User talk:DCDuring/2013

2013 Q I

twenty

I saw a doubtful edit made by user Fête (talk • contribs). Can you confirm that the three pronunciations deleted are right? Ĉiuĵaŭde (talk) 14:23, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. I can't help with pronunciations. DCDuring TALK 14:24, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok. No problem. Happy New Year. Ĉiuĵaŭde (talk) 14:25, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

The main problem with them is that you used phonemic slashes when you should have used phonetic brackets, assuming that those pronunciations are even accurate, which I somewhat doubt considering that I've never heard most of them. But if they're phonetic, we can bet at least somebody says them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, I've certainly heard many any instance of t-less pronunciations of twenty. DCDuring TALK 16:54, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I mean weird pronunciations like [ˈtwʊ̃.ɾi]. If you can't read IPA, that's like twoo(n)ri where the oo is from book, the (n) is nasalized as in French, and the r is a tap like in Spanish. Personally, I've never heard anything approaching that AFAIK. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:09, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that seems weird. That I couldn't tell how weird is why I should leave pronunciation to the professionals. DCDuring TALK 01:31, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian

"See Vote on Serbo-Croatian." Where was this, and what was the outcome? Thank you! Slandan (talk) 00:12, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-06/Unified Serbo-Croatian. Note the vehemence. DCDuring TALK 00:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Agapornis cana

The spelling Agapornis canus isn't an "alternative form"; it's a misspelling. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe in Latin, and maybe according to some authorities, but not in fact in Translingual. DCDuring TALK 21:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

It's an error, just like "Untied States" would be. Species names are governed by strict codes that determine which form is correct and which forms are not. If it's in violation of the Codes, then it's wrong. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

We don't respect the authority of national academies. Why should we respect the ICZN? In any event, "common misspelling" doesn't reflect usage before the ICZN. DCDuring TALK 21:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

National academies have no authority to govern language, but the ICZN has international backing. It would be a great disservice to our uers to imply that Agapornis canus is an acceptable form of the name. If it is only valid prior to the Code (assuming it was used then), then at the least it would be obsolete or archaic. More likely, it was a propogated error. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:19, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

We don't respect national academies even when they have the power to regulate words used in government and courts. ICZN is not followed by every book publisher. When someone does the work to better characterize the usage, fine. If someone wants to context-tag all of the terms not according to ICZN in some new explicit way or insert a usage note, I would welcome it. I would love it if the various terms in Category:mul:Taxonomic names (obsolete) were reviewed and corrected in this regard and in any other ways appropriate. I suppose I could use {{attention|mul|topic=ICZN}} or {{attention|mul|topic=ICBN}} and activate appropriate categories to draw attention to cases I find problematic. DCDuring TALK 22:20, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Or special-purpose categories and templates, such as Category:mul:Taxonomic names to be checked against ICZN and {{check-ICZN}}. DCDuring TALK 22:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

liquidus

Hello DCDuring. In June 2011, you tagged liquidus for clean-up; however, it is unclear what it is in the entry that needs to be cleaned up. Please pass comment in WT:RFC#liquidus to clarify matters. Thanks. I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 18:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I probably put it in when I was tired or in a rush. I've made a few changes and removed it. DCDuring TALK 19:20, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt resolution. I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 17:55, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

brave

It was {{trreq|tt} not{{trreq|tt}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:58, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I blame my eyesight. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 18:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

WT:RFDO#Template:xno

Please consider revising your vote in this debate. English etymologies will remain unchanged; this is about improving accuracy and reducing duplication in the treatment of a dead medieval language. Thanks —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

sg= in English headword-line templates

This parameter was deprecated a little while ago. It still works, but its usage is discouraged because most templates on Wiktionary use head= instead. So could you use that from now on? There is a list at Category:Headword-line template with deprecated head parameter if you feel inclined to fix them, too. —CodeCat 19:46, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

My fingers have a mind of their own, the brain stem. DCDuring TALK 13:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Well maybe you can brain-stem the tide a bit? :) —CodeCat 14:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Just a notice that you used sg= again at sandhill crane. The templates still support this, but there is no telling for how long. —CodeCat 22:31, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Did I actually use it or forget to change it? DCDuring TALK 22:44, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow. Well, as students of human error, we can hardly be surprised. DCDuring TALK 22:46, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Students of human error? How so? —CodeCat 22:47, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Because the unexamined life is not worth living. DCDuring TALK 22:50, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry... I think you over-philosophisimacated me and now I am lost. —CodeCat 22:51, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

And because work on human interfaces in systems necessarily confronts the designer with the persistence of human habits and the the other abundant sources of error. DCDuring TALK 03:55, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

A question on {{taxlink}}

If an entry already contains, say, {{taxlink|Zea mays|species}}, should I avoid using {{taxlink}} on other occurrences of Zea mays? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

If you know that a given taxon is already listed as missing, you could skip using enclosing it in {{taxlink}} on other entries, but it should be wikilinked, which yields a redlink until an entry exists. As you may have noticed, if someone adds the taxon, entries containing the taxon enclosed in {{taxlink}} are categorized in Category:Entries with redundant taxonomic template (taxlink) for removal. Also, if a given L2 section has multiple taxa at a given level, especially species names, enclosing at least one in {{taxlink}} is a good start as it will draw the attention of some interested party to the entry.

{{taxlink}} is intended to be like scaffolding, to be removed as the edifice progresses. If we had had more inclusive and reliable runs of the new "Wanted pages" when I started on this, I would not have needed this purpose-built scaffolding so much.

BTW, I saw an e-mail that Swedish WP (fittingly the country of Linnaeus) has something creating WP articles automatically from material on the web, with taxonomic entries being a major target. We could use that tool! because our number of taxa is pathetically small (<20,000). The possibility of such tools is one reason I am focused on creating the links rather than the entries. I don't know how well they would do at present with vernacular names of animals, for which disambiguation is often important. DCDuring TALK 12:58, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Prepared to answer a deleted inquiry on this subject:

Most importantly, {{taxlink}} is not intended to be a permanent inhabitant of any entry: it is designed to provide an interim useful bluelink, pending the creation of our own entries. There is a set of categories that are intended to provide lists for adding new starter entries reflecting the kind of taxon genus, species, family, parvorder etc that is required. As not too many folks (understatement) are working on adding these entries, the dwell time in an entry might be relatively long. Nevertheless the idea is to place the template wherever a taxon is used so that the entry goes into the queue. When someone decides to work on the taxons at a given level (species, genus, etc) in a given entry the best thing to do is remove the templates. If the template(s) is/are not removed the entry goes into the redundant template category, which I periodically clean up. If an entry exists, but there is no Translingual section, then the "nomul" parameter removes the entry from the redundant template category.

Thus, the templates that I removed today were on my cleanup list as the Wiktionary entries exist. To one, Smilodon AFAICR, I added the "nomul" parameter, as there is a German L2, not a Translingual one.

I am thinking of doing something similar for English vernacular names that more or less correspond to taxa, but that requires some further work on {{taxon}} to itemize and categorize taxonomic entries by their shortcomings, ie, no range, no vernacular name, no differentia, incomplete hyponyms, incomplete derived terms, incomplete hyponyms, project links to something other than the headword (ie, a higher taxon). I haven't decided on how to implement various improvements on taxon entries, nor whether to raise the question of recruiting those working on a webcrawling automatic entry creator to help create lots (100Ks) of taxon entries.

For now, I am working on wikilinking the unlinked taxonomic names in various entries and upgrading the existing entries themselves, which processes are likely to take months. As I am not a linguist, a taxonomist, a good template writer, a HTML/CSS/JS maven, or a botrunner, I depend on mostly manual efforts and the kindness of strangers. DCDuring TALK 19:44, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the additional detail, DC. As strange as I may be, I hope at least to be kind.  :) (Given your time zone, any connection to the city?) Ta, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

  Your comments suggest good intentions coupled with competence. All kindness appreciated. DCDuring TALK 14:53, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

adverbs

I notice that (deprecated template usage) against does not have an adverb section. Most dictionaries don't either, but the OED has a small adverb section after an enormous preposition one. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. That might be an indication that the category is questionable. If the category is OK, could handle it with an "if" or two in the template and a parameter like "noadv=1". DCDuring TALK 16:51, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I may have been too focused on intransitive phrasal verbs, whose validity is tougher to test. We could direct users to both sections (and away from other PoS sections like conjunction etc) and have both noprep and noadv parameters available. DCDuring TALK 16:59, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, looking at the verbs affected in this case, they all seem to be transitive and the term (deprecated template usage) against looks more like a preposition. But formal grammar is not my strong point. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm making a bit of a study of this kind of thing, but I still have some prejudices against these: one reason why I used to keep peppering Algrif with requests for criteria for testing the validity of these. I'm trying to find some criteria on my own, preferrably grammatical like the "fronting" tests, modifiability of the particle by adverbial expressions, etc. I suspect linguists who study these may have some prejudices of their own in the opposing direction, perhaps reminiscent of my ability to find a distinction between for example and for instance. DCDuring TALK 17:38, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

[[:for the life of my‎]]

You probably mean (deprecated template usage) for the life of me - and that's a redirect. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:02, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I just noticed. It all started with a typo in piped link, which was therefore red. D'oh. I realized that there was for the life of one and was about to make the redirect when I noted the initial error. Two errors. I'll be deleting shortly. DCDuring TALK 17:06, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Problems with phrasal verbs

Hi. Thinking about the problem of phrasal verbs, and the "impressive" counts obtained for non-related collocations (c.f. drift apart / drift together)
I find translate.google is a good place to go to get actual statistical results rather than relying on raw data (impressive counts is simply raw, unprocessed data).
It is an area of interest to me, the way that translation machines work. Perhaps you already know about this yourself. However, I would like to make a point.
They use various analog models, which are based on statistical probabilities starting from a huge set (several millions) of real sentences, from books, newspapers, blogs, etc. Very simply, the models are mainly developed from the statistical probability "counts" of one word being next to, or next but one to,or near, another word, and combined with the similar probability that the POS of the one will be next to, or next but one to, the POS of the other. In our example, the probability of "drift" being next to or close to "apart". When you make a simple sentence using "drift apart", the translator examines the probabilities, and comes up with a translation as per the phrasal verb -- some form of "slowly separate" (e.g. in Spanish translates to "alejarse" "separarse") as being the most likely meaning. If, OTOH you enter a sentence with "drift together" and even if you are trying to mean the opposite of "drift apart", the translator will give you a nautical definition for "drift" (in Spanish, "a la deriba"). That gives you a good insight into the statistical significance of the "impressive" counts in the raw data. It would seem that the translator, basing on real data, will give an idiomatic phrasal verb meaning to "drift apart", that "apart" deflects the meaning of "drift" (and visa versa), and that the translator model sees the collocation as a single verb unit. (Hover over the translation and you will see how the translator is seeing the words as a single verb unit.) -- ALGRIF talk 11:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I prefer corpora that are less black-boxy than anything Google offers. I certainly couldn't take what they do on faith, let alone make specific inferences for our purposes from their inferences for theirs. I use COCA and BNC when I need corpora. They even offer some PoS tags (not wholly reliable). DCDuring TALK 12:02, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

It's a shame you think that raw data intuition (that is to say, your own gut feel) is better than a systematic statistical approach to certain problems to do with collocations. It flies in the face of most accepted methods. I only mentioned Google as an easily accessed translator with clear results that demonstrate statistical parsing in practice. You can use any tool you like, if you don't like Google.
I have in mind commonly used (by Google and by others too) processes such as the Viterbi algorithm applied to out-of-context parsing. (See Pedia entry for more info). The example I gave you above shows how statistical processing of huge amounts of real English sentences can throw up that the collocation "drift" given "apart" and "apart" given "drift" is statistically significant to the point of having a very specific meaning. I.e. it is a phrasal verb. Google simply puts pretty yellow highlighting as well, if you want. -- ALGRIF talk 11:37, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

If you could make explicit any criteria whatsoever, then it might be possible to have rational discussions. Why not have this discussion in a public venue where more folks are likely to participate? Why don't you advance a proposal for something specific? I'm sure that lots of folks would like to get behind a proposal based on Google translate - because it would fit their intuition and theoretical prejudices.

In the meantime, I'm going to be trying to use my intuition to produce explicit criteria to identify the SoP spatial senses that superficially appear to be phrasal verbs. It also would be nice to explicitly define the various contributions that particles can make to non-compositional phrasal verbs. Possibly "aspect marker" is a label that suggests some possibilities. DCDuring TALK 13:25, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It would certainly be better than trying to convince you to stop attempting to destroy perfectly good phrasal verb entries, simply because your gut tells you so, even tho you don't quite grasp or understand them, as you have previously stated. Nothing wrong in trying to learn, but please stop trying to destroy entries as part of the process. -- Discussion moved to Appendix talk:English phrasal verbs#Statistical methods with Phrasal Verbs. -- ALGRIF talk 10:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd have been happy to learn from the master, but the master didn't seem to be interested. DCDuring TALK 10:55, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

2013 Q II

Etymology of democratic

In diff in 2009, you have entered a particular etymology into "democratic". Do you remember what is the source or basis for that etymology? I do not see any source indicated in the edit summaries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:28, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I added a References section, which I did not faithfully follow (copyright), having no other source for the Medieval Latin link. Robert does not show a Medieval Latin connection either. DCDuring TALK 12:43, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Your reference does not have "democrat ‎ -ic" ([1]). Should I feel free to remove "democrat ‎ -ic"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:54, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to improve on the changes I just made. DCDuring TALK 14:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Frankish compounds

How can we get {{compound}} to treat Frankish terms like it does Proto-Germanic, using {{recons}} instead of {{term}}? --Victar (talk) 23:53, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. I'm not very good at templates. DCDuring TALK 01:21, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I think that you have to go on bended knee to someone who has recently modified templates like {{Xyzy}} and beg for assistance. Or you could just hard code what you want. Or you could create a template that does exactly what you want for Frankish. DCDuring TALK 01:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

{{taxlink}}

Hi. Why are you removing {{taxlink}} and {{temp|spelink}} from Armenian entries, e.g. in ճագար (čagar)? --Vahag (talk) 11:15, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I remove them if there is an associated wiktionary page. Once the entry for the taxonomic name has been created the templates no longer serve a useful purpose. Category:Entries with redundant taxonomic template (taxlink) identifies such entries that use {{taxlink}}. BTW, unlike {{temp|spelink}}, {{taxlink}} categorizes the page as one that uses a taxonomic name that has no corresponding Wiktionary page. I prefer that the taxonomic level (species, genus, family, etc) be specified, but "unknown" is an accepted value for the second parameter of {{taxlink}}. DCDuring TALK 12:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I see. --Vahag (talk) 14:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Moor

Moor contains an

{{rfc}}

from 2010-10-01 diff=10581863 which doesn't appear to have had any attention. When you have a minute, would you please see if it still needs cleanup and if so, add some explanation about what is needed. Hopefully that will encourage someone to address the issues. Thanks.
SBaker43 (talk) 01:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I made the changes I think were needed. Take a look and improve it. DCDuring TALK 01:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Hard links to Wikispecies

FYI, I replied to this thread and created Wiktionary:Todo/Direct links to Wikispecies. - -sche (discuss) 20:08, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Only 89 left. I'd found a few in the course of searches. I've made great progress in finding taxonomic terms that are unlinked, redlinked, or linked via {{temp|spelink}}. I am enclosing them in {{taxlink}}, which facilitates making entries for the terms actually in use and in updating the taxonomic names to those lately in use. See Category:Entries using missing taxonomic names, which has nearly 5,000 entries in its subcategories. DCDuring TALK 20:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Terms without an English counterpart

• Please give this nomination a second look in light of my responses. I am prepared to address any and all subsequent concerns in order to ensure that this category isn't lost from our project.   — C M B J   00:05, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

• As a participant in an associated discussion, you are invited to contribute to the list of terms and criteria at Appendix:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English. Cheers,   — C M B J   10:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• I also want to stop and express my appreciation for you being a voice of reason on this issue and at the beer parlour when everyone else was losing their cool. Thank you for your levelheadedness and for your commitment to our common mission. All the best,   — C M B J   10:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

{{trreq}} for Chinese

Hi,

When you add Chinese {{trreq}}, just type {{trreq}} with the language code "cmn". This will produce:

* Chinese:
*: {{trreq|cmn}}

That way the translation is possible via the accelerated tool. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't gotten the previous e-mail, so I've been trying to do it the old way. Does that work for Norwegian and for Greek, too, or just Chinese? Is it possible that wildlife names use different characters in different Chinese-speaking parts of China? Most surviving wildlife in China seems to be in the southern area and in the south-central mountains.

BTW, I'm trying to use geographic distribution maps to of species of plants and animals to generate translation requests for them. Occasionally, there are some fairly obscure languages, but I also omit some languages. Can you point me to a set of map that has language distributions, especially of "smaller", but not "tiny" languages? I really would like to know what languages are spoken in a given area. For wildlife areas spoken in wilderness areas are particularly important. DCDuring TALK 01:29, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

You can try with Norwegian and Greek, I don't know. For Serbo-Croatian the template doesn't produce the desired nested result (Cyrillic/Roman). For Chinese I usually add standard Mandarin only, which is used all over China. In 95% of cases words only differ in their pronunciation by the region in China, not the spelling. If you want to know what dialects are spoken and where they are in China, see a map on w:Chinese_language. You can also search for "languages of" country. I don't know if it's a good idea to add requests for which we don't have editors. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:16, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

So it's just a one-off. Sigh.

My interest is limited to living things, for which locals often have a specific name. For big countries a list of languages doesn't say enough. Dialects are not what I need. Distinct languages of the rural and wild areas are what I need. I have some lang codes/names memorized, but the more remote ones will take a lot longer. DCDuring TALK 02:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Re: So it's just a one-off. What do you mean? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Good for one case only, despite similarity to other cases. DCDuring TALK 04:17, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't get the two-line result when I add a translation, though. Maybe I'll just skip Mandarin and do the other languages. DCDuring TALK 04:28, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I've tested adding {{trreq}} with Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Ancient Greek and Aramaic. They can also work. For Norwegian, need "nb" and "nn" (not "no"), "grc" for Ancient Greek. For Serbo-Croatian need to add "Serbo-Croatian/Cyrillic" or "Serbo-Croatian/Roman" to "Nesting". Same thing for Aramaic (arc) - Aramaic/Syriac, Aramaic/Hebrew. So requests work almost the same way normal translations do.

What did you do for Mandarin? Did you type {{trreq}} with the language code "cmn"? Works fine for me. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:32, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I've just realised. You don't seem to be using the JavaScript at all (User:Conrad.Irwin/editor.js) but manually typing the requests? It's easy to use, check if your JavaScript is enabled. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:36, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Could be. But I don't care enough to do it that way. If the (documented) way doesn't work, too bad. DCDuring TALK 04:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

You misunderstood me, I I think. Do you see "add translation" and the button "preview" when you expand any translation table (NOT in the edit mode)? If you do, then all you need to do is type the language code and add a translation or add a request. My suggestion was all under assumption that you were using the tool. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:52, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Heidegger and absconding

It's from here. I think it is more along the lines of commentary than paraphrase, although the translation is pretty close to that.

By the way, is the rabbit fleeing or hiding? I imagined the rabbit hiding down a rabbit hole. One does not necessarily avoid detection by fleeing, only capture. SpinningSpark 19:09, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I had looked at the Heidegger quote above his usage. He was introducing his thoughts with a question that repeated a portion of the close of the translation passage. I have always found works by Hegel, Royce, Heidegger, Sartre to be impenetrable and virtually always worthless as sources of comprehensible usage examples or citations - just like poetry, but not as enjoyable.

Generally, I'm not very happy with literary type citations because they often play on some ambiguity between senses we would like our definitions to distinguish. Our definitions should stake out the range of possible meanings, not at the very border or shore of the meanings of the term but in the mountain range or headlands overlooking the edges of its territory.

A single sentence out of context does not always convey relatively subtle meanings, so I don't know about the rabbit. I now wish that I had always included a url with any citation so context was available to anyone who needed it. DCDuring TALK 23:13, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree on the impenetrability of Heidegger, Sartre etc (but they are not half as impenetrable as those who write about them) but in this case the meaning is clear: it is an attitude that has been withdrawn (in this case piety replaced with arrogance). A person who absconds can be read as a person who runs away. An attitude that absconds cannot be read as running away (except figuratively), it is more obviously read as withdrawing, which the text then explicitly states. So I don't really see why you are finding difficulty with this cite. SpinningSpark 02:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

A citation that requires too much analysis to be understood is a poor usage example and questionable attestation.

BTW, does the Brill citation allow one to distinguish between hiding and fleeing/evading? I think not. If that is the case, perhaps we need to combine definitions with "or". And, the "marmot" citation, which I've found on Google Books, could as easily mean "hibernate" as anything else. DCDuring TALK 14:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

If I agreed that the Heidegger citation required analysis to understand I might agree with you that it would make a poor usex. But I don't, I think it is perfectly plain what it means. It cannot be substituted for any of the other meanings and the author explicitly describes the situation as "withdrawing". Brill: maybe you could substitute "hide" without changing the meaning, but that is only because "hide" can figuratively mean "withdraw". She is not suggesting the reader is literally hiding. Same with the marmot, the citation is clearly referring to hibernation, but I would read the meaning of "abscond" as the animal has disappeared from the scene, not as any kind of indication what it does when it disappears. I think those are all perfectly good citations. Frankly, if anything needs removing it is The Devil's Dictionary quote. That whole book is all hunorous mis-definitions and anything in it is not to be trusted for real usages. SpinningSpark 18:03, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

2013 Q III & IV

Translingual genders?

How does a translingual term have a gender? That doesn't make any sense to me... —CodeCat 01:30, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Because they try to have agreement in gender and number when they use Latin or Latinized pure adjectives and participles as specific and sub-specific epithets with the genus or species. The instances where the principle is apparently violated are often cases where the epithet was formerly a genus name, in which case it is a noun used attributively. There are other cases where nouns are used attributively and cases where the epithets are in the form of Latin genitives. In all these cases, gender agreement is not required. If EP doesn't want to call it Latin, that's fine. But the fact that the coiners of these terms have tried to have gender agreement is self-evident. DCDuring TALK 01:40, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

That I can understand, but is the gender relevant to the use of the term, or only to the etymology? —CodeCat 01:42, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I've found it useful in catching errors in requests for scientific names and in entries. You can consider it frivolous, but it is a fact of language usage. Why do we have obsolete terms? Why do we have unattested inflected forms in dead languages? DCDuring TALK 01:47, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

The gender is indeed relevant to the use of the name. The Codes for both botanical and zoological names have rules about assigning gender, so the gender is explicitly part of the element's grammar. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

WT:GRC TR

HI, DCD. We have a standard transliteration system for Ancient Greek at use in Wiktionary, which should be adhered to until someone gets around to writing a Lua module for this. Even in etymologies, we try to unify our representations of non-Latin scripts. Also, transliteration should match the exact form being displayed, usually the lemma form. For example, here I had to fix the transliteration and change it to match the fact that the link displays 1st-pers. sing. act. pres. ind. but your transliteration was for the act. pres. infinitive. Thank you! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:22, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

oops. DCDuring TALK 18:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

TempWFBotaccount

Please block this account. He's pretty much just admitted to being WF on his talk page. Thanks, Razorflame 18:09, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I could have been quicker to respond with an actual link to, say, the contributions page. The pattern fits WF, so I would have blocked him. He's not the worst contributor we've had, though. DCDuring TALK 18:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep. My bad. I've been away for a while, so I forgot about the link. Thanks anyways, Razorflame 21:38, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem. I was making an excuse for not being very fast. Ivan is quicker on the draw than I am anyway. He probably went to recent changes straight away or he just accepted your view. DCDuring TALK 21:45, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

It is rare for him to accept my view since we've had our disagreements about the inclusion of Serbo-Croation and the exclusion of the separate languages...but that is something that does not need to be brought up ^_^ Razorflame 21:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Bryophyta

I've reverted the changes you made to the etymology of Bryophyta. It is true that the Code justifies such names as being based on a genus name, and requires names to be based on either a genus or characteristic. However, the name Bryophyta predates this requirement. If you look back to when these names were being coined, there was not the same insistence on derivation from the name of an included taxon. Rather, the names were simply descriptiove, as in this case "moss plants". --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I favor history, bit it's more time-consuming to research so I am following a simplistic rule-based approach. Thanks for letting me know. For any changes of that sort that need to be made, you don't have to let me know. I'd expect a lot of that kind of thing in the higher ranked taxa. Some of them could often stand an additional definition or two to reflect the fluctuation of the concepts, sometimes form-based taxa, sometimes less formal groupings, always with membership subject to change. There is something a little too mechanistic about {{taxon}}.

BTW, I've been using categorization (without category pages) by {{taxlink}} to generate a kind of dynamic wanted-pages list at Special:WantedCategories which allows me to work on those names (genera at the moment) that appear most often within {{taxlink}}. I add the genus entry and look for all the entries that use the genus name to make them link to the new entry where appropriate, ie, not if the genus name appears in a species name or in a citation, but almost always otherwise. I am probably going to do the same for species soon, then families, before starting that cycle again. Tribes, orders, subspecies, and other levels are much farther down the list. Some people have been working on the etymologies and on adding images to the entries. I'm planning on adding some templates like {{R:USDA Plants}} to link to specific pages at external sources. DCDuring TALK 17:20, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

So, if I've pointed out the actual etymology for you, why did you change it back to the false etymology? This taxon is not derived from the genus name; rather they independently derive from the same Greek root. --08:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I was doing that. I entirely support historical etymologies and believe that, when correct, they are invariably superior to mere morphological derivations. I have been operating in a mass-entry mode for quite some time and have developed strong habits which sometimes get the better of my best intentions. Habits being what they are I can't say that it won't happen again, but please understand that it is not in accord with my best intentions. DCDuring TALK 12:54, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Question about species/families

I don't really know what the most usual way to handle this is. In Dutch, most taxonomic names are actually Dutch words rather than the international Latin-based names. English also has some native words or at least slightly different names (like arthropods) but Dutch prefers native/Germanic names (geleedpotigen). Where would such language-specific terms be placed? Do the translingual entries have translation tables? Another thing is that the names for families/groups of species are plurale tantum in Dutch, but there is also a singular word which means an individual of that family/group, and that singular has the name of the family as its plural. So geleedpotige means "arthropod": either a single individual, or a single species, in the arthropod family. But its plural means both "multiple arthropods" and "the arthropod family as a whole" (the latter is "Arthropoda" in the international naming). So should these plurals have two definitions, one for the plural and another as a name for the family? And what would the singular definition be? —CodeCat 18:02, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

As you know, the English names that are at least roughly equivalent to taxonomic names appear as English. I would expect that many languages have similar types of names that belong to their language, which is where the entry should be.

I personally think that Translingual taxa should have translation tables, but others have disagreed. You can search for "Translingual translations" to find entries that have them. This is closely related to the problems of English synonyms for such terms. One could easily argue that they are "translations". I have been able to avoid facing the problem because a few of the the English names could be included in the definition of the taxon. There are already a few cases where there is a synonyms header for a Translingual taxon.

Above the level of genus, all taxa seem to have the form of Latin plurals. I suppose it reflects the idea that genus and species are natural kinds (God-made) and the higher taxa are man-made categories.

The nature of the referents (an individual, a group, multiple members of the group, one or multiple subgroups of the group) for such names in ordinary languages seems to follow ordinary grammar. The ambiguity is not limited to taxonomic names, but seems to come up with all sorts of things. Take brands, models, model-years of cars. I don't know how this generalizes across languages, but I suspect at least that it works the same way in all Germanic languages. It seems very much a feature of the grammars of the languages that they have this flexibility of reference. But I don't have the linguistic theory chops to address the matter at that level. It seems like a waste of keystrokes and users' attention to tediously repeat in each entry the formula in the first sentence of this paragraph. The English definitions finesse the question by defining each taxon using a hypernym that itself is used with the same ambiguity of referent with respect to number and individual vs group:

gentian: Any of various herbs of the family Gentianaceae

Any is ambiguous as to number; herb could refer to an individual, a genus, a species, a variety, etc.

I hope this is clear and that it helps. I know that EP watches this page sometimes. He may correct me or express a different perspective. Chuck Entz might have thoughts on this too. DCDuring TALK 18:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

BTW, I fear that neither Translations nor Synonyms are suitable headers for English names that roughly correspond to taxa. We may have to follow Wikispecies and have a heading for taxon entries called "Vernacular names", in which names of all levels of formality (duly marked) for all languages are placed. DCDuring TALK 18:58, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Our practice of considering only attestable and idiomatic English terms "translatable" is a bit awkward in this case. But you can get a clear idea of how this works for Dutch just by looking at the interwikis on Wikipedia. In many cases (except maybe very obscure ones), the English Wikipedia will have a Latinised name as the entry, but its interwiki for nl.wikipedia will be to a Dutch natively created word. For example w:Felidae interwikis to w:nl:Katachtigen (Oh, and I just noticed that Felidae has a translation table). English does not use a distinctive word here, it just borrows the international term, but Dutch has its own distinct term. In the past, we've deleted entries that are SoP in English but not in another language... but I can hardly imagine that practice is useful for cases like this. —CodeCat 19:08, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it is OK, even wise, that other Wiktionaries don't bother with Translingual taxa. If Wikispecies had definitions, etymologies, gender, obsolete taxa, and better interproject links we would not have to bother with taxonomic names either. Or if WP had gender and translations. None of the projects approaches adequate coverage of the millions of species that exist and the many, many thousands of hypernyms that have been applied to the genera and species over time. I just wish that folks at Wiktionary who were defining terms for living things used taxa to specify what they were referring to. See [[lotus]] as an example of ambiguity in the word many non-English entries use as a gloss. WP often does a much better job at disambiguation than Wiktionary does, much to my chagrin. DCDuring TALK 19:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That's kind of why I asked this. I wanted to see if I could improve this at least for Dutch entries, but I am not sure how to format the entries themselves or how to add translations linking to them. —CodeCat 19:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I would start the definition with the taxonomic name and then find the English equivalent, if there is one, or something else that is useful. If you use {{taxlink}}, then it will turn out either that there already is a Translingual entry, which usually has an English vernacular name or at least something designed to give folks some idea of what the entity is, or the entry will be linked to wikispecies, which sometimes has vernacular names, sometimes in English. (You might add the Dutch to the Wikispecies entry in one of their vernacular name boxes.) Sometimes English WP has a vernacular name. Once you get past those, there is a vast array of online resources, but there is no assurance that there is a vernacular name in any given language for a taxon, even at the genus level.

I have created all the missing taxonomic name categories and the missing vernacular name category (a misnomer, as it just means that argument 4 in {{taxon}} is empty) because there are so many gaps in what we have and in what we can readily get. DCDuring TALK 19:57, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

And if you've found an equivalent English term then you have a home for its Dutch translation. If there is such a term, but it is a redlink, the stubbiest of English entries, again using {{taxlink}} will get things started. (You could throw in {{rfi}}, {{pedia}}, {{specieslite}}, and {{commonslite|Category:PAGENAME}}.) DCDuring TALK 20:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

trreq's

Hi,

I have removed some of the requests, which are unlikely to be filled and clutter the category a bit. It's not out of spite or something. It seems some editors are discouraged to add translations when there are too many requests (my long-time observation and feedback I got from other translators) and won't even add basic, every day words. Perhaps, you can request some living creature names directly by users or at Wiktionary:Translation_requests. Unfortunately, we are not getting new editors for exotic languages and northern tree shrew is a complicated, specific and long term. We don't have a Lao, Burmese, etc. translations for "shrew", which would be a higher priority, I think. Do you understand what I mean? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I strongly object to your removing them. I don't care if you think they are too exotic. They have decent-size populations of native speakers. I took the trouble to add these specific languages because they are the languages in the range of the animals in question. I would like to see the local languages added. If anyone should visit who knows the languages I would love to direct them to those entries. Actual local language knowledge would be very good so we could avoid travesties like the Slavic calques at snow leopard. I also don't think that your discomfort with seeing the categories is a serious consideration. If you disagree take it to the BP. DCDuring TALK 03:39, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I have added a topic in Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/August#trreq.27s. Please don't get angry. I don't know what you mean by "travesties". E.g., "снежный леопард" may be a calque (who borrowed from whom?) but that's a correct translation. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:53, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

The locals didn't wait for the Russians to name the local animals for them. Don't you have some idea of the source of the Slavic words that are the Russian for snow leopard: "bars" and "ibirs" ? Why should the Tibeto-Burmese languages use Indo-European words for local fauna? The might well also use the Slavic words of the power culture, but it just seems to hard to believe that such is the only word. The Uzbeks have qoplon. Don't the others have indigenous words too? DCDuring TALK 04:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're asking and don't see what's wrong in the translation table. The Turkic words for "snow leopard" are not of Slavic origin, as you can see. Words "bars" and "ilbirs" are NOT of Slavic origin, they were borrowed INTO Russian from Turkic languages. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:34, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I may be wrong about those. It just looked very suspicious and nobody responded to WT:TR#snow leopard. Also see Template talk:trreq#RFD deletion debate. DCDuring TALK 01:34, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Script errors

Aquifoliaceae, Caprifoliaceae, Elapidae, Hippocastanaceae These entries are now showing script errors. Could you have a look at them and fix them if possible? —CodeCat 22:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

There must be a lot more. Can you characterize what will generate script errors in {{suffix}}? Why don't you do things so that what has worked continues to work or fails in a predictable way. DCDuring TALK 23:08, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Because templates shouldn't need to account for exceptional usage/misusage. They should be used in the way they're intended to be used. These entries give a gloss for... no term at all. That's what's causing the error. —CodeCat 23:16, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

It's hardly a misusage just because you didn't contemplate it. If our templates were well-designed (ie, simple), they could take simple templates being inserted as arguments and my work-around wouldn't have been necessary. DCDuring TALK 23:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

We obviously don't have enough technical capability to wait for someone to design something ideal. I try to make do with what we've got. I'm still disgusted the reversion from the capabilities of the previous context system. DCDuring TALK 23:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

taxlink, spelink

I've added {{taxlink}} and {{temp|spelink}} to few entries recently because I was under the impression that they were preferable to ''[[raw formatting]]'', but I notice this edit. Should I stop using them? - -sche (discuss) 23:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

{{taxlink}} is intended as a temporary replacement for a redlink pending creation of the Wiktionary entry. I'd prefer that it be used instead of {{temp|spelink}} because I have made {{taxlink}} work with categories to help direct me to create the taxonomic entries that would have the most redlinks. It replaces the functionality of Special:WantedPages, but limited to one class of pages, the taxon pages. In principle, we search out all the uses of taxonomic names that are redlinks or unlinked, enclose them in {{taxlink}}, which puts them in the queue (See Category:Entries using missing taxonomic names.), and then clean them off the queue. I use Category:Entries with redundant taxonomic template (taxlink) to identify templates that have been rendered unnecessary because the missing taxonomic name entry has been deleted.

At present, I am adding genus names by having {{taxlink}} temporarily categorize pages with a missing genus name into a category for that genus name. The numerous categories are intended never to be created. The categories with the most members get the genus entry created. The special page gets updated every few days. I am guessing that about a third to a half of the 1000 items on the first page of Special:WantedCategories after the first 200 are for missing genus names. As the categorization is 100% created by {{taxlink}}, the clutter that this creates on that page could be eliminated by editing the template. But I intend to continue using this for genus names until the iterations stop producing any categories with more than three members, then do the same thing for missing species names, then genus names again, then family names, then genus names again.

This only works this way because nobody else seems to be using Special:WantedCategories as a task generator.

Something like this could be done using {{term}} and {{l}} and {{t}} to identify the most missed pages in each language. Presumably it would be limited to a small number of languages and there would need to be some commitment by contributors to take advantage of the prioritization so the limited number of items (5000) that appear in Special:WantedCategories would not be clogged with the same items every run. I suppose the same kind of thing could be accomplished by processing the dump to extract the missing entries and then create a list that counts the number of L2 sections that miss the item. Such a list might be pretty useful for Latin and Greek, for example, because etymologies generate so many redlinks. DCDuring TALK 01:28, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for that comprehensive explanation! I'll stop using those templates to link to entries that already exist.

Having {{l}} and {{term}} generate a list/category/whatever of the "most wanted" redlinked pages, or generating a list of "most wanted" entries in some other way, seems like a very good idea. - -sche (discuss) 01:41, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I knew that was more than you needed or wanted to know. Where SB can be painfully terse, I can be painfully prolix. At least it exposes my own thinking to potential criticism. DCDuring TALK 01:54, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

sperzieboon

Hello. Is there anything wrong with {{taxlink|...|species}} macro? Anceurs (talk) 09:38, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Before I have looked at it at all: If you are having trouble with it, yes, there must be. I will take a look. If you are bothered by the red (missing) categories, they are designed to enable contributors to use Special:WantedCategories to determine which of the species entries most need to me added, having the most pages on which they are used, actually used with {{taxlink}}. DCDuring TALK 10:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

For example in Special:WantedCategories there is a line:

144. Entries missing taxonomic name Erythrina subumbrans‏‎ (5 members)

We lack a Translingual entry for Erythrina subumbrans" and there were, at the time of the run that produced the special page, 5 entries that contained "{{taxlink|Erythrina subumbrans|species}}". Clicking on the (red) category will show those entries that still have the template for the missing species entry.

For pages that have very large numbers of species, the red categories can be numerous and form a menacing-looking mass at the bottom of the page. AFAIK there is no easy way to eliminate the red category display except by adding the entries or losing the capability of tracking the use of the terms. I had tried another means of tracking, but it led to an unprioritized listing. See Category:Entries using missing taxonomic names and its subcategories. DCDuring TALK 11:12, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I see that the above has nothing to do with your issue. You can see what worries me about {{taxlink}} in the answer above. There is nothing wrong with using {{taxlink}} if Wiktionary does not have any entry for the taxonomic name. As I create the taxonomic name entries, as for Phaseolus vulgaris, I look to create plainlinks to the entry for all mainspace uses of the term. That includes eliminating links using {{taxlink}}. DCDuring TALK 11:19, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey

I think you misunderstood something: "When a given technical contributor repeatedly proposes changes that are unresponsive to the needs of anyone other than those much like himself, ..." I proposed that because I guessed other users may want this too and started the discussion to know if it's responsive to the needs of anyone other than me and therefore gave up when people opposed. I don't know what are those other proposed "changes" that you're talking about BTW. --Z 08:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Our discussions among ourselves rarely take much account of users other than folks just like us. We often ignore the obvious, like the benefits of maintaining consistency and adhering to web standards. The mere fact that we give so much primacy to IPA indicates clearly that we are not really taking into account more casual users, from among whom we could conceivably recruit new contributors with a perspective broader than that of the existing group. That we can take up a full entry landing screen with etymology and pronunciation before we present definitions is another indication. If you would like to further the program of rendering us irrelevant to normal users by building such edifices, you will find ample support. Someone like MZ is at least aware of such obvious facts as the uselessness of IPA to most normal users (or should I say potential and past, lost users? Because we don't seem to get all that much attention now from normal users)?

We have software tools (CSS, JS) that would enable us to satisfy the needs of normal users while customizing for the more specialized needs of academic contributors and linguistics fans, but we don't seem to take the trouble to design our defaults for the likely characteristics of unregistered users. Frankly, if I need a good English definition and pronunciation information, I go to MWOnline for quality and to OneLook for supplementary coverage. DCDuring TALK 11:48, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

DCDuring, I guess that's how you see things, but from my perspective it looks like you never propose anything but simply obstruct or complain about every step forward, and you have seemingly offended multiple dedicated contributors (not hypothetical new contributors, real existing contributors) in discussion. Also, I think you misrepresent our users: how many complaints have you seen on WT:FEEDBACK about IPA? Have you ever seen such a complaint? I think that because you haven't bothered to learn IPA, you assume that the majority of our users see that as a big problem, but is that actually the truth? We have no budget to do market research, but we do listen to those who are annoyed enough to complain.

If you really have such problems with Wiktionary that you're not even willing to use the site, do something about it instead. Figure out solutions, create discussions and votes, whatever you need. In the mean time, this is simply the automatic gainsaying of another user's position. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I see virtually every 'step forward' to be serving our contributor group and those just like them and virtually no one else. The mere fact that you believe that IPA is at all relevant to most users of a dictionary site shows how divorced from normal people you, in particular, are. Ask some normal people or people in contact with normal people how many can read IPA. DCDuring TALK 16:56, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

• Chiming in here.

I do strongly think that a broader discussion about usability would be to our overall benefit.

I also strongly think that a broader discussion about user metrics could be invaluable to gaining an insight into how WT is actually used. I'm not even really sure where to go looking for such info. WT:FEED is certainly one venue, but that's only for users who bother to write something, and it's only useful inasmuch as the users are articulate enough in written English to convey their concerns. I'd love to see some other metrics -- how do users arrive on an entry page? how much are categories used? indices? the search box? etc. etc.

There are a number of truly horrible usability failures that arise due to known bugs in the MW backend (category indexing, nearly useless search results, etc). A few of these, at least, have been floating around for far too long (years). How would we raise the profile of these bugs?

There are also some usability issues that have been brought up on WT:FEED multiple times, but then we editors fail to act upon them. One such problem is confusion about where the definitions are. We might scoff and think something along the lines of RTFM, but the simple fact that so many users take the time to comment on this should be a big red flag that our current page layout leaves something to be desired.

Anyway, I'd like to propose that we have such a discussion about usability, in a wider forum, and in the aim of drawing up a concrete list of suggested and implementable changes. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:11, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

"Drawing up a concrete list" is basically the biggest point of my comment that DCDuring missed. He exemplified the behavior I mentioned by calling me abnormal and then not actually proposing and/or doing anything. I agree with Eirikr's points, although thinking that we can raise the profile of MW backend bugs or solve our formatting issues in the BP seem like they'll be a mite ineffective (trust me, I've tried both).—Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:39, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

@Eirikr: I've been in that choir. The most serious underlying problem is the exaggerated concern about privacy in the entire WMF community that seems to prevent any kind of tracking whatsoever. I have always thought that the first step is for each individual to understand how far from being the typical user s/he is. Going to a public library to see who is using the public terminals or looking at the discussions on non-technical Usenet groups can be a way of broadening one's horizons in this regard. If such a thought raises a mild disgust reaction in a person, then that person should disqualify themselves from participating in usability discussions.

If we were to actually face up to usability issues, accepting the WMF limits on methods, the first thing would be to have some idea of who our users are and what they know (eg, meaning of "Hyponyms", "Prepositional phrase", "Homophones", and other terms we use so cavalierly; IPA). We already know that some will actually take the trouble to reveal their confusion with non-English entries (esp German) when they are looking for English, with tables contents that require multiple page-downs to bypass, with long etymology and pronunciation sections that precede definitions. DCDuring TALK 18:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I responded to your comment in the Tea Room.

I responded to your comment in the Tea Room with some citations (including one from "The Laws of Rhode Island" and a Boston news piece.) On a side note, though, you said I might find it fun to document something like this. How would I do that, exactly? Tharthan (talk) 15:13, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

One finds one's motivation where one can. I like to be able to support debatable suppositions with irrefutable facts. I get weary of mere gum-flapping. DCDuring TALK 15:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, forsooth! But I still am unsure on how I would document this. If I were to do a survey, would it not be considered original research?

We don't have any rule against original research. The kind of "research" we do to get citations that support definitions or location of spelling etc is not all that different from getting citations to support a statement at WP. We leave ourselves plenty of room to interpret the citations, though. A great deal of what is referenced at WP does not exactly support the statements made without a lot of "interpretation". DCDuring TALK 15:32, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Hmm... I may be able to come up with something... Tharthan (talk) 15:43, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

a quick zap, please

Hi Dennis, can you zap these please (RFD takes too long to load). My old bot created them in error.

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/dyskieka
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/gryszyczka
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/abstentynencja
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/artylia
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/konygnacja

-WF

•  Done My feelings wouldn't be hurt if you asked someone else, but I'm happy to clean up. DCDuring TALK 18:39, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Keeping RfV balanced

Greetings! Since you have recently added new discussions to Wiktionary:Requests for verification, please help to keep the page from becoming overgrown by helping to advance, close, or archive some old discussions. Cheers! bd2412 T 11:26, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Birthday

Happy birthday to us, again. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you and a Happy B'day to you.

Mine would be happier if en.wikt were working better for me. I've been trying to make sure that my software is up to date and my preferences not too bizarre. Maybe I'll find something. DCDuring TALK 15:26, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Sweet Jesus. I had to clear out every custom bit of CSS and JS and Browser preferences to get things working again. DCDuring TALK 18:52, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

unprotect

Hi there. Could you do me a favour and unprotect the following template pages: {{es-conj-ar}}, {{es-conj-ir}}. -WF

RFV Golden diagram

Would you consider closing the RFV on Golden diagram? Previously, you have tagged it as "clocked out", which does not really advance the process. Closing it would involve the following:

• Posting RFV failed or Failed to the nomination, in boldface.
• Striking out the heading.
• Deleting the Golden diagram entry.

Then it's going to sit there for a week or the like, so other people have chance to question the closure, which hardly ever happens. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:44, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

No thanks. DCDuring TALK 18:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:taxoninfl

FYI, WT:RFDO#Template:taxoninfl. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:01, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Guadalupe pine

Not sure we should even have entries for varieties. Moreover, taxlink doesn't even work right in this case, because IME (as a non-botanist) the var. part is actually left unitalicised. (To get it to work right we'd need another parameter or alternatively we could just do it by means of Lua, but I'm not personally capable of that.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:58, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Many of the items for which the taxonomic community has subspecific names coincide with there being specific vernacular names and having been synonymous specific names. Food and horticultural plants offer many good examples of use of subspecific names, eg, Brassica

One of the reasons why I'd like to use {{taxoninfl}} instead of {{mul-proper noun}} for taxa is so that the peculiarities of subspecific names can be handled by some Lua/Scribunto without burdening templates which serve other purposes. The idea would be that the Lua/Scribunto would parse the taxon to provide the formatting that is recommended by the authorities and followed by the scientific communities. DCDuring TALK 19:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

On what principled basis would we exclude variety names that were not commercial ones? DCDuring TALK 13:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

thereagain

I came across the following usage, but cannot date it, nor find who wrote it:

1883, H. Morley (editor), Cassell's Library of English Literature, page 143.

And we will rule and reign / And our matters maintain / Who dare say thereagain / Or who dare disdain / At our pleasure and will

An "exact" reproduction of Morley's work appears to be in print, and so may be in a library or something. — Pingku^dimmi 13:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I guess it is Modern English, albeit obsolete. There is also another poetic use in Browning. I personally dislike literary poetry usage, because it is so distant from the ordinary language. I find Tolkien's archaicisms as bad. In this case and in the Browning case (AFAICR) the word choice was apparently governed by the needs of rhyme.

I don't think the late 19th century literary use makes the word not obsolete. I view "obsolete" as referring to a "now" evidenced by usage within the lifespan of folks in their 70s or 80s, ie, from the 1930s on. To me the main meanings of again have by now completely driven out alternative interpretations such as "against". DCDuring TALK 13:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Coriandrum sativum

Originally at User talk:-sche

At [[Coriandrum sativum]] I have put (temporarily) both the translation table from coriander and a copy of the "vernacular names" table from Wikispecies. Our translation table includes more languages, theirs has more terms per language, even having Chinese parsley, the redlink for which I just blued.

The language with by far the greatest number of vernacular names is German. Could you give me your assessment of these? Are they valid? common? specialized?

I am considering bringing over many of their vernacular-name tables to enrich our coverage of taxa. They have nearly 61,000 of them. I also expect that the entries with these tables that we don't have are probably the most desirable of the taxon entries that we could add from their million entries. DCDuring TALK 19:19, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The general term is Koriander. Echter Koriander is an unambiguous designation, used in reference works. Gartenkoriander is another disambiguator; to me, it seems less formal (and therefore more common) than Echter Koriander. Those three are the only translations I would include in a trans-table.

Gewürzkoriander is another disambiguator. Arabische, Asiatische and Chinesische Petersilie are about as uncommon relative to Koriander as the circumlocution Chinese parsley is to coriander in English. Indische Petersilie is a variant I hadn't heard before.

I hadn't heard Gebauter Koriander before; it seems to be an obsolete technical term. Wanzendill could be rendered into English as "bug-dill" (a reference to the foul smell of unripe coriander; cf. the suggestion that coriander itself derives from a Greek word for bedbug), for which reason I expect it was a general term (and may still exist in some dialects), even though the only place I can find it used is in reference works from two- and three-hundred years ago.

Kaliander is a southwestern Upper German dialectal variant of Koriander; Koliander is another Upper German dialectal variant. Kalanner and Klanner are northeastern (Low) German dialectal variants.

Wanzenkraut, Wanzenkümmel, Schwindelkorn and Schwindelkraut often (and in some cases primarily) refer(red) to other plants, when used at all. - -sche (discuss) 22:58, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I conclude that the yield of valid terms is relatively high, but not suitable for fully automated population of a translation table.

This raises the question of whether we have a suitable home for the large-scale import of these tables or their data. The table template could be Luacized to conform to our language-name display and the terms should be wrapped in {{t}} or {{l}}. The talk page for the Translingual entry is a possibility. Another approach would be for me to process the table into language-specific lists of vernacular names with the associated taxonomic name and English name(s) (if any) for each non-English language. Each such list would make a subpage (possibly with subpages) of the corresponding requested entries page.

It is a shame that we do not allow translation tables on Translingual entries as they would be a resource to both Wikispecies and Wikipedia. Both of them are a greater linguistic resource (ie, etymologies from WP; translations from both, but esp Wikispecies) to us than we are to them. DCDuring TALK 23:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Translations tables exist in translingual entries (de facto), whether they're supposed to be there or not (de jure).

I wouldn't (automatedly) populate translations tables with vernacular names from Wikispecies; too many of the vernacular names Wikispecies provides are too obsolete or rare to merit mention in a trans table, IMO; others are polysemous and more often reference another plant; others are limited to "dialects" (which we sometimes treat as separate languages, as in the case of Alemannic German and Low German); others don't meet CFI.

Automatedly importing the data into the Transwiki namespace or onto talk pages seems like a reasonable idea. - -sche (discuss) 00:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this entry is at all typical, especially the German section, which contained more terms in one language than I'd ever seen in a Wikispecies entry. But I thought it might illustrate in a compact form some of the range of problems that we might face in trying to use this.

That a term doesn't make a good translation doesn't mean we shouldn't have it (Remember our slogan!).

I don't think the transwiki process is right because we are only interested in a portion of the entries. The transwikied pages would languish, each page typically needing attention from multiple translators. I was thinking of using Perl or Python to extract from the wikispecies XML dump (smaller than enwikt's) just the page name and the table of vernacular names. That in turn could be processed into lists by language or language code. {{VN}} has fewer than 400 of them, some of which may not be used in entries. Then I could eliminate the names that already have definitions in the appropriate L2 that contain the taxonomic name. That would leave two lists: redlinked vernacular names and blue-linked ones that didn't include the taxonomic name.

I suppose that I could just put the language lists in my own user space. That won't risk upsetting anyone. And I could have links to the language-specific redlink pages from the entry request pages. The blue-linked ones raise definition style questions.

Thanks especially for the specific analysis of the German terms. Any further thoughts would be appreciated. I will move this to my own talk page unless you object.

Also, I have not forgotten about the US native species-native languages notion, but I don't have any good lists. I was a little disappointed in the ethnobotany works that I found. I was also unaware of how many of the languages are extinct and have insufficient records to support species/genus-specific translations. And there are the migrations that have moved tribes into environments with a completely different set of species. DCDuring TALK 01:32, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

re "Remember our slogan": Of course; to be clear, I agree that we should have entries for any of the terms which are attested. In this case, that's many of them, though the dialectal terms and the various parsley circumlocutions are iffy, and one would have to do a careful search to see which senses of the polysemous terms meet CFI.

I should work some more on Native American plant names myself. I started adding some terms for Novemberish plants about a week ago, but quickly got distracted.

You could ask in the BP (or GP?) whether others would mind the vernacular name data being imported onto terms' talk pages. Wherever the info ends up, I do think it'll be useful. - -sche (discuss) 02:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I can follow the example of others who have pages and pages of such lists in user pages. If it subsequently seems there should be another location, that'll be fine. For now, I will keep the one example in principal namespace and see if it gets any comments while I work on the technical side. At least there can be a home for whatever I'm able to extract. Some of Pengo's somewhat similar subpages (specific epithets) have been around for years already.

Thanks again. DCDuring TALK 03:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Reindeer

Hi there. The reindeer is Rangifer tarandus but the Latin for reindeer is tarandrus (with an extra "r"). Do we define tarandus as a spelling mistake? SemperBlotto (talk) 19:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that. But Ancient Greek τάρανδος (tárandos, “reindeer”) must be the actual source of the epithet. I wonder where the r came from in Latin. Did the Romans (Pliny? a scribe?) just construe it to be like ανδρος (andros, “man”)? DCDuring TALK 21:06, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

inflected forms of lemmas

re: “something to facilitate searches for all inflected forms of a lemma” Hello DCDuring. You may be interested in the work I've done since you asked for “something to facilitate searches for all inflected forms of a lemma, using our inflection tables” in WT:RFV#auroleus, q.v. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 22:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I was reading a little about Lua today. If I understand it correctly, it would seem that a Lua table could contain information on all the inflected forms for a given term in a given language that should be searched for (given the nominative singular/1st person present indicative singular), a stem [if necessary], and the inflection category) and a Lua module could construct the search string (given the appropriate input and table).

Even my template skills are poor. I've not done a thing about Lua except the reading. So my inference may be wrong and I have no ability to implement successfully. It might be a Grease Pit question, but Achilles stills sulks (lurks?). DCDuring TALK 19:13, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the notice to Wiktionary:News for editors. I'm afraid that I don't know the first thing about Lua. Does what you've read suggest that the function of the templates I've recently created could more easily be fulfilled by something "Luacised"? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it could be much more easily generalized, if I understand how it works correctly. This is a link to a tutorial. mw:Extension:Scribunto has some information on how it is used on wikis and links to reference manuals. Category:Modules has some of the stuff that's been done here using Lua. You may find someone who can help if they have worked on Latin or other modules. I haven't figured out a way for it to help with what I've been doing on Translingual entries, whereas Perl and/or Python can help. I just ran across an interview with the guys who developed Lua, which I read to help me assess its utility. That's pretty much all I know, except that Lua works by having a Lua module called by a template. Presumably Special:WhatLinksHere would show which templates called a given module. Another thing would be to look at some of the WT:GP discussions that mention Lua. DCDuring TALK 22:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've added to my user page a permanent link to your post so I can peruse all those links at some point in the future. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 18:00, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

-caine et al

Thanks for filling out the page for the suffix and the rest of those entries. I had noticed the category didn't exist but didn't know how to create it. — E | talk 22:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I started out skeptical of its validity, but became a convert as I looked into it. There are more of them around. You can do a searchbox search for "*caine" to find more. They need {{suffix}} or {{confix}} (which should be in the Etymology section) to automatically categorize and then show up in derived terms at [[-caine]]. BTW, cocaine and probably eucaine don't derive that way. There may be more exceptions. I'm not sure about novocaine, for example. DCDuring TALK 22:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I've added eucaine. Webster's says novocaine is novo- cocaine, but eucaine from German, wherein it was formed by confixing eu- -caine. There's probably no hard and fast One Right Answer for any of these, I'm guessing. — E | talk 23:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Certainly not. It is occasionally necessary to remove items in the affix categories because the historical (diachronic) etymology is completely inconsistent with the claimed morphological (synchronic) derivation. DCDuring TALK 23:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

How do you suggest to move forward in this instance? You're the better judge of how strict/lax Wiktionary is w/r/t categorizing affixes. — E | talk 23:35, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If the formation was in German, then I would say it should not categorize in English. But User:Leasnam always puts in "Equivalent to ..." so it does categorize in English. There is no consensus. It won't kill me to see it categorized in English, especially if we don't even have the German entry. DCDuring TALK 23:43, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll probably leave things the way they are, then. Less work. — E | talk 23:45, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

"Serranus scriba"

I stumbled into a real brain-bender while going through the missing taxnames cats: Linnaeus described Perca scriba in 1758, which is now in the genus Serranus. It's a fish called the Painted Comber. He also described Perca marina, which, after going through the description and the source(s) he cited therein, later scientists determined was a synonym for Perca scriba. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that Linnaeus' Perca marina was describing the rosefish- probably based on location: Linnaeus said Perca marina was found in Norway, and Serranus scriba apparently never makes it north of the English channel. The rosefish is actually what was described in 1772 by someone else as Perca norvegica. Since the rosefish itself is apparently a good match for the genus Sebastes, this became Sebastes marinus.

Our entries for rosefish and synonyms such as Rotbarsch gave the taxonomic name as Serranus scriba and gave Sebastus marinus as a synonym. Following the links, I saw that Wikispecies agreed that Sebastus marinus was an obsolete synonym for Serranus scriba, but Wikipedia said that the rosefish was Sebastes norvegicus and Serranus scriba was a completely different fish. It was only after following references to try and figure out which was correct that I finally realized that both were, and in fact were in complete agreement. The final score, as far as I can figure:

1. Serranus scriba=Sebastes marinus=Perca marina=Perca scriba=Painted comber
2. Sebastes norvegica=Perca norvegica=Rosefish

• #1<>#2

I figured you might look at the edit histories and wonder what on earth I was thinking, so I thought I should lay it out for you to avoid misunderstanding. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:17, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I might have wondered. But generally I take more of a lexicographer's view: if the usage is confused, we need to reflect the confusion. But you are saying that, in this case, the usage is not terribly confused, once we take Linnaeus off his pedestal for this point. Thanks for straightening it out. You have a better background and therefore better judgment than I on this kind of thing. I sometimes use WoRMS, Fishbase, etc. to get a read on this kind of thing. Fishbase I can't give you a direct link to what they say about "rosefish". Note the category "market"! They make it look like species:Helicolenus dactylopterus is another kind of rosefish, the blackbelly rosefish. There is so much need to clarify this kind of thing. DCDuring TALK 05:48, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I ran into another conundrum with the same species: most English sources tend to say bergylt is Sebastes norvegicus, but Wikipedia redirects it to w:Ballan wrasse, which is apparently berggylt in Norwegian and berggylta in Swedish. I'm trying to track down anything that would clarify whether the Ballan wrasse usage extends to actual English and not just someone going by the specific epithet (the species is Labrus bergylta) or the other languages from whence the term presumably originated. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:04, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Spelling pedantry

Regarding that huge new page of taxonomy: it's "occurrences", not "occurences"! Equinox ◑ 19:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

How humiliating. DCDuring TALK 20:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I thought we weren't a prescriptive dictionary. --WikiTiki89 20:20, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Only among ourselves are we. DCDuring TALK 20:23, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

We evidently are, though — like all dictionaries. We might list definately as a common misspelling but I doubt anyone (?) would want to use it as part of a definition of another word. Equinox ◑ 20:24, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Which reminds me. Isn't it time we starting doing runs to identify common misspellings in all of our definiens? I'd like to go beyond that to look at all singleton occurrences(!!!) of uncapitalized words in our definiens, many of which are likely misspellings, especially those that are not English headwords. How long would it take to get a run of all such singletons and the entry/L2 in which they occur from the XML dump on a typical home PC using Perl or similar? Hours? Minutes? Days? Once we do that we could go on to work on words that have only rare, archaic, and obsolete senses etc. DCDuring TALK 20:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

olinguito as "newly identified"

I'm not sure that "newly identified" is lexically useful. It is true as an encyclopedic matter, but it is a fleeting characteristic. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:25, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

New mammal identifications are rare. We can revise this when the next one is identified, sometime in the next decade or two. Almost all references to anything not part of everyday experience could be considered encyclopedic, but not by me. Anything terse that serves to identify the referent and place it in context, as for translations, seems highly pertinent, as do pictures. We have more encyclopedic content in some etymology sections, but consider it sacrosanct because word mavens and linguists find it so fascinating. DCDuring TALK 13:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with bd2412. "newly identified" does not help define the word. --WikiTiki89 13:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

It does for now, while folks need some confirmation that the word is connected to the highly topical animal. By the time it is not useful lexical information, the entry will hardly ever (never ?) be visited by anyone.

I really thing that we need a more concrete understanding of the actual cash value of a dictionary entry. And also that we take advantage of the fact that the value of our entries lies more in their timeliness and revisability than in the supposedly timeless truths that we might imagine them to contain. DCDuring TALK 13:50, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

How about "identified in 2013"? That will still be as correct in a century as it is today, and the 2013 reader will immediately understand that as of 2013, it is "newly identified". bd2412 T 15:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

What happened was the publication of the taxonomic description. Presumably the natives were aware of the existence of the animal, though they may have spoken of the olinguito as a "baby" "olingo". I don't know whether anyone wrote of it in any sense before this recent "discovery". "Recently" enabled me to finesse inserting (encyclopedic?) technicalities in the definition. In any event, I don't own the entry. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Also, I don't wanna have to bring this up, but does the English usage of the word satisfy WT:CFI#Spanning at least a year? --WikiTiki89 16:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if it didn't (Besides the scholarly publications, it was in the NY Times, for example), except I'm not sure about the "spanning one year" business. This seems a case where we would want an exception. You could search for it and/or challenge it if you want. I don't particularly care whether we have the entry or not. As a case study of what we choose to include or exclude it would be interesting no matter the outcome or process. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

@Wikitiki: Sorry. I'd forgotten about the previous RfV. I wasn't trying to lead you into an ambush. DCDuring TALK 19:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

{{†temp}}

I don't know if you saw, but I posted a comment a week ago on Template talk:†temp.

Your latest comment at Wiktionary:Grease pit/2013/November#My suggestion does not display as you clearly intended it to.

—Ruakh_TALK 22:45, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not very good at templates, so I just do simplistic things. DCDuring TALK 23:12, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The general problems are:

1. the vast number of wanted pages from relatively inactive user pages and from talk pages of all kinds
2. the large number of wanted templates from somewhere deep in our category template system, probably from ifexists tests as well as from talk pages.

I was thinking we could use some wrapper template for dead templates that takes them completely out of action except possibly for a link to some page which had a listing of deprecated and deleted templates, the date at which deprecated and/or deleted. The names would be available for reuse without wreaking havoc with the talk pages on which they were used. We would still have the problem of template deletion making a hash of entry histories. DCDuring TALK 00:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I had already mentioned the idea of wrapping entire user subpages with 'nowiki' to disable the spurious "wanting" caused by the links. The number pagenames like higgins and frederick that are wanted by 10 or 30 user page lists is large. DCDuring TALK 00:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that linking to a template causes it to be a "wanted template". Transclusions count (including transclusions via redirects, indirect transclusions, labeled-section transclusions, etc.), and if-exists tests probably count, but regular links should not count. —Ruakh_TALK 01:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I partially refute thee thus: I was able to clean up all of the wants on wanted PAGES of {{VL.}} by applying {{†temp}} where {{temp|VL.}} or [[:Template:VL.]] were in the discussion/talk pages — really!

Templates appear in Special:WantedTemplates when transcluded and in Special:WantedPages when merely linked to. I joined the Bugzilla effort to get Special:WantedPages run periodically (at least monthly, I hope) after a hiatus that began in 2009. DCDuring TALK 02:10, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

ὄρχις

I was wondering if you could explain the motivation behind this edit. Mind you, I don't have any particular agreement or disagreement with it; it still seems to work more or less the same. It's simply that I thought {{context}} was meant for definitional qualifiers, while {{a}} was for pronunciational qualifiers. Cheers. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:08, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

We now occasionally (~monthly, I hope) get a run of Special:WantedPages. I have been trying to fill in some of those wants. However, there are many spurious ones. One set is from deleted templates formerly used in Conrad's implementation of {{context}}, which has now been Luacized, though not cleanly. One side effect of the way that modules and templates work is that ifexist-type tests for wiki pages make those pages "wanted" in the sense that they appear on Special:WantedPages. Module:labels, which does the heavy lifting for {{context}} has such a test. Why it should need such a test I don't know. I imagine that it was convenient during the transition. I have been looking for various ways to get rid of the spurious wants. Replacing {{context}} with {{a}} where there is no adverse effect on categorization or appearance is a way that I tried to eliminate {{masculine}} from the listing.

I would be happier if the ifexist tests were eliminated wherever they were not essential. I thought that was part of the point of Luacizaton. However, few share my view of the utility of Special:WantedPages and the desirability of eliminating its spurious inhabitants.

There are other kinds of page wants caused by the current operation of {{context}}, by the topic categorization system, by various kinds of overreaching by template designers, and by the links to unlikely-to-be-created entries like frederick or white house or The from various frequency lists and concordances. SB cleaned out many of the ones from his concordance of Moby Dick, but many Connell's and Ullman's pages generate many useless links. I created {{†temp}} to delink mentions of defunct templates on talk and discussion pages to get at another class of bad wants.

There are also a whole lot of, erm, poorly worded categories that are automatically generated by Module:labels, for which no one seems to want to create the "wanted" category page. There are many cases where I simply have no idea what text would explain the category name.

I'm sure that's more than you wanted to know, but it may bring you up to date on some consequences of our implementation of Luacization. DCDuring TALK 23:57, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I myself have often been accused of over-answering a simple question, but I've never quite understood the critique. It seems to me that more information is generally preferable to less, even if one didn't happen to be looking for the particular info at the time. Based on your explanation I now disagree with your conversion of {{context}} to {{a}}. It seems a bad idea to use an incorrect template in place of an existing correct template simply to clean up a list. I would ask for your consent to undo the edit in question, except that Wikitiki89 has already done so. That being said, I sympathize with your desire to have a useful version of WantedPages, and would like to offer a couple of alternative approaches to that end, if I may. First, the specific problem with ὄρχις lies not in its use of {{context}}, but rather in the unnecessary ifexist in Module:labels. I suspect that all of the context templates have been incorporated into Module:labels/data at this point, and the ifexist can be safely removed. Perhaps you should place a request at the Grease Pit to check on this, and if everything's been migrated into the Lua, to remove the template check. Such an approach would allow all pages using {{context}} and {{label}} to use them with impunity, and would remove spurious results from WantedPages (rather more quickly and easily than by converting them to {{a}} I might add). A more difficult but better still approach would be to simply make your own WantedPages from scratch, bypassing all of inherent flaws in the built-in version altogether. I see that you've been conversing with Ruakh on the topic of dump analysis. I imagine that once you get the hang of doing your own analyses, you could make your own version with the spurious results removed. Mind you, this would be a rather long-term approach, as I'm sure dump analysis isn't as easy as our techno-ninjas make it appear. Truth be told, it's a skill which I need to acquire myself at some point. However, I think it's something that could be done more quickly than trying to coerce Special:WantedPages into giving up something useful. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:54, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

How we got, without a vote and no consensus, from WT:ELE to mandatory use of certain templates, I don't fully understand. How we get "improvements" to our templates that are actually a regression I also don't understand. Editing seems more cumbersome than ever. In any event, I don't especially care about any specific reversion. I do care about overambitious templating or luacizing, coupled with a lack of documentation, indifference to expressed user complaints and other user consequences, and unwillingness to promptly clean up entries whose formatting didn't fit the new paradigm. Instead of these tasks being done, we have the relentless pursuit of the next bright shiny object or doubling down on complexity.

Dump analysis is superior for almost any targeted need. I intend to use it to find unlinked taxonomic names in all of Wiktionary's principal namespace, using the complete set of taxonomic-name headwords from Wikispecies, supplemented by some from Wiktionary and from WP. (Perl looks like it might be somewhat better than Python for the job.)

However, the resources of MW applied to the entire wiki are both more efficient and more effective for the broader and indispensable job of discovering the unexpected from wherever it may materialize. A targeted effort to locate specific flaws in some class of template or module will inevitably be perceived as an attack. There is more chance that the special pages could provide evidence that anyone could use to raise questions, which is way I participated in the Bugzilla complaints about some of them not being run at all since 2009 and none of them being run for some weeks this fall. DCDuring TALK 03:15, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

If you want the templates to be improved, bring it up in the WT:GP or something. Swapping out for the wrong template is not the right way to improve. --WikiTiki89 03:36, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

What was the actual bad consequence of that swap, besides not following the rules?

Anyone who lurks here knows the issue. I'd tired of being berated. DCDuring TALK 04:20, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The bad consequences are if we decide to add customizations to those context tags. --WikiTiki89 04:48, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I fully support the Luacizing. Speaking as someone who is nearly finished switching a population of templates to a few Lua modules, it makes the project easier to maintain, simpler to use, and more flexible and responsive to problems. There are always bugs when a program undergoes a major overhaul, and it's easy to assume that that means the new version is inferior, but that is often a false conclusion. At the moment, there were no problems with the switch you made, but that does not mean it's the right thing to do. The two templates will invariably diverge over time, and people will improve them with the assumption that they are used in the manner for which they are prescribed. Had your switch remained, it almost certainly would have caused problems down the road. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 04:25, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

This problem existed before Lua. Luacizing was supposed to fix it. The problem is it was only partially Luacized due to people complaining about the deletion of the old templates. --WikiTiki89 04:48, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Why are there hundreds and hundreds of content items from {{context}} being tested for (both deleted templates {{frequentative}} and things never templated, eg, {{of a face}})?

Why did so many users lose confidence in the process? Were they just cranky or was the process poor and the implementation worse? And all the time the changes were being wreaked on nearly universal components, ie, those likely to cause maximum disruption and those for which corrections would take weeks to ripple through the queue. DCDuring TALK 05:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

That was the case before Lua. Lua was supposed to fix that, as I just said. --WikiTiki89 05:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I note how selective you are in answering questions. What was the need to delete templates rather than deprecate them?

Evidently the Luacization implementation "plan" was unrealistic. It is not as if there was any effort to lay out what the consequences of implementations would be. The implementation was assumed to be conservative of user habits and of existing formatting as had been the case with many past changes. Instead we got something more reminiscent of the implementation of the categorization system, except with more impact on users. What's worse, the response to the failed elements of implementation is to blame the users. DCDuring TALK 11:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Did I not say that it was poorly executed? If not I meant to. I'm defending the concept of Luacization, not the specific way they did it in this case. --WikiTiki89 14:21, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong AFAICT with Luacizing per se. It's a question of over-complicating the effort and allowing regression (complication, extra keystrokes, etc) from a user PoV. I would much prefer that the messes from the first efforts be cleaned up before the next major luacization efforts are undertaken. Otherwise, not all of the lessons will be learned. DCDuring TALK 18:52, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I have implemented the necessary technical improvements to Module:labels so that it can support all our existing context templates. I have migrated most of the templates, but everything in Category:All context labels needs to be gone through, orphaned, and deleted (or recategorized, some of them are used by other templates) before we can kill the template polling in Module:labels. I've done all I feel like doing on this project, so if you'd like to kill off some of the bad wanted entries, I'll leave the completion to you. Cheers. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:34, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad you felt like doing that! Sometimes other folks, including me, sell something based on benefits that they then fail to deliver, in real life, in government, and in wiki projects. You seem much more realistic than most. underpromise and overdeliver is a good proverb.

In order to remove items from Wantedpages and Wantedtemplates all I need to do is work on the linked items that are doing the wanting. As I understand it, that does not cover their possible use in templates, some of which may still be in use, say, the category templates. Would it make sense to do a bot run to list all the named items in all templates? Or all the ifexist uses? Someone could evaluate whether the uses were the best way of accomplishing whatever the objective. I would volunteer but my understanding of templates is not so good. Who would have a valuable opinion on this? Who could I beg to do this if it is worthwhile? DCDuring TALK 15:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

My suggestion is that we should try and kill the ifexist part of Module:labels. Not only would this remove a lot of bunk wanted entries, but it would also improve performance site-wide. The tricky part's already been done for this project, namely tracking down all the templates which render the ifexist necessary. What's left is the tedious task of confirming that whatever orphaned templates from Category:All context labels are in fact orphaned, and then having them deleted. This doesn't require much in the way of template expertise. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:18, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

What should happen as users add labels into entries that are not in the data module? Shouldn't there be yet another maintenance category for the page which then "wants" the template? That would serve to speed the process of updating the data module by providing an up-to-date indication of problem pages. Is there any limit to how big the module can be? I notice that trying to orphan the labels (as opposed to seeing whether they are orphaned) requires more knowledge of the total list of topical categories than I care to develop to avoid creating extra labels. Who is going to be doing that on a regular basis? Alternatively, how can the task be made so easy that someone like me would be willing to chip away at it from time to time, ie, on topics that I know and care about? What existing process can be used? I raise this now because whatever would make ongoing maintenance easier would also make this process easier.

I'll take another run at this and see if I can answer some of my questions myself. DCDuring TALK 13:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I have been thinking about how a Lua module could express its desires in a healthier way than bringing them up on WantedPages. Truth be told, I don't yet have a final answer, as I don't fully understand the workings of Lua on Mediawiki just yet, but I have some initial ideas that I'm kicking around at the moment. The best solution I've yet come up with is to create a category Category:Entries that use a context label not in labels/data or something. Such an approach would work well for Module:Quotations, but is probably less than ideal for Module:labels. As for the non-orphaned templates, honestly, I wouldn't worry about them yet. If we can just get the orphaned templates deleted, that will make it immensely easier to see what remains, and formulate an approach to finishing the job. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 18:42, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

OK. I've got a dump to work on a bit. DCDuring TALK 19:10, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

re numbered Pronunciation headers

Hi DCDuring. Thank you for correcting my formatting error. However, Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV corrected such a formatting error in the opposite way. Which is the correct format? It seems I can't win with KassadBot! — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I haven't done this kind of "correction" very often. EP was/is? a big advocate of Pronunciation n headers. I do recollect that there is Category:Entries with Pronunciation n headers, a large subcategory of Latin entries in Category:Entries with level or structure problems. I hope that this will lead to Kassadbot leaving the entry alone. An alternative approach is to merge both pronunciation sections and put them in the canonical location. Let's try the following:

1. Let's see what Kassadbot does. If nothing then we are OK and can discuss the matter with Ungoliant, if necessary.
2. If Kassadbot kicks it out again, then let's try adding Category:Entries with Pronunciation n headers as a hard category.
3. If Kassadbot kicks it out, perhaps we can discuss with Liliana.

At any point that someone wants to bring it to the Beer Parlor, we can. In the meantime, you could try WT:ALA. If you'd like you could bring it up with Ungoliant, EP, and/or Liliana, but I'd like to see if we know how Kassadbot actually behaves first, if possible. I remember Liliana having suggested that she didn't like to mess with the bot, not understanding it fully (having inherited it from the late Bob Ullmann, I believe), but she may be more comfortable with it now. Ullmann and EP had a long-standing debate about this with the special category being the result. DCDuring TALK 17:37, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I note that ocris has not been flagged by Kassadbot (which has been running) over the past 12 days. DCDuring TALK 14:11, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the historical context to this. Since Kassadbot hasn't done anything to ocris, I guess we can do № 1; moreover, since Ungoliant hasn't touched the entry either, it's probably unnecessary to discuss it with him/her. I'll revert his/her miscorrection now; we'll see if he/she says or does anything in response. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 18:57, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Kassadbot complained again; I'll try № 2 — adding Category:Entries with Pronunciation n headers… — I.S.M.E.T.A. 23:51, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Template:topcatdescdefault

On Category:fro:Fish, it says "See fro:fish" (not "See fish"). Mglovesfun (talk) 13:57, 29 December 2013 (UTC)