Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2006/March

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Ec about Wiktionary:Assume good faith:

Primetime

I am not the only one who has expressed concerns about this contributor, but I may be the first to bring it up here. Primetime has been asked repeatedly to follow the standard formatting practices of wiktionary, and hasn't, and recently their contributions have more and more closely resembled copyvios. This evening they made 4 edits in the space of a minute (xanthomatous, xanthophyll, xanthophyceae, xanthism) consisting of 113 words not including formatting, a tremendous feat of typing let alone recall and expertise. I am not sure what the policy is regarding contributors and dubious activities, but I am certain that Primetime merits some scrutiny. - TheDaveRoss 06:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC) (I appologize if this is the wrong venue)[reply]

The reason why the entries were created so quickly is I use MS Word to write my them because it has a spell checker. I write a list of entries, then move them here. In any case, my format still includes headers, italics, etc. I have explained in detail in previous discussions here why I don't add a second, unecessary header and why I don't link words unrelated to the entry in question. I don't see why Connel blocked me over this.--Primetime 06:39, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What then, are you using to upload them? And when, did you alegedly compose all these wonderful submissions? Why do you have no references cited? Any of these considerations taken alone are untenable; as a whole, there is simply no way that you are not engaging in massive copyright violations. Even if you are alternating your sources for each entry, you are still cycling through them all and cutting and pasting from those resources. Your refusal to format any part of your entries as per our formatting conventions is obviously due to the inconvenience of reformatting your copyright-violation sources.
But the ultimate reason I blocked you, was because the rate of your copyvio flood was increasing. The longer you were permitted to continue, the more would have to be deleted later. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:02, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My copy of MS Word does not tack spaces onto the end of everything. (Just tested, pasting into a couple different browsers.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An additional concern (besides spaces) is the use of ALL CAPS for linking to other definitions. Appropriate capitalization is much more important in Wiktionary than in some of the other WikiMedia. --EncycloPetey 07:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I'm simply going to give two parallel sets of quotations. One comes from seven randomly chosen articles created by Primetime in the last couple of days. The other comes from Webster's Third International New International Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged), copyright 1993 by Merriam-Webster, Inc. Any commentary would be redundant. Keffy 22:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • quaddle
    • Primetime: dialect England: GRUMBLER
    • Webster's 3rd: dial Eng: GRUMBLER
  • quarter blanket
    • Primetime: a blanket used under a horse's harness to cover from the tail to beyond the saddle
    • Webster's 3rd: a blanket used under a horse's harness to cover from the tail to beyond the saddle
  • quaestuary
    • Primetime: archaic: interested in or undertaken for monetary gain or profit "this may be termed the quaestuary class, this being the end which they aim at" -- J.F.Ferrier
    • Webster's 3rd: archaic: interested in or undertaken for monetary gain or profit <this may be termed the ~ class, this being the end which they aim at --J.F.Ferrier
  • xystus
    • Primetime: a long and open portico used especially by ancient Greeks or Romans for athletic exercises in wintry or stormy weather; sometimes: a walk lined with trees
    • Webster's 3rd: a long and open portico used esp. by ancient Greeks or Romans for athletic exercises in wintry or stormy weather; sometimes: a walk lined with trees
  • gonystylus
    • Primetime: a small genus of East Indian trees (order Malvales) constituting a monotypic family, having alternate leathery leaves, regular paniculate flowers and woody fruits, and yielding fragrant timber resembling agalloch
    • Webster's 3rd: a small genus of East Indian trees (order Malvales) constituting a monotypic family, having alternate leathery leaves, regular paniculate flowers and woody fruits, and yielding fragrant timber resembling agalloch
  • gopura
    • Primetime: the gateway of a temple in southern India; often the massive tower resembling a pyramid above the gateway
    • Webster's 3rd: the gateway of a temple in southern India; often: the massive tower resembling a pyramid above the gateway
  • xerogel
    • Primetime: a solid formed from a gel by drying with unhindered shrinkage
    • Webster's 3rd: a solid formed from a gel by drying with unhindered shrinkage -- compare AEROGEL

You should provide evidence to back up your claims. You're Australian, so how did you get an American dictionary? I can guarantee you that these are not from M-W, Unabridged.--Primetime 23:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Any single quote from M-W or anywhere can be fair use, but a pattern of copying from such a source is not acceptable. When there has been a reasonably documented claim of copyright infringement that shifts the burden on the contributor to show evidence of where the material comes from. If you can guarantee that the material is not from M-W, and is legally being used then do it by showing your sources. Please make this your priority. Eclecticology 10:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so can you please tell us where they are from. The evidence is right here, and clearly suggests that these could be copyvios. Some of them are clearly too recent to be from an out-of-copyright source such as Webster 1913. Where did you get them from? — Paul G 10:01, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the entries are either from The Century Dictionary, edited by William D. Whitney, 1891; or Funk and Wagnall's A Standard Dictionary of the English Language, 1893.--Primetime 11:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Primetime, the onus is on you, to provide individual, specific references. The very first term in question did not pan out when I searched. Where exactly are you pasting these from? --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean exactly by "it did not pan out"? Where did you look? I use OCR (optical character recognition) to move the scanned pages directly to a word processor. The books indeed exist, you can find references to them here and here
--Primetime 19:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it really doesn't matter what scanned images I looked at; you still haven't provided citations. Are you planning to? --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:15, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would be happy to provide citations if I were to be unblocked.--Primetime 20:07, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ever willing to give people the benefit of a doubt, Keffy goes off to check out Primetime's claimed sources. Alas, his non-Australian city has no publicly available 1893 editions of F&W, so the quotes below are from Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of the English Language, International Edition (1963).

Until somebody finds an original F&W, I'm willing to admit it's not completely impossible that Philip Gove, editor of Webster's Third, despairing that his huge staff would ever get the job done, begged his company's arch-rival for help, and that not only did F&W let him use verbatim copies of their definitions, they also graciously agreed not to use those definitions themselves in their own later editions. Not completely inconceivable, but not likely enough in this universe that I'm willing to waste any more of my time on this. Keffy 00:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Webster's 3rd Primetime Century Dictionary

(1895 printing)

Funk & Wagnalls (1963)
gonystylus a small genus of East Indian trees (order Malvales) constituting a monotypic family, having alternate leathery leaves, regular paniculate flowers and woody fruits, and yielding fragrant timber resembling agalloch a small genus of East Indian trees (order Malvales) constituting a monotypic family, having alternate leathery leaves, regular paniculate flowers and woody fruits, and yielding fragrant timber resembling agalloch (no entry) (no entry)
gopura the gateway of a temple in southern India; often: the massive tower resembling a pyramid above the gateway the gateway of a temple in southern India; often the massive tower resembling a pyramid above the gateway In India, especially in the south, a pyramidal tower over the gateway of a temple. Also gopuram. (no entry)
quaddle dial Eng: GRUMBLER dialect England: GRUMBLER (no entry) (no entry)
quaestuary archaic: interested in or undertaken for monetary gain or profit <this may be termed the ~ class, this being the end which they aim at --J.F.Ferrier archaic: interested in or undertaken for monetary gain or profit "this may be termed the quaestuary class, this being the end which they aim at" -- J.F.Ferrier (no entry) (no entry)
quarter blanket a blanket used under a horse's harness to cover from the tail to beyond the saddle a blanket used under a horse's harness to cover from the tail to beyond the saddle A horse-blanket intended to cover only the back and a part of the hips. It is usually put on under the harness. (no entry)
xerogel a solid formed from a gel by drying with unhindered shrinkage -- compare AEROGEL a solid formed from a gel by drying with unhindered shrinkage (no entry) (no entry)
xystus a long and open portico used esp. by ancient Greeks or Romans for athletic exercises in wintry or stormy weather; sometimes: a walk lined with trees a long and open portico used especially by ancient Greeks or Romans for athletic exercises in wintry or stormy weather; sometimes: a walk lined with trees (no entry) an exterior portico in ancient Greece facing south where athletes exercised in the winter

I went ahead and looked at Merriam-Webster's Third myself. As you can see above, their definitions are completely different from Keffy's.--Primetime 06:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My local library lets me check out references, so I have "Webster's Third New International Dictionary" subtitle "OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE UNABRIDGED A Merriam-Webster REG. U.S. PAT. OFF." © 1993 BY MERRIAM-WEBSTER, INCORPORATED.
→ISBN
Needless to say, each one of Keffy's citations above match exactly. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
M-W has been printing the Third since 1961, yet you happen to have a 1993 printing, also. What library did you get it at?--Primetime 14:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY" / "PRINCIPAL COPYRIGHT 1961". As to what library, none of your business. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Despite his block, he is still editing here, even today. Yes, I accidentally came across florid where I wanted to add a quote, and I immediately recognized his format. — Vildricianus 20:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Action

It has been 6 days since Primetime's last "rebuttal", and I personally feel the evidence has been given and we ought to make a decision. I see two main things (and a third, tangential thing) which should be considered (read: voted on).

  • What to do with Primetime.
    1. Maintain the present indefinite ban.
    2. Alter it to some other timeframe (I don not know what the standards are here and elsewhere, but something along the lines of 1 month to 1 year seem more suitable to me.)
    3. Some other solution.
  • What to do with Primetime's edits, especially the ones where he is sole contributor. I think the evidence is clear here that many of them are copyvio, which may make this a legal matter, I do not know the precident.
    1. Delete them all.
    2. Sift through and delete only proven copyvios. (I don't know exactly how this would work.)
    3. Some other solution.
      Just looking at the talk page, the user has a track record of copyvios. Revert all changes that fit that pattern unless they can be proved otherwise. Davilla 20:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The third thing which I think should be addressed is how we should handle this situation as a community in the future. I felt like I didn't have any clear direction to take this, and couldn't find anywhere which explained what to do. Was this situation well handled? Should we move in the direction of *pedia's ArbCom for issues such as this? Thoughts on this are important as we grow because this situation WILL come up again. - TheDaveRoss 08:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC) (sorry I did not sign this initially, I don't know how I missed that.)[reply]

It is unfortunate that these suggestions were not signed.

  1. The indefinite block is just fine, and indefinite is not the same as infinite. If he shows himself willing to be more co-operative with the community and its standards he can come back. He will need to convince some key people that he is reformed before that happens, and his work will be closely watched if and when he does come back.
  2. There is no real need to delete anything. The simple fact indicated above that two versions, thirty years apart, of the same dictionary would give such radically different definitions of the same word should set off alarms. As David Crystal points out in his The Stories of English there is a strong tradition of "borrowing" in English dictionaries that goes at least back to the time of Robert Cawdrey's first English dictionary in 1604. Any single entry from another dictionary whose copyrights are still valit is not ipso facto a copyright violation. At worst it is fair use, and may not itself have been copyrightable by the people who put it in that dictionary. It may result from a series of borrowings that can be ultimately traced to a public domain source, or it may (as Patrik so ably indicated on my talk page) be subject to the merger doctrine which applies when the copyrightable form of expression and the uncopyrightable idea expressed come into conflict. We can protect ourselves by simply giving a reference to the source of a definition. What really can be a violation of copyrights is an extended pattern of borrowings; no-one should be allowed to establish such a pattern, and we should stop anyone who seems to be headed in that direction, as we have done with Primetime to disrupt the pattern.
  3. When I read about Wikipedia's Arbcom I find that it creates as many problems as it solves. Giving direction and maintaing a collaborative community are often conflicting aims. It is easy to apply rules to newbies, but it is also extremely problematical to apply the same rules to difficult contributors who have been highly innovative and have contributed a lot to the project. I think the Primetime situation has been well handled despite the uncertainties that often prevailed. A consensus system is made strong by its own imperfections. I agree that such ideas need more development, but preferably outside the context of the difficulties that we are facing with a specific individual. Eclecticology 21:37, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ec, regarding #2: THAT IS TOTALLY FALSE! Primetime offered fake evidence that a fictional dictionary had different meanings entered thirty years later!
  • All of these copyright violations (all of Primetime's entries) need to be removed.
  • --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • (1)I think we should set a specific ammount of time, making it an arbitrary "as long as it takes" doesn't give Primetime any definite time when he can feel like he can rejoin the community if he wishes to, and it doesn't give the community any idea of when it is proper to accept him. Some may feel that a week down the road he is rehabilitated while others may feel that several months is more appropriate. I don't think this should be a "feel it out" sort of deadline. (my psersonal opinion is something in the range of 3 months to 1 year
    (2)I personally cannot reconcile banning a user for their contributions AND keeping those contributions, this is hypocracy. If we have decided that the contributions were copied from another source, I feel they should be removed. Whether or not this is a legal issue, it is a moral one to not include other peoples work passed off as our own, and I am absolutely willing to readd my share of the copied terms if it is the content loss you are worried about. A pattern of copyvios HAS been established and it is irresponsible to keep those copyvios when we know they exist. delete
    (3)I agree that ArbCom has issues, however they do fulfill a certain aspect of the disciplinary process that I think is crucial, namely that such decisions should not have the potential of becoming popularity contests. If two people get into a revert war, and person1 is well liked while person2 is not so much, person2 may be unjustly overruled simply because of bias. I am not saying this has happened, it is just an eventuality of mob-rule discipline. - TheDaveRoss 21:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I hope that you aren't suggesting every one of the 430 entries I have created and every one of the 1270 edits I have made here are copied out of a dictionary. I can understand why you would be suspicious about the rapidly-created ones (about 220 of the total), but those are a recent phenomenon, created on three evenings in March and February. I have been editing here since November 22 of 2005, and most of my entries have subsequently been reformatted, expanded--and often reworded--by other editors.

    About the block, though: The reason why I came to Wiktionary in the first place was to add definitions to words I use in my articles in Wikipedia. I gradually developed an affinity for editing here regularly, but that is gone now. I don't think I really want to start editing here on a large scale again. I would like to be able to come here and add a few entries every once in a while that I think everyone would be interested in or that I need defined for Wikipedia.I probably wouldn't create more than three a day, or so, though. But, I don't think you need to ban me that long at all. I felt humiliated by being blocked like I was, so you can be assured that I was punished. And I think it's obvious why some people got upset with me, so I'll stop.--Primetime 22:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the copyright violations, you have also resorted to sockpuppetry, not only to post here but to edit articles as well (see florid). I assume that blocking the Primetime account will not suffice. — Vildricianus 09:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Vildric: Whatever block is decided upon, it will be enforced, based on the person not the username.
Primetime: I think that the ones which are obviously your work can stay, but many are obviously not and should go.
- TheDaveRoss 02:49, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is clearly a distinction for what was entered initially. Primetime claims some of that has changed over time. As to what's salvagable though, my partial reformatting, rather than rephrasing, of give is lost, as is probably the majority of like content. If Primetime is willing to make the obvious reverts himself, leaving any subjective cases to us, then you should allow him to do so, and consider a shorter ban thereafter for having done so. Davilla 05:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think that any of my contributions should be deleted. I agree with Eclecticology that even if they were copied from a newer source, they are not really copyvios. (See Meta:Avoid Copyright Paranoia.) All I was saying is that I understand why you were suspicious about them, and that if you unblock me, I wouldn't keep on doing what I was doing. Wiktionary is certainly not liable right now because we are partially exempted as a non-profit educational entity under copyright law.[1] A key question in determining whether a violation has occured is whether another dictionary's ability to compete has been damaged by the use of any of their material. If it has, they are compensated, but since the entries I created aren't really referenced, and they lack the credibility of those in print, and since the audiences for online dictionaries and printed ones are completely different, I don't think anyone would even consider taking us to court, as they might be rewarded $5 (or less) by a jury in damages. Further, the trustees who run Wikimedia would need to be warned first by the dictionary in question that they are violating copyright law. (They can't really be expected to be aware of every discussion thread on every Wiki, and thus are not liable for knowingly aiding the copying of any material). TheDaveRoss's proposal about rewording definitions sounds OK to me, though, but they shouldn't be deleted, and many of the definitions in question cannot be reworded because they have only one definition. Also, please realize that I am a financial donor to Wikimedia, so if I believed that something would harm the wiki, I wouldn't do it! Finally, "give" is from the first edition of the OED.

    About the block again, though: I've never been blocked this long on any wiki. The longest I've ever been blocked is three days or so--and that was here. This seems like overkill, and let me tell you that editing using open proxies is not easy--they disconnect, they're slow, and they take time to find. The only reason why I created "florid" was because I needed it defined for an article in Wikipedia. I created "spic" because I had just written an article on the word in Wikipedia, so I figured it belonged here, as well. By and large, I'm really just using them--with difficulty--to argue my case here. If you need another type of guarantee from me to be unblocked that I haven't given, let me know.--Primetime 09:56, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

    Regardless of the legality of the issue, I don't think we should be in the buisiness of doing as much as we can get away with, it is *wrong* to take someone elses work and claim it as your own, and it is *wrong* to act deceitfully about doing so. This is my biggest problem with the whole situation, you claimed someone elses work as your own, and when confronted you lied about it, repeatedly. Why should we delete what you added? Because the authors of the content are the only ones who can give it to us, the only ones who can re-license it (which happens when something is added to Wiktionary) and even if they could never do anything about it in court, we shouldn't take what isn't ours. Rewording them would be tricky, I am not sure that we have any contributors at present with the expertise to write definitions for many of the obscure words you copied, and they are not easily researched. - TheDaveRoss 04:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    But isn't that what we do already with dictionaries like Webster's Second? Further, deleting the entries in question would do more harm than good. Making the definitions impossible to find is much worse, in my opinion, than being disingenuous about their authorship (if you can call that authorship). And let's be clear about how un-unique these definitions are. Almost all of them are less than a sentence in length. They're phrases, really. That raises the question, again, about whether anyone--legally or logically--can claim that a concept is their own. No dictionary invented these words--the use by others made them English. The terse statement of an idea is not a unique work--so how can you steal something that isn't someone else's to begin with?--Primetime 06:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am stunned that all of Primetime's contributions still have not been deleted. So far, every single statement from Primetime has been exposed as a lie, once investigated. I have no reason to believe that any of his submissions are not copyright violations. They are all GFDL violations in that he did not attribute the source. His copyright violations began with his arrival and were always suspicious; as he grew bolder he sped up, he didn't change methods. And he lied every step of the way. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have started going through his entries and cleaning them up. I can find the source of the copyvios in almost half the cases, but (after research) I am rewording them all, just in case. Some of them have Wikipedia entries, so that helps. I may be some time! SemperBlotto 17:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, but shouldn't they be deleted outright, along with all his submissions? A pattern of copyvio is clearly established. The ones you are not immediately identifying as copyvios are probably simply from another source that you don't have easy access to. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:06, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Blotto, I certainly don't feel I have the expertise to readd many of these, nor the resources to do so (for many of them, the pedia ones I suppose I could do). I think that if they are going to be rewritten we ought to make a list of them, and delete them, then readd them from scratch. I may be anal and this may be unecessary, but it also can't hurt anything. I do not feel comfortable with keeping another dictionaries set of definitions, again, regardless of the legality, regardless of the precident. - TheDaveRoss 03:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'll continue to do the best I can, but where I am not confident I'll just delete the word. If anyone else wants to do some deletes, I'm sure few people will object. Words that warrant an entry will just get added again in the normal course of events. SemperBlotto 09:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC) - I have no idea what to do about give - it is just too daunting. SemperBlotto 10:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Daunting indeed. However, we can't just take his word that these are from a public-domain source, can we? I'd say revert. — Vildricianus 12:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone has a clue? — Vildricianus 14:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
All done (apart from give) - and I'd rather not have to do it again. SemperBlotto 15:23, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


After Primetime's IP started recreating give me fin on the soul side which I had deleted he proceeded to progress to my RfA on Wikipedia here and decided to change his vote (which is fine but its what followed) here then after Dvortygirl made a comment he reverted them as a personal attack here and here. Its yet another incident to the list -- Tawker 10:23, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of which, why did you delete an entry with citations and quotations? That was not even part of the pattern discussed above! I voted against you on Wikipedia, but I have every right to do that. Dvortygirl then mentioned my past on Wiktionary, which seems increadibly malicious and irrelevant to Wikipedia.--Primetime 10:45, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I am not going to argue with you because it is frankly not worth my time. It was the consensus of multiple people. As for your Wikipedia vote, Dvortygirl is well within her rights to post your context as it is pretty obvious your vote was a direct result of what happened here. As for you not being blocked on Wikipedia, check your IP logs, someone decided that trolling and removing contextual comments was grounds enough for a block (for 24 hours or less until my RfA there is over) - In short, it was a consensus of 4 adminstrators plus the fact that it was previously deleted (as basically the same content) that lead to the delete. You are more than welcome to contribute if you wish to stick with the guidelines of the Wiktionary community though, so I look forward to seeing some constructive edits :) - On another note, it might be best just to create a new account, Primetime seems to have a little stigma attached to it around here. All the best -- Tawker 18:33, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See [2] for my response. Also, I agree you shouldn't continue to write on this matter, as you haven't been participating in this discussion about me and you have had very little time to watch my edit history.--Primetime 01:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I had a good laugh with Primetime's changes to the Wiktionary article at Pedia [3]. — Vildricianus 11:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Administrative note: I am striking out Primetime's false "additional column" from the table above, from this archive. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:Redirections

Proposal. Please comment. There's few information available on the topic, so I've only represented that which I could think of, which is only a part of the actual practical policies. — Vildricianus 19:54, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the plunge into identifying a policy and starting to develop it.Great stuff!--Richardb 08:32, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can find some debate regarding the subject at
--Patrik Stridvall 09:31, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like this policy and it adds a lot of clarity. I think however there is considerable overlap with the CFI policy - would you consider merging them?
Jonathan Webley 20:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not just idioms - the whole article about redirects is really discussing what merits an article (i.e. it those which meet CFI) and those which should only get a redirect. Jonathan Webley 10:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something that occurs to me is the issue of citations of alternate spellings or inflected forms. Should they be listed under the primary article, or should they too go under the relevant specific inflected or alternate entry? I would prefer for them to go under the main article. This is helpful particularly where a group of citations aims to show a word's history, beyond its current spelling. Widsith 20:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Both. Eclecticology 07:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Redirecting between obsolete spellings or regionally different spellings, not least of all from American to British or the other way round, is strongly discouraged." I can understand that for individual words, but what about compound words like food coloring? Redirecting seems right to me, but somehow I have a feeling I'm in the wrong here. Davilla 02:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's still bias towards one variant. We should avoid that. — Vildricianus 09:20, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POS headings again (in particular Proper noun)

A comment of mine on having a separate "Proper noun" header from Eclecticology's talk page:

Headings such as "Proper noun", "(In)transitive verb", "Phrasal verb", etc. are problematic: First, they require contributors to have more grammatical knowledge compared with the simple POS headers (and so might not add a new definition for fear it might end up under the wrong header or, not much better, add it to the wrong section). Second, it is not clear why and what additional grammatical information should be added to them. We could as well have "(Un)countable noun", "(In)transitive phrasal verb", "(Not) comparable adjective", etc. headers, which, like the current exceptions, is highly unsystematic and irritating. A good bad example is "Wellington": The boot has wrongly been classified as a proper noun. That's why tagging individual definitions is necessary. We should aim to keep things simple and make it possible to add information in small bits. We also don't want users to have to know that when they are looking up a noun they have to check below the "Phrasal verb" header whether there is a "Proper noun" section.

It would be great if the community finally agreed to abolish the "Proper noun" header. Ncik 16:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be much better to abolish all "POS" headings in favor of "===Definitions===" and a tag at the start of each "#" line indicating the part of speech (like a regular dictionary.) Since this idea had been vehemently rejected in the past, I don't expect much to have changed regarding it. But without a total transformation to the general approach here, the "Proper noun" heading should remain. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Although I wouldn't object to the ===Definition=== heading, I don't think that moving the POS into the separate lines would be helpful. "Regular dictionaries" do at least maintain some separation when a word functions as more than one part of speech. Unlike them, we also have extensive translations, and jumbling these together could be confusing for a passive user. Eclecticology 07:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't suggesting "jumbling" them together, I was suggesting they belong together, grouped together, just like regular dictionaries have them. Although now that you mention it, if combined with the "##"/"###" sub-meanings proposed layout, such a jumbling could easily be possible. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am stongly in favor of keeping the headers for Proper noun, Transitive verb, Intransitive verb, and (for Spanish) Reflexive verb. As for any other headers beyond the basic parts of speech, I'm either ambivalent about them or opposed to them. I do think it's very useful for the part of speech to be given in the header, particularly for long pages. As the entries become longer, it becomes harder to scan for the sense that you need. With a part of speech header, one can click on that POS in the Contents of a long page to get where one needs to go. Switching to line tags for each part of speech for each definition will make readability much worse, particularly in cases where ther is already a (mathematics) or similar tag at the beginning of the line. --EncycloPetey 13:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care either way when it comes to Proper Noun, but I think some kind of POS should be given rather than have a general Definitions line. As for verbs, I don't much like Transitive Verb and the like, only because to me it seems counter-productive to split verbs which can be used both transitively and intransitively. Widsith 18:23, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure you're not going to remove all POS headers? While I agree that "POS header" is a misnomer, they do serve a useful purpose with regards to browsing long pages and keeping translations separated.
Of proper nouns, I have even considered removing this tag at all and replacing it with just "noun" – at one point I wasn't sure of the need to identify whether a noun is proper or not – but then, I'm not sure of that anymore. There's probably plenty of good reasons to have it. Then I think we should keep it, right?
As for transitivity of verbs, well I've removed it and merged both into one header dozens of times, and most of the time, the one ===Verb=== is more practical towards definitions, but less towards space management (many weird-looking and paperdictionarish tags in front of the def). We should remain flexible here. — Vildricianus 20:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, Connel's remark has caused this discussion to become concerned with proposals reaching much further than mine. I just want to know if we can agree that, on the basis of our current layout, abolishing the "Proper noun" header and similarly any other header with more than just the simple POS in it (with the usual exception that there might not be an actual POS in the POS header) and instead giving this additional information at the beginning of each definition would be a step forward. Ncik 01:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. Keep Prop. Noun, tr. v., Intr. v. at the least. As was pointed out above, we need a means to distinguish the two basic categories of noun, namely whether the noun refers to a specific thing or to a class of objects. Capitlaization does not help because there are capitalized common nouns both in English (Wellingtons, Mackintosh, and the like) as well as in German. This is an important distinction, particularly for learners of English. I am also in favor of the basic split in verb headers, in part because it hugely affects the way the verb in used. Every major dictionary I know of separates the transitive from the intransitive definitions, so you're arguing against the format that lexicographers prefer and that readers of dictionaries have come to expect. --EncycloPetey 11:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
EncycloPetey, please read more carefully what other people write before of making unqualified comments. It will be indicated whether a noun is a proper noun or a verb is transitive or intransitive when having a particular meaning. I'm just trying to convince people to get rid of these specifications in the POS header and move them at the beginnin of the definitions. I explained the obvious advantages above. See also # Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/October-December_05#Verbs that are transitive and intransitive. Ncik 01:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've always been a bit ambivalent about the separate headings for Transitive and Intransitive verbs. You make a good point for separating them as an ease to navigating through a long article. Combining them and adding a line tag should not be automatic. Eclecticology 21:59, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense, yes. I've always thought that merging them benefits the readability of definitions, while separating them benefits the ease of translations. Bearing in mind that our translations sections are for now more valuable than our definitions, I won't merge any more. As a logical result, Proper noun certainly deserves a header. — Vildricianus 22:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Discouraging "Proper noun" as a heading would be a mistake. (Ncik, the first couple lines of this thread are where you introduced trans./intrans. to the conversation; my comments did not expand the scope.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please give reasons why it would be a mistake to drop the "Proper noun" heading. Ncik 01:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Proper" noun: don't care. "Countable" should never be included. An uncountable noun plus s means different kinds; e.g. milk is uncountable, but "milks" means different kinds of milk.
I don't understand what you mean by the above. Of course a countable noun should be tagged as countable. The "countable" just shouldn't appear in the header.
Sorry, I should have said "in the header". Davilla 12:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Verb: don't further distinguish the type in the heading, but do split them. Personally I try to fit a pattern, e.g. to think someone somehow: To think some person to be some way: "I think him childish"; to look somehow: To appear to be some way: "Your grandmother looks young." Transitive and intransitive headings are not clear-cut in all cases. How to list inflections is a big question though.
The valence of a verb can easily be given at the beginning of each definition by means of a template. We currently have: Template:avalent for valence 0 (e.g. to rain), Template:intransitive for valence 1 (e.g. to die) and Template:transitive for valence 2. I don't know if there exists a template for tri-valent verbs (such as to buy: "I bought her roses"). Inflections are the same no matter what the valence of the meaning is. Ncik 01:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The term valency seems to be a fairly recent addition to theoretical linguistic jargon; it is partly accepted in Britain, and not-at-all accepted in the United States. I don't know whether there really is such a thing as an avalent verb. The only reason "we" have Template:avalent is because Ncik put it there. I don't think that we are being helpful to the user when we start adopting linguistic theories that are only accepted by a subset of specialists in linguistics. In what little I've read there seems to be little support for the concept of avalency; perhaps it could be applied to the infinitive of a verb, but then we are not looking for characteristics that are only aqpplicable to a single form of a verb. Eclecticology 06:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't aware that this is new terminology (The OED has neither "valence" nor "valency" in the linguistic sense. www.dictionary.com does have "valence" in the linguistic sense and "valency" as a variant. Wikipedia links fom "valence" to "valency (linguistics)".) Anyhow, apart from Template:avalent, which we might want to rename, I'm not suggesting using the word "valence". We should stay with the traditional terminology "transitive", "intransitive", and create Template:ditransitive for verbs of valency 3. Ncik 12:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do think it better to use "verbal"/"nominal"/etc. as attributes for other labels like "phrase", e.g. get out of here, but the confusion between "verbal phrase" and "phrasal verb" might merit elimination of the latter (as a heading, not of entries like look up). Davilla 22:20, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The word "phrase" should never turn up in a POS header. For phrases the POS header should give the POS of the phrase, not the POS of the headword of the phrase. But we could consider indicating what the POS of the phrase's headword is elsewhere. Ncik 01:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So try to teach grandma how to suck eggs should be ===Verb=== not ===Verbal Phrase===? Davilla 20:21, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Ncik 21:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Abosolutely not! The header is supposed to be ===Phrase=== because phrases are formed here in their most generic sense - not how they are used! "It was a case of him trying to teach granny to suck eggs" would be an example where the phrase is not a verb. But that (and similar common forms) should redirect to the entry. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Your example sentence features the phrase as a gerund. There have been many discussion about how to deal with gerunds in the past (rather less recently), and I think we have never come to a conclusion. I've hardly ever come across pages with a "Gerund" or "Verbal noun" header or something like that. The user will have to figure out himself that, in the English language, almost any verb's present participle can function as a gerund. The header should definitely not be "Phrase". Ncik 17:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Phrase" alone does sound too simplistic. There's no fine line between, say, a compound noun and a noun phrase. Davilla 22:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I was studying some grammar stuff, I came across that "valency" thing you (Ncik) mentioned. It occurred to me that this can be far more complex than what you suggested above, and I would therefore recommend that it be left out of consideration. However, at the same time I also realized that transitivity of verbs – which is not the same as valency – has the same capability of becoming elaborate beyond the common user's understanding. E.g. there's a usage of to read that is called "pseudo-transitive", when one says I've been reading all day (as one omits the direct object here), which might have a different translation in some languages.

If we were to keep it simple and plain we should leave out the trans/intrans stuff and replace it with simple model phrases like the ones Davilla mentioned above. As these labels are good for English-only stuff but perhaps insufficient for other languages, this would be the most beneficial thing to do for translations and the least one for definitions. However, I'm still not sure what our main direction is: a translating dictionary or a defining dictionary, as both these objectives are hard to combine in a balanced way. It occurs to me, though, that these labels are being applied here in Wiktionary because they have been in monolingual dictionaries. Note: this is all just brainstorming of course. — Vildricianus 11:23, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't quite understand what Davilla is proposing there, and even less understand how it is related to transitivity. As always we will have to have different policies for different languages. It would be naive to expect grammatical concepts to be the same in all languages (more than one would actually be surprising enough). We should by no means abolish tagging verbs as (in/di)transitive just because these notions are more complex than they seem on first sight. The exact implications of tagging a verb as (in/di)transitive should be explained on the according template pages. Ncik 21:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary places way too much emphasis on transitivity in the rendered entry already. Real dictionaries list v. tr. or v. itr. or n because that is not useful information to someone looking for a definition. We shouldn't have "intransitive", "transitive", "ditransitive" in headers or spelled out on definition lines. They should be abbreviated, at the start of each definition, just like a real dictionary. Not being paper, we can link the abbreviations to the proper entry for the curious soulds out there. But spelling them out in headers gives uncalled-for emphasis to these gramatical distinctions. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean is use a pattern instead of funny labels like transitivity and valencey that are questionable in some of the corner cases (such as those above). For the regular cases, this comes out as:
===Verb===
to eat
  1. To consume food.
===Verb===
to eat something
  1. To consume something.
or something along those lines. Davilla 20:10, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You want to blur these concepts because you can't be asked to define and explain them properly?! Not the way forward. (Completely apart from the fact that having to "Verb" headers is atrocious). Ncik 21:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Am I burring them? Do you not agree that these are two different senses, a transitive and intransitive? I would imagine all dictionaries distinguish those two definitions. I actually don't like the second header either, so I've started eliminating it. But the concept is the same.
This has nothing to do with how well they're defined. Even respectable dictionaries aren't very good at this IMO. For instance, AHD defines the word xxxxx (redacted) as "v. tr. To judge or regard; look upon." Consider that you are unfamiliar with xxxxx in English and would like to use it in a sentence. Please construct a gramatically correct sentence for me using the verb xxxxx and conveying the meaning given. 22:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

French Wiktionary article count

What the heck has happened over there? In the last three months they have increased their article count by 300%. It can't be a bot because the increase has been pretty steady over that period. So does anyone know what's been causing this monstrous increase? GeorgeStepanek 06:36, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, they added an entire edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie. Eclecticology 09:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but that's only 33,000 articles. Where did the other 85,000 come from? GeorgeStepanek 06:04, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. You trusted and used the translations here on en:, but not your own? --Connel MacKenzie T C 02:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we can trust and import XX->fr in the XX wikt more easily than fr->XX in the fr wikt. I won't explain why here, because it would be a too long discussion.
Now, I'm dreaming of a world where all Wiktionarys will be united, and where we'll not have to do these duplicating imports... Kipmaster 13:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another comment from a Wiktionnaire contributor:
  • The Wiktionnaire, although the best wiktionary :-), is probably not the most advanced one: I feel that many words in the Wiktionary might be omitted from statistics because they lack a link (I found some by clicking on Random page).
  • If I am right, this is mainly due to a lack of control. Enforcing formatting rules through templates (whatever these rules) saves much time, and provides a better consistency and much easier control. In the Wikionnaire, thanks to templates, all words have at least one category and, therefore, at least one link.
  • If you want to, also have a look at my user page. Lmaltier 15:09, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help wanted - translations to be checked

Translations to be checked are now being categorised by language (see the discussion above) for easier maintenance. I'm going through the links at Wiktionary:Babel and inviting people with good knowledge of particular languages to help out with checking the translations for those languages. There are however many, many languages for which no one has a Babel entry, so I'd like to invite everyone who has a good (by which I mean Babel level 3 or above) knowledge of any foreign language (particularly the lesser-known ones) to take a look at the list of translations to be checked categorised by language and see what they can do to help. If you are interested in being involved, please read about how to check translations before you begin.

I also invite everyone, if they have not done so already, to add Wiktionary:Babel entries to their user page - it's quick and easy to do and lets everyone know which languages you are familiar with and at what level.

Thanks everyone!

— Paul G 12:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've now contacted pretty much everyone with Babel level 3 or above who has made contributions in the last couple of months or so. Please excuse me if I've left you out - you are welcome to participate, naturally.
Here's a summary:
I've contacted everyone who says they known one or more of the following at level 3 or above, or who volunteered in the '"Translations to be checked" - a proposal' discussion in Wiktionary talk:Translations: Afrikaans, Bosnian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Ga, Galician, German, Greek (both Ancient and Modern), Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Tok Pisin, Turkish and Welsh; in other words, most of the major languages and a few others.
I've had replies from people interested in working on Dutch, Italian and Welsh so far. I'm prepared to work on French (which has one of the biggest lists).
If you haven't been contacted personally and would like to help, please leave a message on my talk page. Thanks. — Paul G 09:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

I had a go at writing a guide to formatting etymologies at Wiktionary:Etymology. But my style of writing is far from informative and useful (although I excel at rambling). You guys can make a better guide than I can. --Expurgator t(c) 20:56, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting guideling go on WT:ELE nowhere else. The page Wiktionary:Etymology seems more appropriate to deal with issues concerning the contents of our "Etymology" sections. Ncik 14:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Do we put in etymologies from oldest to newest e.g "From Greek xxx meaning yyy through Latin xxx: yyy through Anglo Saxon xxx: yyy." or the other way round "Anglo Saxon xxx: yyy from Latin xxx: yyy from Greek xxx: yyy." I put them in from oldest to newest, because it shows logical progress (sometimes). Andrew massyn 14:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC).[reply]
I usually use the Webster's format of newest to oldest: From XXX, (XXX) from YYY, (YYY) from ZZZ. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:39, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for 'bot status User:TheCheatBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: TheCheatBot.

Basic English words still in poor shape.

Connel asked if it was time to take down my Basic English clean up project. So I had a look at one word at random from the top 100 Basic English words. after. I added loads, and more could be added. There is no etymology. Translations are not linked to meanings. So, regrettably, it still seriously looks liek the Wiktionary:Project - Cleanup of Basic English Words is still really needed. I also know that head needs lots of work. We really need to find a way of ensuring this dull and boring stuff is done well if Wiktionary is to be taken seriously.--Richardb 08:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a lot more fun if it's done collaboratively. Maybe "word of the day" could be a word to improve rather than a stellar entry. The French Wikipedia has some sort of reward for outstanding entries, and guess what? There's only one word that fits the bill. They reward really does demand quality though. Davilla 20:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That wasn't quite what I asked, Richard. Perhaps I should reword it: can the cross-namespace links to the User: (or User talk:?) namespace by removed? Can this be moved to the Wiktionary namespace or something, so the cross-namespace cleanup list can get scrunched down to a manageble size? --Connel MacKenzie T C 09:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea of Davilla. Perhaps Cleanup of the day ? Some five entries per day, perhaps, corresponding to Translations of the week, or merged with it. It would in general be appreciated if people consecrated more time to Category:1000 English basic words (I do). — Vildricianus 17:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The point of the Wiktionary:Project - Cleanup of Basic English Words was that we could all cooperate, by taking certain words, and marking when we had done our bit on a word. Then we could see when all words had been addressed and "voted" as done. I've no doubt you have done lots Vildricianus, as have others. But I have no idea which you have done and which you have not done, so no idea which one to look at next.--Richardb 14:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Introducing Project Beacon the Collaboration of the week for what it's worth. Davilla 23:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty darn new here, but my two cents from what I have seen since my arrival is that wiktionary could benefit from the filling of omitted words far more than the improvement of the basic ones. I suppose it depends on whether you see this as a tool for those learning the language or as a more advanced reference guide. Anywaym, it seems like every other word I look up is missing and so far I am spending more time writing definitions than finishing this research paper.Morticae 08:45, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot codes

Where can I find the code for each of the bots below? Ncik 23:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting question for those of us who don't understand how a bot operates. Perhaps it would be a good idea to show the code an a sub-page of the bot. I have had some ideas on bot management, but would prefer to wait until namespace management is available before going too far on that path. Eclecticology 23:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On http://sf.net search for "pywikipediabot". --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's the general framework. I'm interested in the (changes to the) code for these particular bots. Ncik 03:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So far, I've changed one line of code, to mark the edits as minor. Since that is GPL, and this is GFDL, I'll try to post that change back up on sf. --Connel MacKenzie T C 04:20, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get it. Downloading the current snapshot, executing 'tar zxvf snapshot-20060312.tar.gz' and then 'ls pywikipedia' gives:
archive              deadlinks             imageharvest.py   makecat.py             solve_disambiguation.py   test.py            wikipedia.py
catall.py            disambiguations       imagetransfer.py  mediawiki-messages     spellcheck.py             titletranslate.py  wiktionary
category             distrib               __init__.py       mediawiki_messages.py  spelling                  touch.py           wiktionary.py
category.py          editarticle.py        interwiki-dumps   nowcommons.py          splitwarning.py           upload.py          wiktionarytest.py
catlib.py            extract_wikilinks.py  interwiki-graphs  pagefromfile.py        sqldump.py                userinterfaces     windows_chars.py
config.py            families              interwiki.py      pagegenerators.py      standardize_interwiki.py  us-states.py       xmlreader.py
CONTENTS             family.py             LICENSE           redirect.py            standardize_notes.py      warnfile.py        xmltest.py
cosmetic_changes.py  featured.py           login-data        replace.py             table2wiki.py             watchlist.py
CVS                  followlive.py         login.py          saveHTML.py            template.py               watchlists
date.py              gui.py                logs              selflink.py            testfamily.py             weblinkchecker.py
Where are your bots? Are they part of other bots? In which file do I find the code that will execute the edits you are proposing? Ncik 14:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
pagefromfile.py. --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:05, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But that file does not tell me what the new page will look like and what starttext and endtext your bots will use. Where is the piece of code that is used to detect what the inflected form for which we would like to create a new page is? Ncik 12:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for bot status: TheCheatBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: TheCheatBot 2.

Request for bot status: ComparBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: ComparBot.

Request for bot status: SuperlBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: SuperlBot.

Request for bot status: ThirdPersonBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: ThirdPersonBot.

Request for bot status: PastBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: PastBot.

Request for bot status: TranslationBot

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2006-03/Request for bot status: TranslationBot.

gibberish titles 12 March

Could someone check the history for the entries that were deleted 12 March with gibberish titles (esp. with mixed numbers and letters)? I removed two of them from my watchlist before wondering how on earth they got to be on my watchlist, and I'm wondering if someone didn't just move the page and replace the content and thus make it appear to be complete garbage when in fact it used to be something meaningful and completely different. Best way to know is simply look at the history, but I don't have that privilage for deleted files. Thanks! Davilla 19:32, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


These are from the move log, and are probably what you mean, and all result from vandalism.

  1. 11:00, 12 March 2006 Connel MacKenzie Talk:58u639586759th5htu45hfg7yd7yg7345762793748972384h3tuihuhg795y moved to Wiktionary talk:Administrators
  2. 10:54, 12 March 2006 Connel MacKenzie 58u639586759th5htu45hfg7yd7yg7345762793748972384h3tuihuhg795y moved to Wiktionary:Administrators
  3. 10:50, 12 March 2006 Todo el mundo Wiktionary talk:Administrators moved to Talk:58u639586759th5htu45hfg7yd7yg7345762793748972384h3tuihuhg795y
  4. 10:50, 12 March 2006 Todo el mundo Wiktionary:Administrators moved to 58u639586759th5htu45hfg7yd7yg7345762793748972384h3tuihuhg795y
  5. 10:40, 12 March 2006 Connel MacKenzie 7856745kj546o2j348u6hjkujhtguoh3495 moved to Wiktionary:Requests for verification
  6. 10:38, 12 March 2006 Connel MacKenzie Talk:yytjertj489 moved to Wiktionary talk:Requests for verification over redirect
  7. 10:33, 12 March 2006 Connel MacKenzie Talk:7856745kj546o2j348u6hjkujhtguoh3495 moved to Talk:yytjertj489 over redirect
  8. 10:29, 12 March 2006 Ttw2s Talk:yytjertj489 moved to Talk:7856745kj546o2j348u6hjkujhtguoh3495
  9. 10:29, 12 March 2006 Ttw2s yytjertj489 moved to 7856745kj546o2j348u6hjkujhtguoh3495

Hope this clears things up. Jonathan Webley 20:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jonathan. That is mostly correct, but to explain a tiny bit further, the ones that I couldn't/didn't move back over redirect were ones where the redirect had been edited, and I opted to delete those manually first, before moving the real entry back. I'm sorry if that hosed your watchlist. In the future, I'll check the entry, and force the move-over-redirect rather than clearing the path first. --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:27, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, I guess everything's fine. Doesn't appear RFV ever left my watchlist. Davilla 05:08, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CheckUser permission

Hi, considering our sock-puppet professional vandal (ex***t) I was thinking that it may be a good idea to give the CheckUser permission (help, policy) to some people here. According to the policy, these rights must be given to at least 2 people on a wiki if given to any. In my opinion, it should be given to bureaucrats, or maybe very trusted admins, that understands how ip works (ip ranges and whois). Could you organize a vote or something?

Also, does somebody know where to ask if we want to checkuser the vandal of yesterday? Kipmaster 09:41, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In principle I have no particular objection to this idea. Currently, AFAIK the only admin with this power is Jon in his capacity as a steward. Extending, this to bureaucrats is fine with me, even though I have personally not sought this. Having this apply to selected other admins opens up the question of who would be trusted with it. The issue here is the ability to deal fairly with others, and a history of being able to avoid fights. I may not have the technical familiarity that is required, but that is learnable if circumstances require. I trust our other bureaucrat's social skills, but know absolutely nothing about his technical abilities. I look forward to his comments on this. Eclecticology 17:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have no desire to have this privilege, if that is what you mean. My tentacles are spread out thinly enough already. And I could do without accusations of abuse of that ability. If you are uncomfortable doing nslookups, whois', traceroute/tracert's and learning the nuances of CIDR address notation, perhaps we should check the meta: pages more closely: meta does not demand that such a person be a sysop, let alone a bureaucrat, right? I'd be comfortable with anyone that knows how to check and comprehend these: [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] and [10]. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:05, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you do not desire the privilege, the question of your suitability is moot. Please note that the only persons that were identifiably mentioned in my above comments are Jon and Paul. (Maybe I should have mentioned George and Ringo? :-)) Thank you for the links, I'll look into them further when needed. Eclecticology 19:27, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't be trusted with checkuser! However, it may be necessary to create a Wiktionary:CheckUser page. --Dangherous 19:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I agree that our current bureaucrats seem like less than optimal choices for the CheckUser privilege. I'll start off some nominations of people I've seen demonstrate internet savvy that I'd be comfortable with having the ability. I do not know if each of these four desire this ability/responsibility. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nominations:
  • I think that the most trustworthy people on Wiktionary are our Bureaucrats, especially Eclecticology. I haven't taken a single remark from him personally, whereas every single word of criticism Mac has ever given me I have taken personally because I knew it was maliciously intended.--Primetime 20:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

first and second definitions disappeared - question

Moved to Wiktionary:Information desk

Pronunciation Guide/Audio Files - A single location to discuss?

Moved to Wiktionary:Information desk

category:Stub and Wiktionary:Lists of words needing attention

Moved to Wiktionary:Information desk

Word of the Day

Moved to Wiktionary:Information desk

Nasimhussain

Moved to Wiktionary:Information desk

Watch list

Default preferences seem to have changed very recently such that pages you create are automatically added to your watchlist. If you don't want this to happen - go to "preferences" => "edit" and untick the box. SemperBlotto 08:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saves me asking "Why the fuck is my watchlist flooded with crap I don't wanna watch" then. Thanks SB... --Expurgator t(c) 22:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing new about this option. Eclecticology 09:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
True. But those of who had it turned off suddenly had it turned on. By whom, I don't know. SemperBlotto 10:27, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the old one is "watch all pages I edit" - the new alternative is "watch only the pages I *create*". I think the second one is quite new, indeed. \Mike 10:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's going on!?

I've noticed some very strange things going on here. Heavy vandalism notices, AOL users blocked, and now a secure.wikimedia.org link. What's going on!? Gerard Foley 10:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great Pronunciation Flood -- the dikes are cracking

The pronunciation flood I threatened above is now imminent. I have 1600 entries ready to go any time now, with thousands more to come. The KeffyBot successfully added its first entry (entitle) this morning. For the rest of this week, I'll continue testing the bot a word at a time and adding safety features. I should be ready to ask officially for a bot flag sometime this weekend.

In the meantime, I'd like to ask anybody who's interested in such things to check out the pages below and offer any suggestions for improvements or other feedback.

And the example words:

Most cosmetic issues can be addressed any time by redefining the template. But please make any comments that would require changing the way the bot fills in the templates soon, sometime during the next few days.

Some miscellaneous points/questions:

  • The bot as it's currently written will skip any article with an existing pronunciation. (Though I will eventually show no mercy to existing pronunciation entries that I wrote myself while impersonating an American.) In the distant future, when most articles have pronunciations, we can talk again about how best to deal with the entries that already exist.
  • I don't think it's worth having a category for all pages with synthetic pronunciations. (By summer, more than half our English articles should have them and it won't be hard to find one.) But I'd personally like to have a way, as I'm going along, to tag those synthetic pronunciations that are especially lame and should go to the front of the queue for replacement by a live human. Would {{rfap}} be the most appropriate way to do this?

Keffy 20:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keffy, please clarify: by "existing pronunciation" do you mean they have a goofy IPA entered, or that they have an .ogg file linked? Either?

It's now skipping anything that has the string "=Pronunciation=" anywhere between "==English==" and the end or the next second-level header. The existing entries are (in most cases) better than nothing, so I'm giving higher priority to articles that have nothing. Keffy 23:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think rfap is the correct template to use, if in total you are talking about a couple hundred. But then, I don't really do audio much anymore, so maybe you should ask User:Dvortygirl directly. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On voting already: Whoa! It's only been tested on one word! Keffy 23:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Has there been any discussion on narrow vs. broad transcriptions in IPA? Neither in my speech is there any distinction between cot and caught, witch and which, or mary, merry, and marry, but I think there should be in a general pronunciation, esp. those currently labeled AHD. I like that your Canadian pronunciation is labeled (should it be more specific than Canada?), but I don't think it could be classified as a narrow transcription either since it leaves out some pedantic details, including use of a more convenient "r". I don't mind that IPA, a standard that applies to any language, is often corrupted for convenience. But considering that this dictionary is supposed to be multilingual, it would be nice to at least denote narrow transcriptions as such, in case these are ever to be compared across languages. Davilla 06:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please, don't restart the "r" flamewar, again!
On starting the voting: 1) The voting process takes quite some time. This clearly is something that we will want flagged as a bot eventually. You are being "good" about discussing the tests as you proceed with them; explicitly linking the test items. 2) Flagging an account with "bot" status does nothing to its past contributions. All a successful bot labelling does is make it less obtrusive to Special:Recentchanges - nothing else! It does not give the account any special status. It does not make that account a uber-account or any other such nonsense, it only unclogs RecentChanges. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Davilla: My transcriptions are all as broad as humanly possible, which is as it should be. Dictionary pronunciation transcriptions should give the barest minimum amount of information necessary to keep the user from accidentally saying a different word than the one they intend. If anyone wants more detailed information in order to sound more native-like in a particular accent, narrow IPA isn't the best way to give it to them. Audio files are. -- Keffy 06:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mean to restart any wars because this is could be a complete tangent and, if it concerns the format, it certainly does not pertain to the approval or disapproval of this bot. I've noticed that the French Wiktionary uses different symbols for general and regional pronunciations, with audio files applying to the latter. (See allemand or other entries.) I seem to be a latecomer in the discussion, but I had suggested doing something similar a few months ago, specifically that SAMPA be used for broad and X-SAMPA for narrow transcriptions. Although "IPA" means the latter to me, again I don't mind the corruption of IPA for convenience, so long as it is recognized and properly placed.
As it pertains to this bot, I presume you are confident that your transcriptions are broad enough to be labeled Canada rather than any specific region in Canada. Presumably many Canadians should exist who would theoretically be able to add a matching pronunciation file to every one of your additions. Then wouldn't it be redundant to provide the narrow transcription, which would override your Canadian one assuming that a broad transciption has been added by that point? If we have to wait for that time then so be it, but it seems more straightforward to just start with the narrow. Davilla 08:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We should definitely have the broad/narrow discussion (especially since I suspect we're not using the terms the same way), but on one of the pronunciation pages, not here. On just the regional question: Yes, the entries reflect the pronunciations of almost all Canadian English speakers from Quebec westward (fewer in the Maritimes, fewer still in Newfoundland). No simple country tag will ever be completely accurate, but a Canada tag is closer to being true than any US or UK tag could hope.
The transcriptions and audio files are mostly applicable even to many/most American speakers. Between my experience and the fact that my accent is already damned close, I'm sure I'd be 99% accurate if I were to add US tags where I thought they should go. But I'd never know when the other 1% would happen (see, for example, the history page of capillary), and with tens of thousands of entries, even a 1% error rate is an awful lot of errors. So I'm sticking to the Canada tag and leaving tagging other regions to the people who live there. -- Keffy 19:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"U.S." should really be General American aka Standard Midwestern, but I wonder how many people contributing audio files have really categorized their accents? Personally mine is GA with cot-caught merger, so I wouldn't know how to label it. Davilla 20:50, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. It looks like the KeffyBot now correctly changes what I want it change and takes a pass on what I want it to take a pass on. (But if anyone can suggest some pathologically formatted pages that I can try to trick it with, I'd love to hear them.) I'll be adding words in small batches till bot flags are approved both here and on Commons. Vote early, vote often. Keffy 19:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The page for Greek ταχύ certainly qualifies as pathologically formatted. The entire contents are embedded in a template, most of which hasn't been filled in. --EncycloPetey 21:14, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We can do without this bot and its idiosyncratic version of IPA. If we can avoid sticking in templates, so much the better. Also, it is important to remember that in many words Canadians vary considerably in whether they follow UK or US pronunciations. Your entry for biodiversity failed to note that the vowel for the third sylable can be either /ɪ/ or /ʌɪ/. The entry for capillary should also show that two pronunciations are used. There are really too many questionable entries that can be generated by such a bot. Eclecticology 09:23, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bot is not generating any transcriptions at all. I am generating each and every transcription by hand. The bot is merely filling them in in the appropriate places in the articles. If you don't trust me to do transcriptions that are better than empty space, come right out and say so. There are many other ways I could be productively spending my time. -- Keffy 15:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Any pronunciations made by native speaker regardless of from where is better than no pronunciation at all. Actually even automatically generated pronunciations that have been checked by a native speaker is better than nothing. It certainly would be much more useful to any non-native speaker than guessing and getting it wrong. Futhermore unlike most other things that can be bot added this is actually possible to automatically check with another bot if somebody feels like it. --Patrik Stridvall 18:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Vote for approving User:KeffyBot for bot status:
  • For:
  1. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. --Patrik Stridvall 18:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Davilla 00:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Against:
Comments:

Women's Football League ?

Is their one? 216.220.231.226 21:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about this one Victorian Women's Football League? Jonathan Webley 22:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is that like real women playing football? 216.220.231.226 22:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the original poster is being facetious. We should just quietly ignore him (there's little doubt it's a male user). — Paul G 14:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

daltry ?

What does it mean? I requested it! --130.111.98.244 21:20, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete?

I followed a redlink and created an entry...before I noticed the link was red because it was misspelled. How do I request speedy delete of an monumen on wiktionary? (Sorry about that). JillianE 16:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure JillianE ? Sorry Waha 16:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way is to include the text {{rfd}} in the entry. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Even better is {{delete|reason why}}. — Vildricianus 14:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Adding entries in HINDI language

How can one make entries in Hindi Language using Deonagari -- the script in which Hindi is written?

If you are familiar with the keyboard sequences to enter those characters, or have somewhere to cut-and-paste the characters into the search box, you should be able to enter them. At this time, we don't have a Devangari alphabet entered in the edit box. Can you help determine what should be there? --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For entries in the Hindi language (as apposed to about the Hindi language) you want the Hindi Wiktionary, which I believe has help on setting up browsers for Indic scripts, if you need help using Devanagari as well. —Muke Tever 14:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In case anyone is looking, the Devanagari characters have now been added to the edit tools box, so if you enable javascript for Wiktionary.org, you can just click on the characters to add them. - Taxman 13:39, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shortcut formats

I noticed a new shortcut CAT:UW and was immediately concerned. Does anyone else care that incorrect Wikipedia style shortcuts are being entered (i.e. the "CAT:" prefix) here? Also, "UW" would be confused for "Ultimate Wiktionary" (now WiktionaryZ) here - perhaps "WT:WARN" would have been a better choice? Or should I just shrug this off? --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've left this message for User:Psy guy
re: User warning templates- Interested in what you might be trying to do ? We already have a Wiktionary:Cleanup and deletion process in place. Could you please indicate why you feel it's a good idea to create another group of templates ? You might be right, or you may just be trying something out, but it would be nice to let the rest of us know. Could you please put your thinking on the talk page of Category:User warning templates--Richardb 10:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I may just be "pedia-centric" but I thought CAT was the standard way to shortcut Category. If it is not, I would be more than happy to change it. CAT:WARN might be more explicit than just CAT:UW. Again, that is what it is called on WP. I think some standardization across projects is very important. I would enjoy your input. -- Psy guy 14:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm biting a newvisitor. That is not my intent. What alarmed me was the use of the CAT: prefix, as we haven't relied on that (see WT:WT.) It is a bit distressing that 'pedia uses the WT: prefix to mean "Wikipedia Talk" instead of "Wiktionary". I didn't put this message on User talk:Psy guy's talk page, but instead here, because I honestly don't know if anyone else cares. That was what I hoped to find out. Do we have a prefix we'd like to use for categories? I thought the same prefix was supposed to be used no matter what the namespace, within a project, for example WT:RQ, WT:POL, WT:WSI. So categories should not have a special prefix, right? I don't know that we could convince 'pedia to standardize their shortcuts correctly to be cross-project friendly; they have been using them "wrong" for a very long time. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:27, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't realize that Wiktionary used WT for everything. I think that is a good idea, but if it is used for everything, does it lose meaning? Of course, using the same prefix does make it easier to organize the shortcuts. I am not trying to be critical, I am just trying to think of all possibilities. -- Psy guy 17:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I don't think different prefixes make them easier to remember at all.  :-) And they certainly are not cross-project friendly. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sold! :-) I have put a speedy tag on CAT:UW and created WT:WARN to replace it. Would an admin please delete the former. -- Psy guy 20:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Categories

Can someone perhaps improve this page, so that we havea compact TOC - A-B-C-D etc. --Richardb 11:21, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vlicindarius and I have added {CategoryTOC} to pretty much all of the categories that requied it --Expurgator t(c) 13:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly the most hilarious misspelling I've seen up to now :-D . Note: I have created Template:CategoryTOC-Ru for the purpose of Russian categories. — Vildricianus 14:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You should get a WT:EC- or WS:CMK-esque shortcut for yourself. They're all the rage these days. --Expurgator t(c) 14:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The page Special:Categories itself, being automatically generated, can't really be improved—I don't think it has provision for by-letter lookup the way individual categories do. w:Special:Categories links to a category browser tool that might be useful. —Muke Tever 14:26, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoever is responsible for the programming of the Special:Categories page, presumably they can program in an A-B-C-D type compact TOC. Anyone know how to ask for this to be done. Would be useful in Wikipedia too.--Richardb 23:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cool link! I've added it to MediaWiki:Categoriespagetext. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need another "room" for newbies asking questions ?

The Beer Parlour gets more daunting all the time for beginners. These days it's a bit like a stranger in town walking into a new pub to find brawls and shouting going on all over the place! Enough to frighten them off.

Perhaps we should havea more sedate place for newbies to simply ask "How To" questions, without being surrounded by people trying to tear each other's head off.

Could we perhaps have a room named as sedately as "Information Desk" ?

What do you all think ?--Richardb 04:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia Information Desk page is for general questions, not just formatting and whatnot. Perhaps we should have an equivalent page, for questions like "What does 'hrunk' mean?" --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:14, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree with anything that both helps the non-familiar AND cleans up the BP. I will even volunteer to keep track of it. :) - TheDaveRoss 07:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Connel, isn't that what the tea room is for? —Muke Tever 16:04, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, Tea Room is generally for help on entries that exist. Information Desk is for "what does this word mean" questions. They are similar concepts, but different intended audiences. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The "Cognac saloon"? "Wine tavern"? "Cocktail lounge"? "Absinthe dungeon"? "Brawl bistro"? Or perhaps something with a different spelling on both sides of the Pond? Now serious: we could have a place where general Wiktionary questions are asked battles are fought: bot requests, proposed changes and projects, ideological revolutions, template wars etc. The other one would then involve specific, one-off questions: 'French article count' etc. — Vildricianus 16:29, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The "Cafe"? "Coffee house"? "Salon"? "Saloon"? --EncycloPetey 21:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like some people around here enjoy a little drink every now and then! ;-) -- Psy guy 03:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have started a discussion page at Information desk about what we think this should/shouldn't be about, please pitch in! - TheDaveRoss 23:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Newcomers seem to always use talk:Main Page anyways, so why not officially sanction that as an information desk, and leave comments about changes to the Main Page on a different page? Davilla 17:13, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Would this be an extension of Wiktionary:Welcome, newcomers? -- Psy guy 03:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Partly yes, partly no. I am hoping that it is useful to both newcomers and long standing citizens who just have a quick question, i.e. "Is there already a template for doing hrunk?" or "How do I edit the Navigation bar which appears on every page?" Even though someone has been here a while, wiki is expansive enough and wiktionary is certainly big enough that noone knows everything, and everyone needs help sometimes. - TheDaveRoss 03:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So is Wiktionary:Information desk agreed upon? If so, should we make a selection of current Beer parlour conversations and move them there in order to make a start? The following spring to mind: "French Wiktionary article count", "gibberish titles 12 March", "first and second definitions disappeared - question", "Pronunciation Guide/Audio Files - A single location to discuss?" etc. All one-off questions. — Vildricianus 14:50, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Um, could we please match the Wikipedia name "Reference desk" for this? Good thing it hasn't gotten started yet! --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I've put a proposal for some disambiguating WP:VP-like introbox on Wiktionary talk:Information desk. Please comment. — Vildricianus 18:13, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If everyone agrees on Wiktionary:Reference desk, I will set up the page, perhaps move some of the most recent Beer parlour comments that belong there. OK? — Vildricianus 11:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Urban Dictionary

Just a word of advance warning... Urban Dictionary is now out as a book, so be on the look-out for references to this book claiming that the word is in print and so must be good. — Paul G 09:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Luckily tis still a dictionary, thus its headwords and use of them in examples can't be cited for CFI :p —Muke Tever 16:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Does this make me a published author then? --Expurgator t(c) 16:36, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You know maybe so, drinks on you! MGSpiller 00:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot2 (anti vandalism bot)

This is a proposal to bring a clone of the Wikipedia bot Tawkerbot2 to automatically revert obvious blatant vandalism from Wiktionary. With various concerns on #wiktionary about Wiktionary's rising popularity and the increase of vandalism that may come with that, an automated tool on our side would be a great idea. -- Tawker 04:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More information at w:User:Tawkerbot2. - dcljr 19:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  1. What the heck. Vandalism, bad. Less work, good. Davilla 22:38, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Page blanking auto-rollback is a very good idea. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC) (Note: the bot is designed specifically for the SW type attacks, such as the ~1,200 pages blanked today that I cleaned up.)[reply]

Oppose


Comments

  • Perhaps you should wait another couple of months with this. It seems like Wiktionary is not ready/has no need for it yet. — Vildricianus 12:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I hesitated at first too. But trying to get kinks worked out from anything automated is harder when trying to fend off a hostile party at the same time. I think waiting for our growing popularity to increase before getting a first-hand look at how it functions, might ultimately be harmful. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

VfD for b:GAT: A Glossary of Astronomical Terms

There is a wikibook that is up for deletion where it has been strongly suggested that this content be moved to Wiktionary. My question here is do you want it on Wiktionary. Most of the content is sub-par compared to typical Wikitionary entries, but there might be some stuff that is worth keeping. In a move to tighten up Wikibooks content standards, a policy change has made content of this nature prohibited from Wikibook with a strong recommendation that if you wanted to create a dictionary or glossary that it should instead be a special project on Wiktionary. See b:Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks#Wikibooks is not a dictionary for policy details.

There are enough pages involved that doing a formal transwiki then deletion by admins here would be pointless if you don't want the content. Feel free to leave a message on b:Wikibooks:Votes for deletion#GAT: A Glossary of Astronomical Terms if you have comments or opinions on this topic. --Robert Horning 15:56, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we want these, as per Wiktionary: Beer parlour archive/January-March 06#Names of Constellations and Stars. --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've put them at Appendix:Astronomical terms for now. And will clea up that page shortly. --Dangherous 16:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't dump stuff in the appendix. Ncik 02:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe some sort of staging sub-page? Appendix:Astronomical terms/transwiki or something so the appendix stays clean while we sort and Wiktionary-ize it all. - TheDaveRoss 02:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I moved the page from Appendix to Wiktionary namespace. Ncik 02:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't seem quite right - the Wiktionary namespace is for stuff dealing with how we function, the pseudo namespace Appendix: does seem better for this, even if it is intended as temporary. --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:30, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
None of these two seems ideal, but the Appendix really should only contain stuff that is presentable to an ordinary, unsuspecting user. The Wiktionary namespace on the other hand contains all sorts of stuff. Ncik 03:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Transwiki:? - dcljr 19:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ncik, if you don't like the way the entry is formatted, clean it up - but that has nothing to do with where the entry belongs. The resulting entry belongs in the Appendix: pseudo-namespace. Perhaps as a temporary entry in the Category: namespace, but certainly not in the namespace reserved for describing and discussing Wiktionary policies. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:18, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I withdraw the first sentence of my last comment and replace it with "...should only contain stuff that belongs in a dictionary appendix." A general list of astronomical terms is not appendix material (but a list of planets with specifications, or a list of star signs is). Lists of that kind should be handled by categories or, as was proposed some time ago, put in a "Lexicon" namespace. I disagree that the "Wiktionary" namespace is reserved for describing and discussing Wiktionary policies. It is for all stuff that is not covered by any other namespace, in particular all sorts of request pages, as which the astronomical terms list can be interpreted as long as it's contents haven't been categorised. Ncik 18:32, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so where is the list now ? And, more importantly, where are all the other pages. Pages such as big_bang_model [[11]] . And what do we do with those. Strip them down to a dictionary definition, and a pointer to the hoped for WikiPedia atricle ?--Richardb 14:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


First quarter 2006 US vs. UK flamewar

I've been brave enough / arrogant enough / stupid enough to propose a DRAFT POLICY. Wiktionary:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy
Can we move the discussion to the Wiktionary talk:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy. I will be moving this great chunck to an archive page of that discussion page.
--Richardb 08:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

initial discussion

As is the regularly recurring cycle on en.wiktionary, questions have been cropping up again recently regarding American vs. Commonwealth spellings of words.

Since my comments in the past may have been unclear, I'd like to say that as an American, I think any respectable dictionary should list the UK spellings only as errors, perhaps used in a nonce fashion for comedic or Shakesperian effect. But they would be better off deleted.

In the interest of NPOV however, I have made numerous enormous concessions in my behavior regarding the incorrect UK spellings. I do not intend to change those compromises; that is, I'm not about to start deleting the UK spellings, even though I know in my heart it is wrong to include them here, especially indicated as valid spellings.

The purpose of this thread is to revive the older discussions so that those who are new, or have otherwise missed salient points of the conversation can adapt to the current practices.

My understanding of the current prectices (that I disagree with) are:

  1. Separate entries must be created for UK/CW spellings.
  2. Separate entries must be created for US spellings.
  3. Each must indicate the existance of the other in the ===Alternate spellings=== heading, before the definitions.
  4. Translations should not be duplicated, but rather limited to the "older" UK/CW spellings.

It is my hope that this quarter's discussion of the topic will not immediately revert to ad-hominem attacks, nor other such flamboyant nonsense.

Confer:

--Connel MacKenzie T C 17:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I firmly support discussion of this important matter. However, it is unclear to me how you intend to bring this up as earnest dialogue, pretending to "hope" it will not result into flamboyant nonsense, while starting off with exactly such palaver about "erroneous" UK spellings. Or is this your humour again? — Vildricianus 18:43, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In all seriousness, what is the current policy? Is Wiktionary:Policy Think Tank on American or British Spelling an accurate synopsis of where the issue stands? —Scs 20:37, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is no firm guidline nor policy. That makes the issue resurface regularly. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other reference links:

--Connel MacKenzie T C 07:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here in Europe (in France for example), the spelling we learn is the UK one. The US spelling is only spelling errors that have been more or less officialised (learned is horrible for example, color?, gr(a|e)y, beurk ). English really lacks an Academy or something (that invents spellings that nobody wants to use...). Btw, all this war about spelling is the fault of the US who decided to change the spellings somewhere... (why?)
Now, the idea is: having two separated articles is stupid redundant. The definitions will be the same, the translations will be the same, it's just a spelling difference. So, the thing to do is to decide which spelling should contain the whole article, and which one should be simplified with links to the other. Google can help: the spelling that returns the most pages can be considered as the dominant one. Since most websites are American, it'll mainly be the American one, so what?
That's what we use on fr: when we have to choose between 2 spellings (the one we learnt at school, and the one proposed by the Academy), and I don't mind if my favorite spelling does not contain the main article. Kipmaster 09:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, "learned" is not a different spelling per se but reflects a different pronunciation — it really does have a D in America. —Muke Tever 23:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Connel, you are being deliberately inflammatory or facetious, aren't you? Perhaps you can remind us when we decided on the policy that Wiktionary should carry American English only. My recollection is that we are in the business of not favouring any particular flavour of English over any other (except in postings to the Beer Parlour, of course :-) ), with the version that is posted first being the page that the "transpondian" spelling cross-refers to.

Oh, and it's "Shakespearean" or "Shakespearian", BTW; "Shakesperian" must be some US spelling I've never come across ;-) ;-P — Paul G

Yikes! Did I really type that? --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kipmaster, the spellings were changed by the US lexicographer Noah Webster. From the Wikipedia article: As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings like "color" instead of "colour," "music" instead " of "musick," "wagon" instead of "waggon," "center" instead of "centre," and "honor" instead of "honour." Additionally, there are "tho" and "thru" as alternatives to "though" and "through", although US English still has "cough"/"rough"/"bough" and "height"/"weight" rather than "coff"/"ruff"/"bow" and "hite"/"wate", so Webster didn't go the whole hog and reform the entire English spelling system. — Paul G 10:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The idea of Paul G to consider the article written first as the main article is also ok for me (as a substitute for the Google idea I proposed). Thanks to the histories (historys in US? :-p), we can get that information. Any objective criterion would do it in fact. We should proceed to a vote soon so that the problem is solved once and for all.
PS: "favour?" Wow, now I'm speaking half US and half UK without knowing it. Learning UK at school, and watching US on tv... Thanks Paul G for putting a name (Webster) on that! Kipmaster 11:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was expressing my opinion, clearly marked as such, in difference to Wiktionary practices. The trmendous British prevalence here on en.wiktionary has taken a toll, leaving en.wiktionary looking less like a dictionary and more like joke. If it sounds inflammatory perhaps you should check your own assumptions. As I said earlier, I've no intention of going back on earlier compromises, and I am not about to start deleting CW spellings. But to arrrogantly, Britishly dismiss the notion is, well, arrogant and British.
  • No, I am not about to start deleting UK/CW spellings. From an American perspective though, I feel they should be. Kipmaster raised a very very common misconception in his arguments above...that American and British terms are equivalent. Paul seems to agree with Kipcool. But I find that rarely to be the case, when the spellings differ. Note that several of the cases have been rolled back to whatever Paul thinks is the right approach (and backed up by the Comonwealth cabal.) But if you want to learn the distinction between the "pondian" versions, you'd be better off looking outside of Wiktionary.
  • That then, is the heart of what I'd like to see fixed, after discussion and possibly even a vote. I can understand the desire for reducing "duplication" only for translations; but even then I doubt such removal of content is accurate. I would like to see each entry clearly identified as invalid spellings wherever they are considered invalid. Flavor should be marked as a spelling error in CW English, while flavour should be indicated as erroneous in US English. Perhaps that marking merits a separate vote of its own? --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think I see your point, after about three re-readings of your posts and skipping the irrelevant palaver about your American perspective (meaning: both perspectives should be respected and considered in order to create a healthy balance). I more or less agree with you, yes; words with variant spellings at either side of the water usually require more than just an =Alternative spelling= header to mark this. Probably, different derived/related terms, different meanings, and accordingly, different translations are also called for. Maybe they also deserve a section explaining what differences there are in usage, history etc, if relevant. At the moment, I can't think of any such difference, but there are certainly people who can add this information. — Vildricianus 07:49, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Connel, I think I am broadly in agreement with you, in that I am in agreement with Vildricianus, but you must understand that, to me and others, your posting came across as (unintentionally) high-handed and disparaging. I think, on careful re-reading and re-interpretation, that what you meant is that "any respectable dictionary of American English should list the UK spellings as errors", but what you wrote initially is far removed from this meaning. I think you could have worded your posting more clearly to avoid raising people's hackles.
    • I and others have been more than happy to recognise that Wiktionary represents all varieties of English and so to be NPOV in my treatment of spelling variations. For myself, I have never asserted in my edits that UK English is somehow superior to other varieties. Naturally, being from the UK, I prefer to enter new words using UK spellings and then cross-refer other spellings to these, but I have no problem with others doing things the other way around. Incidentally, I'd be interested to find out more about this "Commonwealth cabal" that you claim exists.
    • As for marking certain spellings as erroneous in UK or US English, marking "flavour" as Commonwealth English and "flavor" as US English is sufficient, surely? Do we really need to say "this is the only spelling allowed in the UK/US and the other one is incorrect?" Incidentally, I think you'll find that spellings ending in "-our" are in fact acceptable in US English, but are little used. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language at dictionary.com marks "flavour" as "chiefly British". Now, that might be intended to include Canada or Australia - it doesn't say - but I'm sure I've seen American dictionaries that acknowledge "-our" spellings as acceptable variants of the more common "-or" spellings. Perhaps the "-our" spellings are archaic in US English rather than erroneous. — Paul G 09:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry for raising your hackles. I am glad that you re-read my initial posting and were able to realize that I wasn't suggesting that this is an American English dictionary, but rather that from my POV, those entries are wrong (as from the British POV, the correct American spellings are considered errors.)

When at work, if I type "flavour" in Microsoft word, it gets the red squiggly line underneath it. Why? Because it is a misspelling. Yes, it is recognized as British if I right-click it and look it up. But to include it would be erroneous.

As to the cabal, I was referring to center/centre when last year you did assert that everything in the correct entry center should point to centre, whilst removing the US-specific meanings from centre. I believe that individual pair has been partially corrected since then. To call the pro-British sentiment expressed at that time merely a cabal, is perhaps too kind.

Vildricianus, please confer color/colour as a good example of diiverging meanings. Or dig through the history and compare center/centre.

The points I outlined above are not mentioned anywhere as official policy. Or even semi-official. Or even as guidelines. Yet they are the current practice, right? We need a vote of some sort, or an otherwise official policy stating what is what. Currently people are left guessing. Guessing what is appropriate continues to cause problems.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 10:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, and apology accepted. I hope we can get down to discussing the matter at hand now.
As far as I am aware, there is no requirement to link cross-refer US spellings to UK ones. The (unwritten) policy is to write an entry in any particular type of English and then cross-refer all other variations to that entry. The fact that most contributors use UK English would mean that UK spellings would tend to get entered with US spellings having the cross-references, perhaps making it look as though new articles had to use UK spellings, which isn't the case. Such a requirement would introduce bias in favour of UK spellings, which we don't want to promote.
As for what I did with centre/center, I don't remember doing that, but maybe that was before I understood the appropriate way to treat this issue. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that "centre" had to be the "main" entry because it was a UK spelling. If it was entered before "center", then that would be why it should get the full treatment rather than because it was in one or other variety of English.
As Connel says, we certainly do need to get matters clear here and establish official, documented policy on this issue. So what do others think this policy should be? I'm keen on "what gets entered first is the main entry; others cross-refer" but this might not be sufficient as it doesn't cover shades of meaning that might exist in some Englishes but not others. — Paul G 10:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

translations

I think the translations not the definitions is big problem since as people have pointed out they might theoretically mean slightly different things depending on spelling. Since we strictly speaking should have at least three independent quotes for each sense of each spelling we really need entries for all variants. If nothing else to show the quotes somewhere. A minor issue is what to do with misspellings that are so common that it is even possible meet the criteria for inclusion.

Now back to translations, while of course the different spellings might possibly mean slightly different things such nuances are unlikely to effect translations except in rare cases. So the big question is where the translations should be. For example colorize, colorise, colourize and colourise all translate to färglägga in Swedish and I can't imagine any language that translates them differently depending on the spelling. Now I suppose you could argue that 2 of them are misspellings but even so they seem to be widely used none the less. Still, it leaves two of them. The point is that one of the spellings really must be the main entry. Note main entry, not right entry. --Patrik Stridvall 14:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's a theoretical problem, as you say, Patrik, so it's unlikely there will be many cases like this. We'll just deal with them as they arise.
Here's an example that already exists. "Program(me)" is spelled "programme" in UK English and "program" in US English. However, the only spelling in the computing sense is "program" in all varieties of English. So this requires treatment at program that will be absent from programme. We just need to ensure that we provide that treatment. I don't think it is such a big problem. — Paul G 14:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I don't agree at all with the first-gets-it-all principle. Yes, that would be the easiest for us, contributors, but we're making this for the user, aren't we? I don't think anyone looking up "colorize" should be referred to "colourize" or vica versa for any information whatsoever, not even translations. Beside the fact that it's not fair whatever way you turn it, it will make the user wonder. "Do we prefer UK spellings?" - "No we don't, but the UK version got here first." Pardon my language, but this sounds like rubbish. Each entry needs the relevant information there where it belongs, not in a variant which happened to be created first. Yes, there will be duplication. But until the software can handle this properly, we'll need to balance out these entries in order to respect the N in NPOV. For the user, it doesn't help having this first-gets-it-all rule. — Vildricianus 15:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

more discussion

In a comment on the proposal below, Paul G wrote:

...we are aiming at doing more that that here. We want to eliminate the unintentional bias that is introduced by having a page for (say) "aeroplane" that gives full treatment of the word, and another for "airplane" that just says "See aeroplane" as if "airplane" is a mere variant rather than the US spelling of the word.

I'd like to consider the possibility of not worrying about this, after all. Educated people understand that color and colour are two variant spellings of essentially the same word. Educated people understand that that no one spelling is universally "right" or "wrong" or "good" or "bad"; they're just different, that's all. Educated people understand that it's useful to have one page (not two) on which all the central, relevant information about a unique word is to be found. Educated people understand that (for the moment, at least) Mediawiki requires pages to have exactly one name. So, I assert, educated people do not see any bias when color redirects to colour, or vice versa; all they see is the unavoidable logistical repercussion of the simple facts that spelling variants exist, and that Mediawiki is the way it is.

(Now, it's true, uneducated people might perceive the "unintentional bias". But -- and I'm not trying to be elitist or anything; this is a plain fact -- uneducated people don't use dictionaries, so let's not worry about them so much.)

Some day, perhaps, Mediawiki will have a way for one article to have two (or more) different names, with absolutely no way of telling which is the "main" or "preferred" name and which are the variants. (Wiktionary Wikipedia could of course use such a mechanism, too.) That's really the only solution to the "bias" problem. Until then, I suggest we agree that the superficial appearance of "bias" is one that can best be solved by user education.

Up above, Connel MacKenzie wrote:

The tremendous British prevalence here on en.wiktionary has taken a toll, leaving en.wiktionary looking less like a dictionary and more like a joke.

I'd like to challenge this assertion, too, because I just don't see it that way at all. En.wiktionary is a dictionary that is rolling up its sleeves and getting down to the business of defining words; it is wisely and maturely not getting bogged down (well, present company excluded :-) ) in internecine, relatively unimportant, utterly unwinnable arguments about The One True Official English Spelling. Guess what? The English language does not have "one true official spelling", if for no other reason that there is no one, single body to officiate it.

I also don't see any "Comonwealth cabal", nor do I understand what Connel is referring to when he talks about "arrogantly, Britishly dismiss the notion". Sure, there are a lot of Commonwealth spellings on Wiktionary. So what? The English invented the language, after all (or, at least, their cabal conspired to get it named after them :-) ), so I really don't see the problem if their spellings get used, even in a reference work that gets read in America. There are plenty of American spellings on Wiktionary, too. Again, so what? (Emerson's quote on consistency springs to mind.)

—Scs 16:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well-reasoned of you, and I'd perhaps agree, if it hadn't been for such an obvious section title. Your solution will evoke further disagreement in the future, if it could allay the current one at all. — Vildricianus 12:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Eh? I didn't think I'd proposed a "solution", nor did I use a section title. Was it someone else you meant to reply to? —Scs 17:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fail to see how User:Scs' ad hominem attack is well-reasoned. I never said that en-us is "The One True Official English" and my comments very clearly, repeatedly expressed that I had no interest in trying to make such an assertion. As for his idiotic statement that there is no cabal, one needs only to look at the statistics. Again, as the only American contributor in the top 10 contributors on en.wiktionary, (starting out at en.wiktionary a year or more later than several of the others) I have perhaps made a dent. But I've been stymied several times with specious arguments such as "a UK spelling already exists" == "The One True Official English is en-uk." Or arguments such as "terms shouldn't be entered as anything other than redirects."
I still feel it is irresponsible of Wiktionary to list UK spellings such as colour, flavour or parlour without identifying them as spelling errors in American English. It is not as if we don't know they are errors. But the commonwealth cabal in place refuses to let them correctly be listed as such. I find that odd, as I'd assume those same parties would want the American spellings likewise identified as incorrect in commonwealth English.
Until we have some kind of official policy indicating that both need to be entered, and both need to be identified properly, we'll continue to have periodic flamewars on the topic. Any other approach is certain to offend one side of the pond or the other (as has been demonstrated several times in the past now.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:36, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoah, Connel, calm down! I'm sorry you percieved an ad hominem attack, but truly, none was intended! I didn't say you said "One True Official English", and if you want to tar that statement of mine with anything, call it "hyperbolic" or a strawman, please. But at any rate, it's an objective fact: there is no one true official English, or else we wouldn't be having this debate.
Since you brought it up again, though, I'd like to ask why you're apparently so worried about asserting that words like colour are "spelling errors in American English". Would it not suffice to say that "color" is the accepted spelling in American English, and "colour" the accepted spelling in Commonwealth English, and leave it at that (i.e. and not brand either of them as "errors")? —Scs 18:40, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I misread your statement. I did not consider the notion that you were suggesting "user education" as this is a wiki and therefore such a thing is impossible. I'll try to remember you are not making a personal comment.  :-)
I was probably wrong to bring up the erroneous tagging again. As I said before, if I enter any British/commonwealth (is Commonwealth a proper noun?) spellings in, say, Microsoft Word, I'll be prompted to correct it. Those with the default "auto-correct" feature turned on may not even see the replacement. Now, since we aim to be correct in what we say about words, it does not make sense to lead someone on incorrectly. A visitor that arrives here and looks up the single word colour would not have any indication that what they entered is not a word in American English. Simply having a note somewhere that says it is British does not convey quite enough information to be useful. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of the hypothetical visitor, see my new proposal below, which ends up addressing this (at least, if we can agree on having a single page for colo(u)r rather than two).
As far as Microsoft Word is concerned, and please don't take this as any kind of personal attack, I really, really don't care what it does. This is not because I'm a Microsoft basher, but simply because (as I've said before) there is no one authority on "correct" English spelling, and even if there were, it certainly would not be a software company in Redmond.
Here's a thought experiment. You're editing a manuscript (using your U.S. copy of Microsoft Word), and you happen to be including an excerpt from the Guardian Unlimited:
God, the archangel says, is also disturbed by Mr Blair's remark that while religious beliefs might colour his politics, "it's best not to take it too far".
(There's nothing special about this quote; it was just one of the first hits I got in a Google search for "Blair colour".) Now, when you type or paste in this quote, Microsoft Word is likely to give you the dread squiggly red underline for "colour". Is this a problem? Me, I don't think so. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with stringing together the six letters c o l o u r, even within the shores of the revolutionary colonies. Whatever it is that the squiggly red underline means, it is not, "Thou shalt not use this spelling; it is wrong; correct or remove it at once".
—Scs 22:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm not running MS Word right now, but on Linux, I use the command "spell." When I type ctrl-D after pasting in your text, it (correctly) informs me that colour is not a word. --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that the Linux "spell" command carries any more (or less) weight here than Microsoft word, you haven't understood my point at all. At any rate, there is no dispute that "colour" is not the preferred American spelling. But that doesn't mean that it's "wrong", and it certainly doesn't mean that it's "not a word" (just as, of course, "color" is not wrong, either). —Scs 16:12, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably a naive comment of mine, but I fail to see how on earth this can be such a big deal. En.wiktionary includes both American and British English, as well as Australian, New-Zealand, South-African, Irish, Indian, Canadian and any other regional variant of English whatsoever; therefore, all words and spellings of either variant should be included, treated and valued with the same esteem, regardless of any personal affiliation or custom, in other words, with a neutral view. The problem arising out of identical translations for two different spellings must not influence our stance on this general principle, as it is clearly secondary to it. Even if we were to have our main or sole purpose to be a translating dictionary, we should respect English in all its variants, no matter what the result is for our layout, format, translations etc. I wonder whom of the main contributors refuses to honour/honor this principle. — Vildricianus 18:07, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than naming more names, I'd rather work towards solidifying a policy acceptable to all. Then stating it explicitly so that it no longer resurfaces (as it does now on a regular basis.) This is perhaps the poster-child of why we should have something like Wiktionary:Votes. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

A header for editability. — Vildricianus

The "first-gets-it-all" principle is not ideal, but I'm not sure we have anything better right now. Avoiding duplication is important because full pages for both/all spellings quickly get out of synch (with information being added or corrected on one page only).
I proposed the following solution before, but I don't remember what became of it. I'll use "color"/"colour" as an example.
  • Have a single page called "color/colour" or "color, colour", or something similar; the name of the page lists the variations in alphabetical order, so there can be no claims of language bias (although, for most UK/US variations, this favours the US spelling).
  • Move the entire contents of color and colour into this page and format it appropriately so that meanings for a particular spelling are distinguished.
  • Turn color and colour into redirects to this page (but see the next bullet point).
  • As "color" is also a word in Latin and Spanish, color would actually be more than a redirect: the English entry would say "See color/colour", and the Latin and Spanish entries would remain on that page.
I think this is a simple solution that would clear up all the issues around spelling variations once and for all. — Paul G 16:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is still the possibility to include the page color, colour (or whatever) as were it a template: {{:color, colour}}. I don't know if it is feasible, but at least theoretically there is a possibility that one could put the common info on that page and include it in both spellings... \Mike 16:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Templates would make it too difficult to change content. I read elsewhere about Paul's idea, and couldn't understand why this didn't make a resolution at the time. Sounds reasonable. — Vildricianus 16:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, there should be a better way to name these things. Commas imply some phrase; slashes are part of the url syntax. Perhaps color;colour? Note that there's no space. — Vildricianus 09:18, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed - this was one of the things I was unhappy about with my proposal. The phrase "there, there" could be wrongly interpreted as a page giving two identical spellings of "there", for example. — Paul G 10:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
People here seem to believe that words which have different spellings in American and British English often have slightly different meanings because they are spelt differently. This is clearly not the case. Nuances in meaning exist due to cultural and geographical factors. And this is the case for all English words, not only those that are spelt differently. Simply tagging words with the appropriate templates (Template:US, Template:UK, etc.), as we have always done, does the job. It is obvious that a meaning tagged as AmE will be spelt the American way, one tagged as BrE the British way, and one tagged as both can be spelt either way (according to where one comes from, or wants to have one's work published). Ncik 18:12, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, if what we're worried about is translations, or specifically, the problem that might arise if the Commonwealth "colour" ought to have a different translation into, say, Klingon than does the U.S "color", it's already a much bigger problem that there might not be a single perfect translation at all, i.e. neither for colour nor color. It's often the case that a single word in one language will be translated to different words in some other language, depending on the sense in which the word is used. Any translation scheme must accomodate (or at least acknowledge) this possibility, and having done so, if it happens that some of the distinctions between translated-from senses end up being correlated with distinctions between translated-from spellings, then not only is this no problem, but it makes it even easier to document (for a particular translated-to word) which sense is being translated from.
(I suppose there's also the question of which spelling to use when translating to English. Does de.wiktionary say that Farbe is translated to color or colour? [Answer: de.wiktionary.org has Farbe → colour, but here in en.wiktionary.org we've got Farbe → color.])
—Scs 20:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is true; however, we are aiming at doing more that that here. We want to eliminate the unintentional bias that is introduced by having a page for (say) "aeroplane" that gives full treatment of the word, and another for "airplane" that just says "See aeroplane" as if "airplane" is a mere variant rather than the US spelling of the word. We also want to eliminate the duplication of effort and inevitable inconsistencies that would arise if we had two (or more) pages, one for each spelling. The page "aeroplane, airplane" (or separated by whatever punctuation mark is chosen) would indicate where "aeroplane" is the correct spelling (UK, where else?) and where "airplane" is the correct spelling (US, where else?), and then give all of the definitions as they currently stand. In a few cases (such as "program"), there are senses that have only one spelling, and in this case, the senses themselves would be marked accordingly; so (excuse my concise definitions):
program, programme
  1. A series of planned events
  2. A leaflet outlining such events
  3. A TV show
  4. (always spelled program in all varieties of English) A computer program
or something like that. — Paul G 10:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This bothers me. What about historical spellings of words? More to the point, what about the fact that many US spellings are in fact archaic UK spellings? We can't list all alternative spellings on the page title. In my opinion the best solution is to have duplicated information under all relevant headings – the problem of pages becoming out of synch with each other seems to me the lesser evil. Widsith 15:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like Paul's proposal either (for the same reason). But isn't our page layout flexible enough to incorporate all information on historical spellings on one page? This could be done under the "Etymology" header (alternatively a "Word history" header if we ever decide to create one), and by means of various usage notes and an expanded "Alternative spellings" section. Ncik 15:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't we just wait for the Indians to get more net active. Then clearly the commonwealth spellings will overwhelm the American spelling in numbers of users ! :-) --Richardb 00:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the historical spellings, etc, could all be catered for in a section (maybe called "Spelling" towards the top of the page):
program, programme (as the page title)
==Spelling==
  • Program is the usual spelling in the US (and wherever else). The spelling programme is archaic (or historical, or whatever)
  • Programme is the correct spelling in the UK (and wherever else). However, in the computing sense, program is the correct UK spelling.
We could put any other information we like in there about who uses which spelling, which spellings are historical, archaic, etc, and then leave the rest of the article to give the meanings, etc.
Widsith, Ncik, do you have an alternative proposal that we could consider? — Paul G 10:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well I'm not really convinced of the need for any new proposal....as I said above I don't think it's too infeasible to keep a separate page for every current spelling, i.e. color and colour would both exist with very similar information on them (though each would have different citations reflecting the different spellings). Historical forms are a bit different, personally I'm coming round to the Word History idea but we don't need to worry about that till it's become an issue. Widsith 11:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

further discussion

Personally, after reconsidering this entire issue, I think it's perhaps the best solution to deal with it as we're doing now. That is, two pages for colour and color, and trying to keep them as much in sync as possible. I agree that this is not very constructive, and even though I partly like Paul's proposal, I'm not sure whether this would help our project a lot. Perhaps we first need to experiment a bit with a low-profile entry (not color/colour). — Vildricianus 12:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please also note that Paul's suggestion was tried (by user:Dmh?) with color, colour & color coloured and deleted by Ec as nonsense over a year ago. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:10, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, why was that? — Paul G 09:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I recall, it was deleted as an abandoned/failed experiment. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

another proposal

Here's what I would propose, for now at least. This isn't just a policy statement; it also touches on goals and explanations. But what it says isn't really very different from the status quo, as I understand it. (In other words, I'm not proposing any new policy here, mostly just restating the current one.)

That is a wildy false statement. What you propose is even worse than Paul's "partial redirect by section" proposal. What follows on here (based on your incorrect assumption that redirects are acceptable by anyone) is very well formatted, but totally unacceptable. Your choice of torch is interesting; do you realize that in America, a torch is only a wooden stick with oily rags on one end? If you tried to say "torch" in America to refer to a flashlight, you would not be understood; you'd probably be suspected of being mentally retarded. --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:50, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've clarified the "torch" example. (It wasn't hypothetical; it's pasted directly from torch.)
As far as the assumption that redirects are acceptable: I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but I had gotten the impression that plenty of people do find them acceptable. (Not perfect, but a decent compromise under the given constraints.) —Scs 22:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where did you get that assumption? The only person that suggests it these days is Paul; each time the topic comes up he re-suggests it innocently (sometimes suggesting that is has consensus) as if he'd never suggested it before, nor ever heard the arguments against it. It gets tiresome. Consensus has never been to use those redirects here on en.wiktionary. Some experiments with them have been made, but AFAIK, each has been undone. --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. Assuming I'm the Paul referred to, I find it extraordinary at how I am being misrepresented here ("each time"; "innoncently", "suggesting that [it] has consensus", "as if he'd never suggested it before nor ever heard the arguments against it". Is that really how you see me, Connel, or are you playing it up a bit here? — Paul G 09:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Paul, on this topic, it seems to me that your normal rational self takes a vacation. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Paul doesn't need me to defend him, but he's so polite he might not say anything at all, so let me point out that denying his rationality here is uncalled for, and could be seen as offensive. Paul's been utterly rational on this topic, it's just that he's arguing from different premises and opinions than you are. You would do well to remember that many of your opinions are just that, also.
People have been bending over backwards to assume rationality and good faith on your part in spite of the wildly provocative way (yes, it really did look that way) you opened this thread. You might think about returning the favor. —Scs 01:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do not mean to offend; I was stating my opinion as a matter of fact (that is, from my perspective, his actions and statements on this topic do not coincide with his normal behavior, polite bearing and refreshingly clever intuition.)
I opened this thread in a calm manner, compared to the two inquiries (on my and other's talk pages) that immediately preceded re-opening the topic. I have been clear from the outset that I am not ignoring the CW perspective, merely stating the inverse of it: an American perspective. In doing do, I have gotten a far too healthy dose of negative responses. I do wonder why. Perhaps it is too much to swallow when coming from the (flawed) perspective that UK English is The One True English. The only thing even mildly incitful I did, was putting "flame war" in the topic heading (but even that has proven to be partly accurate.)
It is curious that the prevailing mindset here is still not one of openness to allowing all words in all languages (as is the Wiki Way.) Isn't it clear by now, that whenever an attested alternate spelling exists, there must be two separate entries to be accurate?
--Connel MacKenzie T C 03:24, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I guess there are different kinds of "openness". From where I sit, statements like "any respectable dictionary should list the UK spellings only as errors" and "colour is not a word" don't look very open. In what way do the arguments I've been making look not open?
With respect to having separate entries, no, it's not at all clear that "there must be two separate entries to be accurate". For example, we have one page on bald, even through it's also a completely different and unrelated word in German. (And of course this is not an isolated example; it's just the first one I thought of.)
Finally, with respect to your suggestion of a "perspective that UK English is The One True English": that would indeed be flawed, but, again, I just don't see it. I certainly don't see it in this thread, and in particular not in any attempt to (say) unify the color and colour pages. —Scs 17:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I have made one little change in the described use of the "Alternative spellings" section. I've also alluded to the possibilities of combined titles (e.g. "colour/color"), and of separate entries with guaranteed-identical, transcluded content, but I don't get the impression there's consensus around those yet so I'm leaving them as ideas still under discussion.

Suggestions, criticisms, rewordings welcome. (In particular, there's probably a better taxonomic nomenclature than "variants".)

En.wiktionary is a dictionary of the English language, embracing several distinct variants such as British (or "Commonwealth") English, American English, Australian / New Zealand English, Indian English, etc.
In some cases, of course, these variants involve different words for the same idea, different meanings for the same word, different spellings for the same word, and words unique to a particular variant. (If there were no such differences, they wouldn't be variants!) Wiktionary entries must therefore be careful when defining these mixed-use words to indicate how the words are used in each variant.
When two variants have different words for the same idea, those entries should be tagged with their variant:
torch
1. a stick with a flame on one end used as a light source
2. (British, Aust) a portable source of electric light
Synonyms
* flashlight (US)
----------
flashlight
1. (US) An electrical hand-held lightsource.
Synonym
* torch (UK, Aust)
Cross-references between the other-English "translations" can be in the form of synonym lists (as in the examples above), or directly in the definition (e.g. "flashlight: (US) An electrical hand-held lightsource (a British torch).").
When two variants have different meanings for the same word, again, each sense in that word's definition should be appropriately tagged:
subway
1. (North American) underground railway.
4. (British) underground walkway, tunnel for pedestrians.
When a word is specific to one variant, it should obviously be so tagged:
godown
1. (Indian English) A building for the storage of goods; a warehouse.
The situation is trickiest when two variants have different spellings for the same word. In this case, it is preferable to collect the word's etymology, definitions, and other information in a single entry, to avoid duplication of effort, and so that translations can be consistently listed. The alternative spellings are listed in the "Alternative spellings" listing:
colour
Alternative spellings
* colour (Commonwealth English)
* color (US)
All alternatives (including that of the nominal headword) should be listed in the "Alternative spellings" section, as shown.
An unavoidable technical limitation is that any entry must have one title, which will perforce use a particular spelling. The preferred solution is to list the entire entry once under one spelling, and to use redirects to that entry from the other spelling(s). The choice of which spelling "gets" the entry, and which spellings are redirects, is almost accidental; the current practice is simply that the spelling first used when an entry is created stays with the entry, and that the later-added spellings are redirects. (This approach, though unabashedly empirical, does have a certain Solomonlike appeal to it.)
This issue has aroused considerable debate, but the contention can be minimized by observing that there is no claim or assertion of primacy or "correctness" attached to the choice of spelling of the main entry, versus the redirects. All spellings listed in the "Alternative spellings" section are equally valid in the context of their respective variants. The fact that one spelling happens to be listed in an entry's title is an artifact of Wiktionary's database architecture; it is not a value judgment.
To further reduce any appearance of bias, it has been suggested that the title of such an entry be something like "colour/color" or "colour,color" or "colo(u)r", with all individual spellings as redirects to it. This proposal is under discussion but has not reached consensus.
To reduce the appearance of bias, it would also be possible to retain one arbitrary spelling as an entry's formal title, but to list the variants in the entry's various sections:
colour
Alternative spellings
* colour (Commonwealth English)
* color (US)
Noun
colour/color
1. The spectral composition of visible light.
So that visitors unfamiliar with these issues will not perceive any unintended bias, it might be appropriate to include a templateized disclaimer at the top of multi-spelling entries:
Due to technical limitations, this entry's title uses a particular spelling, and is redirected to from other spellings. No value judgment is intended by these choices. See the "Alternative spellings" section for the list of all spellings of this word and their status.
This disclaimer is inspired by the {lowercase} template which Wikipedia uses for words which are supposed to start with a lower-case letter (see e.g. Wikipedia:zsync).
Finally, it is worth asking whether an enhancement to the Wikimedia software could be pursued which would enable a single entry to exist under multiple names, to completely eliminate the implication that the "main" entry uses a "preferred" spelling, or that there is anything inferior about spellings that use redirects.
(It has also been suggested that much the same effect could be achieved without any software changes, by having two or more distinct pages, each containing identical content transcluded from some central place via a template or other mechanism. This idea poses difficulties for those editing the content, and is still being discussed.)

—Scs 22:26, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. :-)
Thank you Scs. --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not see how software could overcome the bias issue. No matter what technical solution is proposed, the result is still sub-optimal. If a user looks up the word color would we then have lots of {{PAGENAME}} tags within the page to display only "color" and not "colour"? That would then raise accusations of bias from the Commonwealth proponents, would it not? (Also, given inflected forms, I don't think such a solution is possible anyhow.)
  • Simply applying the wiki default policies here would be a monstrous improvement to this (Scs') proposal...that is, as Vild said, just have two entries.
  • For some reason, people seem also to forget why heading templates are not allowed on the English Wiktionary. If we simply had template: translations:color, colour (noun) and template: translations:color, colour (verb) then each term could re-use the other's translations, rendering them properly. Additionally, clicking on the translation section's [edit] link to the right would then properly edit the template not the entry. Any visitors editing the translations for one or the other would (correctly) then enter the translations for both (without even knowing it, presumably.)
Please go ahead. I'm looking forward to a fresh idea to overcome the seemingly unresolvable stalemate in this matter. Ncik 02:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the same time, would anyone object if I moved this whole discussion over to Wiktionary:(Policy Think Tank on) American or British Spelling? —Scs 03:23, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please, not just yet. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another proposal

Regarding the third part of User:Scs's proposal above:

Restating what I said there, I have now set up the example contentious entries color and colour in a manner I think may address all concerns. Those being (in order of importance):

  1. Redundant translations should be avoided at all costs.
    1. visiting translators may have a hard enough time with English - let's not make it impossible
    2. visiting newcomers often enter translations in one and not the other ==> very very bad
    3. keeping multiple translation lists is very difficult even for seasoned Wiktionarians
    4. synchronizing reverse/complementary translations becomes increasingly difficult
  2. The perception of a preferred spelling is not NPOV.
  3. The arbitrary choice of a preferred spelling is not NPOV.
  4. The practice of using redirects is abhorred.
  5. Dialectal entries must have the flexibility to express the distinguishing elements.
  6. As per previous Beer Parlour discussions, only the translations section merits this special treatment (the etymology of color is supposed to say that it is derived from colour, for example.)
  7. Solution must not be overwhelmingly complicated for the Wiktionarians doing the grunt-work of setting entries up "properly."
  8. Format resulting from this should conform to WT:ELE as best as possible.

What I've done is replace the two translation sections in both entries to links to the two "common" translation templates named {{translations:color, colour (noun)}} and {{translations:color, colour (verb)}}. Using section editing to edit the translation section of either color or colour will automagically edit the proper template instead.

Things I did wrong on this experiment:

  • I don't like the naming convention, as it is too much to type. Template: trans-color-colour (noun) and Template: trans-color-colour (verb) would have been a better choice.
  • I haven't (yet) converted the verb section to unnumbered translation style. I'm sure this will only increase in importance if this technique is pursued. Note: The "{{ttbc}}" stuff works just fine in this context.
  • I haven't experimented with putting "Return to entry color or colour" somehow at the top using "noinclude"s. Editing one of these templates leaves you at the template right now, not at the entry you started editing. Also, we may want to inform people that they must use section editing to edit translations (or edit the template directly.)
  • Care must be taken with creating the initial templates, if more than one POS section has translations entered. For now, I used Wikipedia-style disambiguation to differentiate them.

Are there any concerns not addressed by this? If this is agreeable to all, I'll run through the various lists...

--Connel MacKenzie T C 04:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Notes:
    • Perhaps the naming could even simply be {{color-colour-verb}}, as it is obviously only for translations.
    • The mention of please use section editing could go right under the =Translations= header in the template.
    • Apart from the following concerns, this is a good proposal. I didn't know about the section editing taking you to the template.
  • Concerns:
    • This proposal doesn't take care of differences in other sections than translations. Solution: the affected entries should be expanded into more or less "complete" ones ASAP, so that few revisions/additions are necessary after the different variants are synchronized.
    • What about senses and their accompanying translations that apply to only one variant, for instance in program/programme or center/centre? We could put these right below the corresponding ones, and have an additional translation table below the template. However, this will then only be reached by editing the entire page. You may have to experiment further with disambiguated translation tables to show how it works.
— Vildricianus 07:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I must say there aren't any conerns I can think of that haven't already been raised. It seems as though this might be a productive approach. --EncycloPetey 09:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll start on center/centre then gray/grey next. I'm still undecided on the naming, e.g. color-colour-verb vs. color-colour (verb) since the disambiguation hiding is turned off here - I guess it doesn't really matter? (WP-style disambiguation dictates that stuff in parenthesis in an article title is hidden when displayed as a link...either I'm doing it wrong or it is turned off here.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments:
Impressive! I had no idea it was possible for section editing to automatically flow through to the template contents like that.
I appreciate the work you've done and I won't try to dissuade you from further experimentation, but for the record I can't say I like the result. There are still, predominantly, two separate pages, which still strikes me -- please don't anyone take this personally -- as retarded. It's a "share the misery" approach; it's the compromise that succeeds not because it's any good, but because it's the least unpalatable.
All we're centralizing so far is the translations, and while those are significant, they're not the only or even the most important part of the entry that are problematically duplicated, that are at risk of diverging. The definitions, examples, and etymologies are still redundant. (Although someone mentioned that an earlier discussion deemed etymologies to be necessarily distinct, for reasons that escape me.) —Scs 03:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The NPOV issue arises again if the definitions are shared. Furthermore, when looking at colored vs. coloured I think you'll see dramatic differences in the definitions (etc.)
The etymology of the American terms must be different; they are, after all, bastard children of the commonwealth spellings (courtesy of Noah Webster.)
--Connel MacKenzie T C 03:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See comment below. —Scs 22:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The pages look very similar now because of the previous iterations of this flame war, not because they should look the same. As they are given the opportunity to diverge, they should gradually become more accurate. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In what way(s) are they currently inaccurate? —Scs 22:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I disagree with you, Scs. Actually, the only things that are shared by these pages are the translations. Etymology: different; pronunciation: different; derived/related terms: different; and so forth. Certainly the definitions; when first looking at Connel's proposal I also thought about expanding this system to all corresponding sections, including defs, until I realized the definitions are even the main point of difference between these entries. Also, American articles should be written in American English, right? Even more differences.
  • Connel, American spellings on -or are historically as correct as Commonwealth -our. See Paradise Lost, there are only words on -or (IIRC). This is comparable to -ize/-ise, where the former predates (and is etymologically correcter than) the latter.
  • Up till now, I haven't got any complaints about this proposal. — Vildricianus 10:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Right. So as the "-*our" pages are corrected, they will reflect that they are valid archaic/obsolete spellings (everywhere, not CW nor US) while the "-*or" pages obviously will not contain those same definition lines. --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:18, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On reflection, some of these arguments are really not so convincing. It's been asserted that all sorts of things have to be different on the separate and differently-spelled U.S. vs. Commonwealth pages, but I'm not seeing those differences. (Perhaps this is because, as Connel suggested above, they've been artificially synchronized, altough at first glance they don't look the worse for that, if so.) In particular:
  • Definitions and examples. The definitions on the color and colour pages are, as mentioned above, virtually identical. The definitions on the colored and coloured pages (which Connel suggested I look at for "dramatic differences") are virtually identical. Besides the spelling and the irrelevant divergence in senses 6 and 7, the only difference that I can see is that the colour page includes tags for countable vs. uncountable. (Am I missing something?)
  • Spelling and other usage within definitions. Now, it's certainly true that a U.S.-slanted entry for "color" is likely to use "color" and other U.S. spellings in its definitions and examples, while a U.K.-slanted definition is likely to use "colour". But this is potentially true of every single definition of any word on Wiktionary. If this is a problem, then we need separate definitions and examples for every word, or in other words, we need a separate en_uk.wiktionary.org and en_us.wiktionary.org. But if we don't need to make that split, if we can tolerate U.K. spelling and usage in a definition that might be read by an American, or American usage in a definition that might be read by the rest of the world, then I don't see why we can't tolerate such quirks on a hypothetical unified color/colour page.
  • Pronunciation. Obviously, the pronunciation of many or most words differs between Commonwealth and U.S. English. If we can capture those differences adequately on a page like father, then we don't necessarily need two separate pages to capture differences in U.S./U.K. pronunciation for color/colour.
  • Etymologies. A couple of people have asserted that the etymologies for colour and color are different. But let's look:
colour: From Old French coulour, from Latin color. In American spelling the 'u' was dropped from colour to simplify the spelling. In British spelling the 'u' remains.
color: From Latin "color" via Old French "coulour"; in U.S. spelling the 'u' was dropped from colour to conform to the word's Latin origin. In the rest of the English-speaking world the 'u' remains.
So the only significant difference is that the two pages give different reasons for why the spelling is different in the U.S.
Now, in terms of hypothetically consolidated pages, I grant that there are additional complications for the color page (which has to contend with the so-spelled Latin and Spanish words), and the tyre page (which has to contend with the city). I grant that, for some people (though I don't know how many), the transpondian spelling variations loom large, and that the appearance of stigma associated with redirects is a real issue. But for all of these other alleged reasons why colour and color have to stay on separate pages, the reasons either aren't compelling (it's demonstrably possible to minimize the differences, as color/colour shows), or the reasons extend past color/colour to suggest that we end up needing (to butcher a phrase) two separate dictionaries separated by a common language. —Scs 22:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please clarify what you are trying to say there at the end. I, for a long time, advocated using redirects (particularly for inflected forms of English words!) Many reasons exist for not using redirects here. The primary reason is that other language entries might share the same spelling. The secondary reason is the havoc caused to interwiki links. A third reason is the certain spellings are not NPOV. (I'm sure many more arguments were ofered a year ago, when I started entering redirects for inflected forms of English words. I don't feel like looking them up right now.)
If en.wiktionary.org has the practice of not using redirects, then is is a very British POV to quash American English spellings. To shoe-horn multiple entries into single entries (as has been done and I repeat: has not yet been undone on these entries) is obviously not a neutral point of view. I have not suggested having separate en-us and en-uk Wiktionaries (you, from your POV have.)
The only component of the entries that is unlikely to diverge (and diverge by a lot they will!) is the translation sections. Artificially merging the entries has always been and will always be, POV. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do wonder what you think my "POV" is. I think the only strong opinions I have here are that (1) having separate pages for e.g. color and colour is lame, and (2) redirects do not necessariloy connote second-class status.
I haven't seen anyone trying to "quash American English spellings", and I'm certainly not trying to. (If there were to be a combined color/colour page, and if it were not called "color/colour", it would likely be under color, seeming if anything to "quash" the British spelling, since it would make more sense to share the same page with the Latin and Spanish spellings.)
When I mentioned the possibility of separate en-us and en-uk wiktionaries I was not proposing or advocating it! What I was trying to show was that many of those who insist that color and colour must remain distinct should also, by logical extension of their own arguments, find themselves requiring such a wholesale split.
And that is what I was trying to say at the end there, which I shall try to clarify. The question is, are color and colour so closely related that they deserve to be discussed on the same page, or are they so different that they require two separate pages? And if they require two separate pages, are there other pairs of related-but-not-identical words that should similarly be split?
Let's look at some other cases:
  • sewer pronunciation 1 (a system of pipes) versus sewer pronunciation 2 (one who sews). Different etymologies, different pronunciations, totally different meanings, yet they share the same page.
  • periodic etymology 1 (repeating) versus periodic etymology 2 (chemistry, per + iodic). Again, completely different etymologies, pronunciations, and meanings, yet they share the same page.
  • father. Different pronunciations in the U.K. versus the U.S., but one page.
  • subway sense 1 (underground railway) versus subway sense 4 (tunnel for pedestrians). Different meanings in the U.S. versus the U.K., but one page.
Here we have pairs of words with completely different meanings and etymologies, or significantly different pronunciations, sharing the same page. Yet color and colour, which are clearly the same word but with a minor regional spelling difference, are consigned to separate pages. Why should spelling be the difference that trumps all others?
It has been repeatedly argued here that color and colour ought to be on separate pages because, aside from their spelling, they have or ought to have significant differences in the way their pronunciations, etymologies, definitions, or examples are listed. But if there ought to be separate color and colour pages for those reasons, then by the very same arguments, there should be separate pages for U.K. vs. U.S. father, and U.S. vs. U.K. subway, and chemistry vs. common usage periodic, and the two very different senses of sewer. If U.K. versus U.S. spelling and usage matter in definitions and examples, then every word (even if it's spelled and defined the same) potentially needs separate U.K. and U.S. definitions — hence, the hypothetical, reductio ad absurdum en.uk versus en.us split.
Real dictionaries do have separate entries for different words that happen to be spelled the same, such as sewer and sewer or periodic and periodic. Real dictionaries don't tend to have separate, redundant entries for color and colour — if they list both as separate headwords, one is invariably a "see" (i.e. a redirect) to the other.
—Scs 02:12, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scs, entries on the English Wiktionary are distinguished by spelling - why we don't use Wikipedia-style disambiguation, I don't know. I wish we did, but we don't. With that premise in place, to not make the spelling distinction when the spelling distinction exists is POV. The "real" dictionaries you refer to are not multilingual dictionaries, but rather one or the other - the American Heritage Dictionary has an obvious bias towards the American spellings, while the Oxford English Dictionary has an obvious bias towards the British spelling. It is wrong for any Wikimedia project to adopt one bias or the other. The is the heart of neutral point of view! --Connel MacKenzie T C 02:39, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Has anybody thought about using templates for the shared parts which do not depend on spelling, such as synonyms and translations?
    Template:Shared:color/colour:Synonyms Template:sh:colo(u)r:Translations or some other variant?
  • Or what about this: make the whole article a template taking the spelling differences as parameters:
    Let me make an example on colour/experiment, color/experiment, and Template:sh_colo(u)r... — Hippietrail 22:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    OK some things work and some things don't work. I was going to fiddle with it to make it as good as possible but this machine is crash-prone and I know there are some other people here who will be able to fiddle with it besides me so I leave it as is so you can first see the problems before I tout it as a miracle cure. I do think it has possibilites, especially with some extra parameters. Have fun! — Hippietrail 22:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ligatures

What about fetus, foetus and fœtus? Or is the ligature extinct in modern English? Jonathan Webley 06:46, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Briefly: US English drops the "o" and UK English retains it; the spelling with the ligature is archaic in UK English and obsolete (or archaic? or erroneous?) in US English. — Paul G 10:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Draft Policy

I've been brave enough / arrogant enough / stupid enough to propose a DRAFT POLICY. Wiktionary:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy
Can we move the discussion to the Wiktionary talk:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy. I will be moving this great chunck to an archive page of that discussion page.
--Richardb 08:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]



rhymes?

I'm noticing that very few entries have rhymes listed. A while ago I thought I remembered more did. There hasn't been any emphasis on removing them, has there? We've still got nice big lists of rhymes underneath rhymes:English. Is there any reason not to insert the appropriate rhyme: links in the pronunciation sections of individual words? —Scs 20:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More likely the case is that the number of rhymes per capita has decreased as the number of "capitas" has increased. I just don't think anyone has focused on adding them, we certainly didn't decide against them or delete them to my knowledge. - TheDaveRoss 20:04, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Second question: would anyone object to backlinks from the various English rhyme lists to rhymes:English, and thence to Wiktionary:Rhymes? —Scs 20:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't object, but I wouldn't want to do them myself :) Perhaps templates could be written for the links, which could then be added automatically and used on new pages in the future.
I think the reason that the rhymes links aren't added is that few people think to do it, and the fact that there are relatively few pages that have these links means that people aren't reminded to do it. The rhymes links are of secondary importance rather than a necessity, so if they are missing, few people are troubled by their absence. — Paul G 10:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Translingual" header

I was wondering wether we should have this header. The only thing it can contain are definitions and some related terms and links. But pronunciations, homophones, rhymes, inflected forms, synonyms etc, quotations, anagrams, and so on usually require separate language headers anyway. Ncik 18:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Numbers, symbols, elements and other terms that are universal in all languages fit nicely. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would recommend it only to be used for those symbols which are not pronounced as they are written, such as abbreviations like Na or e.g., and symbols like &. Then the definition would link to, on this wiki, the English entry, and from there translations would be given. However any abbreviation pronounced as written (whether an acronym like NASA or an initialism like pH or e.g.) I would not put there, as they are essentially words whose pronunciation &c will differ from language to language. (I put initialisms here, because the pronunciation of letters differs from language to language—and where will the stress go?—and in languages that don't normally use the Latin alphabet, the pronunciation may be nontrivial to find.) —Muke Tever 23:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it must be used only for symbols that are not pronounced as they are written. "Na" is a universally used symbol, not an abbreviation (even though it is derived from the Latin natrium). However, "e.g." is not translingual: the French is "par ex." (for "par exemple"). When I was in France some of my colleagues were astonished that we use Latin abbreviations for the English expressions "for example" and "that is" (French abbreviates the French equivalents). Furthermore, "e.g." is often pronounced (informally) as /i:"gi:/ ("ee jee") in the UK and perhaps elsewhere, and "i.e." is very often pronounced /aI"i:/ ("eye ee").
Yes, I know about the pronunciations of e.g.. That is why I listed it both as an example of an abbreviation pronounced as written (as "e gee"), and one not pronounced as written (as "for example"). Anyway, "Translingual" doesn't mean "in all languages"—just in multiple (what might go under ISO 639 code 'mul', I suppose). e.g. has at least English and Latin (though Latin also uses e.c. for this). —Muke Tever 22:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The pronunciation of what these symbols stand for goes in the entries for what the symbols stand for. So "Na" both stands for and is pronounced "sodium" in English, "sodio" in Italian, etc, so the pronunciation and other information go under those entries.
The Translingual header is also appropriate for all those formal scientific names of taxa, which are used across most languages without italicization as foreign words would have. Thus, Echinodermata is Translingual, since it is the same name in all European scientific publications, but echinoderm is English, since it translates in other languages. --EncycloPetey 06:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To what extent can given names or surnames be translingual? They're a tricky thing, partly because of borrowing and translating them. For example, John is clearly of English origin, but is also used in other languages, Dutch among them. — Vildricianus 09:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Echinodermata, the whole of the Linnaean taxonomy, and later extensions to it, are Latin, just as Linnaeus wrote in. Use of such words without italicization (which is not universal, btw; cf. w:sl:Iglokožci, w:lt:Dygiaodžiai, etc.) indicates either borrowing (cf. the word in Webster 1913 as English), alternate typographical practice, or both. —Muke Tever 16:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But most such names have never and do never appear in Latin texts. They are used as words within the texts of whatever language in being used by that author. It is true that Linnaeus wrote in Latin, but that is because it was the language of international scientific and mathematical discourse at the time. New taxonomic names of organisms and groups continue to be published, and many of them use terms and elements that have never appeared in Latin -- I am thinking of species epithets such as yokohamaensis. To classify such words as Latin, then, and list them as such in Wiktionary is misleading. We make no distinction here between Classical Latin, medieval Latin, and nomenclatorial Latin as languages, but the three are quite dissimilar in vocabulary and very different in usage. I see nothing to be gained by listing 20th century invented words (using Latin grammatical conventions) alongside the words of Cicero and Ovid as if they belonged to the same language. Taxonomic names are strictly nouns -- strictly names of organisms and groups of those organisms. They are not used as words in the Latin language and the majority of them never have been. --EncycloPetey 05:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please check your sources before making assumptions. For example the very first Google hit for Yokohamaensis is not taxonomic at all, but a Catholic website giving the Latin name for the diocese of Yokohama. (If Karl Egger didn't coin "Yokohamaensis" for his Lexicon Nominum Locorum, it doesn't look any different from if he would have.) Latin did not die with Cicero and Ovid. It was the literary language of most of Europe through the 18th century—which was why Linnaeus was writing in it, after all. The meme that "Roman Latin is the only pure Latin" was a major factor in the decline of its use, but it is no invalidation of the vast corpus of Latin produced since the Augustan Era, and neither is there any magic dividing line that must divorce 20th and 21st century Latin neologisms from those of the 19th century, 18th century, 17th century, 16th century, or any preceding. Even for those words that have not been in use in running text, the situation is no different from a print dictionary writer-slash-language activist who coins/collects words in a minority language for modern concepts (like Egger himself!)—even if they haven't been used before, they're there for when they will be. Hence w:la:Felidae, etc., and if you like I can write more articles like w:la:tigris to make the epithets nice and unproblematically attested. —Muke Tever 15:37, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are being a bit over-generous in extending Latin's use through the 18th century. By the early 16th century, court documents and offical records across Europe had switched in favor of the local vernacular over traditional Latin as the language of choice. True, the erudite elite continued to use Latin over the next couple of centuries, but it had lost considerable ground by then. While my choice of yokohamaensis may not have been the best, I can cite dozens of others (the most odious being josecuervensis) that I cannot imagine appearing outside of taxonomic circles. All too many are essentially neologistic. --EncycloPetey 15:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Generous? Linnaeus' Systema Naturae is an 18th century work! —Muke Tever 19:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Definite articles in place names

Some time back there was a discussion over whether Le Caire (the French name for Cairo) should be given at Caire rather than at "Le Caire". Wiktionary's policy with phrases that include an initial article ("the", "a" or "an") is to create an entry without this article but to state it with the article under the part-of-speech heading. The same applies to place names beginning with "the", so "the Netherlands" can be found at Netherlands.

However, I disagree that this should be extended to foreign place names that begin with foreign articles. French place names do not usually begin with an article, but "Le Caire" is one example where it does (there is no such place as "Caire"). "Le Havre" is another, and most English-language atlases, gazetteers and encyclopedias list it under "L", not "H". Similarly, I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that "Las Vegas" should go under "V", or "Los Angeles" and "El Alamein" under "A", or "La Spezia" under "S".

So I propose that French should not be given special treatment and that Caire be moved back to "Le Caire" (with a redirect from "Caire"). We already have La Mecque (French for "Mecca"). — Paul G 10:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about Sphinx? There are both Sphinx "name of a Greek demon" and The Sphinx "the great monument in Egypt". --Patrik Stridvall 14:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm referring to place names with foreign articles. Both "Sphinx" and "the Sphinx" belong at Sphinx. — Paul G 14:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. For instance The Hague versus Thames, even though one always says the Thames. — Vildricianus 15:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we also have the translations of The Sphinx. Should French be Le Sphinx? In Swedish it is even worse since it inflects in the definitive to Sfinxen instead of just Sfinx which BTW is the name Oedipus uses in the Swedish translation when talks to the Sphinx of Greek mythology. When he talk about it he uses the definitive Sfinxen. Sigh. --Patrik Stridvall 19:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can clarify that with a small note within translations tables. Deviant translations are no reason for creating entries like The Sphinx. — Vildricianus 09:04, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. Deviant translation is probably right in this case. IIRC Ancient Greek uses the definite article in front of names. So a correct translation into Swedish would probably use Sfinx everywhere since that how Swedish normally treats names. Names doesn't inflect in the definite, or rather they don't unless they always do like in the case of "the Netherlands" (Swedish: Nederländerna). But in such cases the form is frozen. You can't "uninflect" it. The same goes for Sfinxen in the sense of the momument in Egypt. So I think the Swedish translation of Sphinx is correct. The big question is what the entry at Sfinxen should say? Except for the sense for "the momument in Egypt", that is. "Mistranslation of Sfinx" or what? --Patrik Stridvall 20:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have objections to moving Caire back to Le Caire? If not, I'll make this change. — Paul G 09:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, I don't intend this to be done for country names that include the definite article in other languages, such as le Royaume-Uni, la Chine, les États-Unis in French (the United Kingdom, China, the United States). These should stay at Royaume-Uni, Chine, and États-Unis respectively (which is how the entries appear in the French Wiktionary, incidentally). — Paul G 09:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To make things clear: in French, most country names are used with an article, but this article is not a part of the name, and is therefore not capitalized (the same applies to le Sphinx). In Le Caire or Le Havre, Le is a part of the name, which cannot be used without it, and is capitalized (although it is still considered as an article: we don't write à Le Caire or à Le Havre, but au Caire and au Havre. Also note that most French paper dictionaries list Le Havre at Havre (Le), sometimes with an L entry redirecting to the H entry. But here, it should be Le Havre (my place of birth, by the way)... Lmaltier 17:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then these are narrow exceptions. No objections to moving it back. Davilla 17:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Moved back to Le Caire. Thanks. — Paul G 10:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Curly apostrophes

Are we really using curly apostrophes now (one’s)? - dcljr 19:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. We have been using it for a few months now. Ncik 01:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but never in wikilink syntax and always with a redirect from the normal ASCII apostrophe. --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Seems pretty silly to me. Let's force as many needless redirect pages as we can so that we have a prettier apostraphe. Great. - 71.254.2.52 06:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Ncik says "we", but, for myself, I never use them, nor do lots of other contributors. I don't see any good reason to. I can type an apostrophe directly, but I have to do more work to enter a curly/slanted apostrophe. Ncik, can you remind us why this is being done? — Paul G 09:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See also User talk:Hippietrail#Replacement of apostrophes. — Vildricianus 11:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I remember, the main argument was that ’ is the Unicode character specifically designed to be used as the apostrophe, whereas ' is essentially an ASCII remainder which exists in Unicode for compatability reasons. Ncik 14:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite true. See below.—Scs 02:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, "'" is the only character that can be entered in the search box on a US keyboard. --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On a computer screen, it doesn’t make much difference, but when something is copied and pasted into a document to be printed, then it is important. Prior to the last decade or so when everyone began to do his own typing, formatting and printing, the straight quote was always an indication of typewritten text (manual or electric typewritter), and the curly quote was a requirement for professional typeset material. Over the last ten to fifteen years, so much has been entered and printed by casual typists that the formal quote almost disappeared not only from English documents, but from formal texts in almost all other languages. The French guillomets « x » in well-known French magazines turned into straight American "x"; the same happened to German quotes, Dutch quotes, Russian quotes, Italian quotes, and so on. Beginning with Microsoft’s Word 97, this all began to right itself, and good word processors now automatically select the correct quotes according to the language and country, and the proper formal quotes are expected again in printed materials. So, the straight quote is fine on screen, but it’s very sloppy and unprofessional-looking for anything that someone might want to copy and print out. —Stephen 11:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Always" — I like that. Pretty difficult to get the year ’95 right. Davilla 17:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there certainly is that little problem. Word gets the apostrophe in terms such as ’95 and ’til wrong, and that’s why we’re now finding ‘til ‘95 even in commercially prepared materials. —Stephen 19:48, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
dcljr's question was about apostrophes, but what just about everyone else has been talking about is quotes, and there's a difference. Ncik said, "...’ is the Unicode character specifically designed to be used as the apostrophe", but the character he used is actually U+2019, the Right Single Quotation Mark. This, on the other hand, is the Unicode character specifically originally designed to be used as the apostrophe: ʼ (it looks the same, it's true, but the code underneath is U+02BC).
I'm all for nice typographical appearance, but it has to be secondary to proper semantic encoding, database consistency, and ease of searching. If someone gets some quotes wrong, or if someone's browser can't display Unicode, that's not so bad. But when it comes to apostrophes, we're talking about the actual spelling of words. It seems to me it would cause far fewer problems to use the plain old simple ASCII apostrophe ' in actual entry names. If you don't like the way a (plain) apostrophe looks, it seems to me that's a problem to fix in your display or printing software, not by introducing extra complexity into the data, and expecting every other editor ever to go along.
It's not merely an issue of display. The ASCII apostrophe is ambiguous as an ambidextrious single quotation mark. Davilla 19:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, we can play games with redirects, but what a nuisance! And strictly speaking we'll need lots more of them. Right now it's redirects to it’s, but itʼs does not; if I try to look up itʼs (spelled with a Unicode apostrophe) I get the "No page with this exact title exists" page. —Scs 02:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Umm you're quite wrong about U+02BC. It's called "modifier letter apostrophe" and has a special meaning. It is specifically for use with languages that have a letter which looks like an apostrophe but is a true letter rather than punctuation. Usually it represents a glottal stop but sometimes it indicates palatalization. One language I've added a few words of which should use this is Amuzgo though in that case I've decided to use the plain straight apostrophe for now. Most languages I'm aware of which use it are rare minority languages.
The character U+2019, "right single quotation mark" is the correct character for both its namesake and the apostrophe as this comment from the Unicode entry states: "this is the preferred character to use for apostrophe". See here and elsewhere... — Hippietrail 03:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, actually it's more complicated even than that. In earlier revisions of the Unicode Standard, U+02BC was the preferred character for (all) apostrophes. They changed their minds along the way for some reason. It's quite a mess really. —Scs 04:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whee! - dcljr 22:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yup. (Aren't you glad you asked? :-) ) —Scs 12:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ordinary users should not be subjected to the need to distinguish different types of apostrophes. Most will only be confused by these technical details. The KISS principle has much merit. Eclecticology 02:30, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thank you, Eclecticology. As far as I see, having entries with the "correct" apostrophe means that:
  • Contributors have to know that this is what they should be using;
  • Contributors have to find out how to enter it;
  • Numerous redirects are required;
  • Users of the dictionary entering the "straight" apostrophe will not find those entries that have been entered using only the "correct" apostrophe.
...all of which is a complete waste of time, IMO, as they come out the same on my display anyhow! If we drop this, absolutely no one, believe me, is going to criticise us for not using "curly" apostrophes, and we're going to save ourselves a lot of work. To me, it's a pedantic refinement too far. Let's keep it simple, stupid. — Paul G 09:59, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with Paul. There are too many other things to be done right now. If we ever decide we should do it the "correct" way, we can easily set a bot working and get it done overnight. — Vildricianus 12:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but that ignores that entries are and have been entered using the unicode apostrophe instead of "'". Right now those entries can only be found (using the MediaWiki software) if the redirects for each are in place. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If someone goes through that much trouble, then they should have enough know-how to make a redirect page. What's most important is that it works. Rather than making entries consistent across the board, just keep the redirects from ASCII apostrophe to unicode apostrophe where those pages exist. Does this create any problems? In particular, how well would links work if this were carried out to completion? Davilla 19:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Davilla's suggestion seems sensible, under the circumstances. There is no point undoing what has been done, provided all of the content with Unicode apostrophes is accessible using low-ASCII apostrophes too. — Paul G 09:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • This was all gone through and settled months ago. Let me respond to each point above:
    • Contributors have to know that this is what they should be using;
      Not really. We should tell them we prefer it and how to do it in the formatting howtos, but I'm not in favour of forcing anybody to do it. Those of us who care have been fixing entries for ages and will continue to do so.
    • Contributors have to find out how to enter it;
      Put it in the formatting howtos, there's no "have to".
    • Numerous redirects are required;
      No redirects are required. All titles with apostrophes should use the typewriter apostrophe. People linking to these should endeavour to pipelink printers' apostrophes but they shouldn't be forced to. We do not need to link from printers' apostrophes to typewriter apostrophes.
    • Users of the dictionary entering the "straight" apostrophe will not find those entries that have been entered using only the "correct" apostrophe
      Any entries using the printer's apostrophe should be moved to the straight apostrophe. The inverse problem will still occur but very few people will use the printers' apostrophe in the search box.
    — Hippietrail 19:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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