Wiktionary:Grease pit/2014/December

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

'--~~Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tagr paciga</ref> tono," sed ne koleriĝu pri ĝi. Kaj tamen se mi povus montri al vi nian katon Dina. Mi kredas ke vi nepre ekamus la katojn, se nur vi povus vidi ŝin. Ŝi estas tre kara trankvila afero, "Alico daŭrigis, duone al si, dum ŝi ḅḅḍḍẶẶẶẶẶẶẶẶặặ₳₳₳₳₳ por kapti musojn - ho, pardonu! "kriis Alico denove, por tiu tempo la Muso estis hirtaj. Not that often, but far better than nothing. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:58, 1 December 2014 (UTC)::Can't see anything in Special:Contributions/Ruakhbot. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)::: You spelled it wrong, it's Special:Contributions/Rukhabot (the difference has to do with Hebrew grammar; there's a short explanation on its user page</ref>). Anyway, it clearly hasn't run since August. --WikiTiki89 06:22, 1 December 2014 (UTC)--68.104.115.125 07:20, 28 November 2015 (UTC):::: Mea culpa. I will try to start a run sometime this week. (Are there no other active interwiki-bots anymore? That's unfortunate. Rukhabot is the most comprehensive interwiki-bot in mainspace, operating based on XML dumps like Interwicket (talk • contribs) used to do, but there used to be others that ran based on recent-changes and "seeding". And Rukhabot has never touched non-mainspace pages such as categories; we have always depended entirely on "traditional" interwiki-bots for that.) —RuakhTALK 01:00, 2 December 2014 (UTC):::::@Ruakh Yes, please restart, if you can.:::::A couple of questions: Does it link to redirects in other languages? 三輪車 is a redirect to 三轮车 on Chinese wiktionary (zh).ËËẮ:::::: Re: "Are there excluded wikis, which are ignored, e.g. Min Nan (zh-min-nan) […] ?": It excludes "closed" Wiktionaries, such as those for Tibetan, Moldovan, and Romansh; but the Min Nan Wiktionary is not closed, and therefore is not excluded. (See e.g. minnan?diff=28872250.):::::: Re: "I noticed that interwikis are often one-sided": As explained at User:Rukhabot#Interwikis, Rukhabot only edits en.wikt.:::::: Note that it would be very difficult for me to change the interwiki-link behavior, because I would risk getting into accidental rever</ref>t-wars with the other interwiki-bots. I have a lot more freedom with the translation-link behavior, which is why the translation-links do have a little bit of support for "redirects" like zh:三輪車.[reply]

—RuakhTALK 06:54, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Ruakh Thank you. I see you have no control over other wikis. Are able (please consider) to add HTML redirects? We probably centralise traditional and simplified Chinese entries into traditional, pls see Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2014/December#New_changes_to_Chinese_entries. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:50, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Er, I think you misunderstood me? I'm saying that I can't just start supporting HTTP redirects, because then I would get into revert-wars with the interwiki-bots that don't support them. (By the way, 'HTML' and 'HTTP' are not the same thing.) —RuakhTALK 02:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Ruakh Sorry, I meant HTTP redirects. What other bots do you mean? I meant making possible linking English Wiktionary's 三輪車 to zh:三轮车]. Did you mean this particular link is going to cause revert-wars? Please confirm. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:42, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What Ruakh is saying is that if his bot (or anyone else) adds that link, one of the other interwiki bots will remove it. --WikiTiki89 02:50, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks. Sorry if my question/request sounded stupid. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:16, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{ping}}[edit]

There is an odd behavior with {{ping}}. It's been working fine and sent notifications (a red number next to my user name) but today it did not and even when I click the list of notifications, the new one is not even there. There was a period after the template call instead of the usual space. Would that cause this issue? I wanted to test it but apparently I can't ping my own user name. --Panda10 (talk) 20:04, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note, the reason you can't ping yourself is that, to do so, you'd have to save and view the page that had just pinged you. Which of course just removes the ping right away. —CodeCat 21:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@CodeCat. Thanks. --Panda10 (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
One way to ping yourself is to open a second browser in which you're not logged on, then ping your own name as an anon. I just did that, and it worked: I got a notification. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:30, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Angr. Ok, but you used a space after the template call. I am pinging you now with a period after it. Let me know if you get a notification. --Panda10 (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Panda10. Yes, I did. Did you? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:46, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. In that case, I have no idea why I did not get that one message. Thank you for testing. --Panda10 (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The pinging function is often unreliable. It's often happened to me that I've failed to get notifications despite being pinged, without any discernible reason. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:56, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's good to know. Thanks. --Panda10 (talk) 22:17, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note that if the post isn't signed properly, or if the edit adding the post removed any lines from the page, or if the ping link isn't formatted normally, the user won't get a notification. --Yair rand (talk) 01:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
mw:Help:Echo. — Keφr 17:35, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Scan Azeri entries for incorrect yaa[edit]

Can someone scan the dumps and make a list of all pages with an ==Azeri== L2 that contain the letter ي (U+064A, ARABIC LETTER YEH) either in the page title or in the text of the page? These should all be replaced with ی (U+06CC, ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH). I just fixed a few, but have no idea how many more there. --WikiTiki89 16:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I only see one (پوميدور), which you've already moved. I could scan translation tables too, if you think it's worthwhile. DTLHS (talk) 17:02, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting that you didn't find Azərbaycan, which I also just fixed. Are you sure you checked the Latin- and Cyrillic-script entries? --WikiTiki89 17:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My bad, I just checked the title, not the page text. DTLHS (talk) 17:08, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Here:

bir fil din mis dünya ayı diz سو miras фил динозавр avtomobil birlik دین balıq yarasa pomidor silah Azərbaycan мирас میمون təyyarə тәјјарә imza çiçək maşın ədəbiyyat dəniz qızıl dərya gəmi heyvan minarə siçan дин kəndir әдәбијјат kərpic zeytun зејтун şirkət milçək göyərçin bibər meymun jasmin dayanacaq kəfgir qərənfil yoxsul kasıb böyrək xəzinə aclıq hinduşka həqiqət cib damcı پوميدور طیاره qarışqa qalay yasəmən مئیمون мејмун dinozavr Əs-Səlamu əleykum

DTLHS (talk) 17:23, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --WikiTiki89 17:30, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy of Lo Ximiendo. --Vahag (talk) 17:58, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See also the translations and links on Azeri. DTLHS (talk) 18:03, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed all those, but I guess it also looks like it may be worth scanning all translation tables. --WikiTiki89 18:09, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Checking ي vs ی and ك vs ک, which look alike in certain positions could be a regular task for patrollers. It's a common mistake for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Azeri, etc, when entries are made using, e.g. wrong IME. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:56, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What I found when correcting the yaas was that usually the kaf was correct in the same word where the yaa was wrong. --WikiTiki89 23:30, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, yāʾ/ye errors are more common for both Arabic ي and ى (ʾalif maqṣūra) (which looks even more like Persian ی, but a while ago, there was a contributor who used Persian keyboard for Arabic words and she used "kāf" as well. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Or a task for the script detection module (why was it disabled?) DTLHS (talk) 16:48, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, patrolling doesn't have to be manual, mixing Roman and Cyrillic scripts has been quite common, I have fixed quite a few when I spotted them. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:05, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
On a related note, could someone delete کيلو and رجوليت for me, please? Thank you. ك could well be considered an 'alternative spelling' for Persian entries. Kaixinguo (talk) 13:52, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:etyl edit protected request[edit]

"Anglo-Norman" (xno) should link to w:Anglo-Norman language, and not to w:Anglo-Norman, as it presently does. See e.g. beauty#Etymology. It Is Me Here t / c 17:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably it's actually Module:etymology language/data that needs to be changed, but I'm not sure how. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:52, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
N.B. they manage to do it for Georgian at Template:etyl/documentation, if that's any help. It Is Me Here t / c 19:24, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, practically all languages automatically have the word "language" added to the end in {{etyl}}, but Anglo-Norman doesn't, and I don't know why. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Done For "normal" languages — ones with actual mainspace support and so on — it uses the language-name as it appears in categories, which is generally just the normal name plus "language". (There are some configured exceptions — ase category-names and etymology-Wikipedia-links use "American Sign Language" rather than "American Sign Language language" — but that's the default.) For languages defined in Module:etymology language/data, the default is just to use the first listed name, unless configured otherwise with an explicit wikipedia_article value. I've now configured xno to link to w:Anglo-Norman language. —RuakhTALK 04:31, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Huge edit, unreadable in wiki software? consoles[edit]

What's going on here at consoles? I can't even view the diff. I managed to roll it back though. [1] Equinox ◑ 19:58, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's just a bunch of junk JavaScript code, which comes out like even worse junk when interpreted as wikitext. --WikiTiki89 21:12, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Howler in Template:it-noun[edit]

You can no longer specify the other gender plural in {{it-noun}}. The rationale is, that plural goes on the other gender form. So nominatrici cannot be linked to using it-noun in nominatore, but you can link to it from nominatrice so there's no problem. However, for -ista nouns, the other gender noun is the same as the page name! For example alchimista you can't specific a masculine plural and a feminine plural unless both plurals are identical, which they aren't! I had to switch to {{head|it|noun}}. FWIW I'd rather we just allow linking to the other gender plural, but that's a policy issue, not a technical one. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:39, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In cases like these we would just create two noun sections with separate definitions, just like for nominatore and nominatrice. They're still separate nouns with separate meanings, they just happen to have some forms in common. —CodeCat 14:11, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, they're the same noun with the same meaning. CodeCat are you breaking things to avoid boredom again? Renard Migrant (talk) 15:42, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
They have different meanings. You can't call a nominatore a nominatrice. —CodeCat 17:58, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is with alchimista and similar Italian nouns ending in -ista, where one single word refers to both masculine and feminine in the singular, but that same word has two different plural forms depending on the gender. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and I'm arguing that there are two nouns, alchimista m (“male alchemist”) and alchimista f (“female alchemist”). —CodeCat 19:25, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • That wasn't clear initially -- “You can't call a nominatore a nominatrice” made it sound like a different issue.
It seems then as though you're advocating for data redundancy, rather than a simple and elegant means of combining duplicate information. I'm not sure why, especially when we used to have just such a solution. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:10, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Being accurate is still more important than not being redundant. There are many nouns in many languages that are synonyms of each other, but by and large we still have full definitions for both of them. But in this case, they aren't even synonyms. We would never define policewoman with the exact same definitions as policeman, because they clearly mean different things. The same applies here: you can't use alchimisti and alchimiste interchangeably, they refer to different things. Common sense says that words with different meanings must have different definitions, and cannot be combined into one word anymore than policewomen and policemen can. —CodeCat 20:27, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • CodeCat, again your comment suggests that you and I are talking past each other. The issue at hand is not about treating alchimisti and alchimiste interchangeably. It is about having one single entry for the singular form alchimista, which, in the singular, happens to be either masculine or feminine (presumably indicated by the article used), and indicating in the headline for alchimista that this term has two separate plural forms, depending on the gender. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:52, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone other than CodeCat agree with CodeCat about this? --WikiTiki89 22:30, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why this is not in Beer parlour. Is the undiscussed change still left unreverted? --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:45, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with CodeCat. Very often, such words are grouped in paper dictionaries, but it's for space reasons only. And the meaning of the feminine noun associated to the masculine noun is often unclear in these dictionaries: in French, if boulanger and boulangère are described in the same entry, the meaning wife of ... is usually omitted, very unfortunately. Lmaltier (talk) 22:54, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But we aren't discussing boulanger and boulangère, we are discussing (using French as an example) words like chimiste that have the same masculine and feminine form. In French, the plurals are the same, but in Italian, they are different, but they are still one word in the singular. --WikiTiki89 22:59, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In French, yes, for simplicity, it's possible to consider chimiste as a single word, either masculine (for men) or feminine (for women). But, for alchimista in Italian, different plurals clearly mean that they are different words. In Italian, nouns have a gender, either masculine or feminine. Lmaltier (talk) 06:26, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I got to wondering, here we are blathering on about this in English, what do the Italians think? If any Italian speakers can chime in here, please do. I note that none of the participants so far in this thread self-report any Italian knowledge.
FWIW, The IT WT is missing any it:alchmista entry, but they do have an entry for it:specialista, with just the one listing for both masculine and feminine, and two separate entries for the plural.
Note: I did have a look at the history for {{it-noun}}, and the last change was in February 2013 when Semper removed the old template code and replaced it with an invocation of Module:it-head. That was last changed in late July this year by CodeCat, but briefly looking over the changes, I don't think those changes affected plural handling. In short, it looks like {{it-noun}} has had this deficiency for a while, possibly since it was first created.
If this IT WT entry is at all representative, and if Renard Migrant's comments above are accurate about the state of affairs in {{it-noun}}, then this template needs alteration to allow for this case (single gender-agnostic singular form, separate gender-specific plural forms). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:52, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think knowledge of Italian is needed; the matter is presented clearly enough for English-speaking lexicographers to be able to judge the matter well enough. Chiming in from native speakers of multiple inflected European languages featuring constructions similar or analogical to the one discussed does not harm. In Czech, most role names have gender-differentiated lemmas (učitel and učitelka for teacher), but there are cases which are not so differentiated, such as vrchní and radní, and for those it is not unequivocally obvious that we need two separate noun entries, each having a distinct sense. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:18, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with splitting definitions of nouns with common gender. Yeah, English nouns don’t have gender and different words must be used when referring to a specific sex, but why should this affect languages that do inflect for gender? — Ungoliant (falai) 16:42, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How about nouns with identical masculine and feminine singulars and identical masculine and feminine plurals as well? Check out this edit to French marxiste. Isn't this just reader-alienating silliness? Renard Migrant (talk) 13:25, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely what I’m talking about. It’s confusing, inaccurate (at least for Italian and Portuguese, the masculine isn’t merely a male X, it’s also the form used when the sex is unknown or irrelevant) and it wastes the time of readers and contributors alike. — Ungoliant (falai) 16:46, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Revisiting the issue of English UK/US spellings and entry synchroni(s|z)ation[edit]

Following from the Wiktionary:Requests_for_cleanup#anonymize thread, I wanted to bring up again the technical possibilities for maintaining a single dataset (page) for entries with multiple spellings, where the only difference in the spellings is regional (i.e. it has no bearing on meaning, etc.).

Every once in a while, curiosity or frustration bubbles up regarding English entries with different spellings, such as color and colour, and the challenges of maintaining content on both pages. I dimly recall past discussions about this, where the consensus that evolved was that the technical limitations were too great to allow for anything other than either picking one spelling as the lemma and redirecting the other, or just manually maintaining both pages.

However, the last such discussion that I can remember took place before we got Lua. Now that we have proper string processing, I started wondering if we might not be able to come up with something that would work.

As a quick-and-dirty sample, I created User:Eirikr/Template_Tests/colour and User:Eirikr/Template_Tests/color, which both just pull from User:Eirikr/Template Tests/colo(u)r. The plural forms for this word pair are quite simple, so no special processing is needed. More complicated plural forms would need another approach, but at the moment, I cannot think of any UK/US word pairs with more complicated plurals. Another sample pair to demonstrate a verb is at User:Eirikr/Template_Tests/anonymise and User:Eirikr/Template_Tests/anonymize, both of which pull from User:Eirikr/Template_Tests/anonymi(sz)e.

An alternate approach would be to pick one spelling as the "main" one that would contain the data, and just transclude that into the other spelling directly, without using a third page.

Maintaining two separate pages, where ostensibly the only differences should be in regional labels and other specifics, has proven problematic. See the discrepancies between honor and honour, for instance. Maintaining a single dataset instead and applying some simple structured authoring techniques looks like a saner and more consistent way forward.

What are your thoughts? Is this something we could implement? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:07, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is the correct place for discussing the technical aspects of whether something can be done and how we might do it. It's only the matter of whether to actually implement it that has to go to the Beer parlour. The cases where decisions to implement things were made here aren't an argument against discussing things here, but against omitting the Beer parlour step in the process. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. Whether this kind of thing should be done should be discussed in Beer parlour. This discussion should have been started in Beer parlour, since there are no technical difficulties to be discussed, merely whether we want to use templates and thereby complicate editing. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:05, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • After e/c... @Dan Polansky The grease pit is for technical discussions. This is a technical discussion. Why do you “oppose the use of Grease pit for this discussion”?
  • Yes, indeed, we had this discussion before -- as I explicitly note in my initial post here (“I wanted to bring up again”). Much has changed in the technical capabilities of the MediaWiki platform, in ways that, I believe, alter the parameters enough to warrant discussing this again. We turned down a similar idea once before, under different conditions. Under current conditions, I am interested in what community members think.
Note that this issue affects relatively few terms: just those where multiple spellings are all regarded as full lemmata in their own rights, and where the content on all of the relevant pages is (or should be) identical except for spellings and regional tags. Increasing complexity by adding such a workaround (to what is ultimately a technical issue) also reduces complexity by simplifying page maintenance. I believe the net effect on editing complexity is actually a reduction.
I now understand that you are opposed, so thank you for making that clear. However, I do not fully understand why you are opposed. Could you articulate your position? Is your only opposition that it increases a specific kind of complexity, in a small and very specific subset of entries? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:24, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)I understand Dan's opposition. He's not the only editor to oppose this suggestion for the reason that it makes editing more complicated. Nevertheless, if we can't have the two spellings in one heading like other dictionaries, then I support this proposal. Dbfirs 21:51, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which differences should be considered as normal between such pages? It's not always easy to tell, and differences may appear years after creation of pages. Possible differences are:

  • spelling (of course)
  • quotations (of course)
  • inflected forms: plural, etc. (of course)
  • conjugation tables (of course)
  • geographical area
  • period of use
  • pronunciation (either due to the different area or to the different period)
  • usage notes
  • meaning: it may appear that, unexpectedly, the precise meanings are slightly different, or that some meaning is particular to a spelling
  • synonyms, etc. (because of the possible difference of meanings, but also because some synonyms may be specific to a period or to a geographic area)
  • translations (because of the possible difference of meanings)
  • anagrams (of course)
  • gender (unlikely, but possible)
  • etymology (sometimes, the origin of the specific spelling may be of interest)

In other terms, everything may differ. I think that differences are normal, that discrepancies are not a problem, and that users opening honor and users opening honour may have different expectations (e.g. why not a different spelling in definitions and notes in these pages?). But comparing the history of spellings may be interesting nonetheless, and should be encouraged when interesting. The most important thing is that users should never be asked to click on a link in order to get information they need about the word: both pages should be as complete as possible (it will always be the case if pages are improved with time). Also remember the KISS principle: contributors should not be discouraged by complexity. Lmaltier (talk) 22:33, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lmaltier, all of what you mention above might indeed have differences depending on spelling. In the case of UK/US entries, however, I would argue that all of that information still belongs in one place, and should be accessible from either spelling. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support the centralisation of US/UK, etc. spellings under one entry (whatever is chosen) in principle. Agreed to the move of the discussion to BP. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:40, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh? I wasn't supporting just one entry. I thought we were discussing keeping separate entries with just one set of definitions where appropriate, and avoiding "alternative spelling of" and the like. Anyway, I support the move to BP. Dbfirs 10:00, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I Support the centralization of US/UK, etc. as long as: i)the content stays in the Main space and will not be moved to some obscure location in the Template namespace or even worse in the Lua-function namespace, ii) the templates/functions added to the content page don't alter the layout too much allowing to keep the main basic formating scheme, i.e. editing the conntent by humans or bots/javascript should not complicated too much by the unification.Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 05:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would support using the Oxford spelling as the main lemma (i.e. colour and analyse, but localize). --WikiTiki89 06:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support any sane way to avoid the duplication, bearing in mind that some senses (e.g. obsolete Shakespeare) may only be attestable in one spelling. Equinox ◑ 10:19, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion seems to have been diverted slightly onto a different tack. I agree with Equinox about obsolete and rare spellings because the user needs to be made aware of the rarity, but no user wishes to be told that the standard spelling of a common word in his country is an "alternative spelling" and have to click on a proscribed spelling to find the definitions. Dbfirs 16:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It wouldn't be so bad if it says "American spelling of" or "British spelling of". --WikiTiki89 18:14, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. We did get that changed on some entries, but it's still not ideal. Dbfirs 09:42, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like the idea that spellings exist within a binary American/British dichotomy. What about Canada, Ireland, Trinidad...? Equinox ◑ 13:05, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think Canada's the only one that really has its own spelling conventions; every other English-speaking country uses either US spellings or UK spellings consistently. And even Canada doesn't have any spellings that are uniquely its own; each word is spelled either the British way or the American way. For example, Brits might buy rubber casings for car wheels at a tyre centre, and Americans at a tire center, but Canadians would go to a tire centre. And Brits might have a paralysed neighbour and Americans a paralyzed neighbor, but Canadians would have a paralyzed neighbour. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was only using American and British as the most significant examples. If we use Oxford spelling as the lemma, then "Canadian spelling of" would be pretty rare, in fact I don't know of any cases where they differ. What's also always confused me is why we Americans write advertise instead of advertize. --WikiTiki89 19:39, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I gave two examples of Canadian spelling deviating from Oxford spelling above: tire and paralyze (also curb and analyze). As for advertise, it isn't etymologically advert + -ize, so we don't spell it that way (likewise televise, compromise, surprise, etc., are spelled with s). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:14, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yogourt is a uniquely Canadian spelling, used on product packaging for French compatibility, although yogurt is probably the most common in Canada.
Canada is also more tolerant of foreign spellings (British or American), and less likely to see them as errors. In very many cases, the “foreign” spelling is also an alternative Canadian spelling. Makes it hard to mark up dictionary senses clearly. —Michael Z. 2014-12-22 19:58 z
Umm... Oxford spelling also uses tire and paralyze. Don't confuse Oxford spelling with British spelling. I guess you're right about advertise. --WikiTiki89 02:29, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Dammit you're right about paralyze. I always confuse -y(s/z)e and -i(s/z)e. --WikiTiki89 02:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'm right about tire too. Oxford dictionaries call that an American spelling in the sense of a rubber or plastic covering of a motor vehicle's wheel and accept only tyre in that sense. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, as you know, the ODE is not the OED. But I guess the actual Oxford spelling is disputable. The OED has entries for both "TIRE n.2 2b" and "TYRE n.5 2a", but describes the latter as a variant of the former. --WikiTiki89 14:37, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The OED is pretty much the last place I'd go to find out what the Oxford spelling of a word is, because it's so comprehensive and so unabashedly descriptive that it lists everything ever attested. If you use an Oxford dictionary for everyday writing, you should use ODE or COED or http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ and they all agree that tire in this sense is an American (or rather, North American) spelling. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:06, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Then I guess the question is "What is Oxford spelling?" I always thought it was defined by the spelling used by the OED. Note that for -i(s/z)e endings, the OED does not have entries at all for localise, but such spellings are found in the quotations listed at localize. It would be interesting to see which spelling of tire/tyre is used in the OED's definitions of other words. --WikiTiki89 16:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To me, Oxford spelling is the spelling preferred by Oxford University Press in all its publications, for example a journal article published by OUP called “Environmental impact assessment of a scrap tyre artificial reef” or this article mentioning “five trucks equipped with four different types of tyres”. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:32, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All publications in British English use the spelling tyre except when they are deliberately using the archaic spelling tire which used to be used for the iron rim of wheels. Most educators in the UK (including Oxford University itself) now recommend the use of the ise ending where there is a choice in British English, so the so-called Oxford spelling is gradually disappearing on this side of the pond. Of course, some words (advertise, advise, apprise, chastise, comprise, compromise, despise, devise, disguise, excise, exercise, improvise, incise, prise (meaning ‘open’), promise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise, televise etc) cannot have z in modern British English. Dbfirs 19:18, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
None of the words in that list can have z in American English either, at least not in proofread/copyedited American English. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I knew that many of them were z-proscribed but wasn't sure about others (such as prize) in American English. Dbfirs 20:15, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Prise in the sense of "open" has become pry in American English anyway. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:52, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, I'd forgotten that. (I'm not fully conversant with modern American usage.) Our entries at prize (etymology 1 noun sense 7 and etymology 2 verb sense 3) obviously need some adjustment. They could be marked "proscribed" or just mis-spellings for British English, but they seem to appear in some American dictionaries. Dbfirs 21:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • After this discussion has run its course and before there is the required vote on any specific proposal, there should be a Beer Parlor discussion on this obviously non-technical matter. DCDuring TALK 17:02, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Apologies for not having read all of the discussion above. The duplication and separate maintenance of so much content across, say, "color" and "colour" is crazy. I have always thought so. Once I "naively" tried to merge one of these pairs -- can't remember which one now -- assuming that duplicated entries had been created in error, only for it to be reverted. However it is achieved technically, some way of maintaining shared content once only would be highly desirable. 86.152.161.61
Yes, we all agree that one set of definitions, where appropriate, would be a good idea, but we cannot agree on the best way to achieve this. Merging to one spelling is not a good solution, though there are some editors who force this on us. Dbfirs 12:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Citations pages created with empty template documentation[edit]

Not sure why users/bots are creating these, but I've seen many of them. They create a Citations: page that contains the {{documentation subpage}} stuff. An example (which I've since deleted) is at Citations:脚本. Could someone please write an abuse filter to prevent it? Equinox ◑ 03:50, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's because the Citations namespace has the same preload settings somewhere as the Documentation namespace. It was brought up here before, but nothing came of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:20, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It was in MediaWiki:Gadget-DocTabs.js. And I actually fixed that script long ago, but apparently there are still un-fixed versions of it lingering in people's browser caches. We would have to convince people who do it to clear their cookies and localStorage. Quite hopeless, really. The best I could do is probably put mw.loader.store.clear(); into MediaWiki:Common.js and leave it there for a few weeks, but it will strain WMF servers somewhat. — Keφr 18:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Etymological trees[edit]

Etymologies here tend to be displayed in the same format as paper dictionaries. It's a concise format that works well for linear etymologies but in my opinion can be confusing for compound words or when there are multiple possible branches.

At the Vietnamese Wiktionary, we've been nesting vi:Bản mẫu:etym-from to create etymological trees. (For better or worse, we copied the Dutch Wiktionary's penchant for templatizing everything.) Linear etymologies appear inline, but as soon as any branch has an ancestor, the display turns into a nested list. Unfortunately, I'm literally the only person who's been using this template because the syntax is so hideous.

The other day, I came across {{etymtree}}. Though it confusingly deals with descendants rather than the contents of "Etymology" sections, it gave me the idea to implement complex etymologies as "family trees". vi:Bản mẫu:etym takes the same information as etym-from, but with a much simpler syntax based on wiki lists. vi:Mô đun:EtymologicalTree parses it into a microformatted list that is rendered as a "family tree" using CSS. See vi:bánh bao, vi:câu lạc bộ, and vi:văn thư for some simple examples.

EtymologicalTree hasn't been battle-tested yet; I'm sure the English Wikipedia would have plenty of edge cases that would break it easily. But I welcome any feedback you can give, because lately there's been renewed interest in adding etymologies to the Vietnamese Wiktionary, and the community here has a lot more experience with etymologies.

 – Minh Nguyễn 💬 09:02, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Part of what makes {{etymtree}} (yes, it's badly named) work so well is that it doesn't try to parse the whole list. Rather it only parses the language name and the following colon; anything beyond that is shown as-is. It would be a lot more complicated if it had to try to extract the words themselves as well as any additional information that was provided next to them (qualifiers, etc.). Furthermore, even this template breaks if you specify more than one descendant on the same line, because it can't tell which descendants belong to each parent. —CodeCat 13:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea. Wyang (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Edit filter to prevent Ladin --> Latin header changes[edit]

It seems like just about every day I revert some IP's changing of a "Ladin" L2 header to "Latin". Would someone be so kind as to add a filter to stop this? Should it be a warning or a block? Or should it be a warning for autoconfirmed and a block otherwise? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously I worded this very poorly: my question was whether the edit filter should warn those who try to make the change, or disallow it. The secondary issue was whether we might make it conditional, so that non-autoconfirmed users (IPs, mostly/all?) would be treated differently: perhaps disallowing the edit for them, but only warning others (or doing nothing in their case?). The warning should say something like "Please don't try to change Ladin headers to Latin- Ladin is a modern Romance language quite different from Latin". If they were really determined, they could probably work around it by deleting the header or first changing it to something else. Of course, I'm not sure how easy it is to compare an edit against the existing version, so the whole point could be moot.Chuck Entz (talk) 23:26, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think a warning is sufficient; the edit shouldn't be prevented. After all, the editor might be making other good edits at the same time; also, for all we know, somewhere out there we do have a Latin section erroneously labeled "Ladin". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A warning sounds like a good idea to me. —RuakhTALK 21:48, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The process of converting classic talk pages to Flow[edit]

See also: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2014/December#Converting classic talk pages to Flow

(BG: Flow). There are various ways to convert talk pages to Flow. Discussed at this page. I would like to know what we would like to have. Please join the discussion. Gryllida 23:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Finally! I have some questions though...
  • Is this already available? If not, when will it be?
  • What about LiquidThreads?
  • What about non-talk discussions, like this page and its archives?
—CodeCat 23:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Please let's defer this discussion until the community has decided whether or not to use Flow at all! Equinox ◑ 06:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Phabricator tasks tracking[edit]

Hi all, I just created the task phab:T78531 to track bugs and feature requests related to the Wiktionary project as a whole (all languages included). Language specific bugs should be tracked by a different task, e.g. phab:T76447 for the French Wiktionary, so I encourage English contributors to create a task to track en.wiktionary bugs. Dakdada (talk) 11:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:contraction of[edit]

This template is named like a definition-line template; compare Template:abbreviation of, Template:alternative spelling of, Template:genitive of, etc), so I assumed it was for use in the definition lines of pages like I'm. However, it seems to actually be used in etymology sections of pages like aband. Is this desirable or should it be renamed? Shouldn't we have a template for I'm, drum, etc? - -sche (discuss) 06:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not totally unknown for such definition-line templates to be used in etymologies. I've seen {{initialism of}} used that way. Of course, whether these templates are used this way and whether they should be are two different things. Renard Migrant (talk) 20:02, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Idea: view a category from one's current entry[edit]

When I am viewing an entry and I click one of its (large) categories, such as "English lemmas" or "English words suffixed with -able", I find it unhelpful to be shown the first page of the category starting from the very top. Could we, and should we, change things so that we are dropped into the category at the right place, and can immediately see the alphabetically adjacent entries that surround the entry we came from? Thanks. Equinox ◑ 19:55, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's possible without overwriting the built-in category infrastructure (hide existing category links and create our own- probably not something we want to do). DTLHS (talk) 20:25, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The URL could be constructed automatically by using the entry, for example to jump to the word 'ability' in the English lemmas category without paging: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:English_lemmas&pagefrom=ABILITY%0Aability#mw-pages. --Panda10 (talk) 20:49, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think this would be a good idea, if we could make it work. But like DTLHS said, the links are generated by the software and that's out of our control. The best we could do is make yet another JavaScript hack... —CodeCat 21:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
But if the point is to see alphabetically adjacent entries, we shouldn't start the page with the word the reader is coming from, but some number (20?) of entries before it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:44, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That would be nice, in theory, but Javascript can't be counted on to know anything about what's in the category- the entry itself is the only member of the category it knows. Also, when you get into numerical displacements, it makes a big difference whether the entry is 732nd in the category or 2nd. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:mul-letter not working when entered[edit]

Under I#Letter, I just added a third entry after I i and I ı: İ i. But I could not get Template:mul-letter to work for me no matter what I did.

  1. I copied it from one of the existing entries and plugged in the appropriate character(s) from the "Latin/Roman" insertion menu, and all I got was the first character, the capital letter I.
  2. I typed it all in by hand: same old same old.
  3. Finally I gave up and manually typed the wikicode to duplicate the format I saw on the existing entries, and at last I got what I needed:
    İ upper case (lower case i)

I've used & edited Wikipedia for 9 years and I've never heard of the like, but I'm pretty new to editing Wiktionary. Somebody technical, please take a look at this issue. --Thnidu (talk) 07:18, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{mul-letter}} is designed to work only in the entries of the lower-case and upper-case forms. — Ungoliant (falai) 12:27, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The documentation is misleading. It says "all Translingual letter entries", without linking to wherever we explain "Translingual", as we use it. In the absence of a precise technical explanation in terms of Unicode or something a user would default to translingual. Most letters are translingual ("existing in more than one language"), so, in the absence of a link or inline explanation, Thnidu's "error" (the actual error is in the documentation) will likely be repeated. I don't know the right way to fix the documentation to make it technically accurate and potentially complete (if users are encouraged to use good links). DCDuring TALK 17:07, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Middle French present participle forms[edit]

Could someone add this to {{poscatboiler}}? I can't, or only by risking breaking it (which I've done to other modules before). Renard Migrant (talk) 16:13, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should be working now. — Ungoliant (falai) 16:48, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What's wrong with Category:Middle French participle forms? We don't need this category. —CodeCat 19:25, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{ja-usex}} and 々[edit]

Template_talk:ja-usex#Issue_with_handling_.E3.80.85. @Wyang, Eirikr, Haplology --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:32, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Closed. Thanks to User:Kephir. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:24, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

malo[edit]

malo is failing to distinguish between malo#Etymology_2 and the Latin verb mālō (see ‘Etymology 2’ under ‘Latin’), which I can't directly link to at the moment because it isn't. Esszet (talk) 17:16, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You’ll have to use {{anchor}}. — Ungoliant (falai) 17:24, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, it may be better to switch the etymology sections and link directly to #Latin, since Etymology 1 is an inflected form and Etymology 2 a lemma. — Ungoliant (falai) 17:28, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Would you mind explaining exactly what I have to do? {{anchor}} doesn't have documentation, and I can't figure out from the other pages it's used on what to do. Esszet (talk) 22:12, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Add an ID as the first parameter ([2]), then link to it using the ID (malo#la_ety_2). — Ungoliant (falai) 22:17, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That works for purposes of linking, but if you click on ‘Etymology 2’ under ‘Latin’ in the TOC, it takes you to the etymology of the Galician word malo. Esszet (talk) 22:45, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think that can be fixed. — Ungoliant (falai) 22:48, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A similar doesn't exist on other pages; on si, for example, the several ‘Etymology 1’ sections are distinguished by numbers after the ‘1’; for example, si#Etymology_1_2 and si#Etymology_1_3. Why can't the section for mālō be marked ‘Etymology_2_2’? Esszet (talk) 23:41, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, wait, I think I see why. The section for mālō is the first ’Etymology 2’ section, so it doesn't see the need to put an additional ‘2’ after it, and the mālō section is thus confused with the second ‘Etymology’ section, which is also marked ‘Etymology_2’. This looks like it would require a change to the Wiktionary source code to fix it. Esszet (talk) 23:49, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, our section naming practice conflicts with the hidden link numbers added by MediaWiki. The same problem doesn’t occur in si because the section Etymology 2 comes before the second numberless Etymology section (under Dalmatian, which can’t be linked to). — Ungoliant (falai) 23:55, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, where do I go to fix this? Esszet (talk) 23:58, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, no idea. — Ungoliant (falai) 00:07, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've reported the issue on MediaWiki's Support Desk, and someone opened a bug for it. Esszet (talk) 12:09, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And within two days User:Jackmcbarn has proposed a patch. :) I won't get too excited until the patch is approved, but it's great to see someone trying so quickly to address this widespread, significant, simple problem. - -sche (discuss) 17:16, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Etiquette for Module Editors[edit]

I would suggest that anyone who edits a widely-transcluded module should check Category:Pages with module errors at least once a day for a day or two after any edit. Those who regularly do so should make a habit of checking it at least once a day, every day. It just seems like common sense to check the most obvious place where problems will show up so you can catch errors or unforeseen side-effects, and not checking after edits seems like driving blindfolded.

Case in point: there are about a dozen Chinese entries that have been there for upwards of a week with an error in Module:zh-forms. I don't know who caused it, but User:Wyang edited the module about the time the errors started, so he would have spotted them if he had checked. Likewise, whoever corrected the Japanese module problem above should have noticed that a Japanese entry with a different error has shown up in the category since then.

As someone with minimal Lua skills, I'm very grateful for those who are making improvements and fixing things, and I feel bad about having to nag them- but a module error can negate all the benefits of using a module in the first place. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:00, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Those errors are caused by incorrect formatting - see diff for an example. Wyang (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I stand by what I said, though your case apparently isn't a good example of what I do see more than I should. Still, your explanation is sort of like saying "there's no way I could have shot that man, because I was robbing a bank at the time". Any idea when you can fix those entries? Chuck Entz (talk) 05:05, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm on holiday and won't be back until after New Year. Those errors have been sitting there for years and years. If my bot hadn't editted those articles, the wrong information on those pages could be displaying forever. If you see an entry in that error category, instead of absentmindedly singling out whoever might be responsible, see what the real cause is and see if it's something as easy to fix as this. It's not at all related to faults in the modules I created. Even if someone's module edit caused articles to be placed in that category, I disagree with the statement that a module error negates all the benefits. Wyang (talk) 10:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
From one volunteer to another: enjoy your vacation! There'll be plenty of time to nag you when you get back... ;) Chuck Entz (talk) 00:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A New Way to Handle Deprecated Templates[edit]

Would it be possible to have deprecated templates add an invisible text string that would trigger an edit filter which would give a deprecation warning? This would have the advantage of targeting the warning at those who are making edits without cluttering up the entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:27, 25 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Edit Filter only checks the source of page, the templates can not add any extra text to the source when they are transcluded, it is possible when it is substituted ("{subst:...}") though. --Z 17:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, well, it would have been nice if it had worked. I suppose that edit filters looking for specific templates in the source would still work, though- in moderation. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{was wotd}} and Images (and Presumably Other Multimedia Objects)[edit]

When {{was wotd}} is placed immediately above an image (or presumably another type of multimedia object), a gap is created in the text next to the WOTD link (see here for an example). Esszet (talk) 22:25, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see it at [[glyph]] using Firefox 34.0.5, Windows 7, fairly big screen, and my Wiktionary preferences, which include ToC right. Is your screen or window very narrow? What browser (and version) are you using? DCDuring TALK 23:42, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, and Safari 8.0.2 on OS X 10.10.1. Esszet (talk) 01:04, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely can't help, but that info might enable someone else to. DCDuring TALK 01:37, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What I see at glyph is the text after the image staying below it, instead of moving up on the left. In this case, the Etymology L3 header stays below the image, so there's a gap between the English L2 header and the Etymology L3 header that's the height of the {{was wotd}} display and the image combined. This only happens when there's no text between {{was wotd}} and the graphic element below it (it has the same effect when followed immediately by {{wikipedia}}): if I add a single letter to the right of {{was wotd}} or below it, the effect goes away. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a bug in the browser then. —CodeCat 02:45, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Except I happen to be using Internet Explorer 11 on a PC at the moment, and Esszet is using Safari on a Mac- that sounds like a very widespread bug! Chuck Entz (talk) 03:48, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For me, the L3 header is at the same height as the image, and adding text to the right of or below {{was wotd}} doesn't make the gap go away; the text simply appears within it. I've looked at {{was wotd}}, and I don't see anything wrong with it, so I'm guessing the problem lies in the source code for image layout. I've just realized that there are very few types of multimedia objects on Wiktionary, and {{audio}} can't be aligned on the right of the page, so I can't see if the problem persists with other types of multimedia objects. Esszet (talk) 14:32, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You could try something else that was right-aligned, like {{examples-right}}. DCDuring TALK 14:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Same problem. Esszet (talk) 15:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2014/December&oldid=65117942"