Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2005/April-June

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Watchlist Bug?

There seems to be something funny going on with my watchlist. There are currently two occurences of Wiktionary:Beer parlour, and no, I'm not getting confused with the talk page. Here's what I get:

30 Mar 2005

24 Mar 2005

Anyone else having this problem? --HappyDog 00:53, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Confusingly, I just noticed that the entry from 24th March doesn't appear in the history for this page. I expect this is probably something that crept in during the recent page move vandalism, but I don't know how it should be resolved. --HappyDog 00:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
HappyDog, the watchlist specifically resets the list for each day. You will see as many as one entry per day of each article. --Connel MacKenzie 04:11, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No it doesn't, it lists the most recent edit for each page you are watching. If this weren't the case I would have the beer parlour listed for pretty much every single day. I only have one extra entry (aside from the most current) which is for the 24th March, and this doesn't even show up in the page history for this page. The same is true of the talk page by the way. --HappyDog 13:50, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I was thinking of recent changes. --Connel MacKenzie 06:15, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

April fool day

April 1 is known for its pranks. And if you fall for it you say something like "April fool". To me the abcense of any technical discussion following the overwhelming vote for the end of first character capitalisation and the nasty way in which the implementation is being frustrated makes me say that the joke is on you. The en:wiktionary crowd proves impotent to implement its decisions.

I think it is a sorry site to behold (here I do not know if site is spelled correctly but I am sorry indeed).

I will not ask the developers. I will hear about it, I guess, when it has happened. :( GerardM 12:50, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Site" was spelled correctly.
I'm convinced he meant sight (aanblik in Dutch). Polyglot 08:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is overwhelming support for the change. On the transition page I raised some points about what might need to be done before the change could be made. Rather than address those points, and perhaps run the queries that might be needed, you just come here and complain about how others aren't acting fast enough to meet the quick deadline that you envision. This seems to give strength to the old adage, "With friends like this who needs enemies?" We would appreciate if you became part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Eclecticology 17:11, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I have converted several wiktionaries after ending first character capitalisation. I have found that you cannot expect others to do the work for you. The developers have shown NOT be interested in programming stuff for projects other than wikipedia. I walk the talk. You cannot accuse me of not being hands on where I am involved.
That's exactly what I mean. Where you are involved you do a formidable job. But on this Wiktionary you have to let us take care of it. We can also talk to the developers ourselves. So when the time is right we will do so. You are not helping by trying to rush things. Polyglot 08:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I have no queries to run. I have pointed out that we can convert MANY articles by bot. I am willing to get these organised. I have said that ALL the resulting redirects need to be removed because in future these will NOT be created even in the current context. The only response has been that it is problematic. Right, this change is not trivial so nothing new here..
I have been exhorting the en:wiktionary crowd to discuss the technical issues. There has been no discussion. I have put a dead line for today to focus the minds, to no avail. And now I am branded the enemy..??? !!!! There has been an absense of discussion for the last few weeks. Basically, you do not need an enemy, you do its work perfectly well by doing nothing and expect others to do the work for you. GerardM 17:32, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Don't set deadlines if you are not part of the solution. That is what is creating bad feelings toward you. Polyglot 08:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Exhorting people is not always an effective technique. Deadlines on technical discussions do not produce results among people who do not grasp the technical issues. I am as disappointed as you in people's lack of technical discussions. Here are two points where bots would help at this matter.
1. In the large number of articles on CJK characters links for script names like "Hanzi" and "Kanji" should be "hanzi" and "kanji". This seems to be the largest group of wrongly capitalized links. A bot could clean this up quickly.
2. When that first problem is fixed it would be nice to have a query that produces a list of those links which are capitalized, and which may need to be corrected. Perhaps too the affected could hava a category fo unchecked capitalized links added. These could be removed when the links have been checked. A list of uncapitalized links should not be needed as these will likely be correct. Eclecticology
I hope I will find a day to dedicate to programming this some time soon. It's not easy to do so while trying to balance a full time job and consulting though. Polyglot 08:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Changing ALL occurences of a particular word to another word can be done by existing bots.
As long as you can not specify what constitutes a word that may need capitalisation, you cannot do things automagically. Basically there is no magic bullit. Procrastinating will not bring one. Not acting on what is decided in a bitter issue makes the situation worse.
PS I found that I am in the top contributor list for the en:wiktionary bothpersonally and as my bot persona. GerardM 05:22, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Good. Do you think you could please begin by dealing with the issue on the CJK pages? The No. 1 contributor is still the bot who dealt with all the CJK pages. Eclecticology 17:42, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Please define the problem. Then I may be able to do something about it. GerardM 17:56, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Fair enough. In English the names of languages are capitalized but the names of scripts are not. For the large numbers of pages that we have for the CJK characters this has resulted in a large number of links with the wrong capitalization. The links are probably more easily fixed by a bot before the switchover. The ones that I have identified as requiring change are Hanzi, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Kanji, Hanja, Romaji, On, Kun, Hangeul, Eumhun, and Pinyin. Eclecticology 20:40, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I have run a bot that changed Kanji to kanji. It is as easy to do it for all the other terms. GerardM 15:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Species appears as part of speech

There seems to be massive abuse going on in many taxonomy templates: The word species is used where the part of speech, ie something like noun phrase in the cases I know about, should appear. See Felis domesticus. Ncik 01 Apr 2005

The taxonomic pages are not normal definitions. The third level entries are the taxonomic category - order, genus, species etc. I have changed the second level entry from New Latin (which I was never really happy with) to Taxonomy to try to show the difference to a normal page. SemperBlotto 21:35, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But it is very confusing to have extra rules for taxonomic terms. Taxonomic terms are not that different from normal words that they would deserve such an extra treatment. I see the problem of finding an appropriate language section heading ("New Latin", "Translingual", "Taxonomy", or whatever), but that is not my problem. I criticise not indicating of which part of speech these terms are, and, even worse, putting the word "species", which is obviously meant as some sort of classification, in the typeface and place the part of speech is supposed to be in. A better place to let the word species crop up is in the parantheses right after the definition number. See my latest edit of Felis domesticus. Ncik 02 Apr 2005
Well, this apparently requires the taxonomy template to be changed. So I'll do this as well. Ncik 02 Apr 2005
Your point about these headings is well taken. I can live with "Taxonomy" in place the language name, but we have no need to replace the names of the part of speech with taxonomic ranks. We also don't need to have "taxonomy" as a category for every species name. Such a category would be much more efficient if it were restricted to general terms used in taxonomy.
I have mixed feelings about whether this is the place for taxonomic histories as presented. That may well be the job of Wikipedia or Wikispecies, but I'm not sure which. The obsolete binomials are a part of the history of the language. It is certainly no place for listing the various taxonomic divisions that come below the taxon unfer consideration.
In its present format the article makes excessive use of templates. This does not encourage others to edit when they have new or different information. Concerns have also been raised about how this will affect the tracing of information for purposes of appliying GFDL. Eclecticology 05:44, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't use the term "abuse" but I also disagree with these articles. Words such as "species" or "subspecies" should be in the def, not in any heading. I really disliked "New Latin" so I'm glad that has been changed. I also dislike the templates because they make the "source code" of those articles quite opaque to the casual user - including me! I do like how easy it makes it to fix the words of all the pages at once but that's a smaller win in my opinion. I also don't agree with every one of these pages being in a taxonomy category, but not very strongly.
As for "taxonomic history" I would greatly prefer that section gotten rid of and the terms be placed in a "Synonyms" section, and marked as "obsolete" - perhaps even with the year they became obsolete since in this special case we actually know the dates. I'm no expert so perhaps some such terms were never official yet gained some currency at some point in history. I don't know whether "obsolete" or some other marking would be appropriate in that case.
I think that this information can coexist on Wiktionary and Wikipedia/Wikispecies but with us focusing only on the dictionary aspects of the terms.
P.S. I previously wrote an opinion of several of these topics and am unsure whether it was lost in vandalism recovery or I just didn't press the "Save page" button. C'est la vie! — Hippietrail 13:46, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm glad to see we're mostly in agreement on this. :-) Perhaps "overuse" might have been a better term than "abuse". I introduce the term "New Latin" just to have something, but not with the intent of defending it if someone came up with something better. My objection to "Category:Taxonomy" was that if we use that for every living being it would soon become unmanageably big.
Putting the "taxonomic history" material into "Synonyms" seems like a sensible idea. Material in this section could be treated in a manner similar to what is done in biological works. The word "obsolete" may not be needed, and may even be misleading when you consider the different kinds of synonymy. The years to be used would be description dates rather than a reference to when something ceased to be "official". In response to this I took a book off the shelf and opened the page to "Aedes melanimon Dyar" (Diptera: Culicidae). The name list then gives
Grabhamia mediolineata Ludlow, 1907 (preoccupied in Aedes by Aedes mediolineatus (Theobald), 1901)
Aedes melanimon Dyar, 1924
Aedes klotsi Matheson, 1933
This short list gives an idea of some of the problems encountered. The species was first described in one genus, Grabhamia. When Dyar studied the matter in 1924 he detrermined that this species really belonged to Aedes; this would have caused a conflict because that species name was already used in the genus for something else! The name "Theobald" is in parentheses because that species had been originally put in another genus, Culex, when it was first described. Aedes klotsi was described later, and subsequently discovered to be the same thing. This can get very tricky. Eclecticology 19:17, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think it we should keep the "Taxonomy history" information, which I would say is of etymological nature, and thus should appear in the etymology section. Another point that was mentioned above is the use of templates. I completely understand that they are extremely useful for users that create lots of entries (SemperBlotto, eg), but they are difficult to handle for new or less active editors (and even for those who know how templates work, every edit (apart from the first) is a lot of hassle, since one might not know this particular template, and even if one does, there is always the chance that someone changed its definition). Furthermore, they are too inflexible to be used as a frame for an entire article. Ncik 02 Apr 2005

This is what I propose (and am prepared to execute):-

  • restructure a typical taxonomic entry without using the 'taxonomy' template, and without the 'taxonomy' category, and let people modify it until we reach a consensus.
  • restructure all the others in the same way
  • construct a List (or probably Lists) to replace the category
  • when the category is empty, rewrite the 'taxonomy' template to be like 'chemistry' and 'physics' and add it to words that are 'about' taxonomy
  • carry on creating taxonomic entries, mostly from the top down

SemperBlotto 06:46, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that the taxonavigator is exactly the thing that Wikispecies is putting together, and for us to get into that is just duplicating their efforts. Similarly, Wikipedia is concerned with textual material about the taxon being discussed. That being said there are probably two areas remaining where we could focus our attention, and which are consistent with what a dictionary does. The problems of synonymy is one area that has already been mentioned. The other area where we could contribute is in etymology; where do all these biological names come from? Eclecticology 02:02, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I have added an Etymology section to Carnivora, and replaced the Taxonavigation section, mostly with Related terms. More opinions, please. SemperBlotto 09:45, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What is the point

What is the point of having taxonominal names in a dictionary ?? There are multiple names for the same taxon that are taxanominally valid names. Taxonominal names can have different discriptions that are valid under the rules of taxonomy. It is folly to include taxonomy in wiktionary when we hope to achieve something sensible in Wikispecies. GerardM 09:57, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we should start another discussion labelled "All words in all languages (exceptions)" (I can think of a few) SemperBlotto 10:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The labels used in taxonomy are not used in any language. GerardM 11:12, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That's not true; sometimes the labels used in taxonomy are the only common designation in ordinary language (e.g. E. coli). And they are very useful, not least for those of us working from old sources: if Webster 1913 tells me, say, that a thrasher, also called fox, is a shark of species Alopias vulpes I would like to be able to have a dictionary that tells me that that's an outdated version of the current name Alopias vulpinus — and better, when Liddell & Scott (1879) tells me that vulpes marina ("sea fox") is identified with Linnaeus' Squalus alopecia, I'd like to have a dictionary that tells me whether it's the same as the others. As long as fish are involved, fishbase.org is actually pretty good for this (for the fish in question, see its synonyms page)... I'd like to see Wiktionary do better, e.g., with etymologies, pronunciations, etc. —Muke Tever 02:33, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What you need is a resource, that is what wikispecies will provide. Wiktionary will NEVER have the content to do this for all species. So what point is there in duplicating this effort ?? What you need is an interproject link when you want to use websters content.. GerardM 06:08, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I very much agree that we should not be duplicating the efforts of Wikispecies, but these terms are nevertheless a part of language. A person who encounters the term Blattella germanica in his reading needs to know that we are referring to a cockroach. He needs to know that when he encounters the genus name spelled with one "t" it is a common error. He should know that Blatta germanica has been an invalid synonym for this since 1903. He should know about who developed this name and when. He should know that "Blattella" is a diminutive of "Blatta", which is the original Latin for "cockroach", and that "germanica" simply means "german", though the etymology is prabably better placed on the pages for the individual component words. We probably need to discuss with the Wikispecies people where the demarcation of responsibility lies, and how much overlap is acceptable. Eclecticology 17:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OED has a bunch of taxonomic names, though not all. If I see "Cordia" in a mystifying context, OED falls down for me, because it doesn't have an entry, and I would have to hunt for another source that explains it (in this particular case, WP saves the day). My expectation for Wiktionary is that it should include any valid string in any language, and either define it for me, or point me to another Wikimedia project that explains it. What use is a Wiktionary with holes? Might as well stick with Google searches then... Stan Shebs 00:11, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Language templates

Anyone else who thinks that language templates, especially in "Translations" sections, are a pain in the arse? I never know where to insert a new language because of {{eo}}=Spanish, {{de}}=German, {{io}}=Ido, etc. Ncik 02 Apr 2005

Actually "eo" is Esperanto; "es" is Spanish. That helps to prove your point. :-) Eclecticology 22:43, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
lol Ncik
I think the order should be the one that the user expects - alphabetical according to the name that appears on the screen - so Spanish after Russian and before Portuguese (anyway, I always use Italian rather than {{it}} - it's just as easy to write). SemperBlotto 09:41, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Discussing Words Pairwise

I would like to set up pages which discuss words, in particular their meaning and usage differences, pairwise. This would basically take Jun-Dai's proposals regarding the "Synonyms" section a step further, since

  1. a page can be set up for any two words (which are worth being compared to each other); this explicitly includes pairs of words from different languages;
  2. it would solve the problem of having (to have) two versions of each such comparison of words.

The only reason I haven't created such pages yet is that I don't know if something like "english_lead_etym2-german_führen_etym1" (where the two strings are in lexicographical order) is permissible. Any comments or suggestions? Ncik 03 Apr 2005

I can't say that I know what that string would do. The difficulty with such proposals is whether people would use it. Describing the difference between any two English words works well when it is on one of the pages, and the other page has a "See" reference. For bilingual situations it should be enough to put the explanation on the page for the foreign word. Eclecticology 04:35, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is more than one foreign language. I disagree that describing the differences of two words of the same language on one of the pages works well. I have hardly ever seen such a thing, and that's not surprising, since one doesn't know where to put what. Ncik 03 Apr 2005

Idioms, categories, parts of speech

(Some of this has been discussed under "categories" above).

People seem to be pretty busy putting in entries for idioms, which I think is great. However, there seems to be a bit of inconsistency on how to do it. In particular

  • Whether to use "Idiom" as a part of speech, or give "Phrase", "Noun phrase", or similar and mark the definition itself as idiomatic. Personally, I prefer the latter, as "idiom" is not actually a part of speech, and many idioms have non-idiomatic senses.
  • Whether to use the category "Idioms" or the category "English Idioms" for English idioms. I don't have a strong opinion on this, but consistency would be good.
  • Whether to say [[Category:Idioms]] (or "English Idioms") or whether to use a template such as {{idiom}}. Personally, I strongly prefer using a template.

What does anyone else think? -dmh 22:16, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  1. I have no particular objection to using "idiom" as a part of speech, especially when the expression is known only in its idiomatic form. Your alternative would be useful when the expression has both idiomatic and non-idiomatic uses.
  2. To the extent that categories are appropriate for this I would prefer simply "Idioms". This would leave "English idioms" avilable for those expressions that are unique to England in contrast to "American idioms".
  3. I prefer avoiding templates. Typing the additional word "Category" should be no big deal. I think that there has been an overuse of templates recently. Eclecticology 01:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  1. I have not always been consistent here (how unusual!) - but mostly I use "Idiom" if the phrase does not seem to be ever used in a non-idiomatic way, and "verbal phrase" etc if it is. I normally use the Category:English idioms if it is an idiom in the English language (I know we have some wonderfool French idioms). SemperBlotto 07:35, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  1. Since idiom isn't a part of speech, I shall use the word abuse again.
  2. I would prefer to have a category English Idioms rather than just Idioms to achieve consistency of denomination with respect to other languages. The English Idioms category may then have subcategories such as British English Idioms or American English Idioms.
  3. I don't like templates because they obscure the source code. Ncik 06 Apr 2005
Source code is what you typically have in software. We do not have source code. I do not understand the problems that people have with templates. If anything they ensure a consistent way of working. The one big problem with wiktionary (in all its forms) is its inconsistency. GerardM 10:27, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Well, source text then, or whatever the technical term is. Consistency should be obtained by having certain layout rules, not by forcing things into precomposed and undecipherable templates. Ncik 06 Apr 2005
Templates, which despite a recent minimal uptick are still grossly underused, help ensure consistent layout and use of tools such as categories. Currently most terms that could be categorized aren't, because most people will simply tag a specialized sense with something like (''squirrel porn'') ... and won't think to say (''squirrel porn'')[[Category:Squirrelporn]] .... If people can just say {{squirrelporn}} ... and be done with it, many more terms will be categorized, which is a good thing, and the format of tags will be consistent, which is less important but still nice.
This is particularly useful in cases like the Idioms category, where for basically historical reasons the name of the category doesn't match what you'd put in the tag, and there's the real possibility that some people who write the whole thing out longhand will say (''idiomatic'')[Category:Idiomatic], some will say (''idiom'')[Category:Idiom], some will say (''idiomatic'')[Category:Idioms] and so forth.
The whole point of the template here is that it hides the raw text. That's a feature, not a bug. You don't have to care exactly what category idioms go in or what term we might tag the definition with. You also don't have to care exactly how the templates fit together. Just say {{idiom}} or {{squirrelporn}} or whatever and be done with it. If your category/tag doesn't exist yet, it's easy to construct a new one, or you can just leave the entry as is (preferably noting this in the edit summary) and let someone else backfill. Even at this early stage, there are already predefined templates for many useful tags, and again, it's easy to add more.
Finally, no one is forcing anyone to do this. If you really like writing everything out longhand, knock yourself out. But then, why not go all the way and give up ==...== in favor of <h2>...</h2> and so forth? The major difference between those conveniences and new ones built with templates is that the new ones are new and so not as widely agreed upon. Whatever you do, though, please don't undo template usages that already exist with out a clear and specific reason for doing so. -dmh 04:40, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
1."Abuse" isn't a part of speech either. I don't see how it would be helpful to use that instead of "idiom". :-) I don't think we should be too rigid in how we interpret "part of speech". You even make me wonder whether I've been too rigid in my view about taxonomic binomials, at least to the point where I feel my own mind less made up than it was.
2.My avoidance of the word "English" in categories is based on the fact that this is the English Wiktionary. Eclecticology 16:23, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Removing the adjective English from these categories has nothing to do with philately or NPOV. As the English Wiktionary it is only natural that English words be treated differently, and with greater detail. We cannot possibly deal with translations to the same extent. There has never been an understanding that the "only" implication of being the English Wiktionary is that we write articles in English. The implications are much broader than that. Similarly, I would expect all the other Wiktionaries to give priority to their own language, but I'm not going to go there to insist because they have the autonomy to do things their way. Some of the categories that you mention are utterly useless. What would a person possibly look for in Category:English nouns? "English continent nouns" I would change to simply read "continents"; the fact that a continent name is a noun is a redundancy. There is no justification for using the major parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) as categories; this may not be the case for the minor ones which play a more structural role in a language. My habits will continue to ignore language specific navigation paths, preferring topical paths instead. Eclecticology 19:03, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I strongly oppose Eclecticology's view that the English Wiktionary should treat the English language differently from other languages. Such a policy ought to be abandoned if it exists; and Eclecticology's ... only natural that English words be treated differently... should be ... only natural that English words are treated differently ... Reserving categories like "Words originating from Latin venire" for English words would be unlogical and lead to constructions like "Words of any language originating from Latin venire". I don't hope anyone else supports Eclecticology's attitudes towards the role of the English language in the English Wiktionary. Ncik 06 Apr 2005
Thank you for correcting my use of a subjunctive; in retrospect it does seem a little weak. I take note of your clear support for changing the fact of life that the nuances of any language are best elaborated in that language. I would not support your awkward suggestions for categories relating to the derivations of words. Indeed, I have not yet commented on how to treat etymologies in categories because I don't yet have a clear picture in my own mind of what to suggest. Eclecticology 23:54, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm with Eclecticology on this one. What is the actual point of this Wiktionary? Who will be using it? Given that it is in English, it will therefore be used predominantly by English speakers. What will they be using it for? Predominantly to look up definitions of words in their own language. --HappyDog 01:05, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure that's true considering how many more non-native learners and speakers of English there are and how much bigger their demand for explanations and translations of English words is, and also considering that someone with mother tongue A (other than English) learning language B (not English either) is likely to use the English dictionary to look up words of B because almost anyone who's got an internet connection will understand at least a bit English and it is so much more likely to find a (good) entry for the word here just because English will almost certainly be the by far the most popular foreign language among native speakers of B. Many people here seem to forget that especially the English Wiktionary might just be used as a bridge between other languages, and that there are people using this Wiktionary although they are not interested in English words at all. [User:Ncik|Ncik]] 07 Apr 2005
That sounds like a load of anglo-centric chauvinism. The simple fact that the English Wiktionary is so much bigger than the others does not imply any claim to superiority, and we should not condone any attitude that it becomes so in the future. The long range ideal is that a person should be able to look up any word in the Wiktionary for his mother tongue. He should not need to pause to kiss anglo ass on the way to getting there. Eclecticology 08:07, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Nobody needs to claim superiority, the English Wiktionary just is superior. The long range ideal should be that anyone can look up any word in any language. I don't understand why you want people to look up words in their mother languages' Wiktionary only. You are the one who claims a special role for the English language by wanting people working with the Enlgish Wiktionary to implicitly assume that English (not any language as it should be) is meant if no language is specified. I only hope you wont succeed with your segregational approach. Ncik 07 Apr 2005
The factual basis for claiming that the English Wiktionary is superior is doubtful. The ideal is to have anyone look up words of any language in the language with which he is most familiar. There was no "only" about it. The "special role" for English in this Wiktionary is no different from the role that I would advocate for German or Thai in the respective Wiktionaries for those languages. Eclecticology 21:56, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I admit I should have limited the superiority claim to "superior as a foreign language dictionary". I wouldn't be surprised if the German Wiktionary does or will comprise more German words than the English one. I criticize your revised ideal and insist on mine: Someone with mother language Japanese, fluent in English may wish to use the English rather than the Japanese Wiktionary to look up French words because there are many French words that appear (in only slightly different form) in English which can facilitate memorizing these words. Ncik 08 Apr 2005
Sure, people may want to use the English Wikitionary for those reasons, but I don't think they would be too surprised if they had to browse to the French section to find the word. In fact, I expect it would be clearer if the languages were so delineated. I also don't think they would be surprised if, on the English Wiktionary, English words were the default assumption. --HappyDog 13:41, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikimania!

Registration for Wikimania, the first international Wikimedia conference, is now open. It will be brilliant fun. Everone is invited to join the event this summer.

Wikimania will take place from August 4-8, 2005 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The event will combine Wikimedia community discussions and software hacking with academic research, presentations of current implementations, and user/community panels. Wiki fans, community members, and developers are all invited to attend.

Feel free to submit presentations and other content for the conference; for more information, see the call for papers.

Please pass this message along, in English or in translation. For translations, see our internal announcement. To let the rest of the world know, use our public press release.

If you want to help or have great ideas for the conference, please write us via the meta-feedback page, or just ask on the foundation mailing list. Attendees can coordinate travel plans and other informal events on the Wikimania community pages.

Wikimania is an event from the community and for the community - it will be brought to life through your participation and suggestions!

Looking forward to seeing some of you this summer,

+sj + 23:08, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC), on behalf of the Wikimania organization team.

contribs

Hello beer drinkers. I wanna know if there exists a table of "most actie wiktionarians" anywhere, like the scrumptious ones they have over at our big sister Wikipedia's site? and any other random statistics for our humble abode. answer here if u would b so kind sirs/madams--Wonderfool 13:16, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That you'd find on this page. (And behold: It's recently updated as well - only one month old numbers. ;) \Mike 13:35, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It only shows stats for the en:wiktionary. There are no stats that show who is the most active off them all. Honestly it is not that relevant anyway. GerardM 15:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Well, unfortunately you have to check there for english numbers, here for German, here for Netherlands and so on, and then compare for yourself... \Mike 15:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
My understanding was that Wonderfool wanted something like w:Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits SemperBlotto 15:44, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn't even aware of that list :( \Mike 16:40, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation

There are a lot of entries in which the pronunciation in diffent pronunciation alphabets is given in one line. Is this the current convention or a deprecated standard? What are the alphabets in such lines, and in which order do they appear? If it's a deprecated way to give the pronunciation, what is the current one? Ncik 07 Apr 2005

Separate lines would be better. IPA and SAMPA are the recommended ones, but others are possible. Eclecticology 23:38, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
For best understanding of how something is to be pronounced, consider .ogg. GerardM 17:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki convention and cleanup?

Lately I have been noticing a lot of Transwiki entries. I think this is basically a good thing, since it makes usable content of stubs and short entries in Wikipedia and elsewhere. Under the current conventions, they end up in the Transwiki namespace as noted in Wiktionary_talk:Transwiki_log, and this puzzles me. If I or someone else cleans these up with formatting, templates, and wikification, is there some mechanism by which to make these entries "real" articles? Might it make more sense to bring these items in where they should someday live and somehow flag them for cleanup? Failing that, how should I handle those items I choose to clean up? Thanks! --Dvortygirl 18:40, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • If the article is worth keeping, reformat it as per WT:ELE, and then move it to the correct place, noting the move in the Transwiki log. This is all explained at m:transwiki, which is linked to right at the top of Wiktionary:Transwiki log. I'm going to tackle the transwikied articles once we've reduced the size of the Transwiki queue at Wikipedia. I've done one or two already, as you can see from the log. But there are still a lot of articles in the queue to be dealt with first, and the Wikipedia end of the process is non-trivial. Uncle G 18:59, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    Thanks, Uncle G. I read the link and cleaned up, moved, and logged banter (comments welcome). I mainly work on adding new content, but this looks like a good way to improve Wiktionary when my muse doesn't show up. Dvortygirl 19:50, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Idioms

There are quite some entries in the idioms category which aren't idioms. I've started removing the category tags from those entries, but came across a problem: Some of them are phrasal verbs and I wonder what the convention for the part of speech header for phrasal verbs is. I would prefer "Verb" and then indicate in the next line that it is a phrasal verb (in the bracket after the bold infinitive). Does that make sense, or has anyone objections/a better idea? Ncik 12 Apr 2005

Let's have a bit of a discussion first and decide what we do and don't want to call an idiom. The definition we give as of this writing is A phrase that cannot be fully understood from the separate meanings of the individual words which form it, but instead must be learned as a whole unit of meaning. (i.e., a listeme) This includes many if not most phrasal verbs. In the present case, you've marked "out of" and "make up" as not being idioms. They clearly are, in at least some of their senses, under our own definition.
Dictionary.com gives a similar definition: A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on., and my handy Webster's New Collegiate has 2. an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically (as no, it wasn't me) or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (as Monday week for "the Monday a week after next Monday"), so I don't think our definition is bad.
One good reason for marking idioms separately at all is to make it easier for non-native speakers to identify and learn phrases like go off. With traditional dictionaries, you'd have to look through go and/or off to find what you're looking for.
In cases like go off or make up, I would suggest using "Verb phrase" (or "Phrasal verb" — we can discuss that separately) as the part of speech and tagging the idiomatic senses as idiomatic. Thus out of in the sense of outside the boundaries of is not idiomatic, but out of as in we're out of milk is. In other words "phrasal verb" and "idiom" are not mutuall exclusive. Many if not most phrasal verbs have idiomatic senses — otherwise we wouldn't call them out specially.
Implicit in this and other discussion is that idiomaticity is a property of a sense of a term and not the term per se. IMHO, most if not all useful properties are properties of senses, not terms. These would include countability of nouns, comparability of adjectives, transitivity of verbs, pronunciation and probably even inflection. Translation is another good example. It's very often impossible to find a single word that translates all senses of a given word, even in closely related languages (e.g., English of is usually but not always translatable as Dutch van), but it's generally if not always possible to translate a given sense of a word directly. Indeed, this is a good cross-check to see if you've found all the senses of a word. -dmh 03:10, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Dmh. I'm with you: an idiom is any collection of words that means more than the sum of its parts. One of the main reasons I pour so much time into cataloging idioms in particular is that I work regularly with beginning English speakers. Idioms are a major source of confusion and frustration, and they are everywhere in our language. While we're on the subject, could we please also agree on whether to pour idioms into the category English idioms or just idioms (as the {{idiom}} tag seems to do)? I'll happily put them where they belong, but I don't see a consensus about where that is. --Dvortygirl 03:30, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
One advantage to using the {{idiom}} tag is that if we decide to rename the category we only have to change one place. In theory, at least. There have been problems in the past with seeing the results of changing a template, and I don't know the current status of this. I believe it's been improved, and if not it's certainly a bug that should be fixed. -dmh 16:23, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

First character capitalization vs German

I'm not sure where the capitalization conversion is at (previous discussion seems to involve more heat than light :-) ), but whatever conversion scheme is executed, I'll volunteer to fix up the German language stuff that will need manual labor; not really that many words involved, and I'm pretty familiar with what is present. Stan Shebs 03:33, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Broad categories

I've been running across the occasional category notation for things like "English Nouns" and even "English Words". While I advocate tagging with categories in general, particularly if done via a template, I don't think this is a good idea.

First, since it might look like I'm agreeing with Eclecticology here, let me hasten to add that being able to query by part of speech is a useful idea in general. I just don't think the category mechanism is a good way to do it, for two reasons.

  1. The resulting categories will be very large, and I suspect that will cause performance problems, depending on how categories are implemented under the covers (it needn't and might not — queries producing tens of thousands of items should take no time at all if they're done via an indexed database table).
  2. We already tag by language and part of speech via our formatting conventions. Malformed entries get RFC'd and formatted correctly. That cleanup should be as easy as possible, and requiring redundant category tags is a needless burden.

What I'd ultimately like to see instead would be a bit of processing behind the scenes that would automatically deduce the appropriate tags from the form of an entry whenever the entry was edited. Ideally, there would be boolean queries across all tags. E.g., "category = sports, part of speech = verb, language = Slovenian" would turn up Slovenian sports verbs. There would then be no need to distinguish, say, English idioms from Swedish idioms, etc. Just tag a term with any directly applicable categories and leave part of speech and language up to the system. -dmh 05:19, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That level of software support seems pie-in-the-sky. Incidentally, German words categorized by parts of speech will be very helpful in the quite near future, to sort out capitalizations. Stan Shebs 05:59, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, no, maybe.
Yes: As a practical matter, it's always best to work with the software you have, and not speculate about what might happen.
No: We're not talking artificial intelligence here ("extract" would have been better than "deduce"). We're talking about noting that ==English== means that the term is English and ===Noun=== means it's a noun. Even a perl script could figure that out. This won't work on entries that don't follow the usual format, but I don't really care. Most entries do, and those that don't get cleaned up anyway. Similarly, boolean queries have been around for decades now.
Maybe: The key technical problem with any approach is making sure that the database is constructed so that it's easy to do queries. I have no idea whether putting tens of thousands of entries in the same category (whether by explicit tagging or by extraction from the formatting information) would bring the system to its knees. It shouldn't, but it might. If the underlying database isn't set up to support the right kind of structure easily, or whether it would require rewriting. Please note that tagging the entries and providing a nifty query facility are two separate issues.
In any case, updating 60,000 entries to say [[Category:English words]], [[Category:English nouns]] and so forth seems impractical, even given the distributed nature of wiki. Templates could save some typing, so you'd see =={{English}}== and ==={{Noun}}===, but we would still need to convert 60K+ existing entries and make sure that newbies knew how to notate new entries with both new and old entries running around.
A flag day approach could help, provided there was a script that could convert ==English== and its variants to =={{English}}== or whatever. But such a script provides almost all the functionality needed for extracting categories on the fly as described above.
In short, converting existing entries to hold category tags explicitly requires a moderate-sized script and a flag day (or it'll never get done). Doing the same thing behind the scenes requires a moderate-sized script and a means of installing it behind the scenes. Either way, there's a script, but the second solution will be much less visibly disruptive. -dmh 14:40, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can Leet be considered part of English?

I have edited W00t from "English" to "Leet" as, to my mind, it is in some ways a separate language. Is Leet distinct from English, and so should Leet entries be treated as a separate language, headed "Leet", or as part of English, headed "English"?

Arguments for

  • Leet uses symbols that are not part of the English alphabet.
  • Leet is not standard English.
  • Leet has non-standard, variable spelling.

Arguments against

  • Leet words are, for the most part, modifications of English words.
  • Leet is used alongside standard English words in sentences.
  • Leet words are subject, to some extent, to English grammar and inflexion rules.

What do others think? — Paul G 09:21, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It looks like ephemeral jargon to me. I don't think that it's helpful to include this material at all. If people want to insist on including what is effectively something from yet another artificial language, we don't want to leave any impression that it is acceptable English. It might as well be treated as "Leet". Eclecticology 23:38, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Strip away the odd spellings and you've got an English argot. I don't see why we shouldn't include it as such. I don't see anything wrong with

English

Interjection
Woot!

  1. (Leet slang) Used to express joy or success.


So to my mind the only sticking point is the spelling. I'm not familiar enough with the subject to know how stable spellings are. If one or two spellings predominate, we're golden. If not, then we'll need to put our heads together -dmh 02:36, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The most well-known leet words have one or two common spellings.

In general, I think leet shouldn't be added, with all its variable spelling. However, if they are, they are most definitely part of the English language. Some words have slipped into general slang, and are used even in spoken contexts, like w00t, and others have gained different connotations when spelt in l33t style. My opinion is that these exceptional words, at least, deserve entries. --Vladisdead 02:40, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Is it English or is it something else? A lot of the Internet slang seems to be picked up simultaneously in several languages. When does a word stop being an English word used by foreign speakers and start being a word in their own language? I scratched my head about it a little bit when I was googling Scanlation while I was writing an entry for it. Scanlation returns pages in a few languages. There's more then 5000 hits for l33t in French pages. Ended up just calling scanlation English mainly because its two English words put together, similar story for l33t I guess. But its an interesting question anyway. --w:user:eean

I would call that English borrowed into French. The internet may speed the borrowing process, but again it may not — I wouldn't underestimate the linguisting influence of, say, a bunch of Venetian merchants trading caffe and tè. -dmh 04:42, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
With merchants they at least have some nationality, things aren't always so clear on the Internet. That I called scanlation English was really just an assumption on my part, if we go by the logic of "what ever the language of the first person to think of the word is, thats its language." Usually its more simple, its the language the word is first established in. And since none of these words are really all that established anyways, it seems somewhat arbitrary. w:user:eean

Here we have an instance of w00t in an otherwise entirely English context. Its not quite clear whether its intended to be woot or w00t, but meh.

hehe, I wasn't questioning that w00t was used in English, my otherwise non-l33t English-speaking friends use it sometimes. --w:user:eean
  • Hmm I'm not sure where to add a comment. I wouldn't consider leet a language by either the linguist definition or the popular joke/political definition. It doesn't have a grammar of its own. It's not mutually unintelligible with English. It's not a dialect with an army and a navy. Also, as has been pointed out some of the words are used in more than one language. So it's definitely a group of words which belong in a common grouping. I would call it a w:jargon or an w:argot. I would compare it to w:Newspeak or w:Nadsat. I would also compare it to w:Pig Latin though. So I'm not opposed to including this stuff in Wiktionary. But it would be unwise to just mix it in with other English translations and synonyms. It would also be unwise to treat it as a language like German and French. I would say the best way is to keep it out of the translation and synonym sections and to have a new section for jargons and argots. As far as the "native spelling entries" I guess they should have "Leet" or "L33t" or "l33t" where we normally put "English" or "French", which would mean this heading can stand for either the name of a language or the name of a jargon or argot. — Hippietrail 18:13, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Leet is not a language. It's more like a cypher. The "language" does not change. 1337, l337, and L33t are all decrypted into the word leet. W00t should be decrypted to woot. Woot is now american slang same as amscray, but that does not make leet a language anymore than pig latin is a language. --69.11.252.166 06:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

B-word

The entry B-word is a valid entry but flawed as it stands, in my opinion. I mention it here to draw attention to my misgivings about it, which I have posted at Talk:B-word. Please take a look and add discussion there. — Paul G 08:56, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

From the history and discussion, it looks like this has been resolved satisfactorily. Paul? -dmh 03:21, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion of surnames in Wiktionary

I see that a couple of entries for surnames have been added in the past couple of days (Sangwal and Van Keuren). I don't think there is any value in having these in any standard dictionary, let alone Wiktionary. We already have given names and place names, which I think is acceptable, because and these are somewhat restricted in number and translations can be provided in most cases. This does not apply to surnames, however, which are effectively unlimited in number and have are of debatable linguistic interest. I am therefore against their inclusion in Wiktionary.

What are others' thoughts?

— Paul G 08:59, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'd tend to agree, with the obvious exception of a surname that has an appropriate dictionary meaning (such as Newton, which is a unit of measurement). RJNFC 09:27, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I guess a standard approach would to be to include a name if it had a usage other than simply being someone's name, especially if we can dig up proper citations. I don't like the idea much of having an entry for every surname. However, I think that there may be some linguistic interest in the etymology of various surnames. I believe novelists sometimes consult directories of names to find plausible surnames (and to minimize chance of libel), so there is possibly some value in a list of surnames, but this is not an argument for a separate headword for every name. The names of fictional characters are possibly of interest, and of clear interest when they are used in other contexts; for example Scrooge, Jekyll, Dracula, Frankenstein, Mephistopheles, Lochinvar, Portia, Shylock, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Uncle Tom, Suzie Wong, James Bond, Ali Baba, Fauntleroy, Euphues, Boniface, Tibert, et cetera. Similarly certain mythological characters are of clear linguistic interest: e.g. Pandora, Charon, Icarus (does Samson belong in this list??). Many real people also pass into idiomatic usage, such as Garbo, or are used as exemplars of certain characteristics, such as Hannibal, Ned Kelly and Xantippe.
Good points. Sangwal and Van Keuren do not fall into any of these categories. I have nominated them for deletion. — Paul G 13:49, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
They don't bother me. I was concerned when the lists of given names began to appear, but didn't make much fuss about it. A simple "Xxxx is a surname" is in sub-stub territory, but I would be inclined to keep anything that tries to give useful information. The last thing I would want to see here are the raging inclusion/deletion debates that there are on Wikipedia. Keeping things where arguments start to rage saves both disk space and tempers. Eclecticology 23:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There's well over millions; as well as given names. I only see the benefit of etymology, pronunciation, and interlinking with Wikipedia; which isn't much. Maybe when the Wiktionary software is upgraded. --Blade Hirato 21:35, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There certainly are millions, and a multitude of spelling variants as well. Links to other sister projects can already be made. Dutch "Van" names in particular have roots in the common language. If I were to look at Van Keuren I find it very interesting to know how that name developed. It's important to approach these entries with discretion. Opposing them too strongly can only result in having more included for the wrong reasons. Eclecticology 18:27, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • So why, on the front page, is there a pointer to the lists of surnames in the appendix? SemperBlotto 19:56, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Okay. So now I'm wondering what to do if I come across a surname article. Leave it, expand on it, or request deletion. "Xxxx is a surname." does seem a bit lacking. However, it may be useful and interesting if says something like "Xxxxx is a surname, typically of xxxx nationality/hertiage. Can be translated to Son of a poor man." (Yeah, in my ancestry there's a name translated to son of a poor man, no blue blood here. LOL.) Unless there's any real objections (space an issue?) guess I'll work on expanding if possible.--69.11.252.138 02:31, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Color/colour

Has a decision been made on links to variant spellings of words? User:Eean has moved the page for "colour" to "color colour" and is linking everything to that page. He/She also moved the Latin entry to its own page: "Latin (non-English)". Has this been agreed? I think it is a bad move. — Paul G 16:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A link to a variant spelling should ideally link to the main entry (most common spelling or a dual entry such as color colour or whatever name we settle on). If it points to one of the variants, you'll either get a double redirect (which wiki sorts out, I think) or a link to a minimal entry. Neither is fatal, and both can be fixed up at any point.
In the case of color/colour, I would notate related terms like this
*colorful or colourful
or possibly
*colo(u)rful
(Here's the source for that:
*[[colorful colourful|colorful]] or [[colorful colourful|colourful]]
or possibly
*[[colorful colourful|colo(u)rful]] )
In the particular case of color/colour, there is enough already-existing work that converting everything will be a major pain, but hopefully worthwhile in the end -dmh 17:13, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

User:Dmh is now taking this idea and running with it without due discussion and consideration of the group as a whole. This is a very bad idea. User:Paul G doesn't seem to like it, I don't like it. Such things should be decided by the group, not by a couple of individuals! — Hippietrail 04:09, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Let's everyody take a deep breath. If we decide damage has been done, it's not too much to revert and of course I'll be glad to help (modulo impending time constraints). In order to see if the proposed structure will work for Wiktionary, we have to actually try something out. The mini-experiment with womaniser, womanizer seemed to work fine, but color/colour, with its ubiquity and numerous derived terms is another matter. The proposal I put up on User:dmh/color etc. — which [had earlier] received no comment at all despite requests — looked workable, at least if considered in isolation.
Perhaps it would have been better to try something intermediate first. If that turns out to be the consensus, I would propose gray, grey as having enough non-trivial aspects to be interesting, while not entailing such wide reprecussions.
Whatever the decision, the "synch" template is a crock, as is having two nearly identical copies of the same articles. I personally will not do the duplicate work, and so to avoid leaving others with it I will not update articles marked "synch" at all. The only viable alternative is sharing duplicated material by reference. If someone else has a better scheme for this, I'm quite open to suggestion. -dmh 04:29, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In a perfect world, we will have a better version of MediaWiki one day which will allow things such as "levels" where we can still have one page per word-form, and a page at a deeper "level" with all of the common material which is included. In a perfect world, the internal data of Wiktionary would be more structured and the various language wikis would be able to retrieve that data and present it in the ways they feel best. That would also help for issues such as this. I think such changes are worth waiting for rather than breaking the title/wordform paradigm now. In the meantime I do actually think that using a huge macro for the main article content would be a cleanere solution than disambiguation pages. — Hippietrail 04:36, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I was imaginging how that might work and it might work quite well. In other words, there could be a group of ad-hoc templates like {{color, colour common material (Noun}}} etc., with the rest of color and colour worked in around them? This would make linking easier, at the expense of making the linked-to article harder to write, but that's probably the right trade-off.

I think it's a bad idea. Superficially it seems to solve a problem, but I don't think that all the implications have been worked out. "Colored person" in an American context refers to a person of African racial origin, but "Coloured person" in a South African context means a person of mixed race. "Colour sergeant" exists as a British and Canadian term, but I don't believe that the corresponding form is in American usage. Our list of Sherlock Holmes words show 11 entries for "color" and 51 for "colour", but I have not taken the time to explore why. This is for one pair only; considering the possibilities for all the other pairs is very difficult at this stage. Eclecticology 04:41, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

First, these are issues with the articles for colored person etc., not color/colour. As such, they are no more complex than color itself, or even gray/grey. E.g., gray has the SI unit sense that grey lacks.
One drawback to the current proposal is that you have to make the factoring of common content externally visible. That is, there are user-visible pages for gray (non-English), gray (SI), gray, grey and gray, gray. Of these, it would be best if only gray and grey were visible. Hippietrail's proposal keeps the factoring, or something like it, but limits the visibility of the parts. Only the relevant headwords need be visible, unless you're editing an article. Editing an article should be easy, but finding information should be easier yet.
Hippierail, could I ask you (in your copious spare time) to run up a set of entries using your scheme? I'm not sure what to suggest, but if you're at a loss, go ahead and overwrite gray, grey -dmh 05:00, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Could someone supply a case that they feel won't work under the "combined page" scheme? I don't think colored person/coloured person presents any such problem. Just give them two separate entries. colour sergeant is even less of a problem — if color sergeant doesn't mean anything, don't define it or link to it. If it means something different from colour sergeant, give it it's own entry. If they meant the same thing, use a single entry and redirects as usual. -dmh 07:28, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hereby a note I wrote while Hippietrail and Eclecticology were writing:

Another bit of explanation. After a bit of discussion with PaulG and Eean, it seemed worth having a go to see what would happen. At that point, Eean made some of the requisite changes. In the sprit of "in for a penny, in for a pound" it seemed best at least to leave the main entries in a consistent state. So I (and Eean?) pushed through the changes over the span of a couple of logins, which I just now finished. At that point, I did a quick check of "what links here" and gulped. I then started changing wikified links to get rid of the double redirect. Some got changed to color, colour, which may have to be backed out. Many I summarily dewikified, the consensus long since having emerged that wikifying every damn word in a definition was less than helpful. I believe that work can stand.
And speaking of damn, damn dang darn durn seems to settled in comfortably over the past couple of months, despite its somewhat comical heading.
Perhaps the main sticking points here are:
  • The novel use of disambiguation in a Wiktionary article.
  • The central and tangled position of color/colour, being basic vocabulary not only to English but to Wiktionary itself.
As a next step, I'd want to understand the main objectionable qualities of the proposed structure and then discuss whether they can be remedied or are worth putting up with. In actually doing the work on articles that link to color etc., I noted that it's a pain to make a link like [[color, colour|color/colour]] as opposed to just slapping double brackets around a term. But this is mainly a startup cost, I think. New uses will start out pointing to a redirect, which someone can then grumble about and fix. Or ideally a bot can fix.
Finally, I'd like to apologize for losing patience. It would have been better to let, say, womaniser, womanizer sit a bit, then after due discussion try something like gray, grey, and then try color, colour. I certainly didn't mean to slight anyone, particularly my fellow regulars. -dmh 04:49, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is the first time that I even saw that damn dang darn durn existed. I find it to be an aberation. Eclecticology 12:28, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think the difference is that there clearly is a 'superior' spelling with damn and there isn't with color. The page even says "dang, darn and durn are all euphemistic pronunciations of damn." Personally I think we shouldn't try so hard to be so durn PC and just use more re-directs, except in cases like cheque/check where there are real differences in the word beyond its spelling. If there's an improvement in MediaWiki that lets us recognize the unique inner light of every correct spelling it would be pretty easy to transition to that from simple redirects (without much redundant effort). By the way, does anyone know how Microsoft's dictionary handles it? Its the only other international dictionary I know of. --Eean 17:07, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Let me clarify the origin and purpose of damn dang darn durn a bit. I'm not sure if Eean is implying it was motivated by some notion of political correctness, but it wasn't. It was motivated by the desire not to have the same basic information duplicated across damn, damned, goddamn, goddamned, damnit, dammit, goddamnit, goddammit, dang, goldang, goshdang, dangit, goldangit, goshdangit, darn, goldarn, goshdarn, darnit, goldarnit, goshdarnit, durn, goldurn, goshdurn, durnit, goldurnit and goshdurnit. Which is a pretty good approximation of my opinion on the whole damn mess.
From a technical point of view, it represents another point in the design space for dealing with such combinatorial explosions. It solves the same problem that the disambiguation pages for gray and color were aimed at, but in a much more natural dictionary-like way. Instead of making damn a disambiguation between the damn dang darn durn material and the theological material specific to damn, it simply references the omnibus page in the course of an ordinary definition.
As far as I can tell, the same approach would work just fine with color/colour, and I'm a bit embarrassed not to have tried it in that context. It's all historical accident. I came up with the (IMHO) inferior disambiguation approach a while ago during the last round of the eternal color/colour debate and then set it aside as no one had responeded to my request for opinions and the pages in question seemed fairly quiescent by then. I later came up with damn dang darn durn for the practical reasons above. Then Eean had the same instinctive reaction to the current duplicative situation that pretty much every software geek to see the page has had and will have. This prompted me to re-float user:dmh/color etc. Had I been thinking, I would have instead mentioned damn dang darn durn as an example, either along with or instead of color -dmh 06:54, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
well all those damn variants you listed you should just redirect to damn, IMO. Having all the variants as the title itself is not very flexible. Its needlessly cumbersome. Obviously, with color/colour we're not going to find another way to spell color tomorrow. --Eean 19:33, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The reason not to redirect to damn proper is that damn itself has meanings not shared by the rest of the cluster (just as darn also refers to socks and dang to a noise). Granted, there's not that much extra material and in this case having everything under damn would probably also work. There will most likely be other cases, however, where the common material doesn't properly belong under any single heading. Color/colour is a likely candidate. Common material shouldn't go under color in particular because of the non-English entries. Putting it under either color or colour singly is a non-starter anyway (It was tried. It didn't start).
I don't see the awkward title as a major issue. It's only an arbitrary marker. No reader should have to know it directly — it will always be reached through links and redirects. -dmh 19:45, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
All the words you listed mean the same thing as damn IMO. In other instances, probably calling the article Someword (variants) would be more flexible, assuming such a situtation actually exists. Really I wish they had hashed all this out before starting the wiktionary, I think what is the Right Thing is a lot less clear on a dictionary then on an encyclopedia. In other news, tomorrow CST I'm going to make color and colour point to color, colour again unless our Japanese friend has something they want to say. --Eean 22:16, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I believe there was discussion on such an issue that ended with a comment about using a template similar to {{:colour}}; which would insert the contents of 'colour' therein on an article. --Blade Hirato 22:45, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This rings a bell, but I'm unsure as to which problem it is solving and how. -dmh 07:08, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I posted this elsewhere but don't remember where - perhaps it was on Hippietrail's user discussion page. There is no need to update all the links to "color" and "colour" - instead, ensure all of the content of these two pages is at "color, colour" (or whatever it will be called) and then replace these two pages with redirects to "color, colour". All links are then sent to the new page with minimal effort. — Paul G 15:04, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do redirects to redirects get pulled through automagically? My understanding was that they didn't (I thought I noticed that while doing the color, colour links). -dmh 07:28, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In case folks aren't keeping up, a Japanese user is aggresively defending (via reverting, not discussion outside of calling color, colour nonsense) the seperate-but-equal solution. --Eean 19:40, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Frankly, I think that combining the words into one heading such as color, colour will just cause more problems later as the dictionary increases in size. For instance what happens when color means something completely different in another language. And it has already been pointed out that darn has at least one meaning that is not the same as damn. Furthermore, you're doing a disservice to anyone who needs the definition by implying that damn and darn are the same. Damn is generally consider a more vulgar word as a curse and has a completely different meaning in a theological discussion.

May I suggest that what is needed is a way to connect definitions not words. What I'm envisioning is that under the word color for instance one definition would read (in edit):

:: [def1]# The spectral composition of visible light #: ''Humans and birds can perceive color.''[/def1]

and for colour, for example, it would read (in edit):

:: #[color:def1]

If this would be possible than a single definition can be tied to an infinite amount of other words. And each word would and probably should continue to have it's own entry.

--Vik 01:40, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The ability to link to individual senses would indeed be nice, but it's not available and at this point is unlikely to be anytime soon. In any case, this wouldn't solve the problem of deciding which spelling is primary. In the case you give, colour:def1 would point to a definition with an example with the speling color.
We've already discussed the matter of color meaning different things in different languages. It needn't be a problem. The entry for color looks like

English

See neutral page

Spanish

1. Color (linking to neutral page)

The entry for colour is similar, but without the Spanish.
The neutral page has the material that's currently duplicated on color and colour, with both spellings given.
If there are any senses that differ between color and colour, they would go on their respective pages. This would be entirely analgous to the damn dang darn durn case.
It has been pointed out that color and colour have different related terms. There are at least two reasonable ways to handle this (and indeed, they could both be used in conjunction): List the related terms for color under color and likewise for related terms for colour. We could also list all related terms for both terms on the neutral page. Or we could do both. I like the first choice, as it is probalby easiest to maintain. The neutral page related terms would just point back to color and colour.
As colour is the International English spelling whilst color is US specific I feel that the ideal would be for the page for color to contain a note that it is an alternate spelling of colour used in the US and links to the color related terms whilst the page for colour contain the definitions and all links to related terms except those that only relate to color. --Stephenboothuk 16:55, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The related terms themselves should present no problem (see the discussion somewhere up there).
Honest, folks, it will all work fine, and maintaining two versions of a document in a database is never a good idea. -dmh 05:50, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Making disclaimer/warning more wiktionary specific

Its fairly common that we find copyright infringing articles. I hypothesize this is not someone trying to poison Wiktionary, but is due to ignorance. If you are like me, you've read it once and then forget that it says the following at the buttom of every edit page:

You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!

Really I think this assumes the reader understands copyright as well as understands what folks in the Free Software movement consider to be 'free'. I mean, dictionary.com is free [as in beer], but it isn't 'similar free' which is kind of expecting a bit from Joe User. The paragraph previous to that already gets the legal crap over with by stating you are releasing under the GFDL, I don't think we need to cover every case. It should talk to the anonymous junior high student who sees noctilucent doesn't have a definition. I'm not claiming to be a great wordsmith, but here is a try:

All definitions must be written by yourself or borrowed from a public domain resource. Do not use content from copyrighted resources such as dictionary.com.

I think dictionary.com is the biggest culprit, so naming it specifically will be helpful. Also its a good example of what a copyrighted resource is. We could also throw on something nice to it, like 'we want to know what you think' or 'we apperciate your input'. I'm not sure how to put it. Just to be nice and to reiterate the 'your'. --Eean 04:01, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The more I think about it the more quirky I find the copyright situation concerning dictionaries. Copying the definition for any single word may be acceptable as fair use, but the wholesale importing of material from copyright sources would definitely be an infringement. Similarly, two people could have identical material and both be eligible to have their work copyright. This, of course, is totally unrealistic for something the size of a book, but is perfectly conceivable in something as short as a dictionary definition. In some cases the choices for ways to define a word may be extremely limited. Thus, when we examine contributed material that at least looks like a dictionary definition we need to consider the habits expressed in a larger sample of that contributor's work. Eclecticology 22:11, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Obviously some defintions are like two or three words long and not really a problem, especially if there isn't, as you point out, a context of the user copying and pasting. Otherwise, I don't believe we should give the benefit of the doubt. We just need to look at SCO vs. IBM to see why its best to be avoided. I'm always amazed when I search for a simple 4 or 5 word phrase and Google in its billions of pages doesn't return a single result, the point being English has blessed us with many ways of wording things.
Regardless, we should discourage folks to use copyrighted resources and I think that we're currently doing a bad job of it. I'll bring it to Wiktionary-l, maybe folks in other wiktionaries have ideas. --Eean 19:05, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The www.dictionary.com problem seems to have been increasing lately. Perhaps because the copyright warning is so far beyond the special characters? --Connel MacKenzie 09:13, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation and inflections/plurals

I'm not entirely sure if this has been dealt with, so I'll ask anyway. I've been wondering exactly how I should add the pronunciation of inflections and plurals (and the like) to Wiktionary. Should I make a new article, describing the pronunciation and with the definition pointing to the singular word, or should I include it in the main article, something like this:

Pronunciation

hrunk: /hɹʌŋk/
hrunkae: /hɹʌŋkiː/

--Wytukaze 18:51, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How about something like this?
hrunk (plural hrunkae [pronunciation: /ˈhɹʌŋki/])
What do others think? Alternatively, it could be shown in the pronunciation, like this:

Pronunciation

/hɹʌŋk/ (plural /ˈhɹʌŋki/)

I think the latter is better.
Note, by the way, that final unstressed "ee" sounds are shown in Wiktionary as /i/ rather than /iː/ - there is a discussion on this somewhere in the Beer Parlour, if I recall. — Paul G
Well, that's fair enough. I haven't actually written the pronunciation for any final "ee" sounds, so there's no problem there. And I do prefer your version, I hadn't seen that around (Only the other two).
That also makes me realise I've been forgetting to put in stress markers, I'll go fix that at some point in the future. --Wytukaze 09:36, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I use a system something like the first one, e.g. la:Go. —Muke Tever 15:20, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I do not know how to pronounce SAMPA or IPA

There are many people who do not know how to pronounce an IPA or SAMPA pronunciation. I am all for it to have both SAMPA and IPA but please record how it is pronounced and save it on Commons. Please use the standard format for file names xx-word.ogg where xx is the ISO 639 code and word is the word in the applicable characters (no transliteration).. Thanks GerardM 15:21, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) (I already recorded over 3000 words)

It would be good if IPA transcriptions were accompanied by links to pronunciation key pages. I have been doing this on la:, with a template la:Template:en-us-appellatio which indicates a pronunciation is American and links to la:Project:Appellatio Anglica Americae, a pronunciation key showing the standard symbols and examples of them in use. (I hope to make sound files for them all soon too.) —Muke Tever 00:01, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Use of audio files in wiktionary

Hello! I am very surprised to find that there isn't much support for audio pronunciation files on wiktionary. (At least, I can't find anything after searching through the help files for several minutes). As such, I have created Template:audio to assist in adding audio files. There is a usage guide at Template talk:audio, and you can see the template in action at Aotearoa. If I'm not barking up the wrong tree, then I might put together a complete guide to adding audio files. Any comments? -- FirstPrinciples 10:27, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are over 3000 soundfiles with pronunciations of Dutch words. There is an equal need for pronunciations for all the other languages. Please create soundfiles in your own language. :) 22:14, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OK - Are there any pre-existing guides or templates for audio files, for use in English? -- FP 02:08, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)
Although I don't have any interest in audio presentations, neither do I have any objection to what you suggest. Go ahead and add them. If others find them interesting and useful they'll join in with you to add more. Eclecticology 05:29, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I was recently asked if I knew of a convention for this template: does this come before or after the IPA/SAMPA/AHD pronunciations? I guessed it would come after. This example has {audio} before. Does anyone have a preference one way or the other? --Connel MacKenzie 14:02, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

*Usage

Discussion on Usage moved to Wiktionary talk:Policy Think Tank - Usage Notes --Richardb 06:44, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Milestones

We are now way past the 65,000th entry but this wasn't noted in the Milestones. Does anyone know what it was? Paul G 15:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

22:40, 16 Apr 2005 Transwiki:Bunny boiler (531 bytes) . . McBot (Transwiki from Wikipedia) ?
See: Special:Newpages, show last 500, then change limit (in address/location bar) to current # of entries (8,011,846) minus 65k. --Connel MacKenzie 15:57, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Will this work though? What about if entries have been deleted since then? — Paul G 13:04, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Note that this gives the entries from 65,001 onwards. The 65,000 entry is the one at the bottom of the page when you list (8,011,846) minus 65,000 plus 1.
Great, it's a transwiki :) — Paul G 13:38, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yesterday, I had counted 21 deletions (must be tripple that now) in the intervening time period, and instead of changing the limit, I changed the offset, then counted down the number of deletions; that too was inaccurate (some of the deleted articles were older, some were newer.) I don't feel like investigating it any more. BTW, transwikis (crappy as many are) are pretty massive contributions; the transwiki processes itself is rather arduous, therefore worthy of a little polite recognition here and there. (But yeah, I thought the same thing!) --Connel MacKenzie 04:32, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for trying to improve on my estimate, Connel. I think that, all things considered, entry 65,000 is best left as an estimate. Entry 66,000 (which I've added to the Milestones today) is probably correct. — Paul G 10:06, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
These can never be more than rough estimates, though I think we're probably closer than McDonald's when they celebrate the 5 billionth hamburger. I would tend to ignore transwiki articles since we know ahead of time that they are ephemeral. I would simply give credit to the next real article after that. Eclecticology 05:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Combining parts of speech

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Entry_layout_explained

*urbandictionary

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Criteria_for_inclusion#urbandictionary --Stranger 13:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects

A request to everyone...

Please consider creating redirects for new entries. For example, "cell phone" has just been added. A very common alternative spelling of this is "cellphone" (without a space), for which there was no entry. Someone coming along and seeing that this entry is missing could create one, thereby accidentally duplicating the effort at "cell phone", which would be compounded when synonyms and translations were added. This redundancy can be avoided by redirecting "cellphone" to "cell phone" (and giving "cellphone" as an alternative spelling under "cell phone"), as I have done.

Mini-lesson: A redirect page contains just the following text:

#REDIRECT [[cell phone]]

(with no space between the # and REDIRECT) which, in this case, would link the page to cell phone.

I think it is probably good practice to link plurals and inflections to singulars and infinitives (eg, to link "faxes", "faxed" and "faxing" to "fax"), and likewise with variant forms of expressions, especially where there is no one obvious form that is used more than the others (see the redirects I have created for give someone a hand by following the "What links here" link from that page).

This policy seems to be widely used on Wikipedia and would make Wiktionary more consistent and user-friendly. — Paul G 09:43, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PS - if a redirect page subsequently becomes a page in its own right, the content can be replaced with an entry such as "Plural of xxx". For example, the page for "tens" (plural of "ten") might be a redirect to "ten", but as "tens" is also the Portuguese second-person singular present tense of "ter" (to have), the page would need to redirect to both English "ten" and Portuguese "ter", which is not possible. The page would then need to be rewritten with English and Portuguese entries that cross-refer to the relevant pages. I think I'm going to go and do that now :) — Paul G 09:48, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps time to write a Policy_-_Wiktionary_Draft_Proposal, instead of always keeping the ideas unfinished in Beer Parlour.--Richardb 06:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

*Front page incomplete and inconsistent

I've noticed the front page has some inconsistencies, such as in dash usage, and omissions, such as Portuguese titles; but it is blocked. How can one perform or at least suggest fixes?

This would be the page. And while im here, could u bump the Galego (ga) onto the LHS of the page --Wonderfool 21:49, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think Talk:Main Page might be better, actually. This parlor is rather clogged. The page is protected only due to repeated vandalism. --Connel MacKenzie 01:59, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Foreign words - how to format?

I was under the impression that, for foreign words, we just supply an English translation - plus a table of verb conjugations and maybe a list of derived or related words. Is this correct? There is nothing in Wiktionary:Entry layout explained that I can see, and all the examples are English. SemperBlotto 15:18, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What I do is exactly as you described. And if there's any irregularities with the word (for example plus#French then I do my best to elucidate these differences. Bunging in the pronunciation would be something I'd do too if I could read the pronunciation symbols --Wonderfool 15:56, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The main thing that we would want to avoid in foreign word listings is a wide range of translations into third languages. Beyond that there has been no broadly supported attempt to impose any other content limitation on these articles. So pronunciations, etymology, usage notes, quotations and whatever else is perfectly fine there. The absence of people who are ready and able to add this material should not be taken as an indication that it's not allowed. Eclecticology 19:21, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Non-English Words in Wiktionary

This discussion has become far too deep for continued discussion in the Beer parlour. And the Beer parlour is far too crowded to continue to accommodate this discussion. It is now a discussion that is rightfully about Policy Development. I have moved it to Wiktionary talk:Policy Think Tank - English Wiktionary, Foreign Words & Translations. Please continue the discussions there and have a look at the basic policy proposed, modify it according to the consensus developed.--Richardb 05:39, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew entries listed in different format in Recent changes

In Special:Recent changes the contents of each line are normally in the order (Name - Time - Author), but for Hebrew language entries they are in (Author - Time - Name) order. Is this a design feature, or a bug. See, for instance, 11:47 this morning for a modification to יום. SemperBlotto 12:01, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your browser is probably having bidirectional text issues. I used to have a similar problem, but apparently upgrading to Opera 8 fixed it, and יום's entry in Recentchanges looks as normal as any other entry. [But then, I don't think it consistently displayed unusually before either, so maybe not.] —Muke Tever 13:27, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

*Template for Finnish index links

moved to: Template_talk:finnish_index

Red Links at WT:RFD

There are a TON of red links on WT:RFD. Would anyone mind if I went through and got rid of all of them for say... February and March? !!!!Kevin Rector 05:25, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I typically let my nominations linger for two weeks after conversation has died down. I think there are two or three that I've left longer (one that was new information to me about given names, another that pertained to Transwiki...) About once a month, Eclectology will bust through and blast a bunch in one fell swoop, but he is MIA right now. As far as usefulness, I think most admins/sysops that watch it, know to check the end of it. --Connel MacKenzie 12:33, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Now that I've returned from my Wiki holiday, I will deal with WT:RFD as soon as I've caught up with this page WT:BP. Eclecticology 21:48, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Beer Parlour Cleanup required

(I separated this from the Red Links at WT:RFD section, so we can clean up/get rid of the two discussions spearately.--Richardb 08:35, 23 May 2005 (UTC)) Also, this page (Beer Parlour) has GOT to be archived, it's practically useless!!!!Kevin Rector 05:25, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I've returned from my Wiki holiday, I will deal with WT:RFD as soon as I've caught up with this page WT:BP. Eclecticology 21:48, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, I should have been more clear, it is WT:BP that is practically useless because of it's size. It's over 500k. Kevin Rector 13:48, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'll second that. I'll even do it, if nobody objects. Say, all topics before April to be archived to Wiktionary:Beer parlour/Archive? --Wytukaze 17:50, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Good luck! Thanks in advance for your effort! (This page does need some cleanup to Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive!) --Connel MacKenzie 03:22, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Please also note the massive duplication that apparently begins at #47...a quick eyeballing implies that it may have been several portions repasted in various spots, not just a straight double or tripple pasting??? --Connel MacKenzie 04:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Not surprisingly I'd advocate taking a lot of the discussion out of BeerParlour and creating some morePolicy Think Tank pages, or even go so far as making a Draft Policy or two. I've set the system up to cater for these, and created a few documents, but I don't want to do them all myself. Just that, eventually, we must have some policies, instead of endless basically idle chatter going forever around and around in the Beer Parlour. So please, everyone, start creating some Policy Documents to get rid of some of this stuff.--Richardb 06:30, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No problem with moving this stuff to decongest this page, but not everything needs a solid policy. Eclecticology 21:48, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No way Jose. The Beer Parlour is a great place for launching ideas and discussion. But once it looks like we might be discussing a possible policy, then we can move to a Policy Think-Tank page. We may or may not progress from there through Draft Policy, Semi-Official Policy, Official Policy, or to Rejected Policies. Anyway, this is now in progress, so perhaps this discussion (this section of the Beer Parlour) should be cleaned out pretty soon too. Hardly seems worth archiving this kind of ephemeral discussion about simple housekeeping. BE BRAVE on cleanups too !--Richardb 08:35, 23 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bravo to User:Muke for the tedious cleanup job! --Connel MacKenzie 09:11, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Refactoring the transwiki log

We'd like to make it easier for andy and all Wiktionarians to scan incoming articles so that they can be Wiktionarified and renamed to the article namespace (if appropriate). I suspect that Kevin Rector has making the work for the 'bots easier in mind, too. Your comments are solicited at Wiktionary talk:Transwiki log. Uncle G 13:13, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon versus Old English index

There is an Anglo-Saxon index and an Old English index, both of which are listed on Wiktionary:List of languages and Wiktionary:Index of language indexes. These are in fact the same language, and what's more, the Old English index appears to list some Middle English words. It's somewhat beyond me to correct this by myself, and I'm wondering what others' thoughts on the matter are. --Wytukaze 18:05, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's probably generated from Webster 1913 (q.v.), where "Anglo-Saxon" means "Old English" and "Old English" means "Early Middle English" and "Middle English" means "Later Middle English". —Muke Tever 04:59, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
From my own experience I suspect Anglo-Saxon used to be the more common term but a change was caused by the world wars. Compare Saxe-Coburg-Gotha -> Windsor. Ncik 01 May 2005

Pending deletion

In the category Category:Pending deletions, what is this "techincal problem" that stops pages getting deleted? I'm guessin something to do with if a page is so old it can't be deleted? --Wonderfool 04:29, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's to do with the way that articles are compressed when stored in the database. I read a full explanation of it once, somewhere — the developers' LiveJournal I think, but I don't remember exactly where offhand. Uncle G 02:16, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I just went to it and randomly chose interphane from the list. I was able to delete it. Maybe the developers have caught up with this. :-) I'll follow up on it soon. Eclecticology 22:13, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hooray! Well, I just ran through the list and blasted them. But I don't see the majority of entries that had been there? Perhaps they whacked the ones starting with ZZZZZ for us? --Connel MacKenzie 22:25, 22 May 2005 (UTC) Wonderfool deleted the majority of these on 12 May. Yay! I've deleted the category and template. I also trimmed the message on WT:RFD. --Connel MacKenzie 22:48, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*American English Spelling

This is no longer a matter of casual discussion in the Beer Parlour. It now a matter of Policy Development. See Wiktionary:Policy Think Tank on American or British Spelling--Richardb 04:03, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with shortcut redirect to a category page.

I've created a couple of shortcuts that redirect to category pages.WT:WSI and WT:POL, but the redirects don't work properly. When it redirects, the category page header is shown, but the page is not populated with the category entries.

Anyone know how to overcome this problem?--141.168.48.169 05:46, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC) now logged in as --Richardb 05:57, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • You can't, yet. It's a bug (or at least a shortcoming) in the system. People have recently been asking about it on mediawiki-l. Rowan Collins explains this problem in particular here: [1] —Muke Tever 23:38, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • At any rate it would probably be better if, instead of cluttering the main article space with shortcuts, to replace "WT:WSI" with a template Template:WT:WSI, whose contents: [[:Category:WikiSaurus|WT:WSI]] — as: 1) it solves the redirect issue, 2) {{WT:WSI}} is just about as easy to type as [[WT:WSI]], and 3) it doesn't clutter the main article namespace. —Muke Tever
      • Made the template for you. {{WT:WSI}} = [transclusion redacted —K, 06:24, 26 September 2014 (UTC)] —Muke Tever 23:47, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • You are missing part of the point of shortcuts. They are also for putting into the URL field of one's web browser, or into the "Go" entryfield. Your template solution simply doesn't work there. If editors have to type "Template:WT:WSI" (15 characters) into the "Go" entryfield, they might as well type "Category:WikiSaurus" (19 characters). "WT:WSI" is, by comparison, only 6 characters to type. This is why they are called "short cuts". ☺ Uncle G 00:23, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Plus there it would seem completely crazy for little Wiktionary to decide on a new way of doing shortcuts when the much more used Wikipedia has along established way of using shortcuts.

Plus using templates for anything but real "templates" is misleading. Plus exactly how is this cluttering the main articlae namespace. Must be about 10 shortcuts now, amongst 100,000 entries. And no-one ever prints out any sort of list of all the entries in the main article namespace.--Richardb 04:08, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Alphabetization in foreign languages

I have been adding seveal terms to the Spanish section of en, and have noticed that in the category [[Category:Spanish nouns|Es. nouns] that the á words are after the a words, rather than mixed in. For the ñ words this is correct, ñ is not n, but for accented vowels the alphabetical order is the same whether it is accented or not. How would one go about getting this alphabetization issue sorted out (pun!)? - TheDaveRoss 07:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories use numerical sort—that is, they sort by their unicode codepoint, so accented letters come after ordinary a-z characters; and, as well, a-z characters come after A-Z characters. [This is probably because the developers are not equipped to deal with language-specific sort orders, e.g. different languages placing things like å in different places]. In any case, you can use pipelinking with an accentless version to force sort: on uña use [[Category:Spanish nouns|Una]] and it'll sort as "Una". (It'll still show in the category list as "Uña".) There's not currently any way to stick ñ between n and o as it should sort, but . . . as this is an English wiki, it's probably better to sort in a way accessible to English speakers anyway. —Muke Tever 23:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:List of Wiktionarians by number of edits

I case anyone care, for fun I made Wiktionary:List of Wiktionarians by number of edits. Kevin Rector 07:08, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ha! I come in at 28, just one place above you :-)
But then, the count probably takes no account of me being a useless, impatient typist who too often declines to use the preview ! So how many of my edits are "real" edits, and how many just numerous typo corrections ?--Richardb 06:20, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]


*Archiving of WT:VIP

moved to: WT:VIP/archive

Hi everybody. I'm from quechua wiktionary (Wiksimitaqi) adn I need your help very much. I've post a request on meta for a logo... TWO WEEKS AGO! :'( As your guessing, no body said nothing about. I've been wondering if somebody of you can help us with it. It must say "Wiksimitaqi - [wik.si.miˈtɑ.qe] s., Wikimedia-pa Qispi Runa Simipi simitaqi" Thankyou very, very much. Huhsunqu

I don't think any here is going to be able to help you... sorry. Kevin Rector 22:09, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I already took care of it: qu:Image:Wiki.png. I just forgot to note it here. —Muke Tever 03:35, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]


*Voting for Wiktionary:Policy - Transliteration

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Proposal_for_Policies_and_Guidelines --Stranger 17:36, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Voting for Wiktionary:Entry layout explained

I would propose that the Wiktionary:Entry layout explained semi-official policy should be voted on to make it official policy.

The rest of this discussion has been moved to Wiktionary talk:Entry layout explained. Serious policy development discussion shouldnot be conducted in the overcrowded Beer PArlour. It does not fit into the intended purpsoe fo the Beer Parlour, which is already far too crowded. --Richardb 04:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Social Media

This doesn't belong in the main namespace, obviously. But it is a to-do list (albeit one that could stand a little tidying up, as it has spawned one wrongly-titled article already). So where does it belong? Wiktionary:Requested articles/Social Media? Appendix:Social media jargon? Uncle G 14:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I left a message on the contributor's talk page (User talk:24.17.197.227) and encouraged him/her to log in with a user name so they can have it on their user page. If he/she doesn't want to do that, then I suppose it should be deleted. The user seems willing to work with us and doesn't appear to be a troll. Kevin Rector 18:51, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Usage articles

This discussion moved to Wiktionary talk:Policy Think Tank - Usage Notes--Richardb 06:47, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*User:Reginald Fu

moved to: WT:VIP/archive#User:Reginald_Fu --Stranger 13:45, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

User:KevinBot

I'm going to be doing my bot work with the account User:KevinBot from now on. I'm going to ask on Meta that it be flagged as a bot. If anyone has a problem with that, now would be time to say so. Kevin Rector 19:42, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't bots supposed to be tested on 10-15 entries before marking as a bot? (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.) Also, can someone please point out for me where the 'pedia bot guidelines are hidden these days? --Connel MacKenzie 19:21, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The 'pedia page for bots is w:Wikipedia:Bots. As far as I can tell Wiktionary does not have any real bot policy. So I figured I'd throw a message up here and see if anyone objects and if no one does I'd get the account flagged. I have 31,834 bot edits on Wikipedia if anyone cares. Kevin Rector 15:43, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
What does this bot do? Eclecticology 22:31, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What does "m1" mean?

I think I might have asked this before, but don't remember reading any replies.

What does "m1" mean in some Irish translations (see, for example, desert)? Is there an m2 as well? Is there more than one masculine gender in Irish, or is this a typo? If so, should this be noted on the page that explains what abbreviations we use on Wiktionary? — Paul G 09:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A quick google turns up quite a few grammar references for Gaelic. Reading this one it seems clear (as mud) to me that there is a large difference between singular masculine/feminine and plural. Despite my name, I do not speak that language, so it seems prudent to wait for a fluent speaker to weigh in. But for now, it seems that the notation m implies masculine, and m1 implies singular masculine. That's my guess, anyhow. --Connel MacKenzie 21:42, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the research, Connel. This would need to be changed to "m singular" then, in the same way that we write "m plural" and not "m pl", "m pl." or "m2".

*interwiki

moved to: Template_talk:Interwiktionary --Stranger 13:54, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Ammendment to Wiktionary:Page_deletion_guidelines#What_to_delete_and_what_to_keep #3

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Page_deletion_guidelines --Stranger 13:58, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Stewards election

Hello,

The stewards election has started on m:Stewards/elections 2005. Anyone can vote provided that he has a valid account on meta with a link to at least one user page, on a project where the editor is a participant, with at least 3 months participation to the project. Stewards can give sysop right on projects where there are no local bureaucrate. Please vote ! Yann 14:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Site notice change

There is a proposal to change the site notice at MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice. Uncle G 23:42, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Wiktionary:Policy

Jun-Dai. I'm moving your "Policy" stuff to the pre-existing Policy Page Wiktionary:Proposal for Policies and Guidelines. You'll find it in page Wiktionary:Proposal for Policies and Guidelines/Jun-Dai--Richardb 02:38, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Requesting help

The list of words and their definitions from w:Nahuatl dictionary all need to be transplanted to their own articles here as soon as possible so the Wikipedia article can be deleted. You can follow the directions at the top of that page. My bot can only transwiki individual articles, not lists. Thanks a bunch. --McBot 01:25, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Proper pronunciation of a geopgraphical name: Please help me.

I have a question to ask: that is, how do you pronounce Lake Nyos, Cameroon, nye-os or nee-os? Lake Nyos is notorious for its CO2 eruprion which killed thousands of people in 1986. Recently the killer gas is being degassed from the lake bottom to prevent recurrence of the tragedy. I am preparing a Japanese dictionary for the tragic events in the world. As you know Japanese transcripts for Nee-os and Nye-os are totally different and I have to know proper pronunciation. Help from knowledgeable people is most appreciated. (I'd like to request important entries in Wiktionary show pronunciations in the future for non-native speakers of English.)

Yosuke Kawachi, Tokyo, Japan yosuke-kawachi@mug.biglobe.ne.jp

*Cleared out some stuff from Beer Parlour

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Proposal_for_Policies_and_Guidelines --Stranger 17:42, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*WikiSaurus gaining some momentum

WikiSaurus has started to gain some momentum. Plenty of entries, and some have a lot of synonyms. Some I've spotted are - drunk, 42 entries, insane (37), nothing (18), promiscuous woman (17). If you spot any other high scoring entries, why not add them in the note at the top of category:WikiSaurus
But also, any ideas yet on if there is a better way of doing this - any discussions should go on Wiktionary:Thesaurus considerations

Account Vanished

I tried to log in today to check my watchlist, and my account didn't exist.

Mostly I edit Wikipedia, but every once in a while I look up a word here in support of doing, and it doesn't exist, so I add it. I'm pretty sure I did so enough times to "count" and not be deleted. Heck, I added "forsooth".

Anyone know why my account would be deleted, here? Kazvorpal 15:28, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

forsooth was added by User:KazVorpal - and it wasn't very well formatted. SemperBlotto 15:41, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Indeed, I'm no expert on formatting in Wiktionary. But why would the account be deleted? Or are you meaning that the username is case sensitive? If so, that's just silly, even *nix isn't case sensitive for usernames. Kazvorpal 15:57, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Everything in wiki is case-sensitive except (sometimes) the first letter. SemperBlotto 16:01, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well that...and I speak as a 12 year Linux, 20 year C user who likes a case-sensitive file system and programming language, is utterly ridiculous. So is the case sensitivity in entry names. There's a time when being too techie is just anal-retentive KazVorpal 16:24, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the answer to that is "Live with it", I'm afraid. --Wytukaze 16:37, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*Right ro left Languages and Left to right supplement

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Persian_index

What's wrong with pictures?

What's the harm in putting pictures in ? H Padleckas 20:52, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

For reference to what H Padleckas is talking about, please see xyr talk page and the article in question. --Wytukaze 21:04, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Reasonable pictures (such as your contributions) are welcome and are to be encouraged. --Connel MacKenzie 21:09, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki translations in Allow

Checking the entry for allow I see translations entered with unusual (quite interesting, I might add) interwiki translation links. Is this a good way to go? They don't seem to be breaking the interwiki left-column links. This does seem, on its face, to have some value. --Connel MacKenzie 06:50, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Possible, but I'll reserve judgement on it for now. Eclecticology 00:53, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Other wiktionaries do similarly. la: for example has a template, that produces, e.g.
狐 (kitsune) ☞ja
—Muke Tever 06:11, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Words with no definition - how to find them?

Could somebody think of a clever way of finding all words that have no definition? See, for example impress. I have left it for the moment, but will add some definitions tomorrow.

One easy way is to look at Special:Shortpages. - TheDaveRoss 18:29, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
But some are quite long, with etymology and translations - just no definition. SemperBlotto 18:44, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=Etymology category&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=en.wiktionary.org&safe=images a google search, perhaps? Can probably be improved... alot. \Mike 20:56, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'll see if I can come up with something that runs through the most recent sql dump, this weekend. P.S. Please sign your posts here. --Connel MacKenzie 06:24, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I did not re-download the latest dump, but I did use my copy from 4/21/2005. I devised a simple parser, that in hindsight, was probably *too* simple. But I realized partway through that there were several reasons not to get fancy: 1) the articles *should* be more consistent. 2) well, see #1.
Anyhow, some of it was so messed up, my "simple" parser eventually crashed. I'm trying to post the 1st half of that list to User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo but be forewarned: most of these need formatting help, not definitions. They are so far from standard wiki formatting that they did not parse. Minimum requirements: Must have a level two language identifier, e.g. ==English==, must have a third level noun, verb, adj, adv, abbr, or acronym (etc.) heading, and must have one or more lines starting with "#" in that third level section.
I think it is safe to say, that when we've made it through this list, the requests for cleanup, wikify and definition categories will be "full" for a while. --Connel MacKenzie 07:33, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well done that man! Do you want us to remove words from your list after fixing, or are you just going to refresh it from time to time? (snow leopard done, 1 down and ??? to go) SemperBlotto 07:52, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thank you kindly. Please remove words as you clean them up...there is no red/blue indication for this list. I am on wikiholiday this week, so please go hog wild on these. --Connel MacKenzie 19:27, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ha! :-) Your wildest dreams are believing that these will be all fixed when you get back from your holiday. Well done! Eclecticology 00:38, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

*Afrikaans is not an option in the list of languages

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:List_of_languages --Stranger 16:48, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mass upload of words

Is there any way of mass uploading words and their meanings without entering them through the wiki interface?

Short answer; yes. With a bot programmed to interface with wiki this is no problem, however one must be very careful when using a bot to bulk upload words that a, the words and definitions are open content and helpful (see Webster 1913 debates), b, the content you are uploading doesn't conflict with content already available (read: overwrite), c, that the uploaded data is formatted in a useful and typical fashion. - TheDaveRoss 12:24, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indicating that words belong to a certain language

How do you indicate that a word belongs to a specific language? Some of the words on the Afrikaans page (uit, probeer) seem to actually just be links to words in other languages. When you define a word in the list can you do something like "[[af:van]]" to indicate that this is the afrikaans word and not for example the Dutch word?

Each article should begin with a level two heading which is a language label: ==Afrikaans== or ==Dutch==
One page can contain multiple articles when two languages have words with identical spelling. In this case the articles are in English alphabetical order of the name of the language with a horizontal rule separating articles for different languages. To create a horizontal rule use 4 hyphens: ----
A good example page I just noticed is pero which has quite a few languages. If "uit" and "probeer" are correctly spelled words in both Afrikaans and Dutch then they will be on the same page. Right now we have quite a few Dutch words but not many Afrikaans - we would love to have more! — Hippietrail 11:45, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Creating a template

How do I create a new template? I need af to be a template for Afrikaans as well as other things like Selfstandige naamwoord (noun).

To create a template simply go to the template page (e.g. template:Es:-ar) and edit the page. See meta:Help:Template for more info and the markup specific to template pages. - TheDaveRoss 13:02, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

af is a template for afrikaans: If you look at Template:af then you will find it, and this can be shown by typing in {{af}} Wonderfool

Categories

Are there any guidelines on categories? I think I worked out how to start one, but not sure if this is the right thing? Am I duplicating Family? Is there any point in the categories like English Nouns for example? Surely these are identified by ==English== followed by ===Noun===? or am I missing something? Cheers 20.133.0.14 09:12, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • The purpose of categories is to be able to find similar words, or words that are related in some way - by clicking on the category at the bottom of the screen. The convention is that they will be some sort of field of study (like chemistry, in the singular) or a type of word (like English nouns, in the plural). "Family" doesn't really fit either of those, but you could change it to "Family relationships" I suppose. By the way, no two people agree on the use of categories; for instance, many people would prefer to have a page entitled "Wiktionary:List of family relationships". Cheers SemperBlotto 10:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with our newcomer's analysis. I too feel that "English Nouns" is uselessly broad, and that the search technique you suggest would be better. Others see that differently. As between "family" or "family relationships", either would be fine with me, but eventually one will become more dominant. Do what feels comfortable to you. Eclecticology 22:55, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 23:17, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)> I agree that English nouns is a bit silly, but there is some value in using a category for a developing list of words that will eventually become to large for the category. Also, when the list does get too large, you can start to have subcategories: countable nouns, abstract nouns, french-derived nouns, etc. Of course, too many categories is a danger, but I think time will fix this. Wikipedia has the same problem. w:Claudio Arrau is in both the gay category, and the gay musician category, along with the musician category, and probably eventually latin american pianists, famous latin american people, men, people that died over the age of 80, etc. At some stages of development it is useful to think of things in these groups so that we can be sure to format them similarly, or just keep track of them. I'm rambling now. Time to go home. </Jun-Dai>

>>> I don't understand why, but putting a word into a certain category often sparks a flamewar. Almost as if an entry's author is personally offended by a word falling into a given category. Curiosity of human nature.

Perhaps we could convince RichardB to work his wikimagic into formatting Category talk:English words affected by prescriptivism into something like Policy:Categories (THOU SHALT NOT CREATE CATEGORIES OF SINGULAR FORM...)

Hmmm. My self-imposed wikiholiday isn't too sucessful so far. --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with a convention that category names should be in the plural as long as the term is countable.
The purpose of Wikiholidays is to give you the opportunity to get a life. :-) Eclecticology 07:27, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Empty Chinese/Japanese entries

There is a stream of Chinese/Japanese entries coming from anonymous user:195.136.49.36 but these are just a bunch of headers with no substantive content. What's going on here? Is this a bot? Is the user planning to fill them in later? — Paul G 11:16, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to know what this guy is up to. All we can do is delete the pages. Eclecticology 00:55, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation stub?

Now, I know there's a generic section stub ({{substub}}) and a specific etymology stub ({{etystub}}) but is there one for pronunciation? If so, what is it? -- Bennmorland 01:22, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know. Perhaps they shied away from {{pronstub}} for its leet connotations? At any rate, just create it if no one knows if one exists. --Wytukaze 01:31, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oh, lookie here, Jun-Dai just created one. Huzzah. --Wytukaze 01:41, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
done (let me know if you need any others)
WOOT! --Bennmorland 01:51, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Umm... What's the template? --Bennmorland 01:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
And who's "me"? No sig! -- Bennmorland 01:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"me" = Jun-Dai. Template = {{pronstub}} --Wytukaze 01:55, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! --Bennmorland 01:56, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My problem with a lot of these stub templates is that they become an excuse for doing nothing. If pronunciation is so important to somebody why not just add it in instead of adding a stub notice and waiting for somebody else to do it. The same goes even more strongly for the "wikify" stub notice. Wikifying an article does not require any outside information so why not just do it? Eclecticology 17:52, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

The only time *I* add {{wikify}} is when I'm looking at the 500 more recent anonymous changes. (Recent changes, hiding logged in users, last 500.) Blasting through a large (changing) list like that does not afford me time to make all the corrections I'd like to as I am going through the list. But you are right; it has been a while since I've taken a pass at Category:Entries that need to be wikified. --Connel MacKenzie 06:23, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • <Jun-Dai 18:09, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)>
    I can understand the sentiment, Eclecticology, but to me the existence of these stubs allows us to accomplish a couple of things. Given that all of our articles should, in time, have pronunciation and etymology sections, it allows you to leave a trail of articles needing these things for anyone that wants to or enjoys entering them. Obviously, if there's any reason why we don't, as a project, want these sections in all of our arguments, then this line of reasoning is invalid. I personally don't really know how to format/get etymology information without being in danger of copyright violation, so generally I don't. Nor am I really interested in it. Even more so for pronunciation, which uses characters that I am unfamiliar with. So I feel it is leaving useful information if I point out that these sections are lacking in an article I've written.
    Additionally, it can be useful for those who work on a lot of articles, to break their labor up into batchs. You can begin with the definition of a hundred articles. Then you can enter the pronunciations of them, then the etymologies. This is more efficient if you are using different sources for each, and possibly even if you aren't. This part is speculation, but it's certainly a potential reason for their existence.
    The important thing, to me, is that we isolate these as sections that need to be filled out. If we agree that they are necessary sections, then it makes sense to me to have a place that we can go to figure out what entries are in need of them. Some people really dislike entering in this information: should they avoid contributing at all? As free contributors, shouldn't we be allowed the opportunity to do nothing?
  • </Jun-Dai>
You're one after my own heart, Jun-Dai. To me, a pronunciation key is an integral part of any dictionary. And since we have pretty much combined translingual and thesaurus duties in Wiktionary, why not make it an etymological dictionary, as well? All that's missing is a unified official structure for the etymologies. I have taken one that has already appeared on the site and adopted it as my own.
And one more idea, though it may be a bit extraneous; a stub specific to non-Roman alphabet etymologies in need of having the "alien" symbols inserted? Greek, Hebrew, Cantonese, Arabic, etc.? They could be subcats for the basic {{etystub}}. {{etygrstub}}, {{etyhebstub}}, etc.? Flight of fancy that should be broached on its own in a wider forum first, of course.
-- Bennmorland 07:24, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Also, if the argument is that they don't look good, why not lose the "this is a stub" message and just put them in the category? I understand the argument that it is a somewhat lazy way of going about things, but many people can't write etymologies for everyword, outside of Romance languages I know I am at a loss. The same goes for pronunciation, I have to be damn sure I pronounce it right before I add one to Wiktionary, lest I do it improperly. - TheDaveRoss 06:49, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Precisely. I am now going to start putting entries into the two categories Category:Pronunciation stub and Category:Etymology stub, leaving the stub thang behind until there is a consensus. -- Benn M. 01:06, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Stress marks

I think I raised a point about the symbol marking primary stress in AHD some time ago but don't remember seeing a reply. AHD seems to use a symbol a bit like an acute accent or an italicised apostrophe for primary stress and a symbol rather like the IPA stress mark (ˈ) for secondary stress.

Using an italicised apostrophe doesn't seem to work very well (at least, not in my browser - Mozilla in Linux). Some dictionaries use an apostrophe for primary stress and a quotation mark (") for secondary stress.

There doesn't seem to be any hard-and-fast policy on showing stress in AHD in Wiktionary, as far as I can see. I have used ' and " (as described in my second paragraph above) in the transcription of periodic acid, but I don't think this is entirely satisfactory, especially as SAMPA uses " for primary stress (and % for secondary stress).

What would be a suitable policy here? I would favour doing away with AHD altogether as it is unwieldy and only really suitable for US English.

Thoughts, anyone?

— Paul G 08:54, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Well AHD isn't really AHD, it's my own creation originally based on AHD when I thought all American dictionaries used a single system. Since then it's changed a little.
  • Anyway, the American dictionaries seem to use two special characters which look a bit like an apostrophe / acute / prime. The look mostly like a straight apostrophe on an angle of about 45 degress. Usually the primary stress character is much bolder then the secondary stress one, sometimes I believe the angles are reversed.
  • These characters do not seem to be supported by Unicode, at one time a while ago I asked on some mailing list or Usenet group about this issuse but don't remember getting a response. The online dictionaries mostly avoid Unicode and use inline images instead which have a lot of drawbacks.
  • Since correct characters seem to be lacking, I decided to use a plain old apostrophe for primary stress and a double quote character for secondary stress.
  • I am open to any better suggestion up to and including lobbying the Unicode consortium for the special characters dictionaries use. — Hippietrail 12:40, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Confusion caused by Category:Etymology stub

Okay, does this mean we don't use {{etystub}} anymore? I am confused. -- Bennmorland 07:35, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • <Jun-Dai 07:39, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)>
      I think it means that the community doesn't like it, but that you're not likely to have it reverted, so if it's useful to you, keep at it, and if it's important to you, then go ahead, but best to let it go if someone reverts it. I think in the early stages of the Wiktionary (where we most certainly are now), the general policy is live and let live, and get occasionally huffy. If you want it kept as a general rule, then you'll have to fight for it at Wiktionary talk:Entry layout explained.
    </Jun-Dai>
So, shall I risk garnering the rancor of my colleagues, and hope the two networks build in such volume and/or proves their usefulness that no one could hope to revert all of them? *evil grin* -- Benn M. 08:13, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The problem with stubs is that they're things for other people to do. Other people have other interests, and tend to do what they want to do. Very occasionally, as I do, they will look for things like stubs to fix, but for the most part these lists get things added more quickly than things are removed. If you really think that an etymology or pronunciation is needed for a particular the best course of action is for you to research and add it yourself.
I don't know what you mean by "two networks". Eclecticology 17:57, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)
The two respecting {{etystub}} and {{pronstub}} -- Benn M. 06:51, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Language headers

  • <Jun-Dai 05:48, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)>
    This has driven me nuts for some time, and I've never understood it:
    Why do we have multiple languages on a single page rather that giving them their own namespace, like German:Bank or German/Bank, or somesuch?
    One of many reasons why this is awkward is that it means we can never really have a comprehensive article, because there will or may always be languages that we've left out of the list or that haven't been fully entered that don't really have anything to do with, say, a comprehensive Latin entry. It also makes linking to articles awkward. Any sort of "word of the day" feature that we might want to have is sort of hurt by this.
    </Jun-Dai>
Obviously, it is because the Wiktionary community dislikes "disambiguation" pages. I think if we find it too arduous, then a year or two or three from now, someone will ask that each wiktionary become monolingual, with interwiki links to translations on other wikts. With the language headers, that will at least be theoretically possible. --Connel MacKenzie 06:08, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • <Jun-Dai 06:33, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)> Well, for the first part, I guess that makes sense, but it seems like it makes future possibilities, such as having language tabs for each entry, that much more difficult. As for the second part, why would the wiktionaries become monolingual? Where, then, would I get a definition of a Japanese word in English? That just doesn't make sense. </Jun-Dai>
  • <Jun-Dai 06:36, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)> I'm beginning to think that it's time to start thinking about what we eventually want the Wiktionary to become (as GerardM is doing, much as I'm dubious about the direction that team is taking), because our current setup won't ever be greatly useful, or will always be awkward at best, and many scenarios for the future (all of which seem to require Wiktionary-specific software changes) would seem to involve redoing a lot of the work that has already been done. </Jun-Dai>
I agree that disambiguation is useful... I've started using it on la: awhile back, with pages like la:Sulfur (en), simply because the amount of information that goes on a dictionary page when it passes out of stubhood will be just too much to sit on one page (cf. pages like I.) At any rate, I don't prefer the pseudo-namespace-ish German:Bank (just too much to type) and there's no good in using German/Bank when the subpage features for the main article space are turned off (though it might be useful if you get it turned on... then from German/Bank you could use [[/Maus]] to link to German/Maus instead of typing the whole thing out). Another problem with using language names in the article space is that there may be debate over the name of a language (e.g. the Farsi vs. Persian tiff that went on earlier). It may be too late to change things here now though, as it'll be more work even than the capitalization transition (which itself is likely never to happen). —Muke Tever 21:13, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Copyright Violation

What is your advice on determining whether something constitutes a copyright violation? Here is the text in question.

From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, as accessible at Dictionary.com:

"om·buds·man n. 1. A man who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements, especially between aggrieved parties such as consumers or students and an institution or organization."

From ombudsman:

"Noun ombudsman 1. An official who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements, especially between aggrieved parties such as consumers and an institution, organization or government department"


They seem very close to me, but there are differences. What would be your criteria, as more experienced members? Superm401 20:08, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Feel free to rewrite it, or paraphrase it. Ombudsman wass one of my own edits. What I TRY to do is to use several online and paper sources, and come up with something that has the meaning, but not the exact words of the original sources. In this case, It seems I was in a hurry - I shall try to improve it. SemperBlotto 21:47, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Copyright violation as it relates to dictionaries is even trickier than most other claims. It cannot be based on a single definition of a word. The shorter the definition, the stronger the possibility that two definitions can be identical by coincidence. If two pieces of writing are identical but were independently written without reference to each other, there is no copyright violation. Such a situation would be impossible in longer works. Copyright cases over music often depend on whether the alleged infringer had access to the original material. A single instance of copying from AHD is likely fair use, especially if the source is given. What would constitute infringement would be a regular habit of copying from that same source. Rewriting a definition has associated problems too; in particular, it can cause a meaning to drift away from the precise meaning of a term. Eclecticology 00:40, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

I am aware that copyright only covers copying. Therefore, I know that it is acceptable to develop an identical work separately without infringing, unlike with patented inventions for example. I also understand that a definition can easily be independently developed if it's very short, but this was fairly long, and had somewhat complex vocabulary. Therefore, I would be interested in what your opinion would be, seeing the definitions compared without evidence of infringement. You note that copying from AHD may be fair use. I would have to disagree with you about that. A single good definition contains significant content, and it could easily be unacceptable under fair use to copy it to a competing dictionary. Also, it is bad to get into the habit of taking advantage of fair use. I prefer the idea of always generating definitions independently. Now, obviously, SemperBlotto has admitted to referencing a bit too closely in this instance, but what would you do in the future? Superm401 22:30, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

*What are citations? such as Zelkova/Citations

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Entry_layout_explained

*Translation.

Hello.

My name is Rose. I would like help in translating this sentence. The sentence is: The one who brings dreams. I would appreciate this translated from English into Native American.
If anyone could help; I do thank you.
-Rose
mougcza@rogers.com
  • There are many Native American languages, but the majority of people who understand those languages also understand English. You would do better by asking that question on one of the projects for those languages. Eclecticology 04:12, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

Indices for Synonyms, Antonyms, and Homonyms

Since we have indices for rhyming words, it's logical that we should have indices for other things which people commonly need. It also might be helpful to have indices for words that are alliterative or have beginning rhyme rather than end rhyme. --Imagist 14:51, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since you will be doing most of the work, how do you propose to organize this? Eclecticology 16:48, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

Controversial articles on front page

I think it might make the Wiktionary seem more alive to outsiders to advertise our hot debates right on the front page where everybody could see them. A few months ago that would've been tidal wave and tsunami, today it would be photon belt and torroid. It would be interesting to bring new people's perspective in on whather's getting us here hot under the collar at any time. Plus people may come look from time to time to see what new controversy is stirring up. I think it will make us look more alive and "watchable". People may watch for a while and then have an opinion to give, and then become Wiktionarians and stay for a while. What do others think? — Hippietrail 04:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 04:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)>

I'm down. It does play to one of our (collective) strong points: arguing. That said, of the potential Wiktionarians, it would probably only seduce the argumentative ones (it might even scare off some of the more timid ones). Is that what we want?

</Jun-Dai 04:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)>

I OBJECT! Err, wait...ummm. --Connel MacKenzie 05:06, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Seriously though, wouldn't an image-of-the-day or a pronunciation-of-the-day be more like what we want to liven the page up a bit? --Connel MacKenzie 05:06, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Surprise! I don't have a strong feeling on this. It's worth trying if someone is willing to maintain it. But I don't think that our photon belt is nearly as hot as a tsunami. Rfd will likely drive such a feature so that a featured controversy should probably have its own page to avoid cluttering rfd. The topic should probably highlight a broader issue than what happens to only one article. Eclecticology 23:23, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)

New Beer Parlour tab

It's a subtle change, to be sure, but there is now a new tab at the top of this page. You should now see a next to the edit button to make it easy to start a new topic at the bottom. Thanks to Hippietrail for making it happen. --Dvortygirl 05:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, it only works with the monobook skin. If anybody really wants it for another skin please let me know. Also it depends on javascript so if you don't have that enabled you won't see the tab. — Hippietrail 05:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Are downloadable dictionaries available?

I looked everywhere for some answers but hopefully someone can answer this question here. I am looking for readable (ascii/Unicode) downloadable files for the language dictionaries. Anyone know if these are available? Thanks.

Somebody did upload a massive Russian dictionary in Wikisource that could be adapted for our purposes. Eclecticology 23:03, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)


Forgot password invalid email address = Damn...

Hi everybody...

Somebody please help me. I think I miswrote my email address when I created my Wiktionary account, so now my password's lost. I've sent like 4 new passwords to my email account, and checked both my Pop3, Gmail and my Hotmail account, but there is no password. On Wikipedia the password service works fine.

So now I've lost my password for my account called Mathew - what should I do?

I'm sure I've just typed the email wrong - like ……@gmial.com or something, but how can I get my password back now?

--213.237.66.155 [Talk] (a.k.a. Mathew) 21:59, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Get a different new account instead!!! Its not like you've actually used the Mathew account. --Wonderfool


*Special issues with Serbian

moved to: Wiktionary_talk:Serbian_index

Recent changes

What's happened to the format of the header to recent changes? There is a block on the left, then a block on the right. It looks rather strange to me. SemperBlotto 07:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Thank you Connel - that's better. SemperBlotto 07:33, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • I haven't gone back and seen what it was that was wrong, I just went backwards to the last "good" version and restored it in MediaWiki:Recentchangestext. I am shocked to see that it is not protected anymore. --Connel MacKenzie 08:09, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Translations

Someone made Template:Trad, which is used a lot in :fr, and I thought I'd let ppl know, cos its very handy, with interwiki links to all over the shop. Maybe this has been brought up before, i think so. Anyway, if u wanna use it, it'd be great --Expurgator t(c)

"Save page" giving preview

A strange thing keeps happening to me today. I press the save page" button, or hit alt-S, and it keeps giving me the preview page instead of saving the page. Sometimes it takes a dozen tries until it works properly. Any ideas? SemperBlotto 10:34, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's been doing that to me for a long time, usually in the Mediawiki: namespace. I figured it might be some kind of edit throttle to deter bots... But apparently it's just a db glitch. —Muke Tever 16:43, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

dodgy

User:Amgine has been protecting and deleting stuff. How can (s)he do this? A steward, like User:Angela maybe? --Expurgator t(c)

See Wiktionary:Vandalism in progress and his reply on your talk page, Wonderfool :P --Wytukaze 19:34, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, way worse: a developer.  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 27 June 2005 05:50 (UTC)

Help! Can't Save Page

Hi.. I have tried to edit the Appendix:Colours page, but when I save, it just went empty, no matter how many times I tried...

(>_<) ... can someone help?

Sally Ku 27 June 2005 03:13 (UTC)

BTW: I have taken a copy of the contents, so I can paste in and fix as soon as I can update!

1.5Beta1 moves

A change to the Wiki software has Move pages now allowing for a comment or "Reason" where the destination used to be. The "From" page is no longer in an editbox. So to move a page now, edit the FIRST edit box, not the second. Double and tripple check edit history before and after moves now. --Connel MacKenzie 27 June 2005 06:51 (UTC)

*Quick hello

to all my old friends here on Wiktionary. It's nice to be able to spend a little time here again...the admins are the neatest, the wiki is the most peaceful and usable of them all IMHO. Thanks for keeping the place so cool!

AJ --HiFlyer 28 June 2005 18:53 (UTC)

*Wiktionary:Wiktionarian of the month

User:Dvortygirl is the Wiktionarian of the month! --Expurgator t(c) 28 June 2005 11:20 (UTC)

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