User talk:Stardsen

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, welcome to Wiktionary, and thank you for your contribution so far. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• How to edit a page is a concise list of technical guidelines to the wiki format we use here: how to, for example, make text boldfaced or create hyperlinks. Feel free to practice in the sandbox. If you would like a slower introduction we have a short tutorial.
• Entry layout explained (ELE) is a detailed policy documenting how Wiktionary pages should be formatted. All entries should conform to this standard, the easiest way to do this is to copy exactly an existing page for a similar word.
• Our Criteria for inclusion (CFI) define exactly which words Wiktionary is interested in including. There is also a list of things that Wiktionary is not for a higher level overview.
• The FAQ aims to answer most of your remaining questions, and there are several help pages that you can browse for more information.
• We have discussion rooms in which you can ask any question about Wiktionary or its entries, a glossary of our technical jargon, and some hints for dealing with the more common communication issues.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wiktionarian! If you have any questions, bring them to the Wiktionary:Information desk, or ask me on my talk page. If you do so, please sign your posts with four tildes: ~~~~ which automatically produces your username and the current date and time.

Again, welcome! Mglovesfun (talk) 11:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Translations

Hi! I noticed you've been adding translation sections to Dutch words. We don't do that on Wiktionary, only English entries have translations. Could you please remove the ones you added? Thank you! —CodeCat 17:20, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and all the 'see also' terms you added aren't really necessary, either. We have categories for such things, like Category:Dutch pronominal adverbs. —CodeCat 17:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Old Saxon spelling

There is currently a discussion on the normalisation of spellings of old languages such as Old Saxon: WT:BP#Normalised spellings of ancient languages. It seems that the consensus is that for such languages, the spelling may be normalised/standardised, and any other spellings may be treated as alternative spellings. This means that you won't need to add such alternative spellings to pages like *gebaną. The spelling with just v is enough. —CodeCat 13:47, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Please read the discussion and the section on WT:AOSX about orthographical normalisation, before you continue adding Old Saxon words. Thank you. —CodeCat 18:18, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Articles in Old Saxon

Old Saxon didn't have articles yet, it only had a demonstrative determiner which later came to be used as a definite article. —CodeCat 14:36, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Mistakes

Please pay closer attention to the information you copy from other articles. Quite a lot of your Old Saxon entries have incorrect languages and pronunciation, and your use of templates is very inconsistent as well, which others then have to fix. —CodeCat 18:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Unattested Old Saxon terms

On Wiktionary, we require that all terms have attestations in real texts showing them in use. See WT:CFI. Several terms that you've added recently, such as threskan, fōlian and hullian, are not found in any Old Saxon texts according to my sources, and so they've been submitted for verification at WT:RFV (down the bottom of the page). I invite you to participate in the discussion there and to provide attestations for those terms, or they will be deleted. I would also like to ask that you check this yourself before adding terms, as it gives other editors more work to have to verify your terms and it may eventually lead to a block from Wiktionary if other editors have to check on your work too often. I also notice you've not replied to any of my previous messages... I strongly encourage you to reply, as our work on Wiktionary depends heavily on discussion. —CodeCat 22:38, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

They were shown on Proto-Germanic pages, if you want to delete the pages, do so. User:Stardsen 00:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't want to delete the pages... it's just that they don't meet our requirements. It would be against the rules to keep them. But I have something that may help. If you know some German, then maybe Gerhard Köbler's Old Saxon dictionary is useful to you. As far as Old Saxon terms go it is very complete, and it also notes related terms in other languages, and even Germanic etymologies (although they are not always entirely correct). It also shows when a word is not attested: a * before a word means that the word hasn't been found at all in any Old Saxon text, while a * after a word means that the word shown hasn't been found, but inflected forms of that word have been (for example, the infinitive might not be attested but the past tense could be). Terms with * before them in Köbler's dictionary are not allowed on Wiktionary, but terms with * after them are ok. The three terms I mentioned all have a * before them, though. Do note, though, that his dictionary uses both macrons (ō) and circumflex accents (ô) to mark long vowels. I'm not quite sure why he does that, but in any case, on Wiktionary we only use macrons (so ō, not ô). —CodeCat 22:54, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you CodeCat, I will be careful with * before words. User:Stardsen 00:58, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

ana-

Is this Old English or Old Saxon you've added here, because it's a mix of the two. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:41, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Old Saxon plurals?

I saw you've been adding plural forms to Old Saxon nouns. I'm wondering though which plural form it is. Most nouns have 3 or 4 different plural forms. —CodeCat 14:04, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

tebrekan

You added faran and glidan on the page? —CodeCat 13:41, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

gast

You added the wrong word again... —CodeCat 21:17, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:osx /script

Hello, it was as far as I can tell because of all the spaces you put in {{cardinalbox}} that this happened. The reason is that template names can have spaces in them, but not as the first or last character. So [[Template:osx]] and [[Template:osx ]], the server treats them both as {{osx}}. But not so for {{osx/script}} and {{osx /script}} as the space is not the final character here! Mglovesfun (talk) 16:46, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't the server also strip spaces from the arguments of templates? —CodeCat 17:23, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused too! I'm not 100% sure I'm right but whatever I did, I seem to have fixed it! Mglovesfun (talk) 21:10, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Old Saxon

I appreciate that copying over from Old English entries is a good practice (like I do with Anglo-Norman/Old French) but please check a little harder that you change the header to Old Saxon from Old English. Thank you, Mglovesfun (talk) 09:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Old Saxon io

I noticed you've been marking the i in io as long. Why? —CodeCat 12:40, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Format

There is a long-standing inconsistency in our prescribed (See WT:ELE.) structure of headings. For single-etymology L2 sections, the PoS headers are at level 3. For multiple-etymology L2 sections, the PoS headers are at level 4, with corresponding adjustments to subordinate headings. Most of us have internalized this and live with the peculiar logic. Perhaps you could, too. DCDuring TALK 16:06, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Etymologies

When adding etymologies, could you please use the proper etymology templates instead of writing out the words manually like you did at helsith? We have a set of templates such as {{compound}}, {{prefix}} and {{suffix}} for these situations. Could you also add them to the entries you created already? Thank you! —CodeCat 21:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

bigiotan

Hi, could you fix up the entry please, and others like it? The pronunciation isn't right and the template has parameters that don't exist. Thank you! —CodeCat 20:31, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Please discuss some issues that me and other editors are having with your edits

It is really great that you are adding so many new Old Saxon entries. For that I have nothing but praise, it is very helpful. But me and a few other editors have expressed concern that there are still some mistakes in your edits that need fixing. We can fix the occasional mistake, everyone makes them of course. But you are making edits so fast that they are piling up and it is very hard for is to keep up; and that means that while you are making new entries, other editors have to spend a lot of time to "babysit" your edits and check them, while we would rather be doing something else. Apparently, you have copied most of your entries from existing Old English entries. While this is fine, you need to be careful that you don't make any false assumptions about the meanings of certain words, their pronunciations, and also about the templates they use. Quite often (moreso before than now, thankfully), you have left part of the original Old English entry in the Old Saxon entry, which just seems sloppy. On some occasions you have also copied over mistakes that were also present in the original Old English entry. Not all of our entries are up to standards yet, so you can't assume that what you copy is correct. Always check and fix up what you copy first! (And if you are feeling generous, you could fix up the original entry you copied from too. :) )

Judging from your talk page, you have received several messages about this in the past, but you have not responded to them at all, leaving us to guess at your intentions. I have noticed that you have fixed some entries when requested, but you have not fixed any mistakes you made before that, and many of your earlier edits still need to be fixed. This gives the impression that you are not willing to stop and talk to discuss problems, and instead just cruise on without regard to the rest of the editing community on Wiktionary, which is rather worrying.

User:Ruakh suggested that we should undo most of your edits and even that you should be blocked. But your edits are gradually improving, and the entries you create are invaluable despite the mistakes they still contain, so I would rather not block you. So, after some discussion we came up with (hopefully) a better solution. We would like it if you could stop creating any more entries for now, and focus first on correcting earlier mistakes. Those mistakes include at least the following:

• Pronunciations. There is little known about how Old Saxon was actually pronounced. And even then, some of the pronunciations you have added are clearly wrong, such as the one you added to bigiotan (which you since removed, thank you!). So, to err on the side of caution, I would ask you to remove all pronunciations from the entries you have created.
• Etymologies. Some of the older entries you created still have etymologies written in plain text, rather than templates. The templates are important, because they add the entry to the appropriate categories, and also help us keep track of things and format things consistently. So I would ask you to fix the etymologies of all entries you created, so that the etymologies use {{compound}}, {{prefix}}, {{suffix}}, {{etyl}} and {{proto}}. Please make sure to check that you used the correct language code when using those templates, so that the entry does not end up in the categories of another language. Please also use {{term}} to link to cognates in other languages, again with the proper language codes. Some examples of incorrect etymologies you created are fiur, heldor, helligithwing.
• Alternative spellings and alternative forms. There is a difference between {{alternative spelling of}} and {{alternative form of}}, although with ancient languages it is hard to tell at times. An alternative spelling would be, for example, c instead of k, or ƀ instead of v. We call something an alternative form when we have reason to suspect that the difference in the spelling reflects an actual difference in pronunciation. For example gibarion and gibarian are not just alternative spellings, because they have an extra "i" to indicate an extra sound that was not present in the pronunciation of the word when it was written as gibaron. So again I would ask you to check, and if necessary fix, any entries in Category:Old Saxon alternative forms that are marked as "alternative spelling". If you are not sure if something is an alternative spelling or an alternative form, alternative form is a safer bet, as all alternative spellings are always alternative forms (but not all alternative forms are alternative spellings). One final note: when listing possible alternative spellings in the main entry, the heading should always be "alternative forms", even for alternative spellings.
• Headword-line templates. This is a point where it seems you have copied information from Old English entries without fully understanding how it works. The template {{ang-verb}}, which is used to create the headword lines of Old English verbs, has a set of parameters that do not exist in the {{osx-verb}} template. In fact, the only parameter that {{osx-verb}} has is the head= parameter. So I would ask you to fix those templates in entries so that they only use head=, not type= or class= or any other parameters. This includes bigiotan (which you fixed) but also bifithan where head= is missing. Also, if the headword is the same as the name of the entry, then you should not add head=.
• Macrons in headword lines. I noticed that in some entries you created in the past, you added macrons to the diphthong "io" (and maybe "iu" too). In Old English, there is a difference between ēo and eo, but this difference does not exist in Old Saxon, so macrons are not normally placed on that diphthong. Could you remove it in the entries where you added it?

Ruakh and I have agreed to allow you to fix these mistakes before taking any measures against you. So please take care of them before creating anymore entries. You can find a list of all of your edits at Special:Contributions/Stardsen. It would probably be easiest to go all the way to the end of that list (it has several pages) and fix your oldest edits first, as your newer entries are generally better and have less mistakes than your older ones. This will take a while to fix, unfortunately, but if you don't do it, we will have to, which doesn't quite seem fair. Once you have corrected all the entries, please let me or Ruakh know on our talk pages so we can review it. Until then, please don't create anymore entries. —CodeCat 21:35, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah it is obvious that I have still a lot to learn with templates, for the moment I will try to fix my older entries and I began to delete all the pronuntiations, I also shall fix the meanings of words but the only dictionary I have of Old Saxon is written in German so sometimes the meaning from German to English is a bit different... but still I shall clear it. I also have to learn about alternative spellings and forms, thank you for letting me fix them. User:Stardsen 00:05, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

You can always ask in WT:GP if you have any questions or problems with templates, or ask another editor. I agree that they can be confusing, but you can actually go to the template and click edit to see what is 'inside' it. That might help you understand a bit better how that template works (if you understand how template code works in general). The template {{osx-verb}} is fairly simple, so if you are interested in learning how templates work (which is always a useful skill around here!), then you can start there. —CodeCat 22:14, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the help I think it will help me :). User:Stardsen 00:05, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

sluta

Did it really mean "to use" in Old Frisian? —CodeCat 20:26, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

"Cognotates"

"Cognotates" is not a word. —Ruakh_TALK 15:42, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Etymology headers.

When you add an etymology, be sure to add an ===Etymology=== header. —Ruakh_TALK 15:43, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

injury

FYI:

• {{t-}} means that the foreign-language Wiktionary exists, but doesn't have the appropriate entry. {{tø}} means that the foreign-language Wiktionary doesn't exist (yet). There's no Old Saxon Wiktionary, so we always use {{tø|osx|...}}, never {{t-|osx|...}}.
• the xs= parameter is no longer used, and should not be specified.

—Ruakh_TALK 16:14, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Attestations

I hope you're aware that Old Dutch is not attested very well, and often in very inconsistent spelling. So make sure that you know that the word is attested (just seeing it mentioned in an etymology isn't enough) before you add it. —CodeCat 18:35, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Language codes in links

When you link to other terms using {{term}}, can you please remember to include the language code? Like this: diff —CodeCat 23:32, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Category:Entries with level or structure problems

As I write this there were several Old Saxon entries of yours that are on the list. You seem to have the habit of putting PoS headers at level 4 when there is only one Etymology. That gets flagged as non-compliant with WT:ELE, our formatting standards. DCDuring TALK 21:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

ginathari

The suffix and the header say that it is a noun, but the definition is an adjective? —CodeCat 15:55, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Merciful can be either an adjective or a noun. --Stardsen (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

True, but it confused me, so it would probably confuse others too. —CodeCat 16:03, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

It's ok I put someone merciful instead of merciful only. --Stardsen (talk) 16:04, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

wiþquethan

Are there really texts in Old Saxon that use the letter þ? Also, even if there are, why did they use þ for one th but not the other? wiþqueþan seems more likely... —CodeCat 20:54, 21 January 2013 (UTC)