Template:senseid

The following documentation is located at Template:senseid/documentation.

Useful links: subpage list • links • redirects • transclusions • errors (parser/module) • sandbox

Uses Lua:

• Module:anchors/templates

This template generates link targets for senses. Whenever a page of Wiktionary has multiple senses for each language you can give the sense you want to link to an ID. You can then link to this specific id using a variety of linking templates, with the |id= parameter of those templates. The template must be placed at the beginning of a definition line or the beginning of a paragraph (with the parameter |tag=p). In particular, it must come before any {{lb}} context labels, or else it will create a line break after them.

This template is normally invisible. However, you can make it visible by turning on the ShowIDs gadget in your gadget preferences (for logged-in users) or Wiktionary:Preferences for users without an account (for logged-out users). You can also use this template via the graphical editor by User:Yair_rand, which you can find under preferences -> Gadgets -> Enable definition editing options.

When using this template with |tag=p you will also need to use {{senseid-close|tag=p}} at the end of the relevant paragraph of definition. This is to ensure the correct markup is generated.

|1=

The language code (see Wiktionary:Languages) of the current language section.

|2=

The ID that you want to assign to the current sense. Here are the considerations:

• This can be anything, and can include spaces. (Apostrophes have been known not to work for link resolution, at least in some browsers. Thus, please favor (for example) "sorcerer_s apprentice" rather than "sorcerer's apprentice", as it is simple, reliable, and fairly obvious in its intent).
• Keep it short and concise. The pithy essence of the sense is the logical choice.
• Also make sure to choose something that will not need to be changed in the future, because if the ID is changed later, all links that point to it will break. Therefore, make sure that it is not so short and vague as to fail to be clearly differentiated from a nearby sense similar in meaning.
  • Rarely there can arise a need to replace an existing ID value with a revised value. When that is necessary, the following strings of search syntax can help you to find the answer to the question, "What links here by using a certain senseid specifically?" You then need to update the ID value on those pages. Here is the syntax:
    • linksto:FOO insource:/\=BAR/ (finds "|id=BAR" inside the page source)
    • linksto:FOO insource:/\:BAR/ (finds "<id:BAR>" inside the page source)
    • linksto:FOO insource:/\:_BAR/ (finds "#English:_BAR" inside the page source)
    • linksto:FOO insource:/\: BAR/ (finds "#English: BAR" inside the page source)
• When using the template in an English entry, the translation table corresponding to this sense should be given an |id= argument with the same ID as this sense.
• Wikidata item IDs can be used as sense IDs; see below for more information.

|tag=

Tag name. Default is li. Do not specify this parameter when the template is used in a definition line or other list. Specify |tag=p when the template is used in a regular paragraph of text, as in an etymology section (but consider using {{etymid}} instead).

For example you want to add a sense ID to the English word "house" in the sense of a "house music", you can {{senseid}} to the sense:

# {{senseid|en|genre of music}} ].

…resulting in:

2. House music.

Now, when you want to link to this sense from within Wiktionary, you can use the |id= parameter on, for example, {{l}} or {{m}}:

{{m|en|house|id=genre of music}}

The URL to the link will look like this:

https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/house#English:_genre_of_music

The result is:

house

Since this is an English entry, the translation table should be tagged with a matching ID.

In some cases it may be desired to provide a numbered link to a specific sense, on the entry for the word itself. Examples could be in image captions or usage notes. You can use {{senseno}} for this. For example, on the entry fork:

{{senseno|en|tool for laboring}}

The result is:

sense 1.2

Wikidata is a repository for structured data about just about anything. In some cases, a sense on Wiktionary will refer to something that Wikidata has an item on. In that case, it is possible to use the Wikidata ID (Q followed by numbers) as the senseid. For example, for the music style demonstrated above, one could use {{senseid|en|Q20502}}, with Q20502 being the ID of the Wikidata item for house music. This not only establishes a conceptual link between the Wiktionary sense and Wikidata item, but also establishes that all senses with that senseid anywhere on Wiktionary with that senseid are synonyms. In the future, the {{senseid}} template may be extended to query Wikidata itself as well. In general it makes sense that for any concept for which Wikidata already has a unique identifier by the time Wiktionarians are contemplating creating one, the existing Wikidata one is the natural choice; it is quite brief, it has a good chance of not being ontologically poor (that is, doing a bad job of classifying and differentiating well enough, being ambiguous, etc), and it maximizes the chance for useful and easy interoperability between systems in the future.

Keep in mind that Wikidata ids should only be used when the sense matches exactly. This will mean that a Wikidata ID should only be used on nouns, as Wikidata items are generally "things" or "concepts" which are noun-like in nature. It is unclear how such ID's should be interpreted for other parts of speech, for example the adjective green with the Wikidata item Q3133 about this colour. Moreover, green is both a noun and an adjective, and senseids must be unique per language per page, so you can't use the same senseid Q3133 twice on the page, and it is not clear whether it belongs on the noun or the adjective sense.

The templates {{affix}}, {{suffix}} and such use the |idN= parameter to disambiguate the categories for various homographical affixes. When the parameter is provided on these templates, then in addition to linking to the correct sense ID anchor, the derivations category name is also modified to include this ID. For example, {{affix|la|habeō|-tus|id2=action noun}} will link to the "action noun" sense id on the page -tus, but it will also place the entry in the category Category:Latin terms suffixed with -tus (action noun) rather than the plain Category:Latin terms suffixed with -tus.

The format of the anchor generated by this template is LanguageName:_id, such that {{senseid|en|leading or managerial position in certain organizations}} in the entry for secretary can be linked to using ].

• {{etymid}}
• MediaWiki:Gadget-ShowIDs.js — a gadget that displays {{senseid}} and {{etymid}} IDs directly in pages
• {{senseno}}