Wiktionary:Grease pit/2010/March

March 2010

etyl

Someone who knows how to write etyl: templates should write template:etyl:pro, as currently {{etyl|pro}} links to the redlinked w:Old Provençal language, whereas it (apparently) should link to w:Old Occitan. Thanks.​—msh210℠ 17:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed with a wikipedia redirect (they're both valid names). {{etyl}} is using the standard language template {{pro}}, and if we change that we might have to change lots of category names. --Bequw → τ 20:12, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

SIL gives them both as valid names for the same language. I posted about this once before, and nobody really saw any reason to rename the [[Category:Old Provençal derivations]] give it's listed as a valid name by SIL/ISO 639. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Feedback

There are a lot of comments at WT:FB either requesting etymological information or pronunciations. Would it be a good idea, in the feedback box which anons see at the left of every page, to have an option saying "there's no etymology" and "there's no pronunciation" which would automatically add {{rfe}} or Template:termp to a given page? It also might be an idea to have some kind of link to WT:FB itself because I think most people aren't sure where to go to see if anyone has answered their questions or not. Ƿidsiþ 09:24, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Thought useful, it would seem hard as some pages have multiple entries (where to insert the {{rfe}}?) and, relatedly, for non-English entries the lang= parameter would have to be filled in. --Bequw → τ 02:57, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Name space parameter for PoS templates

Just using my Sandbox I've noticed that a lot of major templates don't have a parameter that means they only categorize in the main name space. Do we want to add these to virtually every template or what? For example you can't use them in appendices or talk pages (etc.) without them categorizing, which generally speaking isn't good. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to fix a template, one way to do it is to put the categories in an alternative to a parameter, such as {{{demo|[[category:English nouns]]}}} This will make the template categorize unless |demo=| (or the like) is used: and then you use that whenever you don't want to categorize. This is already being done with a number of templates. (Of course, you can do as you said: make sure it only categorizes in mainspace. I'm just offering an alternative.)​—msh210℠ 16:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

A new inflection line template for Greek adjectives

The templates currently used to display the headword/inflection line for Greek adjectives needed improvement. Examples of the new template {{el-test}} can be seen at Template_talk:el-test. Please could an expert familiar with templates have a look and make sure that I have not committed any howlers. It seems to work with the examples I have given it, but... Thanks —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 16:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

{{el-test}} is now {{el-adj}} —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 05:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:misspelling of

I think I've got it, can I move this version into the actual template without breaking anything? There has been a request for a {{wlink}} parameter to avoid AutoFormat adding count page at the bottom of pages. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:10, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, well. I forgot to update this one (while I was editing {{obsolete spelling of}}, {{rare spelling of}}, etc.) to the new format. Thanks for reminding me. (: The {{misspelling of}} is now updated. --Daniel. 10:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the non-use of {{wlink}} was intentional. We don't want misspellings to be counted; and I'm pretty sure that AutoFormat was already handling it correctly. —Ruakh_TALK 17:11, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

They should be counted as entries, although for the most part not in PoS categories like nouns, verbs, pronouns etc. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

In the past, we've taken the view that they shouldn't be counted as entries. If you feel otherwise, please start a BP discussion. —Ruakh_TALK 18:58, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I've never noticed a consensus of people with that (or the opposite) view.​—msh210℠ 19:08, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

People who have expressed or supported that view include at least myself, Conrad (below), RJFJR (May '09), Nadando (October '08), seemingly-DCDuring (ibid.), Robert Ullmann (ibid.), EnycloPetey (June '08), Raifʻhār Doremítzwr (December '07), and Connel MacKenzie (ibid., and November '07). Now, the December '07 discussion shows Rodasmith seeming to disagree, and Robert Ullmann seeming somewhat ambivalent; and Mglovesfun obviously disagrees, as might SemperBlotto (January '10); and the fact that we've had so many discussions suggests that not everyone has been aware of the consensus (and hence had the opportunity to share in it); and some of these editors may simply have expressed this view in the belief that they were expressing the community view, rather than particularly intending to express their own opinion. (I probably fall into that category, actually.) But overall, it seems like the status quo had better consensus than almost anything here. —Ruakh_TALK 15:00, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I've refused to make the change for exactly that reason twice in the past. Conrad.Irwin 20:26, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Counting misspellings would open us up to a charge of entry-count inflation, whether or not that is anyone's intent. It is, after all, possible to have any number of misspellings for any given word. A given misspelling may even apply to more than one word.

We don't even have ny criteria for distinguishing alternative spellings from misspellings and common misspellings from not-so-common misspellings. DCDuring TALK 00:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's point out the obvious; misspellings are only not counted if they're only misspellings with no categories and no interwikis. Since the server counts any entry containing [[square brackets]] we'd also have to remove all interwikis and all internal links for it not to work. definately for example has a French interwiki, so it's counted. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Why does definately have an interwiki? Should we put misspellings on a clean-up list to have categories and interwikis removed. Can they be prevented? Should Autoformat tag them? DCDuring TALK 16:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Because the French Wiktionary also defines it? I don't think they can (or should) be prevented. Article counting is broken anyway, however there's no need to break it more in this case. I am of the opinion that no templates should support pre-linked parameters, it is more flexible and uniform to have the template do it for you. Conrad.Irwin 17:17, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Some comments above suggest there is no policy on whether a particular misspelling should be included on Wiktionary or not. I was naively supposing that the three-cites CFI rule would be sufficient for them. After all, three independent instances of a particular erroneous spelling (and related ortographical references that prove it as wrong) would be a very good clue to call that a "common misspelling". (For instance, the quantity of people who write the Portuguese word mas as "mais" is incredibly high) --Daniel. 16:44, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that seems like a good way of doing it, the actual problem is when do we call it a "misspelling" and when just an "alternative spelling" - there is no obvious way to do this. The only way I can justify our having the mispelling label at all is that it is a common synonym of "proscribed spelling", but we don't ever show any evidence that it is proscribed, we should (given that we are a descriptive dictionary). What evidence exists, I'm not sure, perhaps usage notes in text-books or dictionaries - I'm not sure we can work out that exclusion from another dictionary counts as implying it's a misspelling. Conrad.Irwin 17:17, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we could provide references to textbooks and dictionaries to label certain words as proscribed or misspellings. Most likely people talk about this too, by describing their own experiences that could be quoted. Interestingly, WT:CFI suggests that misspellings should actually be counted, by describing the usage of {{misspelling of}} as "# {{misspelling of|[[...]]}}" with square brackets. --Daniel. 13:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

wanton

Why doesn't the file I uploaded here link to wanton? ---> Tooironic 12:26, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

It does, look at the bottom under "Global file usage". Conrad.Irwin 17:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah but I can't play the link at wanton, can you? It comes up as a red link for me. ---> Tooironic 22:18, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

It has turned blue for me. Everything was fine in wikitext. It seems like it was something on the backend that was slow to update. --Bequw → τ 02:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Ecclesiastical Latin & etyl|la template

I've just been working on the hypocrite entry and am wondering what would be the best way to format the etymology, given that one of the ancestor terms is (apparently) from ecclesiastical latin? Does anyone know of any similar entries that might help guide me? Or do we just ignore the 'ecclesiastical' part? Thanks.--TyrS 03:04, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Last I heard, the best solution would be to create something similar to {{etyl:Late Latin}}, and use that. However, there have been some nifty changes to the template since I last checked in, so the situation may have changed. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe {{etyl:Ecclesiastical Latin}}, possibly with a redirect as that's quite hard to type. How about {{etyl:EL.}}, unless people think that would be confused with Greek (however, that's unlikely). Mglovesfun (talk) 14:10, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think {{etyl:Ecclesiastical Latin}} looks good. I would argue against {{etyl:EL.}}, as the standard policy is to only use official abbreviations, such as SIL codes, in these types of things. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

But to encourage use {{etyl}}, not lose information, and economize on contributor keystrokes, we are using such codes as "LL.", "VL.", and possibly "NL." and "ML.", all of which are Webster 1913 rather than official ISO. It doesn't seem wrong. The period serves to clarify the source of these and avoid potential conflict with ISO codes. DCDuring TALK 00:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

That is a good point. However, I prefer the longer forms, for a few reasons. First, Two letter abbreviations will quickly be used up. What happens when someone wants to create a shorter version of.....say...{{etyl:Eastern Lao}}? I have no idea if anyone ever would, but let's assume it to be possible. If we use the full forms, such overlap is avoided. ISO codes are importantly different from Webster codes in that they are intended to be comprehensive, whereas Webster is certainly not. Finally, the longer form is frustrating, and this frustration serves to remind everyone that this is not an ideal situation. I would very much like to see a dialect capacity added to {{etyl}}, and I have been clamoring for such a thing from day one. However, to have such a functionality, it needs to build upon a standardized system for dialects, which we currently lack. I have heard rumours that ISO 639-6 will create such a thing, which I eagerly anticipate. However, in the meantime, we are resigned to creating goofy, non-robust kludges. I would prefer to keep our kludges just a little bit cumbersome, to encourage us to switch to a tenable system, when one comes along. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Category:Old French past participle forms

{{poscatboiler}} should support this title. The template is so widely used and so delicate, I daren't update it myself. We also have Category:Italian past participle forms, which does not use this template as it can't. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:08, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

You've asked this exact update to me, and I'm willing to do it (as part of my work of fulfilling {{poscatboiler}} down to every related category). Though you didn't respond when I asked: Why not Old French masculine singular past participles, Old French masculine plural past participles, Old French feminine singular past participles and Old French feminine plural past participles? --Daniel. 17:41, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah right, I never noticed a reply. Hmm well it's a possibility I suppose, but not one I favor. Too specific. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:45, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Though a past participle is by itself a participle form (or a verb form), isn't it? To my eyes, the category title Old French past participle forms is similar to Old French feminine participle forms, Old French plural participle forms and so on; therefore, very specific but not enough if we want specificity. --Daniel. 07:11, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Personal preference, but I don't see any advantage is subdividing the category further. We have Category:Portuguese adjective forms but not Category:Portuguese adjective masculine plural forms (and similar). Why wouldn't the same argument work here? — This unsigned comment was added by Mglovesfun (talk • contribs).

Well, the Portuguese adjective categorization is clearly subdivided into specific inflections and is fairly good in my opinion. The main categories are Portuguese adjectives, Portuguese adjective feminine forms and Portuguese adjective plural forms. Anyway, I've added support to {{poscatboiler|fro|past participle form}} as you asked. --Daniel. 05:38, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. See also Template talk:poscatboiler/theList where I added another request. I'm not strongly against subdividing these further, I just see no 'real' advantage to it. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Creating temporary categories for maintenance

What's the policy in creating new categories? I want to create a category purely to perform maintenance on various kanji entries. Currently, {{ja-kanji}} is supposed to port any kanji into the hidden category Category:Japanese words needing attention if either of its "grade" or "rs" paramaters are blank. However, I've noticed that if the entry also includes the template {{defn|Japanese}}, then that category takes priority and and overides the the categories under {{ja-kanji}}. There are more than 17,000 entries in the Category:Japanese definitions needed. I know there are far fewer kanji out there that still have blank "grade" parameters and probably a few with blank "rs" parameters. I want to create a temporary category, also hidden, titled Category:Kanji entries needing attention to make it easier to find {{ja-kanji}} entries that need to be fixed (as a side benefit, I would add definitions to those entries as I fix the other template). Is this something I can be bold and do, or is there another avenue I should pursue.? Dcmacnut 23:06, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Go for it, as long as you categorise the category somewhere that interested editors will stumble across it (perhaps Category:Requests (Japanese)) then it can be sorted out in the future. Conrad.Irwin 23:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It was wise to explain yourself in advance. You might check with some of the most active editors of Japanese entries. They may have useful thoughts. If no one seems active besides you, consider checking with yourself after a good night's sleep. DCDuring TALK 00:14, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, all. I went ahead and created the category and updated the ja-kanji template to populate it. So far, it's generating 11,000 kanji with incomplete ja-kanji templates. Category:Japanese words needing attention probably would have captured all of these as well, but that is such a generic category there would be no way of knowing the specific issue to be "fixed." It may be overkill, but I really motivated to help at least fill in some of the blanks. 11,000 kanji is a tall order though. I haven't found too many other active Japanese editors here, so we shall see if anyone else finds this useful. Thanks again. Dcmacnut 05:31, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that our Japanese entries are usually quite poor and unformatted compared to other languages. I don't speak any Japanese but I was hoping to update some 'illegal headers' like Romaji to part of speech headers. If you know where to look for cleanup tasks, the number of tasks is in the thousands, to say the least. Mglovesfun (talk) 00:00, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

That's part of the reason I created the template. The current "needs attention" catch-all simply is too generic. For example, I speak Japanese but am not 100% familiar with the ins and outs of Wiktionary formating. So for me its hard to immediately see what "needs" attention in some of these articles, just as it would be for someone well versed in the formating syntax here who doesn't speak japanese. It may lead to over categorization, but the more we can focus in on specific needs for specific entries the better. For example, I've tried to delete Japanese entries for some hanzi simplified forms that simply are not used in Japan today.

One thing I've notices notation for "defintions needed" for each language subheading han character articles. Definitions are included under "translingual" and for the most part those definitions and meanings remain the same regardless of whether it's Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, or Korean. I see no problem in repeating definitions, but is it really necessary? Meaning nuances would be more apparent in articles on compound words, I imagine.Dcmacnut 23:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Requested Entries (English)

What's the difference between Wiktionary:REE and Wiktionary:EDH? It seems potentially confusing and/or counterproductive. Just a suggestion.--71.111.229.19 15:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

REE is for users to request entries. EDH is a generated list of entries in other dictionaries. Nothing should be added to it. (Remove English bluelinks, though.) If we merged the two, REE would be swamped.​—msh210℠ 16:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense. But shouldn't REE be displayed at the top of the Category:Requested_entries_by_language page instead of EDH?--达伟 11:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, the category is full of REE and similar pages (requests). EDH is not requests, so the category points to it as a "see also" type of thing. I've now moved that paragraph to the bottom of the page instead of its top.​—msh210℠ 16:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer

This page appears at the bottom of the user contributions list, herewith an English example : n:MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer, and a Wiktionary one : fr:MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer. JackPotte 20:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm, maybe here it should be like this:

--Yair rand 23:13, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want it, go for it; doesn't make much difference to me in my crazy world of keyboard shortcuts (though it's always nice to put an [edit] link on messages like that, given how easy the names are to guess). Conrad.Irwin 23:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

template language compiler

Does anyone know of a compiler that generates MediaWiki template language from human-friendly input, and vice versa ? --Ivan Štambuk 01:42, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is one, would make a fun project if you have a few weeks to spend on the wikitext -> human-friendly converter (the other way is a day or two at most). Conrad.Irwin 13:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I did found one, but it has almost equally unreadable syntax, lacking syntax highlighting and decent error messages...Sigh. --Ivan Štambuk 21:20, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Audio templates eating an entry

In Paris, the 3 audio templates seem to be leaving an HTML tag open or something. Each template indents the rest of the entry. Can anyone figure this out? Is it affecting other entries? Thanks. —Michael Z. 2010-03-11 23:15 z

Yes, sorry, that was my mistake - I didn't even think to check for that error. Fixed now. Conrad.Irwin 23:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Talk subpages

Is there a reason that the (main), Mediawiki, and Category namespaces don't have subpages but their related Talk namespaces do? Not a big deal, but it does make Talk:AC/DC act oddly. --Bequw → τ 05:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, precisely because AC/DC is not a sub-page of AC (there's a configuration variable that dictates which namespaces have this feature). There is a bug for this (using exactly the same example, so it's probably not a hugely common phenomenon). Conrad.Irwin 08:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

w:Talk:9/11 is one of my favorites of this type. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:infl missing cat2

Hello. This is a problem I posted about last month at Template talk:infl but apparently it is not read any more over there, so I thought of posting a notice here. Template:infl can specify one category with parameter cat= but certain words would require at least one identical parameter cat2= (and maybe more) because they belong to several subcategories at the same time.

It should be a simple change to copy the code for cat= so as to add support for cat2= and cat3= but the template is blocked for administrators only. I have explained full details and examples at Template talk:infl#Missing cat2, thank you if you can look into it. 62.147.24.102 13:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

cat2= and cat3= added. --Yair rand 05:46, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

How do you make a word "good" in a language?

On the "[List_of_Wiktionaries]" page it lists all the languages supported by Wiktionary along with the number of entries for that language and how many are considered "good". I am mostly interested in the Tongan entries. It says there are 200 entries but only 2 are "good". There are no admins to ask about this and I have searched with no luck to find answers, I am not even sure this is where I ask, but hope it will lead somewhere.

First off, what makes an entry "good"? does it need to be verified? Can it be part of an existing page (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pig) or does it need to be published on its own page(en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poaka#Maori)? Does it need its own entry on the language wiki (mi.wiktionary.org/wiki/poaka) it was intended for?

Second, is there a way to see a list of the "good" entries?

Third, how do you become an admin? Do you have to be a speaker or just be responsable? I dont speak Tongan, but I know a few words and have a number of friends from Tonga that have helped teach me how to say things, and since there are 0 admins for "faka Tonga", I was hoping to help get this language moving up the ladder (more than 2 "good" words)

Any help would be appreciated! thanks (you can also reach me at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User_talk:BillyNair

The number "200" does not just apply to entries - user pages, image description pages, meta pages and categories all add to this figure, too. The "good" pages are entries in the article namespace which have at least one link (strictly, the literal string [[).
It's nice that you want to help the Tongan Wiktionary, but you come too late - that Wiktionary is already closed because it was inactive for years with no words at all. However, it'd be great if you could help improve our coverage of the Tongan language by adding Tongan words to English Wiktionary. :) -- Prince Kassad 21:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) As far as I know, an entry is counted as "good" at the list of Wiktionaries if it contains links by means of square brackets (like [[word]], that results in a link word) and is not a redirect to another entry. You may become an administrator usually if you want and other users trust you enough to vote supporting your adminship. When a Wiktionary doesn't have procedures for bestowing the title of administrator, you may instead ask for adminship at meta:Steward requests/Permissions. Although, the Tongan Wiktionary is officially closed as result of this discussion due to 2 years without activity. You may still contribute to Tongan Wiktionary as it is currently placed at incubator. The Tongan Wiktionary may evolve back into its proper place "http://to.wiktionary.org/" eventually, probably after people contribute enough to it. Finally, you may also consider editing the English Wiktionary. --Daniel. 22:11, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Storing entries in fields within the database

Does anyone else think it would be advantageous to store entries in fields within the wiktionary database? I think this would be better as, for one thing, it would make it possible to make more specific searches; for example searching for words based on language, part of speech, etc. --212.120.247.225 17:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this would be amazing. Implementing it in a way that would work efficiently, without a huge amount of effort rewriting the 1.6 million pages we already have is not easy; and we have no developers we can boss around to make them do it. Conrad.Irwin 17:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't this be done automatically? Entries follow quite strict conventions and the wiki markup seems to make a lot of the necessary distinctions for the different parts of an entry --212.120.247.225 18:05, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, probably 99% of it could be automated (given a few developers and a few months). But even 1% left is still tens of thousands of entries (though we can slowly do them if we have a clean up list). Do you have suggestions for how the database layout should look? I have a few ideas, but I've never got anything near good enough in a practical format. Conrad.Irwin 19:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, {{poscatboiler}} is a data base that works pretty good, simply by storing usable information separately in templates. --Daniel. 02:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary does not have an entry for...

When a person tries to access an entry that does not exist yet in Wiktionary, a page "Wiktionary does not yet have an entry for..." appears. I've noticed that, when the first character of the nonexistent entry is an asterisk (for instance: *nix or *-*) the resulting text looks particularly ugly and messy. --Daniel. 02:44, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a well-known bug in MediaWiki (caused by a hacky attempt to fix a non-bug) to which I have proposed a solution. Conrad.Irwin 12:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

On a tertiary topic, do we have a way of generating a list of the most searched terms for which we lack an entry? bd2412 T 05:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Most missed articles. But User:Melancholie hasn't updated it in more than a year.

Continuing on the tangent, it looked to me that many of the most frequent were derived from bad sister-project links, especially at en.wikipedia. It might be useful to check for the validity (not just redlinkedness) of such links from all sister projects, including from FL wiktionaries and wikipedias. It would also be nice to make sure that our links out were valid. DCDuring TALK 11:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Look at the list, it's all porn/erotica or encyclopedic stuff (Noam Chomsky). Mglovesfun (talk) 13:32, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

There are a few dictionary topics in there. bd2412 T 02:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Berber language code(s)

Can someone please help with getting the language code(s) - "ber" for the Berber (Tamazight) language to work in translations? Casablanca has one example, which I tried to get to work - أنفا ('anfa). --Anatoli 03:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

See {{etyl:ber}} and Tamazight, Tamazight has no single language code, it has four. per previous discussions, we could unify them all under a "Wiktionary only" code. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Some languages have multiple codes too. Would be good to have one generic. --Anatoli 12:37, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Propose it; people may well support it. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:51, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you and sorry for delays. I am not really sure. I am not going to contribute in Berber but I noticed that the codes were missing or not set up properly and thought it was unfair. I thought that adding a language code to Wiktionary was a trivial thing, though. --Anatoli 23:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I think using our norms, it would be {{ber-tam}} for unified Tamazight. You'd effectively be proposing that they're all the same language. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I used "tzm", e.g. {{tø|tzm|أنفا|sc=Arab|tr='anfa}} (translation of Casablanca for Central Atlas Tamazight. I didn't know this template existed. --Anatoli 02:46, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Template:form of

While {{form of}} "handily" adds the word "of" automatically, the problem is when you forget this and add "of" to the {{{1}}} parameter without realising it. Could someone make a list of these {{form of|... of|thingy}} and I'll gladly change them by AWB (as I must have made at least 100 of these). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

User:Mglovesfun/Form_of_of. Good catch. Conrad.Irwin 11:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Per usual, can you send me it in a text file that I can load into AWB (shouldn't take too long btw, just remove the [ of]. If you don't have my email address, talk to me on IRC. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:20, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

someone vs. somebody

I thought from a previous discussion we had an agreement to use (deprecated template usage) someone in page titles instead of (deprecated template usage) somebody. A good task for a bot would be to rename all the somebody ones (apart from somebody itself) and create redirects for the rest. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:11, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Connotations?

Should we begin to include connotations along with denotations in definitions?

Sometimes people misuse a word simply by not knowing it carries a negative meaning with it. A clarification if the word has a positive, negative, or neutral connotation could clear things up. — This unsigned comment was added by Robertbiggs34 (talk • contribs).

Certainly, that's what the ==Usage notes== are for :). Did you have any particular pages in mind? Conrad.Irwin 02:31, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Also {{pejorative}} (as well as {{derogatory}} and {{offensive}}, which overlap). —Ruakh_TALK 20:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

"In other projects"

The "in other projects" box in the sidebar doesn't actually look like the other boxes, and it looks very odd in some skins. Rather than have the javascript add the box when there are other project links, wouldn't it make sense to just add the box to Mediawiki:Sidebar and have the javascript hide it when there aren't any other project links, so that the box looks just like the "navigation", "toolbox", and "in other languages" boxes? --Yair rand 19:39, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

No, there are over a thousand "other projects" on wikimedia. Best to just fix the javascript, I can't remember where it was copied from, but it can probably just be fixed here. Conrad.Irwin 21:22, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Conrad.Irwin 16:04, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

RC by languages

It stopped working on 3/21. Does anyone know how to restart it? Thanks. --Panda10 21:15, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

You'll have to get in touch with User:Visviva. Conrad.Irwin 21:20, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

foldability not working

Is it just me, or show/hide functionality of all the templates using it has stopped working on Internet Explorer? --Ivan Štambuk 18:30, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

At least in IE6, show/hide still works for me. -- Prince Kassad 20:46, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Citations tab disappeared

Is it just me (Safari/Mac), or has the “Citations” tab disappeared from entries? When I view a citations page, the tab which usually says “Entry” says “Citations,” and there's no “Entry” tab visible. —Michael Z. 2010-03-26 20:34 z

It's just you. It works perfectly fine here. -- Prince Kassad 20:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I also can't see them (using Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7). --Ivan Štambuk 20:46, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

It's also not working any more for me in Safari, but it works in Firefox. Something must have been changed. I remember seeing the tab rather recently. – Krun 21:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I made some recent changes to the javascript, but not related to citations tabs. On fudge do you see the translation labeller (a plusminus symbol on translation tables) and an "in other projects" box on the left-hand side. (If not, try hard-refreshing and check again). If still not, can someone try to find the error console (normally in "developer tools" somewhere) and copy the error message here. Thanks. Conrad.Irwin 23:17, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Citations tab is back to normal. I do see the ±. —Michael Z. 2010-03-28 21:01 z

Excess power for a bureaucrat

Bureaucrats are allowed to promote a user to Administrator status, but not the reverse. I am a Bureaucrat, and have just (as a test) used the Special:UserRights panel to remove Administrator status from User:Atitarev (since readded). Is this a new feature, or just a bug? SemperBlotto 15:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I brought this up a while ago on Wiktionary talk:Bureaucrats when I noticed what it said on Special:ListGroupRights. This is not a bug, but the standard on some wikis. (There's actually a discussion going on at WP on whether to have it like that there too.) Do you think that it should be changed so that bureaucrats can't remove admin rights? --Yair rand 01:13, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

IMHO it's fine for bureaucrats to have this ability, regardless of why that happened. BTW, see Wiktionary:Bureaucrats?diff=8154467. —Ruakh_TALK 02:11, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

This helps us become separated from Meta by allowing us to handle our own desysoppings if needs be, so I approve of it. Razorflame 02:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

OK - I had always thought the status quo was illogical. It's fine now. SemperBlotto 07:47, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:etyl:zh

Now that {{zh}} by "consensus" (of at least one user) shows Mandarin, not Chinese, wouldn't creating a redirect from {{etyl:zh}} to {{etyl:zhx}} fix the problem of the [[Category:Chinese derivations]] categories that became almost empty when the zh templates what changed. It should probably work in the same way to {{etyl:gem}} (that's ISO 639-5 if I'm right). Mglovesfun (talk) 09:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

"zh" is widely used to mean Mandarin, because http://zh.wikipedia.org is mandarin, and also used to mean Chinese, because the ISO code means Chinese. It should be deprecated and all uses split into {{zho}} and {{cmn}}. Unilateraly changing the meaning of {{etyl:zh}} is likely to have unintended consequences. Conrad.Irwin 12:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, then why is ety:zhx needed? Shouldn't all of those be changed to {{etyl|zho}}? Or should {{zho}} redirect to {{zh}}? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:55, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

zhx is for the language family, zho is for the macrolanguage. I think the former are more used in etymologies, the latter elsewhere, but I really have no idea. zho should not be broken, zh is broken, therefore redirecting would be silly. Conrad.Irwin 15:05, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Good point, maybe a {{deprecated}} tag is the best we can do. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:08, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

substing a crappy template

Hi. Is it possible to hire a bot (or bored user) to run a mass subst: for a template - the one in question is Template:-start-, which shouldn't be in any of the pages it's in. The template is now empty, so there wouldn't be any problem in doing so. --Rising Sun talk? contributions 19:14, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

User:MglovesfunBot for bot status

I was thinking about nominating my bot for bot status. To be clear, it'll be just me using AutoWikiBrowser, but it will free up some space in the recent changes. And I'd promise to keep a log of things I do to avoid opaqueness. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Awesome - you can take control of French conjugaiton, which will free up some time in my life to add loads of French verbs --Rising Sun talk? contributions 21:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Erm, read what I said! I don't know anything about programming, it would just be me on AWB doing some formatting. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:12, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan. Conrad.Irwin 22:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2010-04/User:MglovesfunBot for bot status. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:49, 1 April 2010 (UTC)