User talk:DCDuring/2012 QI

2012 Q I

law

Hi DCDuring--

I'm not sure how a definition of law as a scientific term of art, as opposed to the way it's frequently used colloquially, is redundant - would you mind explaining please? Thanks. Milkunderwood 02:51, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see - you had not only reinstated the unverifiable "one-sided contract", not to be found in any other dictionary, but also reinstated the poorly expressed scientific definition with its confusing example. It's not untrue that "Newton and Einstein understood the law of gravitation in very different ways,", but more essentially Newton and Einstein understood the theory of gravitation in very different ways. A reader finding this example as written will come away with no clear distinction having been made. Milkunderwood 03:47, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Might it help for a usage note to be added, to try to distinguish between formal vs colloquial usages in scientific contexts? Milkunderwood 03:56, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what would help. The fact is that there are many senses of common words in widespread use that do not appeal to, indeed positively annoy, those who use the word in restrictive ways that meet some current standard of consistency with other current concepts. A lesson I had learned before but has been repeatedly confirmed here is that words should not be treated as concepts and still less as the concepts of an intellectual elite, especially at an open wiki such as this. If there is a broad consensus on the definition in some field of endeavor, then we can include such a definition with the appropriate context. There is often significant disagreement about the meaning of terms in such fields as is reflected in the practice of many authors to have specialized glossaries and the distinguish explicitly their definition of a term from that of others in the same field.

As to deletion of senses, I simply like to use the processes that we have (WT:RFV and WT:RFD) instead of simply allowing newcomers to delete what they don't like. I am sometimes surprised by the existence of attestation for senses I initially find outrageous. DCDuring TALK 14:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

On the scientific front, there is some distinction in how "law" is used in different fields. Boyle's Law in thermodynamics (physics, chemistry or physicial chemistry) is rigid and formulaic. In statistics, the Law of Large Numbers and Law of Small Numbers are theoretical conclusions that provide statistical results but with mathematical certainty. Some evolutionary rules (in biology) are described as laws, but have largely probabilistic descriptions of a likely outcome--not strict formulas, such as the case in Boyle's Law. Once you venture into social sciences, all bets are off--the "laws" become soft and mushy. And I am not just talking about Murphy's Law--many pseudo-theoretical expressions, such as Godwin's Law are expressed in terms of "law" even though the outcomes and predictive powers are far from certain. And, in relation to your last point, concerning surprising attestations for existence of superficially dubious forms--thanks for quickly finding an example of resurface to supplant mine from the news. Alex.deWitte 09:30, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW, there was some formatting thing that put [[resurface]] on some list I monitor. Otherwise I wouldn't have noticed. It can be a challenge sometimes to find cites we accept as valid attestation. I was quite pleased with myself when I realized that searching for the passive was a good way to limit search results to transitive resurface, among which the relevant sense was not too hard to locate. It may not be "rare" in the same sense as the hapax legomena and the nonce terms used only in well-known works, but often mentioned in critical works thereon. Sometimes COCA at BYU is a good place for finding things that Google searches make difficult. DCDuring TALK 13:18, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Tom

In reverting me you have restored the vandalism. I cannot believe you intended to do that, it is surely not acceptable to have this nonsense on display while discussion takes place. Sorry for deleting the RFV template, I had come to this through the RFC discussion and had not realised the vandalism had independently been identified at RFV at the stage I made the edit, but you still wished to continue with the RFV. I thought the vandalism was the only issue. SpinningSpark 09:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to get rid of the vandalism. I would have done it myself but I still don't have a good intuitive feel for it.

IMHO, RfV templates should be removed by someone other than a complainant (eg, me) or an attestor, (eg, you). That way three folks at least have taken a look at the matter, with the decision resting with a "neutral" party. There is no rule that requires this, but it seems likely to prevent needless conflict.

The cites you found do look pretty good. DCDuring TALK 21:18, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I've already removed the vandalism once, I'm not going to do it twice. If you're happy for Wikitionary to look stupid, I don't see why I should care much either. SpinningSpark 16:05, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I seem to recall Tom as the name of some part of the ship in Peter Pan (the original novel). My recollection is that it was a gun, but it may have been a bell. (Or ball.  :-) )​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Right and not just the tom-tom:

• DCDuring TALK 08:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

CFI and company names

FYI, Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#CFI and company names. I am notifying you as a likely supporter of exclusion of almost all company names from Wiktionary, so that you can start arguing your case as early as possible. --Dan Polansky 12:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

screw, cop, prison guard

• [1] — This comment was unsigned.

Could we attest those meanings? Nice source for leads, BTW. I always wondered what jolt meant in:

-- DCDuring TALK 09:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Tributary Load

OK. Well. let's see... You deleted my changes to this term (tributary load) and explained that this is not an encyclopedia... Well… OK. I see your point. I realized that you and someone else have removed my changes and I could not understand why. Then I realized that you have sent a reason in my TALK (never use the "TALK" before) Now I see your point (but do not agree with completely). In that case, can you create an article on Wikipedia for this term? For some reason (and I am sure it has nothing to do with this term) my account have been blocked with, apparently, thousands of other accounts because one abusive user is working within our IP range. This is the first time that I use Wiki in this way. I have used it (Wikipedia and Wiktionary) to find words and terms but never created an account to edit anything in it. This particular term needs a lot more information and I was compelled to create an account today. To my surprise, right after I edited the term (tributary load) I found out that my account was blocked because my IP address fall within a range that have been blocked for abuse. Not a good feeling for someone who decide to contribute for the first time in my life. So, again, since I can’t do it, could you create that article in Wikipedia for this term, please? You can use the files in my account (diagrams) that I created for this. Thank you. Jgnpress Jgnpress 18:29, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I am not willing to add an article on a subject I know virtually nothing about or to shill for someone else. Perhaps you can work on this subject on a wikipedia project in another language? The difference between an encyclopedia and a dictionary is a fundamental one. BTW, I don't understand why so many WP articles have etymology sections. DCDuring TALK 18:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

You don't have to SHILL for me or anything else in that line. Thank you. I don't need your help. It wasn't for me anyway. Thank you for being so understanding and willing to help. You were fast to eliminate my editing of the term (which was a good addition to whoever wanted to understand the term correctly). And I see your point here: a dictionary has to be concise. OK, I get it. Therefore I was suggesting that, since I cannot do it because my IP range have been blocked until (I think) March, you could do a contribution to the world of Wikimedia. That was all. But that is OK. Your answer here only shows the kind of person you are. I will wait until they unblock this range of IPs and try to do it myself. Or better yet, maybe I'll just get away from this world of Wikimedia fanatics. Again, this is the first time that I tried to contribute to anything in Wikimedia, created an account for the first time just for this purpose… but the way you have treated me... well, sucks. I have never used Wikimedia a lot. I have read some articles on Wikipedia and really thought that I was in Wikipedia when I was editing the term and that it was all the same. I still do not know exactly how all of this work and do not know all the rules and regulations here. I was just happy to contribute to something that I know very well (engineering). That is why it took me by surprise to see you editing my addition to the term. It was ONLY after I realized that I was in Wiktionary instead of Wikipedia and that there are many Wiki... subjects, if you will, that I understood the difference. My fault. I was really expecting a friendlier and understanding approached from contributors like you, especially after I have explained what happened. But a harsh: I don’t shill for someone else? (This has nothing to do with me; it was an addition to the empowerment of the Wikimedia). -- BTW: Why did you suggest that I try in another language? Where that came from? The term: Tributary Load is in English, isn’t it? What made you think that I could contribute to that term under another language? How good could it be in another language? I don’t use another language, I don't even know how to say that in any other language. I live and work in the US and English is my language. I sense some form of discrimination here. Don't be fooled by my name... — This comment was unsigned.

1. I don't know what your name is. Is your last name "Press"? Is your first name "Juergen"?
2. I was trying to make a constructive suggestion. Because there were a few small grammatical errors in your first posting on this page, I thought that English might not be your first language. Apparently you were just tired or in a hurry. Sorry.
3. I'm sorry that we have gotten off on the wrong foot, especially since I have occasionally been an advocate for the inclusion of more technical term, at least those that meet our standard for "idiomaticity" (ie, being more than the sum of their component terms.
4. We often have glossaries for technical terms in our Appendix namespace. Some of the terms included in the glossaries might not be includable as normal entries and some of the definitions are more encyclopedic than I like to see in our main entries. This would be a good way to contribute if you still wish to.
5. My own initial experience at Wiktionary was not unlike yours, except with terms in psychology. I persisted and learned the weird ways of Wiktionary. DCDuring TALK 14:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

tocalo

Hi, I noticed you tried to fix my page tocalo. I know I left that page rather sloppy, this was mainly because of the strange formatting issues. When creating new Asturian templates and categories, I tend to just adapt the Spanish, Galician, Catalan, French, Italian etc. counterpart, but occasionally this ends up leaving a mess. Basically, with tocalo, it is a kind of compound verb form, I guess - the equivalent of tocarlo in Spanish (in Asturian, they leave out the r in these compound forms, also for reflexives - Asturian tocase = Spanish tocarse.) Anyway, I don't know how to tidy up the tocalo page. It was a kind of experiment - I'm making a lot of experiments with Asturian things, you see, and mostly they work out OK! --Cova (talk) 14:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I tried to bring it into conformity with our overall standards for formatting, partially documented in WT:ELE. I don't know if there are any really well formatted Asturian entries, but you should try to find the best ones. You should also look at the templates in Category:Asturian_headword-line_templates and the pages that use them. DCDuring TALK 14:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the formatting help

Thanks very much for the formatting help, at entry, tough titties. -- Cirt (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that you were a contributor to the entry. I routinely monitor various cleanup lists to push them as far as I can into conformity with my understanding of Wiktionary's standards as I understand them. There is no shortage of such non-conformity. See Category:Requests for various formalized listings of such needs and wants. DCDuring TALK 20:10, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomic Names

Taxonomy is a very complicated system, so incorporating it here gets complicated.

For one thing, the rules vary depending on taxonomic level. Generic names are always nominative singular, but gender is important. Specific epithets are either nominative singular adjectives modifying and agreeing in gender with the generic name (though the gender rule is often ignored), genitive singular or plural nouns acting as adjectives, or nominative singular or plural nouns "in apposition" modifying the generic name.

Everything above genus is derived from the generic name by taking its genitive, removing the ending, then adding an ending specific to the taxonomic level (botany and zoology use different sets of names, and botany allows some older names to be "grandfathered in" as alternate forms). In zoology, at least, the rules don't cover anything above family (and its derivatives, such as superfamily), though they tend to follow common practices for a particular field.

That means that genus (with its associated levels), species (with its associated levels) and higher levels such as order, have etymologies, while family-level names can only be described as "from [fill in the generic name here]".

Of course, the etymology really boils down to "coined by [taxonomic author] from...". In fact, a truly accurate etymology often requires tracking down the original publication of the taxon and seeing what the original author says.

Taxonomic names aren't really Latin, they're a hodgepodge of words from various languages (most often Greek and Latin), those not already Latin being converted into Latin form according to various rules and common practices, then inflected by a very limited subset of Latin grammar. For example, a specific epithet named after a person starts by latinizing the name, then adding a genitive ending treated as if the name is a stem in the 1st declension for females and 2nd declension for males, with some disagreement as to whether there should be an extra "i" in front of the ending: something named for a Mr. Smith would be smithii or smithi, for Mrs. or Miss Smith would be smithae (I'm not sure about smithiae), and multiple Smiths would be smithorum or smithae. Derivative endings such as -ana are often used to avoid conflict with existing taxonomic names. I don't see how "johntuckeri", for instance, could be considered Latin, since it went directly from English to a botanical name- it was never used in an actual Latin sentence.

As for the template: different taxonomic levels are different. At genus level, it's helpful to know the gender, though that's not always easy to find out. I suppose the genitive or the genitive stem might be useful so that derived family-level names can be recognized (for example, Sphing- for Sphinx).

At species level, those which are morphologically adjectives would benefit from alternate forms for the different genders, since they agree in gender with the generic name. The change in ending can make it hard to recognize a specific epithet when the species is moved to a different genus. This doesn't apply to nouns, which don't agree with the generic name. The genitive forms agree with the referent, so alternate gender and number forms could also be of use, though this could get confusing.

As for formatting: the only taxa italicized are those that are listed in a (modified) binomial name, such as genus, subgenus, etc. and species, subspecies, variety, etc.

Author citation is another can of worms, since botany and zoology use different rules, and parentheses are important.

Any of the above have to be carefully weighed as to whether they're helpful enough in practice to outweigh the cost in clutter and confusion.

Personally, I would favor interwiki links to wikispecies rather than having our own interlingual entries. Very few of us at wiktionary understand the difference between taxonomic names and Latin, and equally few know many of the rules regarding taxonomic names. I've had trouble deciding what to do with translation requests in the Latin section where they obviously want the translation for scientific names, since It's not always obvious whether to create a Latin or a translingual entry. Besides, many are named after people or places that wouldn't meet CFI. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:18, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble for such a long and very helpful reply.

Much of what you say is what I suspected or learned from Botanical Latin.

It seems to me that even though New Latin is not as elegant and regular as Classical Latin, it is a much part of Latin as Medieval Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, and Vulgar Latin. It seems a bit more like part of true Latin than Legal Latin and Medical Latin. Merriam-Webster uses the label "ISV", international scientific vocabulary, to finesse some difficulties.

As many Classical Latin words are merely transliterations of Greek stems with Latin declension endings, I don't view the Greek derivations as outside the realm of Latin. And Classical, Vulgar, and Medieval Latin had borrowings from Semitic and Germanic languages, as well as others, especially in the area of proper names. It is finally a matter of simply making a decision as there are arguments on both sides. I don't know what Wiktionary users expect, which might have been a way of helping us reach a decision.

There are a number of translations of taxons that seem to actually be translations of "X family [or other taxonomic level]", where X is the type genus. That doesn't seem like valuable lexical content. DCDuring TALK 22:54, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Off-topic material

Here's the off-topic material from WT:RFV for you: Mglovesfun (talk) 12:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I've blocked you for deliberate vandalism. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:43, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Who died and left you boss? DCDuring TALK 12:46, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Nobody, if you dispute WT:RFV then change it. You're happy to dispute that overhead, overhaul and outcry and words in English? You can't exactly plead ignorance. Therefore if not ignorance, your only possible motive is to harm WT:RFV. 2.28.182.177 12:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

outcry

Could someone check whether the audio file is for the noun or verb senses? — Paul G (talk) 08:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it covers all senses of both PoSes, except the verb sense "to cry louder than". DCDuring TALK 12:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

overhaul

Is the audio file for the noun or the verb? — Paul G (talk) 09:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

overhead

Which part(s) of speech is the audio file for? — Paul G (talk) 10:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

For everything except the adverb. I've never heard it as a pronunciation for the adverb, though our IPA etc says it is. Is it a UK pronunciation? DCDuring TALK 12:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyone object if I move that stuff to the Tea Room where it belongs, and leave a note for PG? Equinox ◑ 12:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

DCDuring objects, nobody knows why. 2.28.182.177 12:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I only object to persistent deletions of valid material whose offense is its misplacement, not its content. I'd suggested TR. DCDuring TALK 12:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

And you blocked me for this? And you agree with me? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

You know you can remove something and move it elsewhere, right? Stupidest thread ever. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:58, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm still blocking you for vandalism, though perhaps it was due to stupidity in stead of malice. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:59, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

For blocking and reverting me and not taking the trouble to correct the problem by moving the content instead of deleting it. DCDuring TALK 13:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Just next time you agree with me, don't block me, as you and I agree on a lot of things, so we'd be blocking each other five times a day. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:02, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with substantive agreement and everything to do with heavy-handed reversion of a veteran user, PaulG. You had the option that you say I should have used. DCDuring TALK 13:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)