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EndsTitleStatus/Votes
Apr 12Retiring the English verb conjugation tablefailed
May 27User:Surjection for checkuser 26  1  1
Jun 15Definite article type usage and encapsulation to meet CFI via IDIOM as idiomaticstarts: May 23
(=3)[Wiktionary:Table of votes](=49)

Retiring the English verb conjugation table

Voting on: Retiring the English verb conjugation table {{en-conj}} (example here) from general use, and replacing it with a feature to show archaic, obsolete and other verb forms not in standard modern use that cannot (or cannot desirably) be incorporated in the headword. {{en-conj}} may be retained for the very small number of verbs, notably the "be" verb, that have standard forms not accommodated (or accommodatable) in the headword.

This vote is on the principle that the presentation to the user will be that of a display of archaic, obsolete and other non-standard forms, not a general-purpose conjugation table, and the exact design and layout can be decided if there is support in principle. However, to give a general idea of what is proposed, in the case of clarify:

Archaic or obsolete verb forms

This proposal does not affect languages other than English.

Rationale

The standard modern forms of almost all English verbs can be accommodated in the headword. However, the conjugation table gives the impression that the situation is more complicated than this, and that English verbs may standardly have more parts and forms – for example, an irregular subjunctive or imperative, or a past tense varying by number or person. In practice, the table seems to be used mainly as a way to link to obsolete/archaic forms, as the documentation at {{en-conj}} encourages, but this is not clear to ordinary dictionary users.


Schedule:

Discussion(s):

Support

  1.   Support Seems like it would improve clarity. John Cross (talk) 21:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Strong support 🌙🐇 ⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀ 22:24, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Support Chihunglu83 (talk) 22:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  4.   Support – about time. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 02:16, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Support mildly: I previously expressed the view that to call this "retiring" the template is a bit misleading as it sounds like we are doing away with it entirely, but since the proposal is "replacing it with a feature to show archaic, obsolete and other verb forms not in standard modern use that cannot (or cannot desirably) be incorporated in the headword", I don't have a strong objection to it. (I am also fine with maintaining the status quo.) We aren't discussing the format of any new template to replace the old one yet, but I would just say that it would be better if the new template puts the archaic forms side-by-side with the modern forms for comparison. Users unfamiliar with grammar may find a term like "2nd-person singular present tense" mystifying, but if the archaic form clarifiest is placed alongside the modern form clarify this would be helpful. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:10, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Support. Imetsia (talk (more)) 12:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Support Pvanp7 (talk) 12:19, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      Support Pixelpito (talk) 17:58, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not eligible (need 50 edits prior to the start of the vote), vote stricken. AG202 (talk) 04:12, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Strong support, if not for entirely retiring the table then definitely prohibiting it with regular verbs that don't have any archaic forms. This is already the status quo and I presume it won't change if this vote doesn't pass. Benwing2 (talk) 08:33, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

  1.   Oppose. To me the standard "conjugation table" format is a more natural and less verbose way to present this information in comparison to using lots of words, even if the table leads to some redundancy.
    • I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement. The |old=1 parameter needs to be removed, and the template should only be used on verbs where "old" forms are attested. Unnecessary parts, like the imperative and (probably) the subjunctive, can be removed too.
    • The argument is made that "the conjugation table gives the impression that the situation is more complicated than this, and that English verbs may standardly have more parts and forms" - I would counter this by saying that, in general, Wiktionary's inflection tables assume that the reader has some level of grammatical knowledge of the language in question. A link to the relevant appendix can be included if felt necessary.
    • No other language uses the proposed "ersatz text-based collapsible box" approach to present verb forms. The {{en-conj}} style of conjugation table is used by English's closest relatives Middle English and West Frisian. Yes, English's verb is even simpler by comparison, but nothing beats a clear table for showing the forms.

      This, that and the other (talk) 04:21, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  2.   Oppose per the above. I don't really see the harm with having the conjugation table, and contrary to the vote's description, the headword line does not contain all the standardly used conjugations in Modern English. The subjunctive is still used quite often especially in American English, so unless we make that clear elsewhere, I don't see why we should remove that. The conjugation table also puts the information in a clear and succinct way, as to be quite honest, I do not like the wordiness that (third-person singular simple present [term], present participle [term], simple past and past participle [term]) has on the headword line. It looks cumbersome. If the issue is the archaic forms, then we can hide those or change them to a parameter. AG202 (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Isn't the subjunctive always identical to the infinitive? I'm not sure what value there is in having it in the template at all. This fact should simply be made clear at Appendix:English verbs imo. (Of course, you could make the same argument for turfing out the 1st person singular – and I think Mihia would – but then, without that, the template only has some of the persons and starts to look incomplete. I'd rather keep that in.) This, that and the other (talk) 12:07, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as American English is concerned, Simon and Garfunkel did sing “I wish I was homeward bound” rather than using the subjunctive “I wish I were homeward bound” and in that case the subjunctive would be identical to the past tense not the infinitive. As for the main issue that we’re voting on here, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:00, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "I wish I were" is past subjunctive, which is never identical to the infinitive. The present subjunctive, "She ordered that he be ready", is identical to the infinitive. — Eru·tuon 16:42, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If it be/is the case that the present subjunctive is used more in American English than British English then perhaps we could mention it somewhere here on Wiktionary. I would’ve thought that people on both sides of the pond are equally likely to avoid any subjunctives outside of a few set phrases but your example of ”She ordered that he be ready” is a good one as I would always rephrase it as “She ordered him to be ready” instead. Perhaps the subjunctive is more common in phrases following the word ‘that’ Stateside? Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Oppose Per the aforementioned points. Besides, at least the Vietnamese Edition of Wiktionary has and uses a similar template, if I recall well. --Apisite (talk) 10:13, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  4.   Oppose per above and per my comments on talk (and in various past discussions of this); I find it weird that the English Wiktionary has big tables of all the (rare, obsolete, etc) forms of other languages' words, but is reluctant to acknowledge them for English... and this is a collapsed table that takes up one line unless someone wants to see it and clicks to expand it; I don't see how the undefined possible replacement could be any more compact, and such a replacement seems certain to be less quickly intelligible than a table. - -sche (discuss) 17:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Oppose I agree with TTO that this is a better way to give the information—especially for phrasal verbs. I don't think the headword setup on absorb oneself in, for example, is good at all. I would, however, support removing the subjunctive from all tables except be. Vergencescattered (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Oppose Awdhi (talk) 03:41, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Oppose Unnecessary deletion Purplebackpack89 12:51, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Strong oppose I agree with -sche. MedK1 (talk) 16:22, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  9.   Oppose I agree with This, that and the other. The template should just display the archaic forms by default. It actually used to work like that until Theknightwho changed it in September 2022 (see here). He then manually added the now-necessary |old=1 parameter to many pages but forgot about 80 of them. In November 2023, I removed the conjugation section of these forgotten pages, mistakingly believing that these verbs didn't have any archaic forms since I didn't see them displayed by the template. Furthermore, when you look at the amount of existing archaic forms (2nd present, 3rd present, 2nd past), you can see that there are at least 2000 verbs with an archaic form, but {{en-conj}} is only used on about 400 pages. Maybe we can create a bot that automatically adds a conjugation table to the pages missing one. Tc14Hd (aka Marc) (talk) 13:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  10.   Oppose. It’s not clear to me why one would need a special alternative to a standard inflection table for English. In addition, the subjunctive issue (mentioned aboved) involves verbs in general, not just the copula. One need only search for a phrase like ‘recommends that he’ to find examples with a following ‘go’, ‘take’, ‘drink’, etc. Nicodene (talk) 05:06, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  11.   Strong oppose per above. --Davi6596 (talk) 17:24, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  12.   Oppose — It seems seldom acknowledged that a dictionary of all words in all languages, past and present, should faithfully describe those words in those languages in all their historical forms, too. For current languages (as opposed to historical languages), the present forms often occlude the historical forms. Whilst it is necessary and helpful to use labels to mark historical usages (obsolete, now rare, archaic, etc.) in current languages, it is neither necessary nor helpful to act as if those historical forms do not exist. In the case of English and {{en-conj}}, rather than “retiring” the template, it should rather be rolled out more widely, probably to most if not all English entries that are members simultaneously of Category:English verbs and of Category:English terms inherited from Middle English and/or Category:English terms inherited from Old English. 0DF (talk) 23:55, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

  1.   Abstain It is essential to have entries for archaic and obsolete forms for users' decoding purposes. I have some trouble seeing the use case for coding archaic and obsolete forms. Accordingly, I'd be happy with no coverage whatsoever at the lemma entry for archaic and obsolete forms. DCDuring (talk) 12:27, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @DCDuring: I feel strongly there should be some way to link archaic and obsolete inflected forms of verbs to the lemma. Since such forms are not (for good reasons) placed in the headword, a conjugation table seems a good way to do so. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What's the use case? DCDuring (talk) 16:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @DCDuring: in the absence of the conjugation table, there would currently be no way for users viewing the lemma to know what the archaic or obsolete inflected forms are unless they are already aware of how such words are formed. It's akin to how I, as someone who knows no Latin, can look up a conjugation table to discover the present active participial form of a Latin word. Of course we could come up with some other way to display these words (put them under "Derived terms"??—not that I think this is a good idea), but since other languages have conjugation tables it seems fine to me to just use that. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But what is their query besides "I want to know what the archaic forms of X are?" If they are decoding, the entry for the form exists. Are we trying to help people encode into archaic/obsolete speech? Why should we have entry clutter for other users to support that. There are fairly simple ways to search for archaic/obsolete forms of a given lemma. Or have we we made that hard? DCDuring (talk) 21:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I could imagine someone composing text in Elizabethan English in a religious or theatrical context. But we don't apply that criterion for most languages when deciding whether the lemma entry ought to link to its inflected forms. Ancient Greek entries sometimes have tables for obscure dialects. For instance, ὑμεῖς (humeîs) has tables for the Doric and Aeolic dialects. Should we remove those tables because the vast majority of people are only learning Koine or Attic Greek (or remove all tables because almost nobody probably writes in Ancient Greek anymore)? — Eru·tuon 03:32, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Abstain I was going to oppose on the basis of be and similar but it looks like the vote specifically addresses this. So the vote name is really misleading, since nothing is being retired. Ioaxxere (talk) 14:54, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Decision

Failed, 8-12-2. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 07:20, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:Surjection for checkuser

Nomination: I hereby nominate Surjection (talk • contribs) as a local English Wiktionary CheckUser. He is one of our most active and trusted contributors serving as administrator and bureaucrat from many years. He is a very prolific contributor with an incredible amount of experience in the field of patrolling and combating vandalism. He has also made a large number of checkuser investigation requests at WT:RFCU. Along with that, his availability, responsiveness and swiftness to act is also notable.

Rationale: Relevant parts of global CheckUser policy:

On any wiki, there must be at least two users with CheckUser status, or none at all. This is so that they can mutually control and confirm their actions. In the case where only one CheckUser is left on a wiki (when the only other one retires, or is removed), the community must appoint a new CheckUser immediately (so that the number of CheckUsers is at least two).

Any user account with CheckUser status that is inactive for more than one year will have their CheckUser access removed.

We currently have only two checkusers – Chuck Entz and TheDaveRoss; however, TheDaveRoss has been inactive from January 2024, which has been longer than one year. To continue having checkusers, a new checkuser must be elected per the above. Additionally, Surjection is hands down the best candidate for a new checkuser and who would make good use of the tools in making his administratorial and patrolling works more efficient.

Schedule:

Acceptance:

Support

  1.   Strong support as nominator. Svārtava (tɕ) 18:27, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2.   Strong support active and definitely entitled. Chihunglu83 (talk) 03:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  3.   Support, I think our best candidate. Vininn126 (talk) 06:47, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  4.   Support, as Surjection is a highly active and competent editor and admin already. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:19, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  5.   Support Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 07:31, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  6.   Support Alfarizi M (talk) 11:16, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  7.   Support AG202 (talk) 12:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  8.   Support, --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:51, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  9.   Support Benwing2 (talk) 19:35, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  10.   Strong support Highly trusted & respected. I have no reservations whatsoever. Megathonic (talk) 02:04, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  11.   Support --Vahag (talk) 11:41, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  12.   Support I have observed his commitment. Fay Freak (talk) 11:58, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  13.   Support Catonif (talk) 12:12, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  14.   Support Davi6596 (talk) 13:08, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  15.   Support — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 18:30, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  16.   Support Илья А. Латушкин (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  17.   Support — Fenakhay (حيطي · مساهماتي) 07:48, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  18.   Support tbm (talk) 08:19, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  19.   Support wholeheartedly Thadh (talk) 21:17, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  20.   Support, the perfect candidate for this position, a trusted active user who has already been doing CU-adjacent work (identifying socks). - -sche (discuss) 22:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  21.   Support —Fish bowl (talk) 08:36, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  22.   Support – genuinely the GOAT. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 23:32, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  23.   Support. Imetsia (talk (more)) 16:04, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  24.   Support Saumache (talk) 7:15, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
      Support--Cactusisme (talk) 12:46, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not eligible to vote — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 13:01, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  25.   Support because of Special:Diff/84756602. 0DF (talk) 23:52, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  26.   Support always good to have checkusers on hand. Schützenpanzer (talk) 16:43, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

  1.   Oppose. ɶLerman (talk) 11:39, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

  1.   Abstain. Some dubious entries slip through the admin net whether there are checkusers or not. There must be some days when all the admins are asleep. DonnanZ (talk) 16:48, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Decision

Definite article type usage and encapsulation to meet CFI via IDIOM as idiomatic

Voting on: Terms that are preceded by a definite article, or a modifier/modifiers that can produce the same result by using paraphrasing, and encapsulate all the things referred to by them to be recognized by WT:CFI via adding a "press test" subheading to WT:IDIOM.

Even though this new test and the tennis player test might be considered sub-categories of the fried egg test, they provide additional granularity and do not simply fall under it redundantly. This more-than-a-decade-old British Council article seems to be hitting on degrees of idiomaticity with definite articles, which is useful in understanding languages that have them, but I'm referring only to the terms attributed with peak levels of such idiomaticity. This peak idiomaticity, as demonstrated by the wolf, kangaroo, and heart examples mentioned in the British Council article, happens to be piled on WT:THUB nouns and thus is not taken into account. Due to English not being the default language across the world, non-English entries not of this type are marginalized.

An example of such an idiomatic term while having widespread immediate recognizability to English-speakers as well as other language speakers that use its cognates/other terms synonymously, would be press, reaching its zenith when isolated in the multiword term freedom of the press, where press is inferred as the same writ large. This is not to say, either haven't been included successfully, just that they have been included on an informal basis (having the necessary social proof) or the idiomatic WT:LEMMING, which prioritizes expert popularity.

That being said, despite being eventually regarded presumably as a legal term under WT:PRIOR, failing that, there was still an argument that entire multiword term was WT:SoP, having a substantive risk of not being included. However, the multiword term sense as it concerns press, citizens or the media to print, or otherwise disseminate, speech, ideas and opinions, is satisfactory. It matches the one in w:Freedom_of_the_press in which the activity is emphasized more than the person's identity as a publisher that comes with the Information Age, which we can find crystallized in w:News_media#Online_journalism. However, on closer inspection of the term press, at least until 17 April 2025, by the coordinate senses only having the dated The print-based media and the nondescript A publisher, a lack of a formal basis becomes instructive. There is no hint at such an Age, and the reason for this lacking is likely that it was not popular enough (expert or otherwise) to be included using just an informal basis. With a formal basis, not only can we recognize such idiomaticity in other terms and their senses, but there were substantive issues that could've been avoided in those manifestations of the same example, where the price was repudiation of modernity.

Another example of such an idiomatic term which strongly demonstrates harm is reflected by the first and second attempts by myself to insert the unpopular term (expert or otherwise) online sphere, using this formal basis that didn't appear to exist and not receiving any validation, without attestation being questioned. However, the first example's qualities are stronger on balance, making this one less deserving of eponymy.


 

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Schedule:

Discussion(s):

Support

Oppose

Abstain

Discussion

Decision

Proposed votes

The following are proposals for new votes, excluding nominations, in cases where the proposer of the vote prefers that the vote is written collaboratively, or where the vote appears to require substantial revision. If you have not created a passing vote yet, it is recommended that you use this section and actively solicit feedback by linking to your proposal in discussion; your vote may have a better chance of passing if it is first reviewed.

Votes may linger here indefinitely. If changes in policy make a proposal irrelevant, the voting page will be requested for deletion. On the other hand, you do not have to be the creator to initiate one of the votes below. Place any votes with a live start date in the section above at least a few days before that start date arrives.

Forthcoming votes:

Wiktionary:Votes/2023-12/Represent the GenAm NURSE and STRUT vowels as schwa
Wiktionary:Votes/2024-06/CFI for mainspace constructed languages
Wiktionary:Votes/2025-04/Definite article type usage and encapsulation to meet CFI via IDIOM as idiomatic
Wiktionary:Votes/2025-04/Deletion of user talk pages
Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-06/Streamlining the approval process of online sources
Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-07/Stubifying alternative forms
Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-11/Should unidiomatic phrases be included if there is consensus for likely utility to readers?

Votes intended to be written collaboratively or substantially revised:

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