User talk:DAVilla/2007

Old English weorþan

Hi, DAVilla

You seem to wonder "to become" to become the primary sense or translation of the Old English weorþan. So do I, unfortunately based on some casual rather than causal evidences such as:

• Morthwyrtha "ancestor worshipper"
• Wilweorthunga "well worship".

This word would be cognate with weird, wyrd, etc. ascribed to the Proto-Germanic *wurþa-, AND perhaps with word ascribed to another similar Proto-Germanic *wurða-.

Words are to call goods (i.e., beings, becomings, happenings, things, or whatever), while weirds or soothsayers are to call gods to make ill fortunes or weirds well. In ancient times, goods were widely believed to have their own god. Perhaps, goods were gods; words were weirds. Indeed, words are for goods; weirds are for gods. Weirds should better be positive wishes than what you dree passively, hence perhaps cognate with Old English willan "to wish."

In short, I wish "to call" to become the primary sense of weorþan, instead of "to become". And I wish to hear about your point of view, why you so wonder. Thanks. --KYPark 04:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I can barely follow you. I just don't understand how "become" can be an auxiliary verb. Perhaps an example or two would be enough to satisfy me. Also does it only use the primary sense of become? If you want to support your point of view, quotations might help there as well. DAVilla 05:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I never thought you are just wondering how "become" can be an auxiliary verb, and went too away from your syntactic question, which I am not that editor responsible to answer. I myself raise another, semantic question against him/her. I am sorry for all your puzzling. Just forget my words. But A Happy New Gear. --KYPark 20:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

In re scenarii

You might also want to reply to the discussion at Category talk:English nouns with irregular plurals. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:27, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I quoted you in a reply of mine in the discussion. Please check to make sure that I have not misinterpreted what you wrote — I would not want to be accused of putting words in your mouth. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 18:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Context and Label templates

Hello there, I've recently been through all of the templates in category:Label templates and migrated all of those I felt comfortable with migrating to context. The others may be interesting to migrate due to the way they are currently used etc. What do you reckon?--Williamsayers79 20:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Numerical analysis

Speaking as a mathematician, this topic will be unlikely to ever have enough topic-specific language to warrent a separate category. The category and associated templates could be switched simply to (anaylsis). --EncycloPetey 02:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Translation table lacks gloss

This is a bad (very bad) category name, since we never put glosses into Translation tables. What we put in are transcriptions into Latin. We use the term "gloss" to refer to additional notation that clarifies the sense of a translation. --EncycloPetey 02:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

It's that header info that's lacking for the table, not the transcription of any single translation. DAVilla 02:52, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah! That wasn't apparent from context, since the first few examples I looked at for clarification were all missing the transcription for the Russian translation. Could we make the category name "Translation table header lacks gloss" for clarity? --EncycloPetey 02:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Shakespeare quote

So, do you think the citation and date should have priority over the example of usage? As reformatted, on the listen page, the quotation has lesser visual impact and the bullets don't align. But if the bullets are aligned, then the quotations won't. This is why I would rather see intra-definitional quotations have the citation information on a line following the quotation itself. It preserves parallel structure and puts the usage example first. --EncycloPetey 23:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, we can try that. Let me align the bullets for now and see what you think. I actually raised this issue at Template talk:new en useful even before I was an admin, but it was largely ignored, so I'm actually all the happier that you've taken issue with the format. DAVilla 23:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, aligning the bullets with #*: for examples doesn't work, so go ahead and try what you will. Personally I'd like to keep the quotation and the source on separate lines if you can make it work. DAVilla 23:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If there's a way to put the citation cleanly on a separate line from the quote, then I would support that; I'd just rather the quote itself was up front. If you've seen the citations page for listen, you may consider that as an insight to my current view of the "ideal" citations page and format for Quotations section -- though I wouldn't say that new and improved ideas aren't waiting out there somewhere. I don't have my thoughts as fully gelled yet for what a properly formatted quote would look like following a definition. --EncycloPetey 23:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've tried some options for putting the quote and citation on separate lines, but have a visual problem. (Now, this assumes no italics) The citation doesn;t look like a separate piece of information without some visual signal. Putting the date first is too distracting. Putting an m-dash in front (as I left it for now) looks awful. Beginning promptly with the author's name makes it look like the end of a wrapped quotation. For the time being, I'm leaning toward keeping the citation info at the end of the quote, on the same line, separated by an m-dash. --EncycloPetey 00:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

If you think that's tough try jefe... or I wish I could dig up an example with many definitions and just a few quotations, since I actually like the citations page. So what do you think about giving Citations: its own namespace, maybe including other things like references (e.g. from printed slang dictionaries) that fail use-mention? That's one alternative to a Neologism: space, one where the definition isn't prime. DAVilla 00:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

RV to Jefe

Do you want my sources or something for putting that new defenition under jefe? I read it on this site that jefe means that. If you want me to translate it for you i can.

Bearingbreaker92 01:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't mean any hostility or offense by reinstating "in a company, etc". What I would like to know, and the reason for the gloss template, is what kind of boss jefe refers to. Clearly it at least pertains to "a person in charge of a business or company," but "etc." isn't very clear. Is jefe also "a leader, the head of an organized group or team" and/or "the head of a political party in a given region or district"? As I'm not a Spanish speaker, please look at my change and correct it if needed. DAVilla 09:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Here im gonna give you a translation of these, tell me what you think.

1. m. y f. Persona que manda o dirige a otras, superior jerárquico

     el jefe de un departamento.

2. Cabeza o presidente de un partido, corporación, organismo, etc.

     el jefe de la oposición.

3. mil. categoría superior a la de capitán e inferior a la de general

     jefe militar.

4. col. Tratamiento informal que se da a una persona a la que no se conoce

     oiga, jefe, ¿me permite pasar?

1. Person that mandates or directs others, heirachical superiority.

    The head of a department (suppose it could also be boss or manager)

2. Head or president of a party, corporation, organization, etc.

   el (jefe) of the oposition.

3. Military ranking superior to Captain but inferior to General

    Maybe Colelel(sp?),  but I did some research and this word seems to be obsolete.

4. Roughly translated : an informal phrase that you say to someone you dont know

     Literally "Listen cheif/boss, you gonna let me pass/go?

Sorry it looks that ugly, it just ended up that way and i dont know why.

Bearingbreaker92 14:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Something like that would be great. The only problem is, where did you get the definitions from? They're not listed on es:jefe, so it would probably be a copyright violation to use them. But that's essentially what we should be going for.

(The formatting is a result of spaces at the beginning of the line.) DAVilla 17:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I gave you a link where i found that, just a random dictionary on the net.

Bearingbreaker92 18:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, the first link. Okay, like I said, something like that would be great. I've gone ahead and fleshed out the two definitions, and guessed at translations for the military one, although I'm not really keen on editing Spanish entries. There are probably too many synonyms on each line, but I wouldn't know which are more applicable. DAVilla 18:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Coniferae and Pinales

Hi Brya, please excuse my ignorance on this subject, but I'd like to delve into it to understand your claims and to verify them for myself. I have seen some fights over technical matters (georeactor specifically comes to mind) where both sides thought they were right because they didn't understand the other side. (For georeactor it turns out they were both right, but neither had heard of the other use.) Right now I'm willing to believe the Wiktionary community does not understand your viewpoint, and I couldn't care less about Wikipedia because they don't use the same criteria we do. In particular we are, or should be, interested in all attested uses of a word, historic or otherwise, regardless of what any single international body says. See planet for a pretty straightforward example. I've read some of what you'd written on Wikipedia, and if you're willing to guide me I'm quite eager to listen. Specifically I am interested in attesting all of the uses claimed, which would pretty much close the matter.

On Coniferae, which I had weakly attempted to resolve, you changed the description of "traditionally a taxon at the rank of a class" to "traditionally used for a taxon above the level of order". Who claims that the rank should be a class, who uses it for division, subclass, etc., and when is it only descriptive? You also claim that Coniferae "may be used at whatever rank this taxon is treated, provided this is above the rank of family" according to Article 16 of the ICBN. Could you link me to that text so I can add a quotation or reference to the page? In what year did that take effect, what was in use before then, and are there any alternatives still in use today?

On Pinales, which I had not tried to edit, you changed "taxonomic order" to "botanical name at the rank of order". Who uses it as an order, and who uses it only descriptively? I'm interested in expanding this claim of different taxonomic viewpoints to possibly a couple of senses if warranted. Thanks! DAVilla 16:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I can try and address some of the points you mention. On the matter of Coniferae what I put in is very close to the official rules in the ICBN (Art 16) which mentions Coniferae explicitly in Ex 2. As to "traditionally a taxon at the rank of a class" this is in the page history. This claim is made by EncycloPetey who says he based this on my note. So, he claims no first hand knowledge on the topic: it is his personal interpretation of my note.

As to what year this came into the ICBN this is not that easy to answer. It is reasonable to say that it came into the ICBN bit by bit in 1952, 1961, 1983 and 2000 (the phrase "descriptive name" came in 1983) but effectively it has been in the Code since 1906 (that is from the first).

As to Pinales I would not know what a "taxonomic order" is except a most curious linguistic aberration. Even if Pinales are to be regarded as an order (taxonomic or not) then this is not a helpful representation, as orders are not fixed. An order will likely vary with each taxonomist who treats the order: it is not a fixed entity. A botanical name is fixed: it is published one and is there forever, no matter what taxonomic point of view is adopted. Brya 14:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I’m taking a break…

Thanks for taking me seriously and for treating me with respect when so many others here dismissed me as a troll. I wrote something that you may want to read here. Kind regards, † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 17:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Any additional concerns about {trans-top} style translation templates?

Hello,

The recent vote for their use has passed, by my count, and I've added a topic in the Grease Pit to hear any technical caveats before I modify WT:ELE (which doesn't seem to have stopped people from using them anyway.) Since you had some concerns regarding their implementation, and have been the most recent contributor to these templates, you might want to weigh in. Thanks! --Jeffqyzt 19:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Help me please

What style should the vote be for the four choices at WT:GP#countable/uncountable? --Connel MacKenzie 05:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I would do it the same as Wiktionary:Votes/2006-12/form-of style if you really think it needs to be brought to a vote. Aren't there some technical issues to be worked out with a hide-this-sort-of-information solution? DAVilla 18:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Pronoun templates

Would you like to help me set up (read: "do it for me") a series of templates along the lines of countable/uncountable and transitive/intransitive to cover the various classes of pronoun? We'd need at least: personal, possessive, interrogative, relative, demonatrative, indefinite, reflexive, and possibly others, all keyed to categorize into the appropriate language by name (e.g. Category:Spanish personal pronouns). The various noun, verb, and adjective categories seem to get the most attention, and pronouns are in need of a thorough cleanup. If the templates existed, then I could make the necessary changes in a single pass. --EncycloPetey 19:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll look into it, but I tend to make promisses that I can't keep. Give me till mid-Chinese New Year, a little over a week. DAVilla 18:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

No rush, I'm getting input in the Beer Parlour regarding the format of pronoun entries, and accumulating the feedback (and resolving differences of opinion) will take time. Then, there's actually implementing them across all the pronoun entries in all languages. This is a long-term project of magnitude, not a rush order. ;) --EncycloPetey 18:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: Flemish

Copying my reply from my own talk page here (not sure on the normal procedures): It seems you're a bit confused, I suggest you take a closer look at the history: I removed the "Flemish" translation, added the two translations there to the Dutch one, and then added one of my own. As for the policy on Flemish, it would be beyond absurd to treat it as a separate language; for comparison's sake, think of the difference between American and British English. Paul Willocx 00:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Your opinion does not dictate our criteria, but thanks anyway. Please don't go telling http://vls.wikipedia.org/ that they don't have a language of their own; they'll probably get very upset. --Connel MacKenzie 09:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Connel, did you follow the link at the top center of their Main Page? It links to the page on West-Vlams on the West-Vlams (vls) Wikipedia. There, West-Vlams is defined as "de meest zuudwestelike dialectgroep van et Nederlands." (the most southwestern dialect of Dutch). Note that West-Vlams is not synonymous with Flemish, but with West-Flemish; it's a dialect of a dialect. And if you can find any reputable linguist (who isn't Flemish) who considers Flemish a bona-fide language in its own right, I owe you a hundred page edits. --EncycloPetey 15:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I notice that my audacity of daring to disagree with you on the Aryan topic has apparently made me your enemy; regardless, it's not a good idea to go taking an aggressive tone with people when talking about subjects you don't know the first thing about. See my own talk page for why http://vls.wikipedia.org has nothing to do with this. Paul Willocx 09:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It is a truism, that those who complain about incivility were the ones that started out being incivil. Agressive tone? Oh my. Cute edit summaries? Oh my.

It is routine when going to someone's talk page to leave a message, to scan other recent comments. In this case, I saw your same insulting language, again being used to push an incorrect point. Enemy? I hope not. You seem to have made some good edits. And some errors. --Connel MacKenzie 09:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but whether you admit it or not, you're the one who started the uncivility on the Aryan page, which then carried over to the replies of both of us on the other pages. As for "same insulting language", I've no idea what incivility you see in my original reply here, and evidently neither does DAvilla. And as for "incorrect point", do point out what's incorrect about it. All typically Flemish expressions that I've seen here, including in fact one of the ones mentioned above (the only one that's a live link), are categorized under Dutch (as they should be). You showed me the link to the vls.wikipedia, and I can certainly understand how you would think that that was Flemish, considering the frankly very misleading ISO-code. However, as you can see for yourself on their main page, it is not in fact Flemish, but West-Flemish, as I said elsewhere. And yes, *should* someone propose to create a Flemish Wikipedia/Wiktionary, which does not currently exist, I would object for the very simple reason that we'd just have to copy the entirety of the Dutch version, throw out some things and add a few. The ortography is literally entirely identical (for the simple reason that a single institute controls the official ortography). If West-Flemish does have its own Wikipedia, then that is because they merely phonetically write their dialect (there exists no such thing as an official West-Flemish spelling). I don't really think that one should exist, either, but evidently other people do.

I'm glad we can agree that we don't want to be enemies. Paul Willocx 15:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Please stop arguing on my talk page. Thanks! DAVilla 16:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

To respond to a question you asked ;)

The person who crafts a consistent and universally applicable set of criteria for distinguishing between a language and a dialect will probably be awarded several honorary doctorates by various institutions. There just isn't a single set of criteria. Consider that the various Chinese languages share a mutually intelligible written language but mutually un-intelligible spoken languages. Russian and Macedonian are mutually intelligible, but those languages are universally considered to be separate. Meanwhile some linguists lump together Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian as a single language, even though there are significant grammatical and lexical differences; and historically these languages have used three different writing systems. (Bosnian was written with Arabic script for a long time). English is considered a single language, but I have seen a BBC documentary that added subtitles to interviews with people from Georgia (the American state, not the country). Apparently, English isn't mutually intelligible. So, the linguists will tell you: there isn't a simple solution or we would know about it by now. --EncycloPetey 16:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You've basically said it's very difficult, but you didn't say it's impossible. So let's have a go at it, shall we?

The first question: If Russian and Macedonian are mutually intelligible, then why are they considered separate languages? DAVilla 16:27, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't answer that one. I have the information from a native Russian who teaches English. She had a group of Macedonian students, and on overhearing their conversation after class, wondered why they were all speaking Russian, until she realized it had to be Macedonian they were speaking (which turned out to be the case). I assume there's something in the particulars of spelling and/or the more complex grammar that characterizes them as different. Of course, there are also political reasons why they should be considered distinct, as that's often a morivating factor in these decisions. The Wikipedia article also notes that Macedonian is mutually intelligible with Bulgarian, which doesn't surprise me. That article notes that Bulgarian and Macedonian don't use noun cases but do have a definite article, which would distinguish them from all other Slavic languages. The classification of Southern Slavic languages was largely the work of German linguists, and unfortunately I'm not good enough in German to attempt reading such highly technical literature (or even to search for such highly technical literature). --EncycloPetey 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Next question: Do we want the distinctions of languages on Wiktionary to be politically motivated? DAVilla 16:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally, no. But it may not always be possible to disentangle that issue. Nationalism is a strong force in shaping languages as well as opinions. We may not be able to tell when political motivations are the key factor and when linguistic differences are key. We don't have sufficient resources to, say, research the host of African languages ourselves. We also may have to contend with what is set up via Meta. --EncycloPetey 16:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Mutually intelligible doesn't mean identical - I've heard it said Danish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible for the most part, but they are still different. The same likely goes for Russian and Macedonian, especially considering that, to the best of my knowledge, they aren't even categorized in the same branch of Slavic languages (Macedonian is categorized with Bulgarian, and I've talked to Bulgarians who refused to acknowledge Macedonian was more than a dialect of Bulgarian). But Petey is right, there are often historical and/or political reasons, which we ignore at our peril (i.e. most of the potential contributors insisting on separating two languages, or dividing them, etc.) Personally, I would say something qualifies as a separate language if (for the languages that *have* a central authority, which isn't always the case) it has its own authority which is able to officially change e.g. the ortography. But that's just my opinion, and there are likely cases where deviating from that rule of thumb would be better for whatever reason (such as that Mandarin vs. Cantonese that someone mentioned). Paul Willocx 17:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:國語

Um, I'm not sure why you have seven different reverse-map templates for "zh", but 國語 means Japanese in Japanese (and Korean in Korean).. And, I guess these are for the wikt hostname, since we're supposed to use cmn/yue/nan/etc for language categories. Cynewulf 18:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay I'll kill those. It was a proof of concept and it looks like there could be some kinks as expected. Yup, I meant the host name, but maybe using cmn/yue/nan universally would be better. Let's see... does cmn:國語 work? Hmm... drat. DAVilla 18:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm using our adjusted abbreviations now, including cmn, as discussed below. Linking to the correct edition of Wiktionary is going to require code for special cases. DAVilla 19:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Templates for cmn and zh

Are you proposing that we change the language headers for all of these entries? Will you be doing that? --EncycloPetey 19:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought the language header was "Mandarin Chinese", from the last discussion I recall on it. Just "Mandarin"? Okay, I'm reverting... DAVilla 19:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Please correct me on Template talk:zh about the correct use. DAVilla 19:37, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually I ask because I'm not sure which one we intend to use. Although I'm working through the various languages templates (and Robert is checking them against headers), I'm not sure what the opinion is regarding various forms of "Chinese". I know there have been several discussions, but I'm uncertain whether the issue of what to official call the languages is settled. A-cai would likely be the best person to ask. My only concern is that the ISO templates, level 2 language headers, and names used in translation sections all match—regardless of what we choose to call them. --EncycloPetey 19:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I really do think "Mandarin Chinese" had the most support, but it was a long time ago and anyway I'm okay with "Mandarin", which was a close second if not tied. The problem with "Chinese" is that it is ambiguous as either the language family or specifically Mandarin. What we are actually using is an adjusted ISO list (or is our scheme and the ISO list consistent?) with 3-letter codes substituted for each dialect of Chinese. Neither Template:zh-min-nan nor Template:zh fit this scheme. They are provided for convenience. DAVilla 19:59, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, out of curiosity, what are the various templates {{Spanish}}, {{Mandarin}}, and the like used for? I know how we use the ISO language name templates, but I've never seen anyone use a lanugage template titled after the full name of a language. Are they intended for use with {{context}} and related templates? --EncycloPetey 19:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm building a foundation for {{language}} which I expect to use with {{t}}. I know {{language}} is resource expensive but I expect that a bot will be able to replace {t} with a less expensive and precisely correctly formatted alternative, {t+} or {t-} or {t!} as I've proposed. DAVilla 19:59, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally these were moved to Language:Spanish etc. DAVilla 14:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

t7 error

I am aware it doesn't provide an anchor, but this will only be used for languages which has no Wiktionary. That means probably less than 1 of 100 translations will have this code, and probably less than 1 of 10 of these words will have its own entry on enwikt, and probably less than 1 of 10 of the words which will have an entry, will have the entry in an article with so many languages that an anchor is even needed. This multiplies up to a single case every 10,000 translations. And only one of 100 articles that has the exact syntax {t7|-|word} will be in the need of an anchor at all. So I think the code should be changed back to keep the simpleness. For any option we will later use, we will make an enhanced template wich can be used for various options, bit imo t, t- and t+ should be the simplest possible for the task. (I noticed your change broke the syntax, and I don't understand what you mean by "see {{t7!}}" since the link is red-colored). Btw, are you at IRC? Then we could discuss some of the issues? ~ Dodde 09:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Not an error, a work in progress. The results should be the same now, except I'm not sure how you had displayed the case of an invalid language code. Is what I have okay? DAVilla 10:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand, I just kinda liked the t7-code as it was, since it was very little code in it and very effective, just like t7+ and t7- along with it, and nothing more was needed. When you totally changed the content of the code and added the language template I felt that maybe with a completely other option was a better way to present it. Regarding {{language}} I am not sure if it is suited for being used with a translation template at all. Personally I hope for that the extension [1] will be added for use in {{t}}. It will practically be very much less server intense than both calling the second set of language templates and using the language template you've been working on. Until then I think it is ok to use the second set of language templates, since the translations list has not grown that that large as they might be some time in the future... ~ Dodde 13:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Why do you say I completely changed the content of the code? {{language}} may be complicated but its implementation is not that far from what you were doing. It too relies on template arrays, it just does about twice as much error checking. All I did was replace your unchecked implementation with a more user-friendly version, using {{language}} instead of {{t-xx}} directly and {{langcode}} instead of the raw language code. The skeleton of your code is identical and the results for the correct uses are unchanged. DAVilla 15:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Language templates

With all due respect, stop modifying the language templates and roll back the ones you've changed.

These must be subst'able; that is their primary use; you can't add parser functions or anything outside the noinclude span other than the canonical language name. Robert Ullmann 14:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I've actually already stopped after doing just a handful to get feedback. The point was that they can still be substituted, e.g. {{subst:fa}} produced Persian when I typed it in here, despite the fact that the code of Template:fa at this point in time is:

{{#switch:{{{1|}}}|=[[Persian]]|en=Persian|FL|fa=فارسی|wiki=fa|scripts=1|script|script1=FAchar}}<noinclude>[[Category:Language templates|fa]]</noinclude>

So it would seem that yes, you can add other things outside the noinclude span without breaking them. But if there is a real objection I can move the code somewhere else. I certainly won't be touching the others any time soon. DAVilla 16:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

No, they cannot be substituted. Yes, it produces Persian. Have you looked at the page wikitext? (obviously not) Robert Ullmann 22:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yikes! How did I miss that? Okay... rolling back. DAVilla 05:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I will move these to the Language: pseudospace. DAVilla 05:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Please leave t and t- alone. Frankly, you don't know what you are doing.

You must fix {{context}} before doing anything else.

See Special/Wantedpages.

The kludge to use the lang param to prevent recursion is dreadfully poor engineering practice, and must be removed. The use of the language template must be removed, it and langcode are a disaster.

If you want to learn computer programming, the WM template language is a lousy place, and the live en.wikt far worse.

I would prefer to be polite, or at least mince words, but I do not see how. Please learn in a sandbox somewhere!

I like you and respect you, but I will not clean up after you! Best, Robert Ullmann 22:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Poor engineering practice... yes, I have to admit you're right. The Special:Wantedpages looks terrible. I think all of those must come from #ifexist: statements. You probably don't want to hear it from me, but {{context}} aside, that's a good bug for the software. And you're right, WM template language is a terrible place for programming. If you can call it that. Technically it isn't Turing complete anyway, what with all the restrictions on recursion and all.

So being right on all those counts, I wonder if you could humble me with what was the matter with {{t}}. DAVilla 06:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh crap, never mind. I found a bug in my code. DAVilla 06:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure you didn’t forget some? I’ll revert {{pap}} for you now, but please double-check (e.g. by looking at User:EncycloPetey/Languages). H. (talk) 14:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! I'd thought all the ones I did were complemented with a Language: entry, but I guess I never wrote Language:Papiamento. Strange. Okay, I'll have to triple-check now. DAVilla 15:07, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Wait, yes I did, but I misspelled it. Or is Language:Papiamentu the translation? DAVilla 15:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Label namespace?

We haven't got a Label namespace. See the dropdown list in Special:Allpages for all the namespaces that exist. SemperBlotto 15:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know. I'm trying to make context more elegant—simple and straightforward—and this is the idea I've come up with for the moment. Don't worry, I'm not going to create a lot of pages or put anything into effect before asking for opinions. DAVilla 15:56, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually this solution would be too difficult to maintain. I'm scrapping it and looking at simplification to context itself. DAVilla 08:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Why the changes to Wiktionary:Quotations?

I disagree with several of them. I have been been away for a few days, so excuse me asking, but has there been recent discussion to support your changes? Such things as the wikification of b.g.c. links, were inserted a few months back after (admitedly limited) discussion, and I don't think it is apropriate to alter a policy page and immediately remove useful content from entries to comply with your change, as you did, eg, at apotreptic, without at least a BP discussion, and these days probably a vote. --Enginear 13:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for bringing it up. I was reading some archive pages today and noticed Connel had made a similar complaint many months ago about my removal of Google book links, not that I hunt them down or anything. I will revert that and raise the issue in BP. DAVilla 14:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for an Admin

Hi, you are always doing awesome work so I thought I'd make this request to you. Can you set up Template:comparative of to automatically categorize the words as [[{{{lang}}} comparatives]], or Category:English comparatives when "lang" is unspecified? I would do it, but the template is protected. Thanks so much, you rock!!! :D Language Lover 19:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Would this be in addition to [[Category:{{{lang|}}} {{{POS|}}} comparative forms]]? DAVilla 19:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, I didn't even notice that. What I would do is replace this:

• {{#if:{{{lang|}}}|[[Category:{{{lang|}}} {{{POS|}}} comparative forms]]}}</includeonly>

with this:

• {{#if:{{{lang|}}}|[[Category:{{{lang|}}} {{{POS|}}} comparative forms]]|[[Category:English comparatives]]}}</includeonly>

Actually, it looks like there's a possible issue: I created Category:English comparatives without know about the (not even existent) category Category:English comparative forms which the template currently assumes. Right now that (nonexistent) category has a whopping 2 entries, because noone ever actually enters "lang=English" when making an English comparative. The problem is that I'm not sure how extensively other languages have used this family of categories. I suppose the safest thing to do (although possibly not the least work) would be to change the above code to

• {{#if:{{{lang|}}}|[[Category:{{{lang|}}} {{{POS|}}} comparative forms]]|[[Category:English {{{POS|}}} comparative forms]]}}</includeonly>

Actually, I'm not even sure what that "POS" variable is, or why it should be there. Maybe it shouldn't? Language Lover 19:25, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, you just want English as a default. Done. Let me know if the category name needs to be changed as well, "comparatives" versus "comparative forms". I don't know what the standard is. DAVilla 19:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

POS takes adjective or adverb I think. Let me know how to categorize those as well. DAVilla 19:33, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I figured it out. POS isn't supposed to be blank, but I made it default to "adjective" now. DAVilla 19:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Oooh, good, you figured out an even shorter way to do it. I hadn't realized that {{{lang|English}}} had the property it does. Now we just need to pull it out of the no-longer-needed "if:", that is to say, change

• {{#if:{{{lang|}}}|[[Category:{{{lang|Enlgish}}} {{{POS|adjective}}} comparative forms]]}}</includeonly>

to

• [[Category:{{{lang|Enlgish}}} {{{POS|adjective}}} comparative forms]]</includeonly>

Thanks, I've learned something new about variables thanks to you :-) Language Lover

Okay, no prob. You're mighty appreciative. Good thing to be if you're hanging around this place.

Let me know if there are any problems. DAVilla 19:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Ack, forgive me, my fault, obviously "Enlgish" should be "English". Hehe... *Language Lover splatters into a thousand pieces as he runs headfirst into a wall*  :-) Thanks for your great patience!!!! Language Lover 20:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

green-collar

Hi,

I was just wondering why you moved the Usenet cite into a separate "Quotations" section at green-collar?

—Ruakh_TALK 20:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't sure that it fit that definition. It probably belongs there, as it certainly wouldn't fit the first, but from the context it's not at all clear to me what he means by "green". Nothing in the post had absolutely anything to do with agriculture. Until the term is verified for that sense, I think it would be better to leave it there. DAVilla 20:34, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

cattag to context

Hi, do you think AutoFormat should be routinely replacing this if it is editing an entry? Robert Ullmann 15:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I've done this, but I don't think it will necessarily find too many. This being the wikt, the first one it found was prick. Robert Ullmann 22:33, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

context and idiomatic

Think you'd like to look at User Talk:Robert Ullmann#Idiom template Robert Ullmann 00:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested entries

Hi there. It is my understanding that Wiktionary:Requested articles:English (and the others) is for our users to request the addition of words that they want to know the meaning of. To that end, I patroll it at least once a day and try to satisfy as many as I can. The addition of a mass of derived terms from "time" does not make this any easier. I have already said that I will try to add definitions for these when I have time, but I cannot do everything at once. Could you please do me a favour and remove them. Cheers. SemperBlotto 08:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for restoring the newer user requests before I got around to it. DAVilla 12:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Wish Granted...

"what they need is a protologism for realizing you've made a mistake after hitting send in the long time it takes Internet Explorer to think about your request before it does jack..."

intregret: [portmanteau interim + regret, parallelling internet] — Joe Webster 23:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Or we could broaden the definition of the sniglet ignosecond; the moment between the time you push the car door and it closes, at which point you realize your keys are still inside. --EncycloPetey 03:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

On my computer it's more like an ignominute. DAVilla 13:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

How about snoozeflash? — Joe Webster 20:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

context/modifier

Hi, was the second one meant to be "coarse" (as in coarse slang) instead of "course"? Robert Ullmann 13:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, um, I knew that. Edited, and the job queue is at 4K. Fortunately {{context2}} handles these a little differently. DAVilla 15:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Good. I wondered what course was supposed to be until I tripped over coarse slang a few minutes later ;-). You might have a look at User Talk:AutoFormat#Another feature? Robert Ullmann 15:22, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

{{premature}}

Good. I was thinking about something like this—not the template, but some notice that the vote wasn't open yet— whilst saving pages in order, when to my intense frustration (which I think I've expressed ;-) EP voted before I had a chance to get anyone to look at it. I had thought with a 30 day vote people might take a little time? Sheesh.

I'll use this on the separate votes to be set up, so there can be some comment and editing before opened. Thanks! Robert Ullmann 15:35, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. There were a couple of other incidents that supported such an approach. The template is now linked from all new votes. DAVilla 19:16, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

In re “Proving a point”

Thanks for your message. I’ve replied to you on my talk page. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 21:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Langcode:zh

Surely you meant Template:langcode:zh, instead, right? --Connel MacKenzie 01:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe that or Template:lang:zh yes, sound much more reasonable. DAVilla 01:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2007-06/Level of basic headings

Argh! I hate to say it, but I think the way that vote is laid out is more confusing than some of the discussion on the subject. Take a look at these comments I made to Robert sometime back about how to split up the issues he was trying to cover with hos AF vote. The current vote draft covers two of these issues at once, which I think is a mistake. --EncycloPetey 16:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've simplified that proposed vote a lot, and I've started a new vote on the top-level structure which will narrow the playing field a little. DAVilla 17:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I think this is much easier to understand and vote on. And thanks for starting this vote. I've been meaning to do so for this issue for some time but have had too many different projects vying for my attention. --EncycloPetey 18:12, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Problem with templates you've been editing

There are problems with context templates such as {{archaic}} and {{pejorative}} that call {{context/cat}} and/or {{context/categorize}}, which you were editing early this morning (UK time), see frog, beef and concordance for examples. Please see the discussion at Wiktionary:Grease pit#Another buggy template about this. Thryduulf 18:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

{{law}} and material fact

Did you do this? Could you be kind enough to fix it, please? --Connel MacKenzie 18:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Is this okay? You can move {{legal}} back to {{law}} if you disagree with the move, or you can edit the label at Template:legal to say "law", even though that's a "name mismatch". DAVilla 18:27, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a redundant complaint, as with the previous section. The [[Category:|...]] stuff is still appearing. That is my only complaint - I don't care if it says "law" or "legal", per se. --Connel MacKenzie 20:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh crap. Right, okay. I have commented out the buggy code again, and this time I do not intend to fix it. It is functionality that is already available now, though indirectly, and already included (without the bug) in {{categorize}} to be implemented by a new version of context (which is already written). So with changes taking so long to propogate, it's just not worth the headache, and I'm sorry for having messed up the appearance of the site today. DAVilla 20:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious about the chnge from (law) to (legal). We have a category for Law; wouldn't a match between context and category be preferable? Particularly since the change has unfortunate and slightly comic effects on pages like murder and abduction, where the head of the definition line now says "legal". --EncycloPetey 20:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Funny. Okay, I've left the label at {{legal}}, but it once again reads law. DAVilla 21:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't edit my votes

Do not ever edit another person's vote. If you do this again, I will move to De-sysop. I am pissed off that you would do this. --EncycloPetey 19:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

If it softens anything, I hope you know that I would really like to restart the vote based on input from yourself and others, to allow for options that you would agree to. But as to the issue at hand, of editing votes by indenting and by removing disallowed images, I'm sorry that I have been in the practice of regulating votes per the instructions, when I suppose that's really a job for whoever closes it. I have had votes on Meta completely struck by such action, comment and all, and that done after the fact, meaning there was no chance for me to make the simple correction necessary to have it counted. So in truth I didn't realize that such practice was objectionable. I do appreciate that you tell me when I've crossed the line.

If this vote were to run to completion, and if I were closing the vote, I would of course count your objection. Leaving it as you wrote it makes that much more clear if someone else were closing it, not to mention that my comment did not mention such edit. So even besides principle, I was entirely in the wrong to edit, and I understand how you're so upset. Of course, I would advise you not to vote as you did, since another admin might look at the instructions, and look at your vote, and not count any of it. But advice is different from regulation, and I will refrain from making such changes until a policy is established, a policy which will, upon reflection, more than likely not allow for that kind of action. DAVilla 20:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I am glad to hear your concilliatory remarks. Frankly, we haven't used voting all that often or heavily before last April, so the specifics of how to run votes are sometimes a bit hazy. I think the distinction between approve, oppose, and abstain much be considerd and maintained whenever a vote is to be held. The approval voting system really works best when one is running a straw poll for the purpose of narrowing down voting options, with the express understanding that a second vote will follow.

I have independently studied the mathematics of voting systems to some degree, and it is a well-known and provable fact that a perfect voting system (entailing what you'd pretty much expect about fairness and all) is impossible to acheive. There will always be some sort of bias.

I like approval voting primarily because of its transparency. The procedure is extremely simple in comparison to ranking systems, for instance, and calculation of the vote is also very clear, although I have to say that allowing negative votes greatly obscures this. Also it does not, as you suggest, require a run-off vote if there is a sufficient and flexible time frame, as I will explain. Here are some aspects of approval voting, spun pursuasively:

Monotonicity: Voting for an option never reduces that option's chance of winning. There is no reason for a voter to tactically vote for an option without voting for all options preferred to it. So the only strategical considerations in our case are whether to withdraw support from the least preferred option(s), as per my comment on your Eymology and Pronunciation vote.

Condorcet criterion: An option which beats every other option in pairwise contest should win. Approval voting does not meet this criterion, unfortunately, but that result relies on (1) incomplete information on how others vote, and (2) allowing a plurality as a winner, rather than requiring a majority. Our style of voting and our requirement for concensus cancel both of those out. In fact, if participants vote strategically there is a higher probability that the Condorcet winner will be elected! That is to say, by refusing to make tactical choices in your vote, you are actually promoting a compromise option.

Assume that participants vote strategically, and suppose A is a winning option over B. If those who chose both A and B actually prefer B, then they will change their votes to diminish the popularity of A (and of any options not preferable to B). If those who selected neither A nor B prefer B over A, and it is clear that none of their preferences over B can win, then they will strategically vote for B as well. Essentially, when the ballot is not secret and votes can be changed, a run-off vote is being held dynamically. Unfortunately, most analyses of voting systems concern secret ballots and, for unranked systems such as approval voting, perceived popularity. However, I'm arguing that approval voting is one system where openness of the vote overcomes its weaknesses. Because strategic voting is beneficial to both the individuals and to the outcome, and because voting strategically demonstrates your preferences, approval voting is transparent not only in the format of the vote but in its actual execution. If everyone has strong preferences, then the vote itself will fail, so voters are encouraged to compromise a little by lowering their tolerances. When tolerances are lowered all choices above a threshold will be selected, so witholding votes initially does not deter others from making those selections as second preferences. And there are no "mind games" where voting for an option you don't prefer might trick others into not voting for it. If anything you would just prolong the vote by withdrawing near the end and having someone else step in to take your place. That's what I meant about sufficient time and flexiblility for close votes.

Independence of irrelevant alternatives: Approval voting is immune to cloning, which means adding options similar to a winner will not dilute it. If one option can beat out the other weaker ones, duplicating that option with a minor variation may result in the clone leading, but it will not result in one of the weaker options winning out. This is important in our case since there is no clear process in composing votes, which is an aspect of voting that is easily overlooked.

Often the format of the vote and the options provided can have a greater effect on the outcome than the voters' preferences. One migitgating factor is to allow more options in an approval vote, as diversity will only aid in more narrowly defining the best option, provided the numer of options do not overwhelm the voters. The concensus requirement is another way to mitigate this. For instance, while you might feel good about vetoing every option on a ballot you dislike, the truth is that abstaining from the vote, which is counted as a blank ballot, accomplishes the exact same thing. And because of the majority proviso, an abstention can be very powerful. DAVilla 00:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I haven't quite got my head wrapped around the issues involved in voting of Wikipedia boxes. That doens't mean I don't have a strong opinion and rationale for that opinion, I just haven't figured out what the specific separable component issues invloved are. It seems more complicated that a single vote or discussion, but I can't parse it into the components that might make the task simpler. --EncycloPetey 20:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

One way to split it up might be to ask if both articles and disambiguation pages can be listed in Wikipedia boxes, or if disambiguation pages are to be excluded, or if articles are to be preferred, or if disambiguation pages are to be preferred, or if articles are to be excluded. I'm not sure if the option to eliminate all Wikipedia boxes is necessary, as the second and last option in unison cover this case. DAVilla 00:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Admin

I certainly wouldn't object to being granted admin status here, if you feel that I have enough experience here to be trusted. I don't know everything yet, and I don't imagine I'd make much use of the tools immediately, but having them will enable me to gradually expand my role here. Thryduulf 20:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Best pet

Looking at Wiktionary:Votes/2007-07/Best pet demonstration, I cannot comprehend how you come to such a counter-intuitive interpretation of "oppose." Oppose. Opposition. I don't think that word means what you apparently think it means. --Connel MacKenzie 17:58, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I understand what they mean. What you don't understand is the mathematics. The way I have structured this vote is equivalent to what you had proposed. Instead of counting points as +1, 0, -1, they're counted as 2, 1, 0. Big wooping deal. It doesn't change the outcome! Alternatively they could have been counted as 1, ½, 0, which is the standard range for the expression of preference in such a social choice function, not the more intuitive ±1. The reason I chose [2, 0] is that it makes an automatic tally possible. Watch it work. Try to play within the rules. If then you decide you don't like it then at least you gave it a chance. You and EncycloPetey are exactly the two people I am trying to please. Approval voting has been working just fine up until this challenge. None of the votes that I started have pushed an idea, or if one did then it fell flat on its face. That's the nature of this very equitable voting system. This isn't for my own gain. What I'm doing is mediating. If you don't appreciate that then you're just going to wind up just frustrating the process. DAVilla 18:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Possessive forms exclusion WT:VOTE rewritten and restarted

I have rewritten and restarted the vote, having attempted to reword the proposal to address the issues that people have raised. You may want to reread the proposal and reconsider your vote. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 20:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Re your note about my note regarding this, I left a message on the talk page of everyone who had contributed to the template or template talk page without checking anything else (including whether they'd already commented on the proposal or not - e.g. I left a message on Connel's talk page, and he is most certainly aware of the vote!), partly to avoid any accusations of selective canvassing and partly because it was just easier to load all the pages in tabs and copy/paste the message in without thinking any further than that! Thryduulf 18:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

You suggested here that an exception in the proposal be made for the pronoun one’s. I’ve started a new section asking for reasons why such an exception ought to be made. Please give your reasons there. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 10:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Acronyms and initialisms

Regarding your last edit to Appendix:Glossary: Your definitions of acronym and initialism seem to exclude things like MCAT ['ɛm.kæt], LSAT ['ɛl.sæt], CSAP ['si.sæp], MDOT ['ɛm.dɑt], and so on, which I think are considered initialisms, and which I'm pretty sure are considered one or the other. —Ruakh_TALK 20:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting question. I pretty much just adapted those defintions directly from the category page when I redirected the link on {{initialism}}. If you can clarify it, then please do.

The boundaries in English seem really fuzzy to me, based on *spelling* more than anything else. Sould x-ray be considered an initialism? Is mic an abbreviation? The whole thing is just silly to me. DAVilla 20:20, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Cebuano

Cebuano is one of many languages spoken in the Philippines. It is not the same as Filipino/Tagalog. --EncycloPetey 06:57, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I meant is it the English name of the language? Anyway thanks, I'll update the page. DAVilla 07:00, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's the English name of the language. Wikipedia usually uses the English name ;) but I happen to know this myself personally (not that I can speak a word of the language, but I know the names of the major Philippine languages like Cebuano and Ilokano). --EncycloPetey 07:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2007-07/Sister project links

Honestly, I think that's overkill, and not likely to pass as a single package. I disagree with 3 and 6, at least, and some of those I don't disagree with, but think we should be leaving them to the individual, not making to many hard rules. Basically, I think we need an up or down (or neither) vote on the boxes, and then once we have that, we'll know whether we need to design layout guidelines for boxes or inline links. Dmcdevit·t 13:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Policy vote on brand names of products

Hi, I've started a policy vote at Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2007-07/Brand names of products. Since you participated in the Beer Parlor discussion, you may wish to vote on the proposal. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:01, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Category:English words spelled with diacritics

I'm not sure what happened here. You deleted this and now there are about 200 red links to this in articles. Were you planning on doing something more, to finish whatever you were doing? :-) Dmcdevit·t 11:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion was to move Category:English words spelled with diacritics or ligatures there to preserve the history. Right now it's a redirect, which is not a workable solution for categories. DAVilla 19:10, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, categories can't be moved, but there is no need. Just copy the content and say the old category name and authors in the edit summary for GFDL purposes. The only real task in moving categories is that all the links need to be changed. A bot can be used to do that. You want everything linked there to go to Category:English words spelled with diacritics instead? Dmcdevit·t 23:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

No, don't relink anything. The category name that I deleted is correct. I just wanted to replace it, but was unable to move the other category. And to preserve the history, there is a need in this case. Unless it's okay to simply state it in an edit summary, and then delete the unused page? DAVilla 23:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Right. GFDL requires attribution. That's why we move the history, but where it is not technically possible, you can just state it. The edit summary works best. Otherwise, our mirrors, and everyone using our content without Special:Import would be in violation of our copyright! And we want them to use our content. Dmcdevit·t 23:14, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

But category pages themselves can move, preserving all history? The move simply leaves behind all the category members. It also moves the talk page with it (normally.) Something really messed up happened here. Anyone mind if I restore it and move/merge/restore current version there? --Connel MacKenzie 03:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Such a move is what I was hoping for. I was trying to clean it up per BD's comments, but I don't feel I've contributed anything. DAVilla 07:13, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Strange move

Did you really move {{m}} to {{m.}}? Just to invalidate all the documentation? Or to leave unprotected redirects behind? Seriously, what were you thinking? The rendered text has no period. The redirects should be the other way around. --Connel MacKenzie 03:09, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, for consistency with the other gender and number templates that I'd moved. I'm not interested in hearing the problem with {{mpl}} etc. discussed for a third time.

The documentation isn't invalid, it just needs to be updated. And the template does have a period, you just can't see it.

Thanks for pointing out the issue with protection. I'm somewhat surprised the redirects aren't automatically protected. DAVilla 07:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Except that {{m.}} is incorrect... --Connel MacKenzie 19:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't care where the template is. I've moved it back. Just leave the redirect from {{m.}} to {{m}} since it corresponds with {{m.pl.}} et al. DAVilla 19:08, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

COW again

Having the red-links was quite superior to having the misleading bluelinked COW stubs. Could you rethink this please, or fill the next ten weeks (or so) out? --Connel MacKenzie 19:05, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll fill them. But you're going to have problems when the year is up, unless you want to recycle all the old entries, or outright delete the pages to show your red links. DAVilla 19:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. No, until someone complains that the ones in the list are all glistening, clean, perfect entries, those ones do need another pass from the collective minds. Recycling them is intended. But until someone decides they want to maintain the COW lists, promote the COW lists and cheerlead the COW progress, no one is in any real danger of seeing a COW entry that they've already cleaned up, particularly when it is only listed near the top of WT:TR (which only newcomers read) and a tiny handful of user pages. When the time comes, that someone actually does see some repeats, perhaps they'll sign up on WT:DW for it (possibly doing a better job of maintaining it, than any of us could manage.) By then, the category of candidates from {{COW}} should have quite a few entries they can use. Who knows, maybe they'll even devise a system of "rating" an entry, so they have objective criteria to remove something from the COW. Replacing them with newer {{COW}} nominations (oldest first) should be a piece of cake. --Connel MacKenzie 05:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:vote-sysop

I object to your recent change to this. The introduction text does not match the recommended duration, and the duration your recommend doesn't seem exactly reasonable. I plan to update and synchronize the various templates. I'm not sure when the ambiguity was introduced, but I know all votes I started has "23:59 GMT" or "23:59 UTC", as they all are supposed to. The disappearance of related discussions is cause for some alarm. --Connel MacKenzie 00:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I see now Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2007-07/User:Thryduulf. The seven days was the Wikipedia convention, was it not? (I think now, they round-up to about 8 days.) Does EP have any compelling reason to drag it out longer? He must not recall that the waiting during that time-frame is worse than being turned down outright. --Connel MacKenzie 01:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that is the relevant discussion, although I didn't comment about the updates to the template. It's mostly guesswork, but I don't want to underestimate the timeframe. We've had at least one contested policy vote, partially on those grounds. I will drop the duration further and adjust the introductory text, and you can override that if you dislike it. Also, if you're sure you'd like the time added to {{today plus}}, I can do that no problem. I submit that it makes sense to sign a statement that starts "I hereby nominate". DAVilla 01:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually the instructions themselves are a bit out of date. I might consider moving that to a help page. DAVilla 01:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The advised time on WT:VOTE for a vote has always been for a recommended 30 days, though I agree that is a bit long for sysop. Looking at past votes, they've run for anywhere from 7 to 28 days (the most recent archived one started by Connel ran for 14 days). I do think we should run a bit longer than Wikipedia, since we don't have as large a voting population here. Perhaps 14 or 21 days? I wouldn't run it for any less than two weeks. --EncycloPetey 02:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, as I indicated I'd do elsewhere as well as here, I've synchronized (and updated) them all. Please give them your eyeballs to make sure I did nothing untoward. Missing the "23:59 UTC" seems to have been a significant problem. Well, they'd all gotten quite out of date. OK now? --Connel MacKenzie 04:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

• For B'crat, the votes were 30 days (I can't imagine anyone thinking that to be unreasonable. For checkUser, see Wiktionary talk:CheckUsers - the main votes were 30 days, even though I (and others) thought it would linger on much longer. Bots were a constant struggle; the importance of being responsibly responsive is balanced out by stretching it out a full week, even though most cases are very clear after the first day. Sysops I don't think should be tortured for two full weeks, but a one-week window does seem pretty small.

• With 63 users contributing more than a hundred edits per month, over 230 contributors editing ten or more times per month, we really ought to have a lot more people participating in the votes. http://stats.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm. The under-representation is rather appalling. Every 100 edits, check a javascript cookie, popup a window? "Hey! You. Yeah you. You haven't voted on anything in 90 days. Until you do, you can no longer edit pages here." (The message, I suppose, shouldn't prevent them from actually editing...just nag them.) Hmmm. That would still be less annoying than the boardvote notices that randomly reposition the screen layout. --Connel MacKenzie 04:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I find discussion very hard to follow unless I'm on a really good connection. It's something you don't realize until your connection speed goes south. Seriously, try it for yourself. DAVilla 10:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

tests

Must you run tests on things that occur 100's of thousands of times in the wikt, sending the job queue through the [expletive deleted] roof? Why do you mess around like this?

The test is simple: go to the sandbox, and add

{{#ifexist:User:DAVilla|a|b}}

then go back to your user page, and click on "What links here". You will see the sandbox. Answer: #ifexist explicitly adds to the link table. So you didn't need to go force the server to re-parse 100K pages for a change to navline that you (then) know will not work, or a change to wikipedia that will tell you nothing. Robert Ullmann 09:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Well there you have it then. Of course you're not black box testing, you're basing your inference partly on what you know happens under the hood. Even so, a single link table isn't such a far-fetched assumption, is it? And anyways it's pretty stupid of me to add the test to {{wikipedia}} rather than {{nav}} which is already dirty. So there you have it. Stupid is as stupid does.

By the way, {{wikipedia}} has been edited, on separate occasions, 7 times this year, and {{nav}} twice as many times, not counting my edits. If shooting the job queue through the expletive roof gives headaches or costs big money, then there needs to be a weight of importance, perhaps based on the protection level. Stupid edits aside. DAVilla 10:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem started with the merger of two tables into one single linktable, as Connel noted earlier in the discussions. {wikipedia} and {nav} are both protected, just as you say. There isn't any problem with adding lots of stuff to the job queue if it is accomplishing something. Robert Ullmann 10:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I keep hearing my ears ringing. Ah. Well, I think we may want to start actively downplaying "job-queue" arguments. It is highly annoying, but temporary (if one can consider a couple days "temporary.") I noticed yesterday that my template protections seemed to be adding to the job queue as well. (Perhaps it was coincidence...I wasn't watching for other NS:10 edits.) Anyway, yes the job-queue occasionally causes real problems, but most of the time a moderate backlog (less than 1 million) isn't of much concern...even if it takes a day to clear. Right now, while everyone's attention is drawn to it, it isn't a good idea to make trivial (nor experimental) edits to widely used templates. --Connel MacKenzie 22:04, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Script templates

Note I'm not trying to be nasty, just trying to get you to slow down... And you are making mistakes: redirecting ZHchar to Hant (because it is the more inclusive? no, it isn't), is wrong: ZHchar would be Hani. Robert Ullmann 10:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

And JAchar corresponds to Japn, not Hrkt, it is used for kanji+kana. Robert Ullmann 11:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay thanks. DAVilla 11:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Please follow that discussion in WT:GP. That choice as a naming convention has several flaws. --Connel MacKenzie 22:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, DAVilla. When you standardized the names of the script templates, you left some of them (e.g. {{KUchar}}) with RFD's, but I don't see any corresponding entries in WT:RFDO. Do you still wish them to be RFDs? Rod (A. Smith) 03:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Template:templates

Which says that it shouldn't be in noinclude tags so that it can categorize templates that call it?

Um, but inclusion isn't confined to the Template: namespace, so using it that way ends up including it in every entry in the wikt, quite uselessly.

It must always be wrapped in noinclude tags if it is to be used! Robert Ullmann 16:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

There was a time when {{USslang}} and friends were legitimate label templates. The intention was to make this automatically count as a regional label, given the {{templates|regional}} call in {{US}}. Since that behavior has died, and since it's no longer necessary to track use of {{language}} since it's biting the dust, there is absolutely no need for this template anymore. DAVilla 00:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Not worried

Thanks, but I'm not actually phased by that user's rantings. I simply wanted to document this user's behavior, so that if someone is contacted about future blocks and issues, all the information will be linked from a single location for reference. --EncycloPetey 00:51, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Surely you (both) mean faze? ;-) Robert Ullmann

Get back to readin ur collage dikshunery and big hevy books, dorkus! DAVilla 17:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems unwise...

due to my lack of knowledge about wiki* and this project in general. And isn't there some minimum term of being active, too? (And I'm not even a sysop.) However, since you are on right now, do you have access to irc? I am in the #wiktionary channel atm. ArielGlenn

Thanks. It's easier for me to be calm about some things because I don't have a long history of involvement with this project, and therefore nor the same level of emotional investment as a lot of folks here. And, to put it in very plain language, in the dispute between User:Connel MacKenzie and User:Doremítzwr, Connel is going to feel much more strongly about what he perceives to be bad faith activity, because he's seen it all before *and* has put a ton of energy and work into this project.

I should be up front about my views too; I think Doremítzwr wants to promote (in a prescriptivist way?) the use of some rare -- sometimes nonexistent -- English forms, and when that was not accepted on Wikipedia, this was the next venue. (I say this after rereading some of the discussions and looking at his Wikipedia interactions.) Anyways, hopefully we do not all have to be admins in order to figure out some solution to this. ArielGlenn 08:30, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

You have persistence I see :-) I will think about this for a little. Please do not take any action right now. I am in the middle of moving (quite literally, my friends with the truck are due here in five minutes) so as soon as that calms down I'll try to give you an answer. ArielGlenn 15:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, great. No rush. DAVilla 15:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, now installed more or less at my new place, and I can find almost all of my belongings... I wonder what people will think of my level of activity here (not much participation for the last while). But go ahead if you think it's worth it. ArielGlenn 08:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Survey of new entry forms

I didn't really want to clog up the BP with my Latin nūgae, so...

I keep text files of templates for my inflected forms, allowing me to speed up creating. After the "a#Latin|a" stuff is properly substituted away, I can more or less copy and paste the lines into both the entry and edit summary. The following are for first declension, non-Greek nouns:

# {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|voc|s}}

'''ā''' {{f}}
# {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|abl|s}}

==Latin== ===Noun=== '''ae''' {{f}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|gen|s}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|dat|s}}
# {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|nom|p}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|voc|p}} [[category:Latin noun forms]]

==Latin== ===Noun=== '''am''' {{f}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|acc|s}} [[category:Latin noun forms]]

==Latin== ===Noun=== '''ārum''' {{f}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|gen|p}} [[category:Latin noun forms]]

==Latin== ===Noun=== '''īs''' {{f}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|dat|p}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|abl|p}}
[[category:Latin noun forms]]

==Latin== ===Noun=== '''ās''' {{f}} # {{inflection of|a#Latin|a|acc|p}} [[category:Latin noun forms]]

I'm not sure if that was what you were looking for, but I hope it may have helped! Medellia 14:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That's great, thanks! DAVilla 14:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Admin

Thanks for considering. It would definitely be great to have the possibility to do some more stuff, like editing protected pages, and I think that I am worth that trust. So accept, yes, but let me say that I try to reduce my time here, so please do not expect too much from me. Maybe could you indicate whether there are special expectancies? I might want to take care of one of the open tasks at WT:DW, particularly those related to translations, but only a minor one. H. (talk) 16:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

CheckUser

Hiya, thanks for thinking of me Dav, but I'm not really sure what it is. What is a Checkuser exactly? Do we have a page about it somewhere? Widsith 08:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks but I'll say no. Personally I think users should have the right to create "sockpuppets" if they want to and I've never been entirely sure why it's frowned upon. Obviously I support any attempt to block disruptive users, whether they are socks or not. Also I'm not sure I'm comfortable looking into people's details like that. But why not nominate yourself? The community trusts you; I'd certainly vote for you. Widsith 09:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I too would vote for you for checkuser if you want to take on the role. Thryduulf 13:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, but not at this time. DAVilla 13:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

E flat major and such

Hi, I recently tried to find out the official spelling for chords and tonalities in my mothertongue (Dutch) and had to resort to asking the Taalunie (the intergovernmental body that regulates spelling) about it. Apparently it is es-groot, es-mineur or es grote terts, dont ask me why the hyphens are missing in the latter.. Anyway I asked both a professional music teacher and a professional English teacher (at NCSU) who hold a degree in voicehere in Raleigh about what it is in English and that created the same problem: you can find just about any spelling.. In the end one of my friends came up with the book she had learned it from in which it was specifically stated that it is E flat major: capital,lower case, lower case no hyphens. If you wish I can ask her to provide a reference but you may have some of your own? Is there a body of clear authority on this point? As silly as our Taalunie can sometimes decide to spel things, at least we have such a thing. nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf

In skimming around, the serious reference works seem to prefer E flat major, but such notable sources as the Kennedy Center calendar use E-flat major. Most of the cases where "flat" or "major" are capitalized seem to be when the entire title of a work or article re a word is in Title Case. I'd say the entry should be at E flat major with the hyphenated form as an alternate. Robert Ullmann 13:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Robert, that means my references towards en. pages on nl. will follow that convention. nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf

{{fr-def-verbform}}

You seem not to have understood what the template does. It takes 3 parameters (the verb infinitive form, the ending and the conjugation) and return the proper line (or lines) for any conjugated form of a verb of the French 1st or second conjugation. Creating separate forms is simply preposterous when this was specifically conceived to supercede them all. Maybe it's just me, but that category contains well over 200 templates for finnish alone (which could have been combined in a fashion similar to what I did). See also {{it-verb-forms}}. This is what templates are intended for: tedious repeated bits of text, so I fail to see any logical reason to create 80 templates when the same task can be carried by a single one. Circeus 17:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The Finnish templates I have just asked about. As I said, they're not supposed to be language-specific, so we will probably end up dropping the fi- prefix from their titles. {{it-verb-forms}} is interesting, and a much more compact version of what you have. I wonder if it could be made substitutable? This will require more thought. DAVilla 21:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

No template using parserfunctions can be made to substitute in the current system (There's a bug filled for it, too). I have to say i fail to understand how (compared to my work anyway) such a monstrosity as {{fi-demonstrative partitive plural of}} is usable when it's almost longer than the text it aims to replace.

By the way, just where does it say that "'form of' templates are not language specific"?? Circeus 23:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

It says it nowhere, which is a problem. They need to be worked over. Your template is kind of bulky, but it provides a convenience that can't be overlooked. Another convenience that templates can provide is automatic categorization. But convenience is not the only issue. For instance, the problem of using {{form of}} directly in pages is that it eliminates the uniformity. Also, having the text "demonstrative partitive plural of" in the code makes it patently clear to new users where exactly it is that "demonstrative partitive plural of" on the page originates. In the absence of any scheme such as the one you've developed, or the ones for French and Italian verb forms, that's also the most memorable name, despite its length. Altogether, there's a strong case for using {{demonstrative partitive plural of|root|lang=fi}}. DAVilla 00:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I made a suggestion of using abbreviations for these templates at WT:RFDO#Finnish categories gone wild. Once we address the mess of all the fi- and sv- form-of templates, then we can address how to standardize more useful templates like the one you made. Does the documented use of your template correspond with {{it-verb-forms}}? It's easier if all languages work pretty much the same way. DAVilla 05:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Nope, the two templates were formulated differently. Mine returns the proper verb form or forms according to the ending. The Italian version can only return one line and one form (although I'm not sure whether there are homographs in Italian conjugations) according to the abbreviated forms of the person, number and tense. The Italian form, I agree can be generalized easily for many languages, but the French form also has advantages, because the Italian can't account for identical forms in the same tense (3rd and 1st singular, or 2nd and 1st singular, both of which are common in French, or 1st and 3rd plural, common in German), which should be written in one line, but require 2 with the Italian version (but not {{form of}}).

On a different topic, maybe they should be differently titled. Something like "verb form of fr" (or vice versa)? Circeus 16:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I started a discussion at the Grease Pit about that. Circeus 16:54, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks! And sorry to drag you into this. Another user who is peripherally involved with these is \Mike for Swedish. I don't know much about the language implications, so I can't contribute a whole lot to these. I do know, however, that the #'s are not supposed to be in the template. That's a convention we have here. I'm sure you can still do a lot of what you want with the template, but you might have to rethink it. Maybe have three versions (appending a 2 or a 3) for each of three definition lines.

Also, I can tell you're a programmer, and if I can give you some counter-intuitive advice, strip out the error-checking. It took me some time to accept that error states are self-evident, and anyways it simplifies the code, which is important for maintenance purposes and because it's difficult to document well. DAVilla 17:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not a programmer by any definition (even though I have some ability with the prserfnctions). It's a relict of being used to seeing these on some templates I work with in Wikipedia.

I had altered the original version so that the template still requires an initial #, but if I must strip it down to one line, then I might as well just make a quick'n'dirty adaptation of the Italian template (and then replace every single existing use to the new format, because they are utterly incompatible >__<). Circeus 17:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

When I made the template fully substitutable, I broke the transclusion. Since AutoWikiBrowser require authorization on wiktionary, do you think you could take a couple minutes to do the 16 or so substitutions now necessary? Circeus 19:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like someone already got them. DAVilla 14:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

thanks for the welcome

I seldom come here and I am usually too lazy to login.. sorry nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf

Admin

Thanks for the suggestion - I have only the haziest idea (absorbed sideways from other's conversations) of what might be involved. My attendance here is spasmodic (may be daily for weeks on end - followed by irregular dips in for more weeks). Is there somewhere where I could find a brief description for what might be involved ? Speaking globally - this really is a Sysiphean (sp?) task - I never finish anything properly - get sidetracked onto a red-herring which takes me weeks down a side alley ... so I should be willing to do more, but it might be irregular! cheers —Saltmarsh 14:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation and yes, and thanks for the intended nomination —Saltmarsh 14:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

IRC

Brion only notices talk page changes when we ask him to check, on IRC. You should have an "irc" link to the right of "log out" - you can try there. It should work in any browser. --Connel MacKenzie 16:26, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Keeping notes as an IRC newcomer may help for documenting WT:IRC. --Connel MacKenzie 19:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm new to that channel, but I'm not new to IRC. I'm just not a fan of messaging etc. DAVilla 16:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

WT:VOTE

What the **** was this for? Just to confuse people starting new votes?

C'mon! I know you've started votes before, and followed the instructions, editing the proper SECTION of the page before. If you are going to rearrange stuff, fix all the links that point to it!

Yes, it's brittle. That's why we take extra care with maintenance, right? Are we trying to make voting (and starting votes) easy, or incomprehensible? We currently have too many "barriers to entry" with regard to the voting process, but that is a reason to simplify further, not a reason to make it more obtuse!

And really, what was it for? I don't see extended discussion on the talk page about it. Actually, I do see other people discussing just how problematic doing something like that would be.

The whole page is a complete mess right now. WTF are people supposed to glean from "recently closed votes" anyhow? The archive section at the bottom worked enormously better for that. The only problem was that people were not diligent about moving their closed votes. Having the mess atop the page doesn't encourage people to move them off any faster...it only discourages proper closing, as people don't want to add further to the mess!

--Connel MacKenzie 21:18, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding the "recently closed votes" isn't a good idea: they should just go on the "timeline" page (which is better than a section all the way down at the bottom.) Just leave "new votes" as section #2? Every time someone tries to "improve" this, the break the links and as Connel says, makes things harder. Robert Ullmann 12:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Different point: please don't combine nominations on one vote page; it makes things much harder, not easier. (There's also an issue you haven't thought of: with one page, if I vote for one of the candidates, I am someone pointedly not voting for the others. With separate pages, I might have just looked at this candidate and not others. If we end up with too many people with 25 votes for CU, that is hardly a crisis ;-) Robert Ullmann 12:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

tlo-pit

Oh I seee. Sorry! I didn't quite know how to word it, and what to use. Thanks for the help. Jakeybean 13:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Ahh... the only problem is, I don't know the present tense of the verb, strangely. What do you think I should do? Jakeybean 14:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay :) no, no these are my own research. Things I've noted down, and written down over time. Jakeybean 14:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

L4 sequence vote

Why did you add {premature} in? I'd just removed it. Robert Ullmann 15:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

See my talk page. Robert Ullmann 15:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

But then you went on making substantive edits and invalidating all of the votes? What are you thinking? Votes are on exact text. Change a punctuation mark and you start over. That's why I want you to write a coherent description of the pronunciation and etymology headers you think we should use. When you "add" an option, you invalidate the whole process. Robert Ullmann 00:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Tidying

Would you mind not changing {{top}} to {{trans-top}} without also providing a gloss, as per your edit to General American? That had only one definition. Of course, if there are several definitions, it sould be split into tables, which you don't have to bother with every time you see it. But please try to avoid growing Category:Translation table header lacks gloss.

(Also, FYI there has been a push away from using {{wikipedia}} in favor of inline links. Although it isn't policy yet, moving the box around may be inconsequential.) DAVilla 05:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

By in-line do you mean {{pedialite}}? I'm in favour of that myself. I'll take your other points into consideration too. Regards. --Williamsayers79 18:12, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Your note

Thank you for the warning, although I don't believe the whitespace had anything to do with the subsequent problems. I removed a conditional statement at the request of another editor because it was producing unexpected behavior. Unfortunately, it appears that the conditional in question had another, undocumented purpose which just so happened to break a large number of templates. A discussion was held on IRC in regards to this and at the time it was decided that the problem could be fixed other than through reverting the template and so it was left as was. —Leftmostcat 05:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Orthography of mentioned words

Hi, DAVilla. In this comment, you said, “It looks like we'll need different css classes for form-of definitions, which should normally be boldfaced, and other mentions, which should normally be italicized.” My impression is that you said that because you believe that the decision about formatting “form of” definitions differs from existing conventions. Based on that impression (and on my understanding that there really is no convention elsewhere), I was not led to believe that you specifically want the style of mentions to differ based on location.

If you actually would prefer the style of mentions to differ based on location, or if you think somebody else specifically would prefer such distinction, please let me know. Thanks for your help so far and thank you in advance for any additional feedback you might provide. Rod (A. Smith) 18:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

If you look at Wiktionary:Etymology you will see italicized Roman text. While it's unclear what style should apply to English words in the etymology, and while usage notes are even less clear, in practice italics is used almost universally for at least foreign words in Roman script in the etymology. As you know, Roman roots in definitions should be boldfaced by default. Therefore there are already at least two conventions for mention. DAVilla 01:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks for the pointer. I had been applying italics to roman script terms mentioned in etymologies, but as this edit shows, not all editors appear to agree with that draft, perhaps because it was written before the “form of” style vote. Do you personally prefer to keep the style for mentions in the etymology different from that in definitions? Rod (A. Smith) 01:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally? Yes. But I say that believing I'm not the only one. In fact it could already be a strong majority with that opinion. I'm not interested in the debate, but I'm worried there may even be a distinction between mentions in definitions (e.g. used with “the”) and mentions of roots in definitions (as form-of). DAVilla 02:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

OK. That's excellent information. It would do us very little good for me to propose the wrong approach. Thank you, DAVilla. Rod (A. Smith) 03:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, DAVilla. In your vote comment, you said, “However, there are also time when it makes sense to put words in quotation marks, so I think we might need a second option, maybe for terms that are not linked?” To help me implement that suggestion, could you please give me an example or two of those situations where quotation marks would be better than the usual style? (e.g. English or Latin/Roman script non-English terms/phrases with or without English translations.) That information will help me determine how to name the flag and any other ways the template should behave differently when that flag is present. Rod (A. Smith) 22:20, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you kidding? Quotations marks are used all over the place, and a template could additionally help handle inner or outer terminal punctuation in the conflicting UK/US standards. Do you think it would be worthwhile to track down every use? That I see it's mostly phrases like examples of usage in the usage notes or literal equivalents in definitions and the etymology, or it's stop words. In any of those cases it's not linked, so I don't think it has to be incorporated into this template. I'm just thinking that if some people use bold for the linked terms, then they might want to use italics instead of quotes for the others (which means it shouldn't be called {{quote}} or the like). Of course, there are certain places where it has to be quotation marks, such as certain titles in citations, so this wouldn't replace that. DAVilla 19:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not explaining my confusion better. When I went to implement the quotation mark option, I noticed that it wouldn't apply to situations where a transcription follows. Further, the following looks confusing:

From “palabra” (“word”) + ...

Then I realized that if the author wants force quotes around a term or phrase without linking it, without adding a transliteration, and without adding an English translation, the best syntax seems to be this:

From “palabra” + ...

A template wouldn't really help anything, but I figured I must have misunderstood your intended use of forcing quotes. You mention an inner/outer terminal punctuation conflict above, which I assume is the difference of opinion regarding whether to place punctuation inside or outside of quotes when the punctuation is not part of the quoted item. If we hope to address that conflict with {{term}}, I need to understand better the situations where it might be used. I don't understand your reference to stop words. Sorry if I seem obtuse, but I'm trying to understand the usage pattern so I can build the best solution possible. Rod (A. Smith) 20:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

An do, I'm not asking for "every use", just some examples. Rod (A. Smith) 20:36, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of achieve, Alma, box, but, Dutch, half, hold, news, resume:

• Old English acheven, Old French achever, achiever, French achever, to finish; à (Latin ad + Old French chief, French chef, end, head, from Latin caput head. See chief
• From colloquial Arabic Template:ARchar (‘ālima) ‘singer’, originally a feminine adjective meaning ‘learned, knowledgeable’, from Template:ARchar (‘alima) ‘to know’.
• Middle English < Old English < Latin buxus < Greek πύξος (pyxos, box tree).
• Old English būtan, corresponding to "by + out".
• From Proto-Germanic þeod (meaning a people, a nation); akin to...
• Anglo-Saxon healf, half ('half'); as a noun, 'half', 'side', 'part'; akin to...
• From the verb, influenced by Old Norse hald (hold, custody).
• Plural of obsolete noun "new", meaning "something that is new"; not, as is sometimes assumed, an acronym for "North, East, West, South" or anything else.
• From Latin resumere (re- + sumere)

Usage notes for ghey, god, hopefully, in (German), jive, le (French), 's:

• The spelling is typically used to differentiate the meaning of "lame" from the homophonic meanings of "homosexual" or "happy," so as to retain the pejorative meaning, without the "happy or joyful" misinterpretation.
• The word "god" is often applied both to males and to females. ... Christian usage shifted the gender to masculine, necessitating the development of a feminine form, "goddess".
• Many adverbs are used as sentence modifiers in this way without comment, like interestingly, frankly, clearly, luckily, unfortunately—it is unclear why hopefully has been singled out for deprecation. ... Merriam-Webster, on the other hand, calls the usage "entirely standard".
• The preposition "in" is used with accusative case if...
• "Jive" and "jibe" are frequently used interchangeably in the U.S. to indicate the concept "to agree or accord". ...
• à le is never used: contracted into au.
• Usage of the possessive marker with words ending in "s" varies. ...the strictly correct form is to form the possessive of both names, as in “Jack’s and Jill’s pails”.

Stop words are very common, usually very short words like “the”, “and”, “where” (in contrast to “thou”, “id”, “nevertheless”), thus words that anyone who knew anything about the language would be expected to understand, and not anything that a dictionary entry could shed much light on. That I've seen, these can be quoted, italicized, or bolded, but never linked.

I don't think combining quotation marks with this template is necessarily a good idea. I'm just bringing it up because it fits the same pattern of use-with-mention that some might wish to stylize differently. DAVilla 03:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Thanks for all those examples. I was really just expecting a couple, but thank you, DAVilla. Rod (A. Smith) 03:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

No problem. They were really easy to run across. The difficult part is sorting through it all. DAVilla 03:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

You mentioned at WT:GP#Format for mentioned terms that an {{{L}}} parameter would be helpful. I implemented it, but now there is a suggestion at Template talk:term#Language sections to remove support for that parameter. Could you please chime in there? Rod (A. Smith) 17:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

anu ano ang uri ng pagtula

isn't nonsense; it is Filipino or Tagalog. Without a definition it isn't very useful though. Robert Ullmann 11:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, it claimed English. DAVilla 23:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/cu-2007-08/User:BD2412 for checkuser

I understand that you put a lot of effort into finding trustworthy administrators who were willing to accept CheckUser nominations, and it's always frustrating to have one's efforts shot down or pooh-poohed, but your response to Dmcdevit really seems over-the-top. In particular, if he thinks that at most one CheckUser should be added at a time, then it makes some sense for him to vote for exactly one of the current candidates, and I don't like your implication that he is expected to vote for whichever candidate currently has the most support. Indeed, the very fact that the various candidates currently have different levels of support is proof positive that editors have their own reasons for supporting certain candidates over others — whatever reasons those might be.

Above all, your comment completely violated the principle of assuming good faith; Dmcdevit explicitly stated his motivations, and if you think that his stated motivations do not justify his actions, then you can try to convince him of such. Assuming his motives are indeed pure (and I see absolutely no reason to doubt it), then it might be possible to convince him that different actions would suit them better. Accusing him of ill motives will not convince him of anything, and risks causing him to dig in his heels, making him less amenable to persuasion.

—Ruakh_TALK 19:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Limit of template reached

Are you done with this? Can it be deleted now? If not, then please explain what is intended better. --Connel MacKenzie 14:51, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I find it useful - when enough terms have been added to the {{see|...}} template atop a page to trigger this category, I usually create an appendix of those terms. Note that con is a bit of a headscratcher - I have no idea whether all those redlinks are actual words (and Google is useless for excluding in this situation). Cheers! bd2412 T 14:57, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

All but the last two are in the Vietnamese-English dictionary of The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project (though some are not given as their own words, appearing only in longer words; Vietnamese writes each syllable separately, à la Chinese). Three of the words — cồn, côn, and còn — have entries in the Vietnamese Wiktionary. —Ruakh_TALK 16:14, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

In light of that I've created Appendix:Variations of 'con'. Thanks! bd2412 T 17:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I rather wonder if Vietnamese should be handled specially somehow; neither flooding the {{see}} links, nor moving them to an appendix, really seems desirable, when a word has only one or two variants and then fifty gazillion Vietnamese syllables that we group in with it. —Ruakh_TALK 17:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I would be inclined to agree, but I strongly suspect that we'll find more uses of "con" with other diacritics in other languages. bd2412 T 17:55, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Negative dates?

So, does "–1951" mean the same as "c1951"? If so, can we document that somewhere? It's very unintuitive, at least for me. —Ruakh_TALK 16:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The correct representation is a. I had to look it up. I always do. Is "≤1951" any clearer? DAVilla 19:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, that's what you mean! Personally I prefer either "a1951" or "a. 1951" for that, but something like "1951 or earlier" seems fine as well. "≤1951" seems a bit too math-y, and maybe a bit less year-like, but I'm O.K. with it if you prefer it. "–1951" I really don't like, because it looks like "negative 1951", or perhaps like someone didn't know how to type a tilde. —Ruakh_TALK 21:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

What does a tilde mean to you? In Taiwan ranges are given as 1~10, but ~1951 in English would be ≈1951.

I'm going to link {{ante}} to the glossary. Too bad {{c.}} is already taken. DAVilla 04:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, to me a tilde means "approximately". (Hence my initial question above.) {{ante}} is a good idea; I'll start using it. —Ruakh_TALK 16:25, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

wintard

I have reviewed your changes to wintard and added the following to its talk page:

It has been claimed that taking the Urban Dictionary material would be a copyvio. I disagree, and this is not just because of the oft overused fair use argument. Dictionary definitions are rarely copyvios because of the merger principle. For a dictionary the word is the idea, and straying too far from the other dictionary's definition would result in our defining a completely different concept. There is also the matter of Urban Dictionary's own Terms of Service at http://www.urbandictionary.com/tos.php. In particular I would refer to IV-3 and the second sentence of VII. As long as what we take from other dictionaries is independently chosen and properly credited material from different specific dictionary entries there should be no question of copyvios. What would be infringement would be a systematic effort to include a range of such entries from the other publication, or a consistent attempt toreproduce the look and feel of that publication. Eclecticology 20:27, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

deism - ttbc

Hi, I noticed that you marked all the translations of deism as translations to be checked. I added most of those, and virtually all of them come straight out of the native Wikipedia pages in those languages. Is that not sufficient, or do additional sources need to be found for each? Cheers! bd2412 T 14:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

{{language}}

What are you thinking? The whole point is to only have lang: templates when we unfortunately must because we haven't gotten the plain template unlinked yet. Then we can make progress toward unlinking them all. Robert Ullmann 09:06, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

This is weird. If that's the final goal, why not just unlink the templates? Why go through this intermediate stage? Can you blame me for being confused? DAVilla 12:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Because each time to logical step of unlinking them is proposed, there is mucho non-sensical screaming. We can't just get them unlinked without running a vote to overrule that. In the meantime, we have a way of making context, t, and infl work. Just a stop-gap since we can't do everything at once. Robert Ullmann 13:06, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The lang: templates should only be referenced via {language}; if the plain template isn't wikilinked, then we should find that the lang: form has no references, and we can delete it. There is, for example, no reason for {lang:en}. If we find the lang: form used somewhere else (e.g. {{term}}) we replace it with {language}. Then we make sure that all of the WT:TOP40 languages + secondary are unlinked, and that the lang: templates are deleted. Then we can more or less formally propose continuing that process, unlinking the plain forms and deleting the lang: forms as they are automatically orphaned. okay? Robert Ullmann 09:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that so many lang: templates had been entered. I had only done a few myself, and it never seemed that they had any support. Looks like Williamsayers79 had jumped to it. Did I actually break anything? Even {{lang:en}} has never been deleted. DAVilla 12:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure any given entry was broken; you seemed to say on WT:GP that some would. But then you hadn't noted the creation of a number of redundant templates. Robert Ullmann 13:06, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, I only knew about the more common ones, a handful of which I had created in the first place. I said and meant "a lot of the languages", not "a lot of the entries". The less common languages that are wikilinked would be broken in category names regardless, but I would guess that there are uses outside of that.

Anyways, I'd really like to resolve this one way or the other, which means more feedback from Connel, Encyclopetey, etc. DAVilla 13:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

You might like to look at User:Robert Ullmann/t7, which shows the current (29 August) state of affairs. Robert Ullmann 08:28, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I note you've zapped all the t- templates. I added a bit more code to check a few things (reporting whether the template is categorized is a line or two ;-), moved it to User:Robert Ullmann/Language templates. Robert Ullmann 15:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

How do you come up with these lists? Do you have to download everything onto your machine to process it? DAVilla 16:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I download the compressed XML dump of the current versions of the articles (+templates and a few other things), is about 50MB. The uncompressed version can be loaded in its entirety into RAM if I care to. And Python had a "dict" structure, so I can create a dict called enwikt, then for each XML entry, enwikt[page.title] = page.text. Then I can do things like if enwikt[word][0] == '#': which means "if word is a redirect". if word in enwikt and enwikt[word].find('=French=')>0: tells me that there is a section entry for French. I don't usually load the whole thing like this, it is easy enough to do what I want while reading the XML. For example, AF prescans the whole XML at the start of a run, remembering what it needs. Robert Ullmann 09:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Different question: I've been looking around for the canonical list of wikts. Haven't found it yet. Even the supposedly definitive list on meta isn't complete, but then also includes wikts with 0 entries that have never been touched since being initialized. Thought you might have seen something? Robert Ullmann 15:24, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I wouldn't know, unless it's in a DNS record somewhere, but you would know more about that. DAVilla 16:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Even the DNS doesn't help; I don't want the ones that are initialized, but have never been touched. Robert Ullmann 09:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Found my answer: meta:List of Wiktionaries has a stats table pasted right into it that Mxn updates fairly often. There are 172 at the moment; I have Tbot reading it directly, quite convenient. Robert Ullmann 10:30, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

creäture

Hi DAVilla. As you know, I recently created creäture. It is well cited, so there are no problems there. However, Widsith decided to comment out the usage notes I wrote for creature which explained the alternative spelling. We’ve been having a discussion on the entry’s talk page, but we have hitherto failed to come to agreement. He has asked me to get a second opinion from another administrator, so here I am, asking you. –Would you mind passing comment on the talk page please? Thanks. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 12:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Never mind; there’s no need now — Ruakh joined the discussion and now the three of us are in near-agreement. By the way, I took the liberty of editing a section hereof hereinbefore, in order to take your talk page out of the Middle English, Old English, Latin, Greek, Proto-Germanic, and Old Norse derivations categories — the links still go where they used to, so I hope you don’t mind. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 10:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! It would be nice if the user namespace never showed in the category list. DAVilla 14:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but it’s not a big bother. I’m glad you were OK with my edit despite my not having asked you first. (I assumed correctly that you would not object, for, why would one?) † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 20:11, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Lombard

Hi, thanks for the advice, DAVilla. Could you please control my recent edits on Lombard, so I'll make sure I've really understood? Thank you very much. Sentinella 21:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Adidas

Hi,

When you have a chance, please take a look at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#Adidas.

Thanks!

—Ruakh_TALK 04:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

form-of templates

Hi Dav, can you have a look at my recent edits to marche and the templates and categories I created, and comment whether I did right, according to what you have in mind? I noticed that the templates in Category:Form-of templates contain ‘of’, although you proscribe that. In how far is this policy yet? Am I too early to jump on the boat once again? H. (talk) 13:45, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

It is impossible to fit ‘plural of’ into your scheme, since {{p}}, {{pl}} and {{plural}} all exist… H. (talk) 13:48, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, what I'd written should have been marked as a proposal, so the page you put up (correctly) would be a demonstration of it. There is another proposal on the table, which I tried to adapt the abbreviations at Wiktionary:Form-of templates to. That's why there's confusion with "of". (There is no real direction at the moment since having a separate form-of template for each form for each language is undesireable.) I've asked for comments on WT:BP#Direction on form-of templates to try and resolve which way we should be headed. DAVilla 18:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, the categories which the templates use (I copied them over from one of the existing ones) are wrong. They should be {{{lang}}} third-p pres ind forms, instead of 3p pres ind ({{{lang}}}). But that is a minor detail, I think. H. (talk) 17:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

english

Is this edit correct? (You can respond here: I'll check back for a coupla weeks.)—msh210℠ 19:43, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It is more often capitalized even in that sense, so far as I can tell from Google books. It's hard to find many hits though. DAVilla 20:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Brand name tags

What tags do you use for brand names? (I.e. the sort of "definition" that I and few others think does not belong in any dictionary, let alone this one.) I'll happily add a separate column to WT:STATS#Detail if you think that would help alleviate concerns. Prehaps even a WT:PREF to prevent them from displaying...

--Connel MacKenzie 18:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

There was a lot of support in a previous vote for the use of a {{trademark}} context label which might suit this purpose. I'm not sure if it would also apply to genericized trademarks, either those that have legally been lost to genericization or those (like xerox) that are still held but are nonetheless in common use as the generic. We might want to have categories for all three, e.g. {{brand}} name, {{generic}}, and {{genericized}} trademark. The first two would together deprecate the five current uses of {{trademark}}, each displaying as "trademark" but categorized differently. Or if they display differently then I'm not sure as what.

If you think it's appropriate, we could also use {{warn}} for terms that have no meaning other than the company or brand. It may be a bit of overkill, but it's as close as we've come so far to your proposed hierarchical dictionary scheme. DAVilla 03:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/cu-2007-08/User:Rodasmith for checkuser

It seems the vote period has ellapsed without the required 25 net supporting votes. The vote should probably be closed. Thanks for the nomination. Rod (A. Smith) 04:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Mass substitution

Hi DAVilla,

Thanks for all your work around here. I would really appreciate, though, if before making bulk changes to a large number of entries, you would at least wait for comment. As I've noted on RFDO, I strongly disagree with the deprecation of these templates; I find them useful for both entering and maintaining this kind of data. -- Visviva 15:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

This concerns comments at WT:RFDO#Template:-ful and a few other breifly discussed nominations. The prefix templates I deleted appeared to have namespace conflicts. In retrospect there was probably no conflict, so I probably did act with haste. I didn't mean to delete anything contentious.

I'm sorry that your opinion was outweighed without ample response. You put a lot of thought into your comments, but know that they were not ignored. Conrad left {{-er}} and {{-or}} because they did something "useful" in linking the correct section. I'm against even this use as implemented, although a cleaner implementation may be possible. In my opinion it would also be nice if the templates indicated meaning.

Personally I didn't feel like your ideas applied to the templates as they existed, and that etymologies are not standardized to the point where templates will help. In retrospect, if {{prefix}} and {{suffix}} are not going to be substituted, then individual templates may make more sense. But they were not perfected at the time and I would rather not see them in such state in bulk. I would much rather see {{term}} and like templates fully developed and implemented, and Wiktionary:Etymology become official policy first, before doing copy-and-paste jobs in the template space. Even then, it would be better to demonstrate the need with a few templates, such as the two Conrad left behind.

Writing this has given me some ideas, and I'm going to try them out. DAVilla 01:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

{{wikipedia}} and other sister projects

Is there any reason why you vote Wiktionary:Votes/2007-07/Sister project links cannot be taken? —Saltmarsh^Talk 06:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I got some negative feedback on it and never pushed it through, but you could put that question to the community and make revisions before trying to get it accepted. DAVilla 03:54, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - I am neutral on the subject —Saltmarsh^Talk 06:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: Voice

I replied at my talk page. Thanks --Neskaya ^talk 04:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

You-Know-Who translations

Hi DAVilla, could you tell me your intention moving translations from You-Know-Who to you-know-who and adding ttbc to all of them? Large cased use (You-Know-Who) seems common as far as I checked web materials. And if you are just moving them, you also know its translations would be the same; I mean you did not have to put ttbc templates. I hope it was not your intention, but your edits for both articles looked like you just spoiled other Translation contributors' effort in vain. Thanks. --Eveningmist 06:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I moved all of the translations to the primary spelling. The two pages had existed independently of each other before then, and I was consolidating the information.

The translations had to be tagged with ttbc because the definition had changed. It used to read, "a name used to refer to Lord Voldemort". DAVilla 18:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi DAVilla, thank you for your reply. I checked both articles carefully, and found You-Know-Who had been focused on Harry Potter jargon since its first version. Small capitalized spelling is more general, however, I cannot agree you-know-who is a primary article of You-Know-Who. I think it's better to recover the previous edit and put your suggestion on the article's talk page. The reason I found the page was because of ttbc tag, but I cannot edit it when I consider the jargon. --Eveningmist 13:31, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The Harry Potter definition was brought up on RFD, and I don't think many would be in favor of restoring it. As to translations, regardless of which is the primary spelling, it makes more sense to me to have all the content in one place. Yes, there may be reason to make you-know-who an alternative spelling, whether it's You-know-who or some other spelling that's pointed to. I moved the questionable content at You-Know-Who only because the one correct definition they're under now had been in existence the longest. DAVilla 03:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Ancient vote archives

In early 2006, we were doing some "votes" on WT:BP, e.g. [2], [3], [4], etc. I can't see any reason not to copy those over to the WT:VOTE area, so there is at least some sequence of events in that archive. Rather than copying, I suppose they could be soft-linked? Do you have any time you can allocate to searching through WT:BPA for them? --Connel MacKenzie 16:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

What about admin votes? I think those are lost in the history. DAVilla 21:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Those might be a little more controversial, as there weren't even votes initially. But the ones that were...hmmm. Does anyone care? I'm not sure those ones show a strong consensus - the tiny number of contributors back that did reflect it back then, but in hindsight, might not be viewed favorably? I don't really understand what Ec's objection was, to archiving the early sysop votes. Maybe ask him on e-mail or the wiktionary-l mailing list? Presumably, since he's still active on the mailing list, you could frame the question in a favorable light ("In the interest of Wikihistory, to show how consensus was formed early on...") <Shrug.> --Connel MacKenzie 17:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

compassionate conservatism

It's simply beautiful as you've done it. DCDuring 23:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't take credit for it. I stole it directly from Wikipedia. But don't tell anyone! Okay, I'm kidding, it's in the comment line. DAVilla 00:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy with a nice entry in a potential controversial area. I've certainly borrowed phrases and sentences from WP from WT. DCDuring 01:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Christmas Competition

Well, if you want to play that way:

• e 1

  egal 4

  Sum is 5.

But I would be surprised if something shorter couldn't be found. --EncycloPetey 02:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yep, looks like Cynewulf found one already. Why not try for a long one in Spanish? --EncycloPetey 03:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Template rfv

Thanx for the understanding and compromise, I didnt mean to step all over your toes its just that there was no response when I posted in beer parlour. And for some reason I can only view the source at Template:rfv, can't edit it, so it leaves me very little other options. Anyway I hope we can remain friends and continue to discover cool things about languages together. Language Lover 04:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Hey, no big deal. I'm sorry for having ignored your original message. I had hoped that others would see it and comment. You can always contact me directly if you like. Otherwise wikiocracy just take a little time. DAVilla 04:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

WOTD

... Also the WOTD doesn't seem to be working on the new page. DAVilla 05:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It isn't calling the right template. The "real" WOTD does not have the year as a parameter in the name. this was done because the WOTD is on the current main page, and hasn't had the format updated. I assume when (if?) we switch to the new design that the {{wotd}} template will be changed to the new design. The template on the "new" design was set up to see how the system would work, and has been updated separately from the "real" WOTD entries. --EncycloPetey 05:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I've previewed it with the "right" template and it's in the wrong style. I guess we need to update the one for December 12. DAVilla 05:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't pretend to understand the technical issues behind all of the Main Page changes. If you need to get 12 Dec's WOTD set up in advance, you are welcome to set that day up. The "word" selected is (I think appropriately) dot the i's and cross the t's, but I found that it doesn't exist yet. So... if you'd like to create that entry, you're welcome to take the honor of doing so. Then you can place the definition in whatever template you need to so that the "new" page will work properly on 12 Dec. --EncycloPetey 05:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Ugh! I had to chase down the RFV first. Here goes nothin... DAVilla 06:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

main page for wiktionary day

Keep in mind that 12 December starts in the Pacific at about 1100 UTC on 11 December ;-) Robert Ullmann 05:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

As far as the word of the day is concerned, it starts at 0:00 UTC. Ironically, I will be somewhere over the Pacific myself at exactly that time. If you want to do the switch at a more convenient time, just update those links (the one in Mediawiki as well as any redirects) and change Wiktionary:Word of the day/December 11 to use {{WOTD}} instead of {{wotd}}. DAVilla 06:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

You weren't planning on moving the new design over the existing page name? Ouch! Not good. Should be a move op, with the Mediawiki link and the redirects left alone. Do you have any idea how many links there are from outside the en.wikt?

Glad I brought this up ... Robert Ullmann 06:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

For example, http://wiktionary.org links to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page changing the local link(s) is out of the question. (we won't even discuss the iwiki links on 170+ other wikts) Robert Ullmann 06:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

A redirect from Wiktionary:Main Page couldn't handle all of those? Anyways, I won't be doing the switch, so however you think it best. DAVilla 06:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

And you plan on eventually removing the redirect how? Surely you weren't thinking of leaving it that way?

For a temporary move? Of course not! I'd undo it by reverting the last change. :-P DAVilla 14:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It should just be move op, with a bit of care to keep the page history attached to the relevant version. Robert Ullmann 06:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Match

Hi Davilla

I revisited this wiki after a long time and had a look on the requests for deletion. I saw your comment on Match, but I do not understand the question. Match was indeed a chain of supermarkets, but I believe it was taken over by another company. I suggest that this is information for wikipedia and that the page should be deleted for that reason, but I have to admit that I am not completely up to date with the policies on wiktionary en.

Annabelleke 10:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The CFI has recently been updated to allow brand names under narrow conditions, essentially that the brand is known well enough to have entered the lexicon and be understood out of context. It would be best to mark each definition on the page as {{rfv-sense}} to allow verification of this. I am not particularly certain that the English definition would pass either. DAVilla 12:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)