Uncle G

Notices
According to Wonderfool, I am Number 9. ☺
If you wish to discuss the content of an article, please do so on that article's own talk page. That's one of the things that they are there for.
Yes, I am an administrator. If you think that I've blocked you wrongly, please use Special:Emailuser/Uncle G. If you have not been blocked, please do not use that. Use a talk page.

Moving dictionaries from the encyclopaedia to the dictionary

Very good work, but I would rather that you didn't enter stubs. The primary purpose of this project is to provide definitions. If you enter stubs then we see blue links where there should be red ones, so we don't generate a proper entry. SemperBlotto 08:07, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

On second thoughts, what you are doing is useful - keep it up. One of us will follow you, adding definitions; then translations, pronunciations etc. If you know Greek, it would be good if you could add etymology sections (see marathon for an example). Cheers. SemperBlotto 10:01, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• (I knew that this would come up. ☺) In case you weren't aware, I'm actually transwikiing vast lists of what are basically dictionary definitions (Wikipedia:Lists of English words of international origin) that are in Wikipedia. Follow the Wikipedia links from the categories to see some of the lists and the process. I decided that the bare minimum of information ("word X has Greek roots") that there was inherent in the categorization warranted the stub, and I didn't really want to clutter Wiktionary with a "list of" article when categories are the ideal mechanism for this sort of thing in Wiktionary, and one might as well do the right thing straight off. I was rather hoping that someone would follow me at Special:Newpages and flesh out the stubs. I might go back over the stubs once I've done the main task. But there are a lot of words yet to go, and I'd like to concentrate upon one thing at a time and get the transfer complete first. If it helps with definitions, please note that most of the stubs actually have corresponding Wikipedia entries, from which it should be relatively easy to derive at least the beginning of a dictionary definition. Uncle G 10:48, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Singular please, not plural

• We like to have singular definitions for the most part - rendzina not rendzinas. It is OK if the plural is the more usual (adenoids) or it the plural has a different meaning (beongings). Cheers. SemperBlotto 12:06, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I missed those. I'm working from the original Wikpedia article names. I've already caught some of the name disambiguations (such as Lei (Hawaiian)), but I didn't fix the number. Uncle G 12:35, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• One more moan. Could you not add a {{wikipedia}} template when there isn't a Wikipedia article (rendzina etc) - it is just confusing. SemperBlotto 12:06, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • This is just pass one. In pass one all I have to hand is the red/blue link status as in Wiktionary. In pass two, I was planning to go back over the lists as per the red/blue link status as in Wikipedia and ensure that all of the interwiki links were right. Uncle G 12:35, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Adding categories

• When the server gets slow, the Categories box doesn't appear at the bottom of the article when I save. But when I go in to re-edit, I see that it's there in the wiki. Should I not worry about this? Will it appear eventually? Cam 16:20, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Never mind, looks like I needed a blank line between it and the language link above it, cheers Cam 16:24, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

stop your bot now

• Dear Sir, your bot has not been marked as a bot. You are overwhelming the recent changes list, and your automated modifications are dubious. --Connel MacKenzie 02:45, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Er ... what bot? Did you not read the rest of this page before adding to it? Uncle G 02:50, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • My apologies. I think I see now. Sorry for the interruption. --Connel MacKenzie 03:18, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • That's all right. I suppose that I should be flattered that little old me, typing in articles longhand, was mistaken for a 'bot. ☺ Uncle G 17:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I guess my main complaint is the same as SemperBlotto first indicated. Stubs suck. Red links are better, as we know then which are undefined, without wading through the stub category. Are you planning on adding definitions of entries you are adding? Perhaps after every 100 or so words, stop and clear off as much of the stubs list as you can? Or after each language, then go back and clear off the stubs list from definitions on Wikipedia? It just seems quite wrong to me to blitz so many words that are known to be null entries, with no end in sight. --Connel MacKenzie 03:25, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Stubs suck. — Yes, but as I said then, there are two mitigating factors here. First: There is some information in the articles: the etymological information inherent in the category information. I'm not adding totally empty articles. Second: Most of these articles have corresponding Wikipedia articles. I was going to add {{wikipedia}} to them all in pass 1, but after talking to SemperBlotto I've decided to add the interwiki links in the second pass. (But you can still check Wikipedia before I get around to that, now that you know that there is a correspondence.) Uncle G 17:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • 1st: The etymological infomarion on its own is essentially worthless. --Connel MacKenzie 19:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • That's false as it stands, and, moreover, as I said, the etymological information wasn't on its own. As I've pointed out to you before, there are parallel Wikipedia articles. Uncle G 20:53, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
        • 2nd: This is not Wikipedia. This is Wiktionary. Having links that should be red be blue is bad...often the term will not be definied if it appears the entry already exists. --Connel MacKenzie 19:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • False. See what SemperBlotto wrote above. Uncle G 20:53, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
            • Oh no, you mean this IS Wikipedia? --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • Are you planning on adding definitions of entries you are adding? — I'm planning on further passes. But I want to complete each phase before I go on to the next. I don't want to be halfway through multiple things concurrently. (It's bad enough that that is having to be the situation at Wikipedia.) And pass 1 involves simple excision of the lists of words from Wikipedia, and the creation and population of the corresponding etymological classification categories in Wiktionary. Pass 2 will be the links from the Wiktionary articles to the Wikipedia ones, and vice versa. As I said before, after those passes have been done I might perform a third pass to flesh things out where I can. Uncle G 17:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • So you are saying you don't intend to add any of the definitions!? --Connel MacKenzie 19:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • I'm saying what I actually write. Try reading it. Uncle G 20:53, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
            • The words "might perform a third pass" do not instill confidence. The phrase "where I can" in addition to carrying a poor connotation, is too subjective. --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • It just seems quite wrong to me to blitz so many words that are known to be null entries, with no end in sight. — We'll there are definitions, of sorts, in the dictionaries that I'm moving from Wikipedia. They are in the main very poor, though, and I'm not incorporating them. SemperBlotto, working from scratch using simply the actual Wikipedia articles for the individual words as references, is producing definitions that are in a lot of cases far superior to the definitions in the Wikipedia dictionaries. And there is actually an end in sight. If you follow the hyperlink that I gave before, to SemperBlotto, you'll see what is tantamount to a progress map. If you follow the hyperlinks from there to the remaining word lists yet to be dealt with, you should get some idea of the number of words that are left to categorize. Uncle G 17:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Cramming a couple thousand null entries is not helpful. My personal opinion is that you would be better off doing one language at a time, then clearing the stub/rfc list for all the words that have Wikipedia links. Otherwise your activities appear abusive. You've already broken one category, that used to be a "manageable" list of undefined stub entries. That list now is harder to navigate (especially during slow server times) and leaves a bias towards the 1^st half of the alphabet. --Connel MacKenzie 19:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • Rubbish. I've broken no categories. Category:Stub was, and is, perfectly fine, and contains no bias. If you cannot navigate a category that exceeds the 200 entry threshold, then I suggest that you learn how to use category tables of contents. Uncle G 20:53, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
            • Do you have trouble reading then? What part of harder to navigate is unclear? How is the fact that entries after 200 do not appear in category:Section stub on the first view not a bias? --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Are you sure that you are not using a bot? You add or modify articles at an amazing rate. SemperBlotto 16:15, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Absolutely positive. I don't possess the knowledge to write a 'bot, nor the interest to find out to be frank. All of my edits are longhand. I do make use of tabbed browsing and copy & paste, though. ☺ Uncle G 16:23, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I should also mention that whilst it takes relatively little time to paste "[[Category:Romanica language]]" into an edit window and hit "Save", what you aren't seeing is how long it takes to initially load those edit windows in the first place. ☺ Uncle G 16:49, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I achieve no where near the rate you do, when I open a bunch of tabs, and submit them all relatively close together. Please, do, tell us your secret. Perhaps the recent fundraiser helped procure enough new hardware to sustain much higher rates? --Connel MacKenzie 19:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • There is no "secret". I've already explained how I do what I do. Yet again, you do not read. Uncle G 20:53, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • I was trying to be complimentary. Save your invective for Mr. Ass pus. --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Esperanto

• Thanks for your work on the UV template. --Cam 20:23, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • My pleasure. I think that I've covered all of your earlier articles. As long as you continue to tag and categorize any further additions, this is going to work out well. The Wikipedia Esperanto article now has a pointer to the UV list that you are busy populating, by the way, right next to where it discusses the vocabulary of Universala Vortaro. I'm sure that the editors there are quietly grateful for your work. Uncle G 17:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Romanica

• Note that Romanica has, I think, only a handful of users (the inventor Josu Lavin and his acquaintances) and was invented in 2001. I love auxiliary languages, I don't feel a chauvinistic loyalty to Esperanto, and was going to put some Interlingua and Interlingue (Occidental) up here eventually. I'm nervous, though, about possibly opening the site to anyone's constructed language project. If someone puts "glon" and says it's "Altorian", is there an argument against that, if the user is sincere? Maybe it's not a problem, I just wanted to let you know that Romanica is brand new. Cam 17:04, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • The status of Romanica came up for discussion (although no-one actually discussed it) at Wiktionary last year. It's now just come up at Wikipedia. I added an explanation to the Wiktionary Beer Parlour discussion that bears repeating: I categorized Romanica because it helps either way. If the decision is to keep the language, then we now have a nice Romanica Dictionary subset of our all words in all languages dictionary. If the decision is to delete the language, it's now dead easy to find all of the words in that language, and all of the related indices and grammars, and remove them. Furthermore: it also helps to inform the deletion discussion at Wikipedia. Uncle G 13:45, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

-TOC-

What's the point of this? It is built automatically isn't it? SemperBlotto 16:17, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Not if there are fewer than (if memory serves) four sections. __TOC__ forces a table of contents to appear even if there are only three sections. Without it, tags such as {{wikipedia}} float across section dividers, pushing the [edit] hyperlinks over to the left away from the right-hand margin, and generally looking rather untidy (in the default skin, at least). Try a page preview of scally both with and without it, and you'll see what I mean. Uncle G 16:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:French fruit nouns

Man, you can't be serious!!! SemperBlotto 10:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I was quite surprised, too. The category already existed, though. I didn't create it. I'm going through Special:Categories tidying things up a bit, merging duplicate categories, and fixing orphaned categories just like this one. Uncle G 11:17, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• And the very next category in the list after I finish writing the above is "Swedish trees", believe it or not. Uncle G 11:19, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Well, I would rather delete them, especially if they are empty. SemperBlotto 11:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • They wouldn't exist at Special:Categories if they were empty. I'm merging some, such as Category:Topic and Category:Topics for example. Uncle G 11:27, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, an atlernative approach would be to remove the silly ones from the small number of articles that reference them. SemperBlotto 11:36, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • I'm not sure that Category:French fruit nouns is "silly". I'm finding populated per-language categories for animals, colours, numbers, fruits, and suchlike in several languages. And we do have these classifications on the Main Page. Uncle G 11:46, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category talk:English words affected by prescriptivism

Since you seem to be interested in helping clean up categories, I think you might enjoy reading some of the more interesting history on the topic, over at Category talk:English words affected by prescriptivism. Insightful contribution to the discussion is welcome. --Connel MacKenzie 19:20, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In detail, within, are the long-winded explanations of why the prefix "English" is to be avoided in en.wiktionary.org category names (unless of course, the category itself affects the English language.) The latest example is Category:Idioms mistakenly being renamed to Category:English idioms. This is wrong and should stop. As the capitalization furor dies down, we can resume discussions about this on WT:BP, but for now it seems more prudent to wait another week or so. --Connel MacKenzie 21:59, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Acronyms

Hi, a few points on the acronyms you have entered recently (PDQ, MPMD, etc).

1. First of all, these are initialisms, not acronyms (see the usage note under acronym).
2. Please use capital letters in the definition only where required. Words should not be capitalised just because they are capitalised in the abbreviation. So PDQ stands for "pretty damn/darn quick", not "Pretty Damn/Darn Quick".
3. Please wikify the full form so that a definition can be given (as I have done in PDQ).

Thanks. — Paul G 15:28, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I didn't actually know of the existence of the {{initialism}} template. I only found out about the {{acronym}} template by accident. Neither is listed on Wiktionary:Index to templates (which reminds me that the Webster template list needs updating ☺). Uncle G 00:29, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Administratorship

Hello Uncle. Would you be interested in being nominated as an Administrator? You seem to have what it takes. SemperBlotto 14:11, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure? You could have stopped Fizzlepizzle a lot sooner. SemperBlotto 22:40, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• The reason that I hadn't responded yet was that I've been thinking this over. You rather took me by surprise, to be honest. I've not angled for administratorship here or elsewhere (and indeed would have refused a nomination on any of the WikiMedia projects a month ago). I don't have a pressing need for the abilities to protect or to delete pages; and, to Connel MacKenzie's disbelief (no matter how many times I tell him), it's not that hard for me to manually edit multiple articles in rapid succession, so the handy reversion tool doesn't gain me that much. On the other hand, I happened to be around at the same time that Phoumie was and would probably have beaten you to the block had I been able to. So things are not entirely one-sided. In the end, as I see it, it's more up to the rest of you than it is to me. If, after looking at my edit history, you (plural) conclude that you trust me in wielding (or indeed not wielding) the extra tools that administrators are given, then I will gladly accept them. To the question of whether I would accept a nomination made by someone else, my answer (now, after a lot of thought) is "Yes.". To the question of whether I have the intention of nominating myself, my answer is "No.". Uncle G 00:16, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• You need to add a few words to Wiktionary:Administrators just to say that you are willing to accept (if offered). Cheers SemperBlotto 16:49, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WT:ELE

Please do not move etymologies, and pronunciations to after the definition.

Please refer to WT:ELE for the prefered ordering. The first "level" after language is etymology (particularly when there are more than one for a particular spelling.) Pronunciations follow , then the parts of speech come (usually) alphabetically.

Thanks. --Connel MacKenzie 08:24, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• For some reason I was convinced that etymologies and pronunciations went below parts of speech. I've gone back over the articles. Uncle G 00:19, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Etymologies of Plurals

I deleted the etymologies of sexes and fathers because they weren't etymologies. Even if you had provided proper etymologies I would have deleted them since they would/should be the same as those of the singular. Ncik 03 Apr 2005

• You were wrong. They were etymologies. Explaining that one word comes from the inflection of another word is explaining its origin. (And, moreover, an etymology is not "improper" for being succinct, and for linking to general articles on prefixes and suffixes.) Don't be confused by paper dictionaries, where only headwords get etymologies and inflections only get etymologies by inference. Uncle G 22:03, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Saying that one word is an inflexion of another is not an etymological (in the linguistic sense; just in case you want to justify your claim by translating literally from Greek) information. If you want to revert again, please consult other people before, preferably by posting in the Beer parlour. Ncik 04 Apr 2005

Vandalism

I wouldn't bother blanking Mr "Ass Pus"'s pages - it's better just to delete them. — Paul G 09:05, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki Log Proposal

Would you please look at my proposal at Wiktionary talk:Transwiki log and weigh in. Kevin Rector 02:53, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

numeric romanizations

Did you get a chance to warn the anonymous IP users that "we" do not appreciate their contributions of numeric romanizations? I didn't see any, but you also mentioned there were several IPs...and since they were are different times, were quite likely the same indivudual? --Connel MacKenzie 04:32, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

• Every time that I have checked so far, it has been a different IP address, so I haven't been able to select a talk page that I could be sure that the user would actually see at all. (The user doesn't appear to be reading xyr own previous contributions, either, to see the deletion notice.) I think that it's one person using a dynamically assigned IP address. I haven't seen two addresses in use simultaneously. Uncle G 11:35, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Hmmm. I don't recall seeing simultaneous users either. But doing a quick traceroute shows them all to be Asian. I have a weird feeling about these. They clearly are adding meaningful information, just not in a way that Wiktionary currently condones. I wish a fluent Chinese linguist would explain these types of entries. --Connel MacKenzie 18:14, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Jock

That's a hecka good set of additions to Jock. Well done and aye aye and all that. Kevin Rector 13:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

User:Uncle G

If I had known your appointment was imminent, I would have let you whack User:Uncle G yourself! Congratulations! --Connel MacKenzie 18:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

• I did wonder for a minute or so why one particular contributor was using "[rollback]" for all of xyr edit history comments. ☺ Uncle G 18:12, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I guess I missed the rollback flurry while working. BTW, what does "xyr" mean? Is that singular or plural, possessive 1st person, or a new politically correct way of being gender neutral, (although I always thought "their" worked just fine for that)? --Connel MacKenzie 00:17, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Fortunately, I didn't click on the links and accidentally roll anything back before I worked out what had happened. Uncle G 11:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
    • xyr is the possessive form of xe. See w:xe (pronoun). Singular they doesn't work very well. It causes problems with pronoun-verb agreement in number. I used to use it, until I found out about xe, xem, and xyr, which are ideal for here and for Usenet, where people can be anonymous or have sexless pseudonyms. Uncle G 11:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:en-infl-reg-consonant

I just saw your two new templates. Brilliant! Since they are for regular forms, is it worth adding the senses (present participle, etc.)? I don't often enter them, only to save a little typing, but I think the recommendation was that they should be listed. Thanks for leading the way on these! --Connel MacKenzie 17:20, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

• I'm glad that you like them. It's an idea that I've had simmering for a while, since before the this discussion in March, even. (I really did think that there would be a template already covering this.) I'm not leading the way, though. It's the templates for conjugating French and Italian verbs that led the way. I did wonder about having "present participle" and so forth. I don't think that it's necessary for the English language entries to go the ways of the French and Italian language entries. English is not inflected enough to warrant big multi-coloured boxes. ☺ On the other hand, whilst (from the quick poke around on the Web that I did before creating the templates) there seems to be a common order for listing inflected forms, it's not universal, so maybe noting which parts of speech in the parentheses are which is a good idea. I'm happy either way. The aspect that I regard as important is not the presence/absence of the names of the parts of speech, but that the inflected words be wikified. I think that we might need a third template for stems ending in the letter y, by the way. Uncle G 19:26, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm generally holding off using this just yet for a couple reasons:
    • The template name itself is difficult to remember.
      • It's a difficult name, but I wanted to follow roughly the same pattern as already existed at WT:I2T#Inflected_Languages_Conjugation_Tables, given that no doubt we'll have other languages wanting conjugation/inflection/declension templates in the future. Uncle G 15:27, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
    • For some reason you don't list the inital verb form as to verb, like all the rest of Wiktionary.
      • I also didn't put commas in. It was initially a very minimalist template. Another user has been bold and added commas. A third user has also commented on one of the templates' talk page about adding "to". That, and the addition of commas, aren't big deals as far as I'm concerned. I'm happy either way, as I said. Uncle G 15:27, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd like to see the senses spelled out (since it is saved typing) all on one single line.
  • Templates tend to have a higher "ownership"-ness about them, so I'm reluctant to mess with your template. Shall I be bold, and try it out on a few terms? There's no shortage of candidates at User_talk:Connel_MacKenzie/wikipedia_words. :-) --Connel MacKenzie 02:38, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Being bold and adding "simple present", "present participle", and "past participle", is, as I said, probably a good idea for clarity. I'm happy either way with "to". I'll be bold right now. I'm currently doing more research to try to come up with a comprehensive set of templates for this. There are some patterns that these two templates don't cover. I'm trying to work out the minimum number of templates that will cover the 24 possibilities that there appear to be. (We won't need 24 different templates.) Uncle G 15:27, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Although 24 templates seems like overkill, this is the English Wiktionary. Maybe (just maybe) it would be correct to have all 24? Hmmm. I wonder what others think? --Connel MacKenzie 18:30, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Wow. I think I'll sit back and absorb this for a day or two. --Connel MacKenzie 18:35, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
        • For regular verbs, 6 templates seems to suffice, at first pass. See the new table at WT:I2T. Uncle G 18:38, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I can't seem to find the right template for cross or push (actually a large handful of similar words are now appearing in the irregular verb category.) Help please?! (Third person form is giving me grief on these entries.) --Connel MacKenzie 19:26, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• They both end in sibilants. Template:en-infl-reg-sibilant, as I see from cross you have already discovered. ☺ Uncle G 23:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

AP Vandal

Take a peek at RC please (User:Fizzy Penis). - TheDaveRoss

Etymology

Hi. In my opinion, we shouldn't add {{ety-stub}} in a blank etymology section, rather, just don't add a blank etymology section. Thanks. 24 00:17, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• There's no better solution in some cases. You've managed to create a misleading article in two different ways in your attempts to avoid using this tag, so far. In your most recent attempt, you had Mikhail Epstein coining a golf term, which was blatantly false. Uncle G 02:05, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Special:Wantedpages

So THAT'S why you wanted an undefined user page!  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 08:24, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

zeal

I am somewhat dismayed that you, while editing this word's etymology, decided to break 'zelos' but totally neglected to note that it was a copyvio. Aren't we overly concerned with the wrong things here? Better a transliterated Greek word than a [[]] sitting in an etymology don't you think. Perhaps RFC or etystub might be more appropriate, and the comment /outside/ the [[]]s. - TheDaveRoss 00:58, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Latest vandal

Uncle G, Can you offer any advice on dealing with page-move vandalism of the sort we just had? I think Connel and I figured out what happened and how you undid it, but I'm still a bit puzzled. It appears we have additional features available immediately after blocking a user. Were you using the undo features in Special:Recentchanges or rollback from Special:Contributions? Talk pages are fine, or if you prefer, we are in [1] frequently, or you could email us. Thanks. --Dvortygirl 00:00, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• The vandal did the following:
  1. Move Article A to Article B
  2. Edit redirect left behind at Article A
  3. Move edited redirect at Article A to Article C
  4. Edit second redirect left behind at Article A
• The way that I undid it was to reverse the sequence:
  1. Delete second edited redirect at Article A
  2. Undo the move from Article C to Article A (and delete the redirect left behind at Article C)
  3. Delete first edited redirect (now moved back) at Article A
  4. Undo the move from Article B to Article A (and delete the redirect left behind at Article B)
• The simpler and bolder way to revert the damage is to delete Article A and Article C (the redirects) and just (manually) move Article B straight back to Article A, deleting the redirect. However, I was using "undo" in Special:Recentchanges to eliminate the possibility of my accidentally mistyping the name in a manual move, and cautiously reversing each change made by the vandal individually in reverse chronological order (watching the user's contributions shrink in another tab as I went along, but not using the rollback feature there). Uncle G 00:20, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Categories at page bottom

Hello,

According to WT:ELE, I thought we were supposed to move categories to the bottom of pages? I also thought we were discouraging large categories? --Connel MacKenzie 28 June 2005 16:55 (UTC)

• I don't know what you are referring to by "large categories". But moving language-specific categories outside of the language section that they apply to makes section editing difficult, as it means that one can only edit the categories for a language if one chooses to edit the last language section of the article, whatever that is. (Editing, say, the "Swedish" section of an article to change the categorizations of the French word is a little bizarre.) I put categories such as (for example) Category:English transitive verbs right in the Transitive verb sub-section of English so that when someone section-edits the Transitive verb sub-section, the wikitext for the relevant categorization is right there, too. Uncle G 30 June 2005 11:21 (UTC)
  • Looking back to when you first arrived on en.wikt:, I'd say that I consider a "large category" to be anything over the 200 entries threshold...anything that splits the category page itself. Personally, I object to categories such as "English nouns" being built by hand instead of by 'bot. But that reminded me that categories (in my understanding) on en.wikt were supposed to be about the English language - therefore the prefix "English" is redundant and/or wrong. Was there a recent conversation on the topic I missied? --Connel MacKenzie 22:37, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Categories are not supposed to be about the English language. The English Wiktionary is not an English dictionary. It is a dictionary of all languages. Our categories are supposed to be about all languages. It is in my view contrary to the NPOV policy to single out any language for special treatment. The language name in the category tells one what language the category relates to. This is why we have (for examples) Category:Spanish idioms, Category:German proper nouns, and Category:French colors (as well as equivalent categories for other languages). Putting all idioms, proper nouns, and colours of all languages into Category:Idioms, Category:Proper nouns, and Category:Colors would be unwieldy. Putting only English idioms, proper nouns, and colours into Category:Idioms, Category:Proper nouns, and Category:Colors is contrary to the mandate to be a dictionary of all languages and contrary to the NPOV policy. Uncle G 11:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
      • I do not know where you get the idea that the English Wiktionary should know everything about every other language. You are being silly, now. It has been Wiktionary's policy long before I got here, to focus on the English language...articles that aren't in English, BTW, are deleted. That must seem harsh to you? --Connel MacKenzie 09:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
        • That has never been Wiktionary's policy. Read the Main Page, for goodness' sake! "All words of all languages". Please leave your Anglo-centrism at the door. Stop thinking that "English Wiktionary" means that we don't include words of other languages, and that we don't treat all languages equally. We do. Uncle G 16:13:22, 2005-08-22 (UTC)
          • Sorry to interfere here, but isn't this what they call a "heated agreement"? Yes, Uncle, "articles that aren't in English ... are deleted", but only if their complete content are not-english for long enough. But if not, Connel, sure we include those non-english words as well. Indeed, I'm really astonished to see how you two manage to believe you disagree upon this... Or does my grasp of English leave me completely when I read these two-three last replies? \Mike 19:13, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
            • Connel's point about articles not written in English is a straw man. No-one asserted that we keep such articles, or even mentioned it until that point. It's also a distraction from the issue at hand, which is the turning of a dictionary of all languages into a dictionary of "English at the front, and all other languages at the back", just like a stamp collector's album. That violates the NPOV policy in my view. Uncle G 19:28:46, 2005-08-22 (UTC)
              • Should we drop the discussion about {{notenglish}} then? Fine. My original question pertained to you moving category tags from the bottom (where apparently they are supposed to be) to the "relevant" section. My question was, and still is, why? It seems reasonable, but by opposing what everyone else here is doing, you are making extra work. (Likewise with the language issue, but I agree that is a separate flamewar.) Wherever the category tags end up, they should be reasonably easy to find, in a consistent part of the article. Others (not I, FWIW) decided that the bottom was the appropriate place. --Connel MacKenzie 00:48, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

WikiSaurus:Penis

Why did you AGAIN remove lots of American terms? Like dick? And Why are you instigating a revert war, just as the discussion about it is starting on WT:BP? --Connel MacKenzie 09:27, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

• I'm not revert warring. I reverted your mass deletion of content once. I'm about to do so again. Uncle G 15:06:30, 2005-08-22 (UTC)
  • I don't follow your logic. You are deleting common terms that actually *are* relevant, under the guise of changing the mission and goal of WikiSaurus? Without discussion? Last time, I specified which entries you had thwacked, on the assumption you did so inadvertantly. --Connel MacKenzie 17:36, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm not deleting anything. It is you who are deleting masses of content from the article, whilst (ironically) claiming to be restoring content; and only you. Please stop. Your supposed list of entries that were "thwacked" was mostly wrong (although a handful of entries were inadvertently removed, for reasons that aren't clear. You could have just put them back in. It is also you and only you who is using the rollback button as a substitute for editing.) They are in the article, simply now in alphabetical order. Try checking. Uncle G 19:21:33, 2005-08-22 (UTC)
      • Looking at the differences displayed at http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=WikiSaurus:penis&curid=65651&diff=562945&oldid=562794 it appears that you are deleting entries, then (again without discussion) adding other languages in order to change the subject. --Connel MacKenzie 19:39, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Transwikibot

Hello,

You've done some interesting work creating those three bots. I'm not convinced the transwiki activity is a good idea though. The transwiki namespace provided us with a fielding area where entries could have Wikipedia-specific templates removed. Additionally, since so much of what comes from Wikipedia is stuff that Wikipedia was afraid to delete outright, it affords Wiktionary an opportunity to review these questionable terms before accepting them into the main namespace. Tagging them with "==English==" may be correct much of the time, but moving them into the main namespace seems quite wrong.

• so much of what comes from Wikipedia is stuff that Wikipedia was afraid to delete outright — An attitude shared by one editor on Wikibooks, but as entirely false there as here. When the 'bots first started running, many months ago, we went through the process of persuading Wikipedians that transwikification is not, and never has been, deletion by the back door. Outright rejecting articles for words that Wiktionary already has is one way that I encourage Wikipedians to deal with their problem articles through other means.

  Tagging them with "==English==" may be correct much of the time — And that's how often it happens: much of the time. Check the actual edits. It doesn't happen to all articles. It happens when I, from reading the article, determine that the article is in fact about an English noun/verb/adjective, and kick off the separate tool to add the headers. I stress once again the semi-automatic nature of the process, that is specifically mentioned at User:Uncle G's 'bot. I have to squeeze the trigger.

  moving them into the main namespace seems quite wrong — Moving the articles into the main namespace is what eventually should happen to all of the articles in the transwiki queue. (There shouldn't be articles there where Wiktionary already has articles, unless there's an exceptional reason. I routinely eject such articles from the Wiktionary transwiki queue at Wikipedia, and encourage Wikipedia editors to check Wiktionary before tagging articles.) The articles that are moved into the main namespace are those that have language and part of speech headers and an {{rfc}} tag (which isn't all of them, remember). They are, at that point, little different from any other partially formatted entry in need of final cleanup. If articles continue to languish in the Transwiki area where people do not look, it makes the task of the transwikifying editors (such as me) harder, because Wikipedians don't check the Transwiki area before complaining that "The article hasn't been copied to Wiktionary as you say it has!". Several times, articles have been repeatedly put back into the transwiki queue, after they have been transwikied and taken out, by Wikipedians who erroneously assert that the transwikification hasn't been done, simply because they go to Wiktionary, hit the "Go" button, and see that it still doesn't have an article on the word in question.

  review these questionable terms — Be aware that there is also review that goes on at Wikipedia, before articles are transwikied. I stress again that this is not an automatic process. A Wikipedian adding a {{move to Wiktionary}} tag to an article doesn't mean that it automatically comes here, without any human intervention. Uncle G 16:13:22, 2005-08-22 (UTC)

It seemed like a fully automatic process (perhaps due to the name.) Knowing that it is semi-automatic addresses my concerns. Thank you. And, excellently done! --Connel MacKenzie 17:49, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Did you discuss what you wished to do on BP? I can't seem to find the proposal.

• There was no need. This is a simple continuation of what the transwiki 'bots have been doing for months, now. It's the same transwikification process, happening in the same way, as it always has been, whether done by tools or by hand. Uncle G 16:13:22, 2005-08-22 (UTC)

At any rate, could you at least strip out the "{" and "}" characters? Maybe replace them with "(" and ")" so it is apparent that what was there, was a template from a different project?

• Transwikification makes an exact copy. I could write yet another 'bot to do post-processing, after transwikification, as I have done for the addition of the headers. (The categories are usually wrong, too.) But that would be non-trivial to write, and I haven't had the time to do so yet. It would be useful for all projects, and is something that I'd like to write, in order to reduce the tedious manual rote work yet further, and in fact was already on my to-do list. Uncle G 16:13:22, 2005-08-22 (UTC)

--Connel MacKenzie 22:26, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Webster 1913

Thanks for the answer to my question in the Beer Parlour about the Webster import.

Although I'm fairly new to this, I'm trying to get some consensus for what (if any) bits of Webster we should use to further the cause. Obviously, your opinion is a key one. Here is where I have got to so far:

Constraints

• Anything we bring in has to comply with the the various formatting conventions, written and implicit - anything less would just dump work on the editors or generate a large cleanup category.
• We don't want to replace any content that has already been contributed, or make any changes in a non-incremental way.

Potential

There are at least four areas of content where Webster clearly wins over the current dictionary content, in increasing order of contentiousness

• Etymology, where none exists. (There seems to have been considerable work done already on this, which you had a hand in, I believe)
• A source of copyright-free references, which could be pasted across where the sense is the same.
• Senses which have been ommited from the current articles because the usage is less common now than in 1913 (we will also find some erroneous omissions, I suspect).
• Common words that currently have no article at all, the ("anything is better than nothing argument).

My thoughts are to build some tool. Not a 'bot in the normal sense - it would not run unattended - but it could prepare an article which is substantially complete and help a human to finish the job. But I'm not going to start work on that sort of thing if the community is going to frown on it later.

Your thoughts?

allan 13:53 23-08-2005 UCT

'bots

Hi Uncle G, would love to talk with you about your bots. I'm in IRC, or can do via user pages, or e-mail. - Amgine

• If you are User:Amgine, you weren't logged in. The 'bot user pages (User:Uncle G's 'bot and User:Uncle G's major work 'bot) and the preceding discussion on this page should answer most questions. What else did you want to know? Uncle G 20:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Template:irregverb

User:Connel MacKenzie has been maintaining a dispute with User:Ncik over a number of things, and I'm trying to find common ground. One in particular has been over this template that Ncik has been using to replace the "accepted" template used by you and others. I personally think that Ncik's template is an improvement, and I don't see you or the others mentioned by Connel as raising any objections about Ncik's changes. Do you have any strong opinions over the verb template? Eclecticology 00:40, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

• I haven't got around to that discussion yet. I have an enormous backlog to deal with. However, I will say now that creating a duplicate template, with a completely inappropriate name (There isn't just the one language here.), wasn't the way to go with this. Paul G had the right approach. He preferred a different appearance and spelling, so he edited the existing templates. That approach didn't result in any major disputes. Uncle G 12:44, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:plcol

Could you delete Template:plcol please?

• It seems that I've been beaten to it. ☺ Uncle G 04:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Help pages

Please stop using a bot to transfer Meta pages to the Help: namespace. This procedure has not been discussed by the community, and any such activity thwarts this community's control over its own policies. Eclecticology 09:58, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• That's just silly on every single point. Help pages are not policy pages. They are help pages, as the namespace indicates. Copying help pages affects policy not one whit. As for discussion by the community: we don't need to discuss it. It's long established practice. We've been copying help text from other projects for almost three years now. Patrick has been doing it. Heck, you yourself have been doing it. Finally, there is a clear mechanism for adding project-specific content to every single page, should we need something Wiktionary-specific for any topic. Uncle G 20:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

More on Help pages

I don't know about the previous comment, but I suggest if you are going to transwiki stuff from Meta, your bot should check for links of the form [[wiktionary:pagename]], since these will be broken here at Wiktionary; see, for example, my latest edit to Help:Namespace. - dcljr 18:26, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• I've already combed through the text fixing a large number of such broken links in the master copy (including links that wouldn't have worked given the case sensitivity here). If you spot more, please fix the master copy. That way, they get fixed for everyone. Uncle G 20:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think you misunderstood me — or I'm misunderstanding you. If you look at the edits I mentioned before (specifically, those in the "To take some examples from Wiktionary" paragraph) and the corresponding links in the original, you can see that these links to Wiktionary will not be broken when copied verbatim to any other (English) sister project besides Wiktionary, since, for example, [[wiktionary:Wiktionary:FAQ]] means an interwiki link to Wiktionary:FAQ when used elsewhere, but here it means a link to the page wiktionary:Wiktionary:FAQ, which clearly doesn't exist, and hopefully never will. <g> So I don't see how these can be "fixed" in the original. - dcljr 10:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I encountered this problem with interwiki links to some of the other projects. You can fix them with a little interwiki magic (which Help:Interwiki linking explains ☺): m:wikt:Wiktionary:FAQ. Uncle G 05:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

EDIT WAR WARNING

An edit war is starting at Wiktionary:Entry layout explained. Please take a look at the page.

Gerard Foley 03:04, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Blocking a range of IP addresses

Hi there. I noticed that you blocked a range of IP addresses and wondered a) how to do it, b) when to do it. This morning, for instance, I blocked various addresses starting 64.12.116 - the fourth number ranging from 10 to 198 (but presumably could have been from 0 to 255). Presumably these ranges are used by innocent bystanders so I should only block for a shorter time than I might normally be tempted to do. Cheers - SemperBlotto 14:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• See MediaWiki:Blockiptext (which I've just updated), w:Wikipedia:Dealing with AOL vandals, and m:Range blocks. Uncle G 15:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

• • Thanks. I'll try not to be too draconian. SemperBlotto 16:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Vandal

Please look at Recent changes and start blocking these people Gerard Foley 04:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• Please look at the block log and notice that I've already been blocking these people. ☺ Uncle G 04:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

How about User:ⓕⓤⓒⓚ ⓨⓞⓤ Gerard Foley 04:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

deletion of exi---nt (rail)

it would appear at first that you deleted this page, but it still appears on my watchlist, and I strongly suspect the above wikilink will turn out to be blue and not red. Are you a true administrator? Cheers, Citizen Premier 01:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, it appears the page I'm referencing is actually exi---nt (raiI)* (the devious bugger who was creating these pages used a capital i for an l). Citizen Premier 01:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• and now it won't link... is there a glitch here or am I just horribly confused?
  • The glitch is your use of a brace instead of a parenthesis. Uncle G 03:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• exicornt (rail) isn't one of the ones that I deleted. I did deal with exi---nt (raiI) (with the capital I), and yes I am an administrator. To see how I dealt with it, look at its edit history and wikitext. Uncle G 03:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Ah, fixed the problem, but my problem is that, unlike most deleted entries, the wikilink is still blue and the article and discussion links are still blue. When an article is deleted, the links to it usually turn red and it loses its edit history, and it's as if it never existed. Just wondering what's going on here. Citizen Premier 06:32, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Category:Swedish derivations

There are quite a lot of words in this category that I doubt are derived from Swedish. Is the categorization based on w:List of English words of Swedish origin or did you use any other information when you categorized them? Gunnar Larsson 22:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC) (native Swedish speaker)

Wiktionary:CheckUser

Good day. You have been nominated (a while ago) to have checkuser rights. Do you show any interest? — Vildricianus 14:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Translating "special" links

Can the 'bot be changed so that it leaves "special" links (like Special:Mypage/monobook.css)? It currently translates those links to unusable "User:YourUserName/monobook.css". See m:Help:User style compared with Help:User style. Rod (A. Smith) 17:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Never mind. I see now that the bot last ran before that link was updated to the "Special:Mypage" style. Rod (A. Smith) 20:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Did you see the new Transwiki procedure?

Hello, welcome back!

I hope all is well for you. Recently, the developers fixed and reenabled the "import" special function; when we import entries from Wikipedia to Wiktionary's Transwiki: namespace, the complete edit history comes along with the entry.

Also of note is that there are several new namespaces defined on en.wiktionary.

There was a discussion about it on WT:GP (the "Grease pit.") --Connel MacKenzie 16:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• I'll have to read up about both of those. Thank you for letting me know. Uncle G 23:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

chav

The reason that lots of the etymology was removed is that it's just nonsense. It was placed in full on the Discussion page by Andrew Massyn, and subsequently summarised on the main page in a more digestible form. There is no point including a dozen ridiculous suggestions by various newspapers, or the acronyms, which are clearly wrong. Widsith 14:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

• It wasn't placed on the discussion page, and we should be having greater detail in etymologies, especially disputed etymologies such as this one, not less. Wiktionary is not a paper dictionary. Uncle G 00:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

CheckUser nominations

As of 31 August, 2006 the CheckUser status vote is beginning, you have been nominated and if you are so inclined please accept your nomination on the CheckUser page. Please also read the Meta Check User policy to be sure that the responsibilities are ones you would be interested in and willing to fulfill. Tentatively the end of the election will be one month from the beginning, but that is subject to change at any time, seeing as I just made that length up and a community consensus on duration will have to be established. Thank you and good luck! - TheDaveRoss 16:53, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

This was a bad idea

Please do not rename these templates, particularly the Template:W2 one's. When updating we go from link to link to link pasting in a new version to maintain EXACT IDENTICAL code. Since everything is keyed in off of {{PAGENAME}}, you are changing the relative linking to all the other templates in the project were we to try to reach one from the template link, which happens constantly. Plus you were breaking an internal test coding that depends on that exact page name in one of three #ifeq: tests that use that page name so we don't have to write and maintain multiple versions. The redirect can go the other way, and we are setting up some. Besides, some of us like camel case! <g> Haven't seen you or said Hi! for a while. Take care, and don't do anything I wouldn't do... like mess with a nine-sister interconnection system when you don't know the rules, the fragile parts, or what's in development and planned development! <g> Consider yourself spanked with a wet noodle! Cheers! // FrankB 10:10, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

• (a) What on Earth are you talking about? That paragraph makes no sense at all. What you are talking about appears to bear no relation to the template that you have linked to, which contained no #ifeq: tests whatsoever until yesterday, when you broke it, and whose operation is unaffected by what its own name is, since its use of {{PAGENAME}} is relevant to the page that it is transcluded onto.

  (b) Why have you linked to a rename operation that was done 15 months ago, as part of dealing with the throwing of the case-sensitivity switch that happened back then?

  (c) Who is this "we" that you are purporting to represent?

  (d) Please explain why you just broke Template:wikispecies.

  (e) Please explain, given that it appears to be an exceedingly complex and byzantine way of doing what for several years has been done in a very simple fashion and doesn't even work, why Wiktionary should keep any of what you have just dumped into the template namespace.

  Uncle G 23:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

• Connell M. just pointed me to back this post. This all happened about the time RL demanded a sacrifice of all my wiki-time for most of three months. Looking at this was a 'too quick' mistake editing across sister projects... note the suffix 'tmp' on the interwiki's on the one I landed, so I have to presume I was modifying the url and well... missed. The target should have been {{WikiSpeciestmp}} like w:template:WikiSpeciestmp or if you had a workable redirects tracking system here, one like this is an easy 'fix'.

Sorry on that. My bad. Probably trying to do too much in too little time. Actually, that's obvious, 9:54 UTC is 5:54 EDST and I'm definitely NOT an early riser... so that was at the end of an all nighter. (Which alas, I'm really too old to do often.)

In such an update mode, I'm generally just Hitting CTRL-A, CTRL-V and saving sans even a preview from the cut buffer, as the 'base version' is working, so I undoubtedly just overwrote this near name equivilent. I can't have followed a hyperlink, or the name would have been consistent and correct.

The rest of it is moot, as you all deleted the system without receiving the tools. Did you keep ubiquitous and useful tools like Template:lts and {{tlx}}? Well you missed that redirect. I'm pretty sure I didn't port the various cat templates and 'La' here yet, so the reasons for the systems and common naming die here due to 'Not Invented Here syndrome' or however you rationalize not keeping common names between sister projects and empowering editors of any stripe to contribute who are familiar with the others. And that really sums up the purpose of the templates inported here. They were the shell of commonality for the other goodies you all will now have to root out an transport on your own. Or write from scratch, or do without. Shrug. Not my loss.

I'm not sure about what you perceived wasn't working, but the preponderance of evidence is rather the other way. I admit there were a few isolated glitches, but given the tagging, if I hadn't updated a version, it would have been very simple and easy to follow the link back to the master copy and see if that was more recent. Can't do that easily without some such system.

Since the system has moved on to being moot here now, I'll just go on back to wikipedia and get back to getting stuff done. After I catch up some other matters, I hope to get this project back on track and posted in Meta. Sorry about the delayed response. But you all might try email for people with other wiki-homes. Do have a good New Year. // FrankB 23:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hope it's OK that I reverted your talk page. It seems to have been Wonderfool as IP. Grtx, --Thogo (talk) 10:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

patrolled edits

Hi, would you mind checking the box for "mark my edits as patrolled" in preferences? Tx, Robert Ullmann 12:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

cattag|slang

What have you done?

You are editing the English Wiktionary. The template convention has always been to assume English on the English Wiktionary, within templates.

Please undo the awful changes you made. --Connel MacKenzie 14:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• What on Earth are you talking about? I have made no edits to Template:cattag, which was last edited three months ago. Uncle G 14:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm talking about the entries you changed today that use {{cattag|slang|... to properly combine tags, that you split up so you could add the unnecessary "English" parameter to slang calls. --Connel MacKenzie 16:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • It's not unnecessary. Other languages than English have slang, and that it is impossible to specify the appropriate language for the relevant categories with {{cattag}} is a serious failing of that template. Uncle G 13:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
      • So, how about starting a discussion somewhere about adding a |lang= parameter to cattag? The changes you made to the entries was unneccesary because of the "English" default! --Connel MacKenzie 17:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
        • There is no such default. Template:cattag erroneously places articles in the parent categories, rather than in the per-language categories. See Template:cattag/category. A language parameter would fix this, yes. But the template doesn't currently have one, and it does not currently default to English. Uncle G 07:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

my preferences => Editing

Hi there Uncle. Could you set Preferences => Editing to "Mark edits I make as patrolled" please. I think we can trust you by now. Cheers. SemperBlotto 15:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Idioms

Hi,

I've noticed you've been adding English idioms at the rate up up to 6 a minute today yesterday. Would I be right in assuming you are using some kind of automated process? If so, is it one I could possibly use to help transfer/transwiki idioms from the w:List of idioms in the English language? West London Dweller 16:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

• No, you wouldn't be right. I have semi-automated tools. They all edit via explicitly labelled non-administrator accounts such as User:Uncle G's 'bot. The only thing that edits under this account is me using nothing but a tabbed web browser. However, I can probably help with the transwikification. What exactly are you trying to do? Uncle G 07:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
  • FYI, I'm starting my transwiki bot in the next few minutes. --Connel MacKenzie 07:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
  • The articles in question have been transwikied - I don't think they are susceptible to any automatic process for ensuring all entries are captured in Wiktionary - it's just going to be a manual slog going through them. What I'm trying to do is ensure that each entry in the transwikied article has a corresponding entry in Wiktionary, with sufficent citations to meet Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion; and also to record the 'where used' information. I've started, for no particular reason, going backwards from 'Z'. So far, all I'm doing is editing the transwikied articles to add a couple of columns to keep track of where I am, and adding [[ and ]] around the idiom itself (also removing the leading capital letter) to quickly see if there is a corresponding entry in Wiktionary. For citations, I'll most likely rely on USENET and Google books for convenience. I still have not zeroed in on a canonical idiom entry that records the idiom, its etymology, where it is used, what it means, and has sufficient citations. - WLD^talk|edits 09:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Incidentally, I'm not happy with the zero in entry, as the citation I've found is for 'zero in on' rather than just 'zero in'. WLD^talk|edits

WT:PT

I am so happy right now. Thank you for this solution to such a harrowing, recurring problem! I've dropped two minor questions on the talk page of WT:PT, and added (Wiktionary-specific?) sysop-caution notes, as well as fully protecting the page with cascading protection tagged.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

--Connel MacKenzie 16:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation issues

Thank you for your thoughtful and well-considered comments on the wider issue of pronunciation. I hope you will stick with the effort to overhaul pronunciation on Wiktionary for the long-haul, since it will take a while to work this all out. In particular, I like the suggestions of making pronunciation guides more accessible, and will have to think on the idea of splitting style pages into reader-end and writer-end material. It's an interesting and intriguing idea.

Your comments touch on a number of points I too have considered (as have Hippietrail and Keffy). T issue of choosing a name for our phonemic system is only the first step in the effort to overhaul and upgrade our treatment of pronunciation. I chose to open the "AHD" naming discussion as a modest first step in the process, with the next logical step being to reach a consensus policy in writing regarding how "AHD" and IPA/SAMPA are used here. We also will need to establish what symbols we use for "AHD" and how we want to make use of them. This will entail writing a guide page for that system. The goal is to break from using someone else's system wholesale and thereby avoid the potential intellectual property issues you mention. Besides which, we serve a broader user base than the AHD, as we are international rather than just American. Our choice of symbols and example words used for "AHD" (or whatever we choose to call it) should reflect this.

So, if I don't quickly pursue all the issues you've thoughtfully raised, it isn't that I didn't notice them. I simply want to stay focussed on just one or two small steps on the path to resolving the big ones. Your comments will come in handy as new steps are taken. --EncycloPetey 17:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Bulleting comments

Hi,

Out of curiosity, why do you bullet other people's comments? Indented comments are the norm here (as on other wikis), and they have advantages over bulleted ones. (It doesn't bother me if you want to bullet your own comments, but it does bother me when you retroactively bullet mine.) —Ruakh_TALK 18:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• Indented comments are not universal, most certainly not on other wikis, and have disadvantages when compared to bulleted ones, not the least of which is the size of the indentation used by most web browsers. Uncle G 00:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I didn't claim that they're universal, only that they're the norm, and I didn't claim that they don't have disadvantages, only that they have advantages as well. It's great that you've picked a certain approach for yourself, but there's no call for you to be imposing said approach on the rest of us. —Ruakh_TALK 03:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
    • If you think that tidying a talk page is "imposing", then wikis are not for you. You may want to familiarize yourself with some wiki basics, like the idea of refactoring. Uncle G 09:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
      • It's not "tidying" to take a perfectly good system and replace it with another one to impose your preferences, which are obviously not shared by other editors, on their comments. (Unless you'd like to invite me to start replacing your bulleted comments with indented ones? I'm willing to, if that's what you want.) —Ruakh_TALK 18:20, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
        • I repeat: You may want to familiarize yourself with some wiki basics. In addition: If you think that these are solely my preferences unshared by other editors, your experience of wikis has been too narrow. Uncle G 17:39, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
          • They're your preferences in that plenty of editors obviously do not share them — if you go to any of the high-volume discussion pages, you'll see that the vast majority of comments use indentation rather than bullets. If we shared your preferences for bullets, we'd use them ourselves. I'm not going to force you to change to conform to the majority preference here. But stop trying to force others to conform to your minority preference. —Ruakh_TALK 21:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
            • Plenty of editors do. Your statement using "we" reveals that you think that you speak for everyone. You most certainly do not. You don't even speak for a majority. As I said: Your experience of wikis has been too narrow. You've only encountered one style of discussion markup, you mistakenly think from that experience that it is the norm, and you are unfamiliar with the idea of refactoring. I suggest that you gain some wider experience, and stop thinking of yourself as the majority. In fact, your mistaken belief that you somehow own talk page markup, and that all of your wikitext is set in stone once written, is far from being either the majority view or even what wikis are about. The rest of the world will continue to edit your writing mercilessly, and will continue to refactor. Uncle G 19:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
              • Since you've failed to give any argument for your bulletizing my comments that doesn't equally support my indentizing yours, I've taken the liberty of doing so here; and while I certainly won't edit discussions just to indentize them, I'll indentize any comments of yours that I'm replying to anyway. Sound good? :-D —Ruakh_TALK 20:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
                • What it sounds like is that you have decided to employ the same level of discussion and interaction with your fellow editors that one would expect from children in an playground. I repeat yet again my suggestions that you take the better course of familiarizing yourself with the idea of refactoring, gain wider experience of wikis, consider that you may actually be mistaken, consider why you are still thinking in terms of your owning markup that isn't even the words that you have written, learn what the markup actually does, and consider why your apparent approach to discussion is that of attempting to initiate fights with other editors. Uncle G 14:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I strongly prefer indented comments, instead of (broken) bulleted comments. AFAIK, the broad majority of Wiktionarians prefer them to bulleted lists, too. The edit text becomes too compressed and jumbled, using bullets. Intervening comments (while discouraged) can be inserted as needed, without breaking the rendering. But most important is the ability to use some damn whitespace between comment lines. The longer the conversation is, the more important that becomes. Getting tripped up over technical details is worse when in a longer conversation. --Connel MacKenzie 18:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

WT:RFD

I am confused by your continued assertions that rfd-sense listings are inappropriate for WT:RFD. I see why you are saying that, but I don't get why.

Why would RFD be any different from the other, related, Wiktionary cleanup pages? All have an entry type of nomination, and a sense type of nomination. Each provide a logical, distinct, centralized discussion area.

While I understand that Wikipedia tries to distribute discussions in as far-off places as possible (due simply to volume) we don't have anywhere near that level of contested entries. Dealing with words is much less controversial than dealing with the encyclopedic topics, so I imagine there never will be a need for the hyper-distributed Wikipedia-style.

I'll also note that my personal frustration with Wikipedia often is a result of that structure. I don't know how many times now, I've linked there, from here, only to have a w:WP:TOOLS item disappear to a sub-sub-sub-subpage.

Please re-familiarize yourself with some of the Wiktionary differences. You used to know this stuff, right off the bat. But the gradual changes are taking their toll? Perhaps you should just spend more time on this side of the fence. Your improvements are as welcome here, as there! --Connel MacKenzie 19:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• I'm well aware of the differences. They are proceeding in the wrong direction. Requests for deletion was originally, and still should be, exactly that: A place to request that an administrator hit a delete button and remove an entire article. It's a place for requesting that an administrator exercise one of xyr administrator tools that other editors do not have. The mistaken idea that "deletion" encompasses ordinary editing that any editor can do, without administrator tools, has gradually grown in a few people's heads, in part because of the false idea that we should have an "entry"/"sense" dichotomy everywhere. That dichotomy is a nonsense. Deletion applies only to entire articles. Editing an entry, with ordinary editing tools, isn't deletion. It is cleanup, which is the purview of Requests for cleanup. Adding and removing senses is an ordinary editorial action, which any editor, even ones without accounts, can boldly do. Only administrators can perform deletion, but any editor can perform cleanup. Promoting the false idea that there are cleanup tasks that ordinary editors cannot do leads to ossification and the sort of stratification in who can edit articles that we reject as one of the basic Foundation principles. Uncle G 12:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I do not see how that WMF page you linked is relevant. Different projects have progressed differently; you should remember that the entry/sense distinction is a Wiktionary specific aspect, and critical to how we approach problems here. Last time I checked, the entry/sense distinction is 100% irrelevant to Wikipedia, as it is an encyclopedia not a dictionary. Deletion (and subsequent removal of a sense re-added) is a feature of a dictionary. And the importance of discussing individual senses in a central location is a critical aspect of how we review entries here! --Connel MacKenzie 13:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    • The only person to mention Wikipedia is you. That's a straw man. The idea that we should have an "entry"/"sense" dichotomy everywhere is not a "Wiktionary-specific aspect". It's a complete nonsense, as already explained. Dressing it up as something "special" to Wiktionary does not justify it in the least. It is wrong. Deletion is an administrator hitting a delete button, no more and no less. It has nothing to do with ordinary editors doing ordinary editing using ordinary editing tools to add and to remove senses, which are actions that any editor can perform. If you don't see the relevance of the Foundation issues to the notion that removal of senses requires a discussion that only administrators can make a final decision upon, leading to stratification and ossification, then Wiktionary has quite significantly lost sight of them, and needs a strong reminder. Anyone can edit, here. Editing is not restricted to administrators alone. Uncle G 00:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2007-06/Requests for partial deletion

Hi,

I just wanted to make sure you were planning to vote at Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2007-06/Requests for partial deletion? You can't claim you don't care about the topic. :-)

—Ruakh_TALK 21:58, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

-ista

Are you sure that the English usage of this suffix came through Portuguese? I'd think that there'd be much more influence from the Spanish usage (the talk page also mentions the term "Sandinista" which did come through Spanish). --Bequw → ¢ • τ 09:17, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

• I've had to scroll back through my contributions histories to find out what I was doing almost three years ago. That information, it turns out, came from the now-deleted w:ista article in Wikipedia. See w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ista for what inspired me to start the entry. Feel free to make Wiktionary do a better job of lexicography than Wikipedia did. ☺ Uncle G 20:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Interjections

I have taken to heart your objections to excessive use of the interjection header and category. I am trying to take some constructive steps. I have begun cleaning up interjections by removing items to proverbs and phrases. There seem to be many imperatives that now appear as interjections. I have been putting them in the newly established Category:English sentences (q.v). I estimate that about 10+% of the items in the interjections category were full sentences, mostly imperatives, hortatories, and precatives (eg, screw you, praise the Lord, perish the thought), but also questions, both rhetorical and other: (say wha). A PoS/L3 header of "Sentence" might provide a good home for many types entries: all the above plus proverbs. It would need to be supplemented with categories, many of which already exist.

I am not sure what should make something eligible for such a heading. Should single words not be eligible even if they can be used as sentences (no, nuts, hell, goddammit)? What about multiword entries without explicit verbs easy come easy go? What about imperatives of verbs and phrasal verbs? Should they be separate headers at all? Your thoughts would be appreciated. DCDuring TALK 14:43, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

• I shall think, and do some research, then. ☺ It was your discussion of this on the Beer Parlour, at Project:Beer Parlour#Entries mislabelled as interjections, that drew this issue to my attention in the first place. Uncle G 14:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  I have made a first pass through English Phrase and Proverb headers and am working through Idioms. In this pass I have been looking mostly to find full sentence entries (excluding imperatives usually), proverbs (whether or not full sentences), and subordinate clauses. I have created hidden categories for English sentences, English subordinate categories, and English pro-sentences, I have not used the last much because I don't think I know enough and am also not sure that it would end up being useful for a large population of users.

  All this is intended to be in aid of some kind of more specific grammatical analysis of entries and some determination of what to do with lexically useful, but grammatically unsatisfactory entries, mostly "phrases" that are not also sentences or subordinate clauses or rhetorical questions. They are often grammatical units with a blank slot to allow for any Noun Phrase or any Pronoun or any gender. For multiword entries we can keep Phrase as a catch all unless, by some miracle, we have an approach to these lexically convenient entries that allows them all to be redirects to more grammatically intelligible entries. Perhaps we could assign them to the category they would be in once completed by the missing component.

  In subsequent passes, I intend to push many Phrase headers into Verb and Noun headers and others into English prepositional phrase category. This latter seems to often include both adjective and adverb PoSs with closely parallel definitions. Perhaps we can have less redundancy in the presentation.

  With a better understanding of these categories and of the proper handling of imperative/hortative/precative verbs I might be able to take a productive run through the multiword "interjections", though I need to understand a few other things about interjections as well. I look forward to the results of your researches. DCDuring TALK 18:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

pos

pl c mypost intearoom--User:史凡 (歡迎光臨！請也用skype: sven0921為我RSI !) 06:04, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

m:Wiktionary/logo/refresh/voting

I do not want to come across as contumelious but please consider casting your vote for the tile logo as—besides using English—the book logo has a clear directionality of horizontal left-to-right, starkly contrasting with Arabic and Chinese, two of the six official UN languages. As such, the tile logo is the only translingual choice left and it was also elected in m:Wiktionary/logo/archive-vote-4. Warmest Regards, :)--_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 02:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Lua (Scribunto)

Hi! I just posted to the "Scribbling" discussion at Beer Parlour, but I just wanted to alert you as well: Scribunto is not going to be enabled anytime soon on any of the Wikimedia wikis other than mediawiki.org and the "test2" test wiki. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding and am working on rectifying the documentation. If you could email me (sumanahwikimedia.org) or comment on my talk page to ensure I know what information sources you were already aware of, that would help me fix all of them. Also, the Tech Ambassadors Network draft plan may interest you. Thanks! Sumanah (talk) 00:10, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed

Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Uncle G. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Uncle G~enwiktionary that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours,
Keegan Peterzell
Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation

00:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

removal of privileges

Letting you know about [[Wiktionary:Votes/2016-01/Uncle G for de-sysop]].​—msh210℠ (talk) 22:57, 11 January 2016 (UTC)