User talk:Connel MacKenzie/archive-2007-2

Boldly mucking with CFI

I've expanded the section on Idiomaticity quite a bit. This is not meant to be a substantive change. I've just tried to capture folklore and practice of the fried egg test and give a couple of pointers on when not to apply it. I don't mind discussing it on BP, and maybe I should have first, but old habits die hard — by now I'm completely comfortable "kernel hacking" CFI in situ.

Anyway, if you could, please have a look. If you see anything contentious — as I said there shouldn't be any such, but this is why I want a second pair of eyes — please feel free to back it out and move it to BP.

BTW, is there a list of Paul's other tests? Someone mentioned the fancy dress test for terms which mean different things on opposite sides of the pond. This is really just a special case of idiomaticity, but a good one. I think Eean once published a list of tests as well, come to think of it. -dmh 06:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Erm, did you look on the Talk page, of the page you were "Kernel Hacking"? The Pawley tests used to be listed there. --Connel MacKenzie 06:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

And indeed, are still listed there. With considerable discussion, I might add. --Connel MacKenzie 06:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think any change to CFI at this point, is bound to be looked at very, very harshly, if there is no WT:VOTE to predicate the change. Since there was none, I highly suspect your changes may get rolled back before any real discussion begins. But that won't be any loss...such an action will just provoke the "better" procedure of accomplishing the same change through a WT:VOTE, right? And once that happens, neither you nor I (nor RichardB, nor Ec, nor an anon, nor a random Wikipedian) can make any attacks on that section without having it immediately reverted.

That said, I'll take a look now, at what you actually wrote there. --Connel MacKenzie 06:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

While what you wrote looks innocuous enough, I know that Paul G, Stephen, Semper and Hippie have each objected to the fried egg test at one point or another. Although I agree with the fried egg test myself, I think this will get rolled back, and have to go through a full one month WT:VOTE to stick. --Connel MacKenzie 07:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

That's fine then. It's better we follow a defined process when dealing with CFI. Go ahead and revert back my recent changes, but please bring them into the discussion (I have to sign off about now, or I'd do it). That said, I don't think the net effect of what I said is any different from what it was before. It's just an elaboration on "sum of parts", including a bit of warning that it can be taken too far.

(I was writing this next bit when you put your reply above in) Of course I didn't look at the talk page. What fun would that be? I do like many of the comments there. Blogs, indeed ... BTW, I saw another comment you added to the effect I wanted to broaden CFI, though I'm not sure if it was before or after we chatted. Once again, I think CFI is about right. I don't see a need to broaden it. I believe what I said is that I couldn't see how it could be broadened further. There was a rhetorical jab in that, but the denotation (that CFI is about as broad as it can get) was meant literally. With a mission of "all words of all languages", CFI has to be broad. I didn't make the world (but neither am I unhappy with how it was made).

There's also a big difference (IMO) between keeping out garbage entries and keeping out slang. A well-written article on some noxious slang stays. A garbage article for an impeccable term gets axed. I'm all for keeping out garbage entries. -dmh 07:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

All my comments (including the shout out) were from before last night's IRC conversation. If time-stamped wrong, then it was something I came back to later, and just saved, then went to bed. I'd guess it is nearly impossible for people to know that you, Hippie, Muke and I have bantered playfully and bickered bitterly over many of these same points a year ago. Or was that two years ago? Or both? Equally improbable, is that anyone not privy to those old conversations would even remotely understand an oblique reference to "thick skin." For those such readers: that was a blanket defense used for harsh words, e.g. I would have said it nicely if Ec hadn't shown in the past that he has extraordinarily thick skin...he can take it as well as dish it out... As always, the playful back-and-forth of IRC becomes enormously hostile attacks when repeated in the same spirit, on the various discussion pages. On the other hand, you had been starting to piss me off.  :-)   ← Note the damn smiley!

I'd roll it back now, and start a vote, but it is a couple hours past when I should have been asleep already. So maybe someone else will, before tomorrow evening. --Connel MacKenzie 07:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[from comment on Enginear's talk page] It is not possible, in US-English, to call scrambled eggs "boiled"...is that possible in en-uk? There isn't water, nor any liquid (when you're done) especially if you choose not to add a little milk. Very strange that you might somehow call that "boiled"...it isn't like a poached egg at all. --Connel MacKenzie 20:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Um, you changed it from a meaningful example, to something incoherent...egg is a required part of that explanation of idiomacy. --Connel MacKenzie 20:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, so have rolled back my edit. But I, and I suspect many, have difficulty imagining that an item cooked in a saucepan (at least in the UK) and which is spoilt if the temperature rises above boiling point, is being "fried". Personally, I would say that egg was simmered in milk to make scrambled eggs (but then my cooking isn't that good). I think dmh's addition is good, and wanted to minimise the chance of someone disliking it and reverting it (though since it limits the application of a rule some don't like, I am not as pessimistic on that count as you were 13 hrs ago). Maybe someone more into cooking can think of a more clearly fried egg dish. --Enginear 21:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

caché

What are you trying to say, with the heading ===Paronym===? That it is a paraody? --Connel MacKenzie 20:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Paronyme

No, the two words cachet and caché are paronyms because they have a close pronunciation, but just wait a moment please because I'm adding French noun to cachet :D. 16@r 20:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Thank you for the link...but, which is it? Offhand, I forget where cognates are listed (if they are listed at all.) And if you mean they are homonyms (hmmm...in some dialects, I guess) then the heading is still wrong. I guess I'll see when you finish with cachet.  :-)   --Connel MacKenzie 20:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, actually when two words are almost homophones (cognates or not) we can say they are paronymes. Here I wanted to make the link because the pronunciation of the two words in French are close. Yes sometimes certain peoples doesn't correctly distinguish the two sounds /e/ (closed e) and /ɛ/ (open e) which may be ambiguous. Examples:

1. verb être in present at the second and third person of singular (tu es, il/elle/on est "you are, he/she/it is" both pronunced /ɛ/) and the conjunction et (and, pronunced /e/). (also explainded on Wikibooks Français/ET et EST). The two sounds must be well distinguished, especially when the two words are just one after the other.

   «Un mouvement qui lutte et est intégré», litterarly "A movement which struggle and is integrated" (absolutely no ambiguity in English and in lot of other languages)

2. The word événement. In French the letter é is read /e/ and è is read /ɛ/), and in fact here the right pronunciation is /e.vɛn.mɑ̃/ not /e.ven.mɑ̃/ because the Académie Française made a mistake somewhen in 17th or 18th century. They corrected the error few years ago and now the word évènement (with grave accent) (so giving the right pronunciation) is popularizing in new dictionaries though it was till nowaday considered as a mispelling. Today both are accepted. (God! red links! attends tu vas voir ^^)

It is very subtle but the good news is I've just learned caché and cachet are not only "close homophones", they are cognates (explaining their close-homophony ^^). 16@r 21:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow...thank you for the lesson. And to think, all this, just because I didn't like the non-standard heading.

Um, but wait. Now the headings themselves are even worse. I think the explanation you gave me, here on this talk page, belongs in a ===Usage notes==== section of cachet, with caché linked as a homonym. (Perhaps the usage note belongs on both entries?)

Sorry to be so picky, but the headings used on en.wiktionary have been slowly consolidating for a number of years now. The only recent heading addition I know of was User:BrettR's addition of ===Determiner=== which at this point, looks like it may not be permenantly accepted. Is it that important to call it a "paronyme" outside of the usage notes?

--Connel MacKenzie 22:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Concerning decimate

Why is it that we are not supposed to superscribe links that are just numbers? † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 12:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The focus of Wiktionary:Quotations is on who said it, not so much what they said. Implying that a link is a footnote, reduces that likelihood of the link being checked (by a reader). --Connel MacKenzie 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. I guess that that is a legitimate (if very minor) consideration. It nonetheless tops my reason for superscribing them. Very well, I shall leave such links as they are in future. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 21:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

In re: for the record

I have replied unto you on my talk page. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 23:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I’ve replied again. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 00:06, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I’ve posted my concluding reply. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 00:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Meta admin?

Okey-dokey, I've basically overhauled that page using data from the master list of Wiktionary editions. In addition to bumping Volapük up, I've added a whopping 11 languages that should've been listed long ago, and eschewed the inflexible <br /> line wrapping with a little CSS. Sorry it took so long; I should've done all that long ago. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

{{Rhymes}}

The rhymes template, yes, mine it is ... or at least I created it & did most of the work on it, though we do have User:Hamaryns to thank for spurring me on to improve it and also for the improvements he made. I have moved it to Template:rhymes as you'd suggested (done by copy & paste). Fixing WhatLinksHere is going to take a while because there are already a few hundred pages with the template. I hope people find it useful. Jimp 17:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I know cut-&-paste is not the way to go but seeing as Template:rhymes already existed I didn't know a better way. (Is there a better way (unless you're an admin)?) Yes, I suppose delete/merge them would probably be the best thing. And your running $python replace.py "{{Rhymes" "{{rhymes" would be most appreciated. Please do these. Jimp 18:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

WT:AS

So, why does this direct to Wiktionary:About Spanish instead of the venerable Wiktionary:About Swedish? My personal opinion is that every single one of these "WT" redirects to an About Language page should be renamed, using "WT:xx" where xx is the language code. --EncycloPetey 04:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It wasn't my naming convention. Would you like to fix them please? --Connel MacKenzie 04:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I see. The "About" is part of the title. So, WT:Axx and hope the "xx" doesn't generate any vularities? --Connel MacKenzie 05:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Bah. Who cares if it does? HE - JA ... They'll still only show the two-letter code in {{policy}}. --Connel MacKenzie 05:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there a problem with using lower case in a redirect, or should I stick to caps? Do you think the "A" for About is necessary? --EncycloPetey 05:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it needs the "A" in the WT: name. Yes, they need to be consistently uppercase. Yes, the "A" needs to be masked within {{policy}}. How's it look otherwise, BTW? --Connel MacKenzie 05:12, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we can simply create duplicate redirects, leaving the old ones in place, yet denying that they exist, if asked.  :-) The {{shortcut}} tags should only use the "proper" shortcut name, ignoring the older, "wrong" shortcut names for now. --Connel MacKenzie 05:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It's getting late, so I'll tackle this tomorrow. Already I've spent more time editing today than I'd planned. --EncycloPetey 05:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

And I see you've already begun. I'm to bed now, but thought I'd recommend not including "About Hebrew" as a Policy yet, since it's still incipient and has unresolved issues. We don't want every little modification there to require a vote. For idle and established pages, that's doable, but not for fledgling works like the new Hebrew page. I'm inclined to keep Latin off as well, until I've had a chance to flesh it out more. --EncycloPetey 06:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as there is one single banner (i.e. {{policy}}) I think they all will be much easier to keep tabs on. For nascent policies, I guess we should just add a parameter to {{policy}} that toggles that draconian warning message. |policy-type=guideline or somesuch? --Connel MacKenzie 07:08, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking about a parameter too. None of the language pages is quite ready for this, although Japanese is very close. Hebrew is just the start of a draft; Chinese needs a complete write through (which has been on my list for 3-4 months now ;-). So they need something that still says draft in some way. So maybe punishment=(revert, block, other)? ;-) Oh, and very good! Robert Ullmann 13:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The 1st draft, yes, I had w:Crushing by elephant but thought better of it!

The main problem is this: the recent WP explosion exposed the problem of having no policy at all. Whatever the final form, even if it does list every single policiy as a "guideline", is that is must say somewhere that each of the various policy page, are real, not to be ignored, community-created (usually) best attempts at capturing what our practices are.

The horrific problem with Richardb's old policy scheme wasn't that it was impossible to maintain (although that problem probably caused this) but instead this: it gave the impression (to numerous notable Wikipedias) that the policys should be ignored....which is 100% incorrect.

Of course, on the flip side, we have to actually maintain out policy pages now. So I guess there is a benefit from all this, albeit a labor-intensive benefit. (It can be noted, that "not having solid policies" is now causing more hours to be lost to avoidable events.)

So far, I have been very careful to word each step of the way, to try to keep the flexibility intact. I've also been getting lots of feedback on IRC as I plow ahead with all this...occasionally some *really* good advice (like, "don't lock yourself into a stupid blocking policy - the only ones that will refer to it are blocked vandals.") Etc. More later. --Connel MacKenzie 17:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW, if you see messages for me on WP again, please remind me here. I'm trying to check it daily, during all this bru-ha-ha. But that sometimes isn't enough. --Connel MacKenzie 17:04, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

WOTD rss feed

Hi, how about including the pronunciation audio clip as an RSS enclosure?

<enclosure url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/En-us-thenceforth.ogg" length="15000" type="application/ogg" />

In order to calculate the file size, you can pull the file's description page, which includes an approximate file size under the speaker icon. I think it'd be kind of cool to add, but by no means necessary.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 06:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent idea. Done. --Connel MacKenzie 06:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow, it works, too! Thank you! --Connel MacKenzie 06:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Dbachmann block

I effectively shortened to one day (removed now). Whatever effect it was to have it has had. Now I just hope that removing it wasn't a really bad mistake. Robert Ullmann 08:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I have replied to your post on your Wikipedia talkpage. Dbachmann 08:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Dbachmann replied to your post on your Wikipedia talkpage at about 17:30 UTC.

In spite of your comment the other day, I feel we're better off without people with big egos, who game the system in an effort to tie us up in dispute resolution processes when we could be doing something useful. I truly doubt whether the amount of good they do is as great as the harm and timewasting they cause by their disruptive actions. The fact that that sort of person thrives on WP is one reason I rarely edit there. --Enginear 18:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC) (Edited 21:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC))

If someone were to say that about me over on Wikipedia, and it were true, I'd write a motherfucking vandalbotin retaliation. Please keep judgements (especially personal) limited to "E-mail this user" comments.

Thank you for notifying me about the Wikipedia activity. I will try to check it soon. --Connel MacKenzie 18:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it may be that when we get too big, and therefore have to be very PC in our dealings with each other, I may feel it's time to move on too. Just as I will if we continue having to spend so long defending ourselves against POV vandals. I'm not one to say something about a person, or class of person, in private which I wouldn't repeat in public. But I hope it's a long time before we reach the too-big stage, and that we find a less wearing way of neutralising the big-heads. And of course, if it were true of you, you would be a liability too, rather than part of the glue that holds us together. ;-) --Enginear 21:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of it that way...I was trying to be a bit more practical, WRT mitigating the current situation, rather than encouraging inflammatory wording. Indeed, relevant personal opinions offer tremendous insight when bandied about in public. Thank you for your kind comments. To be extra clear (to anyone else reading this) I was talking about a hypothetical situation on Wikipedia, trying to illustrate the inevitable natural human emotional response to any attack perceived.

My original assessment directly coincided with your comments; I've revised my own opinion (which I assure you, is a monstrously difficult thing to do) and remain unconvinced, either way. With a gigantic grain of salt, I can see someone battling trolls on Wikipedia (almost as long as I've been here) subconsciously refining their argumentation skills into horrific, scary, razor-sharp weapons of "I'm always right" syndrome.

Well, you've told me twice. I'd better go over the wall to Wikipedia and read it, before finishing this bot run, if it has everyone so wound up. --Connel MacKenzie 21:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I should have just finished the bot run. I am very tired right now. --Connel MacKenzie 06:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Yet another milestone missed?

Did we miss 325,000 or shall we wait for 350,000? SemperBlotto 22:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

If it was User:TheCheatBot again, then we should just skip it, I think. It has been a long time; I was not watching for it at all. I'll ask on IRC when I get there later, if anyone saw it. --Connel MacKenzie 05:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

My first estimate WAS a cheatbot entry, but there was a real entry next to it - so that's what I have nominated. SemperBlotto 12:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Etymology

I replied on your WP page again; I kindly invite you to review the arguments I present and copy them to relevant discussions on WT such points as you consider constructive or insightful. I will not attempt to defend any opinion or proposal personally, both because I fear I would come across too belligerently at this stage, and because I expect to be reverted, blocked, tarred, feathered, and publicly ridiculed on BP the minute I do so. 130.60.142.151 12:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia featured articles and the Wikipedia front page

Hi, Connel.

I'm not sure whether you're still reading Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), and your last comments there showed a certain (understandable) frustration. I just wanted to point out to you that there is a distinction between the process by which articles are made featured (Wikipedia:WP:FAC) and the process by which those featured articles are placed on the front page (Wikipedia:WP:TFA). The latter is more or less decided by one person, but the former is open to all Wikipedians. I'm sorry if your attempt to voice your frustrations led to further frustration: I think that there were just a few misunderstandings along the way. —Josiah Rowe 00:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Josiah, but I must point out, that commenting there started the cabal's attacks in the first place. The Wikipedia featured article cabal is way out of control. --Connel MacKenzie 00:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I shouldn't have, but I did reply again at w:WP:VPP#Summary of F.A.C section above. --Connel MacKenzie 03:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Voting neutral

You mean you want to conscientiously abstain?  ;) --EncycloPetey 05:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Hehe...no, I'd like to oppose the others. Don't know how that's worded, in that context. --Connel MacKenzie 05:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • You mean you want the least objectionable choice should the name in fact change. --EncycloPetey 05:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Hehe. Yes, that is my opinion. --Connel MacKenzie 05:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I must say, this style of voting is pretty weird, when you can see each other's votes. --Connel MacKenzie 05:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
• I agree. I noticed today that the issue of Idiom translations had been all Support until User:henne voted "Abstain". Since then all the votes have been opposed. Weird. --EncycloPetey 05:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. Yes, that too. That one actually is in a pickle right now. If a clear "winner" emerges with plenty of dissent, I'm not sure we can call it "consensus" in good faith. On the other hand, there is no way we should take on the Wikipedia 65+% as meaning consensus. the fact that everyone openly discussed the votes in progress is weird too. These just aren't similar to traditional 'votes' at all. Perhaps calling it "VOTE" instead of "Straw polls" was the error? I dunno. --Connel MacKenzie 05:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Voting doesn't build consensus. Discussion does. Discussing "votes" is actually a good thing, because it allows compromises to be reached, rationales to be analysed and changed, new options to be introduced, and positions to be modified in light of the ongoing discussion. One mantra at AFD over at Wikipedia for a long time was It's not about the votes!. It's perfectly legitimate to say "X is my preferred option, but my second choice is Y, although it is less preferable because of Q.". Indeed, that's a good thing, far better than "I vote for X.", because it makes it simple to come up with a solution that will be acceptable to most people. In contrast, it's bad to have "run-off votes". Decision processes on wikis are supposed to be discussive. They aren't elections. Uncle G 12:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Except that WT:VOTE was created directly because the results of so many "discussion-votes" were ignored unilaterally. On the other hand, "run-off votes" are a good indication that something should be handled via custom user preferences, instead. --Connel MacKenzie 14:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Chinese indexes

I.e. all the pages that are Wiktionary:Chinese * index *

These need to be moved to Index:Chinese \1 \2 with all of the redirects moved and fixed (there are proper redirects in between these pages), and all of the references changed. You commented somewhere that you didn't think this should be a bot task, that someone would have to "slog through them". I'm thinking the opposite: that only bot code has a chance of doing the several thousand interrelated changes with accuracy.

I'm thinking of doing what I did fixing the Korean Yale and Mandarin Pinyin: write the code to make the changes, starting with a report that lists all the changes to be made that everyone interested could look at first. (Several of our Korean experts looked at the Yale fixes, and after catching a number of additional mistakes in the Nanshu code and re-reviewing, ran it without a hitch. User:Robert Ullmann/Korean Yale)

What do you think of this approach? Robert Ullmann 21:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood what I said. I saw ~40 to 80 pages that needed moving (manually) from the Wiktionary: namespace. Correcting the links will happen automatically via User:DblRedirBot. That is, I am not concerned at all about the links following in the long run...DblRedirBot will pick them up within a week's time, from when they move....and all the thoushands of references to them...as long as the redirect pages at not deleted during the interventing time period.

The pages, once in the Index namespace, should must have a consistent heading used, that point correctly to the other Index: namespace lists. That should be done once in a template and included in all those moved pages...that is the part that has to be manually done...each page gets the new "templatized" heading moments after it is moved.

This movement method has worked OK in the past, for other languages. But for CJKV characters, I'm too clueless to do it accurately. I just don't know enough about the CJKV characters. Should they be sorted by numeric Unicode value? If I were doing it, that would be my only option, because I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing with CJKV characters. That is why I said that someone needs to slog through them all. (Because I cannot.)

Now, if you can create the template (modelled off the English Index?) then I can probably help unify the pages that currently are in the Wiktionary namespace. But there is no way I am about to risk doing the heading template for them wrong, myself. And I'm pretty sure I'd do it wrong. (Offhand, I don't even know where the language boundaries are in the Unicode encoding tables.)

Clear as mud? --Connel MacKenzie 01:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I generated a report, User:Robert Ullmann/Chinese indexes. There are 402 page moves and redirects, and 2,659 references to be fixed. (and DblRedirBot doesn't fix links, just redirects to redirects.) Creating a couple of new heading templates would cut down the number of references to be fixed. (But at least it isn't 100,000+ like it used to be ;-) Robert Ullmann 22:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I see the DblRedirBot does do more than redirect.py like it says. Seems it was introducing extra spaces in Oct? Robert Ullmann 22:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly sure what you're talking about in October; I *am* capable of error (such as not using the proper user.config.py file for a given run.)

Your assessment is correct though; When I tried to have DblRedirBot correct links *to* redirects, I fouled it all up, and the cleanup (not sure I ever finished!) soured me from trying again, at least until now. But I don't have time to try that again, for a few days. Do you have something working? Popups will "autofix" some things like that, but as a separate edit for each one you click to fix. Does AWB have a widget for that?

--Connel MacKenzie 00:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Not using AWB again; way too much trouble. So far, this is just analysis. But having identified a page and a link with a regular expression, it isn't to hard to do the sub call (after getting the live page) and check the result. But haven't done any of that yet; just wanted to gen the list and look at it for a while. Robert Ullmann 00:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, having looked at your list, I see a massive amount of duplicate links. So if *one* template can properly reference all the 403 index pages, then that one template can be moved inside of those 403 pages, removing lots of cruft and potential problem links.

I still think step one is to simply [move] those 403 pages, but I am not going to do that, as I'm sure I would not catch any subtle errors along the way (and very likely add several.) If it then takes us a year to clear up the bad pointers and redirects, so be it. But I think the sooner those 403 are moved, the better. --Connel MacKenzie 04:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply to talk page comments

(Replying to this comment

I think you are confusing the FA evaluation and promotion process with the fact that featured articles go on the main page, so I'd like to address each in turn:

Two fundamental assumptions of the featured article candidates page are (a) the featured article candidates page is not 'Articles for Deletion', so consequently (b) we automatically assume anything nominated there would survive a trip to AFD. FAC commentary, therefore, should be focused exclusively on what the article says, and not what the article is about. As I said before, the rules explicitely require all comments to be actionable. If nothing can be done to "fix" someone's objection, it is by defintion inactionable. So: "This article is bad because it lacks citations" is useful feedback because it can be fixed; "this article is bad because _____ (<-- fill in your least favorite president) was a awful" is not actionable, because nothing can be done to fix that. In conclusion, when promoting featured article, importance is, consequently, not at all a consideration.

You asked me - "Perhaps you can explain how Wikipedians facilitate "ranking" of the current nominees for Main Page FA status?". In a word, we don't. I choose the articles I want in the order I want. My primary goals in this respect are never to repeat a featured article on the main page, to avoid featuring on the main page articles from the same topic or area of the world too frequently - e.g, avoid having too many biology articles in a week, or too many US-related articles, 'etc. My personal preferences are for main-stream topics (things that someone off the street should recognize), and for "quirky" articles (For example: Holy prepuce, history of erotic depictions, exploding whale, 'etc).

When, in February 2004, we switched over to the current look, it was initially quite unstable. Having one person - myself - do it is the system which evolved, and by comparison to similar processes on Wikipedia, it has worked extremely well for three years now. Having one person do it cuts down on the subjective bickering about what is and is not important enough to be the main page FA. Think AFD, but bigger, louder, and more subjective.

I do make a conscious effort to defer to the wishes of the FA writers. If someone requests that the FA he wrote be featured on the main page on a certain date, within reason I try to fulfill that request. I figure that if a person devoted the time and effort to get an article up to FA status, the least I can do is run his/her article on the requested date. Therefore, I created a requests page, so that people can make known their preferences for partiuclar dates (without flooding my talk page). I am ambivalent about the requests page, though - It does serve a useful purpose (letting people request a particular date), but most of the requests there are for "As soon as possible" (which is true of virtually all FAs that get written). Some people have decided to treat the requests page as a vote (notice the smattering of "support" or "oppose" comments). This is something I am extremely opposed to - the last thing I want is yet another subjective thing for people to argue over.

I hope that answers your questions. Raul654 19:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Protecting titles against creation

I've just given you Wiktionary:Protected titles, which allows for protecting specific titles against creation, by using the new cascading protection feature of MediaWiki, whilst not employing dummy placeholder pages that will turn up on search engines. You might wish to go through Special:Whatlinkshere/--error: link target missing--, listing each title on the appropriate list and then deleting the protected placeholder. I've done some. Uncle G 13:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• That is simply the most fantastic news I've heard, ever, on Wiktionary. How's it work? --Connel MacKenzie 15:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I thought that you might ask. See the "How it works" section on the page. ☺ Uncle G 18:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Heh. Yes, obviously asked that before I read & edited it. The cleverness and elegance of it; ah, I can't stand it. Fantastic! --Connel MacKenzie 19:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just deleted the user sub-page that was the second-to-top Google Web result for you-know-what, which should thus disappear when the Google spider does its next crawl. I leave the rest of Special:Whatlinkshere/--error: link target missing-- in your capable hands. Uncle G 19:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. I've deleted that target of those redirects, which may simplify those google-crawls. We shall see...(sorry, distractions arose and I didn't save this earlier.) --Connel MacKenzie 20:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I created (and tested ;-) Template:procat; it just cats its arguments together, and makes a transclusion call. If you use it, you can break up page names into 2-4 parts, so a word like exico|rnt doesn't appear on the protection page, therefore not in google at all ... ;-) Robert Ullmann 22:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Pfui. Still displays the same way in the HTML; I can fix that, but not the link, whether visible or not. Cue Emily Litella. Robert Ullmann 06:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I wonder what you did, then. If parameter one is ignored, but is another template reference, as are parameters 2-100... --Connel MacKenzie 06:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

js error - patrolled.js ?

Error: reference to undefined property "WhiteList" Source File: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=User:Connel_MacKenzie/patrolled.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript Line: 66

I'm using: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1 --Versageek 20:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

nevermind, I must have had a bad cached copy.. clearing the cache made the problem go away. --Versageek 20:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

CommonsTicker: CommonsTicker, The Next Generation

I am currently testing a new version of CommonsTicker (dubbed CommonsTicker NG) on the german Wikipedia - problems with ticker pages growing too large made a partial rewrite necessary. Most changes are "under the hood", the larges change for users is in the way the ticker page is structured and updated:

CommonsTicker will now create a subpage for each day, and include this as a template on the ticker page. New entries for a given day are added to the respective subpage without modifying existing entries on that subpage. Old subpages (sections) are removed automatically from the main ticker page - per default, 7 sections are kept (days for which there are no entries are not counted). Please check that your ticker page has both start- and end-markers for the region where CommonsTicker should post (see m:User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker#Ticker_Page); everything between the markers will be replaced. If the markers are missing, the entire page is replaced.

When I have finished testing CommonsTicker NG, I will activate the new version on the wikis where CommonsTicker is currently disabled due to problems with page size (the large projects I mentioned in the last announcement). When all goes well, I will start to switch other wikis to NG one by one, as seems convenient. If you want the new version soon, or you don't want it yet for some reason, please tell me about it on m:User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker#Change_Requests.

This message was posted automatically by the CommonsTicker bot. For feedback and discussion, please go to meta:User talk:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker -- CommonsTicker 14:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Rfc

So, just what is the procedure for cleaning up the RFC page. Should I tag it with an {{rfc|Holy God! It's never been cleaned. Ever!}}? Do the sections get put on the talk pages of the respective entries? Does it just get archived? I'm curious, because I think that's going to be one of the biggest cleanups of them all, and it appears that there is no SOP for such a procedure, since it's never been done. Atelaes 07:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK, there is no archive page for RFCs. Once an entry has been cleaned up, it is optional to move the WT:RFC section to that page's talk page (i.e. if there are interesting comments.) If it is for a group of pages, or boring commentary, the section is normally just removed. That is the SOP. I was discussing a more formal archive on WT:GP last month, but that didn't really go anywhere.

And yes, I do periodically take a shot at clearing it out. It used to be much, much longer. It was at the point of locking up most people's browsers at one point; dial-up users couldn't load the entire page before getting modem timeouts and such. I think I'm spread a bit too thin to help directly, this time around. --Connel MacKenzie 07:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Quite understood. Should I start doing that, and clearing it out? Atelaes 07:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, you and EncycloPetey never followed through with the whole Books of the Bible convo. I'd like to get that underway.......slacker. :-) Atelaes 07:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes.

D'oh! (Have I mentioned recently that I've spread myself too thinly?)

--Connel MacKenzie 07:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to keep bugging you, but could you check my move from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup#accidently to Talk:accidently. I just want to make sure there aren't any special formatting concerns, or anything. Thanks. Atelaes 08:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Please take this as the constructive criticism/helpful suggestions it is intended as:

1. headings within WT:RFC are navigation aides, and aren't needed on the talk page.
2. Knowing where the heck a conversation came from is helpful
3. When removing sections from WT:RFC, always use section editing of that single section only, so that the removal can be found in the history.
4. Consider linking the (diff) of the removal from WT:RFC on the talk page. (I don't usually bother...but that was a suggestion made to me at one point.)

--Connel MacKenzie 08:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

1. Talk pages can be [move]d in the same manner as NS:0 pages. --Connel MacKenzie 08:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll keep those in mind (although linking the diff does seem like a lot of unecessary work. *sigh* I'll consider it. At the very least, I'll follow the rest of them. Atelaes 21:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Right - perhaps someone has a handy way of getting the diff links to paste in. Offhand, I do not. A long time ago I generated diff links for pages that had been removed, but I don't know where that got to. --Connel MacKenzie 21:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

CSU block

Your attention is needed on my talk page Raul654 00:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. I'll keep replies there, for now. --Connel MacKenzie 02:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Politics of the Netherlands (terminology)

Sorry for postint this on your bot's wikipedia talk. I did not notice the screaming letters.

I don't know what policy says on this but I do not believe that w:Politics of the Netherlands (terminology) should be transwiktionaried like your bot proposed here. The article is mainly used (look at its links) to explain Dutch concepts used in articles about the politics of the Netherlands to non-Dutch readers. It is not a list of dictionary definitions, but a list of how common insitutions, like mayors and provincial governors are implementented in the Netherlands. Otherwise these articles would be about 100 additional stubs on wikipedia. Therefore it should not be transwiktionaried and certainly not deleted. -w:user:c_mon 13:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

answered at w:user talk:c_mon ;-) Robert Ullmann 13:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

CopyToWiktionaryBot

CopyToWiktionaryBot added a transwiki template twice to Contract Bridge Glossary on Wikipedia. No problem, I've reverted one, but I thought you should know. I went to the bot's talk page, and it sent me here. -- User:Matchups on Wikipedia 20:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I caught one also (remnants from earlier tests.) When this pass finishes, I'll remove all those duplicate {{TWCleanup}} template references on Wikipedia. --Connel MacKenzie 20:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you do the same for W:Glossary of pool, billiards and snooker terms (very soon to be W:Glossary of cue sports terms)? We've reverted it twice, but it keeps coming back. PS: It kinda cracks me up that you are using the same partially-functional transwiki Talk page redirect over at W:User talk:CopyToWiktionaryBot that you chastized me for over here. Heh. >;-) — SMcCandlish ツ 23:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll do a simple run of replace.py -ref:Template:TWCleanup to remove the duplicates when its done, yes. Thank you for pointing out my error on that talk page...fixed (I think). --Connel MacKenzie 00:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any duplicates now, when I run that replacement? --Connel MacKenzie 15:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

What is with this edit [1]? It doesn't seem to match the regex in the edit summary, and is losing a lot of the info? Something not quite right ;-) Robert Ullmann 09:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Ditto [2] somthing is very wrong here; it is losing everything from line start to the end of templates! Robert Ullmann 09:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yikes. Well, I've changes (.*) to (.*?) so that should go away...but I'm curious why the edit summary was wrong. --Connel MacKenzie 15:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

How is it deciding which templates to remove? A lot of them are obvious (to humans ;-), but things like {{polytonic}} contain content, and need to stay. Robert Ullmann 06:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

replace.py may be doing some special "extras" for {{Prod}}...I haven't found out why/where yet. My "{" characters are all escaped as "\{" so I'm not sure where the extra logic is. This behavior does not match my (limited) understanding of regex matching. --Connel MacKenzie 12:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

D'oh! I've removed the stray "|" character that was there. --Connel MacKenzie 12:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

using "Category:xx:" system

Hi Connel. Are we no longer using xx for language codes in categories? Apparently EncycloPetey thinks it's a "bad name; deprecated" form. He has been deleting categories with xx format and recreating categories deleted a while ago using the full language name. I haven't been able to contribute much lately due to work and study, but I just wanted to make sure I'm not out of the loop on this. --Dijan 06:17, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

(why is this so endlessly confusing to people?) POS cats are (full language name) (POS), (see WT:POS); topic cats are (code):(topic) (as I answer another question on Connel's talk page, I hope he doesn't mind too much ;-) Robert Ullmann 06:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Robert. That clears it up then. --Dijan 07:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Robert. I am grateful that you do; it very much matches the spirit of my request at the top of this page to not post questions to me directly, here, but instead on WT:BP. Despite rumours, I do occasionally sleep. This counts for people I consider friends (such as Dijan) as well as sincere contributors...the volume on this page is simply too much. (Maybe I should have Wernabot archive questions from here, to WT:BP directly, after a minute of inactivity?  :-)  )

By the way, Robert, that is the clearest, most succinct explanation of the system I've seen yet. It should be on WT:CAT, I think. --Connel MacKenzie 12:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: Be more careful

I'll mind that, but when a word has single meaning, which is better to use {{trans-top}} with a simplified meaning, or leave it without the template? --Izumi5 11:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It is "better" to use {{trans-top}}, as additional meanings often are added later. --Connel MacKenzie 12:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for replying, I'll do that. --Izumi5 13:13, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiCast: WOTD

You asked for links in connection with this, try http://www.bitshuffle.org/wikicast/Word_of_the_Day ShakespeareFan00 62.56.80.248 14:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It looks interesting. But my questions was also asking what help you are looking for. As I've mentioned above, I'm too busy myself to take on Yet-Another-Daily-Task.

If I were you, I'd steer away from the "Word-For-the-Wise" format. Your outline seems to mimic it a little too closely for my comfort. The opinionated focus of WFTW conflicts pretty directly with NPOV (which is one reason it is a delightful broadcast.)

Also, I asked on WT:BP, not because I wanted a response here, but rather so you could answer there, theoratically reaching a wider audience.

--Connel MacKenzie 13:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Redirects

You told me "do not enter redirects." why? Wiki Kong 05:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Because you were creating redirects in the main namespace, making more work for sysops who have to remove them. WT:REDIR has more detail. --Connel MacKenzie 13:28, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Antonym for capitalizing?

Hi, well...to be honest, I haven't spent that much time checking the standard layout. Sorry :) By the way, I was wondering what is the antonym for the verb "to capitalize" (meaning, "make use of capital letters"), do you know? Thank you for your help :) -- Frous 14:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

In English, it's decapitalize. --Connel MacKenzie 14:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

transwiki:shotgun approach

Sorry about the half-assed transfer of w:shotgun approach. At the time I was not aware of Template:dicdef and assumed that {{transwiki}} was the proper template to use. The only experience I've had with the transwiki process was transferring source texts to WikiSource. Anetode 14:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

w:Glossary of Japanese history

Hi Connel MacKenzie,

Your bot has three times added some cleanup template about transfer to Wiktionary of w:Glossary of Japanese history. Most recently, it added it to the article immediately following another copy of the same template. It has also added the same template twice to the talk page. Kindly make it stop.

Please note that the English Wikipedia decided to keep the article there. Whether or not the article has been transferred to Wiktionary is separate from Wikipedia's decison to keep it.

Kind regards,

Wikipedia user Fg2 00:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

CopyToWiktionaryBot

Please modify the bot so that it does not litter the articles with tags. Articles are for content, not a message board. Mikkalai 00:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Appendix:Poker terminology

This article was transwikied back in May. I just synced it with the newer edits to the Wikipedia article since then. Could you import the revisions from the transwiki until now for the history? Thanks. Dmcdevit 00:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

w:Glossary of pool, billiards and snooker terms

Hi! Please remove the above article from the purview of CopyToWiktionaryBot. Noting other posts of a similar nature on this page, have you considered building into the bot a mechanism so that it stops tagging a particular article once tags it has placed have been removed (or maybe after having been removed twice), coupled with generation of a list of such articles for you so you can manually review the talk pages/edit summaries of articles the tags were removed from to see the reason? If you had reviewed the talk page of the above article you'd note strong consensus regarding the inappropriateness of the template placed, now removed three or four times both from the talk page and the article proper. I'm sure overall the bot is very helpful, but I don't think we should have the burden of having to come to you to explain why we are finding its automatic multiple tagging actions vexatious, in order to make it stop.--Fuhghettaboutit (w:Fuhghettaboutit) 02:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I've responded to them elsewhere, resolving the issue. Please note that removing the talk page tag is what is causing the duplicate tagging. --Connel MacKenzie 02:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

WOTD RSS comments

RSS is working great! better formating could be used but fine now!! can't wait for official support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! — This unsigned comment was added by 69.105.29.7 (talk).

Well, thank you. What formatting improvements would you like? I'm concerned that I don't yet support "atom" feeds (where you can just drag the icon from the right side of the location bar, down to your personal links.) All I have to do is figure out how MediaWiki does it for Recentchanges. Unfortunately, the recentchanges code is worse than parser.php. Thanks again. --Connel MacKenzie 03:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe I'm thinking differently. One a raw feed of just the word and definition (for some RSS parsers like gmail's):

docile - ready to accept instruction or direction.

and then something with an HTML element with links in word:

February 11 WOTD docile (listen) - Ready to accept instruction or direction.

truthiness deletion

I need a better explanation for this. Discussion added in the tea room Wiktionary:Tea_room#truthiness_deleted_w.2Fo_RFD. Deletion log entry.--Halliburton Shill 09:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Replied there. (Kappa, Atelaes, myself) Robert Ullmann 13:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

IRC - 2/11/2007

I have no such link to the right of log out, and have not been able to find or obtain a product that will allow me to connect to the IRC. Yes, I've tried ChatZilla, but it would not install correctly. --EncycloPetey 01:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Please try refreshing your JS. (On IE, Ctrl-F5, Mozilla fllavors, Ctrl-R or Ctrl-Sh-R.) --Connel MacKenzie 01:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

So, when I am locked out (again) and the system thinks I'm still logged on after restarting my browser, how do I get back in? --EncycloPetey 04:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Try:

/nick Encyclop
/join #wiktionary

--Connel MacKenzie 04:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ligatures

This is a reminder to find out why User:Connel MacKenzie/reformat.js replaces the ligature {dž} with dz instead of dž. --EncycloPetey 18:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Found it. User talk:Strabismus#Ligatures for Serbo-Croatian. --Connel MacKenzie 19:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Patrolling my own edits

Sorry to bug you Connel, but I can't seem to find the box in preferences where I can set it so that my edits are marked as patrolled. It's in the "Editing" tab, correct? I tried clearing all the data in my browser, thinking perhaps it was a leftover from before I got switched to sysop, but I'm still not seeing it. Any thoughts? Atelaes 02:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not showing up in my Preferences either, and I know I remember being able to set that. --EncycloPetey 02:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I noticed it had dissapeared when someone was asking me to add WT:PREFS to Special:Preferences, but I figured it was just on by default for sysops now. It never even occurred to me, that it was a new bug. Are your edits really not marked patrolled, by default? --Connel MacKenzie 03:32, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it appears that they are marked as patrolled simply by default. I made an edit and looked at the recent changes right away, and no exclamation mark. It's hard to say for sure, someone certainly could have patrolled it right when I saved it, but I think it unlikely. So I think everything's ok. Thanks. Atelaes 03:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I made a similar set of comments when I was made an admin, so it's been defaulting correctly but unchangeably since Xmas at least. --Enginear 20:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Welcome message

Thanks for that, no wonder it was deleted last time. I'm too used to Wikipedia. :) --The preceding comment was signed by User:Sp3000 (talk•contribs) 07:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Healthily

Thank you for your contributions to the healthily entry, incorrectly spelled as heathily - can you help me to move the entry to the proper healthily entry? Encuesta española 16:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Done (how embarrassing, that I didn't notice!) --Connel MacKenzie 16:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Open proxies

I am a verified user on the En-Wikipedia (Same Username). Would you add me to the list here? Geo.plrd 05:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Open proxies? Please forgive me, but what are you talking about? (Apparently, I should know.) What list, exactly? --Connel MacKenzie 05:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Apologies. I am a verified user for Wikiproject Open Proxies. I would like to help out at WT:OP. Could you add my username to the Verified User list? Geo. Talk to me! 06:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I'm not sure I actually knew about that list. Is that supposed to be synchronized with a central list from meta? --Connel MacKenzie 06:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is a central list, anyway i am still waiting to be added to the Meta list. Thanks now i can get to work. Geo. Talk to me!

OK, have at it. Uh oh, you're going to be nagging me about the backlog, aren't you.  :-) Enjoy! --Connel MacKenzie 06:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

DidYouMean debugged

G'day Connel.

Earlier Brion set up a dev wiki and gave me an account. This allowed me to quickly find the bug in DidYouMean. I went out to a friend's birthday party and just fixed it when I got back. Try it, try to break it, publicize it. Then we can ask to get it installed on the real Wiktionary!

http://wiktionarydev.leuksman.com

— Hippietrail 15:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Super fabuloso! I saw a bunch of see/xsee's in yesterday's Recentchanges here...I'll try stuffing those through in a little bit. Yay! --Connel MacKenzie 16:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Few questions

Hi! I'm new to WT, but I edited WP for half a year, and already this place has confused me. Is there a page here like w:Wikipedia:Maintenance where cleanup stuff is listed? I noticed a few pages in a transwiki namespace and started cleaning one up, but then I stumbled upon Wiktionary:Administrators and saw that two of the three candidates mention that they have 100 transwiki cleanups - is there a place where these are assigned out, and are the pages such as Transwiki:Glossary of bagpipe terms meant to be cleaned up? Once this is done, I assume that it is meant to be moved into mainspace, is that right? Finally, and Wiktionary:Administrators isn't clear at all, are there some standards for adminship? Also, and I just noticed this on the RC feed, is there a version of wikipedia's Administrator Intervention against Vandalism here, or do the admins mostly catch stuff themselves? Thanks! ST47 01:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

To preempt Connel, I'll answer what I can. First, our WT:RFC is probably the closest thing here to w:Wikipedia:Maintenance. It's admittedly not as complex, but we run a somewhat smaller operation here. Since all transwikis need to be cleaned up to a certain extent, it's not considered terribly useful to list them there (generally). If you're looking for more to do, Versageek has a button on her user page that'll give you as many as you can stand. Connel knows the transwiki process much better than I do, but as I understand it, anyone is more than welcome to tackle the cleanup of any transwiki they see fit. Once cleaned up, they are to be moved to the mainspace, but I am unsure of the procedure for that (it might simply be a page move). Connel'll know the answer on that one. I'll leave our standard welcome on your talk page. It's not terribly warm, but it is quite useful. I would especially recommend checking out the third bullet (Entry layout explained). If you would like to do transwiki, you'll definitely need to get the hang of our formatting policies (we have quite a few, and many are rather important). One of the things about running a smaller project is that our standards for adminship our somewhat more flexible than Wikipedia's. We run a small enough project that just doing what you're supposed to be doing will get you noticed by just about everyone here. So, if you're looking to that goal, just work hard (and get your formatting straight, the bane of newcomers :-)) and you'll be set. As for vandalism, both of the two options you presented are correct. The admins here catch most vandalism as it happens (or shortly after) and there is also WT:VIP where you can bring attention to stuff that's happening. Any more questions, feel free to ask (but I wouldn't get in the habit of leaving all your questions on Connel's page. He's kind of the star of Wiktionary, and his talk page is constantly being filled up, and it makes him cranky). Atelaes 03:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• I have no idea what w:Wikipedia:Maintenance is, but I'm guess it is probably equivalent to our WT:DW or perhaps Wiktionary:Community Portal#Help us with entries needing attention.
• Transwiki cleanups of lists and glossaries do not move to mainspace (NS:0) but rather to the Appendix: or Index: namespace.
• Welcome Newbie! As a veteran Wikipedian, you may have some preconceptions that can get you into trouble here. I strongly advise reading WT:CFI and WT:ELE closely. Those two pages function as the pillars of Wiktionary. Discussions all happen on WT:BP, not my talk page.  :-)
• Note that others are more likely to reply on my talk page, for now, while I have very limited access for a few days.
• We don't have formal standards for "sysops" but generally, a solid understanding of Wiktionary conventions is the main thing. --Connel MacKenzie 15:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)