User talk:DCDuring/2012 QIV

2012 Q IV

below the salt

...is surely the same POS as [[above the salt]], so could you either make "below the salt" a prepositional phrase or make "above the salt" an adjective? Thanks, - -sche (discuss) 20:39, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, boss. Iza werkin jez az fas I can. DCDuring TALK 23:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

template:rft-sense

Why?​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:06, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Because the items get gobs of attention once in the tearoom. DCDuring TALK 18:21, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I suspect some people may check some language-attention category but not the TR.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I care most about English, of course. I am very of distressed by our uniformitarian approach to template and category design. I fear it will come crashing down or die from inability to accommodate changes flexibly.

As to request/maintenance categories, English could use a fine-tuned system, putting each item into one specific category, saving the general "attention" category for items not otherwise classified. I can't speak for most languages, but I suspect that the languages with the fewest contributors more clearly benefit from the attention-by-language approach. DCDuring TALK 19:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

This template doesn't require lang= and wouldn't normally have it for English, so the code you removed should do nothing for English. I can edit it so that it explicitly does nothing for English even if people do use lang=en. Would that be okay with you, then?​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:22, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

That would be fine with me. And if someone misses the English, they can go back to the original. DCDuring TALK 22:04, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Showing usage of a word graphically

Hello,

I found another method to find out the usage of a word: http://www.wordcount.org/main.php - is that a reliable website?

Greetings HeliosX (talk) 17:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Taking the site as face value, the underlying data is the British National Corpus, so it is contemporary UK usage that is represented. That corpus is a large one with 100,000,000 total words. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) has 450 million words. BYU reports that Google Books has 450 billion words. The words are word forms not lemmas ("book" and "books" would be in the count, separately). I can't speak to whether the site host has done what he says he did. If you are looking for a list that you can use and do with what you will, you should look at this page. Generally, you should examine this site which you can freely use after registering and which has a useful user interface but which does not support mass downloads. DCDuring TALK 19:06, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomic names

If you don't hear from me about this during the week, then bug me about it this weekend. My other efforts are being hampered by offline activities and settling in to a new computer, so we might as well make a start dealing with this issue.

I see three main stages of settling this:

1) dealing with the basic information for genus (and higher rank) names: what do we include, where, how, and in what format

2) dealing with binomial names of species and subspecific taxa

3) dealing with the second half of binomial names, which I will call specific epithets in discussion because I am a botanist.

I'd suggest we deal with these topics in the order given above, one at a time, in order to keep things a bit more organized. I also think we ought to have all the conversation at a single location, dedicated solely to this issue, where the material wil be housed for posterity, even if it starts out in a temporary location and is later moved to a proper location of some sort. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:20, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

That seems like the right order.

Shouldn't we have a project page right from the start, with a shortcut and all WT:ATAX -> Wiktionary:About taxonomy? We could conduct the discussion on the talk page and have copies of or links to any useful content now on other pages at WT:ATAX. DCDuring TALK 11:56, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Something like that, but it's really about taxonomic names, rather than taxonomy itself. The fussy would point out that it's biological taxonomy, as opposed to other kinds, and all this is part of the reason I didn't specify a particular page name. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:51, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Taxonomic names. DCDuring TALK 02:59, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Comparative / superlative of "strict"

Hi there - regarding the usage note you wrote for the Wiktionary entry for "strict": What's the source for saying that "more strict" / "most strict" is most often used outside the UK? I've lived in the US all my life, and I've never heard "more strict", only "stricter". "More strict" sounds very odd to me. All the North American dictionaries I can find give only the -er / -est forms. I think this usage note should be removed unless a reference can be given to back it up. Thanks. Seansinc (talk) 07:09, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I was greatly relieved to find that someone else had added that remark originally in this edit. I merely moved it this past March from the inflection line to a usage note.

I checked COCA for relative frequency both over the whole corpus and in speech. It shows a bit more than the usual use of "more" and "most" rather than the "-er" and "-est" forms. In speech "more"/"most" were about 10% as common, in writing about 4%. At BNC there were no instances of more and most.

This suggests to me that perhaps some US speakers don't like to pronounce "cter" and "ctest" and avoid it when they have a choice.

Let's take this to WT:TR where some who are more knowledgeable about speech than I can weigh in. DCDuring TALK 14:33, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

pants

Since sense one specifies ‘usually’ as far as the ankles, I believe sense 2 is redundant. Certainly I can't see it in any other dictionaries. Ƿidsiþ 13:59, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I will restore your sense merger and insert the tags and inflection line that I'd like to see. I was just about to do just that, having finally seen what you were trying to do. DCDuring TALK 14:01, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Translingual epithets

Any way I could get you to budge on Translingual species epithets always being Latin based on User talk:EncycloPetey#destructans or indeed any other discussion? It seems to me these are coined (where they are coined and not borrowed) by non-Latin speakers, and not for use in Latin texts. I'd imagine the advantage you see is then they're all in the same language not some in Latin and some in Translingual. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:03, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

See #Taxonomic names, User talk:EncycloPetey#Translingual, and, especially, Wiktionary:Taxonomic names. DCDuring TALK 12:32, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

It's possible if you want everything in the same language to add a Translingual section to some Latin words, such as atlanticus. In many cases it might do nothing more than duplicate what's already there, but as long as the content is correct it doesn't matter if it duplicates the content of another language section. We allow Middle French words that have identical spelling and meaning to French words to have their own section, ditto Middle English (such as Middle English: book). Mglovesfun (talk) 13:52, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

It might come to that.

As you probably know, I've modified {{taxon}} to categorize by level or type of taxon and created {{taxlink}} to do what {{temp|spelink}} did but also cover more levels of taxa and categorize by the level of taxon that is missing. I also have {{rftaxon}} to be inserted in L2 sections that have a natural kind of living thing among the meanings of the headword. I have created the associated categories that were "wanted", though many have few members. I have also been regularizing all of the existing taxonomic entries that I can find, starting with those that are in relevant categories. Next will be cleanup lists for miscategorized taxonomic names (probably just a few in English and Latin), then insertion of {{rftaxon}} and {{taxlink}} in the appropriate L2 sections of entries in the topical categories for living things. This should lead to a large number of wanted taxonomic entries and render moot such questions as whether we should have entries for species. See Category:mul:Taxonomic names (species).

If I also use {{taxlink}} or equivalent within species inflection-line templates for redlinked species epithets I will find out more about the nature of the missing ones, which fact base will help the discussion of L2 section for missing species epithets. I no longer really care, except for facilitating the build-out of taxonomic-name entries in general. DCDuring TALK 14:15, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

There will be many more epithets not in the lemma form. It doesn't matter to me or to taxonomic usage whether the inflection is good Latin (it usually is) or good morphology in terms of any vintage of Latin language, just like medical and legal "Latin" terms. So I would just as soon simply have the form as used without even bothering to try to specify what form of the lemma it was. DCDuring TALK 14:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Todo/anomalous section0 content

I managed to get to the last one (can't remember how) and it contains a character information box which is appropriate before the first language section as it refers to the entry as a whole, not any particular language. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:54, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Cool. I won't waste more clicks trying to read it. DCDuring TALK 14:15, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Cat

I read long ago that cat in the sense of "dude" is supposedly of African origin, along with the hip uses of hip and dig. Both of these are listed as Wolof in Wiktionary.

I did some research into the history of this Wiktionary enty and discovered that this use of "cat" was indeed once listed at a separate etymology with the Wolof root mentioned, then they did some shuffling of the cat entry, and the Wolof -kat reference was assumed to be . . . vandalism? and deleted. Jeremy Jigglypuff Jones (talk) 21:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Here is the old version, by the way. Jeremy Jigglypuff Jones (talk) 21:45, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

IOW, you have no support for anyone to look at for the existence of -kat#Wolof, for its meaning, or for a connection between the purported suffix and the English term. DCDuring TALK 22:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I see that it is a hypothesis rather than a fact or a well-accepted view. I suppose the problem is the lack of a clear-cut path of transmission between Wolof and the earliest recorded uses of hepcat/hipcat/cat in the 1930s. One would expect there to be many (20? 50? 100?) words that have taken the route as well. -kat#Wolof is something like the agent suffix -er#English, so cat would have been derived from hepcat rather than directly from -kat, based on the meager evidence we have. I've read a little about this kind of thing and understand the evidence problem for direct African influence on AAVE and American English in general: There isn't much evidence, but one wouldn't expect there to be much. But there are nagging questions. Why should Wolof be the African language that lends the most words to English? DCDuring TALK 23:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Translingual proper nouns

Seems KassadBot doesn't like your ''{{head|mul|proper noun}}'' syntax; it's been adding {{head|mul|proper noun}} like this. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:04, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I noticed and I've stopped that. I need to have an easy-to-type replacement template that does the job for taxa of genus-level and below and possibly other jobs. One problem may be that some Translingual terms of that type may also have other uses which are not italicized, eg, as names of stars or constellations. DCDuring TALK 17:09, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

{{taxon}}

Hi there. The template {{taxon}} wikifies the entire colloquial name (see, as an example, (deprecated template usage) Caytoniales). I'm pretty sure that it didn't use to, and I don't think that it should. The documentation example actually shows the colloquial name supplied to the template with square brackets. Is this something that you have changed? SemperBlotto (talk) 09:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

It wikifies each argument unless there is wikilink within it. For all but argument 5, the gloss, this highly desirable. Usually, a wikilinked vernacular name is preceded by the for superior aesthetics. It does force the use of technical terms or lame wikification in some cases. DCDuring TALK 13:26, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

That was how it has behaved all along. I managed not to screw it up when I made my categorization change. DCDuring TALK 13:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

ferret

Any reason you deleted the verb? Is this related to the problem Lo Ximiendo posted on his user page? --WikiTiki89 15:47, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

If indeed I did it, it was inadvertent. I will inspect and restore any blunder. Thanks for letting me know. My feelings wouldn't have been hurt if you had corrected that destructive change, though it was probably combined with other hopefully constructive changes.DCDuring TALK 18:57, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Holy smokes. Thanks for reverting. I have no idea how that happened. DCDuring TALK 19:00, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if I reverted any intentional changes along with that though. --WikiTiki89 19:03, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

No. Thanks again. It might have been something with my touchpad. It is not the first time that I missed such an inadvertent deletion. It's a good thing it is so easy to reverse changes on a wiki. DCDuring TALK 19:07, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

It was actually really hard. I had to move my mouse all the way over to the undo button, then click, then move it all the way over to the save button, and then click again. --WikiTiki89 19:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Give me your tired, your minacious

As one of our experts on telling adjectives from nouns, I thought you might like to comment on Talk:minacious. The supposed noun citations of it are of the form "the minacious"... and yet we do have noun defs of [[poor]] and [[Irish]] supported by similar usage. - -sche (discuss) 21:42, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a "fused-head" construction per CGEL, which virtually any English adjective can enter into. It usually requires some knowledge of the context to know what the fused head is exactly. We should probably have a couple of sentences about it at Wiktionary:English adjectives. I think many of the others, including the demonymics, are suspect too, but a mammoth cleansing seems a poor course of action. DCDuring TALK 22:06, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

{{l|en|…}}

Regarding your question on my talk-page . . .

I think it's worth keeping in mind that {{l}}'s slowness, while less-than-ideal, does not directly affect readers, because no matter how many times {{l}} occurs in the entry [[foo]], the processing of it never takes place during the rendering of http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foo. (Or at least, most of its processing doesn't.) For example, try visiting User:Ruakh/Test, which is a copy of Wiktionary:Requested entries (English) from before my change the other day; you'll find that it loads quite quickly.

The slowness does affect readers indirectly, in that:

• It affects editors, and anything that makes editing harder, or less enjoyable, will be to the detriment of our project and its content.
• One could argue that it increases server load in general, potentially making browsing slower overall. However, such an argument would somehow have to address the awkward fact that browsing isn't slow.

but IMHO, neither of those is reason for a panic attack.

—Ruakh_TALK 17:13, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I just got a difference of about 8 times using the requested entries page, with the original version taking about 50 seconds. I don't know whether it has to do with MW servers or how my ISP handles a request that hasn't been completed all at once. Equinox mentioned that he thought the page was loading more slowly "lately". The insertion of {{l}} was August 8.

I will run the comparison again with a timer later once all caches between my PC and the MW disks have cleared, hopefully before the storm knocks out power or my internet connection. I will make some kind of change to each involving {{term}} to try to force some kind of reconstruction of the page by the servers.

Are all of the templates required actually transcluded? There was some discussion that some templates that are used do not show up on the list of transcluded templates. If they do not show up on that list but are used, then how can we be sure the server fully prepares the content in advance?

In any event this seems to be something that would be limited to our problem pages. We could use a little performance-engineering support from MW. I'm sure our major design choices are defensible even if they go beyond what they wish we had done. DCDuring TALK 17:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

• I just tried again: Current version: 6 seconds, Old version: 42 seconds. DCDuring TALK 17:54, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

• No, you didn't. A URL of the form http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foo only shows you the current version, so you can't have used it to time the old version; and the edit-history shows that you did not temporarily revert to the old version just so you could test this. That's why I was explicit about the URL format, and why I said that this is something that affects editors, not readers: readers don't go poking around in old versions, examining diffs and seeing what's changed. (Not usually, anyway. Not so's it would affect our competitiveness vis-à-vis other online dictionaries.) —Ruakh_TALK 18:30, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I didn't use [[foo]], I used the request pages. What am I supposed to do besides click on the two links to the old version of WT:REE and the one on your user page that you so helpfully provided? I didn't have to make any changes to generate the difference that I measured. I doubt that there have been enough changes to WT:REE to invalidate the comparison as an approximate measure of the scope of the problem. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 18:45, 28 October 2012‎ (UTC).

Re: "I didn't use [[foo]], I used the request pages": Well, duh. I didn't think otherwise. ;-)   "Foo", in my example URL formats, was just a placeholder for the pagename.
Re: "What am I supposed to do besides click on the two links to the old version of WT:REE and the one on your user page that you so helpfully provided?": You're supposed to compare the current version of Wiktionary:Requested entries (English) (which uses wikitext of the form [[foo]] for its links) to the current version of User:Ruakh/Test (which uses wikitext of the form {{l|en|foo}} for its links).
Now do you understand?
—Ruakh_TALK 19:41, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, duh. That's what I have done from the beginning. I have now done so several times getting loading time for the {{l}} old version in excess of 40 seconds each time and less than 8 seconds for the current {{l}}-less version. Your links made that the easy thing to do. I have suggested that others run the test, using the same links copied to the tabbed-languages vote. If others have different experience, then there may be some interaction with ISP operations or some other problem peculiar to me. DCDuring TALK 19:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Wait, so you're saying that visiting User:Ruakh/Test takes >40 seconds for you? Because for me, it's very fast. (That's why I didn't understanding that you were doing that: your results were well out of line with what I was seeing.) Except that actually, right right now it's slow. *investigates a bit* Y'know what? It's because there are a few separate levels of caching. If I visit the page when it's already in the parser cache, it's very fast. If I visit the page when it's not already in the parser cache, it takes a long time. Dammit, that's going to make it very hard to test proposed changes. Especially since intereditor cooperation seems to be out of the question; WT:NOT claims that "Wiktionary is not a battlefield", but I think it's simply mistaken. :-P   —Ruakh_TALK 21:01, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I could tell that my results went against your expectations and experience. I will do other things to let as many caches empty as possible. I don't think that WT:REE is getting a lot of use right now. (It isn't one of those designated high-use page, I don't think.)

You could also try the test on a copy of Wiktionary:Requested entries (Scientific names) before I (laboriously) removed all of the {{l}} instances. I won't fool with it (I am quite sure that no one else would) if you tell me that you want to run performance tests. You would have maximum control of caching effects.

BTW, as I reduced the number of instances of {{l}} performance got better, probably by a caching effect at first, but it seemed to get gradually better thereafter. Then, toward the end of the process, it got much, much better. Final elimination of {{l}} did not have a dramatic effect. Could there be some non-linear number-of-transclusions effect? I know that that goes against your model of how it's supposed to work, but still.... DCDuring TALK 21:19, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea. Some amount of nonlinearity wouldn't surprise me, but I'm not sure exactly what pattern I would expect. (Note that my knowledge of MediaWiki internals, while broader than average, is still not exactly vast.) —Ruakh_TALK 21:29, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Can we use this guy from MW who visited WT:GP to get some information? If you want I could ask questions in my own blundering way. I'm used to exposing my ignorance. DCDuring TALK 21:39, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

• I haven't visited Ruakh's test page, so it shouldn't be in any cache on my end. I may have visited the newly-updated Requested Entries page, but if one of you would like to copy it to another test page, I'll load each test page (the old, supposedly "slower" version and the new, supposedly "faster" version) in turn and give you feedback on how quickly/slowly they finish loading and how quickly/slowly each one re-loads/saves after a null edit. - -sche (discuss) 23:24, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Ed. Rev.

Thanks for the info on quoting from "Ed. Rev." (aka The Edinburgh Review)! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:53, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure. A lot of what happens here is not well documented so asking for an explanation or (politely!) expressing a confusion or frustration is appropriate and deserves as much of an answer as one can give. If I knew of some relevant documentation I would have referred you to it! DCDuring TALK 19:01, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Exocoetidae

Hi there. Do you think this entry should have some sort of links to exocet and (deprecated template usage) Exocet? SemperBlotto (talk) 12:17, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes I do, now that you mention it. But it brings up a question of how to present such things. If this part of Translingual were conceived of in Wiktionary terms as a language, then something related in another (real) language is either a descendant or part of its etymology. If this part of Translingual is conceived of as a sort of branch of English, then it can have English terms as Synonyms, Related terms, Translations, etc.

I don't really want to waste time on addressing this in principle. Over time it will be resolved by building good entries, which will demand suitable treatment. I think I can predict aspects of the outcome, but I may be wrong.

Translingual is a bit of a miscellany that may need for some of its parts to hive off.

There are fair number of taxonomic terms that have extremely lame "definitions", consisting solely of taxonomic placement and a vernacular name ending in "id" (eg, for Cupateidae: "the cupateids"). These really should be in related terms and replaced if possible with a more illuminating definition.

In the meantime, we could put such things under Related terms or See also. I'd prefer Related terms. DCDuring TALK 12:34, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

thymallus

Hi again. I have forgotten what sort of entry we are supposed to create for these sorts of word (the uncapitalised form of the genus name ((deprecated template usage) Thymallus) used as a type species. Any ideas? SemperBlotto (talk) 17:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what we have been doing, nor do I have any particular ideas about what we should do.

I suppose that we need to have a separate entry for the lower-case form, even though there is a kind of grammar that says how this are to be interpreted. If the word is also a normal Latin word we could have an New Latin context and a special non-gloss definition. For a term not used in regular Latin, we could treat it the way you do the eponymous epithets, as a Translingual entry.

I'm not too worried about "getting it wrong" as long as the terms are locatable (categories, distinctive context or words) and reasonably consistently laid out. That would ease the burden of any possible restructuring that may need to occur. DCDuring TALK 17:44, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

OK. I have made an attempt at it (and also at (deprecated template usage) bagarius). I shall use this format in future unless anyone objects. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I've started doing it that way myself. I still can't think of a good alternative. DCDuring TALK 17:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Frankish language template

I noticed that the Frankish language template frk states that it is Frankish, but elsewhere i have seen the language referred to as Old Frankish, which is it? If it is Old Frankish can you change it? The reason I noticed is that someone has added the word "old" in front of the "ety" template stating frankish, and that kind of seems like a bandaid fix to me.

I looked a little further and it seems like probably Frankish is old Frankish but I would like an admin's opinion before I change the old back to regular. Thanks Speednat (talk) 00:26, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Old Frankish and Frankish are the same, but we call the language Frankish because there is no modern Frankish language (that is called Franconian, apparently). So you should probably remove the "Old" when you see it, especially when it is "Old {{etyl|frk}}" because the etyl template will always show the proper name anyway, and if we ever decide to change the name it will end up saying Old Old Frankish... —CodeCat 00:30, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not knowledgeable enough about such things to have an opinion. CodeCat, MGLovesfun, and Liliana-60 might have opinions. As has been confirmed by the message from CodeCat while I was writing this. DCDuring TALK 00:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks that's what I was thinking. Speednat (talk) 05:18, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Your language preference

Quick question: Is your language setting in Special:Preferences set to "en - English"? --Yair rand (talk) 11:53, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Why? DCDuring TALK 12:49, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah, so much for that theory. I had read that pages were cached separately per language, which would result in pretty much every page taking forever to load if one's language was set to anything different, so it occurred to me that that might be causing the lengthy page loads you mentioned you were experiencing a couple sections up. Why pages are loading effectively instantly for me but taking nearly a minute for you remains a mystery for now, I guess... --Yair rand (talk) 13:00, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble to investigate. Does everyone use the same server? Aren't there mirrors? Have you polled admins about their loading-speed and determined their location and IP or IP type? I'm in NY doing Wiktionary from my home using TimeWarner Cable as my IP. The polling might be a good idea anyway to determine how widespread the difficulty is and to generate some hypotheses.

I simply can't be bothered to work on the large entries, many of which urgently need work, with the kind of performance I get. That's one reason I now spend time on taxonomic entries instead: they are much quicker to load, edit, and save. DCDuring TALK 13:12, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't really know if the same server(s) everywhere, or if that would make a difference, or what. I'm not really knowledgeable about how things work on the back end. I agree that polling to see if it's a very widespread issue sounds like a good idea. --Yair rand (talk) 13:30, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:k and script

I thought I'd follow up on your question about why it is important that templates know which scripts languages are written in. My understanding—which others will hopefully correct if it is deficient—is that it is because our site-wide .css causes certain scripts to be displayed in fonts which can handle those scripts, rather than in the default font which tends to display them as meaningless boxes. However, the .css is apparently not yet smart enough to recognise that every time a particular Unicode codepoint appears, it is a particular script, e.g. ฆ (ฆ (kɔɔ)) is always a letter in the Thai script. Scripts must be "applied" to things. Thus, our templates like {{l}} look up each language's script subpage to know what script it uses and thus what font to apply to it, so that it does not display as boxes. {{l/en}} is simplified compared to {{l}} because English is usually written with ASCII characters (instances of Greek letters, click characters and other things being copied from other languages are rare), and which our whole site is in English unless otherwise stated anyway, so no script needs to be applied to English. {{l/th}} (for Thai) could also be a lot simpler than {{l}}, because it could contain the script declaration within itself, rather than requiring the template to look up other templates, but it would still need to contain the script and be a bit less minimal than {{k}}, so that the text of the link displays properly (but if {{l/th}} does contain the script within itself, it should be no slower than {{k}}, AFAIK). There are also what I'll call "philosophical" benefits to declaring every Thai string's script as Thai, etc. - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

There is another reason. This doesn't apply strictly to scripts, but since this functionality is part of script templates, it is tied to them. Usually whenever a script template is used, it is called with a lang= parameter which specifies which language the text is written in. This parameter is used by browsers to figure out how to interpret the text. Most browsers don't really do any interpreting, but one very important application is text-to-speech. If you don't specify, for example, the word attention with lang=fr, a speech synthesizer will assume that it's English and pronounce [əˈtɛnʃən] rather than [atɑ̃sjɔ̃]. ({{head|fr}} is better than '''attention''' for this same reason) So we have to specify the language, there is really no way around it if we want to be accessible to sight-impaired users. On the other hand, I do believe that we can use CSS to do most of the work that the /script subtemplates currently do. For example, it is possible to use CSS to specify that anything on the page that has lang=th applied to it should use Thai font. I'm not sure if we can completely replace script templates in this way, but we should certainly have a closer look in the Grease Pit. —CodeCat 22:38, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

This page is not watched by enough folks to ensure getting the best corrections.

The script-related reasons would seem to have the most relevance for non-Latin scripts. Do not all browsers, no matter what the language selected by the browser or the operating system, need to have and actually have the capability of handling Latin script? If that is so, then we do not need universal use of resource-intensive script selection, especially in the entries that have obvious performance problems. I have never had problems with the use of language-code-based script selection where it is essential.

Selecting language is done by the contributor who specifies the language. All a template does is expand a code to a language name, a labor-saving and error-reducing step of some value, but not absolutely essential.

The resource-intensive aspects of our most widely-used templates (the t family, l, and term) seem to be existence tests and template calls. I don't see any way of completely dispensing with template calls. I do think that we can dispense with and force contributors of bots to insert language codes that actually exist by having dramatically ugly visible results from a template that contains a non-existent language code. Looking up a script where the script is Latin seems extravagantly wasteful for templates that can be used hundreds of times in an entry, for just that purpose.

I am tired of not being able to effectively make small edits to large English entries because of ridiculous save times and even excessive load times. DCDuring TALK 01:37, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

fustic

I don't understand your reversion there. It makes no sense to link to an obsolete name, to dead pages, redirects, or incorrect names or name parts, instead of linking to names of species, current names, and the like. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

"a muscularly Christian period"

Just in case you haven't heard of it: that citation of yours presumably refers to muscular Christianity. Equinox ◑ 22:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I was definitely a little vague about it. Anglican religious movements were not part of my RC childhood. I still think a cite of "muscularly Christian" might help. There are definitely two sides of Christianity, one somewhat feminine and passive, the other male and active. DCDuring TALK 23:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your altruism. Pass a Method (talk) 18:57, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

right to privacy - Russian translation

Hi,

Thanks for your interest but sorry but your edit made the translation incorrect grammatically.

In "право (pravo) на (na) неприкосновенность (neprikosnovennostʹ) частной (častnoj) жизни (žizni)" two words are not in their lemma forms but in genitive case.

To achieve the same using {{t}}, one needs a parameter alt, e.g.:

право (pravo) на (na) неприкосновенность (neprikosnovennostʹ) частной (častnoj) жизни (žizni)

This looks ugly and doesn't look a phrase but a list of words. I no longer that method after a lot of negative feedback, which made sense to me. {{t-SOP}} is another alternative, which I'm not a big fan of.

право на неприкосновенность частной жизни (pravo na neprikosnovennostʹ častnoj žizni) would not be great either and some people complain about this way.

--Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. Do you know whether Liliana's bot automatically handles correction of {{l}} in translations? DCDuring TALK 23:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand the question. I don't remember what the bot does. Can you give me an example of a potential problem? How does it change translations? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I thought that all translations were supposed to be enclosed in a template of the {{t}} family. Is that wrong? DCDuring TALK 00:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

{{l}} and {{t-SOP}} were not "officially" adopted but for cases where a target language is translated as SoP or is non-idiomatic, it makes sense to use them and is often the case. There were a few discussions about non-idiomatic translations about proverbs. If I had more time, I would convert such translations into hedgehop#Translations type. See also Wiktionary_talk:Entry_layout_explained#Occasional_use_of_.7B.7Bl.7D.7D_in_translations about my suggestion, which was welcomed but no action resulted out of it. It's definitely easier and quicker to add a quick translation using {{t}}, even for SoP and non-idiomatic translations. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:26, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I just try to keep translations in compliance with accepted standards. Usually I only correct things marked by AF aka Kassadbot. My mistake here was to venture beyond that practice. I have an an animus against overuse of {{l}} and that clouded my judgment. In fact {{t}} suffers from the same performance-sapping problems. That said, any language that needs to make sure that the correct or best non-Latin script is used should and must use those templates. DCDuring TALK 01:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Both {{t}} and {{l}} have automatic script conversions, compare the look سيارة and سيارة. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I know. I'm confessing to some irrationality. DCDuring TALK 04:16, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Low German taxonomy

Just FYI, if you're looking for taxonomic names to format, most of the ~53 entries in Category:nds:Animals and Category:nds-de:Animals contain nonstandardly-formatted mentions of taxonomic names in their nonstandardly-used "Related terms" sections. I've formatted some of them, and I'll get to all of them eventually, so it's no problem if you have other things you'd rather work on. - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't really know even now what a standard format should be for taxonomic name entries or for the mode of including taxonomic names in non-Translingual entries. But if you could use {{taxlink}} around any taxonomic names that you notice, then the taxonomic names would appear in a subcategory of Category:Entries using missing taxonomic names and get a link to wikispecies until the wiktionary entry is created. I'm getting used to the pattern of these entries, including those for obsolete names etc.

I have fairly explicit observations (See User:DCDuring/Taxa-related page problems.) about some substantive deficiencies in taxonomic entries.

I am mining some simple wikisearches for taxonomic names: "English" "genus" has some 3,000 entries, of which I've probably done more than half. I'll try "Chinese" genus" and "English" "species" after that, then items in various en categories and probably cmn categories. fi is pretty well covered, with a very large portion of the living-thing entries having corresponding Translingual entries..

Then there are already probably 2,000 taxonomic entries that are redlinks categorized using {{taxlink}}. There are more that are redlinks in Translingual etymology sections and as arguments in {{taxon}}. Also there are 2,200 taxonomic entries in Category:Taxonomic names needing vernacular names that do not have any vernacular name or definition other than position in taxonomic hierarchy. Then there are all the redlinked vernacular names.

One of my objectives is to solicit translations from the common languages spoken in the native range of the species, which is greatly helped if there are images of the geographic distribution species from Commons. DCDuring TALK 19:59, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

real gone

Hi. 3 refs added, hidden in attention box, as request. Couldn't find deletion discussion under link. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:24, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

But why isn't this just real + gone? DCDuring TALK 09:54, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Also "hepcat" in the definition is a noun, not an adjective. DCDuring TALK 09:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy new year etc.

Hi! Happy Christmas and all of that tinytimulous bullshit. I would like to discuss with you your current Wiktionary doings SLASH aims (cannot find slash on this keyboard, for love nor money) and what is pleasing SLASH annoying you. I would like to say this is on behalf of some grand Wikimedia survey but it isn't at all. Haha. Perhaps I'll telephone you when you least expect it. But not until I get home so you have rather more than a week. Hope you are well, etc., with love from aunt Equinox ◑ 21:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Appropriate generic seasonal greetings to you too.

Some of my aims are at Wiktionary:Taxonomic names and its talk page and at User:DCDuring/Taxa-related page problems.

What scares me is our lack of technical adepts who can simplify and improve performance of our baroque infrastructure. Annoyances are too numerous to mention. DCDuring TALK 21:51, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Taxlink

I noticed on abalone you removed the taxlink template. Am I not using that in a correct manner? Please let me know because I was under the impression that that particular template was used in that situation. Granted I did not have an argument for the genus or family. Speednat (talk) 00:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I removed it because we have our own entry for Haliotis.

The template is principally intended to help identify entries that need a taxonomic entry to eliminate what would have been a redlink. In the interim it provides a wikispecies link. You can continue to use it as you have, but, if you can, please put in taxonomic level (genus, species, subspecies, etc) as follows {{taxlink|Haliotis|genus}}. Put in "unknown" if you don't know and can't easily find out.

Don't be surprised or offended if I remove it. The template is modestly expensive, so I remove it when it is no longer necessary, ie, when we have our own entry. DCDuring TALK 01:13, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

cool thanks

Endodontidae?diff=19177867

Is this what you had in mind? —Ruakh_TALK 15:56, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Sometimes I just miss these things. All taxa, even obsolete ones BTW, should be presumptively Translingual. DCDuring TALK 16:26, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Oats

Hi DCDuring, could you please tell me what exactly do you want to be checked here? I added the Afrikaans and Dutch translations for 'oats,' and only then I realized I may have made a mistake. I think these are all translations of 'seeds of an oat plant.' In my opinion the translation box 'plural of oat' should be no more than a redirect to the page 'oat.' The text in the translation box should consequently be changed to 'seeds of an oat plant' (and still be awaiting verification). Except for Afrikaans hawer and Dutch haver of course, since these are correct translations for 'oats.' Caudex Rax ツ (talk) 15:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I am often puzzled by a sense of "Xs" that seems to me to be subsumed in the "plural of X" definition. It is true that English speakers rarely refer to a single oat meaning a single seed. But "many oats" is about as common as "much oats", though it is tedious to determine which sense of oat/oats is meant in each usage. (If speakers think of oats as a plural in all senses then our entry at [[oats]] is wrong to have the "seeds" sense.) In Afrikaans and Dutch does the translation for the "seeds" definition differ from the plural of the Afrikaans and Dutch words for oat? DCDuring TALK 15:56, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Both Afrikaans hawer and Dutch haver are uncountable. According to Van Dale EN–NL the countable noun oat refers to botany, and the non-countable noun refers to bucolic poetry. The following (last) meaning refers to food and is preceded by the words "altijd als meervoud: oats," meaning "always plural: oats." Pharos AF–EN / EN–AF endorses this: according to this dictionary oat refers to the plant or to a kernel of oat, while oats "fungeer as ekv. of mv.," meaning "functions as singular or plural." In other words, if the term oats refers to food, it's uncountable in Afrikaans and Dutch, and therefore always singular, whereas it's always plural in English. Caudex Rax ツ (talk) 17:27, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Does our entry for haver#Dutch show that?

I'm going to investigate the temporal and semantic scope of the uncountability/countability of the senses until I am satisfied, but probably not today. Thanks for reminding me of this. DCDuring TALK 17:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The entry for haver#Dutch says plural of haver is havers. Yet both Dikke Van Dale and Prisma's 'Groot Woordenboek Afrikaans en Nederlands' say haver is uncountable. Greetings, Caudex Rax ツ (talk) 18:22, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

We have a template for this situation, called {{sofixit}}, which follows:

If you feel a change is needed, feel free to make it yourself! Wiktionary is a wiki, so anyone — including you — can edit any entry by following the edit link. You don't even need to log in, although there are several reasons why you might want to. Wiki convention is to be bold and not be afraid of making mistakes. If you're not sure how editing works, have a look at How to edit a page, or try out the Sandbox to test your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.

- DCDuring TALK 18:27, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Will do. Have a nice day, Caudex Rax ツ (talk) 19:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see you already did. Caudex Rax ツ (talk) 19:02, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Not I, but CodeCat. DCDuring TALK 19:22, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It is generally uncountable, but the plural of uncountable nouns may occasionally be used to indicate various types of something. So "verschillende havers" would mean "different (kinds of) oats", although it would be a rather unusual way to say it ("verschillende soorten haver" would be more usual). —CodeCat 01:52, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Not dissimilar from English in that regard, except, possibly, the relative frequency of countable and uncountable. I don't really know what the frequencies are. I have a feeling that oats is used as a singular noun: "Oats is one of the healthiest grains." If true, that will mean more work on both [[oat]] and [[oats]]. DCDuring TALK 03:05, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Latin specific epithets

A lot of WT:RE:la is just specific epithets that were not actually words in Classical or Medieval Latin. I'm not interested in creating those, because I personally don't think they're Latin, but as long as I don't have to deal with them and they're marked as New Latin, it's fine. So, would you be OK with me moving all that to a subpage of the requests page, linked to prominently at the top? (PS: specific epithets which were real words in Latin, like (deprecated template usage) mūsimō which you requested and I just created, will stay on the main page.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:57, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I know how to distinguish between epithets that Latinists find acceptable and those they don't. We have numerous words such as canadensis#Latin which might not be "real" Latin, but are nonetheless there. I know it isn't just a question of whether the word is in Lewis and Short. SemperBlotto has been adding Translingual entries for some eponymous noun and adjective forms based on Latinized names of zoologists and botanists. Perhaps you could provide me with some further guidance on this important matter. I never had much luck with EP on it.

If it is just a matter of opinion, I'll continue to put in requests at WT:RE:la and let the opinions be made manifest there. If they don't get added, then so be it. We could date the requessts, leave them there for a year, and see what happens to them.

In a similar situation I stopped working on a some cleanup list until the AWB-assisted mass generation of cleanup items was cleaned up by someone else, which took a few months. DCDuring TALK 19:39, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

A big list of specific epithets is at User:Pengo/Latin/Most_Common_Epithets_contents. He also has pages and pages of less common ones. DCDuring TALK

I'm not really a Latinist, I just like the language and I speak it. Certainly, Lewis & Short (or my Collins, which includes some properly marked Neo-Latin) is enough to make something feel real to me. I guess the distinction is this: it may not be possible to find a non-taxonomic cite for (deprecated template usage) sandvicensis, and it describes something which was only known to Latinists in the late 18th century at the earliest. "Real" Latin, for me, can include Neo-Latin if it's a word like (deprecated template usage) oxoniēnsis, which can be found on inscriptions dating back for the last couple hundred years, and is a serious way to refer to the city of Oxford in Latin. For the former, I strongly prefer Translingual. Many of these names are only found in the nominative (like sandvicensis) or genitive (like Jonesi) cases, and that's a strong pointer to the fact that they're not real Latin, and they're not deserving of inflection tables like a real Latin word.

The only reason I ask to separate them from the main requests page is so that I can create entries for everything I consider to be real and leave the rest to Semper. I'm working on some JS (with massive help from Ruakh) to speed up the process. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:19, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

If you look at WT:REE you will find that the list there of requested terms conforms to no rules. They are reviewed one by one and deleted for cause eventually. If you have particular objectives and criteria, then it seems that you may need your own pages that support your particular objectives. You should be able to apply your criteria to whatever existing lists of terms you want to make your own list. I am in no position to help you there.

But, to make life easier for you and to accommodate your distaste for specific epithets as a source, I won't add any new specific epithets to the page and will start sooner rather than later a project I had in mind: creating a category of entries with missing specific and infra-specific epithets, populated by a special-purpose inflection-line template and/or a variant of {{taxlink}}. You may want to review that category once it really exists, so you can pick those terms that you think are worth making true Latin entries for. For now, there is a small population of such at Category:Entries using missing taxonomic name (epithet). You may also want to pick from Pengo's lists, too. You might want to make a list of uncapitalized lemma forms of genus names to see how many do not have Latin L2s. Some will definitely be in Lewis and Short. DCDuring TALK 02:57, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

That category sounds intriguing. I found Pengo's lists more or less unhelpful in that regard. I also like the lowercase genus name idea; for dinosaurs, for example, it is unlikely to yield any fruits, but it might be helpful with birds, for example. How would I generate that sort of list? (PS: I'm not a fan of Wiktionary taxonomy, but I must admit you're doing a good job of it.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:16, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:mul:Taxonomic names (genus) (more than 3,000 entries, 15 pages) has the (capitalized) genus names that we have. I have used brute-force methods that are not suitable for so many pages to make plain text lists, which I have formatted offline with special-purpose templates to accomplish duplication and lower-casing using the lcfirst: function. I don't know of any elegant methods. So I would ask Ruakh or some other person good at extracting info from the dump. DCDuring TALK 13:25, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Another class of specific epithets that I think are most easily considered Translingual and not Latin are those that are simple transliterations from other languages, usually a name for something living in a native language in the range of the living thing, but also like onca#Translingual. Tef ( < teff) is another. Also, I have applied {{taxlink}} to a few species and genus names at WT:RE:la. I will get to them within the week. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

Something else that you've been doing to Latin entries that I strongly disagree with: creating new senses like this. Any use of the specific epithet would simply mean that the species was considered to be Egyptian, nothing more, nothing less. It's a Classical word with a Classical definition. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:00, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

By all means let's not try to resurrect Latin by treating these as words that might give it a new lease on life. Let's let the dead languages rest in peace. Don't trouble your head about it any more. DCDuring TALK 01:04, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Linguae mortuae semper vivant! (May the dead languages live forever!) There is still material being produced in Latin, literature being written, conversations being had. We must treat Latin as a language that is just as living as English, with neologisms like (deprecated template usage) interrete and (deprecated template usage) hamaxostichus coëxisting with Ciceronian diatribes and Augustinian jeremiads. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:21, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Then I don't understand your animus against the development of new meanings via scientific Latins. Would hamaxostichus prove attestable? DCDuring TALK 02:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Because they're not written in Latin (which, believe or not, requires some knowledge). They are usually coined somewhat macaronically, with but little regard to grammatical niceties. Often, they're just Latinised Ancient Greek (or Mandarin or Japanese or Russian or Portuguese...). Yes, (deprecated template usage) hamaxostichus is easily attestable (if you had bothered to go to the entry, you would have noticed that I had already provided three cites). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:17, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

By that standard Lewis and Short need some corrective editing. Many words in Classical Latin are "just Latinized Ancient Greek". And Afer seems to be taken from a "Punic" source. Borrowings are part of every living language, AFAICT.

The Castellanus cite is from a phrasebook, isn't it? DCDuring TALK 04:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

No, no, borrowings that are actually normalised to a language and used in full sentences written in that language can be demonstrated to have entered successfully. gorbuscha (from горбуша) and onca (from onça) had their spellings normalised, but nobody used the names in Latin texts, AFAICT. An example of a borrowing from Translingual into Latin can be seen in (deprecated template usage) gallopavo, formed synthetically from (deprecated template usage) gallus + (deprecated template usage) pavo by Linnaeus and subsequently used in full Latin sentences (see google books:"gallopavonibus"). And yes, I believe Castellanus writes humorous Latin phrasebooks for those few brave tourists to the Imperium. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:07, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

So, practically, you just mean attestation in running Latin text, ie, that contains a Latin verb.

Is a phrasebook a source of usage or just mentions? DCDuring TALK 12:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Most unfortunately, the verb criterion is not enough. A lot of Latin texts were written in a kind of stylized shorthand, in which verbs like "to be" and "to have" are left out in favor of case constructions. In the phrasebook, however, you will note the verb (deprecated template usage) advenio, which is what the hamaxostichus in question will most likely do. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I conclude from this that Translingual entries will never get timely, constructive support from Latin and should include whatever terms are useful without regard to the existence of Latin as the meanings are likely to be distinct, even if the word has Latin ancestry. If Latin would like to claim a meaning, then it can do so once it is attested in ways acceptable to those who support Latin. I will commence expunging the New Latin from Latin L2 sections shortly. DCDuring TALK 17:20, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. I gather that it's hard to get Latin editors to help support Translingual. Personally, I'd like to help, but I'm also a notorious purist. My position is somewhat confusing, as I support New Latin entries like (deprecated template usage) gallopāvō (and note we lack the generic name (deprecated template usage) Gallopavo) but rely on attestation to decide where to draw the line. If I can be of any service in the domain of the Latin L2, please tell me or drop an {{attention|la}} for me. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:27, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I think I will simply create Translingual noun and adjective entries. I will expect that some of them will be supplemented by or converted to Latin entries. If a sense does not exist in running Latin text then it will simply remain in the Translingual L2 section. And I will move distinct New Latin senses for specific epithets to Translingual. If we get citations that show the term exists in running Latin with the meaning, back they can go. That seems like a robust approach consistent with just about all the expressed concerns I have ever heard about this. It's a bit more total work than it would have to be, but it economizes on Latin expertise, which is apparently somewhat scarce.

Taxonomic work just requires a moderately long apprenticeship (Sitzfleisch), though Latin and some relevant biological expertise certainly help. Getting all three in one person seems hard. DCDuring TALK 00:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)