User talk:DCDuring

Comments welcome. DCDuring 17:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

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Taxonomic entries

Perennials

Problems with plurals

Hi. I only recently became aware that there was a problem. My first thought was to dig into Category:Uncountable to see just what sort of problems might be present. That was when I realised that we have a grave problem, given that we cannot really keep track of anything if the templates are not working. I think EP is right.

1. Step 1 is to rename the category.
2. Step 2.IMHO is to modify the {{uncountable}}, {{pluralonly}}, {{singularonly}}, templates so that only the senses are marked as uncountable, plurale t, and singulare t respectively, and the {{en-noun|-}} template option to simply not put plural forms only. That is, disable its automatic "uncountable" label and categorisation.
3. Step 3. I hadn't thought about "pair of" Perhaps a new template and category?
4. Step 4. A bot to find and list entries that need to be checked out. (Might turn out to be a huge list :-/)

• We could then encourage the correct use of the templates. In any case, I see this as an urgent "to do" before it gets completely out of hand. I wish I knew how big a problem it really is! - Algrif 11:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Your plan looks pretty good to me. The wording of the display for "plurale tantum" and "singulare tantum" and of the WT entries for those phrases needs work. It needs to be more accessible to ordinary users and not just technically correct.

I am appalled at the number of entries that have no templates and no categories. I spend time looking at frequency lists and filling in missing inflected forms. Probably half of the associated lemma entries are missing or significantly defective - and I don't mean missing senses, I mean missing PoSs, missing templates, obsolete headers, erroneous statements of comparability or countability, and structure problems. One hardly knows where to begin.

Are there good tools for counting entries with various characteristics and, especially, combinations of characteristics? I often wish that I could just do queries (not necessarily real-time) on the WT entries to get info on combinations of headers and templates (and parameters of templates). I guess bots marking or listing entries is as good as it gets. I am in need of getting up to speed on the capabilities of templates, bots, etc. What is a good place to start learning? My computer skills are not very up to date, but I am still capable of learning and willing to do so. DCDuring 15:15, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I need to think more carefully on your program. Whatever we do should be linguistically correct, consistent with good wiki-tech-practice, and sufficiently user-friendly as to help WT benefit from and handle any extra users we get from improving WT visiblity on Google. DCDuring 15:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm quite good at suggesting, but not very good at doing. I wish I knew how to write bots, but my (modern day) programming skills are limited. I would need someone to write, or help to write, said bot. I don't even know what could be possible, although I expect it wouldn't be too hard to seek and list all entries with certain tags and bracketed words (uncountable). As for going through any generated list; like all the other listed tasks on Wikt, it could never be a one-man job, although I would see myself being heavily involved. Can we put together a brief proposal about all this for GP consideration? - Algrif 10:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

links

Is this word ever used to refer to more than one golf course? One can find usage of both "The links is ...." and "The links are ...." but every case I've looked at seems to refer to a single course. Also, an etymology is that it is a shortening of "linksland". DCDuring TALK 03:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Found usage: "links" (with either is or are) can refer to a single golf course. "Links are" can also refer to multiple courses. What is that called? DCDuring TALK 04:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what name this phenomenon goes by, but it's the same as deer, where the singular and plural forms are identical. --EncycloPetey 04:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on our Category:English invariant nouns, they are "invariant nouns". Thryduulf 18:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, yes. I've been to that page. Could someone clarify it? I'm having trouble understanding the distinction made there between invariant nouns and invariant use of non-invariant nouns. There is certainly too much "ink" spent on the second case without making it clear exactly what the difference is. I'm too simple-minded to take on that challenge myself. I also don't understand the relationship of that to plurale tantum. I'm beginning to suspect that it would be useful to have an article somewhere (Wiktionary Appendix or WP?) explaining the various non-standard plural phenomena: invariant nouns, plurale tantum, singulare tantum, uncountability, semantic singularity, invariant use of non-invariant nouns, pair-of nouns, and collective nouns with special focus on the simple usage questions of greatest potential interest to our anon and even not-so-anon users:

1. How does a speaker/writer use each type of noun with respect to a single referent ? and
2. Does it (always, sometimes, never) take a plural verb when referring to a single referent?

Consistent nomenclature and corresponding categories for the technically adept wouldn't hurt either to assist the flow of wisdom from adepts to contributors to lowest common denominator. There seem to be some bottlenecks in the flow. DCDuring TALK 19:43, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

• Regular, non-invariant nouns can be either singular or plural with different forms, e.g. "one ship", "two ships"
• Invariant nouns can be either singular or plural, but have the same form for both, e.g. "one sheep", "two sheep"
• Invariant use of non invariant nouns is using one form, usually the singular form, of a noun that has different forms for singular and plural as both singular and plural. e.g. elephant is a non-invariant noun ("one elephant", "two elephants"), but the singular form can be used for the plural (i.e. invariantly), e.g. "I shot three elephant today"
• Pluarlia tantum can only be plural, e.g. tongs - you can say "pass me the tongs please" but not *"pass me the tong please".
• Singularia tantum can only be singular, e.g. crack of dawn.

Does this help? Thryduulf 21:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

It helps because it gives real cases. I seem to try to avoid using many of these expressions as do many of the folks I listen to, so my ear doesn't seem to have been getting much practice.

OK: "One sheep is"; "Two sheep are"

Help me here: "Three elephant are approaching" ?; "Three elephants are approaching". I'm not sure this comes up much in US. You must have more elephant in the UK.

OK: "Three cannon are firing", "Three cannons are firing", "The cannon are firing".

Help me here: "The cannon is firing" How many cannons may be involved? Only one?

If only one cannon can be involved, why would we bother calling this "invariant" rather than a noun with two plural forms?

OK for pairs-of words: "These tongs have rusted" (whether referring to one pair or more than one pair).

How does this work for p.t. nouns that are not pairs-of?

Help me here: Is it simply wrong to say "The experience of cracks of dawn differs by latitude and season"?

Also:

Confirm: "The fleet is passing through the channel". (US) "The fleet are passing through the channel". (UK)

DCDuring TALK 01:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

So links (golf sense) is an invariant noun, plural in form (by coincidence only), with the added quirk of being optionally used as a plural to refer to what is normally considered a single place (a golf course). Oof. Do any other words behave this way? -- Visviva 23:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I guess all pair-of words behave this way; glasses, scissors, jeans, etc. -- Visviva 11:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I started an entry for linksland, but was struck that this term is used only in golf-related literature. On the other hand links/lynkis is a valid Scots word for rough open ground, so linksland seems like a pleonasm, perhaps invented after "links" had begun to refer to golf courses themselves. [1] -- Visviva 23:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Comparability

Please be careful here. For example all the hits for "more nitrogenized" seem to have "more" modifying the noun rather than the adjective.[2] This is also borne out by the 0 hits for "more nitrogenized than." In general "more X than" is a better search, but still may result in false positives. -- Visviva 04:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. For nitrogenized, I also looked at the superlative and found nine in gbc. I reasoned that if a sup does exist, there is no reason for a comp not to exist. Is that too racy?

I am using "more-X-than" as my search term and reading until I find real comparables (not more modifying the same noun that the X modifies, first books, then scholar, sometimes then news, rarely groups. I look for 3. I'm trying to do it right so that I can meet challenges.

Many of the other adjs are logically capable of forming comparatives, but the number of uses is too low (0-2). I think editors are fooled by their own absolutist definitions. Someone defined worldwide as meaning applicable "everywhere". Clearly not how the word is actually used. DCDuring 04:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

You're certainly right that people tend to go overboard with prescriptive definitions. However, for cases like this, IMO very close attention to use is needed. Eight of the nine hits for "most nitrogenized"[3] seem to be modifying the noun rather than the adjective, as in "most nitrogenized compounds are..." The only exception is the 1881 use, and frankly I can't make head or tails of that one. -- Visviva 12:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

If your google yields the searches in the same order as mine 1 and 4 are the right cites. This is most marginal of all the cases. Frankly I am skeptical about many engineering-process words being non-comparable even without the cites. If you would like to challenge it, I will see if I can use print sources to located some additional cites beyond the two clear ones for the superlative. I must say that I thought that the situation would be even worse than it has turned out to be. I thought it would be as bad as with uncountability, but it isn't. The a-/an-, in-, non-, and un- adjectives are rarely comparable in practice. I had estimated 15-20% non-comparability, but find that the negative prefix adjectives reduce the ratio to closer to 10% opposable claims. If it weren't for the proscriptiveness of the "not comparable", I wouldn't care as much. Do our editors find that, given a permissive environment, free of received rules, they must use the freedom to create new rules and restrictions?

That is indeed a common reaction, though mercifully much more muted here than on the pedia. No worries, anyway; looks like you've got a notion for what you're doing. I just happened to notice the activity on RC and think "hm, that seems odd," so I went in for a closer look. It does seem odd that the only two uses of "nitrogenized" in a comparable way on b.g.c. date from the 19th century; but perhaps that's just a fluke. Happy editing! -- Visviva 15:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I have noted the wantonness of Victorian word invention (crash of rhinoceroses) and morphology (-ical when -ic would do). I have tried editing some of the 1913 dictionary entries and 1911 Encyclopedia entries. They were developing a more Germanic language for a while. Perhaps the comparatives were part of the same syndrome. When I engage in chains of similar edits, there is a risk that I will go over the top. I think nitrogenized was the edit with the least support, though I have faith that more could be found. I have often been chastened by confronting the goggle evidence that my a priori assumptions are often wrong. I just wish that some folks would test their assumptions more often. Thanks for the chat. DCDuring 16:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

No.

Countable and comparable

Hello there, I noticed that you have amended the inflection lines of many nouns so that they are countable e.g. adipic acid - in this instance the the chemical itself is not countable but only if there is more than one type of adipic acid e.g. isomers - if that is the case then the definition may need revision to make that clear.

I'm also curious as to what g.b.c. is? - Do you mean Google - in which case many of the changes might then reflect incorrect or at least dubious usages and should not be included in Wiktionary unless they are noted as such.--Williamsayers79

Thanks for following up. I was aware that those changes were incomplete. Since the entry remains on my watchlist, I was hoping someone would come along, make the appropriate changes, and thereby provide a good model for other entries. Yes, I have altered them based on the books.google.com (which ought to be abbreviated b.g.c. not g.b.c. (my mistake)). I certainly wouldn't rely on google web search results given the need to sift through even the supposedly edited works on b.g.c. (let alone the older scanned material). I try to look through the first few pages of a b.g.c. search to make sure that not everything is spurious. I have noticed that folks are inclined to claim that something is uncountable when it is not (not just in chemistry). It wouldn't be so bad if uncountability were marked only at the sense line. I am generally aware that structural differences are abundant in complex molecules, that atoms have isotopes, that there are many Marxisms. However, my chemistry is not so good that I trust myself to add the appropriate senses. If you would point me to a good example of an entry for a chemical with both countable and uncountable senses and let me know the approximate limits of applicability of that model, I would henceforth apply only that model in my effots and would hope to be able to call upon you for cases beyond the scope of the model. DCDuring TALK 19:25, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I would say that methane is a good example where the chemical itself (CH₄) is uncountable as it has only one form, and where the word is also used to refer to other chemicals based on that compound therefore haveing a countable sense to.--Williamsayers79 13:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Comparablility has similar issues. I am somewhat numerate so I am sensitive to the fact that most natural phenomena are matters of degree. Folks who engage in selling, making, or studying things usually are making comparisions of types, grades, and lots in terms of various attributes which are sometimes popularly deemed incomparable. Maybe I have been wrong about believing that we should reflect the practice of "experts" in comparing and pluralizing what the laity do not, but the opposite presumption does not seem to have been based on much more than whim or limited experience in most cases, certainly not consultation with references or b.g.c. I am open to (and enjoy) argument on this as with most Wiktionary matters. DCDuring TALK 19:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you are open for discussion in this area. We often have a bun-fight here over such things when all that is needed is good discussion and clear explanations (use of Usage notes are definitely welcomed from my view point). Regards --Williamsayers79 13:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

From context I assumed that bunfight meant dust-up, but the sense entered and defended by SB is different. Did you mean something like tempest in a teapot? I think the heat generated has to do with the missing side-channels of communication (facial expression, posture, gesture, tone of voice, clothing, tics}} - not that folks don't get into pissing matches in the real world. Internet communication is good for paranoid reactions. I've noted it in my own reactions from time to time. I'm wondering how to defuse some of the negative interactions between important contributors. Humor is a little risky without the side channels. DCDuring TALK 15:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

If you're addressing the idea of what is countable (a slippery concept to be sure) Arnold Zwicky does a good job of laying out the issues here. You might also check out Reid's 1991 book Verb and Noun number in English.--BrettR 13:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the references. DCDuring TALK 14:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Abbreviations

Issues

Following is a initial dump of "issues". Perhaps it could become the start of a guideline for handling the occasional abbreviations that are not well handled by the default features of the existing system:

PoS

Apparently c. is considered to be the cutting edge of forward thinking about abbreviations. I has PoS info optionally at the sense line. Perhaps that is all that is required, given that probably 99% of abbreviations are of proper nouns or nouns. Also an abbreviation that gets used as a verb is often not considered an abbreviation ("RVing" is not "recreational vehicling"). The PoS info is a gloss that may eliminate the need to click through to the entry underlying the abbreviaton, if there is an underlying entry.

No underlying WT entry

Some abbreviations have no underlying entry (it would not meet CFI). For such entries there is more need for PoS info, WP links.

Pluralization

There would be some value in including the plural form of an abbreviation to that a user who typed in a plural for "apts." or "apts" was directed to "apt." or "apt."

Period/no period

Periodless abbreviations are acceptable, following European convention. It would be handy it the search engine given eihter "apt" or "apt." would yield both "apt." and "apt".

Pronunciation

Now folded into characterization as "initialism" or "acronym". As Agvulpine pointed out, some are pronounced both ways and some are pronounced in a combination. Some are rarely spoken. Some seem unpronounceable. Some fraction of Abbreviations are not well served. DCDuring TALK 19:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Alternative spellings

Thanks for actually addressing the original question. Interesting that there was so much pent-up energy about the overall interface. Until there is some more radical advance on the user-interface front, we just have to do the best we can. I don't like to make unilateral changes, especially in something like first-screen appearance, especially if there is a more general issue involved. Are there other instances like OK that you know of? DCDuring TALK 11:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I also noted that the heading in "OK" is "Alternative forms". There are certainly other instances, arguable even rock and roll, where the content under the header is not "spellings" {u.c./l.c., hyphens, -or/-our, -ise/-ize, and/'n') but other closely related variants. Those variants don't always have a good home on the page. Do you think that we should make that the universal header in that position or an allowed alternative, either documented or undocumented? DCDuring TALK 11:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I think in all cases in all entries, we should work to present entries that give the clearest information about a word in the format that is most effective and appropriate to the specifics of that entry, while obviously being subject to the limitations of the Mediawiki code and remaining loyal to our strict formatting precedents, but not obsessively so. The entries should cater first to the reality of that particular word, and second to some overly rigid arbitrary format. For example, if (deprecated template usage) rock-and-roll and (deprecated template usage) OK really don't have "alternate spellings", but more appropriately "alternate forms", well we should be able to make that minor distinction without much fuss. If the list of four or five alt. forms takes up too much vertical space, well then, golly gee, just put 'em side by side. Not too difficult. The formatting conventions are arbitrary, and many believe something is emphatically a necessary formatting convention when it's just some pedant with Asperger's whose brain fights for routine rather than effectiveness.

It's clear some formatting is important to the future of the project, to some preference skins and analysis tools, and to Wiktionary's ability to be understood by potential third party software. However, if a change is necessary, it should be simply made rather than fought. If "alternate forms" (or another useful heading) is currently not a valid heading in some skins, it should simply be made valid. If our software can't properly report to third parties a list of alt forms if they are horizontal with commas, well we should fix that. It's really people's personalities, not actual limitations that sometimes prevent success. -- Thisis0 21:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

This place seems to have more justification for format rigidity than WP. I've been cautious because I'm new and because folks can be touchy about things I don't expect them to be touchy about. The alt spellings format "issue" connected with the homophones discussion a bit and with the general problem of the low useful-info content of the first screen users see for many entries. I also am disappointed by the lack of knowledge about design-relevant user behavior characteristics. We do this for love, but I personally would love to have happy end users. I am optimistic that perhaps we can allow customization of the user interface so that editors and members of the language community can have useful interfaces without jeopardizing the experience of our presumed client base. I would be willing to submit to format rigidity if it sped up the achievement of user-interface customization. DCDuring TALK 21:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Again, simple solutions. Extra trivia like Homophones (and Anagrams, for f's sake) really just need to go after the definitions (like near Synonyms and See also). I'm assuming the Anagram/Homophone junkies fought so hard to be included, the momentum of their cause overshot itself and pushed right up to a prime real estate location, when they really belong down among the trivias and see-also's, if at all. -- Thisis0 22:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Hompohones at least might be justified on the grounds of helping someone to pronounce something or at least to stop looking for non-existent/minimal pronunciation differences. My fear is that the phonetic alphabetic knowledge (or working software for the audio) required to benefit from most of the Pronunciation section isn't there among most (many) of our end users. Simple solutions are all that we are likely to achieve. Because WMF doesn't have vast technical resources, technical solutions at all but the most basic level will be few and far between. I hope that it isn't all duct tape at the server farm. DCDuring TALK 23:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Having IPA here to encourage learning something new is cool, however, I wish we employed classic dictionary pronunciation, or better yet, simple pronunciation (pro-nunn'-see-ay'-shun). Wouldn't that be useful? I also wish we had a better way of showing syllabic hyphenation. As an arranger/editor of sheet music, that is my frequent utility of a dictionary, and sadly, Wiktionary is no help in that regard. I currently hafta take my business elsewhere. It would be a huge change, but I think it would be appropriate where the entry name repeats in bold just under the PoS headers. You know, where the en-noun templates and such are used. That's just a repeat of the entry name, why not make it use·ful? -- Thisis0 23:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Anything that increases the density of useful info on the first screen without setting back a user's ability to find things on other screens is good. In particular, both of your ideas seem good.

1. Hyphenation at the inflection line would either give more info than is now in the entry or save a line in the pronunciation block for those entries that have it. Hyphenation skill is becoming less broadly useful as word-processing software absorbs that function so there may not be much energy for implementing it.
2. A pronunciation scheme that an amateur could use without a reference would be good, even if it was not as useful for linguists and not as correct. Horizontalizing it seems like a good idea, but I don't know whether it interferes with someone's grand scheme for the section.

Today someone was removing the Shorthand section (well formatted and apparently correct) of some entries and could not understand what use that could be. That seems like another skill (like Morse code) that will soon disappear. DCDuring TALK 23:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

What entries? I'd like to see (shorthand sections). Regarding horizontal pronunciations, apparently it's already being done fairly effectively (and simply -- the key to greatness!). Look at (deprecated template usage) attribute. I'd just like to add simple pronunciation to the beginning of those lists. Wouldn't that be a neat way to promote learning IPA anyway, to see the equivalents side by side? -- Thisis0 23:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

There are perhaps 40 entries with the Shorthand heading, appearing at the bottom of the page. They mostly begin "ab". abash should be one. I assume that the person entering them ran out of gas. You can search for "shorthand" and find them by the bottom of page 3 of the search results. There might be more to found by serching the same way for "Gregg" or even "Pitman". If you want to test on a user who knows no IPA, I'm your test subject for alpha testing. DCDuring TALK 00:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Some sort of quality process for important words

Hi,

I agree with you that we need to focus more effectively on core-entry quality. I'd been thinking of some sort of process that would focus on bringing entries for core vocabulary words (and particularly the senses and examples) up to the best achievable level. It would have to be sort of the opposite of our existing "Requests" processes, which do a reasonable job of enforcing compliance with minimum standards but aren't really equipped to go beyond that.

Specifically, I was thinking of something

• slow (maybe a 30-90 day timeframe?),
• fairly structured and deliberative (with a durable subpage structure, maybe including something like Appendix:Dictionary notes),
• focused sharply on key words (maybe the Academic Word List and/or GSL), and with
• restricted throughput (perhaps 10 words per month to start?).

Ideally, upon completing the process, entries would be raised to a high enough standard that they could be used as models of excellence. Truly model entries are something we currently lack, a fact which in turn discourages any serious work on quality, leaving us in the viciously circular place where we find ourselves.

Anyway, I was wondering if you've had any thoughts along these lines. This is another one of those things that I've been meaning to put together a more serious proposal for, but I keep distracting myself with various other shiny objects.  :-) -- Visviva 07:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me start by rambling.

I certainly think that we have numerous articles that have quality issues. Some of the issues are:

1. insufficient modernisation of Websters 1913 imports.
2. missing senses
3. poor grouping of senses in entries with numerous senses
4. redundancy of senses due to hyperspecific senses, especially in fields such as sports, computing, equestrianism, perhaps some scientific fields (eg, mycology).

All of these are fixable within our existing rules. Fixing them would seem to not fit well with our wikiness in that they require the intense efforts of a very few dedicated, experienced users and benefit hardly at all from the active participation of newbies, at least given current modes of participation.

I've been reading some older (1968) essays by Sir Randolph Quirk (Longmans Grammar). He cited Murray talking about the need for his contributors to go back over many entries (closed categories like prepositions especially) and make slips out for the usages that they did not find extraordinary. Quirk believes that non-literary-corpus-based analysis, barely feasible at the time of his essays, was the answer to the underlying problem. That would suggest that we need to have more recourse to the on-line corpera to improve those "core" entries.

To some extent our wikiness seems to give us disproportionate interest in "hard words" or "interesting" words. Though I should know better, I fritter away time on words like griffonage, which happened to be on the "uncategorised pages" list, instead of words like by, bill, defy, or set, just to mention words that have some degree of problem like missing definitions.

I know that lists are motivating. I don't think that the "collaboration of the week" idea worked. WotD creates some motivational pressure due to deadlines, but directs it at "interesting words" (=shiny things). Perhaps we need to have a sequence of lists aimed at intersections of maintenance categories, what-links-here, and other categories. An example might be English prepositions with Webster 1913 templates or used in 5 prepositional phrase entries. Perhaps we could have a page of lists of such lists.

And ultimately we could have featured entries and quality ratings as WP has.

I just don't know what is both motivating and truly useful. I continue to be desirous of ways of addressing the "needs" or "wants" of users, which may themselves be for "shiny objects". DCDuring TALK 11:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's no denying the motivational power of shiny objects. :-) On the other hand, there are a lot of structural needs that IMO are best addressed by focusing on a fairly limited set of "boring" core and near-core words. The need that's been most painfully apparent to me lately is to avoid "lost work" on translation sections -- there are far too many cases where a sloppy original entry has attracted lots of good translations, which have then all been dumped into TTBC when the entry was cleaned up (and if the cleanup itself was flawed, this process may repeat itself several times over). But that's not all; there's also the need to inform compositionality debates -- I think my most common rejoinder on RFD has been "if this is sum of parts, we're missing a sense at [X]" --; the need to support comprehensive treatment of 'nyms and 'terms; the need to delve into those issues of sense-grouping and -splitting that we keep touching on but never really hashing out; and so forth. Poorly-constructed definition sets have all sorts of undesirable side effects.

More cleanup lists would be an excellent thing, as would some kind of central, annotated list of lists (at least, I don't think there is any such list currently maintained). I think we often underestimate the amount of potential newbie and non-newbie energy that goes unchanneled. But still, cleanup lists focus more on the floor (minimum quality) than the ceiling; that is, while reducing the number of "bad" entries is a worthy goal in itself, it won't necessarily lead to more "good" entries. This is particularly the case for the lexical core, where the difference between "adequate" and "good" is particularly noticeable. To really do justice to a GSL word like by or one, or even an AWL word like analyze, requires a major collective investment of thought and effort. That's why I don't think we can do much more for these entries than we are doing now, without some genuinely new process -- perhaps something like a blend of Wikipedia's FA and Peer Review systems with their Core Topics collaboration. Maybe this process could harness the motivational power of to-do lists as well -- for example, the initial phase of review for an entry could involve outlining a list of individual, bite-sized tasks that need to be dealt with.

I think the biggest problem with the CotW approach has been that a week is too short a time to really gather even one person's energies to confront one of these words. I can say from personal experience that, when faced with an entry like do, 40 hours is barely enough time to lay the groundwork for an approach -- and I dare say few of us ever actually have 40 hours to spare in a single week. That's what tends to make these entries so discouraging to work on, and it's why I was thinking of a longer, flexible timeframe. Perhaps the process should be throttled with this in mind -- not 10 entries per month, as I initially suggested, but a maximum of 10 (or X) entries under consideration at one time. When consensus has been reached that the senses for a word are optimal, it could then be removed from the queue and a new word added. -- Visviva 12:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC) I'm having a hard time keeping my thoughts to less than 3 paragraphs lately, sorry. :-)

I guess I am of the opinion (and temperament) that wiktionary needs to be more checklist-oriented than WP. WP articles seem to attract fans, fanatics, learn-by-teaching types, and professionals with teaching inclinations, with narrow subject interests (though sometimes just eclectic). Wiktionary seems to attract serious effort mostly from language fans. Many of us seem to like short-attention-span work, for which checklists are very good.

The longer entries are overwheming. Perhaps the process would be to go through some high-likely-problem-ratio lists and

1. leave a bunch of tags (including new ones) OR
2. leave a tag on the talk page and an entry-specific checklist.

Perhaps the tags or checklists could be harvested for bot or template ideas that would make the process work faster. (I do not yet have a good feel for what can be done by bots or even templates, though a talk-page-checklist template that provided a formatted improvement checklist and entry-improvement log and some invisible maintenance-category membership does seem feasible though ambitious).

Maybe we need some simple focus-generating lists like "Preposition of the Month", "Determiner of the Month", "Pronoun of the Month", "Letter of the Month", "Symbol of the Month". (By the time we progress through each of these we could just start over, because there will be new issues.)

Maybe we need to mark senses that are in the opinion of some ready for translation. (Perhaps we could delete trans tables for those not ready and insert them for those that are.)

Senior contributor tasks:

1. Sequence X-of-the-Month lists (easy ones, test ones, important ones, bad ones)
2. Review entry for tasks to be done
3. Review senses for translations
4. Create short help pages for structured chunks of work
5. Identify exemplars for each L3 and L4 Heading

Meta-tasks include some consensus- and enthusiasm-building.

Shiny objects might be a talk-page maintenance-task template, a page about determining the adequacy of a sense, a help page about how to write some class of definitions, and a proposed list of exemplars.

I'm almost getting enthusiastic myself. DCDuring TALK 14:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Taxonomy

Wikispecies

We can't be the only people wondering about this - perhaps we ought to set-up a project page somewhere on WT and let the Wikispecies people know about it? Maybe there will be some people on Meta interested in cross-project stuff? Thryduulf 23:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It could be, but I'm interested in the specific way that we could get some content and get some impossible stuff off our plate. I think everything really constructive tends to be bottom-up rather than top-down in Wikiworld. We can offer WSP traffic and etymology on taxonomic words. We can get a little traffic and perhaps a lot of words (many thousands?), mostly Translinguals and Latins. We'd probably get some (hundreds, thousands?) additional vernacular names. We might be able to get many entries we don't have, blue some links and not embarass ourselves with amateur handling of taxonomy. IF you can find somebody at Meta for support that would be great too. I'm thinking about working on our classicists. EPetey, and Ataeles, HarrisMorgan because the offer of ety help (if WSp even cares) would depend a bit on them. DCDuring TALK 00:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Taxonomy levels

| Phylum phylum || Phyla |- | Classis classis Classes |- | Ordo ordo Ordines]] |- | Familia familia Familiae |- | Divisio divisio Divisiones |- | Cohors cohors Cohortes |- | Sectio sectio Sectiones |- | Tribus tribus Tribus |- | Genus genus Genera |- | Species species |- | Forma forma Formae

2020

User:User:DCDuring/mul-taxon

Can we delete this? The page title looks wrong: it's not part of your userspace. Equinox ◑ 22:01, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Wrong as rain. Deleted. Thanks. DCDuring (talk) 10:56, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Edit description

Would you mind adding an edit description for your edits like when you updated mountain [4]? If I see a mention of 'rfdatek' in the description, then it will likely satisfy my curiosity enough to not have to look at it. -Mike (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Extra keystrokes are a bit hard on my arthritic right thumb, but I will do it when I remember until the habit is established. DCDuring (talk) 13:26, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

When are brackets indicated?

Hi! I see in this edit that brackets for Langley's Rhetoric dictionary shouldn't be included? When are they needed? Should they be defaulted to off, if the definitional rhymes are considered a use rather than a mention? grendel|khan 15:37, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Fair question. It looked like a use to me. It wasn't in the form of a definition. Others may differ. To get more opinions try taking it to {{tea room}}. DCDuring (talk) 16:31, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Taxonomic slip-up at tamarind

You listed "Gypsophila tubulosa" as the current name for "Diploglottis australis". This is nonsense, but it's a very easy mistake to make: Wikispecies doesn't have an entry for "Diploglottis"- it's a redlink on the species:Sapindaceae page- so it also doesn't have an entry for "Diploglottis australis". When you search for Diploglottis australis, it very helpfully gives you the results for species:Dichoglottis australis, instead, which redirects to species:Gypsophila tubulosa. Wikipedia, on the other hand, has no entry for "Dichoglottis", let alone w:Dichoglottis australis (though w:Gypsophila has a redlink for G. australis). When you search for Dichoglottis australis it very helpfully gives you the results for w:Diploglottis australis instead. In other words, the misdirections cancel each other out, giving the seamless illusion of the two wikis having different names for the same taxon.

As far as I can tell, however, "Gypsophila tubulosa" is the valid name for an annual herb related to baby's breath, while either "Diploglottis australis" or "Diploglottis cunninghamii" (Australian Plant Name Index vs. TROPICOS and The Plant List) is the valid name for a tree that gets over a 100 feet tall with a trunk 2 1/2 feet thick.

I'm not sure how best to fix this, since {{taxlink}} doesn't link to anything useful- but at least we have to keep users from ending up at species:Gypsophila tubulosa. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:51, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for catching the error. I often wonder how many careless errors I make. I've been a bit lazy about checking taxonomic names on non-Translingual entries. As my eyesight gets worse, the visual similarity of different names can fool me as it did on this one.

Usually I don't care much whether {{taxlink}} doesn't have a target at Wikispecies, because I view the more important function as counting uses of the taxonomic name for purposes of prioritizing taxonomic name entries. I have been relying on the failed search to help users get something useful if Wikispecies doesn't have an entry. It would have worked for this if Wikispecies at least had an entry for Diploglottis, especially one with a species listing.

I have removed the nonsense name. I may add D. cunninghamii as a synonym as WP says many use that name. DCDuring (talk) 05:50, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Your remark about "mean"

@Kent Dominic: I don't care about chronology and authorship. My remark was aimed at what I thought a weakness in the 5th definition that you were apparently advocating. DCDuring (talk) 19:16, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

@DCDuring: I couldn't care less about authorship, either. As for chronology, sorry I don't recall what remark you made about that 5th definition. At any rate, it was my bad for making a half-baked edit which, IMHO, should have been subsequently (a) edited by someone to fix its initial weakness, or (b) deleted along with the entirety of definition #5 rather than being reverted to its original infirmity. If you're the one who made that initial reversion under a different user name, shame on you for complicating things! (LOL) In fact, it's not a matter of my being too lazy to do a thorough edit in the first place. I simply wanted to defer to the (non)sense that was already there in case the definition resonated more with others than with me. That's in keeping with my tendency not to delete stuff.

Again, my only issue concerned transivity, neither ergativity re. express nor the semantics re. importance/importance. The ensuing discussion about the acceptability of "important a lot" or "importance a lot" leads down a linguistic rabbit hole for cross-lingual considerations. I resisted the urge to argue how "very important" or "utmost importance" challenges the silly assertion that "Importance is not a neutral term: unmodified, it usually implies a high degree of importance." The whole discourse along those lines was ancillary to my sole interest relating to transivity. I hope the entire episode is water under the bridge since no one has restored definition #5. Yet. If whoever wrote definition #5 feels possessed by pride in authorship to restore it, I surely will die in an apoplectic fit of laughter.--Kent Dominic (talk) 03:43, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Marchantiophyta

I notice you've split out two subdefinitions here, but "division" and "phylum" are considered the same rank in botany; those terms are 100% interchangeable. So the two subdefinitions are akin the saying "France is a country in Eurasia" and "France is a nation in Europe". There is no functional nor practical difference in the definition, the difference is in the phraseology. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:20, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, though division is the equivalent specific to botany, with "phylum" being allowed as a synonym. I'm sure the "Ruggiero, et al" source uses "phylum" for consistency in naming of ranks between kingdoms. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:41, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

I was aware that they are at least approximately equivalent. The uses of division on Wiktionary often marks a different circumscription and/or placement. I was relying on the different terminology to draw attention to those differences.

Because higher taxonomic names often have little lexical meaning apart from circumscription and placement and both of these are subject to frequent adjustment and occasional drastic revision, our entries for such taxa will tend to be behind the curve. That's a reason for our taxonomic entries to have as links to as many of the better-staffed, likely-to-be-durable taxonomic databases as possible.

What, if anything, should be done to preserve the older placements and circumscriptions? Just link to the Wikispecies pages that show the variety of schemes for higher taxonomic ranks where such pages exist?

If we decide to keep it simple, then the consensus scheme of Ruggiero et al., which has been accepted by a few databases and may be updated soon, is probably our best bet, though there are areas where other databases depart from its scheme. Also, we use APG in the areas they cover. DCDuring (talk) 14:46, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

The Ruggiero classification has some drawbacks, but it's the best general classification I've seen. It will cause problems with certain groups of fossil seed plants. But again, the two definitions have no difference. The only real difference in our current definitions is that one identifies the kingdom to which the group belongs, and the other identifies the superphylum, but in fact both classifications put Marchantiophyta into kingdom Plantae. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:19, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I haven't tried to apply Ruggiero to fossil-only taxa. I will probably never work on such taxa. I am also reluctant to spend time on the numerous clades which only exist because of the need to fit fossils into schemes such as that of Ruggiero et al..

I can accept any changes to [[Marchantiopsida]] that respect the Ruggiero placement and circumsciption. I wouldn't mind the conversion of any use of division above the level of order (There is lots of use below that level for insects.) to phylum or other taxonomic rank. But there are some definitions that are based on definitions, mostly superseded or disused, in Century 1911 which use division, for which I am not now willing to spend the time to reconcile with modern schemes. DCDuring (talk) 22:44, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

But this instance is not such a case. This is a situation where you've added two subdefinitions that say the same thing in different words. I see no rationale for splitting the subdefinitions. Splitting definitions like this would create similar issues across the whole range of biota. (Def 1. Dogs are canids, Def 2. Dogs are a group of mammals, Def 3. Dogs are a group of vertebrates, Def. 4 Dogs are a group of animals) How many such subdefinitions are actually needed? Without justification, I will re-merge the subdefinitions you split.

Where I think you are setting yourself up for issues is that you are not simply identifying the rank and definition of the taxon, but you also are incorporating information about its placement within a specific classification system. The placement of a taxon has no bearing on its definition; if I move a book from one shelf to another it merely changes the location of the book, not its contents, appearance, nor any of its essential details. On Wikidata, descriptions of taxa are limited to statement such as "a class of plants" or "an order of animals", without specifying the parent group as part of the definitions. Parent relationships are not inherent to a taxon, and are subject to all manner of changes. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:47, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Definitions are written in terms of words. DCDuring (talk) 22:22, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I've made the merge, since I cannot tell whether you are understanding my argument at all. Please see my proposed revision. Also Metaknowledge is harassing me again, this time on my talk page. Your attention would be appreciated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:10, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Also, is Wiktionary concerned at all with the acceptability of name under the Code? I ask because Hepaticophyta is one of those names that's been used extensively in the literature, but a 2008 paper (by the creator of the "name") concluded that it is a nomen invalidum because the genus upon which it is based is illegitimate. This fact could be added as a Usage note, but doing so (potentially for every such name) may go beyond the utility of Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:16, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I haven't been willing to remove any definition, even a mere wording difference, out of process.

I don't think that we can keep up with the code. It would be nice to note the status of various names, but I think we do well to just follow usage. DCDuring (talk) 13:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Even the definitions you added? This was a pair of sub-definitions you inserted. I have not removed them, simply combined them because they say the same thing. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:08, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I didn't add any definition involving division. I split an existing definition using division into a sense and a subsense. I added the subsense definition using phylum. DCDuring (talk) 17:27, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

niwa-fuji 庭藤

Hello. You changed a taxlink at 庭藤 from I. decora to an internal to Indigofera tinctoria. Unless I miss my guess, though, niwa-fuji is I. decora. See GRIN. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 01:50, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Right you are. Thanks. DCDuring (talk) 01:54, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

This is my usual source for botanical names of romanized Japanese terms. Of course, the taxonomy is a half century out of date, but you can use the usual taxonomic databases to track down the current names. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:27, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

This time it was just my careless reading of the entry. DCDuring (talk) 03:29, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Burnout

Hey DCD. After an epic week Wiktionary-wise, I feel burned out. Literally, my eyes and head and wrist all hurt after working so hard. Please, if you see me around hit me with your admin block hammer. Thanks--Vitoscots (talk) 19:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

I look forward to it. DCDuring (talk) 19:42, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Snake melon, yard-long cucumber

This rollback is an error: both links redirect to Armenian cucumber anyway and thus are useless. Ain92 (talk) 23:28, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Among the functions of the templates {{vern}} and {{taxlink}} is to enable the creation of lists and counts of missing Wiktionary entries, such as User:DCDuring/vern and User:DCDuring/MissingTaxa. Inspecting the code for the templates would demonstrate that the templates also place the entry in categories.

The taxonomic names lists is relatively current. If you'd like, I could do a run to update the vernacular names list. DCDuring (talk) 00:25, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@Ain92 I updated the vernacular names list. DCDuring (talk) 00:38, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see any changes in the article itself, but I checked the discussion of the template and the issue seems to be quite complicated and probably above my competences, so I won't insist. Ain92 (talk) 13:46, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Ain92 I didn't make any changes in the entry ("article"). I updated a list that depends on the large number of template transclusions. The list of missing vernacular names is located at User:DCDuring/vern. DCDuring (talk) 14:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Reverts to rhymes pages

Please stop reverting my edits to this page.

Linking to Wiktionary entries for surnames turns most of the links red. Wikipedia contains more information on the people linked to, and in some cases, a particular surname may only rhyme for the particular person linked to.

If you disagree with this approach, please raise it for discussion in the Beer parlour. Thanks. — Paul G (talk) 13:20, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Why didn't you bring it up before you started. Our convention is to leave redlinks to indicate missing entries. DCDuring (talk) 21:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Paul G: Red links are an intrinsic part of the wiki model: if you see 'em, create the entry (which might optionally link to Wikipedia). If the link isn't an everyday surname but some specific trademark, brand, or performer name (like, say, Ke$ha) then we probably shouldn't have it at all, per policy. Equinox ◑ 22:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, we are already having a BP discussion in which you have failed to participate. DCDuring (talk) 22:04, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out to me: I was unaware of it. I have replied there now. — Paul G (talk) 15:25, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

chip off the old...

Yep, it that's time again to give myself a wikibreak. Please could you do the honours? --Nueva normalidad (talk) 17:18, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

flowers - flowers of zinc, antimony, etc etc

Hi. Thank you for your reply on SB talk page. However, I still feel that flowers as a plural only noun should be in the plural name-space. As a plural only, the singular form is not the right place really, is it? Thanks. -- ALGRIF talk 12:15, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's enough, but I don't object to double-posting. I wouldn't want someone who stripped the 's' to not find it at [[flower]]. To avoid divergent entries we might want to have a {{senseid}} anchor at the relevant definition linked to from the other. Some other (mostly older) dictionaries have the various "flowers of" terms as run-ins for each material: benzoin, antimony, arsenic, sulfur/sulphur, tin, and zinc. Since that list of materials is probably not complete, it would be necessary to have definitions at the flower/flowers pair anyway. Are we sure that the singular is extremely rare relative to the plural? DCDuring (talk) 16:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The singular 'flower of' seems to be somewhere between 10% and 30% as common as the plural. It seems to have been used uncountably, as was the plural form. DCDuring (talk) 16:41, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I hate to impose, but I'm not too sure how to use the {{senseid}} anchor. Could you possibly oblige? If so, most grateful then I will be (Yoda-speak). -- ALGRIF talk 19:03, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm cleaning up some taxonomy messes at the moment. It's worth learning {{senseid}}. The documentation isn't awful. DCDuring (talk) 19:05, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Re. "going to"

I think your recent edits represent an improvement vis-a-vis some that I made not long ago. I've returned a bit of the favor. Have a look. Cheers! --Kent Dominic (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Still recovering from power outages. Perhaps tomorrow. DCDuring (talk) 02:04, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

out

Hi, just to alert you, in this edit you added a new line that has a label "of a user of a service" but not an actual definition. Regards, Mihia (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. DCDuring (talk) 23:05, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

come#Preposition

Hi DCDuring - I don't agree this is a preposition, even though some online dictionaries analyse it that way. I suppose it can be substituted with "by" and the overall meaning is not very different, but that doesn't mean it is a preposition. I don't know if you know the Jimmy Buffet song "Come Monday", but that's a good example of a case where the intended meaning is very much verbal: it means "when Monday _arrives_" not "by Monday". I myself have always understood it as a subjunctive verb, like other modern-day subjunctive uses fossilised to a certain degree. I suppose we could leave the preposition def but I would also like to add a verbal def and cross-reference them. What do you think? - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 20:21, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the origins of this usage of come are from the verb. I also wonder when one decides that a conversion of a word to a different word class has taken place. A number of prepositions have deverbal origins, such as my namesake and the other prepositions ending in ing. More similar to come is the preposition save. The key usage fact that makes me hesitant to insist that it is a pure preposition is that it partially inflects: one can find both come and came used with the same semantics, except for the tense difference. But number doesn't change come to comes (*comes Monday, ?come Mondays). I don't know whether there are other etymologically related prepositions that reflect a tense difference. I am pretty sure that there are no deverbal ones that do so. I think I would prefer to see more about this in an etymology section at come#Preposition and came#Preposition, but we don't usually have PoS-specific etymology sections (just as sense evolution generally is left as an exercise for the reader). It doesn't really have to do with usage, because thinking of come as a verb or a preposition makes no difference in how words are arranged around it.

What would a 'verbal' definition look like? DCDuring (talk) 22:11, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Webs3 has a verbal def: "to come to pass: take place — used in the subjunctive with inverted subject and verb to express the particular time or occasion." Also, OED1 sees it as a verb, def 35: "Come, the present conj., is used with a future date following as subject [...] 'come Easter'; i.e. let Easter come, when Easter shall come". The reason why it is not "comes Monday" is because it is in the subjunctive mood and therefore omits the -s. Of course, you are right that prepositions can begin life as verbs (regarding, during, are good examples - but they are continuous ones, so not exactly analogous to 'come' that we are discussing). However, I think that not all examples of this use of "come" can be seen as prepositional - for example, "Shanahan is a reactionary little toad who will be up against the wall come the revolution". The usage note says that it can be used in the past, but I wonder if that is the same sense exactly. I found this example (? maybe it is an example of what the usage note author as thinking of) "Came six-thirty and we were put out on to the cold street." I think this is just a playful/poetic reversal of subject and verb. But if this is an example of the same sense, then surely it is a verb, otherwise we would be saying that English now has an inflected preposition! - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 04:48, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@Sonofcawdrey: and @DCDuring: In my book, it's less productive to parse a word according to a supposed part of speech than to identify it according to the lexical context in which the word occurs. So, "Come Monday" is a preposition as DCDuring explained; "come hell or high water" is a preposition for similar reasons; "Come All Ye Faithful" is a transitive verb in the imperative mood. As far as I can tell, the prepositional etymology of come is verbal but the usage is archaic in a way that differs from, e.g., "come one, come all," which is a transitive use in the imperative mood. Whether an archaic preposition derives from a verbal or deverbal basis might be interesting but isn't particularly relevant to its use in a fossil phrase, IMHO. However, for trivia's sake, the prepositional senses of come and save (and also except) indeed have verbal etymologies, as DCDuring hinted. Moreover, during also has a verbal origin, from the Proto-Indo-European root, deru-, which morphed into the Old French verb endurer in the 12th century, to the English endure in the mid-13th century, and then to during in the late 13th century. I can't rightly tell whether the earliest use of during was then considered a preposition or a so-called present participle of endure, but I'm nearly certain that any such distinction was immaterial to its usage at the time of its emergence. Kinda like how most people (not including me) consider "regarding" or "considering" to be prepositional parts of speech nowadays. (In fact, I deign to use the terms, present participle and parts of speech in my own lexicon; I prefer continuative participle and lexical category to avoid the anomalies and non sequiturs associated with the traditional terms.) --Kent Dominic (talk) 04:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

hard word

Hi, I commented on the Tea Room saying I've never heard of "hard word" in the context you cited. But English has many native speakers who have all heard of different usages. "Hard word" in the sense you cited is meaning 6b in OED, "outrageous demand". Do you have the OED? You could put an entry in Wikipedia if you wanted to - it is a dictionary anyone can edit. You can email me at djwebb1969 AT gmail.com and I will send you an OED image. 81.141.8.61 10:54, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

LBD

What do you reckon 'bout nominating User:Lingo Bingo Dingo for sysophood? Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 23:40, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Template:quote-case

@Sgconlaw. As the go-to guys in matters legal and templative, I have to ask you both. Do we have a template like Template:quote-case or Template:quote-legal? I feel we can do more with the bonesy quote at short notice. Returning2stadia (talk) 22:43, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I rarely use legal citations and am not very good at template matters, especially since modules are usually involved. DCDuring (talk) 00:14, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Not sure we need to proliferate the number of quotation templates. Just use {{quote-book}}, in my view. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:26, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

puzzle

What word fits the pattern? ... of flats / stumbling ... / ... party / this is a request for another Wonderfool ... because it's been a month already since the last one. La más guay (talk) 01:24, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

2021

Wealdish

Hi. I moved this page rather too hastily. Can you undo the page move, please? Alexfromiowa (talk) 22:39, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done DCDuring (talk) 22:47, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, mate

I apologize for requesting this again, but I'm going crazy here. I neeeeed a WT-break! Please block me ASAP so I can sort out my mental health. Alexfromiowa (talk) 23:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Survey

Some questions re. our mythical targeted users:

1. What do they know?
2. What do they want to know?
3. What do they need to know?
4. What should they know?
5. How does anyone know any of the above?

I'll gladly participate in any survey you conduct or authorize, but I want CPAs involved in the process. --Kent Dominic (talk) 08:07, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure that someone somewhere has studied some population, probably students, to find out what they retained from earlier schooling. I doubt that we would find more than a small fraction of non-linguists who would know how to diagram a sentence in any way. I think most remember the names of parts of speech and dimly remember the functions of the PoSes. Most don't find any use for even that knowledge. They don't need to know it for any practical purpose and don't find any part of grammar fun. These are my expectations. I look for disconfirmation when I talk to people like a guy who works in a writers talent agency, a budding author, a psychologist, a teacher, a social worker, a retired HBS grad, and an intelligent college dropout. Formally trained language learners are the one group of folks other than their teachers (linguists) who might know, want to know, and perhaps should know more, at least during the period when they are acquiring a new language formally. DCDuring (talk) 13:57, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

You read my mind, stole my thoughts, and beat me to the punch for what I'd intended as my next post, dammit! In my ideal world, paradigmatic set linguistics prevails. Its consistency is unassailable. It's replicable algorithmically for machine learning under AI. But people first need to get their heads extricated from their traditional linguistics butts and wash their hands of the inconsistent excrement that gets pooped out. For instance, look up see ya and you'll find it labeled as an interjection. Rightly so, I'd say. Look up see you and it's labeled as a phrase. (Can you see me shaking my head right now?) Then go to Webster and look up see you, which is labeled there as a bloody idiom. LMFAO! I'd be a millionaire if I had a dollar for each time I've heard an ESL student ask, and an instructor fumble to answer, the precise meaning of idiom as that term has been bastardized in ESL classroom settings and literature.

The long and short: people don't need a physics PhD to see sunlight and they don't need a linguistics primer to say, "see ya." However, for those who do want to know its lexical category for whatever casual or academic reason, they're currently screwed under our inherited but traditionally beloved naive set linguistic legacy. By no means am I trying to change that mindset here. First, the data corpus here is too big to apply paradigmatic set linguistics an ad hoc basis even if there were a consensus to promulgate it as a basis for labeling. Second, I have no interest in developing the software to do it en masse. (I've long since transitioned from computer programming to encoding thanks to Windows.) Third, I have too much proprietary interest in the relevant work that I've done to freely offer it here prior to publication of the e-book that demonstrates it hypertextually. Rants such as these are mere rehearsals for doing it live once publication gets underway and the bashing from linguistic traditionalists invariably ensues. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 17:27, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

P.S. In my book, the lexical category for "no matter" can't rightfully be construed as a noun phrase (Det + N) in the "no matter what" phrase. It has to be deemed an adverbial phrase (Adv+V). You'd be right in a context such as "There's no matter in the space between an electron and its neutrons." (Whether the statement itself is scientifically valid depends on some pretty spooky theory. --Kent Dominic (talk) 17:27, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

pourable

Why the two adjective senses? Are these properly distinct? Equinox ◑ 02:51, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

It is from a long time ago. BUT, I often think that many terms have two kids of definitions: everyday and techincal. Everyday use is sense 1; physicists and engineers automatically write as if their definition is the second. See the entry for iron, which has an everyday definition of the material and more technical ones, each for a somewhat different technical specialty. I don't know whether the second ("technical") definition is worth keeping. Almost every definition that has some technical causal element will be rendered obsolete by advances in theory and changes in the style of technical discourse and be so rendered more quickly than everyday definitions. DCDuring (talk) 05:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Short answer: Sense #1 entails anything that can be poured whether liquid (n.), fine powder, sand, figurative thoughts or emotions, etc. Sense #2 entails the attributive sense of the noun that became the adjective e.g. liquid (pourable) nitrogen. For anyone keeping score, words are "pourable" under sense #1 but not under sense #2. Conversely, words can be "liquid" in the adjectival sense included in sense #2 but not in the nominal sense included in sense #1 unless you literally throw a book into a blender. --Kent Dominic (talk) 23:52, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Re. as in

This article typifies my dissatisfaction with labels cut from the cloth of tradition PsOS as applied to phrases. The "as in" article has one label (i.e. Adverb) above two senses. Clearly, sense #1 is clearly parenthetically adverbial: "bow," as in the weapon, not the front of a ship (wherein as is an adverb: namely, and in is a preposition: concerning, regarding, or relating to). Sense #2 is absolutely is not adverbial: "In Sweden, as in most countries, ..." (wherein as is a conjunction: like, and in is a preposition: within or inside).

Long ago, as traditionalist, I would have created a Conjunction label for that second sense. Not so anymore. Nowadays, I'd put sense #1 under a phrasal preposition label, with an adverbial phrase sub-entry. I'd enter sense #2 as a phrasal conjunction. You've no doubt noticed that Wiktionary has defined the former but not the latter. And as usual, I don't want to upset the Wiktionary apple cart by posting edits with unfamiliar labels from my own yet-unpublished lexicon. Nonetheless, I have two questions for you:

1. Do you honestly think the "target user" at Wiktionary:

(a) can't figure out what a phrasal conjunction means in the given context, and

(b) would have any more difficulty figuring it out compared to what "phrasal preposition" means? (If you quibble that sense #2 of "as in" is a collocation rather than an indivisible phrase, then perhaps the entry should be deleted from the article.)

2. Can you empathize with -

(a) my refusal to add a naïve conjunction label for sense #2 as described above, and

(b) my sympathy for readers who try to figure out the POS regarding "as in" (i.e., the way I've left it under "Adverb" in the article)?

No, I'm not trying to linguistically evangelize anyone at Wiktionary on the moribund PsOS versus modern lexical category conundrum. My main reason for posting you on the "as in" article is to see if you have the linguistic conscience to do something on your own about its currently mislabeled sense #2. Regardless of whether you do anything at all and notwithstanding what you might do, I hope you give typical readers as much credit as I do, seeing how I took a survey of one and it's unanimous: the target user expects more regarding the labeling of lexical categories for phrases than Wiktionary typically provides. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 23:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Whenever we have a multiword term, especially one that seems hard to put in a lexical class, the first question should be whether it is a constituent. I don't think this one is. Accordingly, I have RfDed it. DCDuring (talk) 02:22, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Looks like you nominated the entire entry, not just sense #2. Where's the proper place for discussion? My own two cents: "As in" is part of the vernacular re. both senses despite how sense #2 is a criminal victim of linguistic malpractice, label-wise. --Kent Dominic (talk) 10:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

^Never mind. --Kent Dominic (talk) 10:36, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

As to your immediately preceding comment, there is only one definition advanced as idiomatic. As for your earlier, lengthier comment, I would need a better example to address the matter fully. (Do you see what I did there?) I don't think labels should be at all technical and, still less, that they should reflect what seem to be merely the idiolects of our contributors. Part of the problem of technical vocabulary is that there are different schools of thought or practice that use terms in different ways. The bigger problem is that the more syllables to the NPs in a label, the more likely our users' eyes are to glaze over. I think repetition of such eye-glaze experience leads to the selection of other online dictionaries. I regularly consult other dictionaries for the greater clarity (and authority) they usually have relative to ours. DCDuring (talk) 15:40, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

We've never had coffee, but I think I know you well enough to say we can respectfully disagree about certain conclusions. Yet, if we ever met in a café, the lawyer in me would have at your arguments a bit like this:

DCDuring: As to your immediately preceding comment, there is only one definition advanced as idiomatic.

Kent: You know it, I know it, but do average readers know that when they’ve learned only the sense #1 meaning and they mistakenly apply it to the sense #2 usage when they first encounter it? Rather than defining sense #2 (which , if done for every collocation, would go on endlessly) I think a usage note about it would be better than simply deleting it. That’s what I plan to do if the deletion goes forward, since sense #2 is definitely encountered a regular basis in the vernaculars worldwide.

DCDuring: As for your earlier, lengthier comment, I would need a better example to address the matter fully. (Do you see what I did there?)

Kent: Yeah, I don’t want you coffee to get cold.

DCDuring: I don't think labels should be at all technical. …

Kent: I agree. Now, let’s define “technical.”

DCDuring: [Still] less, that they should reflect what seem to be merely the idiolects of our contributors.

Kent: I won’t comment on how relying on “what seem(s) to be merely the idiolects of our contributors” expresses what I consider to be a condescending attitude toward the target users that I’ve surveyed.

DCDuring: Part of the problem of technical vocabulary is that there are different schools of thought or practice that use terms in different ways.

Kent: “Technical?” Did you say, “technical?” Sorry, I don’t know what that word means. Is it a noun? An attributive noun? An adjective? If so, when did it become an adjective? If the other way around, when did it become a noun? Speaking on behalf of the entire population of target users in my survey, I can safely say that my interest in lexical category (based on the various linguistic schools of thought) and etymology are the primary reasons I look up stuff.

DCDuring: The bigger problem is that the more syllables to the NPs in a label, the more likely our users' eyes are to glaze over.

Kent: For what it’s worth, I took that into account by limiting all of the labels in my own lexicon to three words. No exceptions.

DCDuring: I think repetition of such eye-glaze experience leads to the selection of other online dictionaries.

Kent: I can’t dispute what you think, but I respectfully think otherwise. Specifically, for the disinterested, I think the eye glaze leads to disregard of the labels; for the interested, I think the labels either lead to confusion regarding mislabels (e.g., one of my students said, "My boss was titling at windmills the project" after finding tilt at windmills labeled as a verb at Wiktionary) or to curiosity regarding unfamiliar but linguistically apt labels. If curiosity isn’t a hallmark of human intelligence, call me stupid.

DCDuring: I regularly consult other dictionaries for the greater clarity (and authority) they usually have relative to ours.

Kent: Accordingly, can you explain why – for a random phrasal example – you’re content to let “around the world” remain labeled as a prepositional phrase when Webster (to choose one of my four go-to dictionaries) has around the world labeled as a noun?

(An FYI: “Around the world” isn’t included as a phrase in my lexicon. But if it were, it’d look like this:

around the world (prepositional phrase) - Blah, blah, blah; Example: @DCDuring sailed around the world last year. (I.e., with each word linked not to a separate article, but to the corresponding sense of each word as defined according to their varying labels among the glossary's 14,000+ entries.) See generally adverbial prepositional phrase. (I.e., wherein interested readers can see how that works and also find a comparison link to an adjectival prepositional phrase).

Incidentally, Wiktionary labels “go ahead” as a Verb; Oxford (go ahead) labels it as Phrasal Verb; in my book it’s an intransitive phrasal verb. No one’s died or gone blind reading my stuff. At least, no one that I know of. Hope I can say the same about you after you’ve read these 645 words or after some well-intentioned numbnut tells you his boss "went ahead the project" upon reading the Wiktionary entry instead of mine. If you wanted to read about the "Hope I can say..." syntax from the preceding sentence, my book would internally link it to a null subject entry for additional reference. If you think of a way to include "null subject" as a label rather than as a linguistic term of art, I'm all ears. Ha! (Yes, Wikipedia has a null-subject language article and Zero (linguistics) article, but nothing relevant to how we, as native English speakers, regularly drop the subjects from casual speech. Know what I mean? Drives ESLers crazy. Say what? Anyhow, been nice chatting. Rant's done. See ya later. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 21:01, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Re. go back

Under the logic you've applied to "as in," sense #1 and sense #3 re. go back should be RFDed. I'm not expressing an opinion whether to keep or delete either; I'm just sayin'. I do think, however, that the "go back" label needs some love. --Kent Dominic (talk) 21:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I apply the logic conservatively, but I believe that many of our definitions for "phrasal verbs" are NISoP, certainly not all, probably not more than a substantial minority of them. It's a little fuzzy because for most phrasal-verb entries there is at least one definition that is idiomatic. There is a rationale for including the NISoP definitions to contrast them with the idiomatic ones. DCDuring (talk) 23:10, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I know NoISP, but not "NISoP." Typo, or ... ? --Kent Dominic (talk) 00:21, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry. Non-idiomatic sum of parts. DCDuring (talk) 03:36, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

by way of analogy

a.k.a. "Food for thought as my one and only doomed attempt at linguistic evangelism re. the efficacy of labels with more description at Wiktionary"

Assume you’re reading an article about a certain 20th century poet. After prefacing his identity as T.S. Eliot, he’s subsequently referenced as “Eliot” in the majority of the article’s corpus. You’d probably be put off if he were alternately referenced as “T.S.” in the narrative despite the fewer number of syllables. And I don’t think your eyes would glaze upon seeing “T.S. Eliot” rather than “Eliot” in the various photos’ captions. Lastly, I don’t think you’d be confused, but it might satisfy your curiosity, to see his name as “Thomas Stearns Eliot” in the section regarding his early life. In my view, the article would be negligent without mentioning his full sextuplicately syllabic full name. (No charge for the “sextuplicately” neologism, which has exactly one Google Scholar hit.) --Kent Dominic (talk) 11:02, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Yep, I didn't expect a comment. Just a shrug and an eyeroll. Or, instead say that you'll read my lexicon of grammatical terms when it comes out. In return, I promise to shrug and eyeroll to criticism that the lexicon's thrust deals with linguistics, not grammar. But, hey - most people seem to think grammar is bad enough while linguistics is downright scary and to be avoided at all costs.--Kent Dominic (talk) 22:18, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Inasmuch quotation reversion

The change you reverted was unjustified. The quotation I inserted was an example of usage, not prescription or definition. As such it was perfectly justified and informative. You would have a hard time finding a better example, whether you agree with Fowler or not. JonRichfield (talk) 17:11, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

It was a mention, not a use. It is on the talk page. DCDuring (talk) 17:38, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@JonRichfield: Insofar that Wiktionary contributors confuse "inasmuch" and "insofar" in their titles for discussion, my reliance on their credibility and attention to detail evaporates. Ribbing aside, I agree the adverb label for "insofar" is troublesome. If Fowler called it a "compound preposition," I'd say that's exactly right. The consensus at Wiktionary (to which @DCDuring will attest) is to label stuff according to its contextual use rather than its technical POS or lexical category. So, yes - "insofar" is always used adverbially, and the adverb label makes sense from a word-economy standpoint. Nonetheless, in my lexicon, it would be labeled as a preposition, with usage notes that (1) it's in the compound preposition subset, and that (2) it occurs only as part of the "insofar as" or "insofar that" phrasal conjunctions. Silly me: coining a term such as "phrasal conjunction" and deigning to co-opt Fowler's "compound preposition" gem. Wiktionary is way behind the curve when it comes to labeling and defining compounds and phrases. --Kent Dominic (talk) 22:09, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

The sole PoS header for inasmuch as is "Conjunction". It is self-evident that it is a phrase. I always wonder how a single word, whatever its derivation, can be put into a "Phrase" word class. Is phrase much used to refer to single words outside of its use in compound nouns? DCDuring (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Great point! Glad you asked. Using terms from my own lexicon:

• inasmuch: Doesn't merit its own entry as it's a fossil word; searches are redirected as follows...
• inasmuch as: Labeled as a phrasal conjunction, with etymology indicating it comprises inasmuch (a fossil word) + as (conjunction).
• inasmuch that: Labeled as a phrasal conjunction with etymology indicating it comprises inasmuch (a fossil word) + that (conjunction), with usage that is dated if not nearly obsolete.

You say "It is self-evident that it is a phrase," but I think you're using an ordinary sense of "phrase," not a linguistic sense. In the linguistic sense that I apply regarding the term "phrasal conjunction," it means you can't segment and substitute the phrasal components without corrupting the meaning. E.g., you can't say "inasmuch because" or "inasmuch so." There's no fossil record of such articulations, and trying to invent such phrasing would earn you stares as a lunatic. So the "phrasal" moniker is a linguistic red flag not to muck with the syntax.

Similarly, a linguistic sense of "phrase" applies to something like "bite the dust," which is unfortunately labeled here as a Verb. Yet, in my lexicon, it's a verb phrase (which, I might add, Wiktionary defines pretty well in both of its linguistic senses). The "phrase" element of the verb phrase label red flags it: don't muck with it by trying, e.g. "eat the dust" or "bite the mud."

Sure, there are uses for the ordinary senses of "phrase" (e.g. 1. an expression that comprises more than one word, 2. an individual word that implies a specific meaning within a given professional or conversational context, such as "wicket" or "strings" or "skookum"), but that's not what's meant when we say "put it down" is a verb phrase. It's obviously a generic phrase; it's not an obvious verb phrase. In my teaching experience, student's know the difference. They know "put down the book" entails a phrasal verb. They know "put the book down" entails a verb phrase. They memorize which verbs can be collocated with separable objects and which ones can't, e.g. "He flew off the handle" is an inseparable verb phrase. If some leaky dictionary labels it as verb (please don't reference "fly off the handle" here; ha!) they'll attempt some inanity like, "My dad flew off the living room when he saw the F grade on my report card." By dumb luck some might try instead, "My dad flew off the couch..." In such a case, it becomes a generic phrase with a metaphoric meaning but not an idiomatic phrase likely to be found in any dictionary. So, does "fly off" merit a separate sense in Wiktionary's "fly off entry to account for such permutations? Hardly, but I think its Related terms section properly addresses the issue. --Kent Dominic (talk) 01:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I try to stick to the "ordinary" meanings of words for all definitions, labels, headword lines (excluding the headword and its inflections), etc. I am simply not interested in making Wiktionary into a specialist dictionary for logophiles. Linguistics students should hound their professors for approved vocabulary for their coursework. For normal humans "phrase" means what we might call in Wiktionary space an MWE (that is also a constituent).

BTW, I created Category:English non-constituents to make it easy to find them. They are ways for us to include certain snowclones without having full entries for the large number of varied forms they may have. In some cases we should try to replace them with better-formed entries.

If you can attest inasmuch that, by all means create an entry therefor. DCDuring (talk) 02:53, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Quibble, quibble, quibble: You stick to labels and headword lines re. ordinary meanings usage. I'd have no complaint if a word, say, "swimming," had a Usage headword line that identified it according to (1) Present participle (e.g. he is swimming), (2) Adjective (e.g. the swimming pool) (3) Gerund (I like swimming) (4) Noun (e.g. swimming is fun). But, labeling it as a noun to the exclusion of its identity as a gerund, or vice versa, is just plain sad. Here it's listed as a verb. Technically wrong. I can read your lips: "How many average users can distinguish a present participle from a verb?" I concede the point, but not the propriety entailed. As always, I'm not trying to change your mind. And I'm hardly a logophile. God knows I'd rather practice law or, ideally, produce movies. In a nutshell, I wish Wiktionary had more entries that conform to the standards my own target readers expect so that I can link more words to this website instead of having to define them myself for the work that I do. Given the intransigence here, it's often just easier to expand that corpus to an unfortunate extent than bang my head against the WT:POS wall. As for inasmuch that, I used it only for illustrative purposes based on a quick gloss and distant memory. I mentioned it solely in the context of @JonRichfield's interest in this thread. It's not part of the 500,000-word corpus in my lexicon. But if it were ... --Kent Dominic (talk) 10:04, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

multi-word expression (new) and MWE (edited/updated)

Consider my multi-word expression creation to be an anti-Frankenstein; the poor man's approach to language acquisition; the ghetto-world of lexicographical taxonomic standards. I've gone into hiding from my students who'll read me the riot act after they somehow find out about my hand in it. The irony of labeling a multi-word expression under a one-word label - and my admission of condescension for adhering to the WT:POS guidance in so doing ... well, let it be our inside joke. Credit me for resisting the temptation to label it an Idiom. For what it's worth, "multi-word expression" is entered under a Grammar label in my own lexicon. (Fair criticism: It should be labeled as Linguistics, but I've learned most people are allergic to that word.) I don't otherwise use "multi-word expression" in my textbook. It's merely included as a glossary entry that has eight separate senses (unlike the one sense I've included at Wiktionary), with each sense being cf.'d to one or more relevant lexical categories for examples. Happy editing! --Kent Dominic (talk) 23:56, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

re. in order to

It's been more than a month since I last bothered you, so perhaps you've grown restless. Here's your fix: Please look at the POS label for in order to, edit it accordingly, and ping me afterward. I'm just interested in seeing how you'll handle it. Perhaps needless to say, "phrase" doesn't add anything relevant to its meaning. I'm not giving any hints how in order to is labeled in my own lexicon, but I will say it's the only item with its POS label in its lexical category. Cheers. --Kent Dominic (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Template:MW1913Abbr

Does Template:MW1913Abbr serve any purpose and if not can we delete it plz? Indian subcontinent (talk) 21:54, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

What harm does keeping it cause? I don't know whether its original purpose has been rendered obsolete. Do you have any evidence to the effect that it could not have any benefit or that its use causes harm, excluding "harm" to those with a compulsion toward 'tidiness' (OCD). DCDuring (talk) 17:53, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Meh, I don't care that much, TBH. Perhaps I have selective OCD Indian subcontinent (talk) 22:14, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I have channeled my OCD into keeping certain maintenance categories empty. DCDuring (talk) 04:07, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

It can be quite satisfying to have empty maintenance categories, yes. It's like a gold sticker, a reminder that we've done so much clean-up work and we are doing the world a huge favour. Alternatively, it is a reminder of our sad existence, the only achievements of our lives are cleaning up an unimportant dictionary that is destined to perish one day. Indian subcontinent (talk) 09:05, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Repeated addition of references that do not exist

Special:Diff/62609240; Special:Diff/62650963; Special:Diff/62650965. I am confused; what are you trying to do? J3133 (talk) 17:41, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Usually the links are there to show that there is nothing to be linked to. When the relevant discussions are closed they can be deleted. If such deadish links are upsetting to someone, they can be deleted just like almost any other non-definition content. DCDuring (talk) 19:46, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I think this is fine for the temporary purpose of an rfv, but I totally agree that these links shouldn't be there outside the context of the rfv. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:12, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Using common sense, adding a list of sites that do not have a term seems absurd. Using them in a RFV discussion is fine but they do not belong in a dictionary entry. J3133 (talk) 20:18, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Requests for attention in Norwegian Bokmål entries

Hi there, you have added some requests for attention to a number of Sami languages in Norwegian Bokmål all the way back in 2013: akkalasamisk, enaresamisk, kemisamisk, kildinsamisk, lulesamisk, nordsamisk, pitesamisk, skoltesamisk, tersamisk and umesamisk. You did not add an explanation, so I am wondering if you would like to either add a reason or remove them, if no longer relevant? Thanks! Supevan (talk) 19:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

It looks like the problem was the lack of an inflection line. I didn't want to add one myself since I don't know the language. It looks like the peroson (or bot) that added the inflection line didn't remove the request for attention. DCDuring (talk) 04:23, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Great, I have updated the inflections and removed your requests for attention, cheers. Supevan (talk) 06:18, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Viola wikipedia

Our entry suggests this is a valid taxonomic name, but WP's article Viola angustifolia indicates that it is not, and the species was renamed in error. Fancy sorting it out? Thanks. Equinox ◑ 23:20, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I think they have a point: it's only mentioned as a synonym in the original description of Pigea banksiana. I would have to see a published description to back that up before I would base anything on such a mention. Kew, TROPICOS and The Plant List/World Flora Online all treat Viola angustifolia Phil. as a legitimate, accepted name. Most of them don't even mention V. wikipedia, but IPNI lists it as a "nom. illeg. nom. superfl.", i.e., a name that is illegitimate because there was already a vaild name for the taxon, and Kew lists it as a synonym of Viola angustifolia Phil., while it treats Viola angustifolia Banks ex Ging. (the name that supposedly invalidated Viola angustifolia Phil.) as a synonym of Afrohybanthus enneaspermus (L.) Flicker.

To sum it up:

• Frédéric Charles Jean Gingins de la Sarraz, in his description of what he called Pigea banksiana, published in 1824 in the first volume of the De Candolle Prodromus, mentioned that it had the name Viola angustifolia in the Joseph Banks herbarium. This was apparently the same as a plant that had already been described as Viola enneasperma by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.
• Rodolfo Amando Philippi published a description of a species he named Viola angustifolia in the journal Linnaea
• John Michael Watson & Ana Rosa Flores were convinced that the name mentioned by Gingins was a valid name, which would make Philippi's name invalid, so they published an article pointing this out and renaming the species. So far, no one seems to agree.
• by the Principle of Priority a taxonomic name can only be used for one taxon, so any use of a validly published name for any other taxon gets thrown out. Since there have always been so many different taxonomic publications and no way to keep track of them all before the internet, just about every name more than a century old has been been accidentally published for more than one taxon, often many times. Any decent taxonomic publication will have a list of these synonyms for each taxon, but it's not unheard of for someone to discover an earlier publication that invalidates a widely accepted name. When a name becomes invalid for the taxon, the next name validly published for the taxon becomes the correct one. In this case, there wasn't one, so the person who discovered the alleged invalidation would have the chance to rename it.

Chuck Entz (talk) 02:16, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

As the authoritative sources all now seem to agree that this is a synonym of V. angustifolia, that should be what our entry says of it. We can add whatever damning labels seem appropriate, too. DCDuring (talk) 05:03, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

on air

Hi, just to let you know that at RFV you accidentally put comments about "on air" under "Dovercoaster". Mihia (talk) 19:47, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I was wondering where they went. DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Rankf

Some messy taxonomic attempts that I thought you would be interested to see. The editor could use some guidance. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:19, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a look. DCDuring (talk) 14:08, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge I looked at a few of their latest edits. They seem to be copying from some kind of a list, perhaps the index from a book. Typos like "echinta" for "echinata" and "exelsum" for "excelsum" aren't encouraging. In one case they had "Hevea grewiaefolius Hassk.", which is impossible- "Hevea" is feminine, and the genus is strictly South American. Hevea brasiliensis is cultivated worldwide as a source of rubber, but according to TROPICOS the generic name has never occurred in any species name with any variation of "grewiaefolius". There is a Hibiscus grewiifolius Hassk., which is native to Indonesia, and one can find the Hibiscus grewiaefolius variant in the same snippet with Hevea brasiliensis in a few books. I'm guessing they missed the change in the genus from Hevea to Hibiscus in a list. At any rate, definitions consisting of nothing but taxonomic names regurgitated from some list by someone who obviously sees them as random text and has no clue what they refer to is dangerously close to useless. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:16, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

It is easy enough to check the validity of the taxonomic names and make corrections. It also seems easy to delete out of process such entries after they have been corrected. Fortunately is not only somewhat harder to revert the deletions. Why would one delete reviewed and corrected entries having asked for them to be reviewed? DCDuring (talk) 23:59, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I saw Chuck's comment, and I missed that you had edited them. I didn't know there was a reference for Sundanese botanical names — you should definitely add it to the entry. That information would also be very important for Rankf, so they can learn to create correct entries. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:30, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Chuck had preceded me in correcting the taxonomic names. I found a couple of other items that included taxonomic names by doing some searched on the user's contributions. I see good faith efforts to bring the entries closer to our standards. I'm fairly sure that all of the entries are copied from some print dictionary or word list. I suppose that, in principle, there could be a copyvio problem. It would be handy if the taxonomic names were enclosed in {{taxlink}}, however crudely or even wrongly, to make them easier to find and verify. I do that with some Polish entries and others. I added the English vernacular names from Wikispecies, Wikipedia, Wikicommons, or from USDA GRIN, which has a lot of vernacular names for plants, probably the best source for them. DCDuring (talk) 03:07, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

shrikethrush

Hi. You like cute animals - the shrikethrushes (Colluricincla) are supercute, and don't have a WT yet. Roger the Rodger (talk) 13:20, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

And the barbtail ( (); Premnoplex spp; Premnornis) not so cute, but missing Roger the Rodger (talk) 12:47, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I tried to make a redirect on Wikipedia for barbtail, but had to go through about 10 steps asking me "are you sure want to do this?" - screw that! Roger the Rodger (talk) 11:36, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not clear whether WP would need a redirect or a dab page. DCDuring (talk) 17:19, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Marchantiophyta

Crandall-Stotler and Stotler (2000) head their classification with "PHYLUM (DIVISION): MARCHANTIOPHYTA" The leading classification for the group calls it both in the same phrase. Splitting a second "definition" is unwarranted. Your edit would have definitions only in rank of the next-higher including group, which is not an inherent property of the taxon. It would be like splitting definitions of Canidae as: (1) a group within Carnivora, (2) a taxon within Mammalia, (3) a family within Animalia. --03:37, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

The customary thing here is to put such a thing up to RfV, and certainly not to simply rely on a single authority. Our taxonomic entries are subject to the same rules as the others. Mostly, people don't challenge them, but there are instances where taxonomic names have failed. Are you sure that the definitions of the phylum and division Marchantiophyta have always been the same? We do pretend to be a historical dictionary. I see no reason why we should not strive to eventually (possibly even in this century) be a historical dictionary for taxonomic names.

I hope you also realize that {{taxon}}, its categories, and its structure are needed for maintenance of taxonomic entries. DCDuring (talk) 04:16, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, they have always been the same. The paper I cite is the paper where the name was published. There is no earlier history for the name Marchantiophyta. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:06, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Cracksonomy

I know you hate me adding taxons but an accurate (if lacking) stub is better than nothing. Maybe. I was wondering: when we talk about a genus, we usually talk about its parent being a family, but sometimes the "immediate" parent seems to be a tribe or a subwhatever or who knows what the hell. Suppose family A contains tribe B contains genus C. I would create my C entry with B as parent, because it's the immediate one (as computer nerd, I think that this will allow us to "follow the links" and build the whole tree): but is that right? Or should I pick the more important taxon level like the family. It seems particularly dumb to write something like C: parent tribe B: "A-aceous flowering plants", clearly this is a way to slide A in there without a template slot. EQUINOX STOP DOING TAXONOMY. never!!! Equinox ◑ 04:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Because families (and orders, classes, phyla, and kingdoms) have been around longer and seem to be more stable than the other ranks, let alone unranked taxa, I have limited parm2 in {{taxon}} to those ranks, unless the placement would be incertae sedis, in which case I go to the next higher of those principal ranks. It would be very hard to maintain all of these hierarchies if we always had the next highest rank (or clade) directly in {{taxon}}. Taxonomists are constantly inserting new clades into the tree of life, at locations between the traditional ranks, some of which clades they name. I don't think we want our Hypernyms trees to include all of these, though they can be good entries. Wikispecies has had the problem of excessive numbers of nested templates causing display errors.

I don't really think the various English adjectives derived from taxonomic family names are very helpful. The -id and -aceous suffixes (and others) are productive, so if something is in a given family with name ending in aceae or idae, the adjective is usually obvious in its formation and more often understandable in meaning. (The difference between "usually" and "almost always" having to do with the difference between the nominative form and the root of some genus names.) DCDuring (talk) 15:14, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

You didn't actually answer my question there. But you did remind me that taxons are not some perfect, eternal, God-given DNA thing but they might change next week. Hmm. Equinox ◑ 17:55, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

"but is that right?" I don't like the consequences of trying to put the taxon that includes the lemma taxon and the smallest number of other taxa, because that will cause our entries to fall short of correctness more often than other approaches as new taxa are inserted in the tree and because many of the names not of the well-known ranks are obscure and unhelpful to most users. Many other taxonomic databases generally don't bother with names fro such ranks. "Or should I pick the more important taxon level like the family.^[sic]" That is what I do and think both reduces maintenance and enhances usefulness. DCDuring (talk) 22:51, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Callitrichinae, not Callithrichinae- it's the law! (Grassmann's law, to be precise)

Five years ago you moved Callitrichinae to Callithrichinae with the edit summary "spelling". In reality, Callithrichinae is wrong and Callitrichinae is right. The reason is is something called Grassmann's law, which prevents two aspirated consonants from being in the same syllable in Ancient Greek. The case of Ancient Greek θρίξ (thríx) is very tricky, because the nominative singular has a ς (s) at the end, which merges with the asprated χ (kh) to become the unaspirated ξ (x). The names of higher taxa, however, are formed by removing the inflectional ending from the genitive singular before adding the taxonomic ending, and the genitive singular of Ancient Greek θρίξ (thríx) is τριχός (trikhós). Since that form has a vowel after the stem, the χ (kh) remains, and Grassmann's law forces the aspirated θ (th) to become the unaspirated τ (t). That means you can have "-thrix" and you can have "-trichinae", but you can't have *"-thrichinae".

This is obscure enough that some publications aren't aware of it, so Callithrichinae is attested- but it's not allowed by the ICZN. Wikipedia, Wikispecies and Mammal Species of the World all have Callitrichidae. I would be astonished if any of the taxonomic databases accepted "Callithrichinae" as valid. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:17, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm down with a move of the main entry. I'm neutral on whether the redirect from Callithrichinae should be soft or hard.

We could hunt down other entries with the issue, but I'm still trying to add taxon entries that have 10 or more links via {{taxlink}} (Usually with some ordinary redlinks and even unlinked uses too. I find it a bit frustrating that taxon entries that have no incoming links are being added regularly when so many important species entries have yet to be added.. DCDuring (talk) 14:02, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I note that I had not added links to non-wiki taxon databases to [[Callithrichinae]]. When I am not to tired or rushed I do and thereby discover error of that kind. Incidentally, Wikispecies has the wrong spelling. DCDuring (talk) 14:08, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I take it back: Wikispecies has Callithrichidae. I stand by the rest, though.Chuck Entz (talk) 14:12, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I note that we have the main entry under the erroneous spelling Callithrichidae with an inbound redirect from the correct spelling. In adding database links I am finding that many databases still have the group as a family, not a subfamily. I'll see what consensus exists. DCDuring (talk) 14:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

• No taxonomic consensus as to whether it's a family or subfamily. DCDuring (talk) 14:48, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

2022

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser

Hello @DCDuring, can you add my name to Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage? I want to use the AutoWikiBrowser. ToprakM (talk) 11:54, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Sclerospongiae

The second Hypernyms heading should actually be Hyponyms, shouldn't it? 37.110.218.43 13:57, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I made that correction. I should probably do a regex search to find other uncorrected instances of that particular mistake, which I have made and corrected several times before.

Feel free to make such changes once you understand the logic, such as it is, of taxonomic entries sections. Also feel free to ask any questions about taxonomic entries. I should probably revisit WT:Taxonomic names, but it does express aspirations pretty well. We are very far from having very many fully satisfactory taxonomic name entries. My current ambition is to work on the entries for the taxonomic names close the trunk of tree of life, "highest"/oldest taxa, to provide definitions that are more fundamental, more explanatory of the differences, in evolutionary terms, between each taxon and its sister taxa. But simply adding links to best external databases for orders, families, tribes, genera, and species helps both users and contributors a lot. DCDuring (talk) 14:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Cotingidae

Please check the taxonomic placement. Judging by Wikispecies and Wikipedia (not to mention the hyponym section at Tyrannida), these should be suboscines in the Tyrannida, not oscines in the Passerida. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:41, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Right you are. My favorite source for avian taxonomy is Boyd's website Avian Taxonomy in Flux, apparently a one-man operation. I have not idea what my source was for the incorrect placement. DCDuring (talk) 00:18, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Citations

Hey- I wanted to ask you about something that has been dawning on me recently. As anyone who knows me knows, I've added three cites (or more) for a bunch of low-traffic words- "triákis legomenon". However, in many cases, there are other, more frequently used words inside those citations for the rare words, and the Wiktionary entry for the frequently used words often don't have even one cite yet! Is it okay to just duplicate a cite between two different words, where one of the words is rare? I know it's not exactly ideal, but since the visibility of my obscure geographical work is 0% to most readers, the overlap between the readership on my original, obscure cites and the more commonly used words should be 0.00%. Is there a policy on this? I just plan to use common sense. See my recent edits from antirevisionist to heat island for examples.[5] --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:03, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not aware of any policy or even any discussion of practice. IMHO, at this stage of Wiktionary's development, any citation is better than none. Computing power and corpora are likely to improve so it will be easier to be picky about that kind of thing in the future, when correcting departure from ideal sampling of use for citations will probably be easier.

I guess I would generally recommend reusing the cites mostly for nouns that were within one's expertise or interests. Function words should probably be left to actual linguists and collocation-based sampling from large annotated corpora. I have no particular thoughts about adjectives and verbs. The experience of OED when they were dependent on volunteers to provide citations was that they had insufficient coverage of less common (but not uncommon) use of common terms and excessive coverage of the unusual (bright shiny objects). DCDuring (talk) 14:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

As someone who patrols Special:RecentChanges quite regularly, I've seen a number of editors who go systematically through a work of fiction that's in the public domain and add quotes from it to every entry where they're relevant, often using the same sentence in several entries. The main consideration is whether it's a good quote for the entry: does it help reader see how the term is used? Is it representative of usage? Does it provide something that the entry needs? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:43, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The other Winston Churchill comes to mind as a source of many such citations. DCDuring (talk) 15:04, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Template:Eriocaulaceae Hypernyms

Care to create Template:Eriocaulaceae Hypernyms? It was linked at Leiothrix years ago, and you probably forgot about it Notusbutthem (talk) 17:29, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Resolved, IMO. DCDuring (talk) 17:53, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Brazil cherry

Maybe you would be able to double-check this one, versus Brazilian cherry? Thanks. Equinox ◑ 18:24, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Not personally active here, but I remark in passing that common names in a context such as this are chaotic and inconsistent even within a single region. In this case involving radically different plants (herbaceous and trees) in different families. (In this case Solanaceae and Myrtaceae). Even if you could, the resolution would be temporary, as such names are volatile at best. JonRichfield (talk) 18:39, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Certainly chaotic, but these two terms have overlapping, not identical referents. DCDuring (talk) 18:48, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that was the first thing I checked. But neither of the two is stable. I guarantee that you would find that the usage is inconsistent, even largely within a given region. But suit yourself; in a decade hardly anyone would know what you were talking about, and if you go down the street asking opinions, you could start fist-fights about which plant it is and whether it is Brazil or Brazilian or what not (not even to mention whether it is a cherry or not!). But, as I said, suit yourselves. I can't help you, beyond adding a word of caution. JonRichfield (talk) 18:57, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

AWB

Hi DCDuring! I'd like permission to use AWB to fix issues with Latin inflection templates. For example, all the forms of commurmuror contain an inflection-of template saying that they are a passive form of commurmurō. Even smaller jobs, like these forms linking to the non-lemma entry, would be easier to fix using AWB. Per WT:AWB, since you're a friendly sysop, I'm asking you for permission to be added to the checkpage. (I confess I asked Equinox first, but he declined on the grounds that he doesn't speak Latin.) What do you think? This, that and the other (talk) 05:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't speak Latin either. Some of the Latinists get touchy. Is there consensus about your proposed changes or just lack of expressed opposition? DCDuring (talk) 13:41, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Your user page is in CAT:User la, so I assumed you did. In any case, I want to use AWB for uncontroversial cleanup. I'm not going to do anything drastic - it's mainly cleaning up after SemperBlottoBot's errors over the years. This bot created non-lemma form-of entries for Latin lemmas, and given how many inflections Latin verbs (in particular) have, these entries are very tedious to clean up by hand. If one day I did decide to make some drastic change, I would of course seek to discuss it before proceeding. This, that and the other (talk) 02:44, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I only claimed la-1 and I stated it was an exaggeration on my user page. What do I have to do to give you what you need? DCDuring (talk) 02:46, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I believe you have to add my username under "Approved users" at Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage. This, that and the other (talk) 03:03, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done Follow the directions. DCDuring (talk) 03:06, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! I believe you have added a stray ⋅ character at the end of my username - could you check and remove that? This, that and the other (talk) 03:11, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, done. DCDuring (talk) 03:13, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry to bother you again - it turns out Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has been superseded by Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON. Is there any chance you could add me to the latter page? Unfortunately I can't edit Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage to add a note that it is obsolete... This, that and the other (talk) 03:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Both changes made. DCDuring (talk) 14:23, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very much! It works. This, that and the other (talk) 02:30, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

TaxNumber

Okay, I get the part now about adding the species. But whenever I go to wikispecies I don't see any number that you get. Where is it? Vininn126 (talk) 18:33, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

"ver" is an indication of a date when I found some reliable source for the taxonomic name in YYMMDD form. It is really just a marker of verification; I rarely use the date itself. There are lots of uses of {{taxlink}} that have no such date. I sometimes check such taxonomic names to confirm some kind of validity, even if the term is not widely accepted at present. DCDuring (talk) 18:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I see. So the more important thing is adding the species tag when it's present? Vininn126 (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Parameter 2 is more important. The value could be any thing from "kingdom", through "clade", "group", "taxon", "class", "parvorder", "supertribe", "genus", "species", to "variety" and "form". For most entries of a vernacular name perm 2 is "genus" or "species", though "family", "subfamily", "tribe", "subspecies", and "variety" are possible. Sometimes the sources used for vernacular names don't use the latest taxonomic name. In those cases, I will add the current taxonomic name and may change the status of the original taxonomic name to "synonym of" the latest name. But I won't look if there is a ver=YYMMDD, so it's usually better to omit it unless you are certain parm 2 is correct. It is fairly easy for me to add parm 2, in part because the suffixes of the taxonomic name often indicate what taxonomic ranks the names have and in part because I know which online (and other) sources to use. DCDuring (talk) 19:03, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Got it, it's a little complicated for me, to be honest, but I'll keep that in mind. Thanks. Vininn126 (talk) 19:08, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

That's why I don't go on crusades to get people to use {{taxlink}} "correctly". I'm happy if it gets used at all, because I otherwise can't find the taxonomic names that need to be added. DCDuring (talk) 19:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

tuan

Hiya - I have not heard of the brush-tailed phascogale, but you know taxonomy far better than I do, so I thought I'd flag up this obvious contender for expansion. Theknightwho (talk) 22:54, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Citations:pale male

See male, pale and stale for more acceptable ageism and racism. Equinox ◑ 13:50, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

That's a UK anti-Tory thing.

Pale male seems to have achieved success as a meme:

1. It is derogatory whereas white male isn't (except in certain smallish circles), pale being more negative than white.
2. One cannot find pale females at Google News, whereas pale males is not at all uncommon.
3. In biology and genetics the term comes up a lot, making me wonder whether that has motivated some use of the term. Ie, there's the notion of paleness being bred out of a population.
4. In the center of the English-speaking universe, there was the famous red-tailed hawk called Pale Male, whose ultimately successful efforts to attract a mate garnered a lot of attention from New Yorkers.
5. It has a rhyme.

I think it has become a thing. DCDuring (talk) 14:25, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

So where do I find pale females? I'm dying here. Equinox ◑ 14:28, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

The longer you live the higher the female-male ratio in your age cohort. Be patient. DCDuring (talk) 14:31, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

2023

short loin

In case you're interested: the OED added this in June, and they've used your Wiktionary definition verbatim (except for removing the space in "hind quarters"). Equinox ◑ 00:45, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

We should keep a list of their offenses against our license for when they come for us. DCDuring (talk) 12:44, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

More like so I can go begging for a job when my IT industry outdatedness hits 20 years. Equinox ◑ 22:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Possibly obsolete taxonomy

Hi. You might be interested in this list of animals with a Webster 1913 definition. Many need updating, linking to the modern-day name, pictures, and general love. GreyishWorm (talk) 17:28, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Animals

Sorry if I'm overloading you with taxonomic terms to tidy up. It's just that you're so damn good at them. Flackofnubs (talk) 19:17, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

But I'm very far behind in adding new highly linked-to taxonomic names and in fleshing-out/cleaning-up old ones. Just try to get more of the basics into what you do add. Add links to WP, Wikispeciesm and Commons, confirm that the links exist, make sure that our content doesn't conflict with theirs. If it seems like a hard-to-resolve puzzle, add {{attention|mul|comment=taxonomy}}. DCDuring (talk) 19:33, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

"Troponyms" at wilful

1. Our def of "troponym" says it must be a verb (not an adjective): so is it okay? 2. Errm, that "small" HTML tagging is a horrible trick... It might look right on your screen but there's no guarantee it will match the template for anyone else in other circumstances or stylesheets, or people with visual impairments etc... Equinox ◑ 22:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

2: I didn't find {{troponyms}}

1: So, are you recommending {{hyponyms}}? DCDuring (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, many manner adverbs would fit under many verbs if troponyms were defined to allow it. I'd be fine with removing these purported synonyms entirely. If a definiend is basically neutral, then positive or negative terms are not, strictly speaking, synonyms. DCDuring (talk) 22:31, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Dunno, you could ask the Lua powers-that-be to create a troponyms template (or fix the troponym def if that word, previously unknown to me, can cover adjectives). Just mentioning. Equinox ◑ 22:40, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I subsequently found {{troponyms}}. I deployed it in two entries. DCDuring (talk) 23:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Block time

Hey. I need another block. Thanks, punk Van Man Fan (talk) 22:36, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Lupulella

Hyponyms on Lupulella needs needs some formatting cleanup beyond what I can do. JeffDoozan (talk) 14:34, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I must have been interrupted or something. DCDuring (talk) 16:32, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Phrasal Verbs

Lately an IP that geolocates to Thurmont, MD has been very busy adding phrasal-verb catagories and creating new phrasal-verb entries. I have no idea whether they know what they're doing, but you might. See Special:Contributions/76.100.240.27 and Special:Contributions/2601:154:180:97C0:0:0:0:0/48 Chuck Entz (talk) 04:59, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I believe that it was @Algrif who was an advocate of phrasal verbs. He might be a good guy to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable phrasal verb entries. I might be excessively hostile. DCDuring (talk) 11:17, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

That IP is doing a great job. A small percentage of the edits might be dodgy, but overall it's useful Skisckis. Before we were missing extremely common phrasal verbs draft up, cut away (talk) 23:05, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Re categorisation: I was very suspicious of this (and mentioned on Discord briefly) but having reviewed English phrasal verbs it seems that the prepositional ones can be considered "phrasal verbs" too, as long as they are idiomatic enough to be a bit "fossilised". So, probably not much damage. Equinox ◑ 23:18, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

If there is a problem with these, it might be at a conceptual level (eg, are certain particles, in certain meanings, utterly predictable in the way they alter the meaning of the verb) or at the level of reviewing individual entries. I suspect that the ones that have a figurative meaning in addition to a literal one are more likely to be indisputable. DCDuring (talk) 00:55, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• I'll check it out shortly when I get a moment. Thanks for the heads up. ALGRIF talk 05:47, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
• First glance: first impression: looks good. I'll run through the entries with attention to detail, but basically there is nothing to worry about here. -- ALGRIF talk 09:21, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Speaking of the wastebasket taxon ...

Are wastebasket taxon and dumping ground synonyms, hyponym/hypernym, or what? The two entries do not currently make it clear. P.S. You should "archive" (cough, delete) your talk page. Learn from the master! (LIMITED-TIME OFFER: I'll split the old stuff into old year pages if you want. It goes back to 2008! You're the same wiki-age as I am.) Equinox ◑ 03:25, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Because dumping ground is obviously used figuratively outside of biology I don't think of it as in that kind of semantic relationship to wastebasket taxon. I'd be interested to hear what others think. I would think we'd at least need qualifiers to avoid misleading ESLers etc. DCDuring (talk) 12:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Can I archive your talk page? I'll do it for free! I'll pay you a dollar! Equinox ◑ 23:59, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Shaming seems to have worked. You can Zelle me the dollar at my e-mail address. DCDuring (talk) 00:31, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Luxembourgish or lëtzebuergesch?

Have you considered using either of the spellings “lëtzebuergesch” (LB) [6] and “Luxembourgish” (EN) [7] rather than “Letzebergish”?Redav (talk) 15:39, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

No and I never looked up any spelling in a dictionary. I have just followed the pronunciation of my parents, my mother growing up within a few kilometers of Sierck-les-bains (Siirk) and my father speaking German. DCDuring (talk) 16:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

multiple authors in quote templates

Hi. We had a discussion somewhere a few weeks ago about multiple authors in quote templates. I have implemented splitting on semicolons in |author=, |editor=, |tlr=/|translator= and several other params. When they get pasted back together, it now uses commas, per another discussion. I am about to do a bot run to clean up instances where people have used commas, "and", ampersands, etc. to separate authors, and convert them to semicolons. The individual authors in each param can have a language prefix attached to them, e.g. ru:Лев Толстой (which will cause them to be appropriately language-tagged so the font turns out right, as well as getting automatic transliteration if the language supports it), and inline modifiers can be added following them, e.g. ru:Лев Толстой<t:Leo Tolstoy>. Titles work the same way with respect to language prefixes and inline modifiers, e.g. ru:Баллада о королевском бутерброде<t:Ballad of the King's Bread>. I am in the process of updating the docs appropriately. So feel free to put multiple authors together in a single param, with semicolon separators. Eventually I'd like to do away with |first=, |last=, |author2= and other split ways of specifying authors, but that comes later. Benwing2 (talk) 04:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I like your ultimate objective. DCDuring (talk) 13:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

thankyou Giangpro089 (talk) 11:12, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@User:Benwing2 If I continue to put multiple authors, separated by commas, as Google provides them, in the author parameter, nothing bad will happen in the short run and your ultimate scheme will handle the contents of the parameter correctly. Is that correct?

Particularly for scholarly articles, an author's name usually appear as one or two initials followed by surname. (I don't recall ever seeing an author name as surname followed by initials.) Do you intend to ignore such authors (ie, provide no authorlink) or address this with some large data table or recourse to WikiData? DCDuring (talk) 13:42, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring You should change the commas to semicolons if you can. The code specifically parses semicolons and not commas, and will see a bunch of comma-separated authors as a single author. It might "happen" to work because of the way that multiple authors are currently displayed as comma-separated, but it's likely to break in the long run. I have done some bot runs to convert commas to semicolons, but this is fragile and requires significant manual intervention due to the existence of embedded commas in names such as "Sammy Davis, Jr." and "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", and I'd like to avoid having to continually do these bot runs. As for author links, this isn't done currently at all unless you provide the authorlink yourself (if the name of the author is the same as the Wikipedia entry name, just prefix the author with w:, assuming you have correctly separated multiple authors with semicolons; if the Wikipedia link and author name are different, you need to write either {{w|WIKIPEDIA LINK|AUTHOR NAME}} or w:[[WIKIPEDIA LINK|AUTHOR NAME]] or [[w:WIKIPEDIA LINK|AUTHOR NAME]]). Benwing2 (talk) 13:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

But many existing quotations are so listed. You are asking for a lot of manual work. I already use author={{w}} when it leads to the right author entry at WP. Will that also cause your module code trouble and need to be corrected. I always hope that module code will reduce the need to manual labor, but am often disappointed. DCDuring (talk) 13:59, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring There is no problem with using {{w}} in authors, you can continue to do that. The problem is with commas; the existence of legitimate embedded commas in names (in lots of different formats) makes it impossible to automatically parse commas in author specs. Converting commas to semicolons doesn't seem like that much work to me given the work required overall to format a quotation. I suppose an alternative is to provide a compact way of saying "to hell with it, go ahead and split on commas" if you can guarantee there are no embedded commas in names (which is risky given that even scholarly names can have embedded commas in suffixes like Jr.); typing that flag might be marginally less work than converting commas to semicolons. Benwing2 (talk) 14:17, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Is the bad consequence (of leaving commas in) that humans would face an unintelligible or unsightly list of authors (I think not) or that computers would? DCDuring (talk) 14:28, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring There are various issues with having commas left in like this; for example, if we want to display authors with an and before the last one, this requires the ability of the module to know where the author divisions are. Various fields already display with and separation (e.g. |editor=, |editors=, |tlr=, |translator=, |translators=, etc. under some circumstances), and this requires that semicolons are used or the display will be wrong. In addition, currently, in things like |editor=, it displays "editor" or "editors" depending on how many entities there are (one or more); if you separate them with commas, this displays wrong. What I mean by a flag is that for example I could implement something whereby if an author-like field begins with a comma, it gets split on commas and the initial comma ignored; this is a single char you need to type when pasting from Google Scholar, you can't get any simpler than this. But I really don't want a mishmash of unsplittable commas just because it "looks OK right now"; as I have tried to explain, this will cause a lot of issues in the longer run. Benwing2 (talk) 14:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

But, is it so bad that we don't always/ever have "and"? Wouldn't we be better off to have 1% more quotations than have "and" displayed? DCDuring (talk) 16:14, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Ummm, is it really impossible to type a single character (a comma) in front of lists of people you copy? The alternative is you expect me to ultimately clean up your quotations. Benwing2 (talk) 18:19, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

What about all the quotations that already exist that are retroactively deemed wrong? Every time there is this kind of change without some kind of accommodation for the past, that constitutes a technical deficit that adds to the technical debt. Do we need manual efforts to pay off the technical debt? DCDuring (talk) 22:23, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

This isn't really a change; per the documentation you were always supposed to separate authors and such with semicolons. What I did is change the display to use commas when there are semicolon separators. I did do a semi-manual run that tried to correct cases where commas were used in place of semicolons, but as I mentioned above, there are lots of instances where commas legitimately occur in the middle of names, so I had to do a bunch of special-casing in my bot code to skip cases e.g. where there weren't two names between commas or where lowercase words occur. In fact I've been spending at least a month now cleaning up ill-formatted quotations from you and lots of other people. Some quotations had (and sometimes still have) 'LAST, FIRST' in place of 'FIRST LAST', some had/have names like 'Palmer E.C.' in place of 'E.C. Palmer', etc. etc. There were > 5000 uses of unrecognized params, etc. That's why I'm asking you to do the minimum of effort to use properly formatted quotations, so I don't have to spend this much effort in the future in another gargantuan cleanup task. I'm really not sure why you're resisting doing this; I've already told you I will implement a hack so all you have to do is add a comma at the beginning of comma-separated lists of names, if you can't be bothered to change the commas to semicolons. Benwing2 (talk) 22:33, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Why would one intentionally design a rule that made it more complicated to incorporate quotations from Google? Copy-and-paste is a tried and true technique, that economizes on contributor time. It defies belief that we would make it more complicated to do one of the more labor-intensive parts of making a good dictionary. That we are able to get people to do the work without much of any support from technology, instead having to do work to support the technology is beyond me and increasingly beyond my willingness to go along. DCDuring (talk) 02:15, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

You're saying you can select text, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, type the year, etc. etc. but you can't enter a single comma at the beginning of the copied text??? Benwing2 (talk) 02:47, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Or are you just purposely being cantankerous? Benwing2 (talk) 02:48, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Seconding Ben Wing here. It's increasingly frustrating to have DCDuring push back against every minor request to do things a little differently. It's extremely inconsiderate, because these kinds of requests aren't arbitrary. Theknightwho (talk) 03:08, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I have implemented the initial-comma support. You can write |author=,Joe Bloggs, Richard Roe, E.F. Hutton, et al. and it will correctly split the authors on a comma and otherwise ignore the initial comma. Benwing2 (talk) 04:24, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

My overall problem is that your templatizing is not in response to expressed contributor needs and require significant changes in user behavior without commensurate benefits. Even the klugey way in which options are selected for the overcomplicated templates is something only programmers could love. DCDuring (talk) 17:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

WFRank?

So, how do you work out a a WFRank? P. Sovjunk (talk) 15:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Short for Wiktionary Frequency (not WonderFool)Rank. Downloaded file of pages visited from this page, but I don't remember exactly which time period I specified. It gives some idea of what users care about. It is a strange melange, some terms that are common, some that might belong on a Swadesh list, some that might be 'hard', some appendices and categories, colloquial idioms, FL terms, sexual terms, various derogatory terms, Roman numerals, letters, etc. DCDuring (talk) 16:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Items are not directly comparable to the NGSL list, which has only lemmatized words. I made some crude adjustments or indications for be, a/an, etc. but not very systematic and only within the limits of data onthe 1663-4 pages listed in the download. DCDuring (talk) 16:26, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

New categories

I created Category:English positive polarity items and Category:English polarity items, but it seems I've screwed something up. I tried consult the documentation of the template, but I couldn't figure out what to do. Can you help? Brett (talk) 15:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

You did what I would do. The category naming system has been improved so much that I can't use it. I usually just hard-code the category or abandon the effort and let the supposed maintainers fix things or try to delete them. You could try User:Benwing2. DCDuring (talk) 16:53, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I have hardcoded what I use for taxonomic categories. The oldest/newest entries boxes and the letter links are not particularly useful for categories with few members. The size of the old/new boxes can be adjusted. DCDuring (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank youǃ--Brett (talk) 18:52, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Column templates: elephant

Remove column templates again, like at elephant, and I’ll simply give you a 24 hour block, which will double each time. Theknightwho (talk) 17:12, 14 November 2023 (UTC)