Talk:vielen

RFC discussion: February 2013–August 2017

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

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vielen

A bit... too long? —CodeCat 14:30, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Looks correct to me -- Liliana • 14:45, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Better now? I've used {{inflected form of}} at vielen and added a declension table to viel so the reader isn't overwhelmed with a hard-to-read list but can still find the information he's looking for. —Angr 15:32, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey, who decides if the list in inflected forms is too long? The list was completely correct, so why should someone decimate it? I want to redo the old version. --Bigbossfarin (talk) 21:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand why you're unhappy with this: you put a lot of work into the list of forms that got eliminated, there are no rules that I know of that prohibit making such a list, and I'm sure every single item on that list is correct. Still, there are some occasions when the sheer volume of information makes it too difficult to use. The declension table at viel has the same information, but structured in such a way that you don't have to go through the list item-by-item to find a given combination of strong-vs.weak, case, gender, etc.

There are lots of things that are allowed by the rules that aren't a good idea, such as adding example sentences to the entry for every possible form in the declension table, or having a "see also" list with all the nouns that the adjective could be used with. One has to look not just at whether something is permissible and correct, but also whether it would be of any use to those who are trying to find information about the word. Too much relatively unstructured information in one place increases the work needed to find any one piece of it. The quantity of items on the list provides an odd sort of illustration of the definition, but it would be an even better illustration for zu viel... Chuck Entz (talk) 00:11, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, Bigbossfarin's comprehensive entry was the kind of entry de.Wikt has, and indeed the kind of entry en.Wikt has for languages like Latin where individual forms have smaller numbers of senses (see e.g. portibus). I'm on the fence about which diff ([1], [2]) is better in cases like this, where forms have large numbers of senses. - -sche (discuss) 01:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I have no problem with listing the senses of a syncretic inflected form separately, up to about five or six. After that, one starts losing the ability to keep track of them all. If other people feel it's preferable to list all the senses of vielen separately, then I would at the very least recommend removing the "mixed" forms, since there isn't really a "mixed" adjective declension in German: it's just that some forms of ein and kein are followed by strong adjectives and other forms are followed by weak adjectives, so the so-called "mixed" declension is always identical to either the strong form or the weak form. In the case of vielen, the "mixed" forms are always the same as the weak forms. But generally, I do think that if the entry of an inflected form is going to have more than five or six senses, it's preferable to just say {{inflected form of}} and let a declension table at the lemma entry do the work. —Angr 16:19, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I oppose the removal of information. A better solution, IMO, would be merging some of them, for example:

Mixed masculine, feminine and neuter singular genitive of viel.
Mixed masculine, feminine and neuter singular dative of viel.

Instead of:

mixed masculine singular genitive form of viel.
mixed masculine singular dative form of viel.
mixed masculine singular accusative form of viel.
mixed feminine singular genitive form of viel.
mixed feminine singular dative form of viel.
mixed neuter singular genitive form of viel.
mixed neuter singular dative form of viel.

I don’t see how a list showing the various uses of viele overwhelms the user with information, while forcing them to pick out the vielens in a conjugation table doesn’t. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 15:35, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

If we do want to list them all rather than just using {{inflected form of}}, then I'd recommend merging the whole shebang to:

strong masculine and neuter singular genitive form of viel.
strong, weak, and mixed masculine singular accusative form of viel.
strong, weak, and mixed weak plural dative form of viel.
weak and mixed masculine, feminine and neuter singular genitive form of viel.
weak and mixed masculine, feminine and neuter singular dative form of viel.

That leaves only five lines, which is much easier for the reader to parse than 20 lines. —Angr 15:52, 4 February 2013 (UTC) Later: I edited the above to indicate that the masculine singular accusative and dative plural forms are strong, weak, and mixed rather than just strong and weak. —Angr 13:36, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm down with that. It's in line with how we combine the "Simple past tense and past participle of" of English verbs for which those forms are homographic. - -sche (discuss) 01:28, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• Looks good now --New WT User Girl (talk) 10:19, 27 August 2017 (UTC)