I'm not sure how, but this edit of yours removed the categorization from the accompanying template. There might be other affected templates from about the same time. --EncycloPetey 22:22, 16 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Oops, human error, sorry. Thanks for letting me know; I've fixed it now. It looks like it was the only affected template, fortunately. —Ruakh 00:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi there Ruakh! Just wanted to say thanks very much for your helpful explanations at Wiktionary:Requests for verification. I apologize if I've gotten a bit confused at times, but I'm doing my best to learn more and more about how to contribute to Wiktionary. :) Thanks again, -- Cirt (talk) 19:27, 30 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

You're very welcome, and your apology is completely unnecessary. :-)   —Ruakh 20:22, 30 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Heh, okay thanks, that's very reassuring! ;) -- Cirt (talk) 20:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ruakh, thanks very much, for the help at Xenu. ;) Much appreciated, -- Cirt (talk) 03:47, 1 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Is it what you want to have both he-4 and he-3 on your user page? As it makes no sense to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

en-4 is defined as "This user speaks English at a near-native level", and en-3 as "This user is able to contribute with an advanced level of English" (emphases mine). he-4 and he-3 are defined analogously; they're direct translations of the English definitions, just with עברית ("Hebrew") substituted for "English". I speak Hebrew at a near-native level, because I grew up speaking both Hebrew and English at home, but I'm not really able to contribute at a near-native level, because I'm not very literate. (I can read prayers and whatnot, since they're written with vowels, but it takes me ages to get through normal books, since they're written without. I actually read French much better than Hebrew; and I can't write Hebrew almost at all, because I never know how anything is spelled.)
Maybe I should pick either he-4 or he-3 to avoid confusion, but, eh, I don't think it's a big deal. :-)
—Ruakh 18:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

The above-linked-to conversation has taken a turn deeper into areas of what I take to be your expertise, and I'd appreciate your revisiting it.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

So did something break? --Yair rand 02:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Not so far as I know; I'm just opposed to that change. If we want to start doing away with the langprefix B.S. — and I'm all for that — then the sensible thing would be to remove it from {{Xyzy}}, rather than to create a {{Xyzy no langprefix}} to be used in 99% of cases. —Ruakh 02:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Removing it from {{Xyzy}} isn't as easy as it sounds though. It would require moving all the language templates to the main namespace, and that is sure to break things badly. -- Liliana • 03:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with both steps of your reasoning. It seems like those two disagreements should cancel out, and I should reach the same conclusion as you, but somehow it doesn't seem to work out that way . . . —Ruakh 03:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Oh well. I should get back to taking my indefinite wikibreak, I guess. -- Liliana • 03:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

This issue needs some more GP/BP discussion, I think. --Yair rand 03:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

FYI I have touched Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2012-02/Independence by using section heading "independence"; you may want to revert me. See also my comment on the talk page of the vote. --Dan Polansky 08:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I've replied there. —Ruakh 12:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

That citation you added for adjective Bible is pretty obviously a one-off use. I can come up with sentences like "He was very Larry King," "a group of bands that were very activist in spirit," or "Most of the coverage is very horse race." I notice the quote you've used also have "very business." You don't take "business" to be an adjective, do you? --Brett 12:57, 17 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I think you're right. I originally found three cites for "very Bible" (you can find the links on the talk-page). I added one of them. Then I was going to add the second, but when I went to do so, I found that it was far too similar to the first one — also contrasting "very, very" with "very business, sort of Bible" and "sort of business, very Bible" — for them to be truly independent. And when I went to add the third, I started by tracking down the original quoted source, and found that that source seems to have been misquoted: the original seems to have "a very Bibleman", but its quoter parsed it as "a very Bible man". I'm not certain that the quoter was wrong, but still, that's no basis for a cite. So at this point I no longer think that "very Bible" is well enough attested to justify treating "Bible" as an adjective (absent other evidence). —Ruakh 14:01, 18 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I made a dictionary for the Babylon platform, http://www.babylon.com/free-dictionaries/reference/dictionaries-thesauri/Two-way-Eng-Bul-Dictionary/36657.html

Greetings, Willy Obretenov

— This unsigned comment was added by 93.152.183.46 (talk) at 16:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC).Reply

(deprecated template usage) Parent has multiple noun meanings, so I added {{gloss|mother or father}} to (deprecated template usage) הורה's definition "parent". I didn't like that, though, as (deprecated template usage) הורה never means "mother" (AFAIK). I've tried to fix it, but hope you can improve it (further). Thanks, in anticipation.​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

What about "כל הורה"? I would pronounce that as kól-horé and take it to mean "every parent", i.e., "every mother or father". Do you disagree? —Ruakh 01:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

I don't. Good point. Thanks. So {{gloss|mother or father}} might be best. It still seems odd to me.​—msh210℠ (talk) 09:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your edit. That fixed the line-spacing problem with the line above the superscript text, but has caused a line-spacing problem with the line below the superscript text (which it now shares with {{SUB}}). Do you know of any way of solving that one, too? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 18:41, 3 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

That's bizarre. I have some vague thoughts, but no concrete suggestions. If I come up with any, I'll let you know. —Ruakh 19:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. If you do work out a solution, please notify me and others at Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2012-02/Handling of superscript and subscript letters#Templates for superscribing and subscribing, which, I assume, is what prompted you to tweak {{SUP}} in the first place. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 19:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re. this, is there a discussion somewhere? kwami (talk) 04:47, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

I don't know. Probably there are many. There's no single authoritative one that I'd point to and say, "This is the discussion where we all agreed to live and let live, at least when it comes to citations templates." —Ruakh 05:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

put at User:Ruakh/filter, please delete it when able. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Deleted, thanks. Admins can see it at Special:Undelete/User:Ruakh/filter?timestamp=20120306140948. —Ruakh 14:56, 6 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

All the redirects listed under {{poscatboiler}} are not needed anymore and need to be deleted. Do you know of an easy way to delete them all? —CodeCat 18:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

What should the deletion-messages say? —Ruakh 18:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

I think there is a standard message for deleting redirects that were left behind by moves: Bad redirection/residual from move —CodeCat 18:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Right you are.  Done, by adding this JavaScript to User:Ruakh/common.js:

// For every link at ] that points to a redirect-page,
// change it to point, instead, to the deletion-page for that redirect:
addOnloadHook
( function ()
  { if(mediaWiki.config.get('wgPageName') != 'Template:poscatboiler')
      return;
    jQuery('div.allpagesredirect > a').each
    ( function()
      { if(! /Template:poscatboiler+$/.test(this.href))
          return;
        this.href = this.href + '?action=delete';
        $(this).addClass('new');
        this.appendChild(document.createTextNode('?action=delete'));
      }
    );
  }
);
 
// If we're at a deletion-page named ], then set
// the deletion-message and auto-click:
addOnloadHook
( function ()
  { if(! /^Template:poscatboiler/.test(mediaWiki.config.get('wgPageName')))
      return;
    if(mediaWiki.config.get('wgAction') != 'delete')
      return;
    var wpReason = document.getElementById('wpReason');
    wpReason.value =
      'Bad ]/residual from move: ' +
      wpReason.value.replace(/\]\].*/, ']]');
    document.getElementById('wpConfirmB').click();
  }
);

and middle-clicking on the links. (Actually, it might have been easier to use the MediaWiki API — I already have most of the code for that, from when I created the PatrollingEnhancements Gadget — but this wasn't bad.)

—Ruakh 19:10, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! That saves me a lot of work! —CodeCat 19:22, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

You're welcome! :-)   —Ruakh 20:19, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Wow, useful script. I'm about to try and adapt it to delete the bad inflected forms of rimarkigi. - -sche (discuss) 19:34, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi Ran. Could you add the Hebrew etymon and pronunciation of todah rabah, please? Thanks. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 02:54, 18 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've added the Hebrew. I don't know about the pronunciation; in Hebrew it's /to'da ra'ba/, but I've heard Americans say something closer to /'to.da 'ra.ba/, and I'm not sure which should be considered the correct pronunciation in English (or if both should). For that matter, I'm not sure if this phrase is sufficiently nativized for it to make sense to give any English pronunciation at all. —Ruakh 06:32, 18 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

OK; I've therefore removed the Pronunciation section. Thanks for your help. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 06:49, 18 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Is this one OK? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I think so. Thanks. :-)   —Ruakh 18:57, 18 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, too. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 21:36, 18 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi, do you know the vowelization on נטל המס (current redlink; w:)? Does it use (deprecated template usage) נֵטֶל (nétel)?​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

It must, but I'll check tonight to be sure. —Ruakh 19:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. If so, then (deprecated template usage) נֵטֶל can have an "onus, (figurative) burden" sense added to it (which is why I asked).​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:16, 19 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Even-Shoshan doesn't list this compound specifically, but he does have a Modern "by extension" sense of ómes, ma'amasá, sével, listing a Bialik quotation with nétel ham'tsuká and an example sentence with tákhat nétel ha'avodá. He also lists the compound nétel-hahokhakhá (Modern, legal), which I take to be in this sense (and also nétel negdí (Modern), which I do not take to be in this sense, though it doesn't seem to meet the CFI either way). And he doesn't list any other non-verbs with this spelling, so I don't have any alternative interpretation to yours. —Ruakh 01:16, 20 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Many thanks. I've added an "onus" sense to (deprecated template usage) נֵטֶל based on the above. I don't know what nétel negdí is supposed to mean.​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:59, 20 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Even-Shoshan defines it as masá b'tsurát mishkólet shematsmidím l'katséhu shél manóf k'déi l'azén otó; so, "counterweight". But I can't find any evidence of use, so for our purposes, I don't think it really matters much what Even-Shoshan says it means. (The best-attested term for "counterweight" seems to be משקל נגד; and I find that Even-Shoshan does list that term as well, under néged, with some differences of definition. I gather that mishkál néged can be hung from one side of the lever, while a nétel negdí cannot — or could not, if it were a real phrase with different restrictions on its use than "only in dictionaries".) —Ruakh 12:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ah, thanks.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for those changes to the Ditidaht page! I will (try to) remember to use those techniques in the future. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 19:03, 29 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

I see lots of other users use similar rhetoric, I hardly find it appropriate to have one set of rules for some editors and another for the rest and you could simply have redacted or collapsed it.Lucifer (talk) 21:22, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

• whatchutalkinbout?Lucifer (talk) 03:17, 6 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
• Why did you delete pussyman?Lucifer (talk) 03:24, 6 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Whatever anyone else says about it, I find your patrolling enhancements script (the blue Ms and red Ds) very useful, and the dropdown box of deletion reasons only makes it more useful — now I don't have to go to the regular &action=delete page when I want to supply a standard deletion reason. Thanks for your work on the gadget! Together with Lupin's popups, it makes patrolling feasible. - -sche (discuss) 05:26, 8 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I like all of it except that the deletion reason box shows up unbidden at the bottom of watchlist page. I have turned off the Lupin popups, which seems to have eliminated the problem. DCDuring TALK 15:34, 8 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

The delete-reason box only shows up when there are unpatrolled new pages. That shouldn't happen very often on your watchlist, since you're probably not watching too many nonexistent pages. When it does happen, you can just patrol the new page and refresh. But, I see you've commented at the script's talk-page; let's continue this there. —Ruakh 19:46, 8 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Do you think you could properly implement Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2012-02/Brand_names_and_physical_product_2 in CFI, especially by replacing "product" with "brand" in the first list item, and by adding the missing "or service" several times to the body text of the WT:BRAND section? (I am asking you, as I trust you; Daniel Carrero has made a failed attempt at implementing the vote.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

 Done —Ruakh 20:16, 9 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

שלום רוח, may I ask you for a bot run at the Wiktionary? I would need small edits in ~400 articles, quite simple automatic working following a list that I will provide. I'll discuss the details when you answer. תודה -- sarang♥사랑 06:09, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

You can certainly ask, but I can't agree to it without knowing what it is. :-/   —Ruakh 14:24, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

As you may see it depends Chinese (לא עברית). It is an insert of a short string, always at the very beginning of each article, as I did it e.g. at "一" and "Index:Chinese radical/一" with {{Commonsrad|1}}. I would pass you a list of the ~210 characters (as "一") with the corresponding numbers (as "1"). You just tell me what format this list should be, e.g. 一 1, next line 丨 2, 丶 3 and so up to the line 龠 214; I can provide such a list into your bot talk page. I made it manually in some three or four articles, but it is a bit boring to do it another 420 times. I believe that is typical bot work. I would enjoy if your bot might do it. -- sarang♥사랑 15:24, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

See Wiktionary talk:About Sinitic languages#{{Commonsrad}}. —Ruakh 15:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I answered it, and added an explanation to the {{Commonsrad}} documentation. -- sarang♥사랑 18:11, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the improvements. I was considering the possibility of eventually reworking this template to work similarly to {{context}}. As Ancient Greek has a finitish set of authors and works, I think it would be feasible to write subtemplates for all/most of them, so that simply inputting {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3.50}} would produce 7th, 8th century BC, Homer, Iliad, 3.50 (accessing {{grc-cite-Homer}} and {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad}}. Since Robert is no longer with us, and you seem to be among the more knowledgeable editors about this template, I thought I'd see if you had any thoughts, worries, premonitions and like about such a venture. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:36, 14 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Such a thing could certainly be done, but I wonder if it would make more sense to call {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad}} directly from entries? I mean, the reason for {{context}}'s complex network of interlinked templates is that it needs to combine many templates in one; we want {{US|rare}} rather than {{US}} {{rare}} because we want (US, rare) rather than (US) (rare), so every template needs to be able to call every other template. It doesn't seem like {{grc-cite}} would benefit from that sort of complexity, would it? —Ruakh 23:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I suspect that {{grc-cite}} would never need to become quite as monstrous as {{context}}. I guess when I made the comparison, I was thinking that the template could check for prewritten templates and, if extant, utilize them, and if not, simply output the raw text, like {{context}} does. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:57, 14 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I gathered that, but is {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3.50}} really preferable to {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad|3.50}}? If the answer's "yes, it's preferable", then it can certainly be implemented, and I can help with that; it just surprises me, is all. {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad|3.50}} is much simpler and more maintainable, so I wouldn't want to use {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3.50}} unless it's actively preferable. —Ruakh 00:03, 15 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I think it would be. It would allow the subtemps to be created at leisure. {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3.50}} still works before {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad}} is created. That way editors don't have to keep track of which authors are special and which aren't. While the list of Ancient Greek authors and works is finite, it is certainly not small enough to write templates for the lot in a short period of time. Additionally, while more complex, I wonder if it might be more scalable. If the Wikipedia link for w:Aristophanes changes, we only have to change {{grc-cite-Aristophanes}} and not {{grc-cite-Aristophanes-The Birds}}, {{grc-cite-Aristophanes-Lysistrata}}, etc. A lot of the authors have a variety of different names (transliteration of the Greek, Latin, Old Latin, etc.), and I suspect there will be some back and forth. Presumably it wouldn't be that hard to have {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3.50}} call {{grc-cite-Homer|Iliad|3.50}}, which would call {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad|3.50}}, would it? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:21, 15 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

O.K., so I have to take a step back and say that part of your original idea actually cannot reasonably be implemented, so far as I know: sorry, I didn't notice before that you want the 3.50 to get parsed into Γ plus 50. The gamma is doable with only a little bit of ugliness (&#{{#expr:trunc(3.50)+912}}; is Γ, which is Γ), but I can't think of a good way to get the 50. (Wikipedia has a whole family of horrifying templates that do shocking things to extract a substring from a string, but they're pure evil, and I refuse to start down that path!)

But for the rest of it — probably what we would want to do is, put all the formatting stuff into a helper template {{grc-cite/format}}, which would basically look exactly like {{grc-cite}} does now. Then {{grc-cite}} might be {{ {{#ifexist:Template:grc-cite/{{{1|-}}}|grc-cite/{{{1}}}|grc-cite/format}}|{{{1|}}}|{{{2|}}}|{{{3|}}}|{{{4|}}}|{{{5|}}}|year={{{year|}}}|notes={{{notes|}}} }} (so that it calls e.g. {{grc-cite/Homer}} if it exists and {{grc-cite/format}} directly otherwise); {{grc-cite/Homer}} might be {{ {{#ifexist:Template:grc-cite/Homer/{{{2|-}}}|grc-cite/Homer/{{{2}}}|grc-cite/format}}|]|{{{2|}}}|{{{3|}}}|{{{4|}}}|{{{5|}}}|year={{{year|}}}|notes={{{notes|}}} }} (so that it calls e.g. {{grc-cite/Homer/Iliad}} if it exists and {{grc-cite/format}} directly otherwise); and {{grc-cite/Homer/Iliad}} might be {{grc-format|{{{1|}}}|]|{{#if:{{{3|}}}|&#{{#expr:trunc({{{3}}})+912}};|{{{3}}}]]}}|{{{4|}}}|{{{5|}}}|year=]|notes={{{notes|}}} }}. (That's not the only way to do it, and certainly a lot of the details are debatable, but it's the general approach that comes to mind.)

—Ruakh 23:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, those are essentially all the same conclusions I came to myself, even if I never really figured out {{context}}. I realized that our templates probably couldn't extract substrings, though I didn't realize the 'pedia had some which did. If you advise against them, I'll take your word for it. In any case, there are workarounds for that. We could do {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3|50}}. This, of course, introduces some problems. Different works have different chapter/verse arrangements, typically ranging from one to three hierarchical sets of numbers/letters. So, either the citations would have to be named (cit1, cit2, cit3), or they'd have to be last. I almost wonder if it might be best to make them last. So.....you'd have {{grc-cite|Homer|Iliad|3|50|text=κδφξλσκδξφλκσξδκξφσ|trans=foobarfoobar|tr=kdpfkslskdksphlksksdkksphs|transauth=StodgyBritishGuy|transyear=1863}}. There's probably a few other optional fields we might need. In any case, as you can see from the first quote at ἔλαιον (élaion), there is the potential for a lot of stuff after the reference. Some of it (like the information about the translator and his work) absolutely has to be optional, as some of our translations will be done by us, like those done at θεῖον (theîon). Perhaps the rest of the stuff is ideal, but we can't really expect it all the time. The point of all that being that it's probably not a bad idea to have everything after the reference numbers be named, both because they will be produced somewhat haphazardly, and because if you're adding it, the amount of work it takes to name the parameters is relatively irrelevent. We could then have a few different helper templates which convert various numbers and letters to other numbers and letters. So, {{grc-cite-Homer-Iliad}} could do ]. What do you think? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

That makes sense to me. —Ruakh 04:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

On a somewhat tangential note, I also realized why it would be wicked helpful to take parameters instead of separate template calls. The LSJ, along with other grc lexicons, tends to abbreviate all of its citations (and the abbreviations are all in Latin), so we could have {{grc-cite}} do the expansion of those abbreviations for us. For example, you could do {{grc-cite|Ar.|Av.}} and it would produce the same results as {{grc-cite|Aristophanes|The Birds}}. That would make my life a whole lot easier. No, seriously, an assload easier. I've been compiling a list of the abbreviations, what they expand to in Latin, and then what that means in English. It's incredibly tedious. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:28, 17 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I don't follow. You seem to be suggesting that {{grc-cite-Ar.-Av.}} be a redirect to {{grc-cite-Aristophanes-The_Birds}}; but that could be done, and would have the same consequences, with either approach. (Well, I suppose the parameters approach would just require {{grc-cite-Ar.}} to redirect to {{grc-cite-Aristophanes}}, and {{grc-cite-Aristophanes-Av.}} to {{grc-cite-Aristophanes-The_Birds}}, such that the latter could theoretically cover more combinations of abbreviated and unabbreviated names without needing as many templates, but in practice I find it hard to imagine that the difference would be significant. I mean, how many different abbreviations are there for "Aristophanes"?) —Ruakh 04:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Oh yeah. I'm not quite sure why I was thinking the direct call approach couldn't handle that. Perhaps I was just too busy giggling to myself at the thought of not having to look up all that stuff over and over again. I still think the parameter approach is better, for the reasons listed previously. Anyways, thanks so much for your input on this. I'll start working on it, hopefully within the next few days. Would you mind looking at it and critiquing when I get it operational? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 13:03, 17 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ok, so it's all up and running. I've taken it to the Grease pit for comment. I hope you won't take it as an insult to your technical skills, but I thought it'd be prudent to get a few sets of eyes on it, and, if I might take the liberty of patting myself on the back, I think the template's cool enough that it might be useful to add it to the collective Wiktionary meme pool. Rest assured, I would still very much like to have your eyeballs on it, if you have the time. Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Certainly I don't take it as an insult; I frequently take technical thoughts there myself. —Ruakh 01:37, 19 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hello. In order to lower the number of exceptions to the Slovene conjugational templates, I wanted to create a template which would make use of a replace function to accomplish that. After I figured out that the string functions are not installed here, I started copying templates from Wikipedia to make a workaround template work, but in the end it didn't. And only then did I realize that Wiktionary decided against these templates a little more than a year ago, for reasons still not quite clear to me. So, I have a question, is there any other way I could get certain elements in a string replaced by a function? Also, what do I do with the templates I created, should I just leave them alone until they get deleted? Thank you. bead-v 13:59, 15 April 2012 (UTC) — This unsigned comment was added by Bead-v (talk • contribs).

Re: "So, I have a question, is there any other way I could get certain elements in a string replaced by a function?": Not really. You should simply design the template not to require that.

Re: "Also, what do I do with the templates I created, should I just leave them alone until they get deleted?": I've deleted the string-templates now, thanks. As for the Slovene conjugation templates — if you want them to be deleted, you can list them at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others.

—Ruakh 17:38, 15 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

US certainly is. British may be considered a simple adjective, but the fact is that it and Spanish are used far more often in "Franco-"/"Sino-" prefixing situations than "Anglo-" and certainly "Hispano-". LlywelynII (talk) 14:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Sorry. Apparently wasn't signed in. Here's my handle. LlywelynII (talk) 14:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

This would be good to mention in the introductory text ("Most of these prefixes are rare; for example, one normally writes of Spanish-American relations rather than Hispano-American relations"), but it doesn't justify adding non-prefixes to a table of prefixes. (And by "US certainly is" do you mean to assert that "US" is a prefix? If so — what makes you think so?) —Ruakh 14:54, 19 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Glad you're back. I hope you had a good time. New Zealand? DCDuring TALK 00:24, 9 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! I did. :-)   And — Israel. (New Zealand was just the one time, because my parents were on sabbatical there that semester. I loved it, but it's very likely that I'll never go back. Israel, on the other hand, I visit every few years, because I have so many family members and friends there.) —Ruakh 00:36, 9 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Despite our past kerfuffles (or however the fuck you spell that since firefox is yelling at me about it) the fact that you're learning about Persian excites me. Let me know if you'd like advice. If you don't I'll be angry. :P — — 03:17, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Just remembered that I once worked on this, which is relevant to the "zabân-e fârsi" thing. User:Dick Laurent/Appendix:Persian ezâfe — — 11:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I would definitely welcome any advice. :-)   And thanks for the link! —Ruakh 18:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for the apology. Astral (talk) 01:38, 17 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi, if you have time and inclination, I'd appreciate some JS help. If not, I certainly understand. ] is an AutoFormat-like script loaded when editing pages. It works fine, but one line in it does not do anything (or yield an error in Firefox's error console) even when it seemingly should. That line is

txt=txt.replace(/^==(+)==\n*((?:(?:(?:={3,})?.*)?\n)*)(\#+ *\{\{context\|)(+)\}\}/gm,

function($0,$1,$2,$3,$4){return "=="+$1+"==\n"+$2+$3+($1=="English"?"":"lang={"+"{subst:langrev|"+$1+"}}|")+$4+"}}"});

Here, txt is the content of the textarea (wiki source of the page). The purpose of this code is to add lang={{subst:langrev|French}}| in any context tag in a French section, and the same, m.m., for other languages. Any idea on what might be wrong with the code, please?​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:06, 17 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Works for me. You might want to give a specific case of where it doesn't work. --Yair rand (talk) 21:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

It works for me as well, so I've just looked through it for things that seem like they might affect some pages and not others. I see a bunch of little things, but I'm sure that most of them are explicit decisions that you made for simplicity's sake and are completely aware of. The only thing I see that seems unintentional is, it will only touch one problematic context-tag within a given language section, because the regex will match only one time for a given language header. (Specifically, it will only touch the last problematic context-tag, because it will have greedily read past all the others.) To fix that, you could write something like:

txt =
  txt.replace
  ( /^==(+)==\n+(?:(?:===|).*\n+)*/gm,
    function(section, langname)
    { if(langname == 'English')
        return section;
      return '' +
        section.replace
        ( /^(#+ *context)(+)/gm,
          '$1|lang={\{subst:langrev|' + langname + '}\}$2'
        );
    }
  );

But it seems like you would have noticed if it had fixed even one context-tag, because that would have shown up in the diff, right? So it's probably not the problem you encountered . . .
—Ruakh 22:18, 17 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you (both) very much for your help. Oddly, I just tried it again (on ], by adding {{context|aviation|lang=und}}) and it worked fine. Thanks, too, Ruakh, for the suggestion on how to combine multiple fixes into one edit (without which it should fix one, "Show changes", fix another, rinse, and repeat). I'll replace my script with yours and keep an eye on its nonactivation.​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi. You added {{rfdate}} to my quote. Do you want the date of the original German (1886), the English translation (1973), the revised edition of the latter (1990), or all of them? I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 01:32, 25 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

The text there obviously isn't the 1886 German. Is it the 1973 English, or the 1990 English? —Ruakh 02:09, 25 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I don't have a copy of the pre-revision text, so I don't know whether the part I've quoted was the same in the 1973 version. Should I therefore date it 1990? Or perhaps 1973–90? I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 23:03, 25 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, to start with, you gave a specific page number, so you should add whatever other information (year, publisher, ISBN, etc.) matches that page number. But as for the bold year at the start of the metadata — probably something like "1973 or 1990" would be safest? —Ruakh 02:46, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Is there a prescribed style guide? I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 10:04, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Wiktionary:Quotations. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 10:10, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've edited as best I can the metadata to conform to that policy; is what I've done OK? WT:"#Between the definitions seemed to suggest that the later date should come after the publisher's name, rather than at the beginning. I've also added the aphorism number, since you guys seem to like a lot of detail. I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 12:02, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Re: "the later date should come after the publisher's name": More or less. The date of the quotation goes in bold at the beginning of the metadata. The date of the specific publishing/printing/quoting/whatnot goes after the publisher's name, except that it can be omitted if it's the same as the date of the quotation. Naturally that means that the date after the publisher's name, if present, will always be later than the date in bold at the beginning of the metadata, but that's a result of the rule, not the rule itself. (I've edited the citations page to show you what I mean.) Anyway — thanks again! —Ruakh 14:08, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Understood (I think). If I obtain a copy of the pre-revision 1973 text, and I find that it is the same as the 1990 text, should I then change the quotation's metadata to conform with the publication information of the earlier version? I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 16:40, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Eh, not a big deal. If you find that the text is in fact in the 1973 edition, then you can change "1973 or 1990" to just "1973", but I don't think it's particularly important to change the rest of the metadata (since it's accurate even as-is). —Ruakh 22:07, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

OK. I ask because WT:"#Which date to use states "Preferably the work is a first edition, but otherwise the date of the edition should be placed in the edition section." (my emphasis). I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 11:24, 27 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I agree with that. But it's not a huge deal. —Ruakh 13:20, 27 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the clarifications. I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 14:28, 27 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Can you please explain me the reason for removing English word "Sondeli"? - Raman Subba Rao Metikurke ರಾ ಸು ಮೇಟಿಕುರ್ಕೆ (talk) 15:33, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

"English"? It's true that the header at the top was ==English==, but the entry was a copy and paste of the Kannada entry: it belonged to a Kannada category, its interwiki was to a Kannada word, it referred to a reference that said it was a Kannada word. Do you believe this to be an English word? If so, feel free to create an English entry, but it has to be an actual English entry, not just a Kannada entry with the header changed. —Ruakh 15:35, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Sondeli is an English word derived from Kannada language. I had created a page for this word more than two years back and someone has changed it to Kananda pronounced as Sundili - Raman Subba Rao Metikurke ರಾ ಸು ಮೇಟಿಕುರ್ಕೆ (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ah, I see what happened. O.K., I'll take care of it. Thanks. —Ruakh 15:48, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you very much for the changes.

- Raman Subba Rao Metikurke ರಾ ಸು ಮೇಟಿಕುರ್ಕೆ (talk) 16:06, 26 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I noticed this edit, which looks wrong, but I'm not up to speed myself on WT Hebrew practices, so I thought I would bring it to your attention (if you're already subscribed to the page, sorry for the extra clutter). Chuck Entz (talk) 23:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! I've cleaned it up now. —Ruakh 00:00, 29 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

I particularly diagree with these two edits , . Do you mind self-reverting? 78.144.245.127 06:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I do mind, sorry.

Regarding ]: Pass a Method (talk • contribs) removed the text of a valid quotation without offering any justification. (I believe (s)he simply disagreed with the quotation on political grounds, but since (s)he didn't offer an explanation, I can't know for sure.) As for the definition text — I think "not lawful" captures the term's meaning better than "sinful". English works that both use and explain the term generally explain it as "forbidden" or "prohibited" or "not lawful". (Probably the best definition would include "sinful" as well, but not as the first word.)

Regarding ]: We don't include synonyms on "form-of" entries. (And if we did, we'd want to include all synonyms, not just Pass a Method (talk • contribs)'s beloved hetero that (s)he's been adding everywhere.)

—Ruakh 13:03, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I have no political motivations. You can check out my profile of the same name on wikipedia where i am in relatively good standing. I edit only for fun. Im also good at finding references, therefore i will find it easy to prove my edits from google scholar or books. 78.144.245.127 21:07, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I implied a question before; let me now pose it explicitly: Why do you feel that I should delete the text of the quotation at ]? (As I wrote before, you removed that text without explanation, and this lack of explanation was part of what led me to think your motivations were political. If, as you say, my inference was wrong, then you can help dispel it by offering such an explanation now.) —Ruakh 21:26, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Nice work.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:43, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

:-)   —Ruakh 13:04, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

By the way — so, silent ה sometimes becomes א. In particular, ל״ה hif'íl verbs will generally have a Talmudic-Hebrew-or-later action noun with an א in the last position; hence הוֹדָאָה (hoda'á), הַרְשָׁאָה (harsha'á), השוואה \ הַשְׁוָאָה (hashva'á), and so on. (They'll also generally have a Talmudic-Hebrew-or-later action noun with a י in the last position; הוֹדָיָה (hodayá), הַרְשָׁיָה (harshayá), and השווייה \ הַשְׁוָיָה (hashvayá) are all attested, though of these three only hodayá is really a serious competitor to the א version.) Now, my impression is that this is strictly a post-Biblical-Hebrew thing — that Biblical Hebrew never inserts a א — and it makes some sense to me that this would first show up in Talmudic Hebrew, which is also when (for example) the variants קָרוּי (karúi) and שָׁנאוּי (sanúi) of קָרוּא (karú) and שָׁנוּא (sanú) are first attested, which makes me think that final א had fallen silent (due presumably to Aramaic influence) and thereby blurred the line between ל״א and ל״ה — but I don't really know. And my impressions of Biblical Hebrew are not worth very much. :-P   Do you happen to know? —Ruakh 15:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I don't happen to, no; sorry. And I can't think of any hif'il ל״ה action nouns in Tanach, so that I might look up their spellings. (At least in Chumash, action nouns altogether are very rare, or so is my impression.)

On a completely unrelated note, this is going on today; you may be interested.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:28, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! —Ruakh 18:08, 3 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ruth 1:20 has an instance (in מָרָא) of what I assume is a ה turning into an א, though I don't know. I seem vaguely to recall ק־ר־א used in Tanach where ק־ר־ה might be expected, but am not sure of that and certainly don't know where; perhaps when I'm less tired I'll think of where it might be or how to search for it. (In my reply above I was under the impression you were looking for hif'il ל״ה action nouns with א in Tanach; now I'm under the impression you're looking for any א for ה in Tanach, and am answering accordingly.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:54, 4 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Found one! (Sleep is definitely a Good Thing™.) See Jer. 13:22, וְכִי תֹאמְרִי בִּלְבָבֵךְ מַדּוּעַ קְרָאֻנִי אֵלֶּה, which Malbim explains (according to Wikisource) as "את תחשב שהדבר הזה מקרה והרעה באה לך ע״י מקרי העולם, ותשאל מדוע קראך מקרים אלה ";‎ מצודת ציון (also according to s:) explains the word likewise. The JPS has "befallen"; KJV, "come upon", ASV and ESV, "come upon"; Young's "met".​—msh210℠ (talk) 14:33, 4 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Perfect, thank you! :-D   —Ruakh 14:48, 4 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

And an earlier example is in II Sam. 1:6.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:30, 13 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi. How sure are you of the kamatz in the conswv? I know שֻׁלְחָן's conswv is שֻׁלְחַן and בָּקָר's is בְּקַר, for example.​—msh210℠ (talk) 04:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Not very sure; Even-Shoshan doesn't list construct forms for this word. Because of examples like yours, I thought it might be patákh, so I Googled both אִידֵאָל and אִידֵאַל looked for construct examples. The latter gets exactly two hits, both in the construct; the former requires more effort, since of course it has all the indefinite hits, but nonetheless you can find אִידֵאָל הַיֹּפִי,‎ אִידֵאָל אֵיכוּת,‎ אִידֵאָל הַחֶבְרָה,‎ אִידֵאָל הַ"שָּׁלוֹם בְּיָמֵינוּ". Also, the Akadémya says that vowels are preserved in the inflected forms of loanwords; admittedly, it says this in the context of discussing sh'vá, so its immediate point is that the plural of salát is salatim and not *s'latím, but its phrasing of the statement sounds pretty general to me. —Ruakh 12:26, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Sounds good. Thanks for the legwork.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:04, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Purely random curiosity, but I'd be very curious to know what the original Hebrew word translated in the 1611 quotation is... Ƿidsiþ 08:30, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

It's פְּתִיגִיל (p'tigíl). Its derivation and precise meaning are unclear. If you Google "פְּתִיגִיל", you'll find a bunch of theories. :-P   —Ruakh 12:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks muchly. I've added it to the entry, via the ever-handy {{transterm}}. Ƿidsiþ 12:44, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I tried to create a Hebrew entry, even though my Hebrew is awful and I can't even figure out where all the vowels are on my Hebrew keyboard. Could you please clean it up? Sorry and thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:52, 12 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Will do (tonight). —Ruakh 12:18, 12 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thankee --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:47, 12 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

FWIW, iIn your first 2 comments to the enemy combatant thread you did write the following statements.

• The Bush Administration used the term enemy combatant in reference to such people precisely because it was claiming that they were enemy combatants in sense #1.
• Smurrayinchester's analysis is correct, and his analogy is apt; that order's definition does not demonstrate that a new sense of "enemy combatant" exists.
• that still wouldn't mean that the term "enemy combatant" had a new and distinct sense.

It is true -- you didn't use the exact phrase "functionally equivalent" -- but I think I fairly paraphrased the surface meaning of these statements when I said you argued the two definitions were functionally equivalent. Listen, we all make mistakes. This discussion has proven remarkably unpleasant, so I am likely not to return here, but if we interact again it may be my turn to make a mistake. Geo Swan (talk) 08:01, 13 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I think the equivalence described in those statements is the exact opposite of "functional equivalence". But whatever. I've left that discussion, and I don't want to continue it here. —Ruakh 11:37, 13 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

• Okay, it is your position that saying the two definitions were used in the "same sense" is different from saying the two definitions are "functionally equivalent" -- and you do not want to explain yourself any further. Geo Swan (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

• It's my position that I am done trying to understand your comments, so you needn't bother writing them here. Stick to the main discussion, where there may be editors who do understand you (or at least, who are still trying to). —Ruakh 13:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I want to propose changing the wording of social conservative from "Judeo-Christian" to "Abrahamist" based on the following argument. Firstly, other Abrahamic religions also place emphasis on social conservatism such as Baha'i, Islam, Druze. Secondly, because social conservative is a political concept, i believe the more politically sounding variant of "Abrahamism" is more appropriate. However, i'm also okay with "Abrahamic". Do you have any thoughts on this? Pass a Method (talk) 10:10, 17 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm definitely opposed to "Abrahamist". As for "Abrahamic" — maybe raise this at Wiktionary:Tea room? My instinct is that we should actually go the other way, and change "Judeo-Christian" to just "Christian" (since American Jews have traditionally been socially liberal, and although recently there have started to be more socially conservative Jews, I don't think that any reading of Jewish values has been a factor in the development of the social-conservative movement), I'd be interested to hear what other people think. —Ruakh 10:21, 17 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

How about just "religious values"? The views of socially conservative Christians tend to be diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christianity anyway. —Angr 16:18, 17 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I only today noticed WT:Requests for cleanup#Template:my-roman. Please take a look at the template now and let me know if you're content with the changes, and removed the RFC tag if you are. Thanks! —Angr 16:13, 17 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hey Ruakh, could you fix the Hebrew in the etymology here? It's written only in Latin script. 50 Xylophone Players talk 23:19, 18 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Any interest? (See ].)​—msh210℠ (talk) 01:10, 20 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, you know what to do. Please accept at Wiktionary:Votes/bc-2012-06/User:Ruakh for bureaucrat. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:38, 20 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Just wanted to add that I've co-nominated you for the position because I was originally planning on doing the nomination, but since Metaknowledge did the nomination, I felt it only right to do the co-nomination since I showed the interest in the idea in the first place :) Hope you accept! Razorflame 06:09, 20 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Vote passes, you are now a Bureaucrat. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:15, 22 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! —Ruakh 13:41, 22 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Congrats. Sorry, I forgot to vote. DCDuring TALK 14:25, 22 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Could you double-check my work here. I want to make sure it is right. I'm about 95% sure it is correct, but again, I want to make sure. Thanks, Razorflame 02:56, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, looks like I need more work in my French before contributing into it any further :) I will do that before making any further pages :) Razorflame 03:07, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Am I more or less correct that, if documentation is incorporated onto the main page of a template by {{documentation}}, then changes to the documentation page do not add to the queue for pages that transclude the template. Thus, changes to the documentation page can be made freely.

So when I categorize a template, especially if it is multiply transcluded, I should add a "nul" documentation page that includes the desired category.

What should the content of a "nul" documentation page be? How about:

This template needs proper documentation. 
It should be added to PAGENAME/documentation.

Should there also be a category, something like Category:Templates without documentation subpages?

I would continue to attempt to place the templates into more specific categories, using the approach documented at {{documentation}}. DCDuring TALK 16:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: first paragraph: Yes, that's more or less correct. To make it completely correct, I'd add the restriction that the template must use <onlyinclude> or <noinclude> to control which part of itself is transcluded, and the {{documentation}} must be outside the transcluded part.

Re: adding a "null" documentation page: I'd say so, yes.

Re: the content of a "null" documentation page: Currently, if {{documentation}} finds that there's no documentation-page for a template, it adds the template to Category:Templates requiring documentation, and displays this message:

This template needs documentation and categorisation. Please create the documentation page.

The "create the documentation page" link uses {{documentation/preload}} (q.v.) as a preload-template. So I think this question has already been resolved, unless you're dissatisfied with that preload-template.

Re: Category:Templates without documentation subpages: I'm a bit confused. From the rest of this comment, you seem to mean that "null" documentation pages should add this category; but that name makes it sound like the template doesn't have any documentation page at all. But regardless . . . I think that the aforementioned Category:Templates requiring documentation could definitely be extended a bit to include templates that have documentation-subpages but don't have real documentation.

—Ruakh 17:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I just didn't realize the functionality of {{documentation}} with respect to missing documentation subpages. I'd be perfectly happy to add that category instead of the one I made up, unless you see some objection. Would it not be better if the message I added was visibly different from that added by {{documentation}} as you have it above? DCDuring TALK 19:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: "Would it not be better if the message I added was visibly different from that added by {{documentation}} as you have it above?": Sorry, I think we must be talking at cross-purposes. You asked what the content of a "null" documentation subpage should be, and what I'm saying is, we already have a model for that: {{documentation/preload}}. I mentioned the message added by {{documentation}} solely to point out the existence of, and explain the significance of, {{documentation/preload}}. —Ruakh 19:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Oh, but it might be worth changing {{documentation/preload}} to initially transclude some sort of {{docstub}} template. That would give some sort of message like you describe, including a link to edit the doc-page, and would add the appropriate category. —Ruakh 19:54, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Should any of this broader matter be brought to WT:BP or WT:GP? DCDuring TALK 19:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Sure, why not? —Ruakh 19:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

• I think I have just discovered a fly in the ointment, not too serious, but annoying. To speed my editing I had been alternating between putting in first the documentation page, then {{documentation}}. Occasionally I noted that the category did not show the template, though the template showed the category. (I recall similar symptoms being reported about some Icelandic reference templates.) I made my changes to some of the "context n" group in decreasing number order. I just noticed that every other of those templates did not appear in the category. I them made an edit to the template page, inserting a space, which did the trick. The end result, then is that a template that is never changed may not appear in the category to which it has been assigned on the documentation subpage. Is that what you would have expected? Does it make sense? Am I misinterpreting something? DCDuring TALK 06:07, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• No, it doesn't make sense, but yes, it's what I expected. :-/   See e.g. Wiktionary:Grease pit#Strange lag of sorts. Sorry, I probably should have mentioned it, but it seemed like MediaWiki's actual intended features were complicated enough without getting into subtle bugs. And I thought I had an idea for how to fix it after-the-fact: I figured we could edit {{documentation}}, which would trigger updates on the template-pages that include {{documentation}}, and thereby get them into their categories. Unfortunately, I discovered last night that that does not work . . . we can prevent the problem in the future, though, by modifying {{documentation}} to unconditionally include the documentation-page. (We can use <span style="display:none">...</span> to hide the redlink when the template doesn't exist.) —Ruakh 13:09, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

  Please let me know when you think we have worked enough of the kinks out so that we were in a position to make some kind of proposal. On the nul documentation/category page I include, I have added: 1., some comments to help especially newer templateers get the documentation and other material into the right places with respect to the inclusion tags and, 2., an exhortation to provide real documentation. I'm sure you've seen what I had been inserting. Any other changes you'd recommend? DCDuring TALK 14:09, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for fixing my post in the Beer parlour, first post and already making a mess, not a good start... (Fedso (talk) 21:01, 27 June 2012 (UTC))Reply

No worries. :-)   —Ruakh 21:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

1. If we are ever to launch a major effort to improve the documentation of the templates that are used, then wouldn't it be necessary to move documentation from the template page to the documentation page and insert {{documentation}} to avoid server overload from repeated editorial changes?
2. I am creating a list at User:DCDuring/UncategorizedTemplates/not to be categorized of what seem to be widely transcluded templates. As I understand it, widespread transclusion is a sufficient condition to suggest that a change in the template would cause a heavy load on servers.
   1. What constitutes sufficient transclusion to be a "heavy" load? 50/500/5,000 transclusions?
   2. What other indications are there that would suggest that a given template might cause a heavy server load?
   3. Who would you suggest as both willing and able to sift through the list at User:DCDuring/UncategorizedTemplates to identify the templates that should not be changed too quickly?

I hope these stuff doesn't seem too tedious. I'm not even sure whom else to ask. DCDuring TALK 14:30, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

1. Yes, absolutely.
2. Agreed.
   1. I don't know. The more, the worse. I think that for anything over, say, 1000 transclusions, we should be extra careful when editing (since it's no longer so cheap to fix a typo), and for anything over, say, 5000 transclusions, we shouldn't make changes without discussing them, and should make an effort to combine multiple changes into a single edit. But those are really just wild guesses. (And it's cumulative: if I'm editing ten templates one right after the other, then the main consideration is the total number of all of their transclusions added together.)
   2. None. I mean, some pages are "heavier" than others (I imagine that the servers die a little inside every time they discover they have to re-generate water!), but overall I think the presence of a template on such "heavy" pages is likely to correlate pretty well with the presence of a template on more pages. I doubt this is worth thinking about or trying to measure.
   3. No clue. What kind of sifting did you have in mind?

On the other side, I should add that CodeCat commented a few weeks back, "I don't understand why having a long job queue for a short time is bad. The job queue exists in the first place to spread the load, for exactly these kinds of situations", and she does have a point. The only consequence that I can 100% guarantee will result from editing a widely transcluded template is that other edits to other templates will take a while to take effect. That said, I've noticed that when you edit a very widely transcluded template, there's some delay between you hit "Save page" and when it actually saves — for the really really used-everywhere templates it will often just time out on the browser's end — so I know that the very act of populating the job queue must be intensive to begin with.

—Ruakh 14:52, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for bearing with me on this.

re: 3. How about inserting in the talk page for "widely transcluded templates" without {{documentation}} a suggestion that "<noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>" or superior equivalent be included at the next edit to the template and that any user documentation included be moved to the documentation page. Is there a more insistent way of communicating this?

Do changes to a template that are entirely in "noinclude" even generate changes in pages in which the template is transcluded? If so, then it would be without bad consequence to insert {{documentation}} so encapsulated for all pages that lack it.

Is there a way to give certain maintenance-type or bot-generated changes or changes-by-transclusion a lower priority on the queue so the impact on manual editors is less serious? Is that what the job queue does itself? DCDuring TALK 15:36, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: talk-page: We can try it. I don't know of a good way to add a more insistent message to certain specific pages without editing those pages, no. That said, I think we could use JavaScript to add such a message to any template without {{documentation}} (whether or not the template is "widely transcluded".)

My experience leads me to believe that visiting a template's edit-page and clicking "Save page" will add all of its transclusions to the job queue, even if you make no changes at all.

There is no way to prioritize the job queue, no. However, note that the job queue only applies to changes-by-transclusion; edits directly to a page do not go through the job queue.

—Ruakh 15:52, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

• How is it that a change in the documentation subpage which is transcluded onto the main template page by {{documentation}} does not get added to the job queue? Does only transclusion from the main template page matter? Is there something special about the documentation subpage? DCDuring TALK 01:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• It's because the proper use of <noinclude> or <onlyinclude> means that the documentation subpage is transcluded on a very small number of pages — see e.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:headtempboiler:suffix/doc — and when you update it, only those pages have to get re-generated. (By contrast, see Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:pt-conj/doWork, which lists every page that includes {{pt-conj}}, because all of those pages do include {{pt-conj/doWork}} indirectly.) Does that make sense? —Ruakh 01:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• So the material so bracketed is transcluded, but any templates contained therein are not evaluated in the transclusion process. I just wanted to make sure that the key assumption I was making was correct. All this makes me wonder about the wisdom of having so much common code transcluded as it is so universally in this kind of an environment. So that would suggest a need to test the post-edit version of a widely transcluded template in the wild, but on a small, but visible subset of entries. I assume on cannot jump the queue for testing? It also should mean that there is good reason not to use a template, especially a complex one, when the benefit is small. DCDuring TALK 02:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• Re: "I assume on cannot jump the queue for testing?": You can't get an edit to a template to bypass the queue, but you can cause a specific page to be regenerated immediately by making a "null edit" (click the edit tab and click "Save page" without actually making any changes: it won't show up in the revision history, but it will cause the page to be regenerated). —Ruakh 02:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• So that's why some results seem so fast despite the queue. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 03:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Is there a place I can go to find a measure of the queue for en.wikt and for the total queue that we participate in (other wiktionaries?, other projects?)? Is there a Mediawiki page that documents the queue? DCDuring TALK 03:12, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I believe that each wiki has a completely separate job queue. For general documentation about the job queue, see mw:Manual:Job queue. For the specific number of pages in the en.wikt job queue at any given time, visit http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=statistics and refresh a few times. (From what I understand, the number you see there will depend on which server you happen to hit; refreshing a few times will likely show you the job-queue-lengths on multiple different servers, for a better picture.) As you can see there, the en.wikt job queue is typically within spitting distance of "empty", so you shouldn't usually see much delay in seeing a template-edit take effect unless it has a lot of transclusions or someone has recently edited a template that has a lot of transclusions. —Ruakh 03:19, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

¶ Greetings. Your Classification of ‘publically’ as an alternative Form is considerably controversial since it has a significantly different Suffix included : -al. I think that it should be treated as a Synonym instead. If you possess any Objections, please let me know. Shalom. --Æ&Œ (talk) 14:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

What do you mean, it's "considerably controversial"? I've never heard of any controversy. They're definitely two spellings of the same word. I don't know anyone who says publical. —Ruakh 14:55, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

¶ I brought this up to Martin Gardner in an e‐mail. The Suffixes are different, synonymous, but different. It is like saying that ‘uncorrect’ is an alternative Spelling of ‘incorrect’. publical is not standard but it does exist on Google Books. --Æ&Œ (talk) 15:01, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I don't know what Martin Gardner has to do with anything. And I think this is more like saying that "donut" is an alternative spelling of "doughnut", even though "do" and "dough" are different. —Ruakh 15:13, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Uh…‘donut’ is not a Combination of do with nut, is it ? I think that is a Type of Contraction : as, tho’. ‘publically’ came after ‘publicly’, so it cannot be a Contraction.

Y’know, if you would rather not talk about this, I can shut up. That is usually what (some) People want from me, I sense. --Æ&Œ (talk) 15:23, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm surprised that you cite a source that specifically identifies publically as a variant of publicly, explains that both are part of a class of words ending in <-ically>, and proposes that publically does not come from publical.
I'm not opposed to the conversation, but I don't really get where you're coming from. I'm still hung up on "considerably controversial", actually. Can you point to some evidence of the controversy? (Or, wait, did you just mean that you disagreed with it? Because if so, then that's not really what "controversial" means, but at least your comment would make more sense that way.)
—Ruakh 15:31, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

¶ I confess that it appears that I have misused the Term ‘controversial’ there, but it seems controversial right now. Anyway, here is a Source that lists it as a Synonym. I am not attempting to signify that ‘publicly’ is directly related to ‘‐ically’ (I believe that publicly is simply public with ‐ly & publically is public with ‐ally), but surely you can agree that ‘‐ly’ & ‘‐ally’ are Synonymous, yes ? Although are they alternative Spellings of eachother ? I personally think not since the Suffixes are different. Is that clear, sir ? What do you believe ? --Æ&Œ (talk) 15:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

(Sorry for the delay in replying; I didn't notice this comment until now.) Most of your comment is not very clear to me, sorry, but let me address the parts I think I do understand:

• I don't know how I would characterize -ly and -ally; I guess "synonym" is fine.
• WolframAlpha also thinks that gaol and jail are synonyms, so it doesn't draw this distinction very well. (For color it does identify colour as the "British spelling", and vice versa, but it doesn't seem to have a good general concept of "alternative form".)
• Just because two suffixes are distinct, that doesn't mean that words using them can't be alternative forms. Aluminum and aluminium, for example, are clearly alternative forms, whether or not -um and -ium are.

—Ruakh 20:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I am not certain what I am saying that appears to be so unclear to you. As far as I can tell, -um and -ium are closely related enough that they are alternative Forms. -al is not related to -ic, is it ? Since this Conversation appears not to be making any Progress, I can request various Opinions in the so‐called ‘Tea Room’ instead, if I may have your Permission. --Æ&Œ (talk) 18:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: "I am not certain what I am saying that appears to be so unclear to you": I don't understand your statement that "I am not attempting to signify that ‘publicly’ is directly related to ‘‐ically’", and I don't understand this sequence of statements/questions: "surely you can agree that ‘‐ly’ & ‘‐ally’ are Synonymous, yes ? Although are they alternative Spellings of eachother ? I personally think not since the Suffixes are different." It might help if you tried to write in Standard English; your odd blend of intentional archaisms, Modern colloquialisms, and non-native grammar is difficult to understand. (Take the word "signify", for example. It's not used that way. Is it an archaism that I'm not familiar with? Is it a false cognate with your native language?) (Though I see now that your user-page claims that English is your native language. Is that really true? I find it very surprising.)

Re: "-al is not related to -ic, is it ?": Even if it were, that wouldn't really be relevant. The point is that "-icly" and "-ically" are alternative forms — same meaning, same pronunciation, same word — even though one contains an "-al" that the other lacks.

Re: Tea room: by all means.

—Ruakh 18:42, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, do you believe that ‐ally as well as ‐ly are synonyms, or are they alternative Forms ? Yes or no ? I do not understand what you are talking about. What archaisms ? What ‘Modern colloquialisms’ ? Did I hallucinate the third definition of ‘signify’ here ? I have been attempting to moderate the tone of my writings for months now, and these continual vague complaints are not helping me ; they are only frustrating. Do I need to write like an idiot to get the point across ? --Æ&Œ (talk) 18:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

If it helps, here are three ways in which this last comment of yours was not Standard English:

• The clause "-ally as well as -ly are synonyms" is not grammatical. There are times when "as well as" can substitute for "and"; this is not one of them.
• We do not capitalize "Forms". (Though I notice that that's the only word you arbitrarily capitalized in this comment, so I guess you're moving away from that archaism?)
• We do not put a space before a question mark.
• The question "Yes or no?" cannot be used to demand an answer to an A-or-B question, except in the specific case that A is an affirmative clause and B is its negation. (Think about it: what would it mean if I replied "yes"?)

To answer some of your questions:

• Re: "What ‘Modern colloquialisms’ ?": The use of "although" in "Although are they alternative Spellings of eachother ?" is colloquial at best.
• Re: "Did I hallucinate the third definition of ‘signify’ here ?": No, but I think you've misunderstood it. Shakespeare's use ("a tale signifying nothing") is Standard; your use ("I am not attempting to signify that ") is not.
• Re: "Do I need to write like an idiot to get the point across ?": I don't know, but you need to do something differently. If you know any easy-to-understand idiots, then sure, you might try writing like them, and seeing if it helps.

—Ruakh 19:17, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, despite my frustration, I must say that I thank you for being clear and direct this time. I still have some comments:

• I am not certain why as well as cannot be utilized as a synonym there, unless you are saying that it is simply not common in that fashion.
• I stopped capitalising nouns because it was irritating you (a habit which I have not broken as a whole; it does not exactly irritate some people).
• I believe that inserting spaces before punctuation marks is still acceptable to a degree, some friends I have do it, but I shall stop using that habit because it annoys you.
• I noticed that logic mistake, but it was too late to fix it. However, an answer can be extended for clarification.
• I shall stop saying ‘although’ to you.
• ‘signify’ is utilized to explain the term ‘mean’ here. Am I still misunderstanding them, or do the definitions require reformations?

I’ll just shut up since I annoy you so much. --Æ&Œ (talk) 19:42, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• Re: "as well as": As ] explains, it means "and in addition". "-ally as well as -ly are synonyms" would mean "-ally is a synonym, as is -ly". (Also, I think "X as well as Y" should have the same verb agreement as "X" alone, but that's a lesser point.)
• Re: noun capitalization, spaces before punctuation marks: I admit that I find them slightly annoying, but the real problem is that they're archaisms, so when you use a wrong word (as you so often do), I left trying to figure out if the wrong word is actually just an archaism.
• Re: logic error: Fair enough. The other problem with that question, of course, is that I'd already answered it, when I wrote "I don't know how I would characterize -ly and -ally; I guess 'synonym' is fine." If that's not satisfactory, then you won't be satisfied, sorry.
• Re: "although": Why? Are you unwilling to use it the way the Standard English uses it?
• Re: "signify": I think the definitions are fine (and "reformations" is another archaism!). I can't speak to whether you're misunderstanding them. Just because a word X is used to explain a word Y, that doesn't mean that X and Y are interchangeable. And your sentence wouldn't be much better with "mean" instead of "signify", anyway: "I am not attempting to mean that " is not English. If I understand what it's supposed to mean, the English translation of it would be "I don't mean that ".

I wouldn't say that you "annoy me so much", and I'm sorry if I've given you that impression. I have difficulty understanding you, and that makes for frustrating conversations (on both our parts), but if your reason for leaving the conversation is that you think I'm annoyed with you, then you shouldn't.

—Ruakh 22:36, 3 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've started working it. When I have at least one hundred entries analyzed, I'll run it by you. Who here has a statistical, quantitative head who might like this kind of thing? DCDuring TALK 00:51, 5 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm actually still not clear on what "this kind of thing" is, exactly. That's why I didn't answer your question "Are there other ways of getting some statistics about entries in English (or any other language)?", nor any of the questions in that paragraph: I have no idea what kind of statistics you're looking for. :-/   But if I can just answer "Who here has a statistical, quantitative head  ?" instead of "Who here might like this kind of thing?" — I believe Msh210 (talk • contribs) works in the statistical/quantitative area. —Ruakh 01:11, 5 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

One interesting way of looking at dictionaries is to look at the overlaps in their coverage, both in total and for any class of items. Apparently MW3 and Wiktionary have about the same number of English entries +/- 10%. My preliminary results suggest that more than half of wiktionary's entries are not in MWOnline. That might mean that they have more than 100,000 entries that wiktionary does not. Wouldn't we want to know more about what they have that we don't? I don't know how to get a random sample of their entries, but I can get a random sample from MW3. Also the sample can give a profile of the mix of wiktionary's entries in terms of presence or absence of templates, categories, and other elements, the number of senses, formatting quality, recency of last edit, etc. Some of these things might need to be confirmed by other means, but a small sample can be more intensively analyzed to generate more hypotheses.

I'll try msh210. DCDuring TALK 03:01, 5 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Why did you make a change to this template without putting the category (and {{documentation subpage}} so the subpage categorizes) on the documentation page and {{documentation}} on the main template page? I have been doing that kind of thing to avoid unnecessary edits of the transcluded template. Is that a waste of time or should it, or something like, it be standard practice? DCDuring TALK 17:22, 12 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I didn't notice the lack of {{documentation}} — sorry, I'm not as attuned to that as you are — and also, I didn't realize that that template had as many transclusions as it does. —Ruakh 17:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

But, as you said, < 1,000 really isn't that bad. But repeatedly, .... I certainly wasn't scolding you.

About the "/script" template pages, as they all work the same, wouldn't the easiest thing be to make up one true documentation page and use a template like {{documentation subpage}} (which merely categorizes and shows a banner only on the doc page) to additionally transclude the true documentation page on every instance of the appropriate type of subpage? Even if this was initially only applied to "/script" pages with fewer than 100 transclusions, wouldn't it dramatically reduce the number of uncategorized template pages, albeit at the cost of making one "/script/doc" page for every "/script" page so treated. DCDuring TALK 18:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

diff​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I noticed that. :-)   —Ruakh 16:51, 13 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hello,

Not to be a bother here, but are you going to finish dealing with the MacMillan copyvio situation? 98.125.2.195 06:21, 15 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I think I dealt with most of the non-tricky cases . . . I'm not sure how to handle cases like ], where the original copyvio was in place for a long time, with a lot of contributors making major improvements to the entry during that time. :-/   —Ruakh 15:36, 15 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Correction: Actually, it turns out there are still a bunch of non-tricky ones left. I just got hung up on a few tricky ones. I'll keep going. —Ruakh 16:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Although I don't speak Mandarin, these pronunciations doesn't look correct for me. There are only consonants in them. Why there are no vowels and tones? Maro 15:47, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I agree. —Ruakh 15:50, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

So what now? Maro 16:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I have no idea. —Ruakh 16:56, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

• I just fixed the 汉语 page based on the IPA I tracked down in an old edit. {{py-to-ipa}} in its current state appears to be quite broken, barfing up several screen lines worth of code and producing no useful IPA even when substed.

One idea that occurs to me (after only a moment's thought, so take it with a grain of salt) would be to rework the template to just take a series of individual chars, thereby obviating the need for {{str index}}. However, this would require that someone (maybe even a bot) go through and add bars between each of the parameter letters in calls to {{py-to-ipa}}. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:50, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

First of all, I would like to ask that you check the new conjugation table. If there is an error, edit the template (Template:he-conj-nif'al-dagesh-kal) instead of removing it from the page.

Secondly, (regarding the translation of the example) you were right that I did not read the page I linked to. I assumed it covered what I was talking about but it turns out the page was poorly written itself. Dangling prepositions are common in English speech but are still incorrect in formal English grammar. The problem with dangling prepositions is that in this case ("What time are we meeting at tomorrow?") it is not visually clear in written text whether at is referring to What or to tomorrow (if this were spoken language, prosody would clear everything up nicely and there would be no problem). The phrase at tomorrow, however does not make any sense and the readers that read it that way will have to read the sentence twice to understand it. Saying "At what time are we meeting tomorrow?" removes this ambiguity and also happens to be a grammatically correct and actually a very common way to say this, unlike what you seem to think. I don't think it is worth putting this up for a vote or anything so if you still disagree with me, how about we change the example?

--WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:11, 19 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: conjugation table: It's ugly and poorly-constructed (which is not your fault: you followed an ugly and poorly-constructed model), but it seems to be mostly correct. The only actual error is the missing dot in the masculine singular present tense.

Re: "dangling" (i.e. stranded) prepositions: They are absolutely correct in all forms of English, whereas pied-piped prepositions are usually awkward, as in this case. As you say, the phrase "at tomorrow" does not make any sense; therefore, it's not a problem. But if you prefer, we can simply drop the preposition, and write "What time shall we meet tomorrow?" (Or "What time are we meeting tomorrow?", or "What time tomorrow shall we meet?" — there are other options.)

—Ruakh 15:05, 19 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: conjugation table: I fixed it. For some reason nikkud was disabled for the last root letter in the masculine singular present in the template I copied from.

Re: dangling prepositions: I wish there was some sort of published standard to look this up in. From what I learned in my high school's intensive English program, dangling prepositions are grammatically incorrect in formal writing, even though they are accepted in informal speech and writing (where they seem to have become the rule rather than the exception). I still don't understand what your problem is with "At what time..." but we can settle on just omitting the at.

--WikiTiki89 (talk) 16:26, 19 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

You have used (deprecated template usage) reanalysis in a few etymologies that I have noticed. Do you use it in any specific linguistic sense (eg, from generative grammar) or more generally. At ] I have added a kind of conjectural etymology which asserts that users reinterpreted somewhat unfamiliar terms into more familiar ones twice. As I wrote it, having just added ], which is even in MWOnline, I couldn't think of reanalysis. Is what I assert in those etymologies what you and others would call reanalysis? DCDuring TALK 02:52, 21 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

"Reanalysis" is sometimes used pretty generally, but its core meaning is — it's when speakers learn an expression correctly, but infer a different underlying structure from the one that actually produced it. Usually reanalysis becomes detectable when it triggers some later change, or allows some different syntax, that wouldn't have made sense with the original structure; for example, the backformation of pea from pease demonstrates that the /-z/ of pease was reanalyzed as the plural inflection ending /-z/. In the case of banged to rights, the reanalysis is detectable even without a later change, because although it's used and pronounced the same way, the spelling is different. (See the archived RFV discussion on the talk-page for my thoughts from four years ago.)

I don't understand Etymology 1 at all — not just the etymology, but the definition, either. The quotation doesn't seem to support our def, and I can't follow the trail of thought in the etymology.

For Etymology 2 (the verb), I do think reanalysis took place, but not exactly the one described in the etymology. At least, I don't know about those specific senses of bang. But it may be academic, because I don't think the verb actually meets the CFI. In the RFV discussion I said we should keep the verb, but I now think that we shouldn't have.

—Ruakh 15:30, 21 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I realized I had a resource: Crystal's Dictionary of Phonetics and Linguistics, which provides two senses of reanalysis, one Chomskyan and one closer to what you describe and I had inferred.

I was just trying to make some sense of what we had. This had gone through RfV and I didn't want to re-open it. Collins, the only OneLook dictionary that defines this, defines it as "caught red-handed", which has certainly is not transparent for most English speakers in the US. (deprecated template usage) bang is replaceable in various uses with dead, right, bam, smack, completely. (deprecated template usage) to rights means "properly" or "into order". If someone says "The copper had me bang to rights", I think the original meaning was SoP: "He had me completely properly (with respect to my guilt and evidence thereof)." Probably frequent use on television has largely squeezed out more general application of the phrase, but:

• Lua error in Module:quote at line 2951: Parameter 1 is required.
• Lua error in Module:quote at line 2951: Parameter 1 is required.

Maybe an improvement would be to use {{&lit}} with a few citations as the above of the SoP usage. DCDuring TALK 15:04, 22 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Congatulations on being bureaucrat! Also, I've been wondering: Why does your user page have both he-3 and he-4 userboxes? --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:59, 22 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! And — the xx-4 Babel-boxes talk about speaking (e.g. "This user speaks English at a near-native level"), whereas the xx-3 Babel-boxes talk about level of contribution (e.g. "This user is able to contribute with an advanced level of English"). Although I grew up speaking both Hebrew and English at home, I never became fully literate in Hebrew. (Bibles and prayerbooks and so on are all written with vowels; true literacy in Hebrew requires reading text without vowels. I've gotten a lot better at that in the past decade or so, but I'm still nowhere near native-level literacy.) —Ruakh 23:38, 22 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

How many times have you been asked that? Methinks you need a FAQ list.​—msh210℠ (talk) 03:59, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Or I could just choose one level and remove the other . . . —Ruakh 12:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Congrats. Sorry I missed the vote. DCDuring TALK 04:20, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. No worries. :-)   —Ruakh 12:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Congrats, and please add yourself to WT:B. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:56, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

 Done, thanks. —Ruakh 12:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I second the congratulations above. I'm confident you'll use the tools wisely. Until you reveal yourself as another WF sockpuppet.

It seems to me that "children" in modern, colloquial Hebrew is ילדים while "boys" is בנים. But my modern, colloquial Hebrew is, of course, not very good, so: Is that correct? If not, ignore the rest of this message.

IMO that should be a usage note at both lemma forms' entries and at both plural forms' entries: what do you think?​—msh210℠ (talk) 03:56, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: "It seems to me that 'children' in modern, colloquial Hebrew is ילדים while 'boys' is בנים": Yup, that sounds about right. (I'm not sure that all the nuances line up exactly perfectly, but it's close.)   Re: usage notes: O.K. —Ruakh 12:12, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:16, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hello. I want to add to 일#Abbreviation that 일 is an abbreviation for 일요일 (hanja 日曜日) . Is there a style guide for this? Thank you. --PuzzletChung (talk) 01:09, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

You can indicate it by using the {{abbreviation of}} template, either as an etymology or as a definition. —Ruakh 01:13, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

There are two sections called "Noun". The first section "Noun" gives the impression that it reflects general, modern usage. This is inaccurate because of the inclusion of definition 2. in that section. Defintion 2. does not belong there, but under "Old Armenian", which it already is. Therefore, there should be an indication that the first section "Noun" pertains to Modern Armenian. This can be either with a heading, as such, or in parenthesis, but it is a distinction that needs to be made. Please let me know your thoughts. Diranakir (talk) 21:08, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

"(archaic)" is a good solution, Ruakh. Diranakir (talk) 22:32, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Umm, huh? How come it doesn't have a bot flag? I even saw that you got approved for one via a past vote. o.O User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 02:14, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

It does have a bot flag . . . I must have to do something special to get edits actually marked as bot edits. Thanks for the note; I didn't realize the edits weren't showing up right. I've killed the bot for now, until I figure that out. Thanks again. —Ruakh 02:21, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

O.K., fixed now: turns out I needed to include bot=1 in the action=edit request. —Ruakh 02:24, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

When reverting at second class and first class, you said to ping you if I had a problem with it. Well, I have a problem with it (enough of a problem to undo it back to my edits). We already had tenderfoot and Eagle Scout, so I completed the set by creating Life Scout, and Star Scout (definitions which have been marked as patrolled), and added definitions at first class and second class (FYI, it is second class, not second-class, for the rank). These usages are easily verifiable, and not SOP. Would you rather I moved the definitions to First Class/Second Class, or to First Class Scout/Second Class Scout? That’d be consistent with Eagle, but inconsistent with tenderfoot. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 17:10, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

They're listed under ===Adjective===, but the definitions sound like proper nouns. They also make it sound likely to be SOP, and they include a great deal of encyclopedic-sounding information. And note that we're not a glossary of Boy Scouts of America. —Ruakh 17:21, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I fixed the Proper Noun issue, but I don't exactly see how they're SOP. If they were SOP, First Class would be the highest rank, which it hasn't been in 100 years, and all context of what the badges mean would be lost. Furthermore, if we delete those two, we'd have to delete all of them...this probably is one of those cases where they're either all notable or all not Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 18:03, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Y'know, every time you use the term "notable", you make it just a little bit clearer how little interest you have in Wiktionary. —Ruakh 18:07, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, what I mean is, if you delete one, you'll probably have to delete all of them. Star and Eagle, especially, because the logo for those two are a star and an eagle. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 18:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Actually, that doesn't follow; Eagle Scout has entered the common vocabulary as an attested term in and of itself:

• 2011, Louis Ferrante, Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman, p. 76:

  Massino wasn't an Eagle Scout doing an old man favors; he was positioning himself for a grab at the crown when the old man croaked.

As with all terms, this is the basis for its ability to be included here. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:46, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I have reverted your correction to the Swadesh list of Romance Languages. Interlingua is a "constructed language" (like, Esperanto) and, hence, does not belong in this list. See: https://en.wikipedia.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Interlingua . Is there a Swadesh for constructed languages?Mwidunn (talk) 01:33, 29 July 2012 (UTC)mwidunnReply

Hi,

Please note that I replied to your note there, belatedly. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:05, 30 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I've replied there. —Ruakh 01:53, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

it's still a type of nigger as racists would use the term, people that use the term nigger are not referring to people of African Ancestry, they are referring to a stereotype of African Americans in the United States and or Canada.Lucifer (talk) 00:21, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

That may well be true; it's a matter of active debate among linguists whether a racial epithet such as nigger is denotatively different from black person (especially intensionally, but even extensionally: a sentence such as "Oprah Winfrey isn't a nigger, she's just black" might acceptable to some speakers). Nonetheless, I don't see any need for our def to use such an epithet. —Ruakh 01:57, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Isn't that censorship? Other definitions use the abusive term too. Also nigger is used hisotrically in reference to Native Americans and people that are stupid as well, niggerling simply does not mean a person of black african ancestry exclusively is my point, how can we better present that?Lucifer (talk) 02:35, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

First, demonstrate it. Then we can figure out how to present it. —Ruakh 02:50, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Can you please verify that the following code (borrowed from you, mostly) is correct, and explain any errors to me? I want every verb that links to ] to get this text replacement to use {{tpi-verb}}.

addOnloadHook
( function ()
  { if(mediaWiki.config.get('wgPageName') == 'Special:WhatLinksHere/-im')
      $('ul#mw-whatlinkshere-list a').each
      ( function ()
        { if(this.href.indexOf('https://dictious.com/en/') > -1)
            this.href += '?action=edit';
        }
      );
    else if(document.location.href.indexOf('action=edit') > -1)
    { var wpTextbox1 = document.getElementById('wpTextbox1');
      if(wpTextbox1.value.indexOf('\n{{head|tpi|verb') > -1)
      { wpTextbox1.value =
          wpTextbox1.value.replace(/\n{{headtpiverb}}/g, '\n#* {{tpi-verbt}}');
        document.getElementById('wpSummary').value =
          '/*Tok Pisin*/ converting {{head|tpi|verb}} to {{tpi-verb}}';
        document.getElementById('wpSave').click();
      }
    }
  }
);

Thanks so much in advance! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:34, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

The only things that jump out at me are:

• Inside a regular expression, | denotes alternation. If you want to denote an actual pipe character, you need to quote it with a backslash: \|. Alternatively, you can wrap it in a character class, taking advantage of the fact that most special characters lose their specialness inside a character class: . (I like the latter, myself: I find it's often more readable.)
• {{temp}} doesn't work inside an edit summary; you should just write /*Tok Pisin*/ converting {{head|tpi|verb}} to {{tpi-verb}}, or perhaps /*Tok Pisin*/ converting {{head|tpi|verb}} to {{]}}.
• It presumes that {{head|tpi|verb|...}} always has additional arguments after the verb. Is that a valid assumption? It somehow strikes me as unlikely.

—Ruakh 15:52, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

I think things would also go wrong if an entry contains {{head|tpi|verb form}} or some other part of speech beginning with 'verb' (not that that is likely). In that case, the 'if' will succeed, but then the regular expression will fail. —CodeCat 16:05, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ah, I see! Thanks you for pointing out those mistakes, Ruakh. @CodeCat: That won't happen, so it's not a problem. If you two think it's fine now, I guess I'll run it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:09, 31 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Note: I created User:Metaknowledge/Rollback edit summary, and intend to make it a vote in the near future. Comments and edits welcome. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:05, 3 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi! Do you think you could make a script that modifies the 'new section' button at the top of discussion pages? The script should change which page the new section is actually added to, based on the current month and year. So, if the script is somehow 'transcluded' on Wiktionary:Asdf, and the current month is August 2012, then the button should create a new section on the page Wiktionary:Asdf/2012/August. Hopefully the script should work for any page, but if it only works for one page that's ok too as long as it's easy to copy and adapt the script for another page. Would you be able to make something like that? Thank you! —CodeCat 11:38, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

 Done. Note that you may need to hard-refresh http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wiktionary.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=site&only=scripts&skin=vector&* in order to see the change. (And, feel free to wrap the wikitext part in a template. For the moment, I just plopped it in Wiktionary:Grease pit/header.) —Ruakh 12:43, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! How does it work? Does it only work if there is an id="new-section-redirect" on the page? It seems rather redundant to have an extra button like that, most people will probably prefer to use the + sign as they always have. Could the div be left empty or hidden, so that it triggers the script without changing the page content? —CodeCat 13:43, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

You're welcome! Re: extra button: I figured that (1) the link is useful anyway; (2) the new-section-link won't actually work for people until they get the updated JavaScript; (3) the new-section-link won't work for people on mobile devices, people without JavaScript, etc.; and (4) this is the simplest way to have the server determine the current month and year to put in the link (since if we tried to use the client-side month and year we'd get problems for people in different time-zones, people using different calendars, people who have their system clock set wrong, etc.). But there's nothing in the script that checks to determine the visibility status of the div, as long as it has the right id; so, style="display:none" would not affect the script. —Ruakh 14:09, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

It's really a shame there is no server-side scripting to do this kind of thing. But I have an idea that might work for both situations. Have the script hide the div (optionally, perhaps depending on something within the div) when it is successful. That way, the link will appear by default, but will be hidden to those who don't need it. —CodeCat 16:22, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I thought of that, but see point #1. —Ruakh 17:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

People might want to use this on their talk pages, but might not like having to be forced to have a button. On the other hand, if they make the div hidden, then people without scripts can't use their talk page. So an option to hide it somehow when the script runs would be nice. —CodeCat 18:30, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Sorry to be constantly pestering you with these. I noticed that SemperBlottoBot (talk • contribs) had some old errors in Latin entries that its owner did not seem to have fully cleaned up. I was wondering if you could generate a list at User:Metaknowledge/Latin problems (if possible, sorted by problem). The problems are:

• Any use of {{inflection of|quux|foo|bar|c|foobar|lang=la}} where the metasyntactic variables are any strings (Latin has no common gender)
• Any use of {{inflection of|quux|foo|bar|m|p|lang=la}} where the headword line is '''quuxorum''' (i.e. the first argument of {{inflection of}} is identical to the part of the bolded headword that precedes orum)
• Any ==Latin== entries with titles that include the following characters: ā ē ī ō ū Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū ĭ

If any of this is unclear, I will be glad to explain. Thank you so much/Permultas gratias tibi ago! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:27, 3 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you once again! For an example of the -orum problem, see this diff: . Compare the macra in the headword with the present condition of the entry (after I fixed it): desertorum. It's theoretically possible that all examples of this problem were fixed, but given the massive quantity of entries with the other problems, I find it unlikely. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:47, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

No version of ] has ever matched your description. For one thing, the headword line has never had the form '''...'''; it's always been {{la-part-form|...}}. For another, the first argument of {{inflection of}} has always been desertus, and the displayed headword has never been dēsertorum has never been desertusorum: originally it was dēsertorum (yes macron, no us), and now it's dēsertōrum. —Ruakh 13:59, 4 August 2012 (UTC) corrected 18:33, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

OK. That was my mistake. I was trying to explain the problem, but I obviously messed up. I still don't understand what you're saying when you claim that "the displayed headword has never been dēsertorum: originally it was dēsertorum" (those two look the same to me). I'm just trying to get every instance of dēsertorum as the headword to become dēsertōrum. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:53, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: "I still don't understand what you're saying when you claim ": Sorry, copy-and-paste-o. I've corrected the claim. —Ruakh 18:33, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, yes, that was my error. A refined request would be:

• Any use of {{inflection of|foo|quuxus|bar|m|p|lang=la}} where the headword line is {{la-part-form|quuxorum}} (i.e. the part of second argument of {{inflection of}} that precedes us is identical to the part of the bolded headword that precedes orum)

How's that? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:51, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks so much! All this digging has revealed more errors. I would like to add to the list:

• Any Latin entry which has a pagename that ends in the string ibus but has {{inflection of|foo|bar|baz|f|s|lang=la}}
• Any Latin entry which has a pagename that ends in the string ibus but does not include the string abl anywhere within the ==Latin== section of the page
• Any Latin entry which has a pagename that ends in the string tote but has {{conjugation of|foo|bar|2|p|pres|act|imp|lang=la}}

(If you ever get annoyed about all this, I am open to learning how to do it myself, although I'll be going on semi-holiday soon.) Thank you! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:09, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

 Done, but re: "I am open to learning how to do it myself": I was, in fact, about to suggest that. —Ruakh 22:42, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. I will try, but don't be surprised if I have to ask for help (if you have any beginner's help pages to suggest, I would be glad to read them first). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I will be very happy to help. Tell me — what programming languages are you comfortable with? —Ruakh 00:52, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Therein lieth the problem. I am weak in JavaScript, and that's all I really know besides HTML tags and wiki markup, which don't really count for anything. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:48, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ah. Well, in that case I recommend you learn another language. I'm a big fan of Perl, personally — especially for analyzing database dumps. (I use a lot of different languages for different things, but I never use anything besides Perl for the database-dump stuff.) —Ruakh 13:40, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Easier said than done, but I will see what I can do. I really think that in the short term, I just need a lot more practice with object-oriented programming. I also have an instinct to want to learn everything (I can clearly see how knowing Python, C, and PHP would improve my life), but I still believe that I can work to a reasonable goal. Thank you for all your support (and the Perl code!). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:42, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

If your goal is analyzing XML dumps, then OOP is not going to be of use. And I don't recommend C or PHP — PHP because it's a terrible language with no redeeming qualities and will make you a bad programmer (and I hereby promise not to help you learn to analyze XML dumps if you try to do it in PHP), C because it's a very difficult one. (If you want to be a serious programmer, I think you should learn C sooner or later. It'll make you smarter, and it'll give you a deeper understanding of other languages. But I think it's a bad idea to jump into it when you still describe yourself as "weak" in the only language you know. Becoming truly productive should be a higher priority, and in this day and age, C won't help with that.) Python is fine; I never use it, because I like Perl better and they're basically equivalent, but I won't try to dissuade you from it. —Ruakh 15:04, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Haha. If PHP is so evil, why did the MediaWiki devs force us to use it? ($wgThingamabobbers come up a lot.) Also, wouldn't C be helpful just by dint of being a predecessor to many ideas (including C++, of course)? It's great to hear your evaluations, though.
I must clarify that I have a lot of goals, and some are definitely OOP-dependent. But Perl dump analysis - well, that would be fantastic in its own right. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: PHP: There are a number of major web-sites and web-platforms (Digg, Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, MediaWiki) that were originally written in PHP; some have managed to get free of it — in whole or in part — while others haven't. Of the ones that haven't, some have managed to make do, others haven't. (WordPress, in particular, is pretty terrible.) It's nontrivial, once you have a working site, to migrate to a different language, no matter how bad your choice of original language was.

Re: C: Knowing C might make it easier to learn other languages, but the reverse is true as well: I learned C relatively quickly, when I did, because I already knew C++ and Perl (and various other languages). I'd already picked up a lot of the important things, so I could focus on the fairly few things that were new to me. The thing is, writing C code takes several times longer than writing equivalent (or superior) code in a newer language like Perl, so a year's experience writing C programs amounts, in a sense, to a few months' experience if you'd been using Perl. Becoming productive, getting a lot of practice, learning to write well — learning C can help with those, but not nearly as much as they can help with learning C.

—Ruakh 16:26, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I see. Flexibility is difficult for sites and programs, and therefore necessary for programmers. I may never be very productive, and my syntax may remain messy or spaghettied, but as long as I get a lot of practice and learn from it, I will consider it well worth the effort. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:15, 5 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ah, I see, my bad. I had come to this via spermatozoid so was thinking along those lines. You are correct and it should be /ˈzəʊɔɪd/, I don't know why you didn't simply correct it though rather than delete the section. My edit was probably re-added by an automated restore system when the WM servers came back up, it was certainly not me.

In my edit to dacryocystitis I have not given any syllable breaks, I have only indicated primary and secondary stress. Although I know the IPA and am a native English speaker, I am not an expert on morphology so in general I will not supply syllable breaks, I am happy for others to add them however.

Daco-Romanian refers to Romania in the context of the Roman region Dacia, which is pronounced with an 's'. In fact the term should probably really be "Dacio-Romanian", but hey. Again, I am happy to be corrected, but it's easier to modify something that's already there when you find you disagree with it than it is to create all the content from scratch, so even if I am only 95% accurate it's better than not contributing anything at all.

— This unsigned comment was added by Flet (talk • contribs) at 21:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC).Reply

Hi, thanks for creating an account.

Re: correcting vs. reverting: I'm not great at IPA for English. I'd rather remove information that I know is wrong than "correct" it in a way that still might be wrong.

Re: dacryocystitis: stress marks imply syllable breaks (they precede the stressed syllable), so what that really means is that you didn't supply any syllable breaks other than those implied by the stress marks. Which would be fine, except that the syllable breaks implied by the stress marks were certainly wrong. I don't know if dacryocystitis is dacryocy-stitis or dacryocys-titis (I suspect the former), but it's certainly not dacryocyst-itis.

Re: Daco-Romanian: I know what it means, and I know that "Dacia" has /s/, but I still find it hard to believe that "Daco-" has /s/. It happens pretty often in English that, of two related terms with <c>, one will have /s/ and the other /k/; hence, for example, "-ic" /ɪk/ (as in electric) vs. "-icity" /ɪ.sɪ.ti/ (as electricity), "indicate" vs. "indices", and so on. (In Latin this was a phonological alternation; in English it occurs only in terms that come from or via Latin, plus terms formed by analogy with said.) By contrast, it's exceedingly rare that <co> has /s/ rather than /k/; in fact, I can't think of a single example.

—Ruakh 22:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, the c in Dacia is generally pronounced as /ʃ/, at least in my dialect (General American). But Ruakh is right overall. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:51, 7 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Actually, yeah, me, too, due to yod-coalescence or something like it, but Flet marked his pronunciation as UK, so I was willing to roll with it. Probably I should have said that I accepted that "Dacia" has /s/, rather than that I knew it. —Ruakh 00:03, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: dacryocystitis: the morphology is dacry-o-cyst-itis, as it is an inflammation (itis) involving a cyst (cf bronch-itis, mening-itis, conjunctiv-itis). So the 's' and 't' are both part of the preceding syllable rather than the following, no? (Flet (talk) 06:03, 8 August 2012 (UTC))Reply

No; syllable breaks don't follow morpheme boundaries. Not too many dictionaries have dacryocystitis, but you can easily look up bronchitis or meningitis and see that their syllable-breaks are not where your theory would put them. (You may be thinking of hyphenation rules; dacryocystitis could be split across a line-break just before the -itis, but that doesn't mean there's a syllable break there.) —Ruakh 06:22, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I got a lovely case for you: dedifferentiation. Would love to hear your thoughts on syllable boundaries in the last 3 syllables! (Flet (talk) 16:11, 9 August 2012 (UTC))Reply

I'd assume -ti-a-tion, no? —Ruakh 16:47, 9 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I mean there is no consonant to put the stress mark before. (Flet (talk) 14:17, 10 August 2012 (UTC))Reply

No consonant is needed. The stress mark goes at the syllable boundary, right before the stressed syllable. If the syllable boundary is between two vowels, then the stress mark goes between two vowels. —Ruakh 17:08, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Also, is there not a way in which you can mark a particular section of content as "unsure", "needs review", or something along those lines? (Flet (talk) 06:12, 8 August 2012 (UTC))Reply

Hmm. I don't know. For non-English content, I often use {{attention}} to attract the attention of an editor who speaks a specific language, but it seems strange to use {{attention|en}}, since, I mean, all of our editors speak English. But Category:English terms needing attention (which {{attention|en}}) does exist, and isn't empty, so I guess that is an option? —Ruakh 06:22, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Wow! That would be at least the third time he has fooled me. Look at the immense volume of legitimate contributions. I think he was drinking. I wonder if alcohol was involved on the other occasions as well. DCDuring TALK 12:34, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

A few editors have e-mailed me, and a few have commented at the Beer parlour, to say that they don't think he's WF. (But no one has objected to the desysopping, of course.) —Ruakh 12:37, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

It is the edit summary to the deletion of the main page that makes me wonder. DCDuring TALK 12:46, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

. . . and now WF himself has e-mailed me in a way that implies he's not Equinox. (Not that that means anything . . .) —Ruakh 13:09, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

@DCDuring: Well, most of the volume is done by some automated script. Granted that, his manual contributions are also good quality as a rule. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

@Meta: How he does it doesn't bother me as long as there are no copyvios (not likely because the source seems to be Webster).

@Ruakh: The timing has to make you more, not less suspicious, unless you've been in regular correspondence. Anyway, on the internet nobody knows you're a dog, so we are not likely to come to any final resolution on matters of identity. DCDuring TALK 23:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Not regular correspondence, no, but we've e-mailed back and forth a few times. The timing doesn't affect my level of suspicion, because there was no attempt to make it sound like a coincidence; WF was clearly aware of what had just happened, and was e-mailing about it. —Ruakh 23:28, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Heh. WF e-mailed me in congratulation! Yes I was being a drunken idiot but we all need a bit of catharsis. L and the community attitude towards him make me insane. Deleting the main page (which is actually pretty harmless because someone can restore it as a click) seemed like a good gesture of contempt. And I agree I am probably too unstable to be an admin, although I have been a good spam-zapper. Meta: I only started the Webster 1913 project in late 2011, and was creating thousands of original entries for 2 to 3 years prior to that. Equinox ◑ 23:12, 9 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Do know I'll always back you up on any matters, whatever happens. -- Liliana • 23:41, 9 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Glad you're back, WF or whatever your name is. DCDuring TALK 23:59, 9 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I have to say, it's pretty awesome that our regular mainpage-deleters around here seem like such decent people :) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:52, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I quite like the new revert message, but I noticed that when I revert it still shows the old message. Is this a per-user setting? And if so, do you think it should be made the default for all users? —CodeCat 18:17, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

See Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Help:Reverting#When to and MediaWiki:Revertpage. There's a site-wide default revert-message, MediaWiki:Revertpage, and Msh210 (talk • contribs) did modify it briefly, but then it became clear that the change was controversial, so he rolled it back pending a consensual decision. Unfortunately, there's no real way for an individual user to specify a different personal default, but if a rollback-link's query-string has a summary=... parameter, then the ... supersedes MediaWiki:Revertpage; so, I added some JavaScript to User:Ruakh/common.js that searches the page for rollback-links and adds that parameter. You're welcome to copy that script, though my custom summary might be a bit too long-winded: see #Brevity is the soul of not getting cut off in the middle. Update added at 19:03, 8 August 2012 (UTC): I've now shortened my custom summary slightly, enough so that that example wouldn't have been cut off.

I do think that we should modify the site-wide default. Metaknowledge (talk • contribs) has put together a draft proposal on that — see User:Metaknowledge/Rollback edit summary — but I'm not sure whether and when (s)he plans to move forward with it.

—Ruakh 18:57, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

If Metaknowledge doesn't plan to start the vote, I think I might... —CodeCat 20:19, 8 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

On a few consecutive recent occasions, I have been unable to clean up my watchlist (nearly 25,000 items) using either method I know of (raw or "view and edit" on top of watchlist page). I get a Wikimedia error page with the following message:

PHP fatal error in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.20wmf9/includes/Html.php line 147:

Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 11095038 bytes)

What do you advise, besides not letting that happen? (Although I could use some information about the limits that cause this.) Is there a way for someone else to selectively reduce it in size so I could finish the clean-up myself? For example, removing all user, citation, template, and appendix space items, + those beginning with characters not in the basic ASCII set? Can I get a list of my watchlist items and somehow mass-clean it out myself. I'd like to preserve the English-language principal namespace portion, at least. DCDuring TALK 18:03, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

It should be possible using the API. I'll put together some JavaScript for you. —Ruakh 18:17, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. The prospect of going through "my contributions" to find a thousand or more items to unwatch, even limited to the namespaces above, is daunting. As a practical matter, the problem didn't arise at 20K, though loading was slow. DCDuring TALK 18:27, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

O.K. . . . copy User:Ruakh/common.js?oldid=17385720 to Special:MyPage/common.js, then visit Special:TrimWatchList. (When you get there, you'll see "No such special page"; that's fine. It's not a real special-page, it's just a hook for the script.) And . . . just let it sit. For a long time. I don't see anything in the API that lets you unwatch multiple pages at a time, so it'll just do one after another, for ages and ages. (If you get any error-messages, though, let me know.) —Ruakh 20:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. It didn't take too long, but I still have 23,612 items, which still seems to exceed whatever the limit is. I'd often done that kind of cleaning myself, so I'm not too surprised that it didn't find much.

How about doing the same to everything that begins with a capital letter, everything that has a non-ascii or capital character in it or with "-"? Or entries ending in "ed" and "ing"? If it is not possible, would crush the servers, or just take a long time, let me know.

I've been trying to go back to my oldest contributions to find things to unwatch as well. What a pain. Maybe I should just stop worrying about this kind of unmaintainability and just unwatch what annoys me one at a time. DCDuring TALK 20:51, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Re: everything that begins with a capital letter: change the line if(unwatchRange(watchtoken, 0, '\u00A0')) to if(unwatchRange(watchtoken, 0, 'A', ',"framed":false,"label":"Reply","flags":,"classes":}'>Reply

Perl would be cool. Thanks for what you've done. Enjoy the weekend. DCDuring TALK 21:22, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

FWIW, my watchlist contained 20,710 items until I removed several hundred of them just a moment ago. So, the point at which a watchlist becomes un-editable seems to be somewhere between 20,710 and 23,612. - -sche (discuss) 01:47, 11 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I was able to successfully edit the list at 21,372 and also at a higher level (200 more?) that I did not record. DCDuring TALK 03:47, 11 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

Think yourself lucky. SemperBlottoBot has over 163,000 items in its watchlist (I didn't realize it was adding every term it created). Absolutely impossible to clean it up. SemperBlotto (talk) 20:58, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I would bet it would be possible to use the approach Ruakh took with JS to do it. It might take hours, but not a day and probably not very many hours, to run. It probably mostly involves removing the selectivity elements of what he did for me. DCDuring TALK 21:26, 10 August 2012 (UTC)Reply