User talk:Robert Ullmann/2007

Your posting to my talk page

I'm afraid I find your posting to my talk page to be 1) needlessly confrontational; 2) incomprehensible. What do you mean about "cruft" and "nanshu"? I just don't get it. I am simply trying to assist in a collaborative effort, as I believed our project to be, to make our entries as clear as possible. As it stands now the Chinese template for hanzi, as formulated by you presumably, does not specify whether a character is simplified or traditional, and although the alternate form is given in the template it is given in a manner very confusing to users. In this case, the format we had before was much clearer. I have brought this up but instead I get needless confrontation. I have looked at the template's code several times and can make no sense of it, although I have created East Asian templates in Wikipedia. I'm afraid the code you've used doesn't make any sense at all to me. What I do know is that the templates for Chinese and Korean, as currently constructed, do not produce an entry that is clear or easily usable, particularly to novices to these East Asian languages. Thank you for writing. Badagnani 06:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see -- are the templates you were referring to not the ones I had made recommendations about, but instead the one with Mandarin, Cantonese, and Min Nan? I'm surprised you're recommending that I use those, because I see that now (in a move I didn't really agree with), Mandarin, Cantonese, and Min Nan have been separated in entries (and in fact often with Japanese in between the second and third) without regard to the close links between the three languages; that would seem to make the 3-language template obsolete and unusable. In any case, I made very specific recommendations about the Korean and Chinese pronunciation templates to make them more clear and usable -- not any others. Badagnani 06:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The templates for Chinese languages, as well as the other removal of the cruft created by User:NanshuBot were done during and after extensive discussions on WT:BP over a period of months. The format is being brought into line with the WT:ELE and related style standards.

You have been told several times to use the standard templates {{zh-hanzi}} and {{zh-forms}} (also {{ja-forms}}) if you feel that the forms are insufficiently visible, but instead you re-insert the Nanshu cruft without discussing it.

• • I'm sorry, I've already told you that I don't understand what "nanshu" and "cruft" mean. And could you be a bit nicer in your postings? I've just re-read the Wiki guidelines and they do say that we should treat one another and our suggestions with the utmost respect and kindness. Thank you. Badagnani 02:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• • My comment wasn't that the form of the character (that is, whether it was the simplified or traditional form) was "insufficiently visible"; in fact it wasn't there at all, anywhere in the entry. I thought I was very clear about that. We really do have to have entries that are perfectly clear for all users: fluent Chinese speakers/readers as well as Chinese learners. The previous format was eminently clear and the template you advise using is a good step, but it is a bit small and "exiled" to the right; a bit of tweaking and enlargement, I believe, would make it more prominent and resolve the problem. Badagnani 03:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

None of these are "pronunciation" templates; I don't know how to assist you out of that level of confusion. Robert Ullmann 11:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• • Please substitute "romanization" for "pronunciation," then, and consider my suggestions for improvement of the templates. Nobody is perfect and I seem to have used the wrong word. Everything else about my comment stands. As with everything else on Wiktionary (and Wikipedia), there's always room for improvement. I have made specific recommendations to improve the clarity of the templates at the "discussion" pages of several of the individual templates themselves. Thanks. Badagnani 02:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Badagnani, I'd like to thank you for maintaining a level of decorum that is admirable. Your point that we need to be more polite to each other is well taken.
• I'm sorry that I have not yet had a chance to delve into this template. I had hoped that pointing to other complicated templates used in English, someone might take the initiative to experiment with new templates (somewhere) but that has not happened.
• Robert Ullmann, can I ask you to pause your bot activities for a couple days, (actually, it looks like you already have?) so these minor complaints can be dealt with? We all wish to improve the entries; what we thought was agreement on a better format, still aparently has problems, as Badagnani has pointed out. While I don't agree 100% with Badagnani, I also have no expertise in CJKV languages at all. And it takes me longer to understand what I've linguistically missed, than it does for me to fix an errant template.  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 18:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

I'm not sure how to interpret what seems to be a consistently strongly confrontational and patronizing attitude in your "discussion" posts to me, in fact from the very first one you ever left for me. I hope we can move beyond that into a friendly mode of editing and discussion, because working here should be fun, don't you agree? My comments are always made in good faith and in an effort to improve the usability of our Wiktionary, in collaborative fashion. It does seem that a number of the comments I have made have been dismissed out of hand, and not seriously considered. Perhaps it's something going on in your personal life that I shouldn't take personally, or it's just your mode of (seeminly always heated and belittling) discourse which seems normal to you but not to others. In any case, I have not seen the template you are referring to ("simplified" and "traditional" in reference to discrete hanzi as opposed to multi-hanzi words), but it makes perfect sense. Why haven't you been putting those in your revised entries all along, or are you planning to implement them as you go along, later? My only comment about them is that the template box is fairly small, and far to the right, which would mean that some users might miss seeing it entirely. Perhaps the size could be increased somewhat. Best, Badagnani 02:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry about the tone, I do get exasperated sometimes (and no, it is not anything external ;-). I simply could not understand why you would not comprehend using a template you have used many times before, even after being reminded of it repeatedly.

One thing you should realize is that I can't have the bot introduce information that is not there, it is just re-formatting. When the page has the Nanshu "style" field, the bot puts the alternate form in the cmn-hanzi template. It can't do more than that. The reason is that Nanshu was making some assumptions about simplified and traditional forms. From User:NanshuBot:

• The Bot detects the type of a character ("simplified", "traditional" or "both") by variants. If it has one or more simplified variants, it is "traditional". If its simplified variant is also a traditonal character (like 臺), its simplified variant (like 台) is "both". The same is true of traditional variants. But the detection is sometimes wrong.
• The Bot does not designate the type of a character ("simplified", "traditional" or "both") if it has neither simplified nor traditional variants.

It is no wonder the "detection is sometimes wrong" ... the only valid information in the Nanshu entries is that a character has a traditional or simplified variant. Look at 台 it is considered simplified and traditional, but is also the simplified form of 臺, itself, and two other characters. If you want to add this information, you need an external reference to check. (The pointers to the Unihan DB I'm introducing are very useful; that DB has improved the format since Nanshu was using it.)

There are about 2000 simplified characters, (list is very similar to the Jōyō list, with 1,945), some of which are traditional. In a few cases a character is both a simplified form of a traditional character, and also has its own simplified form. The vast majority of the 70,000+ Han characters are not usefully classed as either, being "traditional" only in the sense of not having a simplified form.

One note about the box: you probably have a fairly large screen like I do, with a lot of pixels. Try shrinking the window to 3/4-width and 3/4-height (or so, depending on what you have) to get some idea how a very large part of the user base sees the presentation! I wouldn't want to make it any bigger. Robert Ullmann 05:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Explanation of form (simplified/traditional) in hanzi entries

OK, I have just tried implementing the hanzi-forms template you recommended, at the 丝 entry, which previously had no identification of whether the character was simplified or traditional. The only drawback I see is that the entry still does not state clearly whether the character is simplified or traditional. The only way, apparently, that one would know that the character is simplified is that the simplified character shows up black, without a wikilink, while the traditional one is a blue link. I don't think this really solves the problem of identification of whether a hanzi entry is describing a simplified or traditional character as well as my earlier suggestion that it be identified as simplified by saying "Form: Simplified" below the character, as we had before. On the other hand, the template for characters that are both simplified and traditional it's fine because it says "Simplified and Traditional." I think we're almost there; we just need to put our heads together to get things as clear as possible for our users. Badagnani 03:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

You keep saying that the page had no identification that the character is simplified? I don't get it. I don't understand how anyone can look at:

丝 (traditional 絲, pinyin sī (si1), Wade-Giles ssu¹)

and not know that the character is a simplified form of 絲. Isn't that what it says?! I mean, how dense are people? ;-) I mean, we don't go around writing:

box (this is singular!, the plural is boxes)

It might be nice to add a key to the template so that it can say this, like the POS templates, but that information is not in the Nanshu entries as I observed above, even though it may appear to be! We might add form=(s, t, ts)?

as to the box, don't you think that people can like, kinda, tell what entry they are looking at? (Once they get past the "everything looks like squiggles" stage, of course ;-)

actually, they should both show up blue, see 丝 ... Robert Ullmann 06:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Whatever you may think, no, the form of the template (parenthetical citation) you present above does not make it absolutely clear that the character is either simplified or traditional. This is very important, particularly for Chinese learners. I must admit that it took me some time to figure out why it says "traditional" in parentheses right after the simplified character. Of course now I see what you've done but for maximum clarity, it should have "Form:" and "Traditional form:" rather than simply "Traditional," which makes it, at first glance, appear that the character presented, though we know it is singular, is traditional. Also, I have pointed out that the use of italics without colons between the name of the romanization name and the romanization itself, and semicolons (rather than commas) separating romanizations from one another (I gave similar examples of the standard format for Chinese entries at Wikipedia) does serve to create confusion. There is always room for improvement. Badagnani 19:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I've mentioned that in the colour entry, the alternate spelling color is presented on a separate line, below. I do recommend this for the template we're discussing, to avoid the confusion I described above (of course calling the alternate form "alternate form" rather than "alternate spelling," as the colour entry does). Badagnani 19:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I would like to tell you why I discourage the use of "alternate form" for simplified/traditional. There are a number of Chinese characters that have true alternate forms, which have nothing to do with simplified/traditional. This is more pronounced for the traditional character set. Here is one example:

• trad. 夠 or 够／够 or 够, simpl. 够 (gòu)

A-cai 21:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Asking for your expertise

As you may know, I've been trying to get people to add as many different language entries to Appendix:Units of time, Appendix:Days of the Week, and Appendix:Months of the Year as possible. I would particularly like to see more entries for major languages outside of Europe. I noticed that you rate yourself with some experience in (Ki)Swahili (and even live in Nairobi!) Could you add the appropriate terms to these pages? Thanks so much for whatever you can do, and glad to see the fine work you do. (The regulars never seem to get their due appreciation.) --EncycloPetey 23:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Re:Kenia

The bot has has good taste. ;) Kinyarwandan Wiktionary!? This project is getting more and more interesting!--Jyril 18:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

User talk:Krun

Please check my talkpage again. – Krun 21:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Hanja compounds

In "articles" (entries?) about a single Chinese character, should there be only one Compounds section for all languages, or one for each language in which the listed compounds occur? I'm asking because most Korean compounds will have a Japanese or (literary) Chinese equivalent.

If there is to be a separate Compounds section for each language, I was also wondering whether I should use lang in it for display aethetics, or whether some bot is going to take care of that later. Dustsucker 00:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

There should be a separate section, but I don't think we are trying to make them exhaustive; listing all the compounds for character in (say) Mandarin that have ever been used (and should someday have a wikt entry) would completely overwhelm the user who just needs the everyday ones plus some of the less frequent. The differences between the sections would be instructive. (Some of the existing entries have compounds for Chinese, which the 'bot is stuffing into Mandarin; in at least one case they are all Cantonese ;-)

Not sure exactly what do do yet about the aesthetics in the compounds section et al

It you use a script template, it should be (e.g.) {{KOchar}}, otherwise {lang} the HTML parameter(s) get embedded in the page, rather than in the template, where they can be maintained as browsers and such evolve. Browsers like Firefox give the user control over fonts by language code, which is what KOchar and its sisters use, as well as the appropriate spans, class (should be class="KO", not done yet) etc. There have been quite a few subtle changes to these templates; {unicode} used to have a huge list of fonts, now much simpler as IE is dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming ... Robert Ullmann 01:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

A thought I had was to have a top/bottom template for a compounds table, with the language specified. We could then use a uniform table format, and perhaps make it a collapsible section like {{trans-top}}. But I haven't gone very far thinking about this. Robert Ullmann 01:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you reading and for your replies (also below and also on my talk page). I'll try to keep in mind what you said about script templates, and I'm really looking forward to seeing a few model articles whose format people can copy after all CJKV-related format issues have been sorted out. Dustsucker 04:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

CJKV characters simplified differently in Japanese and Chinese

I've suggested a standardised way of adding triads (triplets?) of characters to Category:CJKV characters simplified differently in Japan and China (see there) and added a few characters to this category to see how it works. The good news is that now it's possible for a reader to see what is what, right from the category page, without opening characters' "articles", even if the reader cannot tell hanzi from kanji.

I realised how bad this was when I remembered that there are probably quite a few simplified characters that represent more than one differently shaped traditional character, as each (Japanese or Chinese) simplified character would have to be collated with exactly one traditional character. Perhaps you know a better way? :(

I also noted that an IP had a different way of collating (see diff). Collation by radical + additional stuff breaks up the neat tidiness (it gets slightly more difficult to see where one triplet ends and the next one begins) but might have some benefits (finding a particular triplet in a crowded cat), although there is still the problem of simplified characters from more than one traditional character.

Once the category gets filled (if it survives) so that only a tiny fraction of entries fits on one page, it could be very hard to find "your" character, depending on how collation is handled. Dustsucker 01:20, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this kind of category sort magic has limitations. An entry can only appear in one place; it isn't a general indexing system. At some point you need to have an Index: sort of page (pages). I think the idea behind the category (like the general idea of categories) is that the sort should just make it easy to find the entry, the pther info should be on the page. Is something to think about. Robert Ullmann 01:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment

Hi, did you not say you would attempt to moderate your belittling tone? Regarding the layout of the line, use of italics, and non-use of colons and semicolons, I am clearly saying it does not make clear visual sense. You do not address that but refer to some standard format to which you do not present a link. If the standard format is designed as such, then I believe the standard format to be unclear. Additionally, I have het to receive a response about the listing of simplified and traditional forms as comparable to the listing of alternate U.S./British spellings such as in the case of color/colour.

Further, the tone you took in your last posting is just inexcusable, and again is making it very unpleasant for me to work here. Perhaps that is what you want, to drive me away from continuing to work here. However, my comments for these small improvements are made in good faith in an effort to improve Wiktionary's clarity and usefulness, and I believe, though you apparently do not, that I am a productive editor, working with seriousness and devotion to this project. You, on the other hand, appear not to have given serious consideration to any of my suggestions, no matter how logical they may have been. It is as if you are incapable of considering any constructive suggestion of any kind. I hope you will prove me wrong. Thank you. Badagnani 23:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Read those two paragraphs you just wrote. You are criticizing me for a belittling tone? Incredible! Robert Ullmann 03:38, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Kinyarwanda

So, Meta (m:wiktionary) gives the English for rw as Rwandi, but Wikipedia redirects that name to w:Kinyarwanda, and you've given it as lkinyarwanda on the Main Page. I can't say that I know enough to know which is "right" (or even preferred), but it seems that there's an opportunity here to get the name standardized across the Wiki projects. Could you do so? Also, all the language names seem to be capitalized on the main page (for languages which use capitals), so does rw use capital letters? Thanks, --EncycloPetey 18:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, meta is on my list of things to get fixed. WP is right; the English name is Kinyarwanda. The Kinyarwanda name is Ikinyarwanda, and it does capitalize language names, English is Icyongereza. (all languages take prefixes Icy-, Iki-, Igi-) Robert Ullmann 04:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Template

Moving/redirecting to userspace. thank you for notifying me. :) RaccoonFox 00:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Mandarin Pinyin

Hi. Excellent job of creating all those entries. I fixed a few where people had stuck letters with breves instead of carons in hànzì entries -- mĕng năi pĭ lĭ should be měng nǎi pǐ lǐ. I also fixed the hànzì that pointed to ĕ but it still needs to be merged into ě.

I think I got all the breves but maybe there are some more entries with invalid pinyin. ... and what is ḿ? It was added by Nanshu but it's not in the Unihan db (nor is it valid Pinyin as far as I can tell). Cynewulf 19:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

m acute and n grave were both added to UCS because of pinyin ... apparently it is valid, but still something I want to chase. If you look at the Unihan DB for the character with m-acute, it says Mandarin pinyin is M2, which has to be ḿ, right? There isn't any vowel ... the s/w is designed to work incrementally, so when things are fixed, it can be run again. I should have caught all the carons at the start ;-) Robert Ullmann 20:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Re "someone else looking at things" -- I know the feeling. It seems nobody ever reacts to my edits, so I sometimes wonder whether people are ignoring me or whether I'm doing everything perfectly.

Looking at ḿ, the character 呣 U+5463 does have a romanization of m2, but that's Cantonese -- the Mandarin entry is blank. As for 唍 U+550D, I don't see m2 anywhere on the unihan page.

I don't know enough about the language to say for certain that "this is wrong", but given some of the mistakes I've fixed I think we should at least subject this to some sort of fact checking. Cynewulf 21:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Newbies

I do not think that I am biting other newbies, all I am doing is telling them what there mistakes are and telling to try not to do that again. I do not want it to seem like I am bitting them so what am I doing that seems like I am. Have a nice week and god bless.--Sir James Paul 21:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry about that, that template is on wikipedia and I thought it would be at witionary but it is not.--Sir James Paul 16:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

"Indef" might not be so good

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Brion_VIBBER&diff=next&oldid=490249

Perhaps a shorter duration block is in order. --Connel MacKenzie 05:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you want to monitor him. Every single bit of his "help" had to be fixed/reverted. I did figure on reviewing this. He ignored an explicit warning not to edit anon users talk pages with warnings, etc. He is much more trouble on the 'pedia, showed up a month or so ago wanting to be an admin. Changed to 1 week, but I don't think it will really help ... we'll just have more next week. (Read his talk page (and the sub-page) on the 'pedia, and you'll see what I mean.) Also he has at least one sock here (#14949) and has been suspected of using socks to add to/affect voting on admin status (for himself). Robert Ullmann 06:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. That is much better, I hope. I think the classic is q:User talk:Sir James Paul. This is amusing: meta:User talk:Sir James Paul, likewise this! I hope I wasn't this bad when I started here. --Connel MacKenzie 06:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

A minute after I shortened the block, Tawker removed it. Is Tawker going to patrol him? ;-) Robert Ullmann 06:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

See edit to a template on simple; like any political campaign, put those stickers everywhere: [1]] Robert Ullmann 07:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I didn't realize it was even possible to be opposed for sysophood on simple:, let alone fail. --Connel MacKenzie 07:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About_Japanese/Transliteration

I'm not really sure where to raise these questions..

Talk page of WT:AJ I would think. Sorry, I haven't been able to do very much for a few days. (And dealing with things like the PIE silliness below...)

Probably best to copy these there; I can look at them more closely but someone else like Tohru can too. (and it is midnight right now) Robert Ullmann 20:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Cynewulf 21:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• The strict Japanese transliteration rules state that -oう where the う is the non-past indicative verb inflection should not be romanized as ō, but that -iい must always be romanized as ī, even if it is the non-past indicative 形容詞 inflection (いい, 難しい etc). Was this an oversight or is this intentional?

• For 形容動詞 mainly, and similar things (-に, etc) by extension, does the standard romanization include a space between the root word and the type conversion particle? For example, is 静かな shizukana or shizuka na?

• It is implied via wikipedia that ぢ (e.g., in ちぢれる) is ji, and づ (e.g., in つづく) is zu. Is this correct?

(oh, and can you confirm that 連体詞 use L3 header "Prefix" and {{ja-pos}} type prefix?)

That is the intention. Robert Ullmann 20:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Cynewulf 04:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

formality

it is indeed being discussed, at Wiktionary talk:Reconstructed terms, where I waited for input for several days before going ahead. This is a formal invitation to civilly join the discussion there. Dbachmann 16:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

But you know perfectly well that you need to either add a reference to that at WT:BP or such. And you know that the issue is at RFD, you replied there and yet continued. Robert Ullmann 16:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

frankly, I would have thought the discussion being in Category:Active discussions should be enough. I am active on Wikipedia mainly; since you are more familiar with Wiktionary than I am, you could have linked the discussion on BP yourself if you wanted broader input. Instead of doing that, or even just commenting yourself, you put things on RFD. I daresay "This is being discussed, as you know well" cuts both ways: since you appear to know this is being discussed, how can you justify taking the rfd route instead of trying to seek consensus? Not that your implication that etymological reconstructions are "nonsense" promise the discussion will be very fruitful, of course. Dbachmann 16:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I had no idea that there was any discussion until I found the entries turning up in the main namespace; I added RfD, and there is then there is a procedure. "Active discussions" means nothing around here; most are dormant; certainly not watched.

And you were informed directly on your talk page that it was settled policy that PIE belonged in appendicies, little more than a week ago.

For the record though, PIE is complete and utter bilge.

But that has nothing to do with the discussion, the discussion is on whether entries can be cited per CFI. The wiktionary is descriptive of real, actual, citeable, and cited use. Robert Ullmann 16:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I was informed on my talkpage that there had been a discussion. I inquired where this discussion is at, and was pointed to Wiktionary:Reconstructed terms. On that page, it says the issue is under debate (not "settled policy"), and that there are various approaches. Since I appear to be the only editor into adding PIE entries, I decided which of the approaches fit me best and went ahead. Do point me to a page saying the "Appendix" thing is "settled policy", the Wiktionary:Reconstructed terms certainly says otherwise, and it transpires that it is your metaphysical dislike of etymological entries that left it 'unsettled' in the first place. Now, do feel free to show me around on wiktionary, as a veteran editor helping a newcomer, but don't try to sell me misrepresentations about 'settled policy'. Dbachmann 21:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

furthermore, what does it bother you if I upload the full Pokorny to "* namespace"? It's not like it collides with anything, it is not like it isn't attributable to notable dictionaries, and it's not like you are paying for the diskspace. Feel free to ignore this issue if you're not into working on it. Dbachmann 21:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

WT:CFI is policy, which PIE does not, and cannot meet. And "*" is not a namespace. And it does collide; we have *nix and * itself. You want to make a major change to CFI to allow conjectural entries? Take it to WT:BP, see where you get. Don't listen to me, I'm obviously a complete idiot to suggest that we require words to be real words in actual languages before they are entered in a dictionary. (My talk page, my tone of voice ;-) Robert Ullmann 22:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

you keep saying CFI prohibits reconstructed entries. I can see no indication of such a ruling there at all. And the 'active discussion' at Wiktionary:Reconstructed terms seems to be completely unaware of any such policy too. We are not even discussing whether Wiktionary should have such entries. We are just discussing how they should be named. I am sorry, but you really seem to be making things up. As for "namespaces", I realize "* namespace" is not an actual namespace. If you can drop fabricating policy concerns, we can actually debate how to best place them. If your concern is merely technical, I have no problem with opening an actual "*: namespace", moving *men- to *:men- or even Reconstructed:men-. This isn't urgent at all, we can peacefully look at all sides of the question and still move things around when we're done. In fact, I would favour the *:men- as an excellent solution. Dbachmann 13:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, etymological entries are a perfectly pragmatic thing, I am not making any claim about the "validity" of any reconstruction; it is merely straightforward that maintaining a single *ped- entry makes more sense than synchronising identical etymological discussions at foot, Fuss, fot, fuoz, vuoz, voet, πούς, piede, pes, etc., etc.; I maintain that it will also make sense to keep a link to *men- at men, since this is where users unaware of intricate considerations of namespace issues will look for the entry. Dbachmann 13:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

There is a perfectly good settled namespace for PIE: Appendix:Proto-Indo-European

The point being that it as a conjectural reconstruction. Not real, actual words. You are quite right that it is of etymological interest. The entries for the words purportedly descended from *men- can perfectly well refer to the entry. You ought to create an ety template ({{PIE}}) that displays (e.g.) *ped- and links to Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *ped- where it is perfectly appropriate to have an entire article on the root in whatever format works for you.

I am not inventing things: the main namespace gets real, citable words, with evidence that they were actually used, as spelled, by real people. That's what CFI is all about. Robert Ullmann 11:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

i

Template: ja-verb

Hey, I have an idea for {{ja-verb}}. It is that if one input s (means sa-column irregular conjugation) to "type" parameter, template should change (if article is XXX) XXX to XXXする. What do you say? --Izumi5 05:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

But the entry for XXXする should be at XXXする. Yes, I know paper dictionaries put various forms of a root at the same entry; that is because they don't have the space to have separate entries for each form and inflection, and they don't have links. We put each spelling on its own page, with all the appropriate links. That way someone trying to look up 監督する can find it, without having to know how to decompose it into stem and suffix, to look up 監督.

(Yes, to you and me that is obvious, but consider the person who is, for example, just learning the difference between hiragana and kanji? Remember, they both look like squiggles to most people ;-) If you found the word watoto, (Swahili) and wanted to look it up, would you know that you have to look under mtoto as you would in a paper dictionary? Would you know that it is M-WA class, and that watoto is plural and (of course!) you should be looking at the singular, which of course you are expected to just know, never having seen Swahili before? So we have an entry at watoto ...)

We don't want someone unfamiliar with Japanese to have to figure out how to decompose かんとくする in order to look it up. Our users are speakers of English, some of whom are not fluent in English, but using it as the only access they have to information. (If your native language is Kinyarwanda, you can look up rw:蝴蝶, but there are only a few such entries so far ;-)

IIRC, you did suggest before that the verb template have a better parameter than "type", but we needed a specific list of conjugations with short names. Robert Ullmann 11:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are way many combinations of Chinese compound word and subsidiary verb (補助動詞) する and that's different from Swahili or English or so. If someone don't know about this, maybe he take the XXXする as XXX (mostly noun), so I wanted to make these words (XXXする) posted in XXX.

Verbs which conjugate irregularly is カ(ka)Column and サ(sa)Column in contemporary Japanese. All columns have both godan/kami-ichidan/shimo-ichidan conjugation type.

For ancient Japanese, sometimes called 文語(ぶんご, bungo), see following table.

Column	Yodan	Kami-Ichidan	Shimo-Ichidan	Kami-Nidan	Shimo-Nidan	Irregular
ア(a)
カ(ka)	○	○	○	○	○	○
サ(sa)	○			○	○	○
タ(ta)	○			○	○
ナ(na)	○	○		○	○	○
ハ(ha)	○			○	○
マ(ma)	○	○		○	○
ヤ(ya)	○			○	○
ラ(ra)	○			○	○	○
ワ(wa)	○			○	○
ガ(ga)	○			○	○
バ(ba)	○			○	○

--Izumi5 14:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Nothing urgent

Hi, it seems your bot missed the oversized Kanji when it removed all other oversized renditions which Jusjih had placed on 解. Dustsucker 01:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The 'bot wasn't removing things like that; I was (too many variations ;-), In this case it didn't confuse the bot so I didn't notice it. Need to figure out what to do with the various uses of < font > (which should never appear in page wikitext, only in templates) Robert Ullmann 11:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

mother

Wondering about your attachment to the use of "motherfucker" as an etymology for the word mother. It seems like your revert was pretty much inappropriate. Please fix it. Dunning 23:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Personal comments are out of line.

This is a dictionary; the term mother as a shortened form of motherfucker is used, as offensive slang; we document that. Robert Ullmann 11:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Translations

Yeah I work mostly on en.wikipedia but I've been interested on working on here too. I also do some work on es.wikipedia, not much though, I've written a few articles. Im planning on working on es.wiktionary as soon as im comfortable with how the english one works.

I mostly just came here to work on the translations.

Theres my wikistory for you.

Bearingbreaker92 01:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

block threats

so point me to this vote already. You are just bullying me at this point, and if this was Wikipedia (where I have been an admin for two years), you would be in trouble for admin abuse. Dbachmann 12:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

What? for saying that you would be blocked for persisting in doing something after being warned twice that what you were doing is out of policy? Want to participate in the policy discussion which you instigated? Or just go ahead doing what you think you ought to be allowed to do regardless of policy or community decision? See Wiktionary talk:About Proto-Indo-European and WT:VOTE, where all votes are.

I am trying to work out a refinement of policy that is a middle ground between your desire to promote PIE, etc. and others' desire to eradicate it completely from the en.wikt. If you want to be threatening and confrontational, I will be inclined to side with those that would simply remove PIE entirely. All I have said to you more than once is Do not continue doing what you KNOW is questionable and being questioned.

IF we keep PIE, it will be in the appendicies, where it has been and is. Robert Ullmann 12:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no desire to "promote" anything, all I am doing is citing reliable sources on etymological information, which belongs in a dictionary as a matter of course. You have abused your privileges to push your "eradication" campaign, but you have not deigned to discuss civilly at the appropriate talkpages. You have not shown where CFI prohibits etymological entries, you just keep repeating the claim. You, sir, are edit-warring, and blatantly pushing a content dispute instead of reviewing the solutions under debate at Wiktionary:Reconstructed terms. I have no interest in debating with you any further, but I will request that your admin actions are reviewed by the larger community. Dbachmann 16:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Proto- language vote

Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2006-12/Proto- languages in Appendicies started Robert Ullmann 17:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

{{stroke order}}

Excellent. There might be a reason to leave {{Han stroke}} as a separate template, used only for Han characters, but I don't know what that might be. Thanks for improving the template.

It doesn't seem to occur very often but I wonder if it might be worth the effort to add a parameter to specify alternate stroke orders in China/Japan: see e.g. Image:請-bw.png and Image:請-jbw.png (compare strokes 9 and 10). Cynewulf 05:29, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

category:Japanese language

ok, I understand that. I'll remove the link to category:Japanese language if I find it in the pages of Japanese words which are not directly related to Japanese language(such as, except of 名詞(noun), 形容詞(adjective), 動詞(verb), ..., 漢字(kanji), ひらがな(hiragana), etc ). Thanks for your advices.--Carl Daniels 04:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: Wizzrobe

Sorry to sound so discouraging. There is an article at w:Wizzrobe where it does meet the criteria. Robert Ullmann 06:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That's why I thought if wikipedia has a article about something, you could write a simple definition here on wiktionary.com. Wiki Kong 06:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's not how it works. There are plenty of items that have articles on Wikipedia but will never have an entry in Wiktionary, likewise there are plenty of words defined in Wiktionary that will never have articles on Wikipedia. The criteria for inclusion in ach project are very different. --EncycloPetey 06:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As you can see, it doesn't quite work that way: there are lots of proper names, people, places, etc that have WP entries, but aren't dictionary entries. And the other way around: lots of very interesting words that don't rate a WP entry. Robert Ullmann 06:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No, you really can't squirrel away definitions on user subpages to evade CFI. And note that re-creating deleted pages is cause for an immediate block. (which I haven't done ;-) This is WP material, and well-covered there. Robert Ullmann 06:28, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, if having the word here annoys you, I won't repost it. Hopefully I can make some useful definitions here.

Wiki Kong 06:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Special:Wantedpages

Well, I've figured out what happened to Special:Wantedpages now. When you were first starting your Ullmannbot tests, the effects were minor, but now that it has been running a while, the page is quite clogged.

Since it only lists the top 1,000 these days, your links now have overwhelmed the list. Can you please whittle that list down?

The special pages are normally updated on Wednesday and Saturday. But the updates refresh all WMF wikis, not just en.wikt:, so the time it starts and finishes varies a bit.

--Connel MacKenzie 07:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Um, interesting. I was linking the pinyin (in the diacritic form) because BD2412 was working on creating those 1018 (IIRC) entries. But he hasn't been working on it for a while. I could generate the missing ones, complete with a simple meaning on the def lines where we have the information. Need a new XML dump. UllmannBot has finished the 21,300 entries it was working on, except ones that have been modified too much for the bot to re-format. The single hangul syllable blocks I can fix (mostly) by tweaking {{ko-hanja}}. Robert Ullmann 07:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

OK. See my talk page for my pessimistic outlook on the XML dumps (we got skipped this last cycle.) I think it would be nice if you (and other CJKV speakers) could manually attack the Special:Wantedpages page, especially the top entries. --Connel MacKenzie 08:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Manually would be a huge amount of work to get no-where near what some simple code can do on the first pass. Look at the top entry on that list, you want to create that by hand? Robert Ullmann 08:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

This is happening, very slowly. Lots of mess to clean up. Including 648 (not counting since fixed) entries that Nanshu got the pinyin wrong. Robert Ullmann 14:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Note that this ran yesterday, and again this morning.  :-) So I should stop being "an asshole" about the advertisement on the Wikipedia fundraiser thing, I suppose. --Connel MacKenzie 17:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Harry Potter

The Harry Potter translations are being deleted from Wikipedia, if you didn't notice.--85.156.132.203 11:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I didn't notice. Thank you for pointing it out. Are the pages set up for Transwiki (there is a process that copies the history). The material could very well be in an Appendix (or appendicies) here. Robert Ullmann 12:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Pagemove vandal

Hi please check that all of the pages are in their proper location as my script can't revert double pagemoves. --Az1568 09:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry.. Hope this helps tho

• orig_page is the original, correct page location
• final_page is the final, vandalized page location

1. Identify the orig_page and final_page.
2. Delete orig_page (as it only contains the redirect history)
3. Move final_page to (the now vacant) orig_page (as it contains the page history)
4. Delete pages redirecting to final_page (if they have no other history).

--Az1568 10:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Labelling scenarii

I have responded unto you on my talk page. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 19:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I have responded unto you on my talk page again. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 15:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I have written a summary of our discussion at Category talk:English nouns with irregular plurals; please read it to ensure that what I have written is accurate. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 18:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

please slow down on RFDO

Redirects are supposed to linger long enough for double redirects thing to run...right? --Connel MacKenzie 17:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

There are no redirects/other links to these. Only links are from RFDO (you created them and added them to RFDO ;-). True, it is better not to delete a cat that is emptied until job queue is (returns to) zero. Which it is. Robert Ullmann 17:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Template

Hi,

I dropped in to the template talk page and added some thoughts. I'm not really 100% thrilled with putting the romanizations in the inflection line, which is why I've been playing with alternative approaches. At any rate, I reckon the time for standardization is probably upon us; I'll be happy to go back and fix my old contribs once we can hash out a format that works for everybody. Hope to see you around... Cheers, -- Visviva 09:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:hiragana

Hopefully the lack of {{hiragana}} will make your bot work easier Cynewulf 18:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

cuneiform

with reference to this discussion, I would appreciate your input on how to optimize cuneiform entries in compliance with WT:STYLE. I realize our relationship has soured somewhat since your first constructive input. I would ask you to give constructive input on this, not walk roughshod over a whole class of entries without as much as a note on a talkpage. I am asking you for your opinion in good faith, and if you do have an opinion, would you please build a sample entry to illustrate it. This is somewhat pressing as I am planning to run a bot creating entries on several hundred cuneiform signs soon, and I want to make sure there is an uncontroversial format for this before I go ahead. Dbachmann 14:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

1. WT:STYLE is one particular contributors experiment. Sorry that you were confused by that - I am beginning a conversation to rectify that situation. In the meantime, please be aware that you should be following the community approved entry layout.
2. I have replied on User talk:Dbachmann#Cuneiform.
3. I look forward to helping you in any way that I can, for your bot approval. You may find that the Wiktionary bot approval process is a bit more arduous (and longer) than the Wikipedia counterpart.

--Connel MacKenzie 17:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Advice on kanji grade levels

Hi. I'm brand new to wiktionary and am very interested in the kanji content here. I noticed a lot of problems with the kanji grade categories above grade 1 (many many missing) and started to work on improving them, starting with grade 2. I have lists of the kanji in each grade level, but this is still nasty manual work --- looking up each kanji and inserting the grade level into the ja-kanji template and removing the old grade level category. Since you created the ja-kanji template and use a bot, I'm curious if you have any advice to offer. Does this seem like an appropriate project to tackle with a bot? Or is this something you already have on your to-do list? I've never used a bot here or in wikipedia (let alone used one involving non-ASCII characters), but I think I could tackle this technically if this task made sense. Thanks. Rickterp 02:24, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a very good idea. Have you looked through the pybot framework? A good way to learn (more) Python. What you should do is:

• learn whatever you need and put together the bot, set up to do everything except comment out the page.put call so you can do some testing
• create account RickterpBot for it to log in (it won't have a bot flag)
• have it do 5-10 entries, check them, revert any bugs and try again (;-)
• then we can look at it and do the WT:VOTE procedure on a 'bot flag
• then run it on more and keep checking it

Would be good to have it do grades 2-6 and "grade 7", the remainder of the Jōyō list. The non-ASCII characters are easy to deal with, Python runs with 16-bit Unicode strings, the Han range you are dealing with is 0x4E00-0x9FFF.

It is something I could do fairly easily, but I have lots of other things to do too, and this is a very good bot task if you want to learn, and a very useful contribution. Robert Ullmann 09:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

cuneiform

with reference to this discussion, I would appreciate your input on how to optimize cuneiform entries in compliance with WT:STYLE. I realize our relationship has soured somewhat since your first constructive input. I would ask you to give constructive input on this, not walk roughshod over a whole class of entries without as much as a note on a talkpage. I am asking you for your opinion in good faith, and if you do have an opinion, would you please build a sample entry to illustrate it. This is somewhat pressing as I am planning to run a bot creating entries on several hundred cuneiform signs soon, and I want to make sure there is an uncontroversial format for this before I go ahead. Dbachmann 14:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

1. WT:STYLE is one particular contributors experiment. Sorry that you were confused by that - I am beginning a conversation to rectify that situation. In the meantime, please be aware that you should be following the community approved entry layout.
2. I have replied on User talk:Dbachmann#Cuneiform.
3. I look forward to helping you in any way that I can, for your bot approval. You may find that the Wiktionary bot approval process is a bit more arduous (and longer) than the Wikipedia counterpart.

--Connel MacKenzie 17:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:ethnologue

Maybe a stupid question that you've answered before, but why does this template say "IS 639-3 code" instead of "ISO 639-3 code"? CapnPrep 04:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it was properly IS 639. "ISO" is "International Standards Organization", "IS" is "International Standard". So IS 639-3: International Standard 639-3. So this is the way I learned it a long time ago (like around the IS 639-1 process in SC2). It does seem that the ISO itself has taken to using ISO as the prefix sometime in the last 15 years ;-) Since they now call it "ISO 639" themselves, I'll go change it ;-) Robert Ullmann 11:35, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Cool! I was just concerned that it wasn't very recognizable; they throw around a lot of arcane abbreviations at ISO meetings, but they are not all for general human consumption. I wonder which WG of which SC of which TC of ISO establishes the standards for referring to their own standards? There must be one… CapnPrep 16:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

ISO/IEC JTAB (Joint Technical Advisory Board. The "meta" of ISO ;-) Robert Ullmann 17:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Greek

This seems to have fixed it (although a couple of other fixes seemed to have done the trick, until a problem was later discovered. So, I'm not breaking out the champagne just yet). Thank you very much. The solution is so simple, I wonder why I (and two others) didn't think of it. I suppose that's the nature of the beast. Concerning, the first parameter, I'm not sure why it's set to an input instead of simply using PAGENAME (I didn't write the template). Do you think '''{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}''' would work? I'm really new to programming languages, and so I thought I'd run this by someone with a bit more experience before I edit a template which runs the risk of making half the Ancient Greek nouns look like they got hit in the face with a brick. Also, on a completely unrelated note, I recently found out that you have a bot which deals with foreign scripts. I talked to theDaveRoss about getting a copy of his bot to do the exact same thing for Ancient Greek as it's currently doing for Spanish, as Greek is an absurdly inflected language. But he said he didn't know how to get a bot to work with non-Latin characters. Any thoughts on this? In any case, thanks very much for the suggestion for the noun template. Cerealkiller13 20:29, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Making the first parameter default to PAGENAME doesn't really help, because it has to be there anyway (else you can't get to the second parameter ;-). This is one reason why named parameters are good once you get past two or three. We'd have to run a fix through all the calls to remove it. (not hard, but we can leave it for now)

I don't know why he would have any trouble with non-Latin characters; it is written in Python, which does everything in Unicode. But there are other issues with that as well, it left some problems and there are always language specific issues; and bots require real programming (even more than templates ;-). Robert Ullmann 20:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair point, perhaps it would be best for me to learn some programming before I consider owning a bot. As far as the template goes, I think a solution is better reached now than later. The only advantage that I see to having PAGENAME and then all the paramaters shifted over one is that the editor wouldn't have to enter in the first parameter, saving them a bit of time and effort. While this is certainly good, I don't think it would justify the work needed to go through all the articles and delete the first parameter. I guess the other advantage would be that it would automatically change in the event of a page move. However, in the event of a page move, the whole article would likely have to be changed, as the various inflections would likely be wrong. If I'm missing something, please tell me. Cerealkiller13 20:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixing it has the advantage that people (like me) don't look at it (either the template or entries) and wonder why is the pagename/headword repeated? Is it the same? Two observations for now: one, removing that param is exactly the sort of thing a very simple bot could do easily; two, there is other template magic that could be applied ;-) It is midnight here; more later ... Robert Ullmann 20:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Again, fair point. Well, as I think has been previously established, I don't know how to program bots (even simple ones) and I think my talent with templates is rather suspect as well. So, if you feel like programming such a bot (or know of someone else who would) or know of some template spell that would fix it, you are more than welcome to do so. I will be more than happy to assist in any way that my meager skills allow (short of going through all 100 or so Ancient Greek nouns which have the template by hand and removing the first parameter, at least not today). Cerealkiller13 21:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: "Han" is going wrong...

It seems to be Han/6880 is categorized into Grade 1 kanji. Please fix it. --Izumi5 12:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

bad format stuff copied from 校 ... fixed in both places. Robert Ullmann 12:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Proper nouns

I started a conversation at Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Nouns/Proper nouns and would like to request your input on it, as your name came up in a discussion I had with a user concerning this topic. Thanks. Cerealkiller13 20:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

About 均-bw.png

Aw, sorry. I made that image and tried to upload it to Commons. It seemes that I have misplaced the file and uploaded it twice. --Izumi5 12:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Spanish Verbs

Think you could run your bot and make me a list? This is just something that I thought of that i could knock out pretty easily.

Take a verb, for example tomar. Template:es-conj-ar, sorry about the template.

Basically there is a list of spanish verbs. [[2]] Think you could make a list of every form that is on the chart, but doesnt have its conjugation yet?

If you dont quite understand what im saying, please just leave me a message. ITs about 12 at night where I am, and my brain isnt functioning all quite right :).

Bearingbreaker92 04:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a pretty chart ;-). "TheDaveBot" was supposed to generate all of these. Are you looking for ones it might have missed? Or exactly what? Robert Ullmann 11:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I was looking through the spanish word list you made up, and it seemed a few were missing. Dont worry about it, its only a few. Bearingbreaker92 15:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you give me a couple of examples? Robert Ullmann 11:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Other languages

On a page you can put something like "es:Robert Ullmann" in brackets and have it link to other language wiki's.

My question is : is there a template for this? Or do I have to sort out every single language that has it and add it manually? I ask this because there is alot of languages, and I know not all of them have that word.

Like one page, amarilla, needs categories, is there a template that will add them all or some other method?

Thank you

Bearingbreaker92 04:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The iwiki links, like [[es:word]] are managed automatically by a bot (RobotGMwikt), you don't need to worry about them. (And these aren't categories) Robert Ullmann 11:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Haglaz

Hi, could you unprotect haglaz, or at least add something along the following lines to it? Thanks! Angr 18:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

===Etymology===
Proto-Germanic [[Appendix:Proto-Germanic *haglaz|*''haglaz'']] 'hail'

Can you please weigh in at Wiktionary:Grease pit#Implementation of Template:temp:trans-top style template for translations blocks?

Hello,

The vote for approval of the {{trans-top}} etc. translation blocks passed, but some concerns had been raised regarding the implementation. Since you created the initial version, I thought you might want to weigh in, if you have any remaining concerns. Thanks! --Jeffqyzt 19:37, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:t

Your edits to this template have gone awry. Take a look at the Catalan links on the entry for listen (second & third translation sections). The link is displayed instead of the text. --EncycloPetey 21:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

no problem, just that the wikilink had to be taken out of the ca template. Robert Ullmann 23:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

You RRRRRUUULE! Awesome, what you did. And such an easy trick to just use {{{{{1}}}}}! Ok, we have to fix a lot of the language templates, but I think this is a good use for them, and they are seldomly used anyway. Thanks! henne 11:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Dutch, ttbc

Hi Robert,

Please watch out: you added a comma between ‘naar’ and ‘beneden’ in the translation of down. This is incorrect: the translation is ‘naar beneden’ as a whole. I do acknowledge that it looks a bit awkward with {{t}} in between them. Maybe I should leave it out on the first word? I do not think it makes sense to link to naar beneden, since as a native speaker of Dutch, I do not experience this word pair as constituting a dictionary meaning.

Also: I agree that ttbc should be very visible, but at the same time, it looks very nice if they are inside of a trans-frame. Maybe we can find something better for this? henne 17:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks very awkward, very much like an error. But linking both with t is worse, it makes it surely look like two words. There is a solution, given it is beneden you want to link. As to "naar beneden" in the Dutch wikt, we run into this problem at various levels, usually with someone insisting that a term in (e.g.) Korean is just a phrase, and shouldn't be in the dictionary. But note that tennis player is just such a phrase in English, we need it to link to FL terms. We probably will have naar beneden here at some point. Look at it down, beneden now? Robert Ullmann 20:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

In re: for the record

I have replied unto you on my talk page. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 22:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Reversing a redirect

Didn't know you could do that. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks for the info. Jimp 18:18, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

E-mail this user

Is your e-mail link still working? I sent a note a day or two ago, but didn't hear anything back. --Connel MacKenzie 01:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Was lurking in the junk folder. I should've added you to the address book (e.g. white-list) the last time you sent a note. Will reply presently (is 4 AM here ;-) Robert Ullmann 01:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Meta admin?

Uh, okay. I guess that means w:rw:Kinyarwanda needs to be renamed, then. Thanks for the heads-up. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 02:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: iwiki links

I know, RobotGMwikt's pretty good about that. But I just do it out of habit; I always add the interwikis at the Vietnamese entry first, since we link to new entries on the front page there. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent clarification of copyright law

Thanks for the explanation. As a designer for 30 yrs I think I understand at least the basics of copyright law and the difference between copyrighting and patenting, but I realise I learned it by rote, rather than understanding that the underlying principle, obvious in hindsight, is the damage which can be done to the copyright holder by reusing his work in a particular way. Therefore use in the same field is more important than use in a field the copyright holder is not competing in. --Enginear 16:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

IRC

Hello. There are a bunch of us on IRC at the moment, and we were wondering if you might like to join us. --Dvortygirl 05:12, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

From where I am I go through a NAT box, and the iconnect.co.ke proxy. IRC doesn't want to work. Robert Ullmann 10:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, you've been invited to IRC. To get there, click the little IRC link to the right of [log out]. (That signs you in to irc://irc.freenode.net/wiktionary with your Wiktionary username.) At this point, it is still an experimental proof of concept. It uses Javascript to call a CGI-IRC page, which loads a Java client in a new window of your browser. If demand increases I'll put it on toolserver properly. Hope to see you there soon. --Connel MacKenzie 00:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Timeline

I restored the section header for the definition to which the citations applied, but made a cut-and-paste error. --EncycloPetey 21:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The section header of Citations pages should indicate which definition the citations support. The timeline is an added feature, and does not require a separate header. See listen/Citations to see why such a header is needed. --EncycloPetey 22:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

language code templates

Hold on: only unusual languages are supposed to be wikilinked!

These templates are primarily for subst:'ing into translation tables. The common languages don't get linked! (I.e. at least those with their own wikts, plus any others that are ordinarily recognizable. Robert Ullmann 07:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; That had occurred to me after I done a few and logged off last night. Any time I start a major project (like this one) I do try to hold off after making the iinital start, so that the wisdom of others will correct problems early on.

But, you also reverted my categorizations. Shouldn't these all be categorized? If the categorization is in a "noinclude" tag, won't that keep it from being "subst"-ed in? --EncycloPetey 00:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. Just wanted to be sure there wasn't some additional technical reason I wasn't aware of. --EncycloPetey 03:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Sesotho

Robert,

Thanks for the help so far! I'm still unable to edit the first page displayed on http://www.wiktionary.org/ - any hints?

Furthermore I see the language Sesotho is often listed as seSotho on some parts of the site - this way of writing is mainly used for the Nguni languages such as Zulu (isiZulu) and Xhosa (isiXhosa) but not the Sotho family languages.

Regards --JAKoli4 10:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The top page (www.wiktionary.org) is part of meta. What did you want to change? Looks right at the moment. Robert Ullmann 10:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The link is to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/st: (goes to no page!) and it should be http://st.wiktionary.org/

Any ideas on how to change the language name?

Okay, I'll work on this tomorrow; I think I know who to ask. Robert Ullmann 23:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI: the page name is meta:Www.wiktionary.org_portal, usually maintained by meta:User:mxn, requested on his meta talk page. Robert Ullmann 04:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Renaming AHD?

As one of the people who voiced an opinion in the discussion, I thought you'd like to know that a VOTE has been initiated regarding the name of our "AHD" pronunciation system. --EncycloPetey 06:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Spanish Missing list

Do you think that you could rerun your process and update the list? And have all the pages that have been created , removed from the list and stuff.

Thanks

this is it incase you have forgotten

Bearingbreaker92 04:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Robert Ullmann 05:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure if you did these [3]

[4] [5]

The program writes all 4 at the same time. Robert Ullmann 03:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The reason I ask is because I have created noventa y seis, but it still exists on the list, isnt it supposed to be removed? Bearingbreaker92 23:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The list is as of 26 January 2007, like it says at the top. New list comes with the next database dump. Robert Ullmann 23:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, pardon my ignorance. Bearingbreaker92 23:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Concerning axiomata

I have reverted your reversion of my revision unto axiom, as I have just cited axiomata six times. In future, could you either make some quick checks, or give me the benefit of the doubt for a half-hour or so? † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 00:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

When you learn to write standard English I will perhaps listen to you. (BTW: you are using "unto" incorrectly. It looks, and is, really, really stupid! It doesn't mean "in" or "of" in any circumstance.) Robert Ullmann 00:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Strong's

section note: user Cerealkiller13 and user Atelaes are the same person

I think it's an excellent idea. I'll have to look into creating similar templates for some of the other references. I know LSJ is online, but I've had a hell of a time trying to find anything on it. By the way, do you have any brilliant ideas on how to implement it? I'll certainly start using it on every entry I happen to edit, but there are a lot of entries which cite that site (I'd say 90% of our Ancient Greek section). Thanks much. Cerealkiller13 17:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

So, there is no online Bauer, but the LSJ is online. However, it's riddled with problems. First of all, the format that they use to translate Greek characters into Latin characters uses equal signs and pipes that screw up the template. More importantly, I don't think the website is really up to snuff. When a link does work, it's ridiculously slow. And more often than not, the links don't work at all. And, the formatting is terrible, it's nearly impossible to find anything. I think it would be a bad idea to set something as large as Wiktionary on such an apparently fragile site. All the traffic we could potentially send would probably crash their whole system. The template is Template:LSJ and some examples of entries using the site in a non-template form are πρωΐ and υἱός. If you would like to take a look at it, and try fiddling with it, by all means do so. Otherwise, feel free to delete it. I don't think it's worth pursuing at this point. Cerealkiller13 22:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say just use it on new entries or those you happen to edit and see how it goes; there isn't any hurry to retrofit it. Would be a minor bot task at some point. Note that if we have other sources that use Strong's numbers, we don't need another template, we can just add a line. Robert Ullmann 14:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll just start using it as I go along. But, LSJ isn't a Strong's. It's the premier Ancient Greek lexicon. If we could find a way to link each of our Ancient Greek entries to their LSJ entries, it would be great (although perhaps a bit redundant, seeing as LSJ will likely be the primary source of the stuff we put on non-biblical Ancient Greek entries). If I misinterpreted what you said, I apologize. Cerealkiller13 18:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I just wasn't answering both of your questions; I hadn't looked at LSJ yet. They have no trouble displaying Unicode/UTF-8, why can't you look things up that way? (silly ;-) If you are sourcing stuff from there, have you looked at the copyrights? Robert Ullmann 20:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, sorry about the misunderstanding. And while they do display stuff in Unicode, as far as I can tell, you can't search by it (or enter an address in it). Their searches and addresses are in a goofy Romanized format. If you can figure out a way to search or do an address in Unicode on their site, that would solve a lot of problems. I've tried with no success (and to add insult to injury, one of my RAM chips recently blew, and so I'm running on 256 with XP, which makes opening text documents slow, nevermind opening complex websites, and so searching through their (already slow) website is excruciating). As far as copyright goes, I must admit that I'm a little uncertain, and would have asked at some point (if I were a responsible person, I probably would have asked a long time ago). But my understanding is that, if I take their definitions, reword them, and cite them, it's all good. If I am incorrect in this, please, for the love of God, tell me before I make Wiktionary one big lawsuit target. Also, am I correct in assuming that I can take inflections, alternate spellings, and etymologies from them wholesale? It seems that they couldn't copyright those (well, at least not the first two). At least for the time being, most of the words I'm looking at are biblical, and I have multiple sources that I can synthesize with biblical Greek words. Cerealkiller13 20:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know if this makes any difference in any way (I can't see how it would), but when I use the LSJ, I'm using my own personal paper copy, not the website. Cerealkiller13 20:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Note that the Intermediate Liddell & Scott is out of copyright, so is entirely safe. As to the 1940 L&S: etymologies I believe are a problem, as they are research by the copyright holder. But I'm not sure, it is fuzzy. Robert Ullmann 22:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip on the Intermediate. I got a used copy for $15, that will be helpful. As far as copyright issues go, it seems to me that the issue as a whole is sort of fuzzy. Wiktionary seems pretty clear about certain things that are definitely copyright violations, and clear about things that are definitely not copvio's, but it seems that no one knows exactly where the boundary between these two is. I suppose the law probably is rather vague on (or perhaps doesn't even cover) some novel aspects of Wiktionary. Cerealkiller13 23:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

So, after a bit of searching, it would seem that the issue is actually confused at the federal level, which makes it no surprise that we're all confused about it here. Copyright might expire 120 years after creation, 90 years after publication, 70 years after the death of the author, or 28 years after publication, if published before 1978. It's incredibly complicated. Here's an excerpt from the official US copyright website: "The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission." The rules are riddled with confusions like this. The basic point seems to be: We'll see what happens when they try and sue you. *sigh* In any case, the Intermediate I ordered got canceled, and so I got a full LSJ eight edition from the late 1800's (I'm not really sure when, the book doesn't even say) 1877. By every copyright law I've read, it should be public domain. Hopefully that should speed up the cleaning of the Ancient Greek section. By the way, I was thinking of adding a category to the {{Strong's}} which would add the category Category:Strong's Concordance to every word and order it based on it's number, thus creating a searchable Strong's on Wiktionary. Any thoughts on that? Atelaes 21:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

But all those rules only apply to works published after 1 January 1923, so anything before 1923 is in the public domain. (see w:WP:PD) Which makes life a bit simpler.

Categorizing is interesting; you'd want separate cats for Greek and Hebrew I think; but then sorting by number isn't going to be very helpful: only the first digit will show up as an index key, and then you'll have a long list with no indication of where you are in the numbering! It would be better to have Index: pages. (Index:Strong's Concordance/Greek) Perhaps we could generate them by magic? Robert Ullmann 01:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Now they tell me. Well, at least 1923 is before 1925 (or else I would have kicked myself for not getting the 1925 version). As for Strong, yeah it wouldn't be terribly useful to have #'s 1,11, and 113 under the heading "1." I didn't think of that. Good thing I asked someone first. An index is an excellent idea, and we could do magic, or......we could let some poor sucker do all the work for us, and then just steal it. :) Atelaes 01:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: Radicals

Ack, sorry about the job queue. When I touched checktrans ([6]) it cleared up pretty quickly.. oh well.

Feel free to revert Han char -- I just felt the need to do something more productive than a bunch of reverts. Probably should have asked somebody before touching such a major template.

The index moves look good -- I don't know much Chinese though (I can read it as Japanese but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense). Would cleaning up some of the real oddballs (chi#Chinese) simplify the bot run?

Cynewulf 04:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed your BP post. Guess you have everything under control for this run. Cynewulf 04:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

A couple of funny cases (the chi case) turn out not to be a problem (it won't try the page move, as there is no such page, the change to the reference will work exactly correctly even though the code thinks #chi is part of the linked page name ;-). As I said, it was fine to mod the template. Robert Ullmann 04:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

face the music

Thanks for that. I saw the talk page and realised I'd made a mistake. You just beat me to the undelete. 14:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Korean Hanja

Ok. But I think you've read discussion on User_talk:A-heun#Korean Hanja and got that Hanja is not the Korean language! --아흔(A-heun) 15:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I've never maintained that here is ko wikt. Have you asked yourself why in almost any wikt hanja is treated as Korean? I suppose that they import often ko entries incl. hanja from the en without asking if all is correct - they understand at least English instead of Korean. And I've already corrected this mistake on the fr, de, sv wikt. Hanja is, of course, not the Chinese language, but it is undoubtedly Chinese characters which almost are used also in China and Japan. --아흔(A-heun) 15:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No. It is because from any frame of reference outside Korea Hanja are Korean. It may be an older, foreign script, but when it is used to write Korean, it is a Korean script. It is a real shame that the ko.wikt can't fully document the heritage of the Korean language because of the exclusion of the hanja script. Robert Ullmann 15:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't find any fully documentation of the heritage of the English language on the en? Do you think that's a task of the wikipedia, don't you? See hanja entries on the ko wikt. Once more, Hanja is not the Korean language, no matter if you believe or not! --아흔(A-heun) 16:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh really? See, as a random example, hægl. And no matter how much you complain, Hanja has to be Korean, because it isn't anything else. It is Han characters used in Korea, to write Korean. Yes, I do understand the purist point of view. Sorry. We don't do POV here ;-) Robert Ullmann 16:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Transwiki:Bahman

I don't get it,... why would one want to copy an article from an encyclopedia to a dictionary when the article doesn't have dictionary content? Moreover, why use a bot (which couldn't possibly tell the difference)? What are the criteria for inclusion in Transwiki? Any article? Apologies for being a bother. -- Cornucopia 13:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The bot copies things that are tagged. And this article is certainly dictionary material, I can't figure out how you think it wouldn't be (name of a month in Persian). Certainly you can make it into an expanded pedia article, nothing stopping you. Robert Ullmann 13:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

um, have you read w:Vohu Manah? And,... are all hypostatic names suitable for transwikification?

As for being the name of a month in Persian,... well, its not quite the "name of a month", its a month dedicated to a particular divinity, after whom the month is then named. -- Cornucopia 13:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Template help given

Thanks for that Robert - I had looked at the meta/template help and couldn't find what I thought I needed! - I was looking for a "ifnot" part to the statement, which apparently isn't necessary. Cheers —Saltmarsh 11:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Rhymes

Is it fine if I re-add the part about the template to WT:ELE, with the indentation as it is now, and that I start a discussion in WT:BP about the formatting of the pronunciation section? Btw, you seem to be confused: it was not me who introduced {{rhymes}}, but I am actively using it. henne 14:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me; yes I know you didn't introduce the template, but as you say you've been working on it. I would just add a reference to {{rhymes}}, and let the doco there carry the example; WT:ELE is long enough as it is, it is supposed to be a simple intro! Robert Ullmann 14:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I did as you suggested. I’ll start a discussion in the Beer Parlour sometime soon. henne 15:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Language templates linked to WP

I've discovered why so many language templates are linked to WP articles (I keep finding ones that I didn't do). It seems that the master index at Wiktionary:Index_to_templates/languages recommends linking to the Wikipedia article from these templates. This should probably be changed. There are also some templates on that list that probably shouldn't exist, such as the one for Afrihili, a constructed language that does not meet CFI. There may be others. --EncycloPetey 07:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's why; I think that was always done originally. I note you are adding the 3-letter codes for languages with two-letter codes, is there some reason why they shouldn't simply be redirects to the corresponding 2-letter codes? Seems a bit easier. But either is okay. (I will have to update the s/w that does my L2 header analysis to handle having both codes, else it will just report the last one it saw ... ;-) Robert Ullmann 09:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Denigrate used to mean blacken

Infoplease Dictionary, Dictionary.com, the Online Etymology Dictionary, UltraLingua English Dictionary, the Online Plain Text English Dictionary, Webster’s 1913 Edition Dictionary, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, and Hutchinson’s Dictionary of Difficult Words all register the above disputed sense (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary doesn’t even give any other definition). It seems to be the original meaning of the word. I do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to label this sense as (rare). However, I’m not going to revert your revision; I’ll leave that to you to do, if the evidence persuades you. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You just won't [expletive deleted] get it, will you? The problem with your contributions is not that they aren't attested, the problem is your promotion of obscure, rare, archaic, pretentious, pompous, and sometimes just absurd usage as somehow standard or preferred. (The "alphabetic order" excuse you pulled out of your arse to explain why you listed your plurals first is a case in point.) Do you comprehend that your references are referring only to blacken in the figurative sense (meaning—ah—"denigrate"), not literally "to make black"? If you didn't try to list your obscurities first you would meet with far fewer objections. Robert Ullmann 15:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I see that you’ve reached your decision, and however much I disagree with it, I shall leave denigrate as it is. It is very strange, in mine opinion, that so many dictionaries would list a usage meant figuratively whilst nowhere labelling it as “figurative”, “literary”, “metaphorical”, or whatever, particularly in the case of Webster’s 1828 Dictionary; in reading its definition, I would interpret denigrate to mean “make completely black”. But there I go again, applying my screwy perspective to things… † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 16:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Robert, I note that OED2 has at least two cites of the literal sense, though it does say it is now rare. --Enginear 21:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, and I tagged it as rare. I'm not doubting the literal sense was common, from which we get the "defame" sense. Compare blackguard. Robert Ullmann 04:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Why do none of the above dictionaries tag the blacken sense as rare? Why did you simply delete the blacken sense when I first added it? † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 05:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Cause it wasn't rare in 1913, or in those dictionaries that are built on scans of pre-1923 dictionaries? Cause you had added it as the first definition without tagging it, and it is easier to just revert that crap than go and fix it? Robert Ullmann 12:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Since the definition of “rare” is nebulous at best, since showing the proportional usages of the different senses of a verb would require examining the contexts of its use in thousands of sources, since even if I did do that, you would only seek to undermine such evidence by questioning its accuracy or bending the definition of “rare” to apply to the situation, and since showing you the “blacken” sense, untagged as “rare” or anything else, in eight different dictionaries has had no effect, I don’t think I’ll bother arguing that one any further.

Try to look at the second issue objectively. I find a discussion concerning the use of the word denigrate in a usage note, saying that an entry therefor ought to exist and be linked to. I go to create such an entry, but find out that it already exists, and that the usage note merely doesn’t link to it. As I’m at the entry, I decide to make sure everything therein is accurate to the best of my knowledge. To help me do this, I consult Dictionary.com, which shows me that the sense meaning “blacken” is missing. Therefore, I add it, and as it wasn’t labelled as “rare” by Dictionary.com, I didn’t label it as “rare” either. As I assumed was the convention, I sorted the definitions alphabetically, which I considered to be the most neutral way of doing so. You would dispute this motivation, saying that the alphabetical order is an “excuse [that I] pulled out of [mine] arse to explain why [I] listed [my] plurals [et cetera] first”. Since I can’t prove my good intention, and since you can’t prove the bad intention of which you suspect me, this argument is going even fewer places than our arguments usually go. By then, I was beginning to understand that, even if I made no such judgement, there are many who consider defintions and plurals order as vitally important — which is why I list ‘+s’ plural forms first nowadays (irrespective of frequency); however, as I didn’t think that adding the “blacken” sense would cause any dispute, I didn’t think that I needed to arbitrarily add it at the bottom, rather than the top, of the list. (Note that, if I were to list the definitions by historical development (which is a common order for doing so both here and in many other dictionaries), rather than by frequency, the “blacken” sense would come first.)

Having proven that my revision was neither crap nor intended as crap-loading, I still want to address the claim that “it is easier to just revert that crap than go and fix it”. Is it really? Is clicking “edit”, deleting the offending material, writing an unnecessarily harsh and mendacious edit summary, and then clicking “save page” considerably less work than clicking “edit”, cutting the “blacken” sense and then pasting it at the bottom, adding a {{context|rare}} tag thereunto, writing “+rare tag; moved def” (or something to that effect) as an edit summary, and then clicking “save page”? Furthermore, is doing so, even if it is easier, actually right, particularly in the context of the fact that nothing I add here is actually crap? Such a response may be appropriate to the contributions of a known vandal, but it is not an appropriate response to my contributions which, though often rare, obscure, archaic, or whatever, are consistently valid. I mean valid in the context of WT:CFI. You clearly don’t want what you see as ludicrously pædantic, prætentious, and pompous entries added to Wiktionary. However, if, as I am always told it should, Wiktionary is to accurately describe how the English language is used, then it must contain entries for the weird and wacky obscurities and curiosities that I always add.

previous para modified to remove call on context/rare, keep my talk page out of the cat

Sorry about that; I didn’t mean to put your talk page into the rare category. I’ll know how not to do so in future. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 20:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I ask that, if you insist on persuing this vendetta of yours against me, that you at least check your facts and only challenge my contributions with valid reasons (without using the words pretentious, pompous, crap, troll, et cetera), rather than damaging Wiktionary by obsessively seeking to undermine the entries that I add here. I also ask that, if you respond to this four-paragraph spiel of mine, that you take the time to address each of the significant points I raise herein, rather than, as you usually do, restating dogmata and attacking mine idiosyncratic usages (such as the prevocalic “mine” or my use of ligatures), which are impertinent to this discussion. I do not wish to anger you, or expend time and energy in conflict with you. I have made a number of attempts to build bridges, address misunderstandings, et cetera. I’d rather that we could work together, rather than against each other. I see that you have things to contribute here, and, hopefully, you can see the same in me. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You are even more verbose than me, and I get criticised for verbosity. I am glad Robert has not wasted his time by replying, but sorry you wasted your time writing such a screed, and that I wasted mine by reading it. It takes two to argue. Please use your time writing entries that benefit wikt, rather than wearing out your keyboard like this. If you want to contribute to a current discussion on order of definitions, see WT:TR#anarchy again. --Enginear 18:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I have done so. And yes, I probably did waste my time writing the above “screed”. I only hope that it puts an end to the bickering betwixt Robert and me. Concerning my verbosity: it’s funny, one spends the first couple of decades of his life building his vocabulary and learning to be more verbose; afterwards, one has the even more difficult to ask of learning not to be verbose! † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 19:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing

This is an excellent resource - thanks very much for compiling it. I'm looking through and fixing some of the very many typos that this is revealing, which we would not know about if you hadn't done this.

One thing I notice is that it does throw up a few false positives, such as "l'a" (French for "le"/"la" (pronoun) + "a"), which are correct but should not have entries of their own (or should they? Perhaps these can explain the contraction, as this is something a user might want to look up. Hm...). I was going to ask if there is any way of weeding these out, but it's probably better to leave them in as they need each to be considered individually. — Paul G 09:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. We probably should have l'a ... as the notes say, it doesn't exclude things (e.g.) ending in 's because some might be wanted (or may be errors if not wanted), it keeps all the forms with single apostrophes. I noticed you fixed "zoo-like" in safari park, sorry, that was my little travesty ... Robert Ullmann 22:45, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Kinyawanda/Kinyarwanda misprint?

Is the 7th word of the 3rd para of your user page a misprint (I'm guessing since I don't know any words in the language, perhaps not even its name!). --Enginear 12:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is supposed to be an 'r' there. Thanks! Robert Ullmann 15:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Your most recent comment

Thanks for the tip. I have removed your comment, as I feel its sardonic nature was evident to all, and I guess I just don't want all that nonsense spilling into my talk page. I hope you will not take it as an act of ill will. Atelaes 18:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Han format

In 䵠 and 䵟, you put the Unicode hex in the template's decimal field. Just letting you know before you accidentally do more. – Krun 14:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

um, thanks; I probably should just be deleting these, they have no content at all Robert Ullmann 14:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikitravel

Hi, the Wikitravel thing is a WMF project, isn't it? Shouldn't we therefore have an entry for it? --Connel MacKenzie 16:18, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

• From -pedia "The project uses the MediaWiki software, which is also used by Wikipedia. However, Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project" SemperBlotto 16:21, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It belongs to Internet Brands, Inc. a for-profit commercial enterprise. Pure SPAM. Robert Ullmann 16:23, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Re:Icelandic

Maybe so, but it seems that "the most important link"^(ever) has to be there as often as possible to be also seen also by the blind, therefore this is not as redundant as You might have thought :), regards --birdy _{(:> )=|} 16:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)