User talk:Colin M

poppers citations

I have added formatted citations for both the challenged, uncountable sense and the simple plural. The unformatted dump of some Google HTML I have moved to the Citations page. Some of the citations have nothing to do with amyl nitrite in any form. DCDuring (talk) 06:59, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@DCDuring: I suppose you're trying to make some point, but you're doing a disservice to readers by cherry-picking unusual usage examples. poppers is far more likely to behave as a plural rather than a singular for verb agreement purposes, but your quotations give the opposite impression. The first two are especially poor examples for verb agreement because the subject of the sentence in both cases is "Amyl nitrate", and "poppers" is merely an appositive. Colin M (talk) 08:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Add what you can cite. The label plural only is not true. One can probably find use of poppers in the sense that you are promoting with a singular verb as well as with a plural verb. What do you think plural only means, or should mean? DCDuring (talk) 16:58, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I think it means that the vast majority of usages are with a plural inflection and conjugation. There may be a few counterexamples, but these would be judged by a speaker familiar with the term to be unusual, and maybe even unacceptable. To take just a few examples from the A's of Category:English pluralia tantum, allsorts, anal beads, and animal fries are all marked plural only, but it's possible to find google results for "allsort", "anal bead", and "animal fry". So maybe the way this term is being used is not in step with how you're understanding it. Colin M (talk) 03:03, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

If you're saying that a word's countability/plurality has been got wrong by wiki editors, why would you use other wiki entries to evidence this? Obviously you can have one anal bead; the fact that you usually have many of them is not a grammatical phenomenon but the fact that it feels better... umm... according to my friend. Equinox ◑ 04:47, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Are there citations supporting the claims made in the entries you refer to? Without such citations the entries may turn out to be wrong. I would argue that the category you refer to is a good place to find error in Wiktionary.

It is difficult to gather evidence about the relative frequency of the behavior of poppers that is of concern. The assertion of a single Wiktionary contributor is generally not considered sufficient, especially if other contributors disagree. The number agreement with verbs of poppers can be determined most straightforwardly when poppers is the subject of a present indicative verb form. Gathering comprehensive relative frequency statistics is not easy. DCDuring (talk) 15:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion for gathering relative frequency data on usage. What about just surveying a selection of writing about the drug and counting the frequency of different forms? One reasonable option would be the works cited by Wikipedia's Poppers article. It would be a lot of work to check all 68, but we could start with a randomly selected sample of 10 or 20. This will be biased toward a more formal register of course, but I think it's a good start. (If we wanted data from a less formal register, we could look at a random selection of comments containing popper(s) on, say, Reddit or Twitter.) What do you think? Colin M (talk) 19:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

The last three citations provide sufficient unambiguous attestation that poppers is used with singular verbs. The first two citations support the element of the definition of poppers that it refers to a chemical, amyl nitrate. That increases the plausibility of it being a mass noun for at least some users. If you have unambiguous citations that show that other users use it differently when referring to the chemical amyl nitrate, please provide the evidence and a definition conforming to the evidence. DCDuring (talk) 15:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I have added three citations that include the phrase much poppers, which is in itself sufficient attestation of the uncountability of poppers ("amyl nitrate") for some users. An uncountable noun agrees with a singular verb. DCDuring (talk) 15:46, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox:

If you're saying that a word's countability/plurality has been got wrong by wiki editors, why would you use other wiki entries to evidence this?

That's not what I'm saying. DCDuring asked me what I think the "plural only" label does or should mean. I gave an answer, and then referred to some examples of terms to which the label has been applied which seem to agree with my interpretation. I think these examples lend evidentiary weight to my reading. And even if you think my reading is incorrect, it's still noteworthy that other editors seem to be frequently using the label 'incorrectly'. (Though, as an aside, if I were saying that wiki editors are getting X wrong, of course I would use existing wiki entries as evidence for this?) Colin M (talk) 18:36, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Colin if I've learned one thing from Wikipedia it's that any disagreement gets increasingly "meta". It's absolutely impossible that anyone will ever say "oh, yeah, I was wrong! you were right!". That can't happen. so it goes into exciting spirals. And if it's about gender or race then it turns into exciting WP:OFFICE. Anyway, as I said earlier, you seem like a smart guy, but clearly we disagree, and I know by now that arguing is impossible, so we just agree to disagree, and stop. Equinox ◑ 06:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

A word of warning

You're very active and uncontroversial on Wiktionary. You'd better be careful, otherwise you'll get nominated to be an administrator. Oxlade2000 (talk) 21:00, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I take that as a high compliment! However, I don't know if I would have any use for admin tools. I have a lot of respect for the people who watch recent changes and ban vandals, but it's not something I'm personally interested in doing. If there's a need for more people to close discussions at RfD/RfV, that's somewhere I could possibly see myself helping out, but I'm not in any hurry. :) Colin M (talk) 20:03, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

It was a compliment. Sadly, I'm an infamous sockpuppet and nobody trusts me, so I'm not going to start an admin vote for you, lest people vote against you out of spite for me. Oxlade2000 (talk) 18:49, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Order of definitions

Regarding the order of definitions: it's been discussed quite a bit (since very early on, 2007 and 2009), particularly in 2012 and 2018. (The most recent thread I spotted was in 2020 and is little more than a summary of the existing options and lack of consensus.) Some people favour strictly chronological order; some people favour commonness, or at least putting common senses before obsolete ones. I make the point that de facto we accept grouping of related senses (including on the entry you asked about) because a strict chronological or strict commonness order would often split closely related senses and make entries harder to follow. Maybe one day we'll reach consensus... or it may be like with national-variety-specific spellings or words, where as long as it's not making the entry outright confusing (e.g., a definition that simply says "dinner" without clarifying which meal is meant, or "biscuit" without clarifying) different styles co-exist. That's probably more of an answer and more links than you asked for, sorry, hah. - -sche (discuss) 00:39, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the links! That's very helpful. Colin M (talk) 05:02, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

murr

Make a user page already. It's pretty rude to revert well-established users who work hard and study corpora before every edit, when you are a piece of red, as though you assume we have no clue. I'm sure you are very smart but some of us are as smart as you, Colin. Nice to meet you. Equinox ◑ 05:42, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

You can probably ignore that message. Equinox was doubtlessly drunk at the time (which happens a looot) Yellow is the colour (talk) 15:08, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Haha, WF is on the money. I cannot remember writing this. Equinox ◑ 03:04, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox: I assume you're referring to soup and fish? I don't think it should be considered rude to revert someone over a good faith content disagreement. I gave you a reason in the edit summary. I pointed to clear evidence of "soup and fish" being used as a plural/uncountable. I have no objection to you adding "soup and fishes" as a rare/nonstandard plural, but in the case of a contested term, the burden should be on the editor who wants to include it to show that it satisfies WT:CFI, no?

I think a spirit of cooperation and collegiality is a necessary ingredient to a successful wiki, and so it saddens me to read what I perceive to be a somewhat prickly tone in your message above and in this edit. I hope we can get back on the right foot. I have complete faith that two very smart people can resolve their disagreements by a good faith dialogue, and in so doing make a better dictionary. :)

I haven't made a user page because I don't feel I have anything particularly important to advertise about myself. But if you want you can check out my user page on Wikipedia, which has a very cute opossum photo. Colin M (talk) 18:37, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I've since edited it again with some citations of the plural. Equinox ◑ 03:04, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I saw! Looks good - thanks for digging them up. Colin M (talk) 03:12, 4 May 2021 (UTC)