User talk:DCDuring/2012 QII

2012 Q II

Talkback

here Pass a Method (talk) 18:23, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Replied

Not a regular here, so my reply took a whopping 2 weeks. --Hydrox (talk) 01:00, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

scrap

Hey, I noticed you tagged it for RfV, then removed your own tag before starting an RfV discussion. Did you mean to do that? By the way, a Google Search of "plans for" "were scrapped" turned up 90,000 hits, and most of the ones on the first page fit my (partially idiomatic) description of the plans being stopped rather than definition #1 of them being thrown away Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 05:27, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I was mistaken in tagging it. For some reason I was confused by the passive voice. Clearly the sense is derived from the more literal sense, but equally clearly it is not normally a live metaphor now. DCDuring TALK 13:09, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

kohling

I am new to wiktionary. can you explain what I am doing wrong please? — This comment was unsigned.

There are a lot of little things to learn, but it is good that you have registered.

1. You should sign your posts on discussion and talk pages by adding "~~~~" at the end.
2. We don't put pronunciations or etymologies (or much of anything) on entries for "non-lemma" terms like kohling. We have a way of semi-automatically adding those non-lemmas, which you can turn on by switching on the appropriate check-box at "my preferences" / "gadgets".

I don't know what kind of things interest you, so it's hard to be constructive. If English is your native language, then take a look at WT:REE for requested entries. WT:ELE is useful, as well as WT:CFI.

You may need a thick skin to accept all the corrections that are likely to be inflicted on your early contributions, but paying attention to them is the best way to learn or check what you have learned otherwise. Feel free to ask me or any editor who may correct or revert your contributions. DCDuring TALK 04:44, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomy

Hey DC, did you know we have {{taxon}} for Taxon entries now? It's very handy; it even adds the page to Category:mul:Taxonomic names 50 Xylophone Players talk 20:09, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

occupy the dictionary!

I've cited the "occupy but not hold" sense of [[occupy]], made it an {{uncommon}} subsense of "occupy (and hold)" ... but now I wonder if it would be more accurate and helpful to have only one sense with usage note ({{qualifier}}?) immediately after it:

1. To take possession or control of, to begin an occupation of. (This implies retention of control, but forces are sometimes said to have "occupied but not held" a place.)

What do you think? Either way, the definitions and/or notes can probably be improved. - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. I like that kind of thing and will get to it in due course. Intuitively, I find it hard to believe that one can be said to occupy something and not hold it for at least some period of time. A period of occupation would normally coincide with a period of holding. But the neologism may be different. Is there a new sense of occupy that is not durative, but is instead a (media) event? DCDuring TALK 22:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Is occupying "taking and holding for a short time" vs. holding, which does not have any "taking" as part of its definition? One can lose what one holds, but not what one occupies? The economics of paying for troops and warfare and the practicalities of police response may make a practical distinction between occupying and holding. DCDuring TALK 23:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually, our entry seems to be missing an "Occupy (Wall Street)" sense. I'm referring instead to the sense which is the subject of WT:RFV#occupy. Its quotations (from 1940, 1975, 1983 and 2006) seem to use "occupy" in the usual military sense, but without the intuitive implication you speak of (that occupying implies holding). Consider "The Japanese can occupy but cannot hold, and what they can hold they cannot hold long" or "Spain occupied, but could not populate [Florida]".

I just went looking for a quotation of "Germany occupied France", expecting to find uses like "Germany occupied France for several years" — but instead I found "In the spring of 1940 Germany occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands." Along with the 1940-2006 citations, this suggests a sense "conquer and begin an occupation of". Is that an accurate interpretation of the 1940-2006 citations? ("Germany occupied France for several years" would be the sense we both find more intuitive, "hold; (garrison and) have control of".) - -sche (discuss) 23:32, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Occupy definitely includes the seizure of what is then held (for a time). I don't think you normally would say "occupy and hold" whereas you can "seize and hold". COCA shows 18 instances of "[seize] and [hold]", only 1 of "[occupy] and [hold]". I didn't get enough sleep and it's been very hot here today. (No air conditioning: It's against my religion and bank account.) I know this has been a day when I should not have operated heavy machinery, so I can't quite get to closure on this. DCDuring TALK 23:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

COCA also has 10 instances of "[seize] and [occupy]", which certainly suggests that occupy is a lot closer to "hold". Is there then a sequence: "attack, seize, occupy, hold"? Or is holding just success in seizing and occupying? Occupation also seems to differ in meaning between "seizing and holding against attack" in war and "maintaining an armed force in a place against the sovereignty of the government and people of the place" (or something more felicitous). DCDuring TALK 00:01, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

We are attempting to make distinctions that other dictionaries do not. Perhaps we should find the applicable international law that defines post-hostilities occupation.

I am more skeptical than ever about the utility of a distinction between a longer- and shorter-term "holding" or "keeping" associated with occupy. DCDuring TALK 00:21, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

In 1940, Germany occupied France. At 10:28 a.m., I stirred the moussaka. Do we need a separate sense for "starting to stir something"? No. Equinox ◑ 00:24, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

That's where I began and where I ended. But along the way I discovered the power of coordination ("and") for determining semantic content (excluding legal use of multiple synonyms!) and a possible distinction between occupation during hostilities and occupation after hostilities. DCDuring TALK 00:37, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) OK, I've combined the senses, keeping the old def mostly intact. I've tweaked it slightly to try to account for all 'permutations': "Germany occupied (had control of) France for several years" and "China occupies (has control of) Tibet at the moment, but in the past, Tibet was independent and...", vs "Japan can occupy (take control of) but not hold (keep control of)". What do you think? - -sche (discuss) 00:43, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, stirring can be a short activity: the ocean can certainly be said to have stirred sediment for millions of years, but you could also start stirring at 10:28 and finish before the clock reached 10:29. In contrast, occupation is implicitly a longer activity than the 1940-2006 citations have it being. I might say "at 10:28, I drove to the store down the street" (even though the trip took me until 10:30) — but I would find it very odd if a San Franciscan said "at 10:28, I drove to New York City". In the case of such a long trip, I would expect "at 10:28, I started driving to New York City". - -sche (discuss) 00:49, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Certainly, but that applies to any number of things: "at 10:28, I went to town" (either started, or arrived, but not both, assuming some walking distance)... This seems to be something for a grammar book or appendix. Equinox ◑ 01:02, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

One of the important ways of discovering the shades of meaning of common words is to pay attention to grammatical differences in usage. Having an objective complement, collocating with different prepositions, having aspectual differences are ways that verb senses can be distinguished. Whether occupy has senses aspectually distinct (inceptive, imperfective, durative, stative, etc) is what we have been trying to get at. I wish I had a more intuitive feel for such things. I barely remember the names of some aspects that grammarians have identified as occurring in the wild. Those grammar distinctions in other languages can be semantic distinctions in English. English has some inflectional aspect differences. As I understand it, "ing" endings indicate a progressive aspect and we have the grammatical distinction between simple past, past perfect, and pluperfect. More remotely, verbs ending in "le" (sparkle) are frequentatives of the corresponding base (spark). DCDuring TALK 01:57, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Pre-CodeCat?

You make it sound like an era. I know I feel old but THAT old? o.o —CodeCat 00:44, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

When I was a boy, we would have been happy to have an era named after us. I just wanted to soften the effect of your somewhat harsh edit summary on the newbie? contributor. I figured either you could take it or I could talk my way out of trouble with you. Writing edit summaries is a lot like tweeting: you have to squeeze it in any way you can. I assume it to be limited by # of characters. How many, I wonder? DCDuring TALK 02:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Let's see... 200 apparently. Look at the edit summary for this message. —CodeCat 11:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

210, by my count. Thanks for the test. Without spaces I had to scroll far to the right see them all. I have to see how many show up on special watchlist when spaces are inserted. Maybe we should have a character counter like Twitter's.

I've noted the oddness that deletion/move summaries seem to have different length limits or are simply added-to when referenced in page histories, with the result that long deletion/move summaries only show up unabridged in logs, whereas they are truncated in page histories. (Or maybe I imagined that?) - -sche (discuss) 12:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I've asked a bunch of questions about edit summary size at WT:GP. I may not have asked the right ones. DCDuring TALK 12:39, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

Please don't. Even if it's only rarely. Also why? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Who's the vandal here? See User talk:Liliana-60. You could at least wait until I get an answer. DCDuring TALK 16:32, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

No, YOU could just wait until you get an answer. Don't make a mistake and then revert an editor who fixes it. Try either not making mistakes, or ask someone if you don't understand instead of reverting blindly to a broken version. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:35, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Liliana-60 will understand your comment as you haven't told him what it is you want. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing you want a template for Canadian French? Well {{fra}} was never that, it displayed French for a while, then it was a redirect to {{fr}}. I seem to think we have a template for Cajun French, but we could easily make one for Canadian French if we wanted to. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:38, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I was relying on Canadian French#External links. DCDuring TALK 16:59, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I see, I suppose that's because Canadian French is a form French. {{etyl:Canadian French}} seems simple enough. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:31, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Database-dump–based list.

Hi DCDuring,

I seem to recall that a while back you made a comment about wanting a list of something . . . maybe a list of verb entries where the past-participle is a bluelink but isn't defined as a past participle? Does that ring a bell? If you can refresh my memory about what it was that you wanted, I can probably generate an approximate list for you based on the last database-dump.

—Ruakh_TALK
17:16, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for remembering. The problem as I see it is that we have a fairly large number of entries for headwords ending in "ed" that are deverbal but only contain adjective section, but do not contain a verb (form) PoS section. Your characterization is good. I could use either the list of verbs or the corresponding list of adjectives, though the latter would be quicker to work with.

Can the PoS sections just be bot-inserted be any chance, preferably above the adjective section? I'd be happy to clean up after a bot has done its work, given notice so it can be scheduled when I can do it.

There are so many things to be cleaned up.

Is it ever going to be possible to render the Special:Uncategorizedtemplates page more useful by categorizing the subpages, presumably by mass addition of standardized documentation pages, starting with those whose parent page has the fewest transclusions? Presumably, it should be done for all subpages within a language code and a language family at once - or do such groupings not speed the clearing of the queue? DCDuring TALK 18:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: original question: I've started User:DCDuring/NonverbalDeverbals. Right now it only lists a small subset of cases, in that it requires the lemma's inflection-line to be the exact string {{en-verb}}, but it should be enough to serve as a starting-point.

I always forget how hard it is to generate these sorts of lists, because we have just so many problems with our data that you really can't make any assumptions. I started by looking at headword lines of ==English== ===Verb=== entries, and discovered that a lot of them were using {{en-noun}} or other incompatible headword-line templates, sometimes because the header was wrong and template was right, and sometimes the reverse. I've cleaned all of those up now, but it doesn't inspire confidence.

Re: Special:UncategorizedTemplates: I absolutely agree that standardized documentation pages are the way to go. I created User:DCDuring/UncategorizedTemplates not because I view that as the permanent solution, but only because I didn't think the non-bottable half of the template-categorization effort should have to wait for the bottable half to be figured out. As for doing all subpages of a template at the same time — no, that won't affect the clearing of the job queue. (I don't think it's harmful, but I also don't think it's helpful.)

—Ruakh_TALK 03:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I didn't expect that so many of the adjectives would be denominal. For those of the form "Xed", I was focused on those without Noun PoS sections at "X" and with no Verb PoS section at "Xed". What you have provided seems to be/include those "Xed" entries where "X" has a Verb PoS and "Xed" does not. No matter: All of these need to be enhanced. Strictly speaking, the denominal adjectives are of a different etymology than the past participle, especially where we show distinct etymologies for X#Verb and X#Noun. See (deprecated template usage) skilled and tell me what you think. What you have provided points out how many problems there are. Yet again, thanks. DCDuring TALK 12:32, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomy (again)

Hey, when you're fixing up entries can you also convert the See also's to Hyponyms? They almost invariably are taxons within the headword taxon; species with a genus, genera within a family, etc. 50 Xylophone Players talk 16:47, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Next pass, I am going to work through the entries for genera and do a few things, like {{taxon}} and Etymologies. Frankly, I think we have no business in hyponyms and hypernyms beyond what goes in {{taxon}}, as our sister projects are already competing in the area. I'm not even sure about that stuff within {{taxon}}. DCDuring TALK 16:54, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Linguistically, I don't think we are doing much of value in taxonomy other than genera and species epithets. Translations should be from the corresponding English name, if at all possible. If not, wikispecies has plenty of room for vernacular names. Very few of the super-generic names are etymologically interesting, being usually SoP morphs of a genus name. If we had every genus name and all the English vernacular names, I think we would have the framework for adding entries in all other language. I'd even go so far as to call the various Latinate "English" names ending in "id" and "oid" and "acae" and "a" vernacular names for this purpose. My efforts in this realm will go no further. DCDuring TALK 17:10, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Linebreaks in templates

Please don't add extra line breaks before noinclude tags in templates. The extra line breaks do get transcluded when the templates are used, causing some problems. --Yair rand (talk) 17:00, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. I was trying not to. These undocumented and uncategorized templates are quite a mess. So it's hard to take the time to be careful. It's never fun cleaning up other people's messes. DCDuring TALK 17:18, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

<noinclude>

It's unnecessary, and IMHO misleading, to use <noinclude> at a template that uses <onlyinclude> (except, of course, inside the <onlyinclude>).

And personally, I think <onlyinclude> is far superior to <noinclude> for cases like {{----}}.

—Ruakh_TALK 19:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd be happy if the experts had categorized and documented their own templates or those in their bailiwcik. I'm trying just not to break anything or bring the servers to their knees.

I've discovered more templates that look as if any change would cause a big load on the servers, eg, {{context 1}}. Am I right?

Is there any hope to render Special:UncategorizedTemplates as useful a maintenance category as Special:UncategorizedPages by, say, getting the count of those that can't be changed down below 4000? Or is it going to be necessary to periodically run your thing to generate the list I've been working? DCDuring TALK 20:08, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: first paragraph: What I mean is, I don't think you needed to re-edit {{----}} after my last edit. All you did was remove a line-break and add <noinclude> tags, and I don't really see the benefit of either of those changes. (It's only transcluded on two pages. I don't think there's a big problem with the changes. But to me they seem actively pointless, and border on revert-warring, so I'd rather get on the same page if possible.)

Re: second paragraph: Yes, you're right.

Re: third paragraph: As I told you two days ago, "I created User:DCDuring/UncategorizedTemplates not because I view that as the permanent solution, but only because I didn't think the non-bottable half of the template-categorization effort should have to wait for the bottable half to be figured out."

—Ruakh_TALK 20:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't realized that you had edited it and was further confused by "includeonly" and "onlyinclude", which I still don't get. I thought that I'd forgotten to work on that template and didn't see a category, which I thought anyone working on these would add. Even a low-value categorization like to Category:Templates seems better than nothing, as it is not obvious to me what existing template category would be a good home for this. I've reverted the product of my confusion, but not the template categorization. DCDuring TALK 21:15, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm totally on board with the template categorization. I didn't even know there was a Category:Templates. (I guess I never looked!) Maybe {{documentation/preload}} should include it? And maybe we should set up an abuse-filter to detect the creation of a template without {{documentation}}?

Regarding "includeonly" and "onlyinclude" . . . yeah, the names are confusing. Basically there are three tags:

• foo<noinclude>bar</noinclude>baz produces foobarbaz on the template page, but foobaz on pages that transclude it.
• foo<includeonly>bar</includeonly>baz produces foobaz on the template page, but foobarbaz on pages that transclude it. (It's one opposite of "noinclude": instead of preventing its contents from being transcluded, it prevents its contents from being anything other than transcluded.)
• foo<onlyinclude>bar</onlyinclude>baz produces foobarbaz on the template page, but bar on pages that transclude it. (It's another opposite of "noinclude": instead of preventing its contents from being transcluded, it prevents anything other than its contents from being transcluded.)

That's for regular template transclusions, as well as subst: and safesubst:ed transclusion. Preload templates, however, don't support "onlyinclude", and while they do support "noinclude" and "includeonly", they don't use the full MediaWiki parser, so they don't do a very smart job of finding where/whether "noinclude" and "includeonly" start and stop.

—Ruakh_TALK 00:52, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation about the operation of the "includes". It seems to be yet another reason for me to limit what I do to incremental editing, well away from the business end of any templates.

I don't think Category:Templates is useful as a permanent one for templates. It is useful as a holder for categories of templates and as a temporary holder of templates that do not have an appropriate category, at least in the opinion of someone assigning that category.

An abuse filter for the absence of {{documentation}} (or whatever other approach would work) would be really useful in Template space. It would also be nice to have some indication of inadequate categorization, ie, only in Category:Templates requiring documentation. It is less critical that a lack of {{documentation}}. Some way of detecting suspiciously slender documentation, not significantly different from a preload might be useful for cleanup. DCDuring TALK 01:06, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: "[[[:Category:Templates]]] is useful […] as a temporary holder of templates that do not have an appropriate category": Quite. That's why I was suggesting that {{documentation/preload}} might provide it, so that documented templates will start out there until someone categorizes them better. (After all, Special:UncategorizedTemplates just shows whether a template is in any category at all, even something like Category:Requests for deletion/Others or something like Category:English nouns. A template in a catch-all category can be found and categorized properly.)

Re: Abuse filter: O.K., I've given it a shot.

—Ruakh_TALK 02:22, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I would always favor letting Mediawiki capability, like the special uncategorized pages, do some of the work. I dislike being dependent of technical experts for every bit of smooth functioning. Partially it is because of my own lack of expertise in (or enthusiasm for) technical matters. But in part it is because technical adepts move on, leaving the rest of us to cope with their edifices as best we can. The causes of departure vary, but Ullmann, Daniel., and Conrad.Irwin come to mind. And others show signs of dwindling commitment. Of course some folks are a lot more responsible that others in how they handle technical responsibilities. I am grateful to them, at least in principle. Sometimes it takes a few months before I discover where the documentation I need is! DCDuring TALK 02:34, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I've noticed the same thing. That's why I posted all of the code for User:DCDuring/UncategorizedTemplates on its talk-page, so that it won't depend on me (and on whatever computer I wrote that on). —Ruakh_TALK 14:28, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Considering the lack of documentation for templates... do you think it would work to have a specific request page to ask for documentation or clarification of a template? Or should that just go into GP? —CodeCat 15:20, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea for mid-priority/urgency items. The highest should (and anyway would) go to WT:GP. The lowest level could just be in the category populated by {{documentation}}.

Relatedly, I asked this of Ruakh on his talk page, but you might know:

Do changes to a template that are entirely in "noinclude" even generate changes in pages in which the template is transcluded? If so, then it would be without bad consequence to insert {{documentation}} so encapsulated for all pages that lack it. DCDuring TALK 15:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Template:grc-cite-Plato-Laws-chapcon

I'm assuming you tagged this and Template:grc-cite-Plato-Republic-chapcon for attention because when you go to the template, you see an error? Let me assure you that the two templates work just fine when actually used. I have been unable to get rid of the direct visit error message. I'm not entirely certain why the error comes up, but I have a suspicion that it's because the less than operators that are used can't function properly when comparing wikicode parameters, like {{{1}}}, but work just fine when they receive either nothing or numbers, which is what they get in actual use. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:25, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

I had looked at one entry that used it (or the other one I tagged for the same reason) and it didn't seem right, but the cause may have been different. I'm just trying to push all of the templates I can into categories as close as possible to where they might get whatever treatment they warrant. Sometimes I see something that seems odd to me in my ignorance of technical matters. I trust you to take care of them, or not, as you think is worth your time, certainly without needing to give any explanation to me. I figure that I detect something real once in a while, more often something that would concern others like me that can be fixed simply, and very often something I just don't understand.

I'm happy you're still around. DCDuring TALK 03:10, 29 June 2012 (UTC)