User talk:DCDuring/2008 QIII

User talk:Daniel Polansky#Voting

Thanks. I was not altogether confident about this. --Daniel Polansky 18:57, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikisaurus problems

I fully agree with you that wikisaurus as it stands is lacking, though I don't quite get where my direction is duplicating wiktionary. Also, what did you mean about definitions? Putting definitions into wikisaurus is duplicating wiktionary. I'm sure that wasn't what you were aiming at, so I'm a bit confused.

The page that I created called alcoholic was based on statements made in the Policy page for wikisaurus. It was my intention to show the worst case scenario. I truly don't want the page to look like that. What I actually want is for the policy page to change.

Was the statement about users being unable to understand based on the "alcoholic" page? I don't think they could handle that either. Users need something really simple to deal with. If they go to a page where they expect a word and it isn't there, they should be able to just add that word without having to deal with any extra steps. That's what I'm aiming for. Amina (sack36) 06:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh hey! I did some rambling on my page about what my philosophy for wikisaurus is. It isn't rightly finished yet, but if you're up to reading a treatise on the best way to make a thesaurus and will forgive my pique when I sound pompous and full of myself, you may want to take a look. It's the closest I've gotten to explaining my philosophy of a computer weighted thesaurus. Amina (sack36) 06:46, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The question is: What can you get the Wikisoftware to do? It is not infinitely flexible. Have you looked at Wordnet yet and the discussions of "semantic networks"? The question is not whether you can get ordinary users to use a system, it's how can you get them to help design, fill, and improve it, I think. The reason I wrote on your user page is that your BP posting made it highly likely that a respondent would mistake your intent, as I did. I still don't understand how the Wiki format will work in three or more dimensions. Most contributors seem to have trouble adding good text, let alone formatted text, let alone links, let alone links of various intensities. Wiktionary isn't now doing a very good job of getting user input with a relatively simple model. I hope you can figure out something that makes it easier for them to contribute. Most changes in Wiki world are very incremental, so I am curious about your thoughts about first steps. DCDuring TALK 09:31, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Aw shucks, DC! I know you're trying to get me on the right track, and I sure do want to make the leap, but I just don't understand what that is. Take, for instance, that last paragraph just above.

I don't actually know the right track. I'm not trying to be mysterious. I am guessing at something. If I am shown to be wrong or find out that I am wrong, I can usually deal with it, though sometimes not immediately. But I am no techie. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

a. I didn't think the items I mentioned for the wiki-software to do were all that hard. It's just a simple if-then statement. I don't know the software here very well, so I could be wrong. Am I?

It depends on how much of is strictly within our realm: bots and templates, and some CSS. It seems hard to get developers to focus. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

b. All that I know of WordNet is that it is a system that attempts to place word meanings into Synsets. Past that I couldn't find any references. Is there a reason to break the meanings up into sets? Wouldn't it be better to deal with shades of meaning?

I don't know terribly much about them either, but if you are going to do anything in this area you have to appreciate the competition. As I see it, the reason to think in terms of sets of terms is that a set is a good match to a page in a namespace that can add value without duplicating Wiktionary itself. Gradations within the set can be done on the page. I don't get how gradations can be intelligibly be done between pages. Also our pages are fundamentally linear, simple lists. Items on lists can be ordered; as can lists that are on other lists. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

C. What did I say on BP that was skewed to where people would take my meaning wrong? I'm notorious for obfuscating my meaning unintentionally. Maybe I could correct it if you could tell me what's wrong?

It was just my overall reaction. I don't have specifics for you, I'm afraid. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

d. What is easier about the old way of doing things that mine is making more complex? Maybe you could show me an example of the old way that is well done? Maybe compare the two so I can see where I'm going askew?

I don't know enough about the old way. I'm just trying to encourage you, partially because I have the feeling that nobody really cares enough about 'Saurus. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

e. You said, "Most contributors seem to have trouble adding good text, let alone formatted text, let alone links, let alone links of various intensities" I totally agree with that statement which is why I don't understand how you are using it to describe my pages. It's because of that statement that I went back to a simpler model. ...only you don't think my model is simpler. Which is why my mind is going around in circles.

As I say, I don't really have it in me to get into 'Saurus much. I do know that something has to be very simple for users to contribute and that you can't make much progress if every contribution is likely to break something (which is a problem at Wiktionary generally). DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally, I wanted to ask if my out in left field ideas is the reason why no one responds to my posts anymore?--Amina (sack36) 00:55, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that many new contributors have big ambitions. (I have had an ambitious idea or two and not followed through). Follow-through is never so good, for very understandable reasons: not enough time, more basic work needs to be done first, some of the basic work is interesting in itself, some projects are too lonely. Most folks here are just waiting for something concrete and incremental and clearly good to demonstrate the possibilities of a specific initiative. The fact is that Wiktionary is far short of being a true competitor to the big dictionaries. Quality is uneven, we lack important tools, many inconsistencies remain, not enough tech-savvy contributors. Many projects that are tangential to the main goal seem less compelling. And many veterans really focus on very specific areas of special interest to them for their big lonely contributions. IOW, it will take time, demonstration of skill or competence (tech and communications), and delivery against "promises". Also, it just takes time to break in and Summer is slow. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you have some easy-to-do things consistent with your long-term approach that might add value or would enable you to display mastery of the old way? I have a suspicion that many veteran contributors would really like it if we had a good way of handling synonyms for sex terms, alcoholic beverages, recreational drugs, and similar items, which may not be easy to attest to justify a full entry. Anything that would give young users a playpen that was treated less harshly by the patrollers would be useful. Talk pages on subject areas (word/meaning cluster, of course) of interest to them might be nice. There are appendices, such as for military slang that have been useful, but for groups with a different age mix and lesser tendency to puerile vandalism against the "serious" entries that the veterans put their hopes on. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm thinking (translation: hoping) that the best thing for me to do is just drudge onward until I have a body of work large enough that I'm no longer under the radar. This I can do. I'll continue to read up on the back end of things, too. You've given me quite a bit of avenues to learn. I appreciate that. Thanks for the hand up. I think I'd better get crackin! Amina (sack36) 20:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Templates for wikisaurus

All the templates I find for wikisaurus I've transferred over to "wse" in templates. I've spent a bit of time trying to get this cleaned up and have been looking everywhere I can think, but the closest i can come to the thing you're looking for is a wiktionary referral box that I saw is to be deleted. Template:Wikisaurus-link there's two of them (one without caps) and they both say delete. Are they similar to what you're going for?

Wikisaurus is being overlayed

I wrote an article in Beer Parlor about this and was thinking you may want to see it. Amina (sack36) 21:16, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Nils and I were thinking it might be ok to set up a test project system on the pattern of wikipedia with the full knowledge that if consensus is to not go with project we will delete all our pages dealing with it. This would be something like a pilot project to give everyone a gander at what pros and cons there were to the concept.

We wondered if you were interested in joining the pilot project. Amina (sack36) 08:13, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikisaurus Project Page

The page is finally up and running you can check it out here: Wikisaurus:project/improvements Amina (sack36) 06:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Assistance please

Could you check out Wikisaurus:abode for me? The dividing line between types of abodes and style of structure is too close for me to call. I started writing down styles but found that a bunch that I thought of as architectural style was listed as kind of abode. Amina (sack36) 11:56, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, due to the kindness of user:Ruakh we have a mouseover. See it in saurus project page. Amina (sack36) 04:50, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

thanks

for clearing up the salty water --Kringa 16:44, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure. DCDuring TALK 16:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

εἶδος

Is this correct? The second character doesn't look right. Some {{term}} uses that seem properly spelled yield redlinks referring to this. eidetic is one. DCDuring TALK 17:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep. The second character is a iota with smooth breathing and a circumflex instead of an acute. It appears that Widsith has corrected the spelling on eidetic, and the link is now blue. Admittedly, it can be difficult to tell what's happening with normal sized-fonts when there is this much diacriticality on a single character. Truth be told, we had an incorrect character in the grc section of Edittools for four months before I figured out there was something wrong. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:38, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure? After Widsith's correction, I compared the iota and I could find the proverbial iota of difference between the iota in eidos (as copied from entry name) and those in edittools. The one copied from the entry name had a curved top. The ones in edittools grc font did not AFAICT. With glasses and good light I can see a difference. DCDuring TALK 22:46, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

OK. I was thrown by the three different appearances of the iota. In a heading it appears as a straight line. In the edit window it appeared with curves at the bottom and the top. In edittools, it appears with a curve only at the bottom. I haven't compared with the many combinations of breathings, accents, bold, and size, let alone checked for treatment of other characters. I don't like to have to use a larger font size which squeezes content off the screen, so I may have to leave accented characters (especially Greek) to those with younger eyes. DCDuring TALK 23:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Yes, you have to blow it up a few times to be able to actually see the differences between many of the 16 minuscule iotas currently in edittools. Feel quite free to attach an {{rfscript|spellcheck}} to anything you like. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

eidetic

Thanks. I don't understand how to duplicate the second character in εἶδος from the edittools Ancient Greek character set. Between the accents and the different shape of the iota (above version has a left stroke at the top but not the characters in the character set) I suspect that the headword was made using a different character set. I hope I am wrong because if it is from a different character set, I wonder how many entries have such a problem. DCDuring TALK 19:38, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It's definitely there. It's hard to see it properly -- it doesn't display well, but there's actually a smooth breathing mark as well as a tilde over it -- I usually have to increase the text size a couple of times before I can see it. Widsith 06:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

triple

When you say "all sources point to lico as the origin", what sources do you mean? M-W says is comes form plus, which is the comparative of multus, not a form of plico. Lewis and short say that triplus was borrowed from Ancient Greek, and the OED concurs. You found an error in M-W, but seem to have misinterpreted it. --EncycloPetey 03:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

And quadruplus and quintuplus? I can't quite see the Greek origins for that. DCDuring TALK 03:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Once the lower-number terms were borrowed, the others were formed by analogy. None of these are the native Latin terms, which normally end in -plex. However, none of this supports any connection with the verb plicō, as not even M-W makes that connection. Words with the ending -plex are the ones that derive from a combination with plicō, not the words anding in -plus. --EncycloPetey 03:24, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I see now. It all started with Etymology 2 and then something I came across on Ullman's missing list. I must have confounded "-fold" with the actual role of "plico" in the "-plex" and "-plicate" words. Thanks for your patience. DCDuring TALK 06:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

assward

So, "The battery was installed assward." means it was installed backward?!? --EncycloPetey 00:09, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Relative to its own. DCDuring TALK 00:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it more likely an English speaker would interpret assward as "toward the rectum". --EncycloPetey 00:18, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not what the first cites seem to say, but I'll be adjusting the def. I didn't think it would be a word, but I was wrong. DCDuring TALK 00:21, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I would interpret "knocked asswards" as "knocked on his ass," and not simply as "backwards". --EncycloPetey 00:33, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Robert Ullmann/L3/invalid

I noticed you've been doing some work with Robert's lists. I was wondering if you have kept track of where you're at with the L3's, or if you had simply been attacking it at random. I've got the L2's trimmed down to the usual list of problematic languages, and God only knows when we'll get another dump, so I figured I'd hit the L3's. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:17, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

As of now, everything on that list that needs fixing has either been fixed by AF or tagged into Category:Entries with non-standard headers by AF, or is tagged for a specific header (Hiragana). Easier to work from the cats I think. Robert Ullmann 06:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, cool beans. Thanks. AF deserves a raise. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Enharmonic

Enharmonic is an adjective describing something that is an "enharmonic equivalent", the noun. Hyacinth 23:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Better to light a single candle

The entry was labeled an idiom by Kchishol1970, so I moved it as such. In retrospect, it probably is a proverb, though I've seen it used both with "it is" and without. --TBC 21:23, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Something determiner, not pronoun

See CGEL p. 423--Brett 01:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:German nouns

May I ask why you put genitive forms of German nouns into Category:German nouns rather than Category:German noun forms? They should be there—if anywhere: The deliberate omission of {{infl}} is in line with the omission of it in pages categorised in Category:English plurals. Probably the category Category:German noun forms should be added eventually by the template {{genitive of}} when used with lang=de. Note also that {{genitive of}} adds already the square brackets which you duplicated in some instances! -- Gauss 16:38, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I was merely clearing out categoryless words, moving them from one desk to anotherbetter able to handle them than I, as it were. What should I do with such terms exactly? To my shame, my German is just not very good. DCDuring TALK 16:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The expert in such matters is probably User:Mutante in his capacities of (a) native speaker, (b) major activist in Wiktionary:Categorizing, and (c) administrator with technical knowledge. I suggest you work out something. I'm not that much into categorization but I'm quite sure inflected forms don't belong into the same category as the ground forms.
(Probably the easiest solution would be to amendment {{genitive of|lang=de}} to add the appropriate category (whichever..) automatically as it is done with {{plural of|lang=xx}}. Then the task would boil down to checking if the lang parameter is present. The addition of a category has to be based on the presence of a lang parameter because this parameter seems to be missing at least in the articles on Irish nouns where {{genitive of}} has been used.) -- Gauss 17:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The category Category:German noun forms is now added automatically by the template {{genitive of}} if used with the optional argument lang=de. -- Gauss 14:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation 1

Please see my response to Robert in the Beer Parlour. The fact is that WT:ELE does not address the issue of pronunciation tied to POS, and we've held two vote (one dropped) to resolve the issue of how to format such entries. The result was "no consensus", so we have no set directing format for such entries. However, what you've been doing the past two days is certainly incorrect, as it puts parts of speech into the {{a}} template, which is specifically for accents, and not for parts of speech. I would recommend not altering the format on entries simply because Robert's bot tagged them. Robert says that the format is "illegal", but the voting was inconclusive as to how the community wanted to resolve the issue. --EncycloPetey 16:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The "documentation" for {{a}} specifically uses Pronunciation as its lead example. What would you prefer? {{template|italbrac}}? What I am doing is putting it into a format that seems to be often used. DCDuring TALK 16:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the tags just mean "illegal", not following ELE. What to do with them is not resolved, and won't be until someone who wants to use the Pron N headers writes a proposal that is complete, and can be adopted.

However, {{a}} is specifically designed to allow other tags and labels to be used along with accents, in the same way {{context}} provides for other tags besides context labels. So we don't have (foo)(bar) because {a} or {context} closes the parens. Robert Ullmann 17:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

You are saying that there is no strong semantic content to the templates at present. The use of {{a}} in its documentation shows it being used for something other than accent. At first I mistakenly thought it showed exactly the use I was making of it. To what sense of the the word "accent" does it refer anyway? "Stress mark" or "dialect"? DCDuring TALK 18:24, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

sap

as in "club"....where did you get the "sapling" idea from? OED thinks it's a sub-sense of "sap-wood". Ƿidsiþ 12:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

MWOnline suggests it. I have had second thoughts and am simply uncertain. It is really just a question of whether the meaning (especially of the verb) is sufficiently distinct from the tree-juice sense and whether the meaning of sap-wood sense of sap is the actual source. I'll take a look at some slang dictionaries to see what their thoughts are. DCDuring TALK 14:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Cassel's Slang offers that ety, too. I can't see the relevant page of Partridge. Mencken's 4th (no supplements) and Partridge's 1936 Slang Today and Yesterday are silent on this sense. But Webster's 1828 offers the sap-wood meaning of sap as a US (New England) meaning. If that meaning were widespread in the US or if sap=blackjack were New England in origin, the matter might be settled. I dunno. DCDuring TALK 15:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Cassell's often get it wrong, but they seem pretty convincing in this case. Ƿidsiþ 15:59, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

This kind of split of an etymology doesn't add very much value in terms of clarification and gives users more navigation problems, so I could easily accept either way. The verb sense of sap was really the big justification for the split. DCDuring TALK 16:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

etyl codes

Per your edit summary "I'd never looked up that code" [1], there is a comprehensive list at [[Wiktionary:Etymology/language templates]] (shortcut: WT:ETY/TEMP). Also I find the Wikipedia page on the language often helpful - the articles are typically named <language> language (or there is a redirect in place from there). Thryduulf 18:45, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I knew where. I had inferred from some discussion that it was like Medieval Latin, New Latin, Vulgar Latin, and Late Latin: We had a template; there was a WP article; but no ISO 639 code. DCDuring TALK 18:55, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

pronunciation of unused

I've standardised the pronunciation section of (deprecated template usage) unused and written a lengthy usage note about the two pronunciations I hear in the UK. As the bringer of the query about the pronunciation, I would appreciate it if you proof read it and see if it marries up with your experience in the US. Thryduulf 16:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Roger, wilco. DCDuring TALK 16:10, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

per your suggestions on my talk page, yes I think all them are a good idea and I'm also happy to let you do the work(!). Thryduulf 17:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

second

I see you've been having second thoughts. :-) Sorry. Couldn't resist it. But seriously, neat work, without a doubt. -- Algrif 17:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've discovered the joys of working on rfc-structure and have dramatically reduced the number of English entries so tagged. As a byproduct I got rid of some of the Pronunciation 1/2 headers which always annoyed me. I understand some of the reasons why they exist (no known etymology, avoid repetition of space-consuming Pronunciation section, user sometimes gets better grasp of differences than through focus on Etymology), but still dislike 'em. In English, we could pay the price of a few overlong entries with vacuous etymology differences and repeated pronunciations for the few entries (<100?) that probably would need them. I don't know about other languages, though.

Thanks for the discussion about bound to. It is helping me to think about unused, unused to, used, used to, and useta, and even about other modal verbs (including stacked ones) in Southern US English. Southern US is neglected at wikt, it seems, for pronunciation (lots of speakers, >50MM), distinctive grammar and inflection (some like AAVE, some now labeled non-standard here), and even distinct vocabulary. Apparently, it also preserves some patterns from West Country England that may be in decline there. DCDuring TALK 17:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

ellipsis marks in quotations

Hello DC -- Just looking at the quotations you added to word, I'm pretty sure that most style guides recommend avoiding the use of ellipses [...] at the beginning and end of quotations, especially when the quotations comprise grammatically complete units. I think that ellipsis marks are really only needed in the middle of a quote when one omits something for brevity. (PS - I just found some confirmation of this in The Chicago Manual Style, 14th ed., section 10.55 under "Ellipses.") -- WikiPedant 19:19, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe so. I do it when I don't take entire passage that is quoted in the source. If I put the quotation marks without ellipses, it looks as if the quotation begins there (or ends there), which can be misleading. I usually try to include the beginning of a sentence and the punctuation at the end if Google lets me see it. I try to use ellipses to support that without having overlong citations. DCDuring TALK 19:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, DC, I understand your reasoning, but I don't think that using such ellipses is necessary or even usual practice in academic and other formal writing. You can always quote a chunk from something bigger (even leaving off the beginning or ending of a sentence) and display the chunk as if it is a sentence (as long as it's grammatically complete} without using ellipsis marks. -- WikiPedant 22:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Canadian French

See English etymology for Canadien for my example. The wikitext is From {{etyl|fr-ca}} {{term|Canadien||Canadian|lang=fr-ca}}. {{category|Canadian French derivations}} is automatically added.

Both etyl and term make use of the code to reference {{fr-ca}} or {{lang:fr-ca}} (not sure which; I created both following other examples).

I'm just aping other examples—this seems to meet the basic functional requirements, but I'm not positive I've gone through all of the required steps. —Michael Z. 2008-08-11 21:44 z

I've done most of my practical learning here by aping, especially since the documentation is out of date, incomplete, hard to find, and even wrong more than most. Query: if something is a Canadian French derivation should that not mean that it is also a French derivation. Shouldn't each Canadian French category be a subcategory of the corresponding French category. It would be a one-time thing that would put everything in the right place. I don't know who the right person to ask is, maybe Bob Ullmann. He's knows a lot about ISO 639 and templates and categories. Conrad Irwin, also. There are certainly others. I'm mostly just concerned about users (especially impact of first-entry-screen layout) and competition. But I like etymologies because they give insight into "meme"evolution. DCDuring TALK 23:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Request for cleanup: rasshøl

Hi, I noticed you tagged this entry with a request for cleanup, but I'm not sure I completely got the reason for the request. I've reverted the headings back to how they were before my last edit, but I suspect I haven't grasped all the issues you had in mind yet. Could you elaborate a bit on them? :) Michae2109 17:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I see what you mean. The decision on my part to use the L3 "Non-standard" heading was one I was uncertain about. The problem is that the word høl is both official and not official, the official meaning being some sort of depression or cave in a river or stream. The unofficial meaning is totally different and stems from how the word hull/hol ("a hole") is pronounced when used in humorous and slang contexts. Instead of saying dette er hull i hodet! ("this is completely crazy!") many would pronounce it as høl i hue!, and instead of rasshol (the "official" form), many say rasshøl. This is why høl has been assigned this unofficial meaning as well ("a hole"). Anyway, after some consideration, I found that the best solution for the rasshøl entry would be to simply use the heading "Norwegian" and then mention in the "Usage notes" section that this meaning is not part of official orthography in either Bokmål or Nynorsk. I am not sure if this goes well with the established consensus on Norwegian entries, but I will of course do my best to follow the agreed upon structure as closely as possible, though as you said, it's not easy to understand how unofficial slang terms are handled.

What I do know is that The Bokmål/Nynorsk dictionary only encompasses words recognised in official orthography (when looking up a word in the dictionary, a texts reads "(offisiell rettskriving)", meaning "official orthography"), while Ordnett also includeds some commonly used spellings and dialect words and variants.

I am also eager to resolve this conflict between structure and language needs, but I haven't got to think so much about it yet. So far, my suggestion is reflected in the entry høl, with the official meanings listed in separate Nynorsk and Bokmål-sections and then the unofficial slang meaning under some sort of heading signalising that the word is unofficial; all this under the single L2 heading "Norwegian". I'm only planning to use this method in words not part of official orthography, as I still feel that Bokmål and Nynorsk should have separate language sections.

I am not certain how to approach the issue as of now, but I hope my respond was not too messy. Don't worry about messing up Norwegian entries, I need all the pointing out I can get, and I certainly do not have the exclusive right to do that:) Michae2109 19:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look and see what I can do. :) Michae2109 20:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

λίμνη

Bear in mind that just because a link is blue, does not mean that the word you're looking for exists (it does, but did not previously). Also, I tweaked out epilimnion a bit, as you had my grc words tagged as New Latin, and they were embarrassed. :P -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:39, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

countability

You have edited away changes I had made. I had tried to remove the debatable cases and leave the undebatable cases. I'm sure that there are many more undebatable cases. I was trying to make the entry true. You have made it brief, but untrue and misleading. The truth is now reflected in the policy of pushing uncountability to the sense level. DCDuring TALK 20:11, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

If you'd like to find a better example than 'information' for the uncountable glossary entry, you could do that instead of trying to cover rare exceptions. It's not likely you'll find one that doesn't have some rare countable sense or possibility of such a sense, though. The point is to make it simple and illustrate the premise. Currently, it does that. No glossary purports to give an exhaustive definition covering every rare case, let alone give air-time to the specific rare case of an unrelated word ('information'). I had thought you were mostly concerned with communicating well to the lay user rather than rare pedantics or being thorough for the sake of being thorough.

Everything should be as simple as possible and no simpler. I liked the fact that we had the opportunity to correct the erroneous assertion that it is words that are uncountable rather that senses. "Information" provided the perfect opportunity, allowing the counter-example and the admitted special context of its countability, a common feature of some of the words purportedly uncountable.

As for "annual, first, satin", what's debatable about their uncomparability? I guess the one thing I can think of is that 'satin' is actually a noun and might be more of a noun adjunct than an adjective. -- Thisis0 22:47, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I took the trouble to investigate their purported uncountability. I specifically search for "more-X-than" and confirm that it really is not separated by hyphens, not a typo or scanno, etc. First is the most debatable of these because the superlative form, firstmost, is shaky. "Annual" is used in agriculture and horticulture comparatively. The best evidence that "satin" is a true adjective is probably that it has a comparative form because its use as a predicate adjective is hard to distinguish from its use as a noun predicate. DCDuring TALK 23:02, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:trans-see

Do you know about this? Often useful, where there shouldn't be any other translations info in the particular table. Robert Ullmann 06:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

No, I hadn't paid attention to the discussion. I had just been adding omitted colons to the entries that needed them. I look forward to something similar for the rel tables. Thanks for the heads up.

DCDuring TALK 10:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

set

I think you were looking for {{trans-see}}. I have added it to the entry. --EncycloPetey 02:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I had to think for a while to remember it myself. Then, when I can to let you know, there was a notice about it above this comment! --EncycloPetey 02:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

And now that you've got it, I've taught AF to do it by itself in most cases it can recognize (there will always be exceptions). I was able to undo grinder and see that AF (on the second try ;-) did exactly the same thing. Robert Ullmann 15:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

As I was making the rfc-trans changes, I realized that I might be depriving you of the feedback needed to handle more cases. I tried to make better edit summaries to give you a sense of what was prevalent. Does that help? DCDuring TALK 16:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

oxymoron

Forgive my pique. I get very annoyed at the liberal placement of non-standard tags, misspelling templates, and other pejoratives by this supposedly descriptivist institution. You were quite right to remove "hypercorrect". I would only wish to remove the hypercorrect and censorious from the ranks of our contributors. DCDuring TALK 16:12, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Think nothing of it. The objection to the looser sense can’t really be founded upon etymology; in Ancient Greek it just means “sharp-dull” — a contradiction in terms — a {{m|en|wooden iron}} or {{m|la|contradictio in adjecto}}. If you want to weaken the proscriptive strength of that usage note, you may want to mention that and take the non-standard comment out of the “External links” section. I much præfer dispassionately laying out the arguments on either side in a clear fashion and then letting the reader consider which position of præscription suits him best. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

controlled chaos

Hi. I have made this entry as uncountable. This is almost certainly incorrect, and I'm sure you can determine this very quickly, as it is one of your "special areas". But my problem comes from the fact that I am not sure what the plural is. controlled chaoses sounds and looks really wierd. -- ALGRIF talk 15:07, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. You might also want to look at chaos in that case. Cheers, -- ALGRIF talk 16:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

US pronunciations

There is nobody who is especially active at adding US pronunciations, although EncycloPetey has made a couple of comments about existing pronunciations recently. The US pronunciation of the adjective being the same as the noun has been in the entry since that pronunciation section was added in this edit by DAVilla in October 2006. Thryduulf 10:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

This makes me wonder about the quality of such US pronunciations. It don't believe that the phonetic spellings match the audio file. I'm going to have to learn IPA. DCDuring TALK 13:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

My knowledge of IPA and SAMPA is entirely self taught, principally from the Wikipedia articles and existing entries here at Wiktionary. w:SAMPA_chart_for_English and w:IPA chart for English dialects are my standard references. The wp articles on the individual IPA symbols also usefully have The pronunciations I add are based on my speech and the speech I hear around me, there are only a few phonemes that do not occur in English that I understand.

Unfortunately I cannot listen to the audio files at the moment to transcribe from that. Thryduulf 14:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I have had difficulties with audio myself, which often makes me wonder about how many of our users can take advantage of our audio pronunciations. My problems in IE were never fully solved. Firefox has been much better. I've been wondering how we can give more of our users the benefit of the phonetic spellings and also get them to "verify" the phonetic alphabet renderings of pronunciations. Do you know whether there is open-source software that can do voice synthesis based on IPA or SAMPA? I'll have to check into that thought. DCDuring TALK 15:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd never thought of synthesized speech before, so I don't know what is available, but it's a very good idea. I suggest that you bring it up for discussion somewhere. Thryduulf 17:29, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

predicates

AF has marked this as needing cleanup. You forgot to indent the second Pronunciation one level below the Etymology 2 header. Wehn there are multiple etymologies, all headers underneath them get moved one level deeper, including Pronunciation. --EncycloPetey 01:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

{{quote-book}}

See my reply on its talk page. H. (talk) 15:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

See also

FYI - this occurs at various levels (L3 or L4). It can be nested underneath a POS header, but there is no requirement that it be placed there. I wouldn't worry too much about placement for this particular header. --EncycloPetey 03:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

serene

Hi, I noticed that you undid my changes to serene. I removed the "Used as a part of titles" because I felt it belonged in the derived terms section; and the bit about the sky because it was the same definition, just in a more specific context. I don't really mind the repeated definition, but I feel that "Her Serene Highness" should be moved back to derived terms. Would you object too much if I did?

I like the definitions that SB put in 3.5 years ago. The archaic meaning is different from the other, but more in line with the etymology. The use in a title is substantially abstracted from the specific meanings. It is what {{non-gloss definition}} is well-suited for. I would be happy to review it on RfV or RfD, though, because I might be wrong. I compared our entry with other dictionaries'. We still are a little short of the more complete ones. DCDuring TALK 21:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)