User talk:DCDuring/2009 QI

dignity

Can you please have a look at Talk:dignity#RFV? --Dan Polansky 11:04, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

surrebutter

If you look at our definition of rebutter, then the new definition of surrebutter makes no sense. A rebutter is a person according to our definition. --EncycloPetey 20:45, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Our definition of rebutter would seem to be missing a sense. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 20:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

OED1

All ten (or fourteen) original volumes, as published 1888-1928, have been scanned and posted on archive.org. It takes a bit of poking around to find them all. I downloaded the full set to my hard drive a while back -- if you or anyone else is interested, I'd be happy to save you that hassle by sending all ~5 gigs through a file-sending service. Unfortunately, because these were scanned by a (heroic!) individual, there are some substantial gaps -- some volumes are missing hundreds of pages -- and other strange glitches. Why no one at Hathi or Google Books has thought it worthwhile to have the OED digitized professionally is beyond me...

The barriers to import, as I see them, are three:

1. OCR: This is the big one. Most of the scanned files are PDFs containing OCR'd text, but the quality of this text is so poor as to be incomprehensible. I have been able to get somewhat better results running ABBYY over the page images, but a great deal of proofreading is still required. Unfortunately the various performance-boosting tricks that OCR programs like ABBYY use tend to backfire when working with an idiosyncratic text like the OED. ... Neither Gutenberg, Wikisource, nor any other distributed-proofreading enterprise seems to have this on their radar... Since we don't have tens of thousands of man-hours to spare, we would probably need to target specific entries (most logically, those that we don't yet have entries for).
2. Format: Converting OED format to Wiktionary format is seriously non-trivial, though in theory it could be automated. Then there is the matter of style.
3. Inclusion: The OED contains a lot of words that don't meet CFI -- they have only one or two citations, or would be considered Middle English, or have only mentions rather than uses, etc.

In view of these issues -- particularly #3 -- I'd been toying with the idea of importing selected OED1 entries to Citations: rather than directly to mainspace, using some kind of standard wrapper template and formatting (trying to match the original as closely as feasible). The original OED entries -- many of which are truly works of art -- could then remain unmolested, and any eligible content could be adapted at leisure into the actual entry, if any. I think this would be reasonably within the mandate of Citations-space, though I'm not sure there wouldn't be objections.

Anyway, that's as far as I'd gotten in thinking about this; just thought I'd share.  :-) I am unlikely to actually spearhead any project of this nature in the near future, but if anyone were to take the initiative, I would definitely chip in as much as able. Cheers, -- Visviva 15:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad and not surprised that you have given the matter some thought. I agree with your thoughts certainly in general and in particular where I have myself thought about it at all. Perhaps I can make inquiries and exhortations at Gutenberg for proofreading.

I wonder whether OED/OUP has in some subtle (or not) way leaned on Google and Gutenberg to nudge this off the list of high-priority projects.

I wonder, too, whether we shouldn't have a separate namespace for Oxford 1919 entries in a format suitable for raw imports from OED1 rather than overburden citationspace. It would not be in enwikt interests to have this outside of enwikt, so it might be possible to convince those who need convincing to go along with the technical steps necessary. I further wonder if this would be a project that could win funding support (as untimely as such a hope might seem). DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 16:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Y'know, a WPA for proofreaders seems like just the thing when we have millions of white-collar workers on the street. It may be an idea whose time has come. I would have no idea how to go about making such a proposal, though...

For raw imports, I think Appendix-space would do just fine (we have the Webster's pages in there somewhere already). On the other hand, any serious large-scale proofreading project would really belong on Wikisource rather than here; they have structures in place for that kind of work, which we don't and probably never will. In an ideal world, IMO, the bulk text would be maintained at Wikisource or Gutenberg and individual entries would be imported here as appropriate.

Part of my reason for thinking of Citations-space is that the OED is so much more citations-driven than any other dictionary, and the citations themselves are a large part of what we would hope to extract. It's not something I would normally consider doing with entries from Webster's or Century. In addition, the entries often contain scholarly notes which may be worthy of citation in their own right. See e.g. User:Visviva/suantly.

NB: I realize now that the final volumes of the OED (specifically, parts 1 and 2 of volume 10, letters T-Z) may well not be public domain; they were published after the 1923 cutoff. Then again, given that Oxford's lawyers haven't sent a takedown notice to the Internet Archive, there may be more to the story. -- Visviva 17:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

It is just 75 years, right? By the time we'd be done through "S", copyright would very likely have expired on more volumes.

I haven't worked with Wikisource. Is there anyone in particular who would be good to consult on this? My concern about not using citationspace is principally with making sure that we don't suffer unnecessary delay because of opposition. I think having alternatives for how to do it (and being open to additional suggestions) would mean less question about whether to do it. :::The next step would seem to be to run it up the flagpole at Wikisource and Project Gutenberg. Gutenberg seems the most plausible place for any grant-funding possibilities, but WMF might be amenable. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 17:46, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Asperger syndrome‎

I'm inclined to think that all English names of diseases are proper nouns, since their grammar is much more like that of proper nouns. They can't take descriptive adjectives; they generally don't take determiners (except for (deprecated template usage) the in the way some proper nouns do), can't be counted, etc. --EncycloPetey 21:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

TaskBag.

Hi DCDuring,

Quite a while ago, you mentioned wanting a kind of to-do list that you could use for cleanup categories — there'd be entries in those categories that you couldn't fix, and you wanted to ignore those entries.

Earlier today, I started something along those lines. I'm not sure how useful it is yet — it's very limited so far, though I have a lot of plans for its future — but if you'd like to give it a try, add this:

importScript('MediaWiki:Gadget-TaskBag.js/v0-1.js');

to User:DCDuring/monobook.js. (You'll have to hard-refresh afterward.) It adds links to the "toolbox" at left, and a "my taskbag" link to the very top of the page, between "my preferences" and "my watchlist". It's very ugly, but I think you'll find it mostly self-explanatory, assuming it works for you — I only tested with Firefox 3 and IE 7 — if it doesn't work for you, then I imagine you'll find it very confusing. :-P

—Ruakh_TALK 05:49, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look. DCDuring TALK 13:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

newbies on wictionary

dear DCDuring,

a Newcomer myself, I had a look at your user page, and noticed your list of priorities; given that, would you mind having a look at the quite lengthy post which among other things addresses how newcomers seem to get treated in general when first contributing to wictionary, that I put on Encyclopetey's user page yesterday?

Furthermore, many of my concerns hav to do with the accessibility of wictionary, like indeed having the most useful information for most users at the initial page that displays during a search, like pronunciation and definitions.

I thank you in advance for your efforts, as well as for the fact that I learned from your user page that I'm a fallibilist myself [cannot get my speech recognition to learn that word; spelling idiosyncrasies in the above are also blamed on the software. LOL]!!史凡 02:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

oakum

Did you mean to change the Finnish?—msh210℠ 19:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

No! Now returned to previous. Probably a touch-pad mistake. How did you ever notice that? DCDuring TALK 21:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

No worries

Hi there. I fixed your mistake on treading water. Cheers, Razorflame 16:56, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Ridiculously complicated, but "tread" and "tread water" seem to have different frequencies of the inflected forms. DCDuring TALK 17:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

"Clocked out"

Hello. Could you explain the ramifications of an RFD/RFV being "clocked out"? Does that mean that no consensus was reached within some time period, and that RFD/RFV is now unavailable? I was looking at sugartime and finding it slightly annoying that this obvious protologism was apparently allowed to pass because almost nobody bothered commenting. Equinox 23:01, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I know you asked DCDuring, but I figure you probably welcome multiple points of view, Equinox. Here's what I do: If an RFV lasts thirty days with insufficient citations, I fail it (mark the RFV page's section as failed and strike its header, and remove the offending senses or delete the entry). If an RFD lasts thirty days with no consensus, I keep it (mark the RFD page's section as passed and strike the header, and remove the rfd tag). (I think that the former is standard operating procedure (policy?) and the latter is my own rule.) I make exceptions when the RFV is of a foreign word, when the RFD discussion is really unresolved (I may use {{look}}), and when the RFV is of a word that I think likely has citations (but that no one has bothered citing).—msh210℠ 23:14, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I always hope that the process will work more or less as MSH describes it. The RfV process seems to be better defined. Accordingly, I find that if an entry seems wrong, it is often better to put it in RfV. The outcomes seem to be:

1. It gets cited as defined,
2. It gets cited but has to be redefined,
3. It doesn't get cited.

It is difficult to see any problem with the first two outcomes. The third outcome could lead to deletion by neglect, but rarely does a potentially citable word not get cited. When one does, it means that the folks who do most of the attestation work didn't think it was worth it, possibly because it is not to our taste, but more likely because we don't trust ourselves to do it justice (sometimes because it is hard to sift out usages from our usual sources). When someone takes charge of the RfV process, they can choose to let something stay longer (as Msh says above), sometimes very long. As a result deletion of worthwhile entries is not too likely.

I put in clocked out as a way of drawing attention to the entry, especially if it is one that I had tagged. I don't like to be both tagging entries and removing them: I feel at least two heads should be involved.

I am inclusionist (on words, anyway, less so on badly worded and narrowly defined senses and on phrases that don't seem clearly idiomatic), so I don't like to delete things that might be real. I am inclined to RfV entries that SB speedily deletes. Most of the time he is right; once in a while I find I can cite something he has deleted. I suspect the number of valuable entries that get speedy deleted is tiny.

As to sugartime, I would have thought that it would have been deleted if not cited. DCDuring TALK 00:28, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

pruning

Thank you for your message and your confidence. Unfortunately I'm not a native speaker and contribute to English entries rather occasionally. I added some words to the first definition, which I borrowed from the definition of prune, because the initial phrase looked unsatisfying to me. Now, could we say "The removal of excess material from a tree or shrub" ? --flyax 17:50, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I usually prefer "a removal", when possible, because it helps people recognise the possibility of a plural. I guess I'll just have to get my emotions under control. DCDuring TALK 18:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

RVF tags on Russian city names

Hello, please explain the meaning of the RVF tags you placed. The city names you tagged can be found in the Wikipedia. Please give an example of what you mean and why the entries need to be tagged. Please reply in "Requests for verification".Anatoli 04:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Question

Hi there. I understand that you are an administrator here. Could you please look over agardite to make sure that I did everyting correctly? Thanks, Razorflame 17:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Rackets et al

Sorry, thought I was following process...from what I could find...Thanks for the pointers. BTW, what do you think of consolidating them?? -- Mjquin id 19:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about your partially wasted effort. By my taste/interpretation, both tennis racket and tennis racquet do not fit our rules for inclusion (WT:CFI#Idioms. But take a look at [[fried egg]] and [[hippie movement]]. Then follow the link to the RfV discussion of [[hippie movement]]. DCDuring TALK 20:25, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Multi-word entries

Unfortunately, I can't see any way to draw this line beyond "use your common sense!", and (without throwing out the old saw about common sense not being common) that's clearly no grounds for making rules, because it can't be objectively measured. I can't think of any definite rules that would catch the worthwhile and ditch the dross, which is a pity, because I think we are going to end up with a zillion pathetic entries like ''[[tinned fruit salad]]'' and ''[[Japanese immigrant]]'' purely because they occur in many Web pages. Are we trying to define words or sentences? Gawsh. Equinox ◑ 22:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Relatively little harm comes from having too many entries. One good thing about low-quality multi-words is that they can cause us to check the senses shown in the component words for completeness and correctness. I have broken my sword on some of these and now wonder what I was hoping to achieve. A simple-to-administer system for automatically including some terms and automatically excluding others, leaving fewer to the more labor-intensive and contentious RfD process might be good. For example, any term in one of the major dictionaries (the mainstream OneLook dictionaries+OED-Wikt-WP-WordNet, for starters) and three citations for each sense would be a keeper. Perhaps anything with no dictionary support, no citations, no image, no translations, and no links after one/two/three years might be a presumed delete.

I recommend that you send any entry the could go to either RfD or RfV to RfV. Some entries will not get cited and will thereby be deleted in due course. This won't work for easy-to-cite common collocations, but it will work against entries that have no support from those who are willing to do citation work (me, Visviva, Ruakh, and not as many others as we'd like). Attestation can be fun. The facts discovered can even change one's mind about the legitimacy of entries. Using Google books and news searches and BNC and COCA via http://corpus.byu.edu/ and the quote-books and quote-news templates is not so bad. DCDuring TALK 00:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps. But I would say the reasons things fail RfV are not related to being "things that shouldn't be in the dictionary", and I would feel bad about getting something deleted purely because nobody could be bothered to defend it and not because there was any "anti-consensus". To reiterate my example from above, tinned fruit salad has about 200 matches in Google Books, but that doesn't legitimise it in any way; and then he has far more, but I doubt even Stephen would add that one. Tush. Well, I take your (implied) point that adding material is more important than deleting it; I suppose I just secretly hope for a sea change where all of these (IMO!) obvious compounds will be either pragmatically zapped or (using some excellent future technology) redirected to their separate components. Equinox ◑ 01:02, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Most of the multi-word entries that have defenders are not like "tinned fruit salad" (although it would be fun to see who would defend it). They are more nearly legitimate ones like "rate of climb", "fried egg", "sunny side up", "over easy" - and Eiffel Tower, not so much Great Pyramid at Giza.

Getting citations entered is more valuable than keeping some marginal entry. There'll be someone else to add it in a year or two or three if it's of any potential value at all. Items stay on RfV for no less than a month. The folks who handle the resolution or RfV items use their discretion to avoid deleting entries that might deserve to live. I'm fairly aggressive about citing English entries that seem to be under attack for reasons other than not meeting our criteria (such as bias against: US, commercial products, vulgarisms, teen-talk, US dialect, business, religion, etc). There are defenders for many other specific types of terms, too.

A fairly simple "future technology" would be a "no text found" page that provided links to each of the words used in the search for multiword searches for those that have entries and search boxes and buttons for such words without entries. DCDuring TALK 01:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

plummetting

See :User:Visviva/Guardian_20090223}} for an example of adjective use. SemperBlotto 19:51, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quote. My brain isn't too sharp today. I don't remember exactly what criteria we use to determine whether adjectival use of a present participle warrants a separate Adjective PoS. As I understand it, the leading criteria are:

1. Attestable attributive use
2. Comparative and/or superlative form exists.
3. Gradability
4. Attestable predicative use

1. No question.
2. I looked for "more" and didn't find it in Books.
3. It doesn't seem gradable ("too", "very").
4. I'm not sure about predicative use. "The market is/was plummeting." seems like present/past progressive of the verb.

I didn't think 1 alone was enough, just as with attributive use of the noun. If others have concluded otherwise, I'd like to understand the thinking. I could do more usage research about comparability and gradability. Is this worth TR or BP? DCDuring TALK 20:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

To me, it just seems obvious that it is an adjective. Here are a few random pieces from Google book search - How To Survive In A Plummeting Elevator‎ - Economists don't know how to measure the productivity of industries with plummeting prices. - this benign neglect for the krone's plummeting exchange rate was extremely shortsighted. - If you spread mulch too early, plants won't fully harden off and go dormant, making them vulnerable to plummeting temperatures. - Donors' concerns about Kenya's plummeting economy deepened. - With the present plummeting demand market for office buildings - and so on. SemperBlotto 22:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Funny, those examples all sound like verbs to me. Not to say it's not an adjective, but at least I don't see it from those examples.—msh210℠ 22:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I had never disputed that participles are used attributively as adjectives (1. above). The three open questions are:

1. Is attributive usage without any other adjectival characteristics enough to warrant a participle being shown as an adjective also? ((It isn't for nouns.)
2. Does research on usage of plummeting/plummetting show that it to be gradable or comparable?
3. Does my interpretation of "Prices were plummetting" as present progressive rather than predicative use of "plummetting" make that "test" ineffective? (I think it does.)

The examples do not show gradability or comparability: "The market was so plummetting it made my head spin."??? "The temperatures were more plummetting yesterday than today."??? Neither construction seems like real usage to me. Of course, usage facts could prove my "ear" to not accurately reflect usage outside the communities where I have learned my English. DCDuring TALK 00:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree that this doesn't seem like an adjective; it's not gradable and can't felicitously be used with modifiers like "very" or verbs like "become". On the other hand there is something very adjectival-feeling in the phrase "plummeting share prices"... And there is this: [1] ... but it's the only one I could find. -- Visviva 01:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This is why, at the very least, we need to have some content (usage examples, citations) at some inflected forms, I think. Also, attributive use usage examples for nouns. I don't think that we do any service to users not showing an adjective and noun PoSes in attributive use of nouns and noun and adjective use of participles. DCDuring TALK 01:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. BTW, even if we accept "plummeting" as an adjective, the sentence in that cite doesn't mean what its speaker meant for it to mean. Taken literally, it indicates a positive and high-magnitude second derivative of Party membership with respect to time (albeit presumably not so high in magnitude as to bring the first derivative above zero); but the speaker clearly meant for it to indicate a negative and high-magnitude first derivative. That suggests to me that the speaker was mixing together a few different versions of what he wanted to say, and got a bad result; which makes it hard to tell whether "very, very plummeting" is something he would ordinarily say, or if it was just a part of the larger mix-up. —Ruakh_TALK 14:44, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so are you saying that, just as "a green elevator" is functionally equivalent to "an elevator that is green", then "a plummeting elevator" must be functionally equivalent to "an elevator that is plummeting". OK, I'll accept that - sorry to have been a pain. SemperBlotto 15:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

surrogatum

Why do you require verification of the sense? There is certainly enough citations and an entry in Wikipedia, what more to you need? You don't seem to require verification of the sense for scacchic and it's definition is quite meaningless! WritersCramp 12:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

scacchic was in RfD. RfD is different process than RfV. There was no valid reason under WT:CFI provided for the RfD. Should "scacchi" be challenged, I am confident, having examined the potential for citing scacchic, that one could find more than 3 citations in qualifying sources. I found citations for [[surrogatum principle]]. I did not find 3 additional citations for surrogatum alone (as a noun) or surrogatum modifying other nouns (in attributive use). If there were actual citations in the entry from the kinds of sources we accept for attestation, instead of links, it would be possible to have a discussion. DCDuring TALK 15:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

it is what it is

Hello DC -- Re this edit, it is interesting indeed to see Locke using this exact turn of phrase, but I'm 99.99% sure his usage is not idiomatic in the contemporary sense. He is speaking quite literally as a philosopher, making a straight-up SOP ontological statement -- Every real existent is what it is by virtue of its constitution. Perhaps a literal sense should be added, and this nice quotation should go with that sense. -- WikiPedant 21:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Do with it what you will. There is a [[Transwiki:It is what it is|transwiki]] page that has some other material, eg, a Safire article, and a somewhat different take. DCDuring TALK 22:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

WT:BP

Was this edit intentional?

Of course not. Sorry. I have trouble with undesired deletions due to my touchpad. I thought I was only inconveniencing myself. DCDuring TALK 15:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

obnosis

Please go through the history on the page to see that:

1) lisakachold is adding cites and entries that conform to wiktionary standards. 2) lisakachold is removing cites that do not conform or are redundant and commenting on the discussion page related to and before edits. 3) others are removing or immediately reverting those edits even if they conform [added senses and durable sources for all] [rfv sense tags removed even when obnosis is on that page]. 4) others are chastising lisakachold for editing her own edits and threatening that this is wrong. There is no proof of the version and the change, in a nutshell attributing lisakachold own edits to others and saying her cleanup of a talk/discussion page is bannable behavior.

Please diligently and carefully look at the history, like the administrators have been called to do. The page will be nominated for deletion since a scientology agenda exists to remove all but scientology references, which is not supported by the musical entries, gaming entries, literature entries as common use which the "users" continue to whittle away at in repeated edit wars.

They have removed the etylogy that includes "disease" repeatedly that was accepted by you and other editors at rfv in October.

Repeatedly they edit the page back to Scientology only sense, removing durable sources for well documented senses from two or more users at once, then lock the page supposedly for an "edit war".

New Administrators are not even clearly and completely stating on the Discussion page why their edits are done; history is vague as to why the changes are made, and don't completely conform to the whole slicing up of the page content that essentially restores it to Scientology even adding extensive vague and obtuse cites.

PLEASE ADVISE on what to do with this situation? — This unsigned comment was added by 68.3.119.178 (talk) at 12:06, 2 March 2009.

Colossus of Rhodes

Hi. I see you've tagged this RFV. But I don't see any entry in RFV. However, what I wanted to suggest is that "like a Colossus of Rhodes" gets a good number of Google hits, many of which I would consider to be attributive. "Hanna rose like a Colossus of Rhodes" or "Like a Colossus of Rhodes minus the body, this foot was a mysterious monstrosity". What's your opinion on this? -- ALGRIF talk 15:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll probably pick another of them with less likelihood of being successfully cited. If someone wants this kind of entry in, then cfi should be changed. I don't care whether we change cfi, though I would like to understand the user-based rationale for including terms that are well covered in WP. Figuring out how to direct effort to entry quality improvement seems more important than abridging WP entries. DCDuring TALK 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree entirely. I sometimes find myself thinking, that with the limited amount of time available, why waste so much of it arguing about whether a fairly pointless / or clearly necessary/ entry should or should not be included, when there is so much useful work to be done. Which reminds me... back to phrasal verbs. Still 2,000 or more missing. -- ALGRIF talk 16:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

roop

Hi there. Did you mean to put in the Verb PoS in this word? Thanks, Razorflame 18:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes. See roup#Etymology 1. DCDuring TALK 18:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

WT:BP#Move Category:US to Category:United States English

Have I addressed your concerns adequately about renaming the category, or are you still thinking about it? Disagree completely? Because this is a very populous and high-level category, I don't want to proceed unless everyone is satisfied.

In my view, it is just the name that is changing, to support the established purpose of the category, and to match virtually every other category in the branch (excepting [[:category:UK]], which is on my short list). The renaming doesn't really interact with what may already be miscategorized (although the more explicit name may help prevent further miscategorization).

I'm not changing any templates at this time, either. I do plan to make a proposal to handle terms for geographically restricted subjects, as opposed to terms from regional dialects. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2009-03-18 22:23 z

Thanks for asking. I will think on it. I would like to enable the appropriate changes in support of geographic context at the same time. I think that the templates need to be changed as part of the whole set of changes. DCDuring TALK 22:42, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Why tie the name change to another issue which is likely to be a huge can of worms? The name change is simply standardizing one anomalous category name, without changing the function of anything. Geographic context is a whole new framework for us, and many editors are barely introduced to the concept. Regardless of what's decided about that one, the category is clearly named incorrectly. —Michael Z. 2009-03-19 03:13 z

A simple review of some of the 3200 entries in the category will show that many entries already have a US tag because the referent is in the US. I believe that users are likely to continue to use the US tag in this way, especially if the displayed label does not change. DCDuring TALK 10:28, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Then propose a change in the label. But please don't stall the fixing of a misnamed category based on that. —Michael Z. 2009-03-19 14:13 z

I have proposed a change to templates and context display. A well thought-out proposal needs to address the ancillary issues, especially those that will affect user (passive and contributor) behavior. DCDuring TALK 14:28, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

WT:BP#Move Category:US to Category:American English

Hi. Carolina Wren's question has prompted me to rethink the proposal, and I've restarted it under a new heading. Please leave a note there. Thanks. —Michael Z. 2009-03-19 16:01 z

Hi. The proposal to rename has been on the table for a week. The category's purpose is clear from its description and the fact that Category:United States of America also exists, and plainly it is incorrectly named when compared to the rest of Category:Regional English.

Tying several independent issues to this move is pointless. I wouldn't be wise to launch a single proposal that complex and with so many possible points of failure, just to rename this category. Renaming the template may or may not be helpful, but your suggestion clashes with the rest of [[:Category:Regional context labels]], so that expands the scope further. Proposing a framework for regional context categories and templates is huge, and could be resolved three or four very different ways. None of these things change the fact that the name [[:Category:US]] fails badly, and Category:American English is the best name. Moving it improves the dictionary without harming anything.

So please rethink your position. Leave a note at the BP and let us know that you'll support the move. Thanks. —Michael Z. 2009-03-23 16:17 z

aconita

Shown as Translingual noun. Shouldn't we treat it as a Latin adjective? Would it be a form of the New Latin coinage aconitus (adjective), derived from classical Latin aconitum (“monk's hood”)? DCDuring TALK 19:21, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

That's the way I normally treat these. They're not Translingual unless they're used as words in multiple languages. This is only used as part of a word internationally, and so I would treat it as strictly Latin (and as an adjective form). See more of my thoughts at WT:BP#Species names. --EncycloPetey 02:16, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

systematic risk

Better definition for it please, a correct one. Steel Blade 01:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, DCDuring. I was mentioning about systematic risk, but thank you though. Steel Blade 02:12, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this confusing? Steel Blade 10:39, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2009-03/Transwikis from other Wiktionaries

Hi DCDuring,

Since you commented at Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Transwikis from other Wiktionaries., I wanted to make sure you were aware of the resultant vote, Wiktionary:Votes/2009-03/Transwikis from other Wiktionaries.

—Ruakh_TALK 13:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC)