User talk:Scs/Archive/2006

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Welcome![edit]

Hello, and welcome to Wiktionary. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:


I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wiktionarian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk (discussion) and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~, which automatically produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the beer parlour or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:50, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GutenBot buglet[edit]

You may have fixed this already, but the Gutenbot inserted a bunch of escaped apostrophes, e.g. "I\'d" and "isn\'t". I don't know if it's a glitch in the script or in the data you fed it with. I've cleaned some of them up, but I've left them in at that's and meet ("I\'ve") so you can see what they look like. —Scs 20:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Yes, I've since fixed the bug in the data being fed to the 'bot. I haven't re-ranked them in quite some time. Since a new XML backup was started today, I think I will wait until next week when a newer XML dump is available before trying to re-run it. Also missing is the update to the Frequency lists, to correspond to the individual rankings, which I need to correct before running. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:49, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rhymes[edit]

The rhymes you added look fine to me (in the right place, not just past tenses or past participles but also adjectives). I've replied on my user page and also to the thread you've started about rhymes in the Beer parlour. — Paul G 10:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...ah, but I'd only looked at "flared", etc. "Underwear" does not belong on the page for "air" rhymes because it is stressed on the first syllable. — Paul G 11:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

convention for linking to Wikisaurus[edit]

So here's a question: is there a convention for linking to Wikisaurus categories from the Synonyms and Antonyms sections of regular Wiktionary entries? It seems there ought to be. —Scs 21:13, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a template Template:WikiSaurus-link to provide a neat little link to the WikiSaurus entry.Richardb

WikiSaurus - compromise proposed (/more)[edit]

copied from [WT:BP]===WikiSaurus - compromise proposed (/more)=== A possible compromise between the "tough criteria for WikiSaurus", and the "Don't lose even the least valuable "synonyms". Introduce, in WikiSaurus, a xxx/more subpage for the problem pages. Cull the trash from the main page (by whatever criteria), but don't just delete it, put it in the /more page. In the main page indicate that new entries not meeting the tough criteria have to be put in the /more page, and there can be researched for verifiability, and perhaps later promoted to the main page. With this I would then suggest we might even protect the main WikiSaurus page. Admin's would then be responsible for checking the /more pages every so often to see if there are any terms that could be promoted to the main page, as they meet the criteria. Thus we would meet two purposes. The main WikiSaurus page would be kept up to our "standard" (which I have to point is very subjectively applied), whilst the /more page would capture every possible synonym, and would in effect be a specific protologism page.--Richardb 23:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. Do we have an appendix that lists them all? It would be nice to link to it from this entry. SemperBlotto 15:16, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about it some more, though, we probably do want our own "all languages" list somewhere, with links to our own articles on them, and to use as a tool to ensure that our language headers are consistent. And such a list would certainly want to cross-ref with ISO 639. And categories like "ISO 639 Language Codes" might make sense, too. –scs 13:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Language names is high on my todo list - they're quite poorly covered now. But do you want the ISO codes added themselves (as entries)? —Vildricianus 15:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, the "List of Languages" could certainly have the ISO code. But are you suggesting a separate entry for each code (along the lines of the E numbers) - it would be a lot of work, be boring (like the E numbers) and may not be that useful. SemperBlotto 16:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Me, I'm suggesting it, but not proposing it, if you see what I mean. :-) So far I've added a few, manually, to satisfy redlinks on RJFJR's list at RJFJR/WTconcord. If I were going to add all 480 of them (which is an "if", not a "when") I'd surely use a bot of some sort. I'm not sure if that's what Vildricianus is suggesting (or proposing) or what. –scs 20:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
480? And the rest? You do know there are already about 8,000 in the ISO 639-3 set, right? We expect you to finish the job once you start it :-). I don't think it's useful, though. I'd recommend on compiling a list rather than entering each code as an article. —Vildricianus 21:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Monobook[edit]

I see you were unaware of this previously. Have a look at the source of all pages - some things that are loaded each time are MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css (the default skin). Similarly, also MediaWiki:Monobook.js gets loaded. Additionally, if existing, personal CSS and JavaScript are loaded on top of that. This allows for a greater flexibility in interface, user styles and functions. I don't know whether you know something about CSS or JS, but feel free to have a look at some of the monobook pages here - Hippietrail's, Connel's or Mike's or mine. Cheers. —Vildricianus 23:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Good. If you've got any more questions, feel free to ask. When I first experimented with it, I thought it was an ill-documented, arcane matter, until I found the tons and tons of things at Wikipedia and Meta about them, over here for javascript, and here and here for CSS, from where I nicked all kinds of things to build my files. Have fun. —Vildricianus 09:13, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
By the way, there is a huge difference between Special:Mypage/monobook.js and Special:Mypage/monobook.css. --Connel MacKenzie T C 04:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hehe. Yes, I saw what looked like css code in your js file. --Connel MacKenzie T C 04:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, but it wasn't, now, was it? (big grin) –scs 04:32, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, kindasorta. It is Javascript that outputs css (which is OK, but now I'm quite curious as to why you want/need to do it that way.) --Connel MacKenzie T C
  • I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that you saw the "cookies" stuff in MediaWiki:Monobook.js. Are you using them for the extended Wiktionary:Preferences page? You are just thinking about having a whole bunch of toggles for these things, right? How is your progress on this going, anyhow? Any news? --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Nope, no progress; dropped that little project for now in favor of some others. (I've been alarmingly flighty on side projects lately.) I'll likely get back to it eventually... —scs 16:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

user-custom monobook[edit]

Hmm, I'm not sure about that. It may be a hook or extension, compare your Version for that. It may (more likely) also be a setting in LocalSettings.php. You can search Meta for this, but a less time-consuming thing to do is post to mediawiki-l. — Vildricianus 09:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

w:Help:User style tells me the following:

$wgAllowUserJs  = true;
$wgAllowUserCss = true;

Settings in LocalSettings.php. — Vildricianus 13:41, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! That's it. Thanks. –scs 17:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Top 40[edit]

There is a list here, but it never got much response. Perhaps we should throw the list on the BP to attract comments. Please be bold in this, I've had my fair share for now. Cheers. — Vildricianus 11:43, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scsbot[edit]

As a matter of more than slight technical interest, how are you accomplishing the partial and/or section additions your bot is doing? --Connel MacKenzie T C 02:22, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing too remarkable. I have an infrastructure that lets me feed a page's editbox textarea to an arbitrary shell script for editing. For adding these rhymes, that script is an ad-hoc one that looks for the ===Pronunciation=== line and adds the rhyme at the end of that section, or if there is no Pronunciation section it looks for the ===Etymology=== line and adds a new Pronunciation section after it, or if there is no Etymology section it backs up to the ===English=== line and adds a Pronunciation section after that.
Anyway, as I say, nothing magical. The script is basically mucking around with the editbox text the same way you or I would. I'll post the code shortly. —scs 03:50, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
<yoda>A great job, it's doing.</yoda> — Vildricianus 19:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In anticipation of the bot flag, could you mark edits as minor? — Vildricianus 13:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done. (The code was already written; just had to invoke it.) —scs 15:02, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You could of course have set this in your preferences as well :-). — Vildricianus 15:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apparent duplicates in rhymes pages[edit]

Please be careful with your removal of what appear to be duplicats in the rhymes pages. Links of the form:

indicate two different words "x", one of which has "y" as an alternative spelling. — Paul G 09:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, thanks for the clean-up work - I appreciate it. :) — Paul G 09:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Me again... please don't add foreign words to the English rhymes. "Lex" is Latin, unless, of course, you know an English meaning, in which case you might want to update lex accordingly. — Paul G 09:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it is English, in the same way that i.e., e.g. and ad nauseam (etc.) are. — Vildricianus 10:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicates: understood; I eventually figured that out, and stopped. (But you're going to have to explain more clearly why you want two fletchers!)

Foreign words: agree. I've added the English sense of lex I had in mind.

scs 12:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've replied on my user page. — Paul G 09:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Multisyllable Rhymes[edit]

What are your thoughts on Multisyllable Rhymes. The official Wiktionary position seems to be that individualization rhymes with oversimplification, which to my mind, they don't. To my mind, rhyming is not symmetric, as bumblebee is a rhyme for tea, but not the other way around. Should the individualization page have pointers to multiple rhymes, e.g. ation, zation, ization, lization, alization, ualization, idualization, etc.? Certainly the page rhymes:English:-eɪʃən seems too cluttered to be useful -- might it be better to have all two syllable rhymes, and then pointers to the rhyme pages for flation, kation, nation, sation, zation et al?

I'm sure this has all been discussed, but I can't find such a discussion. And please forgive my use of ascii rather than IPA.

— This unsigned comment was added by Avjewe (talkcontribs) at 20:38, 20 June 2006.

Clearly there are several possible ways of organizing the rhymes. I didn't have anything to do with the design of the scheme Wiktionary uses, and it took a bit of getting used to, but it seems pretty good to me.
It's true that there are an awful lot of rhymes listed at Rhymes:English:-eɪʃən, but of course that's a quirk given how many words there are in English formed by adding -ation. (It occurs to me that it might be worth broadening the rule we have against including every simple past tense and plural derivation, to also include broadly constructive suffixes like -ation.)
Your suggestion, it sounds like, might actually be more conservative that Wikipedia's current rule. Usually the direction people want to go in (either deliberatly or by accident) is to match on just the last syllable, as opposed to all-syllables-after-and-including-the-stressed-syllable. But if you don't want inividualization to rhyme with oversimplification, it sounds like you might be suggesting involving all the word's syllables in the comparison.
Since different people are looking for different things out of rhyme lists, no one scheme will ever be perfect. The best we can hope for is that people can find what they're looking for, culling our lists (or combining two or three) as necessary, but without having to do too much extra work.
In the fullness of time we might indeed want to have several different, overlapping categorization schemes, especially if the pages could be autogenerated. Another wrinkle that would be useful to consider would be to introduce the possibility of optionally grouping rhymes based on American pronunciation. (Currently they're based on British pronunciation.) In the meantime, more cross links might help.
Mostly I'm just blathering here. If you have specific suggestions, I encourage you to post them at the Beer Parlour, to see what some of the real regulars think. (Beware that, even if you have a good sugggestion, you're likely to meet some resistance at first from the entrenched status quo, but don't let this discourage you.) —scs 02:20, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the reasoning. Rhymes are organised by the primary stress only. Hence almost all words ending in "-ation" are rhymes, as the stress is on the "-a-" of "-ation". (There are a few exceptions - cation.)
By this criterion alone, individualization and oversimplification are indeed rhymes. However, if secondary stress and meter are taken into consideration, then they are not. If * represents primary stress, ' secondary stress, and - unstressed syllables, then the stress patterns of these words (in my accent) are: '-'---*- and '-'--*- respectively. The first word has an extra unstressed syllable (in "al").
Meter is sometimes important to poets, but it is for them, rather than us, to judge whether or not to choose "oversimplification" as a rhyme for "individualization".
The "-ation" page contains only a small fraction of all the "-ation" words in my word list, and will only get longer. Some way of subdividing it (perhaps one "syllables" section per page) will be necessary if it is to be usable. My feeling is that subdividing it by meter is not the way to break it up.
Regarding non-UK pronunciations, there is at least one user who is considering how this might be done.

"poor" and "pure"[edit]

From User talk:Paul G. I've responded to your "boor"/"pure" question there.

Are "poor" and "pure" the same for you, except for the /j/ sound in "pure"? If not, then perhaps you have the pure-poor split w:://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language vowel changes before historic r#Pure-poor split Ligo 02:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See User talk:Paul G.

I don't think you're imagining the difference between the vowels in "poor" and "pure". I certainly have a difference between the vowels in "poor" and "pure" in my speech as I have the pure-poor split. Do "pure" and "fir" rhyme for you? "pure" and "fir" rhyme for me, as I have the cure-fir merger w:English-language vowel changes before historic r#Cure-fir merger. "poor" and "pour" are homonyms for me as I have the pour-poor merger w:English-language vowel changes before historic r#Pour-poor merger

I would thus transcribe these words in my speech as:

  • poor - /pOr/
  • pour - /pOr/
  • pure - /pj3`/
  • fir - /f3`/

I don't have /ʊə(r)/ or /ʊr/ in my speech. I've started a page about rhymes for "fir" at rhymes:English:-3(`). Ligo 16:25, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Too many questions! :-)
I've probably got some version of the poor/pure split, but if so, it's the North American one, not the New Zealand one.
Some times I'm not even sure how I say things. Sometimes poor sounds like tour; sometimes it sounds more like pore. (Same with pour.)
When I was 17 I moved from Southern California to Massachusetts to go to school, and the one thing I got teased about was how I said roof. But now I can't even remember whether I said it like foot and the Northeasterners said it should be like boot, or vice versa. (I'm totally schizo now. Same with route, which either rhymes with root or out. On alternate days, that is. :-) )
Pure and fir are definitely different for me. Pure definitely has a longer /oo/, like spoor or manure or boor. Fir for me is probably /əɹ/, and that's an interesting case, because I think I say it more like the colloquial pronunciation of for that's phonetically spelled "fer". And, in fact, I was already thinking that we need to list for and your on the rhymes:English:-ɜː(r) page for that reason (or, perhaps, on your new -3(`) page). It's not how I say 'em, but imagine the carnival barker: "Step right up! Get yer hot apple pies here! Two fer a dollar!"
I'm going to have to spend a lot of time studying w:English-language vowel changes before historic r, and then maybe I can figure some of this stuff out.
scs 17:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another question. Sorry for so many questions, but do the following rhyme for you:
  • "pure" and "fewer"
  • "poor" and "mooer"
Ligo 18:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No prob on the questions, although until you moved them back here, I was about to say, we might have to apologize to Paul for laying waste to his talk page like that. :-) No, I don't have the two-syllable pronunciations of pure and poor (which I gather are one facet of the NZ poor/pure split). But I was thinking about sewer (which until recently was missing from Rhymes:English:-uːə(r)), because while it's got two syllables, its first-syllable vowel is very close to my poor. —scs 19:01, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You're saying that your "pour" sometimes rhymes with "tour"? I'm from Northern England and, while I distinguish between "pore" and "poor" as /po@r/ and /pU@r/, my "pour" always rhymes with "pore", never "poor". P.S. Do you pronounce "hire" and "higher" the same way? For me, "hire" has one syllable (a triphthong) while "higher" has two syllables. Jooge 19:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did suggest that pour might sound almost like tour, but I may have to retract that. (It's hard, of course, to make definitive pronouncements about punctuation, even one's own, because especially when you get self-conscious about listening to how you say things, sometimes they come out different.) But I can certainly imagine pour with more of an /oo/ than pore. This is perhaps more pronounced in the participle: though pouring can be a homophone for poring, it's not necessarily. (But it probably never goes so far as touring, either.)
Yes, higher and hire are pretty much homophones for me. (How did you guess? :-) )
I guessed because many people have said they have two syllables in "hire". However, for me "higher" is two syllables /haI.@r/ while "hire" is one triphthonged syllable /haI@r/. I make the same distinction between "lyre" having one syllable and "liar" have two syllables. Also, dictionary.com mentions "lyre" as having one syllable http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lyre and "liar" as having two syllables http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liar. Jooge 14:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Are there other words than "tripthong" for that sort of partial-syllable thing? I was just noticing that s'more used to be on rhymes:English:-ɔː(r) but has been commented out. I was thinking of putting it back in, but I can't decide if it's one syllable or two, or 1½.
scs 13:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't really heard of any words for it other than triphthong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triphthong. By the way, do you also pronounce "flour" and "flower" the same way? Does "coir" rhyme with "employer" for you? For me, "flour" and "coir" have one syllable while "flower" and "employer" have two. If you do rhyme "flour" and "flower" as well as "coir" and "employer" then you probably have r-breaking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_consonants#R-breaking in your speech. Jooge 14:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Flour and flower: yeah, pretty much homophones.
Coir: never even heard the word!
I've just remembered that other canonical examples of questionably-syllabified words are squirrel and kitten. —scs 15:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(after a pause) Oh! coir! I guess I have seen that word, maybe once, though it's never made it into my vocabulary. I'd've guessed it was pronounced /kwore/ or /kwahr/, à la français. —scs 15:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do you pronounced "squirrel? For me, it's "skwirr-ul" with the vowel sound in "bit" in the first syllable and it definitely has two syllables. Jooge 15:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
'Round these parts, it's one syllable, and rhymes with whirl. (The vowel is more of an /ur/, as in Burt or girl or quirt).
I wonder how Professor Quirrell's name is typically pronounced? —scs 15:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So you pronounced "kitten" with one syllable, homophonous with "kin". For me, "kitten" definitely has two syllables "kitt-un" and does not sound like "kin" Jooge 15:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
kitten isn't /kin/, but it isn't /kit ten/, either (though some people do pronounce it that way). It's /kit n/, where there's hardly any vowel in the second syllable at all (that is, it's not even really /kit ən/). I think this is called a "syllabic consonant", represented in IPA as /n̩/. Another example is button. Like squirrel and s'more, these are words I find myself asking whether they might have 1½ syllables. —scs 15:47, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moor[edit]

Quote-"I've been mucking around at rhymes:English:-ʊə(r) and rhymes:English:-ɔː(r), and now I'm confused. The suggestion there is that moor rhymes with floor and store, and is therefore a homophone for more. And I'm sure that for some speakers it is, but me, I've always pronounced moor to rhyme with pure and the surname Muir. Does anyone else, or am I the only one? —scs 15:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)"

You're not the only one. I'm from Northern England and I also rhyme "moor" with "pure" rather than with "store". Jooge 03:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Thanks. —scs 13:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wheels[edit]

Thanks for that, I'd already blocked the account on sight. Jonathan Webley 12:41, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pore and pour[edit]

Come to think about, "pore" and "pour" can sometimes sound different in my speech. "pour" sometimes has more of an "owe" vowel /poUr/, as in "tow", "row" and "grow" in my speech. It never rhymes with "tour" though, which has an "oo" sound. Jooge 15:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, good point about the /ow/ vowel.
P.S., do you pronounce "horse" and "hoarse" the same way? For me, "horse" is /hOrs/, while "hoarse" is /ho@rs/. Jooge 15:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, those words are pretty much the same for me. If anything, the /h/ in horse is more pure; I can imagine that I or speakers I'm familiar with, if asked to make a distinction, might pronounce hoarse a little more like /hworse/. —scs 15:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least for me, the difference is in the vowels. The /h/s in the two words are pretty much the same for me. "hoarse" for me has the vowel in "roar", "wore", "door", "floor", "more", "board" etc. /o@r/ while "horse" has the vowel in "cord", "for", "nor", "fork", "horn" etc. /Or/ Jooge 15:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Consonants are aspirated in English - hence "hoarse" (or "horse" for that matter) can sound "rough" in some accents. A particularly strong example is the /h/ in "huge", which is more like /ç/ (the consonant in German "ich").
By the way, I've replied on my page to the comment you posted there. — Paul G 19:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

coördinate et alibi[edit]

Thanks for your contributions. Luckily, I kept a copy of the coördinate definition as I was rather proud of myself, and so was able to resurrect my definition with very little hassle - who said that pride was a sin? I have combined the usage note you gave at coordinate with mine and placed them under the Alternative spellings section of coördinate. The pages for co-ordinate and coordinate are now redirects. I will copy the usage notes to the pages of all the derived terms soon. Thank you again. Doremítzwr 19:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be better for co-ordinate and coordinate to be link pages, not redirects. Wiktionary policy is moving away from redirects for most purposes, and though I can't keep track of all the nuances of the policy, I'm pretty sure that spelling variants like these are supposed to have their own, true pages. (That's what I'd favor in this case, at any rate.) For one thing, a real (non-redirect) coordinate page can retain the "in other languages" cross-references.
Also, while a case could be made for having coöperate be the "main" spelling for that word, I don't believe I ever see anyone spelling coordinate as coördinate these days, so moving the content from the former to the latter is a debatable move. In fact, the coördinate page you had written last night didn't disappear by accident; it was deleted by User:SemperBlotto, I think after someone brought it up at WT:RFD. You might want to ask him his opinion, too.
[P.S. Probably no deed to duplicate the Usage Note all over the place; rather, leave it at coordinate or coördinate and then just say "See usage note at ..." on the pages for all the derived terms.] —scs 19:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again. Sorry it took so long for me to reply to you on this issue; it was very rude of me. At the time, I was not in the mood for the hassle of arguing my case concerning this word. However, since then, the discussion has been reöpened at the Requests for Verification Page, where I have given my points. Would you like to join us there for the discussion? Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 03:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted the "see also" link to scénario (which it looks like you added), because it was red. —scs 21:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Usually we don't do that. On the contrary, red link is red link, they should remain in place. — Vildricianus 21:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, okay, let me put it this way: what is that link there for, and what would the scénario page contain if it existed? —scs 21:28, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SSH? Noun = {{initialism}}? — Vildricianus 13:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience, it's always lower-case, and it's a name, not an abbreviation or an initialism. —scs 15:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bots[edit]

With 6 support votes, I'm sure you can ask the bot flag at meta. — Vildricianus 09:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! Thanks for the tip. I didn't realize we don't have bureaucrats; I didn't realize I needed to ask there. Done. —scs 16:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We do have bureaucrat(s), so you could ask Paul to set the flag as well... but meta will be waaay faster :-D — Vildricianus 16:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In case Dvortygirl hasn't already told you, your proposed rhymes bot has finally been granted bot status. Sorry for the long delay. I haven't been around here much lately, but Dvortygirl has been getting stuck in as our new bureaucrat. — Paul G 19:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic vs Arabic alphabet[edit]

Hi Scs. I just saw this edit of yours. Has this kind of combining been discussed anywhere? Because I think it's a bad idea. The thing is that Arabic script is generally called Arabic no matter which language it's used for - and it's used for many. Even on this Wiktionary we have quite a lot of Persian and Urdu articles and a smattering for other languages which use Arabic script. Now when you put the entry under the heading Arabic, it means we have no entry to cover all the other languages. If we are to do this then we need very similar entries for every other language which uses Arabic too. To me it makes more sense to have one entry with the level-2 heading having the name of the script rather than the language. What do you think? — Hippietrail 22:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, it hasn't been discussed anywhere; that was just me being bold and/or hasty, after noticing from Stridvall's tool that the "Arabic alphabet" header was only used just that once.
I didn't know that the Arabic script was used for other languages. Would "Translingual" then be the better choice for these letters? I really don't like random extra level-2 headings. —scs 23:12, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Non-UK rhymes[edit]

Hi,

I appreciate your supportive comment on my user page regarding non-UK pronunciations. I'm pleased that you are interested in working towards integrating rhymes based on US pronunciation with the existing rhymes.

One obstacle you'll have to overcome is that US dictionaries don't agree on a standard pronunciation. UK dictionaries tend to use RP (or something close to it), while US English doesn't (as far as I am aware) have a single standard pronunciation. (That's not to say that UK English has only one accent - far from it!)

If I can help you with this, please let me know. Note that I am not around on here as much as I used to be. — Paul G 19:44, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot policy[edit]

Thanks for getting the ball rolling. However, I've been pretty busy lately and it seems I'll stay busy for a while. Please remind me if I don't respond to it this week. — Vildricianus 21:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rhymes bot[edit]

One thing I've noticed about the rhymes bot is that it is adding rhymes links in a non-standard format. I'm sure we discussed somewhere about the "Rhymes" link not needing to go under "Pronunciation" in case there is not already a pronunciation section.

But looking at WT:ELE it looks like this has changed, so it is doing it according to standard practice already, so ignore what I have just said.

One thing that is however slightly incorrect about the format is that there should be no colon after the asterisk, as it puts an ugly space between the bullet point and what follows.

*Rhymes

rather than

*:Rhymes

Is it possible for your rhymes bot to go back and correct this? — Paul G 09:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The extra space was deliberate, and mimicked what I thought I'd seen on most of the old, manually-added rhymes links. And me, I thought it looked good, not "ugly" -- homophones and rhymes being sort of adjuncts to punctuation, I thought it made sense to offset them a bit from the actual punctuations. But I confess I'd never actually looked at what WT:ELE said, and you're right, it does specify the format, and without the indent.
I've changed the script, and depending on how strongly people feel I'll have it fix all the "wrong" ones on the next pass. —scs 11:47, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're most welcome![edit]

I very much enjoyed meeting you, and your introduction to the square! Lovely dinner. - Amgine/talk 03:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OneWomanArmy923 and the word Cuff[edit]

Yes, it's very underground. I also recommended this word to another online slang dictionary. I don't know how to prove it but I'll certainly try. Phew, this place is really awesome.

Thank you so much for the help on how to get the blue highlight on my username. You are very helpful and it's very very appreciated. In fact, when I saw that you had a TOC on your talk page I just had to have one too. So you're helpful and inspiring. Thank you very much. User: OneWomanArmy923
You are such a nice person. I looked up the TOC and implemented it on my talk page, albeit rather badly. LOL I'm not sure what you mean about the last comment you made about cuff but I'll look into it. I just started a new job as a researcher and with my other job it leaves me very little time. I will look into what you said though. Thanks S. --OneWomanArmy923 03:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you[edit]

Thank you again. FYI: {{welcome}}, {{welcomeip}} and {{pediawelcome}} all exist and whichever one is used is normally "subst:"'ed when put on a new user's talk page.  :-)   --Connel MacKenzie 17:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this comment was meant for you. To clarify:
  1. Thank you for commenting on User talk: Fabartus.
  2. Re: User talk:OWA, those three templates are the ones normally used for welcoming people on en.wikt:.
--Connel MacKenzie 19:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Voting[edit]

I would like to point out to anyone who hasn't voted yet that there are at least four votes going on at the moment that everyone has a vested interest in, 4 Checkusers, 2 Admins, 1 new logo and 1 boardmember, the more the merrier when it comes to these votes, especially the checkusers which requires 25 votes before anyone can be appointed, and the board vote which determines the course of Wikimedia! - TheDaveRoss 15:42, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the kind message[edit]

I'd appreciate it if you could try submitting (and/or resubmitting) some voting policy votes. I'm particularly interested in how easy or hard it is, to make a new nomination. I suspect that the choice of the six different buttons may be counter-intuitive. So, suggestions on how to simplify it are appreciated. Thanks in advance. --Connel MacKenzie 18:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RFCs[edit]

Yes. I'm the author or co-author of a number of RFCs; inventor of some of the things you use. (I'm the one who told Brian Ritchie to take his Plan 9 proposal for encoding UCS in 8 bits to the ISO WG, the result was UTF-8 ;-). Robert Ullmann 14:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You mean Ken Thompson. Yes, I shouldn't have said "his" referring to Ritchie. But I was talking to Ritchie, and didn't know then that Thompson had devised it. ;-) Robert Ullmann 14:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, bloody 'el. I've conflated Brian (Kernighan) and Dennis's first names. It has been too long. Seems like yesterday sometimes that I was working on that stuff, but it has been like 15 years ... sigh. Robert Ullmann 11:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Public domain word lists[edit]

Thanks for pointing me towards those. I've now programmed the analysis to read and merge all those files and I should think between them they have almost as much as OED. Certainly good enough for the present task. Moglex 16:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Junctions and crossovers[edit]

I'd be delighted if you would straighten out whichever of these terms you believe are legit so we can all move on. —Dvortygirl 05:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Tis unprotected. I ask only that you add the proper entry promptly so as to help discourage any further abuse. When you're done, I'll try to remember to semi-protect it for good measure. —Dvortygirl 21:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]