a few places I noticed it.
• Added except wikipedia.NoSuchSite: around pages[code] = pagegenerators.AllpagesPageGenerator(site=wikipedia.getSite(code, 'wiktionary'), start=start, namespace = 0).__iter__(), though I think that the pywikipediabot needs updating to include the right wikts.
• used wikipedia.handleArgs() so that I could reduce the throttling.

Yours Conrad.Irwin 23:45, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

very good! I am still very frustrated not being on IRC (mibbit just causes the same problem). I am planning on running my own test on the current SVN; this is very helpful. Robert Ullmann 23:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

you fixed the putfirst problem (putfirst can be null/None)? If sv has a putfirst list you may not have noticed ;-) Robert Ullmann 23:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I knew there was something. I just added 'sv': self.alphabetic to wiktionary_family.py. Presumably I can add the other wikts to that file too? Conrad.Irwin 00:16, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

you notice it is now re-sorting things added previously; the sv default (like all wikis by default) was to sort on code. You may want to consider whether this is desireable in sv? Robert Ullmann 00:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The sort list that it generated was reasonably small, so I assumed that this was how they were sorted before, or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely? Conrad.Irwin 00:32, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean now. I've asked Dodde. Conrad.Irwin 00:34, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

by default they were sorted code-alpha, only a few wps/wikts use self(lang)-alpha (and there is no present provision for a wikt to use a different policy than the wp; we got self-alpha becuase the wikipedia decided on it ...) note that you are changing the order added by birdy-bot et-al. Might want to look at this. But I would think self alpha would be preferred? In the meantime, you are adding a lot that the pybot interwiki.py never would ;-) Robert Ullmann 00:38, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

note it won't check existing sort order in entries w/o -sort. I need to sleep now. Robert Ullmann 00:42, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Main Page

What is that tag for? Just an accident? --EivindJ 10:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's not good. It's because there is an entry for "Main page" in namespace 0, and AF tried to format it because even though it is a redirect, it is special cased so it doesn't look like one. Combine that with the utterly horrid mis-feature in the pywikipedia framework where it automatically tries the sysop account when a page is locked (protected), and the result is no good.

I've special cased this; also yet another patch to wikipedia.py due. Robert Ullmann 11:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I see ... the problem is solved and it wasn't out there for long. Unfortunately I couldn't edit the main page, so I just had to sit and wait for someone else to do it :) --EivindJ 13:24, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Re: cloak

Thanks for telling me, I answered at my talk page to keep the thread. --Daniel Polansky 18:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism charge

From an anon's talk page:

Likewise, removing the quotation from the correct form (as EP) did, is just vandalism. No reason it can't be there, and it should be there. Robert Ullmann 06:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Robert, if you want to level an accusation at me, please don't do it behind my back. --EncycloPetey 06:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Posting derogatory accusations about users on the pages of other users is gossip-mongering and tarnishes the image of Wiktionary. If you have a problem with something I've done, then please say so to me, and not to other people such as anon editors. Please show some maturity, as I know you have been the victim before of similar behind-the-back comments and accusations, and I'm sure you didn't enjoy it any more than I am now. --EncycloPetey 06:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Not behind your back, you saw it immediately, as expected.

I'll say it clearly here: It is bad enough that you vandalize what you consider "non-lemma" pages by removing valid content, but trying to push the "lemma" ("base spelling", whatever) form on others is bad news. You want "lemmas" to be "complete", fine. But just because you think having non-lemma entries be useful is "too hard" or some such bilge doesn't license you to vandalize those entries by removing valid content, esp. content that should be there. periphrases And yes, I am using the word vandalize intentionally, there is no other possible description for someone who deletes valid, useful content from the correct entry; whether it appears elsewhere (on a "lemma") or not. I've said this before, and I will say it again. It must stop. Robert Ullmann 06:54, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I just thought I'd chime in here to briefly mention that EP is not the only one who thinks that such duplication is not merely wasted effort, but rather something which should be avoided (and removed). It is unfortunate that the community cannot come to a consensus on the issue, but let's not create a bunch of bad blood over it. While you may disagree with EP (and me) on this issue, I think vandalism is an inappropriate term. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:58, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a wiki, not a database. Having information appear in the relevant entries, "duplicated" by transclusion, bots, humans, or magic is the entire point. Else we might as well replace every entry with a "soft redirect" to Websters or the OED. Wikipedia could just be a link farm; everything has to be sourced on-line right? So people should go look at the source pages. All forms, whether "lemma" or not, should explain themselves, definition, examples, inflection tables. "Go look at this other entry and try to figure out what it means for this one" is not helpful. If you think that is too hard, fine! Building a wiki with all words in all languages is way harder. Will never be done. (Just ignore that it is being done.) And it isn't even that hard: start giving out class assignments: "Add examples for all tenses and forms of X to the wiktionary, with translations, you will be graded ..." I have a small team of KU students learning how to do entries; they are native speakers of 7 different languages. Robert Ullmann 08:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

However, I should note that I think having quotations for non-lemmata is a good thing. Non-lemmata should be attested, the same as lemmata. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:00, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Putting a quotation for a specific form on the entry for that form is not "duplication". (Putting it on the "lemma" might be, but is reasonable.) We need quotations and/or examples for all of the entries, and removing correct ones is not moving in the right direction. If it was not EP, and not a "lemma" issue, the IP removing the content from periphrases would be blocked out-of-hand for "removing content" by any of us, eh? Robert Ullmann 07:05, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

There are many things which we get away with which anons don't for a whole slew of reasons. I don't think that's a fair point. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Robert, I strongly react on the fact that you call another admin's contributions for vandalism; that's a very bad habbit. Vandalism is edits done with the intension to harm Wiktionary, and even though you think these edits did so, I'm sure EP doesn't have any intensions to harm Wiktionary. when you disagree you tell and discuss ... but do not call everything you don't agree with for vandalism. --Eivind (t) 07:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Removing valid content from "non-lemma" entries is harm, and EP intends it, it is not accidental that he is damaging entries by removing content. (And yes, I know the semantic difference between intentionally harming something and intentionally doing something that is in fact harmful ...) Okay, so we can't call it "vandalism" because a respected admin is doing it, while if it was someone else we would. Okay. Removing the valid quote from periphrases was vandalismfooism. The fooism must stop! Robert Ullmann 08:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Very well, I haved moved for a community censure of your actions: WT:BP#Community censure of Robert Ullmann. This sort of thing should never happen, and you have had a change to retract but chose not to. --EncycloPetey 16:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I removed the comment from the IP anon page at the beginning. I am sorry this has been so severely escalated, my position that removing content from pages is harmful/vandalism/whatever you choose to call it is not news to you. I do apologize sincerely for the ranting. Pleas see BP as well. Robert Ullmann 16:50, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Project - German

I was wondering how you compiled those pages: they contain a number of words that just don't exist. I understand some of them are from various ====Translations==== (such as standplatz heraus, clearly due to an online translation tool) but there are also some with no reference (such as Stasis, which is a technical term not used outside hospitals, thus hard to come across). -- Gauss 16:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

They are the words referenced from the translations tables, plus synonyms etc from German sections, plus words in the de wiktionary identified as Deutsch, for example de:Stasis. These last are the ones without references. Plus a few parsing errors ... This can be re-run if desired, and if there are specific classes of errors, I can look at fixing them. Robert Ullmann 16:51, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Category:Wikisaurus

Hi Robert,

As per your comment on my talk page on [[:Category:Wikisaurus]], I’ve raised this discussion at Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Category:Wikisaurus, since it seems to be of broader interest.

Cheers!

Nbarth (email) (talk) 21:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:EncycloPetey&diff=prev&oldid=4819084

Transcluded? What do you mean?68.148.164.166 14:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, ya know, this is a dictionary? You can look up transcluded ;-) It means the section following is added by transcluding another page. Not usually done for a user talk page, and can be confusing (as you note). Robert Ullmann 14:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

And what did you mean by "EP"?68.148.164.166 10:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

EP is an abbreviation for EncycloPetey. Conrad.Irwin 11:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Cosmetics of placement for the wikipedia template

Hello Robert -- I noticed that you recently changed the "Cosmetics" instructions to simpler "Placement" instructions on the talk page for the wikipedia template. I have been following the old instructions for some time (moving the template above the ==English== header in cases where there are enough headers to generate a contents box). Now, you seem to be saying that placing the wikipedia box to the right of the contents box is wrong. I still think it looks better to do so (see, for example, free will). Should I discontinue placing the wikipedia template to the right of the contents box? -- WikiPedant 11:29, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

That was being done to keep the [edit] links from getting displaced. Which is now fixed.

The problem with "to the right of the context box" is that assumes the contents box is there. But user preferences can not show it, or show it collapsed, or show it on the right. So there isn't any "to the right of the contents box" ;-). Also it should go inside the language section it belongs to, so it will be picked up anything extracting that language. Robert Ullmann 14:01, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, under the ==English== header it goes from now on then. Thanks. -- WikiPedant 04:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Betawiki

Hi. With the release of MediaWiki 1.13 coming soon, could you please complete the most often used messages group for 'sw'? Thanks! Siebrand 20:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)