User talk:Visviva/archive/2006-2007

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Redirects

Hi, we don't use redirects in the Wiktionary. Each form gets its own entry. Use the ====See also==== section to point to others if they aren't referenced in the definition.

Hmm, that page was a two-week discussion 6 months ago, and isn't policy. We ought to revise it or something.

The statement "we don't use re-directs" is a simplification; there are a few cases where there really isn't anything else that makes sense, and there are leftover redirects. (they also get left behind on page moves, sometimes for a long time, since those are basically harmless.

Note that we have many entries for things never used entirely on their own: prefixes, suffixes, particles ... usually an entry that you would think of redirecting is one of those sorts of things. You might look at WT:AJ to see how another CJKV language handles all the various things (if you are interested!) Robert Ullmann 19:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:Kwic

What is this? --Connel MacKenzie 20:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

please don't use examples in the template code page itself, the s/w is not as resistant to bad recursion as one would like ;-(, I moved to talk page. Robert Ullmann 17:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, didn't mean to cause trouble. What is "bad recursion"? I've used the "noinclude" approach frequently on WP, and as far as I had ever known the only drawbacks arose when the template or the documentation were very large (thus bringing the total size near the transclusion limit). Cheers, -- Visviva 18:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

And then someone makes some minor edit (breaking the noinclude), and the job queue gets very stuck. Look at the history of {{kanji}} and see why it is protected. Is just bad coding style, when it it is easy to have a test page. (Talk page or whatever). Robert Ullmann 18:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyright: 붉은발슴새

If a Korean website has an English copyright notice on it, why would you think it is safe to reference? That can't be GFDL compatable, right? --Connel MacKenzie 06:58, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for answering my questions. No worries, I just don't read Korean, so I thought I'd ask. --Connel MacKenzie 07:14, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Various Korean entries

Your input would be very welcome on my talk page at Lexically_unproper_Korean_Words Kappa 19:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation requests

If you see a word you think really needs a pronunciation, just tag it in the Pronunciation section with {{rfp}}, and it will be added to the list of such Requests. If there is no Pronunciation section on a page, just start one as a level-3 header after the Etymology section (if there is one). --EncycloPetey 05:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

{{ko-pos}}

This was created to be (the start of) standard POS template(s) for Korean, tell me what you think.

Is is designed to follow our general style, while allowing a bit more (languages have one standard romanization on the wikt, for Korean SK2000 Revised of course ;-) Robert Ullmann 07:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in here, but as I've written elsewhere, I'm really curious when and by whom it was decided to treat SK2000 as the standard among standards in this project. I think it should be used in Wikipedia articles, but I do not consider it any more suitable than the others for use in a dictionary, mostly because of its ambiguity both in terms of decoding (“Is this ‹ng› from ‘ㅇㅇ’ or from ‘ㄴㄱ’?”) and encoding (vague rules, no complete table, much guesswork as to how exactly [spaces, capitalisation] something should be romanised since there are no official examples to follow except proper names). Dustsucker 05:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't really know, but think it has simply been picked up by default. Personally I think a rather strong case could be made for Yale, the problem being that hardly anyone uses it except for linguists; also those little dots are kind of ugly. :-) I'm a bit more skeptical of RR transliteration, although I toyed with it for a time, since it seems to be introducing a novel system not described elsewhere (but perhaps there is an authoritative description after all) ... at any rate, I look forward to being enlightened on that score. -- Visviva 08:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Concordance progress

So how are you coming so tar on your work to make proper concordances? If you've reached a stage where data would be helpful to play with, let me know. By this weekend, I hope (knock on wood) to have finished processing a chunk of Shakespeare's Henry V. --EncycloPetey 03:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Korean noun inflections

{ { infl|ko|noun|subject: |비오리가|topic: |비오리는|direct object: |비오리를 } }

Hi, I wonder how much such Korean noun inflections as above around 비오리 would pay back. --KYPark 09:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Rephrased --KYPark 00:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Eurasian water shrew

Hi,

I noticed that you have made a Korean entry for "Eurasian water shrew" and you give Sorex daphaenodon as its scientific name. However, according to Wikipedia and my zoology books "Eurasian water shrew" is Neomys fodiens. According to same sources it lives in Europe and Western part of Asia. Sorex daphaenodon on the other hand is mentioned in Wikipedia by the English name "Siberian large-toothed shrew". I recommend Wikipedia article on "shrew" for further study. With best regards, Hekaheka 22:32, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks... think I fixed this eventually. -- Visviva 04:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

하는가

I expect you're right about 하는가 (instead of 한가). My information is coming from an often confusing blend of a "concise" Korean-English dictionary, a non-linguist Native Korean, and incomplete online resources. None of them are authoritative. I'll obtain a proper verb table reference before proceeding. Rod (A. Smith) 07:18, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Transcription, transliteration

Hi, Visviva. You're probably still working on fixing romanization of inflections where the stem ends in ㅎ, but note that the current challenges would be moot if we use transliteration. Rod (A. Smith) 16:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

This is true... if there is one more romanization-related glitch in the template, I may be inclined to make the switch to RR transliteration. Been meaning to do some work on Wiktionary:About Korean/Romanization, by the way, with the goal of providing reference material and proposed Wiktionary standards for the use of each system (such standards are a particularly thorny matter wrt MR, which has at least 3 major competing versions). -- Visviva 10:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Appendix:Chess pieces

I discovered this wonderful little translation table for names of chess pieces, and have expanded it as best I could. It still needs Korean, though. Can you help? --EncycloPetey 03:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

If it helps, Stephen found the written forms and transliterations. They are already on the page. I just don't know anything about Korean to be able to set up meaningful entries. --EncycloPetey 04:19, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I saw it looked like it had been done already, but I'm happy to help. -- Visviva 04:25, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Beer Parlour translation

It took me a while to figure out what meco was saying as well ;) I think the gist is: "This is a big picture proposal, and not everyone can handle loking at the big picture, so we should stick to the smaller picture issue." At least that's what I got from that. --EncycloPetey 06:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks... good to have a translator around. -- Visviva 17:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)



What are these characters?   They display as ? in Firefox (with lots of fonts loaded ;-), and we don't have entries? Robert Ullmann 13:27, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Heh... I was wondering if anyone would notice. ;-) Those are 옛한글, Middle Korean characters not used in modern Korean, and therefore not included in either the standard Unicode sector for hangul or in most Korean fonts. If you're interested, you can download a font for them here, click on the green bar. (works on Firefox/Windows)

It is possible there are issues of freedom involved with these codepoints; they are in a Unicode region enigmatically labeled the "Hanyang Private Use Area." Which is to say they are in some sense not actually Unicode; although I don't know if they can be considered non-free, given that the characters themselves are certainlyin the public domain.

There appears to have been a small dustup about this in the early history of Korean Wikisource, with various bizarre and dysfunctional workarounds attempted (typing individual jamo and using CSS tricks to bind them together), but since then a live-and-let-live attitude seems to have prevailed. So I figured if it was OK there it was probably OK here, although if that proves not to be the case I will happily consent to the deletion of this entry (and of various 옛한글 in Etymology sections). -- Visviva 13:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that that area is re-used for each "private use". It isn't reserved for Old Korean (if it was, it would just have code point assignments.) Using the area is a hack, and a bad one: Unicode provides combining jamo to compose all of the Old Korean syllable blocks, there is a perfectly good way to represent them. Of course, it also provides standard combining jamo for all of the Modern Korean syllable blocks, but the Koreans screamed and screamed and screamed and SCREAMED until we (WG2) gave them a huge tranche of plane 0 for all of the composed blocks. It would be perfectly possible to do the same for Old Korean on plane 2 (within UTF-8, which represents all 2³¹ character codes) but that isn't good enough. (Korean is special you see, superior to everything else ... as you can see I've seen too much of the politics ;-)

So we can't use the Private Use Area (although it might be reasonable for ko.wikt, pedia etc, defining it as specifically for Korean; but unpleasant because then the projects aren't using the same code). We can use the combining jamo, but then the fonts are a problem, because the existing ones assume you want the PUA to be Korean-only ... sigh. Robert Ullmann 14:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Aha... thanks for the info. I've just been sort of piecing things together, didn't have a real notion of the big picture here. So... is there a font that will recombine the jamo properly? Or should I try to figure out how to write one myself? I'm not averse to the challenge, though it certainly would be one... -- Visviva 15:02, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Possessive forms exclusion WT:VOTE rewritten and restarted

I have rewritten and restarted the vote, having attempted to reword the proposal to address the issues that people have raised. You may want to reread the proposal and reconsider your vote. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 20:05, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Language-specific "see"

I thought the WT:BP discussion was pretty clearly against language-specific {{see}} templates? --Connel MacKenzie 16:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd seen the discussion, but it actually hadn't occurred to me that there was any connection to the Korean/Japanese case. I've put in my 2 cents; thanks for pointing it out. -- Visviva 17:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Admin?

Are you interested in being nominated for Adminship? You've been around awhile and are doing some quality work in the community. The extra admin buttons could make some of your efforts a little easier. --EncycloPetey 08:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Well sure, if you feel the time is right. I hadn't been thinking about going in that direction for a while, but I'd be delighted to be considered. -- Visviva 17:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. I've started a vote. You'll need to go to the "Acceptance" line and add your Babel information and UTC timezone...as well as a note of acceptance, of course. --EncycloPetey 19:27, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Policy vote on brand names of products

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

Closest out-of-language etymon

Hi, Visviva.

Our approach is usually to show just the closest out-of-language etymon in etymology sections, and 문제 appears to have been borrowed into Korean directly from 問題. So, I altered [1] the etymology. If I'm mistaken, feel free to revert, of course. Cheers! Rod (A. Smith) 16:30, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, 問題 is also Korean, of course, though like most similar compounds it currently lacks a Korean section. I suppose that we could list all hangul forms of hanja nouns as derived from the hanja form -- but I assume that isn't what you mean.  :-)

Are you saying that this is borrowed from Japanese, or from Chinese? I'd feel more comfortable with some sort of support for this (e.g., citations from medieval Chinese works using 問題 in the modern sense), since as with many Sino-Korean compounds it's unclear on the surface whether the word: a) was borrowed from Chinese pre-1910, b) was borrowed from Japanese 1900-1945, or c) was independently created by Korean authors based on the combinatoric rules which are the shared heritage of the the CJKV languages -- or potentially d), is a post-1945 borrowing from Japanese or Chinese.

The history of these words is a fascinating subject, but I lack any adequately authoritative resource that addresses these questions. -- Visviva 16:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, without documentation, the history is not known with certainty, but the two-syllable Korean word (which can be spelled in hanja or hangeul) seems to have come directly from the two-syllable Japanese word. Assuming that's so, our typical treatment in the etymology section is to show just the compound Japanese etymon (although {{ko-etym-Sino}} ignores the distinction between Japanese and Chinese etymons). Of course, documentation is even better and could invalidate my guess about direct Japanese borrowing. To show word histories beyond their immediate out-of-language ancestor, we usually put that in the etymon's entry and let the reader click through for those details. Rod (A. Smith) 17:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I understand the principle, but don't see how this can be regarded as a transparent borrowing from Japanese (particularly since it occurs in Mandarin as well). If I had had to guess, I would have guessed that this word originally referred to problems on the old state civil service examinations, and was adopted into medieval Korean from Chinese usage; but absent some basis for stating that, I think it's better to retain the straightforward explanation of composition, which is just as valid or invalid for one CJK(V) language as it is for another. (Even in modern Korean it is not unusual for new Sino-Korean compounds to emerge). I don't dispute that the word in question (and many others) may well have been borrowed from Japanese, but there is no a priori reason to assume that a reasonably intuitive compound found in two or more CJK(V) languages did not emerge independently in each. -- Visviva 17:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. Since you understand the principle of documenting the immediate out-of-language etymon, I'm satisfied. I trust your judgment regarding likely histories of individual words. Rod (A. Smith) 18:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, well, thanks.  :-) Still, I'd like to figure out where this word did come from, if possible... -- Visviva 18:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Further on this... the earliest valid cites for 問題 in the Joseon wangjo sillok [2] that I can find are from the reign of Gojong; these start in 1896, when the term is already being used in its fully modern sense. This still leaves the question of origins rather up in the air; there was a lot of Japanese influence in Korea by 1896, but there was also a lot of Chinese influence, in addition to a fair amount of homegrown intellectual ferment -- the term could have arisen from any of these. I still need some form of evidence to be convinced that this was a Japanese borrowing. When does 問題 first appear in Japanese? -- Visviva 18:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Revised romanization confusion

Hi, Visviva. I haven't been able to find a complete reference for RRoK. As a result, I don't know whether yeokhal or yeokal is the correct transcription of 역할. Do you know of any complete reference for RRoK? Thanks in advance. Rod (A. Smith) 01:46, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The official specifications are in Ministry of Culture & Tourism Bulletin 2000-8, which is available in translated form here. Note the exception for nouns (actually 체언 in the original); based on this, I believe yeokhal is the correct romanization here. I've also been in the habit of assuming that this exception extends to hada verbs formed from substantives, since the same logic would seem to apply (thus e.g. 대답하다 as daedaphada); however, as far as I'm aware the specific hada issue is never addressed in any official documentation. Such are the downsides of a system which seems to have been primarily intended for the transcription of proper nouns. -- Visviva 02:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. That's the most complete document I had read (probably dozens of times). I thought perhaps another version would incluide a "New Romanization System" table before it was "simplified", i.e. one that includes "the case of assimilation of adjacent consonants", "the case of the epenthetic ㄴ and ㄹ", "cases of palatalization", and "cases where ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ are adjacent to ㅎ". Guess not. Rod (A. Smith) 02:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Lanner Falcon

I would have expected the spelling Lanner falcon. Is that what you intended? --EncycloPetey 23:34, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I would actually prefer to spell it lanner falcon, as I don't care for the convention of capitalizing the common names of animal species; however, the vast majority of b.g.c. ang general-web hits used "Lanner Falcon," so that is where I placed the article. I'm not attached to this solution, it just seemed like the best thing at the time... Probably all imaginable alternative capitalizations should be created as soft redirects in any case. Cheers, -- Visviva 05:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

PS - I have a question posted on your Wikispecies User page, as it pertains to revisions on Wikispecies. I've posted the same quesiton at the WS Village Pump, in case the help I need is more than you alone can provide. --EncycloPetey 23:37, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Administratorship

Congratulations, you are now a Wiktionary administrator. I hope you enjoy your new role and make good use of your new powers. — Paul G 13:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Sysop-fishing

I object to your unblocking, without discussion.

1. 11:31, December 1, 2005 SemperBlotto (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "depants" (tosh) (Restore)
2. b.g.c. does not attest it (where did you dig those up?)
3. b.g.c. *does* attest a different form (WT:RFV#pants..."de-pants" may be valid, "depants" not...from May of this year.)
4. Original entry was from a vandal-only account.
5. Previous deletion was from a UK sysop (so it isn't just 'unheard-of in the US,' it also isn't a UKism.)
6. Re-entered by a contributor who regularly makes bad entries.
7. Removed again.
8. Re-entered by an anon (with a "dirty IP" - probably an open proxy, or otherwise shared IP.)
9. Re-entered with a false comment. (Gee, http://www.dictionary.com which does include that dictionary, doesn't list it today. Nor back then.)
10. Trolling on my Wikipedia talk page, with egregious lies about a one week block somehow being indefinite, plus numerous false references to WP policies that do not apply here, appeals to authority, claims of good-faith edits there (so what?) with little demonstrated here.
11. Apparently, fishing around, until finding you.

Don't you think a LITTLE discussion might have been warranted? What is that contributor's problem, that they can't even send an e-mail? What is their problem, that all they can do is irrationally scream at length about Wiktionary not being exactly like Wikipedia for user talk pages? (Duh: is that feature abused on WP? Almost 100% of the time, no?)

I wish for you to reinstate the rest of the one-week block and apologize. I have serious doubts about that contributor becoming useful here, when they can't even recognize: #1) what they did was wrong, #2) what I did was not in any way untoward.

--Connel MacKenzie 22:55, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Review: depants is a perfectly good entry; easily attested with b.g.c. (It is a scanno as well for departs, but whether that is worth listing is marginal.) Dictionary.com does list it as a valid entry from Random House and Webster's. Even if the user was/is troublesome, describing a perfectly good, accurate entry as "nonsense" is not constructive, and not in itself a basis for a block. While there may be some other basis, this entry is not it. Why the de-pants variant doesn't exist when it was clearly stated as cited in that rfv discussion is not known. Robert Ullmann 23:48, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Robert, thank you for your observation, but obviously (as even Ruakh didn't find cites for this when it came up in May) it is not "easily attested." Searching d.com just a little while ago (when discussing it with Muke on IRC) it wasn't - but perhaps I was looking up on of the myriad other forms. Nonsense is a perfect description for the unattested definition proffered. But the main point is that it was the third re-addition without cites. Once is too often. --Connel MacKenzie 01:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for any disruption this action may have caused. As it happens, the user is someone with whom I have had extensive constructive interaction across several projects, although s/he has expressed a wish not to be directly identified here; our working relationship was, I think, the reason s/he contacted me. In any case, I do believe that the actions of User:24.93.170.200 demonstrate a fairly solid record of good-faith contributions to Far Eastern and other languages (which I have reason to believe are all due to the same user), to which the creation of depants is no exception. However, I also happy to remove myself from this matter and leave it to community discussion. My judgment was undertaken in good faith, as I believe yours (Connel's) were as well; it may well be, however, that my judgment was mistaken. If this is the case, I am happy to accept whatever remedy the community deems appropriate.

I am working through limited internet access at the moment (generally with 24-48 hour gaps, although today is an exception), while I am traveling in the States. I must, therefore, ask forgiveness for not investing as much time in the matter as perhaps I should have, and in particular for failing to initiate discussion before I took action. I think, however, that just as discussion would have been warranted for my unblocking, it also would have been warranted prior to the original block.

Please allow me to sketch the chain of events as I perceive them:

1. User:24..., acting in good faith, adds a suspicious entry

2. User:CM, engaging in his laudable work of patrolling edits, observes this suspicious activity, interprets it as blatant vandalism, and responds appropriately (removing the material and blocking the user).

3. User:24... becomes upset, which unfortunately is a common response to blocking.

4. User:24... sends me an email requesting advice.

5. I review User:24...'s contributions, giving particular attention to depants (which is apparently the only problematic contribution from this user)

6. I retrieve 3 citations for "depants" from b.g.c., among the tens available, and restore the disputed sense to that entry in what I believe to be a CFI-compliant way.

7. Because no remotely blockable offense seems to have taken place, I unblock User:24..., providing an explanatory summary, reasoning that User:CM's block was probably made in good faith but hastily, and that he and other users will perceive my action to have been warranted. (*)

8. Being in a rush to deal with some RL matters, I fail to contact User:CM to explain my action. (*)

9. User:CM becomes upset, which unfortunately is a common and natural response to having one's actions reversed.

My actions marked by (*) -- viz., my unblocking of User:24... and my failure to explain myself immediately to the blocking admin -- are the only events in this chain which, in my estimation, can be considered problematic. I would be happy to accept community review for these actions, and apologize for any unnecessary disruption arising from them. -- Visviva 00:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Apology accepted. I (of all people) can understand RL interruptions. Given your "timeline" of events I wish to ask you to make sure 8 comes before 7 (with some time to respond) if something similar happens in the future...I will continue to do so myself. --Connel MacKenzie 01:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

ko-basic-adj

There are two extra }'s on the key= parameter. Robert Ullmann 14:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this (I inadvertently thanked the wrong person in my edit summary). -- Visviva 15:51, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

new users

There is a very high probability that "Neverbeenkissed" and "Pizzamonger" are WF socks. Takes a CU to check if the net is Tiscali UK. Robert Ullmann 10:32, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the heads up. -- Visviva 10:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

burn scar..

That entry was really more Wikipedia material.. (I was busily deleting while you were moving.. ) --Versageek 05:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't entirely sure that it wasn't salvageable, but I'm not sorry to see it go. Thanks for the note! -- Visviva 05:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Is a parameter present?

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#ifeq:{{{relterms|-}}}|{{{relterms|+}}}|

====Related terms====
* {{{relterms}}}

}}

Robert Ullmann 17:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a neat trick, thanks. In this case that was actually the opposite of what I was trying to do, but I'll definitely keep it on file. -- Visviva 05:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Quotations

Hi,

Thanks for all the cites you've been adding to articles! Just a reminder, we don't wrap quotations in quotation marks, as the source information serves the purpose of identifying quotes, and the indentation serves the purpose of delimiting them.

Thanks again!

—Ruakh_TALK 14:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow, a project page with up-to-date, useful information! I'd forgotten we had any of those. :-) Thanks for the reminder. Omitting the quotation marks seems horrifically unnatural to me, but I guess I'd better get used to it. Sigh. -- Visviva 14:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC) Hey, remember that question you had about Citations: page titles? See Wiktionary:Quotations#Subpages. But maybe you noticed that already.

Explanation of deletion

Well, frankly, I don't know why you say that. There is nothing rude about quashing the MediaWiki generated duplication of deleted content; particularly when most of the time, it is libelous personal information. Since the en.wikt deletion logs are harvested and reposted, it is ludicrous to allow those deletion comments to duplicate the same private information being deleted in the first place. --Connel MacKenzie 18:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I may have to eat my words. My recollection is that the last time I clicked on an "explanation of deletion" (quite a while ago), it took me to the deletion entry, as if anyone querying the deletion must be a moron who doesn't understand what deletion is. I recall a certain amount of steam escaping from my ears on that occasion. On the other hand, linking to the sysop-delete page is certainly not rude (although it is less than helpful), so please accept my confused apology.

On the broader matter, I would have to disagree. Certainly where personal attacks, privacy, or copyvio are in question, the autosummary should be blanked and replaced with a summary of the reasons for deletion ("deleted as possible attack page," etc.). But in general, if we don't explain why a page was deleted (or allow the autosummary do so for us), we are leaving the non-admin user completely in the dark.

It was quite frustrating for me in the past, when I would discover that an entry I was going to create had previously been deleted, but with no indication as to the reasons for that deletion... and thus no indication as to whether any entry I might create would also be subject to deletion. Transparency in the deletion process is a Good Thing. Now, I'd have to admit I get sloppy with my own deletion summaries -- e.g. just leaving {{rfd}} in the autosummary without explaining the outcome of debate -- so I'm in no position to point fingers... but I don't think automated sloppiness is a good idea. -- Visviva 10:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps, but automating the propagation of libelous material is worse. That's merely one we actually have heard about. Anyhow, no worries. Keep up the good contributions and cleanup efforts. (On another note, I think you understand, now, why so many of us have burned out on WT:RD/WT:RFV archiving. Every single entry is at least a little controversial...or it wouldn't be there to begin with. Therefore, no matter what you do, someone will be angry...for each and every one.) --Connel MacKenzie 05:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Attributive use?

How would I identify an "attributive use" of a proper noun? Kappa 02:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, ask ten editors and you'll get eleven answers... But you know that. ;-) I would define it as "use to indicate something other than the literal referent," often to attribute to another thing some notable property of the literal referent. So "she went and bought a Rolls-Royce" would not be attributive use, but "these shoes are the Rolls-Royce of discount beige loafers" would be. Or in the toponymic context, use of Chicago to denote a kind of hot dog, pizza, or blues would count as attributive use. A Chicago hot dog is still a Chicago hot dog, even on the other side of the world. (Unfortunately, I can state from bitter experience that this does not apply to Chicago pizza.)

So that's my interpretation, which I think is pretty close to the middle of the road. That said, I think we might do well to scotch the entire criterion. If a proper noun has acquired an entirely different sense, if for example "Rolls-Royce" really has become a synonym for "high-class luxury item," that sense alone should be given a full listing in mainspace, with only a nod to the literal referent in Appendix-space (or in Wikipedia). I'm not sure that proper nouns sensu stricto (leaving aside months, language names, surnames, etc.) really belong in the mainspace at all. We're wasting a lot of energy on these litmus tests that would be better applied to the task of writing the dictionary. -- Visviva 03:29, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:English initialisms

Yes, odd, something to be fixed. The other oddity is using templates in the header line with a lang= parameter, instead of a headword/inflection line template like most POS ... Robert Ullmann 15:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

protocol droid

Going through the July RFV archive, I saw your comment about protocol droid, and restored the entry and added the cites you linked to from RFD — except that one of the cites doesn't actually seem to use the terms? (See Special:Whatlinkshere/protocol droid.) —Ruakh_TALK 16:40, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Mass substitution

Hi DAVilla,

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

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

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

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

Writing this has given me some ideas, and I'm going to try them out. DAVilla 02:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, no worries, thanks for responding, not sure now why I was so invested anyway. Cheers, -- Visviva 12:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)