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Thanks! The uses in userspace and some other places can probably be left as-is, but e.g. the uses in Template:IPAsym looks like ones we should check. In one case, I see that the character has since been added to Unicode. - -sche(discuss)18:26, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
@Furius, Hyarmendacil, Strabismus, CAmbrose I’ve been doing some work with Egyptian and have come across a number of problems that aren’t yet addressed or could do with changing in WT:About Egyptian, so I thought I’d ask about them to try to come to some sort of consensus before going ahead with implementing anything unilaterally. (Unfortunately I think all the Egyptologically inclined editors I pinged are inactive, but I figured it’s worth a try.) The proposals I would make are these:
Distinguish between s and z instead of merging them both into s like we (nominally) do now. The phonemes merged by Middle Egyptian, but they were still separate in Old Egyptian, and most authors still make the distinction, from Allen to the Wörterbuch. Even Faulkner’s dictionary of Middle Egyptian puts the variants with z in parentheses where appropriate. On Wiktionary, Egyptian covers Old Egyptian as well as Middle, so that separating z out makes more sense, and there are already a few entries that have z in defiance of the current policy.
Change 3 to Ꜣ in transliteration. This is the correct Unicode codepoint dedicated to Egyptological aleph, and font support has become good enough that I think most people can see it. (Is this actually the case?) The current 3 wreaks havoc with the linkify function in templates, which converts it to an unlinked superscript 3 whenever it comes at the end of a word.
Change ˤ to ꜥ in transliteration. Not so important, just a switch to the correct codepoint now that it’s probably supported for most people. (Again, can anyone confirm/deny?)
Standardize the hieroglyph Z4 (the two dual strokes
) and the nisba adjective ending to be a variant of j (
) rather than y (
). (Right now it is not defined either way.) Both conventions are common — Faulkner and Hoch call it y, while Allen, Loprieno, and the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae call it j — but the convention in most of our entries was to call it j, presumably because most of our editors were reading Allen. I’m proposing that we standardize what already seemed most common.
Only use dots (.) to separate morphemes in the case of suffix pronouns etc., not with inflectional suffixes for singular, plural, etc. This is again the convention that already seems most common, presumably because it’s the one Allen follows. I’d be fine with the other common system, too, where equals signs (=) separate out the suffix pronouns and dots separate out all the other morphemes, but consensus seems to favor the one Allen uses.
Standardize the use of periods as dots, rather than using interpuncts (·). Again for this, I have no opinions either way, but this seems to be current consensus.
I don't remember when and why our current standards were established, but it is true that nobody working on them is active any longer. I think all your points seem very reasonable, although alternate transliterations should remain as soft redirects to the standardised lemma form using {{egy-alternative transliteration of}}. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds15:16, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Most of these proposals seem reasonable; I do not know enough to comment on j vs y. I strongly support avoiding the equals sign =, which causes difficulties if provided in a template (link, etc), and possibly also if we were to devise a module that parses the content of our entries to generate something (as is done in some Thai entries, and recently proposed for Arabic), and possibly also for some re-users of our content, because of what it usually means in template syntax. - -sche(discuss)18:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
@Vorziblix: I can confirm that the Ꜣ and ꜥ characters (as well as ˤ) all display on the machine I am currently using, which is a loaner that does not have obscure font support. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯19:44, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for all the feedback. Let’s consider the use of the equals sign definitively ruled out, and the soft redirect policy makes sense. Regarding lack of universal support for Ꜣ and ꜥ, I am inclined to think the template issues and Unicode compliance still make the changeover worthwhile, but will defer to consensus if the general opinion is otherwise. In any case I’ll wait a few more days to give more time for comments before making any changes/additions to WT:About Egyptian. —Vorziblix (talk) 04:20, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
The symbols also display correctly for me. If we switch away from ꜥ, remember to update that entry, which currently mentions the use of ˤ. I wonder if it would help to switch egy from using Latn as its script, to using Latinx, which I think calls on more comprehensive fonts. - -sche(discuss)05:20, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I am very inactive, sadly, but all of these are reasonable. The first point (s/z) is the one that is most likely to cause issues, I think. What would the new rule mean for e.g. nts? So far as I'm aware (and I confess that I have never studied old Egyptian) the alternative reading only comes into existence once z and s had merged. Would we create a new article for ntz? Furius (talk) 15:57, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
The lemma form would definitely be at nts, since it derives from the fem. sing. 3p. suffix pronoun .s, which was s all through Old Egyptian; if ntz exists at all, it should just be an ‘alternative form of…’ entry, but it’s probably unneeded. In general words that first appear after OE and never had the s/z distinction would be lemmatized with ‘s’; words that had ‘z’ in OE would be at the ‘z’ variant, but with an ‘alternative form’ entry at the ‘s’ variant; and words that had ‘s’ in OE would straightforwardly be at the ‘s’ variant. That way anyone searching by ME form could always search with ‘s’, and anachronistic readings like ntz wouldn’t be necessary.
As further potentially useful information, at the bottom of this page there’s a discussion on the principles used by Allen for transliteration; regarding s vs. z they line up pretty well with my suggestion above: ‘If the hieroglyphic writing of a particular instance of a word has z but the original spelling had s, we transliterate the consonant as s,… but vice versa, if a particular instance has s but the original spelling had z, we transliterate the consonant as s.… We transliterate as z only if both the original spelling and the particular instance have z.’
Some of the other discussions there might also be good to consider, particularly the question of whether to hyphenate compound words, where we don’t seem to have any consistent policy. —Vorziblix (talk) 01:41, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Enable sitelinks on Wikidata for Wiktionary pages (outside main namespace)
Hello all,
Here's an important information about the evolution of Wiktionary sitelinks in the next weeks.
Short version: From June 20th, we are going to store the interwiki links of all the namespaces (except main, user and talk) in Wikidata. This will not break your Wiktionary, but if you want to use all the features, you will have to remove your sitelinks from wikitext and connect your pages to Wikidata.
The namespaces you mention can be stored in Wikidata as well. The namespace Rhymes, for example, has an equivalent on German Wiktionary, so it will be possible to make links between the pages. About Citations: we're going to investigate to see if it is more relevant to make automatic links with Cognate, or centralized links in Wikidata. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 09:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
For what it's worth, the Portuguese Wiktionary has a Rhymes namespace too, but it's virtually unused. It has only one page, which is obviously a stub: pt:Rimas:Inglês. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to link it to our Rhymes:English through interwikis. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 13:36, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Citations pages match their connected main-namespace pages. An exception is when citations are centralized on one page; one wiki might choose to centralize citations of both "have got someone's back" and "have someone's back" on Citations:have someone's back, where another wiki might centralize them on its equivalent of Citations:have got someone's back ... but one wiki might choose to lemmatize one of those phrases in the main namespace, too, where another wiki might lemmatize the other phrase ... and hard or soft redirects might or might not exist ... much like if a certain discussion happened to take place only on Talk:have got someone's back and not Talk:have someone's back. So IMO it makes as much sense to handle Citations pages via the Colgate extension, as it does to handle main-namespace and talk pages. Interwiki links between citations pages seem not very useful, anyway. - -sche(discuss)05:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
What about categories? Most Wiktionaries have the same category for each language, so adding each of them individually to Wikidata is a huge waste of effort. There's no difference between Category:English nouns and Category:Dutch nouns other than the language, they should be treated as the same thing. —CodeCat18:39, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
This phase is the same done for Wikipedia and other projects, so any interwiki link existing on any page will be exported to Wikidata, except user pages, talk pages and main space provided by Cognate. That means Wiktionary: pages, categories, templates, modules, etc., including custom namespaces I asked for. You have not to add them individually, it is a mass export. So Category:English nouns will continue linking to nl:Categorie:Zelfstandig naamwoord in het Engels, etc., but it will be easier to maintain it in a centralized place. Any interwiki link in one language project will appear in all wikts. Any page renamed or deleted will update interwikis immediately (as currently does Cognate). See d:Q7923975. I suppose that besides Wikipedia, Wikibooks, etc, it should appear Wiktionary with Category:English language, nl:Categorie:Woorden in het Engels and all wikt interwikis. Apart from interwiki links for Wiktionary you can access to equivalent links in other projects, if any. --Vriullop (talk) 06:53, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
About CodeCat's "There's no difference between Category:English nouns and Category:Dutch nouns other than the language ..." This only applies to a small minority of categories in the English Wiktionary. Yes, if we had a centralized database of languages, we could then generate a list of "Category:(language) nouns" in the English Wiktionary, but do many Wiktionaries use a predictable system for their nouns categories, and all other categories? Their category systems might unpredictably change at some point, and some existing and future Wiktionaries might not have figured standards for categories yet. Maybe Wikidata is not the most perfect conceivable system for listing our category interwikis using little storage space but at least it seems to be as flexible as needed. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 11:20, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel Carrero: Individual Wiktionaries moving things is an argument for a central repository at Wikidata. If they get moved on the (e.g.) Dutch Wiktionary, then the links will be instantly and automatically updated at the (e.g.) Swahili Wiktionary. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯15:53, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Vriullop. Our Category:English language is pretty awesome, with the description full of diverse English-related links, but its main purpose is still just being the main category about English. Wikidata controls interwikis, and the category interwikis should probably be between categories only. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:32, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
@CodeCat: I don't know about any discussions, but as I'm sure you know, apparently anything that exists in separate Wikipedia pages also may have separate Wikidata items for the sake of storing interwikis.
To be more exact, apparently any page in some Wikimedia projects can have its own Wikidata item to store interwikis. For example, d:Q30237873 is the recent Wikinews article "Theresa May's Conservative Party wins UK election but loses majority, leaving Brexit plan in question". --Daniel Carrero (talk) 06:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Cognate & redirects
Hello again,
Several persons mentioned the idea of Cognate linking to redirection pages. This is a complex issue that should be decided with a consensus of different languages communities. To complete the discussions that have been running on Phabricator and have more points of view, I created a discussion topic here. Feel free to add a comment. Thanks, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 13:13, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
lexicographic approach to learning
One the main uses of a lexicographic resource is that of educational learning, therefore it would enrich Wiktionary to create a discussion room to ask for advice from advanced users regarding the learning process itself. The feedback would enable discovering current weaknesses and so improve Wiktioanry on the whole. --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:07, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
But it still leaves the learning process with an excessively narrow focus on people like us. We are already pretty good at taking ourselves as model users. We need more than a convenience sample of active, interested users of Wiktionary. Any thoughts on how to get that? DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Personal advice from those who are already fluent, what they'd do differently knowing what they know now, mistakes to be avoided, grammatical aspects which the entry of a certain term doesn't clarify, etc. For example, strategies to learn chinese characters and their respective pronunciation (homophones), or arabic broken plurals (unpredictability). --Backinstadiums (talk) 06:02, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm very much interested in having a permanent discussion around this. You're interested in learning strategies in general, or the role of Wiktionary? I think a more general learning discussion might be a bit off-topic here (there are already plenty of resources on the web), I'm more interested is how Wiktionary can be part of the learning process. I recently ran a workshop “How to learn a language by building a dictionary”. Making / editing entries forces you to think about the language in a structured and formal way, plus you can include your own material (photos you have taken, example sentences you came across, citations from books you read etc.). There was interest in it but the problem is (again and again) that Wiktionary is still unknown and that contributing is difficult. – Jberkel (talk) 07:32, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
I would think that it would make sense to have a project page in the Wiktionary namespace which interested users could put on their watchlists. Any issues that emerge that would benefit from a wider audience of Wiktionarians could be brought to WT:BP. DCDuring (talk) 12:25, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Currently we have {{quote}}, which is just for formatting the text of a quote much like {{usex}}. Then we have {{quote-book}} and its relatives, which also show the source info above the quote, and are a lot more elaborate and contain many parameters. {{quote}} is quite easy to use, since it works the exact same way as {{usex}} and people are very familiar with that. I think it would be desirable if the other set of templates could be modified so that they are more compatible with {{quote}}, so that the more elaborate templates are easier to use for people (like me) who are used to {{quote}} and {{usex}}. I'm thinking mainly of the parameters: first parameter is language, second is quote, third is translation. Would this be ok? —CodeCat18:56, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm OK with that. You might have to do a lot of cleanup though, since language codes aren't required in {{quote-book}} right now, even if there is a translation. DTLHS (talk) 18:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, and I believe it accepts language names rather than language codes too. This is a drawback of these quote templates currently: they don't tag the quoted text, which {{quote}} does. —CodeCat19:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm not very clear as to what is being suggested. All the {{quote-}} family of templates can be used with positional parameters for the basic parameters; for example, {{quote-book||||||}}. I don't understand what "tagging the quoted text" entails, nor why adding a language code as the first parameter is needed. The {{quote-}} (and {{cite-}}) templates have not hitherto had a language code parameter, so if such a parameter is added a bot would need to update all the uses of the template. — SMUconlaw (talk) 20:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
All templates on Wiktionary that display words in another language will wrap text in a bit of HTML that indicates the language of the text, by convention using either the first parameter to indicate the language, or the lang= parameter, depending on the template. However, this is missing for the quote- templates. They have a language parameter named language=, but it's optional, and it's provided with a language name rather than a language code. It doesn't follow the conventions of other templates. What I would like is if the first three parameters of the quote- templates could be the same as those of {{quote}}, with the others being named parameters: {{quote-book||||author=|page=|title=|url=|year=}}. The current transliteration= parameter would be renamed to tr=, again to match other templates. —CodeCat20:36, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I guess I have no strong objection to changing the first three positional parameters so long as a bot can come along and carry out all the required changes to pages where the templates have been used. However, I'm afraid I have no experience with adding language tagging to templates. What is such tagging for, actually, and which text is tagged – the quotation? — SMUconlaw (talk) 21:11, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Script tagging goes along with language tagging, allows the text to be displayed in appropriate fonts, which are specified in MediaWiki:Common.css. This is particularly important for non-Latin scripts, or Latin scripts containing unusual characters. Language tagging (I hear) tells screen readers which language the text is written in, allowing them to read it correctly. Script tagging is generally added at the same time as language tagging is added, by Module:script utilities. Linking templates like {{l}} and {{m}} add script and language tagging using this module, as well as {{usex}} and {{lang}}. — Eru·tuon22:00, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I’d like us to have a category for words with -ed pronounced a full -èd where -’d is expected (in other words, it wouldn’t include words like pitted and modded), but I can’t think of a good, accurate name. Any ideas? — Ungoliant(falai)20:28, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Are you talking about homographs with different standard pronunciations and distinct meanings, but not distinct etymologies? Some more: aged, cussed, dogged. Would you include words that just had different (presumably standard) pronunciation of the -ed like alleged. DCDuring (talk) 22:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Hmm, heteronym apparently means a word with a different pronunciation and meaning. The category we're speaking of should only relate to pronunciation. — Eru·tuon23:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
legged and learned have common etymologies and related meanings, but not identical meanings. alleged is, I think the only one of those so far mentioned with the same meaning for both pronunciations. DCDuring (talk) 23:49, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I’m talking about a category for words that have -ed but don’t follow the suffix’s usual pronunciation rule (as Erutuon explains below), regardless of the relationship between its senses and regardless of whether the same word is pronounceable in a way that follows the rule. — Ungoliant(falai)01:30, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
For more context, the rule is that the suffix -ed is pronounced /d/ or /t/ after most consonants, but /ɪd/ or /əd/ after /d/ or /t/. (The difference between /ɪd/ and /əd/ is dialectal; some dialects have one, some have the other.) So the category would be for words in -ed that don't follow this rule, that should have /d/ or /t/, but have /ɪd/ or /əd/ instead. — Eru·tuon00:31, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
As a native speaker I certainly expect them or at least allow for their possibility, except for the ones based on misspellings (wretch) or with one of the pronunciations being for a rare word, usually a verb (eg, sacre).
Do I understand correctly that the motivation for the category is that someone who encountered in writing the word being used in a sense which commonly required the separate syllable for -ed would mispronounce it, having insufficient experience hearing it? If so, this seems a much better Appendix than a category. A usage note containing a link to such appendix would be more useful than a category. I think an appendix would allow for more flexibility (and length) in its title. DCDuring (talk) 00:34, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
I think the usefulness is simply that someone may be interested in seeing a list of words in this category, which is exactly what categories are for. --WikiTiki8915:27, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
@Erutuon: Good question. Several thoughts (I will depart a little from your question, sorry about that):
Do we plan to eventually create categories for compounds like Category:English terms derived from "apple", as it was suggested here? If so, then I guess we could do the same for univerbations (and in that case, the code would have to be {{univerbation|ru|за|чем}}, wouldn't it?). But that idea strikes me as inappropriate in the case of univerbations (Category:Russian univerbated syntagms containing за doesn't make much sense); and makes me actually think that univerbations are rather a sister category to compounds than a subtype of them.
In any case, I think that no "+" sign should appear in the output: both markups should give "зачем" rather than "за + чем".
For these two reasons, right now I don't really feel strongly one way or the other.
As I mentioned in this vote, I'd rather have no automated text at all in etymology templates, and type "Univerbation of" in plain text. What is your opinion about that? --Barytonesis (talk) 10:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
If we did want to add categories for univerbations containing individual words, it would be possible to do that with either {{univerbation|ru|зачем}} or {{univerbation|ru|за|чем}}, but I think {{univerbation|ru|за|чем}} would make it easier. Also, {{univerbation|ru|зачем}} is more prone to human error: it would be easy for an editor to fail to link the words. I suppose {{univerbation|ru|за чем}} is another option; it could be linked in the same way that {{head|en|phrase}} adds links for each word automatically.
I agree about having no plus sign between the constituent words, since they form a natural phrase.
I was going to say that if we use {{univerbation|ru|за|чем}}, there might be the annoyance of having separate |altN= parameters for each word, to add accent marks to Russian words and macrons to Latin words (and so on). For instance, the univerbation ἐφήμερος(ephḗmeros) would have to be encoded as {{univerbation|grc|ἐπί|alt1=ἐπῐ́|ἡμέρα|alt2=ἡμέρᾱ}}. But actually, it could just be written as {{univerbation|grc|ἐπῐ́|ἡμέρᾱ}}, and the linking module would automatically generate the actual entry titles.
I'm sympathetic to not having manual text "univerbation", but it might be a good idea to link to a definition in Appendix:Glossary, since few people are likely to know the term, so I'm not sure. — Eru·tuon18:45, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Proposal: Clean up, rename and replace "en:" → "English" in all categories
(This obviously would need a vote to be implemented.)
I don't know that I disagree as such but I think this will cause a lot more problems than it solves and it seems like a huge undertaking for very little benefit. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯15:53, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel Carrero: The wording of many of these categories. "English terms referring to " or "English terms related to "? "English words for " or "English language words for ", etc. As it stands now, the scheme is very straight forward: code:Idea. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯16:32, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
The current scheme is also ambiguous about whether a category is for words in a given set, or words related to a topic. This has been causing quite a few headaches lately. Is Category:Stars for names of individual stars, words for types of stars, or any words related to stars? What if we want categories for each of these types? Daniel's scheme at least avoids the ambiguity: Category:English names of stars, Category:English terms related to stars. I'm not sure where words for types of stars would go. —CodeCat16:36, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Shall we introduce a new type of category to the proposed list? I'm thinking of this:
What's the supposed benefit of using language names rather than language codes? Names can be awkwardly long, and are not guaranteed to be unique. Equinox◑19:59, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
They are guaranteed to be unique, per WT:LANG. And the benefit is that users can't be expected to learn language codes merely to use Wiktionary. It's an unnecessary barrier. —CodeCat20:00, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, they are guaranteed to be as unique in category names as they are in L2 headers. Which means, there could be cases where people assume "Riang" means the Bangladesh language ria when it actually means the Burma language ril, but that shouldn't cause any more headaches with categories than it does with L2 headers. - -sche(discuss)22:50, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
There are two components to this proposal: changing language code to language name, and changing the names of the categories (the part after the language code or name). Hypothetically the second could be done without the other: that is, there could be a chimeric category name, Category:en:Names of cities in Kyoto Prefecture, Honshu, Japan. I suppose it makes sense to do both at the same time, since (I imagine) thousands of categories will have to be renamed when either change is made. However, some editors might want to keep language codes but have the other part of the category name be changed. (The other option, using language names but not changing the rest of the category name, will not work: Category:en:Sex → Category:English sex is nonsensical.)
On the whole, the category names are clearer, but they will be more difficult to find when one is categorizing, because they are longer. Admittedly, the existing categories are difficult to find too, especially when creating one that doesn't exist for a particular language yet. I wonder if a tool could be created to make this easier. HotCat isn't quite what I'm thinking of. Perhaps something where you could type in a phrase, like "cities kyoto" and find Category:English names of cities in Kyoto Prefecture, Honshu, Japan, or the umbrella category thereof.
Functionally, the only purpose of using language codes rather than names is to distinguish topic or set categories from the categories that use language names (part-of-speech categories especially). If language names are used, the only distinction will be the category names after the language name. So, the two types of categories will be harder to tell apart. — Eru·tuon21:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I would indeed favour something like that over "sentence" categories like "English terms involving/about/relating to sex". The latter seem a bit wordy and would probably sound actively bad or strange in certain cases. BTW, regarding Daniel's proposal, I think "jargon" is a very poor choice: it is a loaded term, suggesting that this is needlessly complex language; we did in fact remove "jargon" glosses from a lot of entries at one stage. Equinox◑22:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
I have similar concerns/dislike as Erutuon and Equinox towards the long names. "English names of cities in Kyoto Prefecture, Honshu, Japan" is horribly long, and probably too finely "granular" (but the latter is a separate issue). Long names are harder for users to write when adding or searching for categories.
Language codes have several benefits over language names, including being shorter and not needing to be moved when we rename a language (moving 100 categories is a major hassle which I suppose we can avoid now by mass-deleting the categories and letting bots create the new cats and WikiData sort the interwikis out). OTOH, I understand those who feel they are a barrier for less-adept users.
Can we avoid the unwieldy "sentence" names and make the topic category "English:Foobar", and the set/list category "English:List of foobars"? (Another idea, proposed on my talk page, is "Category:English:topic:Foobar" vs "Category:English:List:Foobar(s)".)
Re: "Functionally, the only purpose of using language codes rather than names is to distinguish topic or set categories from the categories that use language names (part-of-speech categories especially)." -- It's not been always like this in the past, like in the old categories mentioned in the op (Category:es:Japanese derivations and Category:es:Derogatory). Even if that rule is supposed to be followed now, we have Category:English female given names, Category:English surnames, etc., and if we rename any category to contain "names", "terms", "jargon" or "terminology" in the name, it technically becomes a "lexical" category and will need to start with "English..." as per this rule.
Are codes better than names always, or are names better than codes always? If we had no categories for derivations whatsoever, would we want to create Category:es:Japanese derivations? The proposed category names like Category:English terms related to sex are supposed to be straightforward -- the category contains what the title says, as in a normal English text.
By the way, if we renamed all categories as proposed above we could remove "by language" from all categories. In the current naming scheme, we have this:
If this proposal passes, we could have this, without "by language" anywhere (unless we want to keep the "by language", of course, but that won't be a requirement like today):
Additional proposal: we could have one module listing all catgegories with "names of", another module for "terms for", another for "terms relating to", and another for the list of place names. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 02:16, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
We seem to have many different ideas. Let's have a poll to get a rough tally of whether more people like names vs codes, and whether more people like shorter/condensed or longer/descriptive names. That way, we can see what kind of names we should focus on (like, if most people want descriptive names, then we can focus on deciding whether "pertaining to" or "involving" is better, but if most people want short names, then bikeshedding the format of hypothetical long names would be silly). - -sche(discuss)22:42, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Categories for terms which are limited to the "jargon" of medicine (if you are distinguishing them from "terms that pertain to the topic of medicine") are neither "topic" nor exactly "list" categories, IMO, but are in the same vein as categories for terms which are limited to British English. So, I don't think my poll covers them, because I think they should be addressed separately. - -sche(discuss)22:42, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
There are way too many reasons not to like this, so I'll start with just one: all of these ideas move the interesting information farther and farther to the end of the name "blahblahblahblahblahblahblah fish" in newspaper jargonterminology talk this is known as burying the lede. The way sorting works means we can't rearrange the order, so we need to be as concise as possible in the left-hand parts. Take a look at the massive logjam of categories at the bottom of most multilingual entries. Now imagine it being twice the size without a corresponding increase in the size of the rightmost nodes. Someone mentioned HotCat: the auto-complete feature is going to be pretty much useless if you have to type in pretty much the whole category name before it gets to the part that it can fill in. And all the stuff about descriptive English sentences being easier for people to understand was the main selling point of COBOL- remember COBOL? I'm sure every programmer aspires to someday write code like the immortal "ADD A TO B GIVING C", and I'm sure any kid in grade school could debug three COBOL business applications before breakfast... right? >;pChuck Entz (talk) 09:07, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
@Chuck Entz: Do you think you could at least agree with me that the current language-code categories need to be cleaned up one way or the other? I'm pretty sure we can't say that the current system is acceptable. One of Wikimedia's values is "We strive for excellence." Place name categories are probably the messiest of all.
I don't mean it in a sarcastic way, it's just a normal question: As you know, I prefer language names instead of codes and I gave my reasons in this discussion. But if language codes were the best option always, shouldn't all language-specific categories like Category:English nouns and Category:Italian terms derived from Ancient Greek be renamed to include language codes instead of names? When we use the auto-complete feature, I believe we have to type at least "Italian terms d" if we want to get Italian terms derived from other languages. Or we just navigate to Category:Italian terms derived from other languages (which is named using normal English text, like the other categories I'm proposing).
Based on this discussion and this vote, I think in 2011 I myself helped to introduce and cement our existing tradition that apparently "lexical" categories have language names and "topical" categories have language codes, but it was just because I wanted to clean up some categories and put forward the proposal of replacing say Category:es:Euphemisms into Category:Spanish euphemisms without necessarily having to change the whole system yet.
I don't think the logic of programming languages applies to our categories. COBOL's "ADD A TO B GIVING C" is not better than "A+B=C", but Category:English names of stars has some merits discussed elsewhere in this discussion, as opposed to Category:en:Stars. If we want a category for medicine slang (multileaf collimator? s/p? CINV?) which cannot contain everyday words like heal, disease and doctor, then maybe the word "jargon" (or slang, or terminology) somehow needs to be in the category name.
Another category where this is an issue: Category:en:Forests. While the description and parent category suggest it's for names of forests, it also contains terms for types of forests, and terms related to forests. —CodeCat22:10, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Poll 1: Language names vs codes
On a new line, please indicate what you support:
(1) language names (like "French") to be used in naming topic categories (like categories for terms pertaining to the topic of religion);
(2) language names to be used in set/list categories (like lists of dog breeds); or
(3) language codes (like "fr") to be used in naming topic categories;
(4) language codes to be used in set categories.
Thus, if you want names to be used in all cases, you can indicate "1&2", or if you want codes in all cases, then indicate "3&4". But if you want a mix like "1&4", you can indicate that.
As I proposed above and then further commented in my reply to "Poll 2" below, I'd prefer category names that read like normal English, like Category:English terms relating to sex. In "real life", are many people even aware of different ISO codes for each language, not to mention our non-ISO made-up codes like "alv-pro", "nai-dly" and others found in Module:languages/datax?
Currently, Category:Baseball contains 18 subcategories like "en:Baseball", "fr:Baseball", "ko:Baseball", etc. Sure, we all know what they mean, but navigating them requires learning how ISO handles codes and how we separately handle them. Language codes are gibberish if you don't know what they mean. — Sure, even "I like monkeys." is gibberish if you don't know its meaning, but you get the point. Using normal text with the actual language name should make the category contents immediately obvious to English speakers.
Categories starting with our specific set of ISO and made-up language codes are an English Wiktionary signature, and therefore a barrier for reuse. Anyone is allowed to copy Wiktionary content - they can create mirrors, books, CDs with it. So, it's better to make the material as "generic" as possible. If a reader is navigating a new site called www.definitelynotwiktionary.com and finds a category name like Category:gmq-bot:Music, they will probably not understand what "gmq-bot" means. Even if we generously assume that the reader has the privilege of being knowledgeable about our language codes, then it's possible they will be compelled to think "oh so we're using that English Wiktionary system now, I'd better get my list of language codes that they use to start navigating categories like this". By contrast, if we renamed Category:gmq-bot:Music to Category:Westrobothnian terms relating to music, the new name should be sensible anywhere. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 05:07, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Poll 2: Longer vs shorter names for set categories
On a new line, please indicate what basic type of name you support — for the part of the category that comes after the language name or code:
(1) Long descriptive names like "names of municipalities in São Paulo, Brazil" and "names of dog breeds" or "terms for dog breeds". (The precise format, like "names of" vs "terms for", can be worked out next if it's clear that people prefer long descriptive names to short names.)
(2) Short names that contain "list" or "set" to distinguish list vs topic categories: like "list:municipalities in São Paulo, Brazil" and "list:Dog breeds" or "set:Dog breeds".
(3) Very short names that don't distinguish list vs topic categories: like "municipalities in São Paulo, Brazil" and "Dog breeds".
I believe (1) is the best option, because names like Category:English terms relating to sex are to be read as normal English text, like other categories already are. Oppose (2) because the distinction between list, or set, or topic is arbitrary and not immediately obvious. And of course, oppose (3) as too ambiguous. See further comments below.
If you get all terms relating to Christianity, this is equally a list, a set and the topic of Christianity-related terms. If we choose to pretend these words have unique meanings which clearly set them apart (which they don't), this would be an obvious kludge to avoid category overlap using as few characters as possible. Using "list", "set:", "topic:" at the start of categories is like using obscure abbreviations to save a few characters. (Some people oppose using template abbreviations like {{der}} instead of {{derived}}, saying that the latter is easier to read. What to do with templates is a separate discussion, but that is a good point. Aside from that, I believe we have a consensus not to use abbreviations like q.v., L., Gr., esp., cf., &c. in etymologies.) If we implemented these arbitrary category prefixes, I fear we would probably have to constantly lecture anons and new editors about what is the correct category prefix to use.
What I'm saying here is consistent with what I proposed above. The proposed category names are supposed to be read as normal English text. Currently, we have to wonder if categories like Category:en:Stars contains names of stars, and/or types of stars, and/or terms relating to stars. If this proposal passes, we may have this:
I'm not saying all the three "star" categories above will have to be created, but I'd like any existing category to conform to a naming system like this. The wording may change if people want, naturally.
In the past, other proposals that made category names read like normal English text were voted and approved:
Poll 3: Longer vs shorter names for topic categories
On a new line, please indicate what basic type of name you support — for the part of the category that comes after the language name or code:
(1) Long descriptive names like "terms pertaining to Christianity" or "terms relating to Christianity". (The precise format can be worked out next if it's clear people prefer long descriptive names to short names.)
(2) Short names that contain "topic" to distinguish list vs topic categories: like "topic:Christianity".
(3) Very short names that don't distinguish list vs topic categories: like "Christianity".
I believe (1) is the best option, because names like Category:English terms relating to sex are to be read as normal English text, like other categories already are. Oppose (2) because the distinction between list, or set, or topic is arbitrary and not immediately obvious. And of course, oppose (3) as too ambiguous. See further comments in my response to the "Poll 2" above. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 04:25, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Either 1 or, preferably 2, because they permit the addition of usage-context categories (eg, military slang for woman, member of the local population, etc.). DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Results
From the results of the poll above, I gather that people want language names in the categories, but that there is less consensus on the format of the rest of the name. What happens next? —CodeCat19:26, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Monthly suggested collective task is to take care of concert. You already have a Wikisaurus:musical instrument and a Wikisaurus:musical composition but nothing about the show! Well, in June, there is the Fête de la Musique and that's enough to plan a new Wikisaurus:concert, isn't it? Also, there is plenty pictures on Commons to illustrated entries related to musical performances.
Show must go on!
By the way, Lexisession is a collaborative experiment without any guide nor direction. You're free to participate as you like and to suggest next month topic. If you do something this month, please report it here, to let people know you are involve in a way or another. I hope there will be some people interested by playing music Noé09:21, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
@Atitarev, Cinemantique, Wikitiki89, CodeCat In new entries, I've been putting {{wikipedia|lang=ru}} templates just under the ==Russian== headword, but some existing entries put in under the ===Noun=== or similar headword. See атеи́зм(atɛízm) for an example where I moved it up. Not sure if this is correct, comments? Also, is there a difference for English-language and foreign-language Wikipedia references? An example where I put both is пого́ст(pogóst); this Russian term has several meanings specific to Russian culture and has an English-language entry under pogost, which is helpful in explaining some of the meanings. Benwing2 (talk) 20:50, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
For English terms I used to place them under the ==English== header too. However, another editor tended to remove and replace them with:
IMO {{wikipedia}} should go under the language header; I find it a bit messy if it's under the POS, maybe unless it only applies to e.g. the noun section of an entry that lists a verb first, in which case I understand putting it underneath the relevant headword line template. Alternatively using {{pedia}} as Smuconlaw describes is also fine. - -sche(discuss)01:01, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
The situations with Translingual (taxonomic) is very different than for other languages: the pedia, species, and commons links are on all fours with other external links (which can be numerous). Taxonomic entries often have images so the right hand side can become cluttered and push into other language sections. Thus it makes more sense to me to put the sister-project links under "References".
Something similar applies to entries for English vernacular names of organisms, which often have either images or many sister-project links.
Finally I have the ToC on the right hand side, which further pushes right-hand side content down into other language sections.
I'm one of the editors who tends to convert {{wikipedia}} to {{pedia}} in Further Reading. The main reason is consistency: why should Wikipedia links get a special treatment? The box is also quite big and takes up a a lot space on the screen, especially when multiple links are stacked. Even the {{wikipedia}} documentation page says: "Consider instead using the inline version of this template". – Jberkel (talk) 06:15, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
What are / were / should be the rules for anagrams in English and other languages?
I would be willing to run a bot to update anagram sections (in which subset of languages?) if I know the rules. "Rules" meaning, which characters to ignore / normalize, minimum length, etc. DTLHS (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
It would be great if we created a page which documented character normalization policies in a machine-readable format (Wiktionary:Character normalization?). I know these exist to some extent in user-space, but a unified version would be better. - DaveRoss12:45, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
As usual, Actualités is in English but talk about French Wiktionary and lexicography in general.
This time: a focus on proposals for Wikimania 2017 related to Wiktionaries, a presentation of two dictionaries about the body and some words about Guaraní language. There is also a stack of statistics, shorts and a game!
As usual, it is translated in English by non-native speakers, so it is not perfect, but can be improved by readers (wiki-spirit and all). Please note that we do not received any money for this publication and we translate it because we are eager to read the same kind of publication about your project in the future and be inspire by your projects. Feel free to leave us comments! Noé10:12, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Fascinating! Hmm, what is en.Wikt doing that could be reported in such a publication?
Last time I recall us comparing the new words other dictionaries had added to our entries, we similarly already had most of them.
We've been working on templates/scripts that would enable an entry to specify its most recent etymon, and have the script find and display that term's etymon, and that etymon's etymon, to reduce content duplication and dissynchronization.
Efforts to create a module that can automatically transliterate vocalized Hebrew are continuing and may lead to a proposal to Unicode to encode separate codepoints for big and small shvas like big and small qamats.
We've been expanding our coverage of languages that (are not dialects of other languages and) do not have ISO codes (Module:languages/datax).
We've been expanding the number of languages we have referenced/verifiable entries in, using in some cases fr.Wikt's entries (which in many cases were based on en.Wikt's redlinked translations of water, ha).
Sure, we can report hot topics of en.wikt! Easily if someone from the project do a summary, just like you did. We tried in some old issues, but it was biased because discussions are split in several pages and we didn't know enough the names of the participants to get the whole picture.
The comparison with other dictionaries seems to me very different in English than in French because the editorial choices of French dictionaries is to select only around 60.000 entries whether English dictionary select an average of 100.000. It is purely arbitrary. So in French dictionaries, you will not find any words for technical practices such as leather work for example. Each year, they delete words from dictionaries to save space for the new ones, and I think it is definitively a plus for French Wiktionary, because we do not, and for readers of "old" books, definitions will only be available in Wiktionary, and not anymore in dictionaries! So, French Wiktionary can pretend to have a better coverage than published dictionaries. I think it is more difficult to communicate on this matter for English Wiktionary. Well, I hope you will disconfirm.
Templates for etymologies is a big deal. In French Wiktionary, we prefer to write paragraphs of etymology with large compilations of sources, in a similar way as Wikipedia writing. Policies Wiktionnaire:Étymologie and Wiktionary:Etymology show great differences. French Wiktionary promote long etymologies including folk etymology and false ones with sources. We do not want to have From latin to French in etymology because it is barely false considering the history of the language and the influence of the dialects. We want to trace the path for the forms and the meanings, mentioning regional uses when needed (for example: bataclan). Also, lot of sources says obscure origin when words come from Arab or Gitan (Romani), we prefer to quote these official sources and more recent analyses displaying better data to show that old official sources can be politicly biased. Our etymology have to be more neutral than old ones. I do not judge one strategy better than the other. I think we need to do both. French Wiktionary need to develop a template to display schematic trees with the basic history of words, but also to provide plenty details with the whole history and controversial hypotheses.
Hebrew and Unicode: Great news! I hope you will publish a press release when it will be done!
Expanding coverage for underdescribed languages is great! Is it a global effort or a contribution by few people? In French Wiktionary, it is mainly do by two people, including Pamputt, for water translations Noé08:44, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Wiktionary:Milestones and Wiktionary:News for editors are generally used to announce new things. But they're generally not very interesting. I can't imagine many people going "Wow! How cool! Greek nouns have been reclassified from invariable to indeclinable!!!" -WF.
I was wondering if it wouldn't be a be a good idea to create language codes for Proto East, South and West Slavic. They're well established and would make sense to reconstruct. --Victar (talk) 23:15, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
"Proto-East Slavic" is Old East Slavic, is it not? As for West and South, are you sure it's possible to reconstruct as single Proto-West Slavic and a single Proto-South Slavic? --WikiTiki8923:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't know myself what the differences would be between PES and OES, but if there is no distinction, than I don't think we should have a separate level in descendant trees. I do know that PWS has some pretty distinct features. Matasović argues that South Slavic is strictly as a geographical grouping, not a genetic clade, so I'm not clear on that. @Benwing, Vahagn Petrosyan? --Victar (talk) 01:36, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
West Slavic is really not that distinct. Most of its features are retentions of things already present in Proto-Slavic. —CodeCat17:23, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Having distinct features does not mean it is possible to have a single consistent reconstruction. And OES is Proto-East Slavic. Don't forget that "Proto" doesn't mean reconstruction, but just that it is the ancestor of a language group. In this case OES is the ancestor of the East Slavic languages, so it is Proto-East Slavic. --WikiTiki8917:33, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I obviously understand what proto means, but if you follow the point I was making, If you're arguing that PES and OES are identical, which I generally disagree with, than we shouldn't have level in a descendant trees for PES above OES, but instead call that branch Old East Slavic. Otherwise that's like adding a Proto Norse above each entry of Old Norse in PGmc descendant trees. --Victar (talk) 18:03, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Proto-Norseis a separate language from Old Norse, and happens to be marginally attested, even. At least Old Gutnish does not descend from any attested variety of Old Norse, and I recall hearing about similar archaisms in the Finland Swedish and Jutlandic Danish dialects too. --Tropylium (talk) 23:34, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
I already do that. I label the line as "East Slavic" but put the OES term on the same line. —CodeCat18:06, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
That's great, but I haven't seen that the case in the entries I've come accross, as per my example above. If people are in agreement with that though, I'm satisfied. --Victar (talk) 18:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
First of all, why would it be obvious to me what you personally know or don't know? If I want to make sure we are on the same page in terms of terminology, you shouldn't take it personally. Second of all, OES is the ancestor of all East Slavic languages; that makes it by definition Proto-East Slavic. It's not something you can disagree with unless you want to say that OES is not the ancestor of all East Slavic languages (which you could maybe make a case for regarding the Old Novgorod dialect or North Russian, but in that case we probably can't reconstruct a single Proto-East Slavic anyway). If the tree is wrong, it should be fixed; don't impose incorrect descriptions of reality onto reality itself. --WikiTiki8918:14, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
The difference is not just in the script. Manichaean Middle Persian has systematic dialectal differences from Zoroastrian (Book) Middle Persian. For example, to Zoroastrian nd corresponds Manichaean nn, as in Book bnd(band) : Manichaean bn(bann, “bond, link”); Old Persian rd gives Zoroastrian l but often r in Manichaean, e.g. sāl vs sār ‘year’; Iranian r̥ gives Zoroastrian ar but often ir in Manichaean, e.g. mard vs mird ‘man’.
Even if we decide to merge both under Middle Persian, we should keep Manichaean Middle Persian as an etymology-only language. @ZxxZxxZ, what do you think? --Vahag (talk) 07:13, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I believe some of those differences are due to limitations and idiosyncrasies of the scripts itself. Note that even though the transcription BMP s’lyn-(“to provoke”) contains an l, it is pronounced /sārēn-/, as per Cheung. Both alphabets also lacked a full set of vowels. Even so, I think these are minor dialectal changes. --Victar (talk) 08:00, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
As Vahag said the differences are beyond the script, not just Manichaean, but also Zoroastrian (Pazend, Avestan alphabet). I've even read there are differences between the Middle Persian written in Inscriptional Pahlavi and the Middle Persian in Book Pahlavi (which was mostly written in Islamic period and is called "late Middle Persian", as opposed to the "early Middle Persian" of the inscriptions), though I'm not aware of any instances beyond spelling differences (e.g. in the arameograms used). Regarding the s’lyn- instance, it's true, though the letter "l" is also used for l, anyway the instance provided by Vahag is a different case: we know ŠNT was pronounced as sāl in Middle Persian, but it is recorded with r in Manichaean alphabet. I think we should keep them separate. --Z11:30, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
This family of languages has fluctuated between l and r since the days of IIr. I see more variation in dialects of English than in forms of Middle Persian -- certainly not enough be called a separate language -- and all these "differences" seem highly predictable to me. @-sche, this strikes me as one of those "splittist" cases you mentioned. --Victar (talk) 14:12, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
I am open to being persuaded otherwise by you all, who seem to have greater knowledge of this subject than I do, but based on this discussion and from what Wikipedia says, it does sound like we are dealing with dialects. They should of course have separate etymology codes (like Cajun French vs standard French). If l/r variation also exists within one or especially both varieties and not just as a distinction between them, that would suggest it should not be held up as a reason to separate them; likewise, if the appearance or absence of any particular variation is due to the constraints of script! Wikipedia speaks of using the documents which were written in more expressive/conservative scripts to understand the documents written in the other script. (It makes me think of the ISO granting separate codes to hieroglyphic vs cuneiform Luwian.) - -sche(discuss)04:56, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
I'd like to do the same edit again, where I added two vote references. See the history of the page for further comments from him and myself. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 04:00, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Addendum: Wiktionary:Votes/2011-04/Sourced policies is the vote where it was accepted to link every piece of text in EL and CFI to their supporting votes through the wiki technique of references. There are too many so-called policies created unilaterally without verifiable consensus. WT:EL and WT:CFI themselves are partially voted and partially non-voted. If we don't link the votes, we can't easily verify the fact Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion/Well documented languages is thankfully almost 100% voted and approved, with a few unvoted changes concerning Arabic, Irish and Welsh. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 17:22, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
All words in all languages
In the very first paragraph of our main page we have "It aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English.". This is manifestly false. We do not include all words (we omit some brand names for example) and we do not treat computer programming languages to be languages. There are two main ways we could improve this situation. The first (my preferred option, as I'm sure you know) is to make the statement true - to include all words, in all languages. A second option is either to rewrite the statement as " ... most words of most languages ... " or to follow it with an asterisk that somehow points to a "terms and conditions apply" section. What does everyone else think? SemperBlotto (talk) 04:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
What is this platonic definition of "word" that you seek to make us follow? Just because you say brand names are words doesn't mean we have to agree with you. DTLHS (talk) 04:59, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Then you can see that it's totally impossible to "make the statement true" since we will never agree on what a word is. DTLHS (talk) 05:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
This of course comes back to what constitutes a "word". If I stub my toe and say, "Yowzawhoawhoawhoa!" then that will certainly communicate some meaning to someone else ("that hurt a lot") but it's not really a word. There are a lot of signed, spoken, and written things which convey meaning but I think that anyone using common sense would realize that no dictionary could ever include all of these phenomena. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯05:24, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Of course we would include "Yowzawhoawhoawhoa" - if it makes it into three different books by three different authors (like "Windows" has done). SemperBlotto (talk) 05:32, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Sure, and it never will. That doesn't make it more or less of a "word", it's just not a "word" for our purposes. Someone else could rightly call a lot of things "words" which we don't: everyone would have some caveats on what would constitute "every word in every language" and I don't think ours are so unreasonable as to expect them to need a disclaimer on the front page. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯05:34, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
For the record, maybe some dictionaries have a broader criteria for inclusion than us. http://jisho.org is an English-Japanese dictionary where in addition to "normal" stuff, you can search for some people names, brand names and movie titles, among other things. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 08:58, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, this is manifestly false: we only include attested words. Even if we relaxed attestation criteria even more, we still have to admit that we do not have an omnicorpus of all utterances of all languages that ever existed on the planet, and therefore, we will necessarily fail to cover some words. This is not just a hypothetical concern; we are very certain that we omit some words for lack of evidence, even though we do not necessarily have to know which words.
One remedy is to do nothing and read the sentence as a slogan that does not contain the necessary qualifications. Another remedy is to inject "approximately", "basically" somewhere in the slogan. The asterisk mentioned above is also an option. Adding "as long as there is enough evidence", which occurred to me, is not so good since that would address the attestation requirement but not the other requirements and exclusions." --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:08, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
We could change
As an international dictionary, Wiktionary is intended to include “all words in all languages”.
to
As an international dictionary, Wiktionary is intended to include basically “all words in all languages”, subject to certain conditions.
I like the proposed change. It's an honest assessment of what words we actually accept. Though technically we also accept phrases, symbols and other things. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 10:24, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
How about "a bunch of words in a bunch of languages"? -WF
The ordinary-word meaning of this slogan is somewhat misleading. The following notes explain the qualifications:
1Not every word is included at all, let alone in a meaningful way. Obviously we haven't gotten around to all of them. Attestation requirements exclude many. Due to the narrowness of our contributor base many languages are unrepresented and many specialized contexts are unrepresented, even in English.
2"Word" can include letters, numbers, symbols, abbreviations, proverbs, idiomatic expressions, some non-idiomatic expressions, clitics, affixes.
3Some "words2" could fall between languages. A multi-word expression borrowed from a foreign language could be non-idiomatic in its original language and thereby not includable in that language. It may also only be found in italics or quotation marks in running text in other languages, indicating that authors and editors don't think it has entered the lexicon in that language.
4See Vote on Serbo-Croatian.
5Translingual is not a language. Many non-words are better characterized as things. Things that are not words are not part of languages.
This approach works in real life for more-or-less unchangeable statements of great importance, like those in the US Constitution. DCDuring (talk) 13:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me that it worth expanding it at Wiktionary:All words in all languages, not as a disclaimer nor a policy but as an introduction to a pillar of Wiktionary. Comments on this thread worth to be annotated in a project/essay page, including "it's complicated" :-) --Vriullop (talk) 13:42, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I think the slogan is an acceptable aspirational slogan (good word, Catsidhe). Vriullop's idea of a page explaining it is interesting, but might overlap heavily with WT:CFI. It seems to be obvious to many people who comment on it that it is not to be taken to Amelia Bedelia levels of literalism. Even if we started including brand names, book titles, nonces, etc as some Wiktionaries do, we are unable to include all words in all languages, because some words were never recorded by anyone before they passed out of memory (e.g. in the Khazar language, Ciguayo, or Jassic). We are even apparently prevented by law from including all words in all languages because (in previous discussions in which some of our users who are lawyers have participated, it has been noted that) languages like Dothraki probably constitute significant parts of commercial franchises, and it would probably violate copyright if a third-party dictionary like us included all or a substantial number of the words in such a language. Even the most permissive inclusionism will hit hard limits. Personally, I expect that as we become more complete, we will include codes for over 9000(!!!!1) languages. And we might broadly guesstimate that poorly-attested languages and highly-inflected languages may average out to half a million entries per language, so perhaps our slogan could say we aim "to describe four and a half billion words in nine thousand languages"? ;D - -sche(discuss)17:44, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not sure now is the best time to create this vote since I had created another one two days ago. But we have an ongoing discussion about what to do with {{bor}} in all entries, so I created it anyway. Please check Wiktionary:Votes/2017-06/borrowing, borrowed. There are a few discussions linked there. Feel free to edit the vote or suggest any changes.
category for past forms of verbs used in turn as verbs on their own
A category of these forms may help the learner very much, since if they are not acquainted with these forms, finding them confuses momentarily the undertanding. For example, slew may mean "to veer", but it's as well the simple past tense of "slay"; likewise, "lay" is a transitive verb, as well as the simple past tense of "to lie, when pertaining to position". I do not know how to overlap categories so that I can get the one I wish to create. --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:12, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I think it would be useful to have a more general category for overlapping of verb forms. This category could also include set and read, which don't distinguish tense in writing. —CodeCat14:17, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
ELE dictates that language sections should be in alphabetical orders. Some languages have unusual characters in their English names, should they be alphabetized including those characters at face value, or without those characters? By way of an example, what is the correct order of "Ch'orti', Chachi, Cofán". - DaveRoss14:16, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I would say to just ignore the non-letters (from an English point of view). So the order would be Chachi, Ch'orti', Cofán. —CodeCat14:17, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I find it hard to believe we haven't had this discussion before somewhere. I support using code-point order sorting, i.e. not ignoring the non-letters, since it's the easiest to implement and it's the state of all entries are in now. DTLHS (talk) 14:50, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
@DTLHS I figured the issue had been resolved and I was just not aware and couldn't find it readily. While I also like using the code-point ordering, I have found that not all entries are in that order (see: A).
@CodeCat If we go that way we will need to settle on what constitutes a non-letter (e.g. accents). Thankfully the set of allowable language names is limited so we can be comprehensive. - DaveRoss15:05, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
One other note, the translation sections should also follow the same policy, whatever it is. And presumably other sorted lists should have a policy. - DaveRoss15:47, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't know about the examples you gave but I'd like to simply caution that those typographic characters actually are letters in some languages, e.g. ʻokina in Hawaiʻian. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯16:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Right, but our L2 headers, i.e. language names, are in English. We have ==French==, ==German==, and ==Spanish==, not ==Français==, ==Deutsch==, and ==Español==. For that reason, I'm in favor of ignoring things like apostrophes and diacritics when it comes to alphabetizing languages. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:39, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
There is also a tendency to omit apostrophes in English when they don't seem to do anything (compare Mi'kmaq and Mikmaq), so the order might change depending on which spelling of a language we use, which is potentially confusing. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
The list of L2 headers we currently employ includes many non-English characters, perhaps that should not be the case but it is at the moment. I think we are relatively consistent in this regard within a single language, but I might be wrong on that. - DaveRoss21:04, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to the argument that codepoint ordering is possibly the easiest to maintain (and is the one used by many entries now, due to bots sorting things), but it would not seem to be too difficult to define a more natural order, with Xârâcùù sorted before Xhosa, etc. It does appear as if other references ignore apostrophes, click letters, and diacritics when alphabetizing:
The International Encyclopedia of Linguistics lists in this order ’Akhoe, ǀAnda, Deti, ǁGana, Ganádi, ǀGwi, Hadza, Haiǀom, Hietshware, ǂHua (they print it as =/Hua), Juǀ’hoan Nǀu, ǃOǃung, Sandawe, ǀXam, ǁXegwi, Xiri, ǃXóõ.
Dalby's Dictionary of Languages sorts Larestani, Lārī, Lashi, Lāsī, Latgalian, Mabwe-Lungu, Mača, Macao, Māhārāshtri, Mahi.
The Ethnologue itself has Afrikaans, ||Ani, Birwa, English, ||Gana, Gciriku, |Gwi, Hai||om, Herero, ‡Hua, Ju|’hoansi, Kalanga |Xam, ||Xegwi, ‡Ungkue.
Hodge's old Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico has Háami, Hāʼanaʟěnox, Haatse, Háatsü-háno, Habasopis, Hailtsa, Haiʼ‘luntchi, Haiʼmāaxstō, Hai-ne-na-une, Háiokalita, Haiowanni.
I agree that translations should be sorted in the same order.
Looking at WT:LOL, it appears that the list of characters besides A-Z used in language names and alt names (ignoring case) is
á, à, â, ä, ȁ, å, ã, ā : treat as a?
æ : treat as ae?
ɓ : treat as b?
ç, č : treat as c?
ḍ, ḏ : treat as d?
é, è, ê, ë : treat as e?
ɛ : also treat as e?
ğ : treat as g?
ḥ : treat as h?
í, ì, î, ï, ĩ, ī, ɨ : treat as i?
ł : treat as l?
ñ : treat as n?
ŋ : treat as ng? At the moment, all languages with alt names using "ŋ" indeed use "ng" in their canonical names.
ó, ò, ô, ö, ȍ, õ, ō : treat as o?
ɔ, ɔ̃ : also treat as o?
š : treat as s?
ṭ : treat as t?
ú, ù, ü, ũ, ŭ, ų : treat as u?
ŵ : treat as w?
ý : treat as y?
ẓ : treat as z?
ə : what should happen to schwas?
() (as in "Kare (Africa)", "Yao (South America)") : parse as-is i.e. in codepoint order?
- (and –, which was used in four alt names I just switched to use hyphens) : parse as-is?
. (as in "Mt. Iraya Agta") : parse as-is? or ignore i.e. discard?
', ʼ, ǀ, ǁ, ǃ, ǂ and ʻ and ˀ, ʔ (and the nonstandard ’, ‡) : ignore i.e. discard?
Note that many of these special characters only appear in alt names (which I included as a decent repository of what special characters might one day appear in canonical names of same languages), and are already normalized as above in their canonical names which we'd be dealing with, anyway! (Perhaps someone else feels like making a list of only those special chars which appear in canonical names.)
Can we simplify your suggestion to: "Use the natural ordering after removing all combining characters and punctuation, and splitting ligatures."? I am worried about converting similar characters in other scripts to their Latin counterparts, since that way lies incredible complexity and subjectivity. - DaveRoss19:05, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
My post only spells out all of the diacritical letters that are in use so people can see which letters those are and see if they agree with the proposed normalization; I expect that an actual rule would be phrased in more general terms, yes. For example, much of it can be simplified to "ignore diacritics". Noe links to an article by the person in charge of Glottolog about naming languages, which agrees with replacing (and sorting) ɛ and ɔ as e and o. As for punctuation, do we want to remove it? Suppose we had a language called "Kala (Zimbabwe)", should it be sorted before or after "Kala Lagaw Ya"? - -sche(discuss)19:26, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
I am certainly not the right person to make the calls about the best course here, I am merely hoping for a general rule if possible rather than a mapping system. - DaveRoss19:34, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
I think parenthesized qualifiers such as "(Zimbabwe)" should be entirely ignored unless it results in two languages having identical names, and only then should they be used to sort them. In other words, sort it as just "Kala" but if there happens to be another "Kala" then use the qualifiers to determine which goes first. —CodeCat19:36, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be (effectively) just like sorting with the parenthesis left in place? Perhaps there are instances I am not considering. - DaveRoss19:48, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps, but editors can't be expected to know Unicode code points, whereas they can be expected to know English alphabetical ordering. So even if any programmed implementation treats it as you say, a human-readable description of the process would have to describe it more as I did. —CodeCat19:57, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
As far as I know, parentheses are only used when two languages do have the same name, and then, in almost all cases — the only exception that comes to mind is that we haven't yet added a qualifier to the million-strong language "Yao" just because the tiny, extinct language "Yao (South America)" exists — they are used on both languages. So I suppose we should leave the parentheses as-is and thus sort a hypothetical "Kala (Zimbabwe)" above "Kala Lagaw Ya". A rule that parentheses' contents "should be dropped unless X is true" where X is true 100% of the time would be needlessly confusing, IMO. - -sche(discuss)20:00, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Not really, because "Kala (Zimbabwe)" should be sorted before a hypothetical language called "Kalaza". —CodeCat20:09, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
I think I may understand the source of the confusion. I'm assuming that a space doesn't count for sorting, since it's not an alphabetical character. So "Kala (Zimbabwe)" would be "Kalazimbabwe" for sorting purposes if we didn't take out the parenthetical part. Or, to take two real examples, I'm saying that "Tokelauan" would come before "Tok Pisin". —CodeCat20:16, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Aha, that's a place our assumptions differed; I assumed spaces would be counted. Poking around other reference works, I see that G. Cinque's Typological Studies: Word Order and Relative Clauses sorts "Tokelauan, Tok Pisin" (in the alphabetical index), while J. Lynch's Pacific Languages: An Introduction sorts "Tok Pisin, Tokelauan". I'm not sure which is better. But independent of whether or not spaces are counted, I would never sort "Kala (Zimbabwe)" as "Kalazimbabwe". And if we both want "Kala (Zimbabwe)" above "Kalaza", isn't the simplest way to obtain that to treat the parentheses as parentheses, which are sorted ahead of alphabetic characters? - -sche(discuss)20:49, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Here's a list of only those characters that are current used in canonical names, i.e. the ones we'd actually have to sort right now: , (space), - (hyphen), ' (apostrophe), . (dot), () (parentheses), á à â ä ã å ç é è ê ë í ì î ï ñ ó ò ô ö õ ú ù ü (diacritics, which could be handled by a rule "treat letters with diacritics the same as their base letters"), and ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ (click consonants, which could be handled by a rule "treat click consonants as if they are not there"). It's possible that we should even remove some of those from the canonical names themselves, i.e. rename the languages. - -sche(discuss)20:49, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
If we are doing this, I suggest that we create a module function that outputs a list of every language name in whatever internal order we decide on. Bots can read that page and order language sections and translations accordingly. DTLHS (talk) 22:57, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
My suggestion- four classes of characters:
Basic English letters
Basic English letters with diacritics
Non-English letters with no English counterpart (most or all them clicks and glottal stops)
Punctuation
Perform the following transformations to produce the sort key, in the order given:
Convert apostrophes to one of the other glottal-stop characters so they won't be treated as punctuation.
Convert all punctuation to spaces and then convert multiple spaces to single spaces.
Prefix all letters having diacritics with the corresponding basic English letter.
Swap non-English/no-counterpart letters with the following letter so the following letter comes first. If there are multiple such letters, swap all of those letters next to each other as a group.
This has the advantage of having things sorted first by basic English letters, but having the order of the diacritics followed as well, and having the order of the "ignorable" non-English/no-counterpart letters followed, too. Since spaces are sorted before basic English letters, that also honors the principle that "nothing comes before something".
I'm not positive about the second transformation, since that will mean "Abc (def)" will be the same as "Abc def", but it's something to start with- tweaking is welcome. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:55, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
Sure. The idea is that there should be a basic English letter before other characters for sorting purposes, with the others following it to distinguish between cases distinguishable only by those other characters. "Swapping" isn't really the best choice of words: what I mean is that the first basic English letter following one or more non-English-no-counterpart characters should be moved in front of them. Now that I've had a chance to think about it, maybe it would be better to ensure that the diacriticed letter goes with it, probably by moving the fourth transformation before the third, and clarifying that both basic English letters and diacriticed letters should be treated the same by this new third transformation. Thus 'ábçd would become aá'bcçd. Using these rules on -sche's examples below: Gadang→Gadang, Ga'dang→Gad'ang, and Madi→Madi, Ma'di→Mad'i. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:53, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
...? Why is having to sort Mad'i any better than having to sort Ma'di? It seems like it would be neater to say: ignore apostrophes (clicks, and diacritics) when sorting languages on the page, but if that causes two or more languages to have the same name, then sort those two or more amongst themselves with the apostrophes present (left where they are). Should spaces also be subjected to such a process (resulting in "Tokelauan, Tok Pisin"), or left alone? I tend to think spaces should be left in per the "nothing comes before something" principle you mention (so, "Tok Pisin, Tokelauan"), at which point there's no reason to remove the parentheses (and indeed, removing them would only make things more complicated and difficult), since leaving them in ensures that a hypothetical "Foo (Bar)" comes before "Foo Bar", which seems appropriate because bare "Foo" should also come before "Foo (Bar)". - -sche(discuss)04:09, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
You raise an important point, that some language names would be identical if diacritics and special characters were removed. These include gdk Gadang and gdg Ga'dang, and grg Madi and mhi Ma'di. What order should these be in: "Ga'dang, Gadang" or "Gadang, Ga'dang"? - -sche(discuss)18:20, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Proposal: a page to centralise the patrolling effort
For some four years we’ve been unable to keep up with the rate of unpatrolled changes. This means that a lot of inadequate edits, and sometimes even vandalism, gets through. I’ve been trying to think of ways to improve the efficiency of our patrolling, because Special:RecentChanges is very hard to use: it lists all unpatrolled edits in all languages and all areas, but an individual patroller has the knowledge to patrol perhaps 10% of them. For example, right now most recent unpatrolled edits are changes to Hungarian entries and the addition of Galician, Ukrainian and Italian translations. I have enough knowledge to verify whether the Galician translations are good, and I could look up some published dictionaries to check the Italian and Ukrainian translations (but other users could do it faster and better), and I can’t possibly hope to check the content of the Hungarian entries (just the formatting).
In addition to the raw recent changes page, we could have a page with a list of users with unpatrolled edits, separated by language and topic. For example, if I am patrolling the recent changes and come across a user adding Japanese etymologies, I would add a new item to section ==Japanese==, subsection ===Etymology=== on this page, with a link to the user’s contribution page and perhaps an explanation as to why I think their contributions need special attention. Eventually a patroller who is more proficient in Japanese etymology will see this link and check the contributions. In order to keep the patrolling process invisible, as it already is, this page should have a mechanism to prevent users from being pinged (WT:VIP has such a mechanism, if I remember correctly). The advantages that such a page might bring include:
Encourage users who don’t the time or patience to go through Special:RecentChanges to patrol.
Encourage patrollers to delegate edits to someone who feels more confident in the language and topic.
Provide a place where the correctness of someone’s edits can be discussed (like a pre-WT:RFC, without implying that their edits need to be cleaned up)
Make it easier to identify sockpuppets and patterns of odd behaviour.
Prevent unpatrolled edits from being lost in the Recent Changes limbo.
This is a fantastic idea. I think that the problem of a piling up of unpatrolled edits has not been due to the difficulty of patrolling so much as to the fact that not that many people are patrolling. This kind of page could help make clear to admins who don't patrol as much how they can help out in the common effort. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds18:39, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I think that this collation of edits by topic and language could be done mostly automatically if anyone wants to do it. DTLHS (talk) 18:41, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I am not sure I am understanding the suggestion exactly, but it does seem like it could be useful. Is there any way you could mock something up which demonstrates what you are suggestion (even if in a limited way)? I think I would support this effort even if that wasn't possible, I am more curious about what the implementation might look like and be capable of. - DaveRoss13:27, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for that, it isn't exactly what I expected but it makes a lot of sense now. This seems like a great way to collaborate. - DaveRoss15:38, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
For some reason I pictured something which showed the edits to be patrolled, and I couldn't think of how that might work (without a lot of fancy coding). I get now that it is more of a WT:VIP analog. - DaveRoss17:21, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV: I patrol changes to existing Hungarian entries almost every day by checking my Watchlist. Since it doesn't show new entries, those are harder to find. It would be great to have a better method. We had a Recent Changes list by languages a long time ago, that worked well. I'm not sure what technical challenges it presents. --Panda10 (talk) 18:45, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Appendix: Easily confused chinese words
Hi, regading the concept of chinese anagram, I think it would be of great help to create an appendix similar to Easily_confused_Chinese_characters but Easily "confused Chinese words", which in theory could be easily created from a corpus of words, just selecting those with the same number of the same characters yet in different positions.
Furthermore, I'd like to know how the concept of anagram can be used for characters themselves, transposing radicals or even strokes.
--Backinstadiums (talk) 13:14, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata precautionary principle
Once the Wikidata vote ends, there's a chance we'll get Wikidata installed here.
If that happens, what do you think of restricting its use by implementing the rule below?
"Any and all edits using Wikidata shall be reverted on sight if they were not discussed or voted before."
I agree that it is right to be cautious in any implementation of data from Wikidata, especially when that data will be presented directly to the user. I would suggest that, at least to begin with, any use of Wikidata data which is non-controversial (e.g. using the mapping between ISO codes and language names ) be discussed publicly and agreed upon, and any potentially controversial use (e.g. including a Wikidata identifier as a template parameter; presenting Wikidata data directly) be subject to a vote. - DaveRoss14:45, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Ehh. (Or maybe: LOL.) Treatment of languages (as dialects or macrolanguages, etc) is rather complex, and not a good candidate for quick Wikidata-fication. Treatment of ISO- as well as exceptionally- coded lects as separate or as dialects of one unit varies a lot between wikis; we merge even some lects that have separate wikis, like the Serbo-Croatian lects. Names also vary a lot not just between wikis of different languages (which obviously use their own native names for things), but also within different wikis that use the same language, if wikis have different priorities with respect to e.g. calling each language by its native name, or by the name that is most common in references on the language, vs calling it by a name that distinguishes it from other languages with the same name: hence we have "Austronesian Mor" and "Mbo (Congo)", where another wiki might prefer "Mor (Austronesian)" or "Mbo (Democratic Republic of the Congo)", or might even think the name should be plain "Mor" and damn the torpedoes.
Other things that pertain to languages also vary between wikis, e.g. some wikis might consider that a language that is documented by linguists in the Latin script, or in Cyrillic, but that has no natively-used script should not be said to have "Latn"/"Cyrl" as a script, whereas other wikis might feel otherwise. Since our templates need to know what scripts a language is written in so as to know whether it needs a transliteration, and since our CSS applies fonts based on that information as well, we wouldn't want other folks to pull the rug out from under us as to what script a language had.
Even family information is the source of both disagreement (is Tibeto-Burman different from Sino-Tibetan? is Finno-Ugric different from Uralic? etc) and different priorities (some wikis might want comprehensive family trees that listed every node; for us, they would be too finely granular and would ghettoize languages and derivations into tiny categories hidden at the ends of long trees).
To move only some language names / script infos / etc to Wikidata and handle others locally would be inefficient and unwise, IMO. And in order to move them all, we would need "infrastructure" to be added there that would handle e.g. "is called X on wiki Y", at which point, we'd just be doing the same thing we're doing well here, but doing it there for some reason, which seems inefficient and unwise.
IMO, treatment of languages is so central to what each Wiktionary does that, especially for a wiki with as many active linguistically-adept and technically-adept editors as en.Wikt, it makes sense to do it locally.
Peripheral things, things that are not core to our mission, are better candidates for moves: e.g., parsing that a certain city is in a certain county/province/etc in a certain country on a certain continent, or (re the recent discussion of eponyms) parsing that a certain person has a certain nationality. - -sche(discuss)16:34, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Here's an idea: if Wikidata allows it, each language could have an "English Wiktionary name" property. We would use "Austronesian Mor" even if for other purposes the same language is called by other names. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 16:54, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
There is a strong argument for bringing ourselves more into compliance with international standards where we can, but also I disagree that managing by exception would overly complex. There are relatively few people who have any idea how/where to modify the existing language mapping structure, it is both obfuscated and has significant functionality issues (see water, man). As Daniel suggests there are also other paths for this (and virtually every) problem, e.g. creating new properties which would be controlled by this community. - DaveRoss17:01, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
The sentence in quotes is something that I would enthusiastically support. It would certainly assuage a lot of my (and others') personal fears with respect to Wikidata. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds15:19, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
With the appropriately-chosen fêeste, there are now 1000 entries for Middle Dutch. Some of them are alternative forms, but this is compensated by some entries that have more than one lemma. —CodeCat20:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Is there is standard format for words whose descendants are all borrowed? Case in point, Frenchhangar. Related, I wonder if we need a variant of {{see desc}} for examples like Frankish*haimgard that instead reads (see there for further borrowings). --Victar (talk) 00:53, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
What do you care for most? What are you concerned with? Take part in the strategy discussion
Hi!
The more involved we are, the more ideas or wishes concerning the future of Wikipedia we have. We want to change some things, but other things we prefer not to be changed at all, and we can explain why for each of those things. At some point, we don’t think only about the recent changes or personal lists of to-dos, but also about, for example, groups of users, the software, institutional partners, money!, etc. When we discuss with other Wikimedians, we want them to have at least similar priorities that we have. Otherwise, we feel we wasted our time and efforts.
We need to find something that could be predictable, clear and certain to everybody. A uniting idea that would be more nearby and close to the every day’s reality than the Vision (every human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge).
But people contribute to Wikimedia in so many ways. The thing that should unite us should also fit various needs of editors and affiliates from many countries. What’s more, we can’t ignore other groups of people who care about or depend on us, like regular donors or “power readers” (people who read our content a lot and often).
That’s why we’re running the movement strategy discussions. Between 2019 and 2034, the main idea that results from these discussions, considered by Wikimedians as the most important one, will influence big and small decisions, e.g. in grant programs, or software development. For example: are we more educational, or more IT-like?
We want to take into account everybody’s voice. Really: each community is important. We don’t want you to be or even feel excluded.
Please, if you are interested in the Wikimedia strategy, follow these steps:
Have a look at this page. There are drafts of 5 potential candidates for the strategic priority. You can comment on the talk pages.
The last day for the discussion is June, 12. Later, we’ll read all your comments, and shortly after that, there’ll be another round of discussions (see the timeline). I will give you more details before that happens.
If you have any questions, ask me. If you ask me here, mention me please.
Friendly disclaimer: this message wasn't written by a bot, a bureaucrat or a person who doesn't care about your project. I’m a Polish Wikipedian, and I hope my words are straightforward enough. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:01, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Yikes, the use of marketing jargon here is horrible, the opposite of wikis' origins as common-sense technical tools. I think I agree with the Germans. Equinox◑18:50, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
This isn't marketing. I'm not a marketer. And I'm not 'we'. Tell me you don't care about anything beyond English Wiktionary, fine, I'll understand (there are many users who 'just edit'), but don't imply I do things that I don't. For me, it's an utter lack of WT:AGF. In other words: are you interested in the movement strategy? do you have any questions? remember: questions to me personally, not to the entire WMF. And please, see my user page and read who I am. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
Stephen, I appreciate what you wrote, however, I'm not new at all. I got used to a daily MMA situation when my opponents get medieval on my arguments, and I can do the same with their words. That's a 'normal' wiki-way, but only when one doesn't like the opponent, or when one talks to someone from the other side (a newbie, a WMF staffer). But I'm not one of them, and there's no reason not to like me in advance. I, like 'Red' Redding, may get your community sth from the other side, provided I'm asked civilly. That propaganda, I wrote it myself. I tried to avoid corporate speech, added a friendly disclaimer, but yeah. Cheers. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:52, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
No, nobody is attacking you for no reason. Stuff like "movement strategy ecosystems and actors" is opaque marketing-style jargon from the commercial world, not to be trusted on an open project. Equinox◑21:05, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
@Equinox, SGrabarczuk (WMF) is Polish, and his English can be expected to be a bit off. It likely reflects the sort of English texts that he often reads. He indicates that his English level is en-3, so judgments such as "opaque marketing-style jargon from the commercial world, not to be trusted on an open project" are unfair, inappropriate, and very likely incorrect. —Stephen(Talk)23:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
@Equinox, I bet both of us well know how to deal with the History tab. You can see that I didn't write that. You'll welcome to react like tell (err, where did you find this?) insert_the_author's_nick_here not to use that sort of words. I'll agree! I know that most of users assume that guy has a (WMF) in his signature, so he's co-responsible for all that rubbish, but that's an incorrect, simplifying, and not exactly fair assumption. I'm not a boss, thus I'm responsible only for myself. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
@Stephen G. Brown Really, I always found en.Wikt to be very manageable and relaxed in terms of good faith. Make a round on German Wikipedia (and German editors here...). Quick to assume agendas and deceit and not as shy to say so. (Not excluding myself, I quietly accuse a lot of them of agenda pushing.) @SGrabarczuk (WMF) I agree that the headlines sound like suit buzzwords. The actual explanations are valid topics that might benefit the Wiki projects. I think editors, certainly here, have little interest in diverting time and attention to the peripherals of what they actually like doing. En.Wikt is, from what I see, populated not by a people who wanted to be part of a commune and better the world but by people who use dictionaries a lot, do linguistics a lot or have a pet language they would like to propagate. Small wik-, big -tionary. Even the participation in these here talk pages is minuscule. This means for the 'other side' that things have to be made with the awareness/anticipation that they will be judged (and most likely discarded) after a cursory glance, so things like headlines should be very plain and on point, even if it doesn't have much ring as a motto. And to give you at least some form of feedback: The only things I ever see in these discussions which people would need other than 'more editors making more edits' are technical things. So maybe explicitly asking what's needed in that regard would get a better reply. Really just a guess, though, I don't deal in the Grease Pit. Korn (talk) 22:45, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
@Korn, read the comments in this discussion by Equinox. Not what I would call manageable and relaxed in terms of good faith. —Stephen(Talk)23:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
@Stephen G. Brown Might be personal bias as I'm partially affected, but I still find "Marketing jargon isn't to be trusted in an open project" less venomous than the things I find on the talk pages of Wikipedia, and I don't think that kind of attitude is common here towards editors editing. I could only tell you one person here who ever showed an actual lack of good faith in dealing with such situations and it's a German. Even Wyang and CodeCat only think of each other as stubborn idiots, rather than people with ill intent. As an example of actual bad faith: My worst personal encounter with not-good-faith was moving an article called 'German dialects', dealing in equal parity and no little detal with Dutch, Low German and German dialects, to 'Continental West-Germanic dialects'. I was, IIRC, then accused of doing that for vandalism, by people who had never heard the term, and the fact that I had made a typo, as I do, and had to move the article twice, was taken as evidence that I was covering up my villainy. The article was then moved back and butchered from a perfectly good article about Continental West-Germanic into a disgrace about 'German'. Now that is real lack of good faith, the important kind, which affects the projects' contents. And I never saw that kind happening here. (Feel free to direct me to examples.) Equinox' distrust, while not a good sign of project spirit, doesn't actually make Wiktionary any worse to the user than it is, nor does it drive away able, good-willed editors. And I don't think he's actually thinking WMF is out to worsen the projects. I read it more as an accusation of being out of touch. Korn (talk) 09:00, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
@Korn, yes, not everyone treats others that way. The number of abusive editors seems to have been decreasing over the years, very gradually. Nowadays, I think there are only a couple of them left. In the old days, half of our editors seemed to be looking for any reason to jump down someone's throat. The atmosphere was tense. It used to be common for some admins to block other admins over minor or weird reasons. A few years ago, a certain admin blocked an new editor for one year because he transcribed a Persian word using /sh/ instead of /š/. The situation is improving, but it is still nothing to brag about. —Stephen(Talk)09:22, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
It's no insult. All the propaganda and stuff coming from "the Wikimedia foundation" uses a completely different tone and context than the ENTIRE rest of the Wiktionary site. I see it as inappropriate. Contributors here may be involved in the Wikipedia project or other WM projects as well, but are not necessarily and many aren't. Wikipedia and Wiktionary are two completely separate communities, other than the fact that the two often link to each other on a lot of pages, often share contributors, and that they're funded by the same foundation. In my opinion, besides possible funding issues, if Wiktionary ever broke off from its relations with WMF, there would be no differences. The people, the contributors, the tone, expectations of contributors, style of editing, etc., would all be the same. It is my opinion that the ads need to stop coming to places like the Beer Parlour because it's simply not a concern or priority of ours. PseudoSkull (talk) 10:43, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
Really, now? You're attacking the people who do the friendly work of making sure this project stays online because they offer you the choice to participate in the decisions of what they do with the funds they raised? Which you can just ignore and move on with your life? That's the type of thing you want to do? Korn (talk) 12:28, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
As above, I'm not the only one holding the side you just stated. Also, I wouldn't say my statement is "attacking", but rather stating an opinion that the propaganda is somewhat inappropriate here. Maybe we should just make a page called Wiktionary:Place propaganda and advertisements here to keep it out of our site discussion space. Like I said, Wiktionary is a completely separate community with very little direct relations to Wikipedia, so the propaganda is not really a concern to us. That isn't an attack; that's just the stating that I'm annoyed by it like others above me, as it has always clearly stood out to me that the propaganda did not belong here. I never said anything, though, because I didn't want to possibly be that one egg who said something that pissed Wiktionary off. PseudoSkull (talk) 16:54, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
To be fair, I never said that the content of the propaganda was bad; I personally actually agree with most of what it said and think it's good that free knowledge is being highly encouraged by the foundation, etc., but the fact that there IS propaganda at all is the bad part, regardless of how much I agree or disagree with its statements. PseudoSkull (talk) 16:57, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
Maybe there's a story in the background that justifies your attitude, I don't know. I probably can't and shouldn't resolve that. I can only admit that I understand what you write. Now, look: in various places all over the world, groups of people (not necessarily users) gathered and talked about the future of our movement. Link #1, link #2. The crucial points documented in such pages will help to conduct next the discussion. Think and write what you want, but don't miss the point that you do have an opportunity and you can influence the strategy, if you take part.
By the way, the next cycle (3rd one) of our discussions will begin in July. Now, we're reading the cycle 2 feedback. When the conclusions are published, I'll write again. Do you have any questions concerning the strategy? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
To clarify: I really, really dislike marketing/advertising and feel that they have destroyed much of what was good about the early Internet (and I spend enough time deleting Viagra and vanity from en.wikt); so I am inclined to go on the attack when I think I spy this stuff creeping into spaces that are still largely neutral and informational, like (the greater part of) the Wikimedia projects. SGrabarczuk, of course I have nothing against you personally and I apologise if you feel you were being attacked as an individual. I know I am difficult to get along with! Equinox◑15:45, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
English orthographic categories
Hi, taking into account the educational characteristic inherent in lexicography, I'd like to propose creating categories for intricate issues related to orthography. Thus, a category for words with doubled letters, even twice (lemmas: aggress, accommodate, etc.) would help learners review lists and make less mistakes. --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:34, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
d:Q2122792 (ISO 639-3: "mhz") is Mor language (Austronesian). Here, we use "Austronesian Mor" and not any synonyms such as "Mor (Austronesian)" or just "Mor".
The chosen language name is used in etymologies, translations, descendants, categories, appendices, policies and other places. If we decide to change a language name, it will have to change everywhere. We often use modules and templates to convert language code→name information, such as "mhz"→"Austronesian Mor". We have large data modules containing language code→name information. The "mhz"→"Austronesian Mor" information is one of the 621 languages currently stored at Module:languages/data3/m. See also Category:Language data modules for all the language data. WT:LANG is our language policy.
Three questions:
Can we move all the language data modules to Wikidata? (we don't know yet if there's consensus here to do it — it may or may not be done, depending on consensus)
Can we add a new statement "English Wiktionary name" where its value is exactly the name we use? This way, the language name will be exactly as the English Wiktionary decides, even if a different synonym is chosen for other projects and purposes.
Can we protect the new statement "English Wiktionary name" so that people are generally disallowed to edit it even if the rest of the data item is free to be edited? Maybe only Wikidata admins would edit it.
The canonical name of a language is the single most queried item across Wiktionary. This means that there are very strict requirements on speed. How fast can such names be queried from Wikidata? What if it's hundreds of them like on water? As for the name of the data item, something like en.wiktionary might be better, but I have very little knowledge of how Wikidata works in detail (could someone explain it to me on my talk page?). —CodeCat17:35, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel Carrero, Lea Lacroix (WMDE): If this foolish idea is to proceed, then as I noted in the previous discussion, you would also need to add "English Wiktionary script(s)" and "English Wiktionary family" field, and corresponding "French Wiktionary script(s)", "English Wikipedia family", etc to handle cases where script and family information is disputed/controversial between wikis, e.g. where one wiki follows Ethnologue in declaring a language unwritten (Zxxx / Zyyy, because there is no natively-authored literature) but we regard it as being in Cyrl (if we have entries in Cyrl citing linguistic reference works in Cyrl, our templates and CSS rely on that being declared as a script of that language so they know to ask for transliteration, and to call on the right fonts for displaying it); and (respectively) where one wiki treats Uralic and Finno-Ugric as different (maybe a WP would), and another treats them as the same (cf Tibeto-Burman vs Sino-Tibetan, etc), or where one wiki wants every node in a family tree represented, while another wants pragmatic levels of categorization, not to ghettoize languages into a dozen nested levels of families. You would also need parameters for when one wiki considers several ISO or non-ISO coded lects to be distinct, but another wiki considers them one language (e.g., Serbian vs Croatian vs Serbo-Croatian, Rhine Franconian vs Central Franconian vs Kölsch, European French vs Cajun French, Boubonnais-Berrichon vs Bourbonnais and separately Berrichon etc), as well as the basic capacity to handle lects which lack ISO codes. You would need, in effect, to duplicate everything we currently do here, but on another site, where the people who maintain language data on this site would need to have the full editing rights to keep it up to date there, or bother Wikidata editors about hundreds of things a month — see how many distinct codes I've changed in Module:languages's submodules recently — or, more likely, have things go unupdated. And, as CodeCat notes, fetching the data from Wikidata would have to be as fast as fetching it from our local modules, unless you were going to make the existing problems large entries have (which seem to be due to the use of many complex auto-transliteration modules) worse. I continue to regard this fixation on outsourcing everything, despite the lack of benefits, as foolish; language data is so central to each wiki that it makes sense to do it locally, at least on a wiki with as many active technically- and linguistically-adept editors as en.Wikt. - -sche(discuss)18:10, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm curious as to whether using Wikidata would actually be faster than our local language modules. Is there any way to measure that? Currently, a template replacing "mhz"→"Austronesian Mor" would have to transclude the entirety of Module:languages/data3/m. With Wikidata, it would only have to access a single property (language name, or en.wikt language name) of d:Q2122792. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:03, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
That makes me wonder: can we have per-wiki Wikidatas? We don't want to outsource all this data, but the infrastructure of Wikidata could still be beneficial (whether in terms of speed remains to be seen) if it could be kept locally. —CodeCat20:19, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
It's important that d:Q42365 (the Wikidata item for "Old English") already has statementsidentifiers like "Quora topic ID" ("Old-English") and "Encyclopædia Britannica Online ID" ("topic/Old-English-language"), so using Wikidata to contain information about multiple sites seems the normal thing to do, it's not an earth-shattering new idea. So I think Wikidata might as well have "English Wiktionary name" (or "English Wiktionary ID") for all languages, it would simply fit the current system. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:26, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps, but what about my idea of having some kind of Wikidata local to en.wiktionary alone? —CodeCat20:41, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Sounds to me that what we need is actually WikiMetadata: a database of controlled vocabularies (and even ontologies) used by one Wiktionary to store and serve all linguistic descriptions, be it languages or parts of speech or scripts. No actual "data", only edited by recognized Wiktionarians, cached for fast Lua access, etc. — Dakdada11:22, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
More and more I think the idea of a local Wikibase installation might be the better course. While I like the idea of sharing as much data as possible across Wiktionaries, I am afraid that the consensus to get there is not likely to arise any time soon. If we start with a local database we can get all of the benefits of a relational database to work with while eliminating the concerns of numerous individuals. - DaveRoss17:55, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello,
Thanks for bringing this interesting issue. I'll try to provide a general answer, feel free to ping me if I forgot something.
I'm not sure that a "English Wiktionary name" property would be accepted through the community process on Wikidata. Of course I can't answer on behalf of the editors. In order to get the languages names from Wikidata, maybe it would be more efficient to first improve Wikidata (we are aware that a lot of items about languages are missing), fix the labels if necessary (in collaboration with the Wikidata editors), and finally improve your module so you can use data from Wikidata, but also, in the cases where Wikidata doesn't fit to your naming rules, use your own local labels.
About having part of the data protected: I'm pretty sure this will be rejected by the community, since Wikidata, as the other Wikimedia projects, has the free and direct editing in its basic rules. We don't allow any editor, or external organization, to have specific rights on the data, and we try to solve the potential issues with discussions, source-based informations. I'm sure we can solve this as well whithin both communities.
About having a local database: it is technically possible that you install your own instance of Wikibase, the free software that powers Wikidata. However, our goal here is to share knowledge whithin the Wikimedia projects as much as possible, and try to have less informations split into silos, that's why we can't support this idea.
Now I understand better your concerns about languages, I have the feeling that this is not the best topic to start experimenting with Wikidata and the arbitrary access. These templates are used on almost all the pages of the main namespace. It would be wise to start with something with a smaller scale of change. Also, this topic appears quite controversial sometimes. I agree that we should find solutions together, but for a start, I would suggest something else.
I had a look at the citations namespace, for example this one, and noticed that you're generally including with the quote, the name of the work, its author, and date of publication. These informations could be very easily integrated from Wikidata. Instead of entering manually "1843 — Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol", you could build a small module that needs only the ID of the work (Q62879) to display automatically the title, author, year of publication, and even more informations. This seems a nice way to start experimenting with arbitrary access. What do you think? Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 13:57, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
@Lea Lacroix (WMDE): Thanks for your reply. I understand. I agree with the citation idea, I've been thinking that it's a great idea to use Wikidata to fetch that information (and of course help to build Wikidata by adding data about more books when needed). --Daniel Carrero (talk) 02:05, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
About the local database: the idea is that this would not be a database of shareable data, but of metadata. This is very different. Also those metadata are already "split into silos" (in Lua modules), and for good reasons: they are community specific. — Dakdada11:27, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
Request to add a new language code "rya" for rGyalrong a.k.a. Jiarong
I'm travelling in rGyalrong speaking areas of Sichuan right now. Danba county and now Kangding, both in Garze (Ganzi).
rGyalrong people identify as Tibetan and are classified as Tibetan by the Chinese government. But there language is more closely related to the Qiang language than to Tibetan. (The Qiang don't idenity as Tibetan and are classified separately by the Chinese government.)
There is an ISO code 'jya'
rGyalrong is apparently very important in reconstructions of Old Chinese as it's considered to be a very conservative member of the Sino-Tibetan family.
Note that it's considered a group of languages (or dialects?) but a proposal to split it into individual language codes was rejected in 2011. This can be handled with labels and in any case I believe none have written forms so we'd have to use either IPA or whatever conventional orthography is used by linguists. One main linguist is known for the study of all these languages so my guess is there's a unified conventional orthography.
-sche split the code "jya" last year into Situ (sometimes called Eastern rGyalrong) (sit-sit?), Japhug (sit-jap?), Tshobdun (Caodeng, Sidaba) (sit-tsh), Zbu (Rdzong'bur, Showu, Sidaba) (sit-zbu). DTLHS (talk) 04:24, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
If you can obtain more data on how different or similar the lects are, perhaps especially when written, that will be very helpful. The limited data I found on the lects suggested they were not mutually intelligible; even the Ethnologue page says "Dialects are likely three separate mutually unintelligible languages" with low similarity. Guiillaume Jacques says "Rgyalrong comprises at least four mutually unintelligible languages: Japhug, Tshobdun, Zbu, and Situ." That's why I proposed the split DTLHS links to, and (with no feedback for over a month) implemented it. - -sche(discuss)05:58, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback! None of them are regularly written though I read that Situ had an orthography created before 1950 I think. I haven't found any info on that yet so I guess it's something made up by linguists and/or missionaries. Situ is also by far the most spoken. It's also the one spoken in both Danba and Kangding, so it's the one I'm interested it.
I've been gathering some comparisons of the languages' pronouns, conjugation patterns and other words at User:-sche/Gyalrong. The last decade or two of literature seems to be in agreement that the lects are mutually unintelligible. The only user I can think of who hasn't commented but might know about these languages is @Wyang. - -sche(discuss)22:59, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
@-sche I'm not an expert in Rgyalrong either, and only have a physical copy of the 2002 Chinese-Rgyalrong dictionary (in the Situ dialect). The western expert on Rgyalrong is definitely Dr. Guillaume Jacques, who also used to have an account and was an admin on the Chinese Wikipedia: w:zh:User:向柏霖, so it may be a wise idea to contact him re: the organisation of the varieties of Rgyalrong on Wiktionary. Dr. Jacques wrote the 472-page 《嘉绒语研究》 (Jiarongyu yanjiu, “A study on the Rgyalrong language”), which divided Rgyalrong into the four mutually unintelligible dialects above. I also vaguely remember there was a Rgyalrong-Chinese-French dictionary for the Japhug dialect circulating online, which may be handy. Wyang (talk) 08:16, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Flag semaphore
I created three flag semaphore entries. Let me know if they look OK and if they should be kept. I also asked SemperBlotto (User talk:SemperBlotto#Flag semaphore).
@Daniel Carrero: Thanks for this. With Braille, Morse Code, and semaphore, I think that covers most unusual encodings for the Latin alphabet other than fingerspelling and shorthand. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯16:56, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
@Backinstadiums: I knew that tactical signing was a thing but not that there was a way to encode it in print. It seems like this is a pictorial chart and not a way to record it that we can use. And tactile signing is not a language itself but another encoding. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯15:31, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, looks good to me. Ⅱ (single codepoint) and II (two instances of "I") are the same thing, even though there's a distinction at some level which is meaningful to computers. For the same reason, I had redirected say, ❗ to !. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 17:00, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Ok, I won't revert anymore. It's a kind of instinct when you see an IP user doing wholesale deletion of stuff, you think something's fishy. —CodeCat17:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
It's very controversial to adopt Wikidata for anything new that's specific to Wiktionary, but is there any data currently on Wikidata that we can already make use of? Data about species comes to mind. @DCDuring, what do you think? —CodeCat17:03, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
The place name thing is interesting. We might be able to modify {{place}} to make use of it. However, we'd presumably need some way to tell, within an entry, "use this Wikidata item". Would that mean that {{place}} would take a parameter to specify the Wikidata item code (Q...)? —CodeCat17:10, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I think we should think about if we can avoid using numeric codes directly in entries, if that's possible. DTLHS (talk) 17:13, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I suggest using a combination of numerical codes and hidden text comments that don't affect the entry. d:Q90 (Paris, France) d:Q79917 (Paris, Arkansas) could work like in the table below. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 17:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Code
Result
# {{Wikidata place|Q90|capital of France... this is just a comment I can say anything here}}
# {{Wikidata place|Q79917|city of Arkansas... this is the same}}
Bleh. If we're going to include comments, can we not put them in actual wikitext comments instead of a pointless template parameter? —CodeCat17:37, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I think I would be happy enough without any comments at all, just using the 1st parameter for the number code and that's it.
I like the idea of using comments since it gives an assurance that the wikidata item is actually the intended target- otherwise someone could add an incorrect number and there would be no way to tell what they meant or if it was wrong. DTLHS (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
The data itself might help. The module could check (somehow) if the item is in fact a city, town, river or some other kind of geographical thing. If it's not, then it could throw an error. —CodeCat17:48, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Two checks: 1) check if the item is a type of geographical location (presumably needed for description and categorization purposes, and a template called {{Wikidata place}} should be able to return a module error otherwise); 2) compare the current entry title with the accepted titles in the Wikidata item. When "Q90" and "Q79917" are used in the entry Paris, the module should be able to check if "Paris" is an acceptable name for both items as per Wikidata. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 17:57, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
DutchParijs is already available in the list of names for d:Q90 in all languages. This reminds me, {{Wikidata place}} should be able to know what is the current language section, so in that Dutch entry the proposed syntax should actually be {{Wikidata place|nl|Q90|capital of France}} (and "en" in English entries, of course). --Daniel Carrero (talk) 18:06, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
That works, but what if the name isn't listed? Should we require the name in language X to be present in Wikidata before we allow the use of the template for X? Adding a tracking category ("hey, this name isn't in Wikidata yet, someone go add it!") would be much more helpful than a straight error. —CodeCat18:10, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
A top-level category for stuff to be added to Wikidata in a particular language would also be good. Since you were involved in renaming all the request categories, I'll leave the naming to you. :) —CodeCat18:17, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Alright! Proposed category tree (which may be changed/discussed):
(probably more Wikidata categories for things other than place names)
If we have template tracking categories as discussed here, I believe we don't actually need those template comments. Sure, it would be wrong to set up a place name definition with the number d:Q10943 because it means "cheese", but the template should be able to recognize that automatically. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 18:36, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I and other people in the request category vote seemed to support the following notion: a request category is when you manually request something, like {{rfe}}. In the Wikidata categories above, the entries would get automatically categorized whenever something looks wrong. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:18, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Ok. But to call it an error is a bit extreme. It's just a missing translation, a common symptom of a project that is always a work in progress. —CodeCat19:20, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't like this since it gets into the entire problem of representing lexicographic data in wikidata which they are really not set up to do. Place names have synonyms, obsolete forms, dialectal forms, etc. DTLHS (talk) 18:18, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
This is purely to supplement the current {{place}} template. This template creates definitions based on the parameters you give it and then also categorises appropriately. What would change in a Wikidata implementation is that these parameters would be fetched from Wikidata (e.g. "is a city", "capital of France") rather than being provided as parameters. This isn't lexicographical data in my understanding of the word. —CodeCat18:22, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
And that follows from the fact that both uses of the {{Wikidata place}} template, one on Paris and one on Parijs, would use the same Wikidata item code. This information is therefore not stored on Wikidata at all. Even if there were no Wikidata and {{Wikidata place}} were an empty template, the mere fact that they both had Q90 as a parameter would establish them as synonyms. —CodeCat18:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
It's important that the "city of France" sense in DutchParijs will need to access the English translation somehow. Here's two ways to accomplish that: using Wikidata or using a parameter. See table. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:04, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Code
Result
# {{Wikidata place|nl|Q90}} <!-- using Wikidata -->
# {{Wikidata place|nl|Q90|Paris}} <!-- using a template parameter -->
Paris(city in Île-de-France, France and the capital and most populous city of France)
The current iteration of {{place}} uses t1= for that purpose. I think we should keep using a parameter, again to minimise our dependence on Wikidata for lexicographical things. —CodeCat19:07, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
That is an option, but it seems Wikidata is still an option too because it will get "morpheme" data items designed specifically for lexicographical data (Wikidata:Wiktionary).
Maybe the best course of action is just keep using the parameter as you said since it's reliable and it works. But we can change our minds later and delete that parameter from all entries if the morpheme thing works out. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:11, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of how hesitant many people here are about offloading lexicographical data to Wikidata. But if we limit ourselves to the existing data already out there, such as topography in the case of {{place}}, then I don't think it would be as much of an issue. —CodeCat19:14, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
In my role as articulate fish at a convention of ichthyologists, here's my initial view of how Wikidata might help with Translingual taxonomic entries.
How about a dynamic map for place names? See ca:Kenya. It fact it does not use currently Wikidata but OpenStreetMap with Wikidata identifier. With Wikidata access it could fetch coordinates to add a point in the OSM map, for example for cities. --Vriullop (talk) 12:20, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata might be a desirable way for me to speed insertion of "References" to external sites. I have seen such links on Commons, en.WP, and Wikispecies. Wikidata seems to have already accumulated such information from multiple projects, though I haven't yet found which ones. If that were better than what I could find on eg, Rosa at NCBI, then it would marginally speed things up. If I could extract the links in a single step by, say, a substed template (or something more sophisticated), that would save a more meaningful amount of time. I am skeptical about the response time of accessing such links through Wikidata each time an entry is loaded.
Something similar might apply with respect to references at vernacular names, though such references are, IMO, not so useful for such entries.
You might think that the hierarchical taxon/clade structure would be a perfect use of Wikidata, but I believe that relying on such a structure is not helpful in definitions. It seems better to me to define species, genera, tribes, and sections with reference to the family, not matter what intermediate ranked taxa or clades may be used by one or more sites. Non-expert users don't seem to have much familiarity with the various super-, sub-, infra- ranks of phylas, classes, orders, families, and species, let alone tribes, sections, and divisions. DCDuring (talk) 19:49, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
That's the idea, but . See ] for a not uncommon approach to handling missing pages at external databases: providing a link to a page for a higher-ranked taxon. I suppose that could be managed by using a separate template for each higher-ranked taxon selected for inclusion, but I'd want to be able to exclude from the higher-taxon list of links those databases that had a more specific link. In principle there could be many such separate templates for a given taxon, though very few taxa would need more than three. DCDuring (talk) 14:21, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I understand. d:Q10404513 has 3 identifiers linking to 3 databases. Are these links ok? Anyway you must provide always the Wikidata page to fetch. Either this one or the higher-ranked. --Vriullop (talk) 14:44, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata items as senseids
Currently, the template {{senseid}} is used to disambiguate specific senses and allow us to link to them from elsewhere. Senseids are just text, they can be anything at all as long as it's unique. This means it's possible to use the codes for Wikidata items as senseids too. For example, we could use {{senseid|en|Q90}} on the first sense of Paris. This wouldn't actually do anything, other than tell editors that this sense refers to the thing whose Wikidata code is Q90. {{senseid}} would not be modified at all for this purpose, it would not access Wikidata. But it does add information to Wiktionary entries, by establishing a conceptual link between senses and Wikidata items.
Such links could be used for future things that we currently haven't thought of. A possibility that comes to mind is Wikipedia links. If {{senseid}} detects that its parameter is a Wikidata item code (Q followed by numbers), then it could be modified in the future to query that item for its en.wikipedia article name. {{wikipedia}} or some similar interproject link could then automatically be displayed next to certain senses, whenever {{senseid}} is given a Wikidata item as a parameter.
For those of us hesitant to offload data onto Wikidata, please notice that this change would change nothing at all on Wikidata's end. The data added by this would be entirely on en.wiktionary, in the form of a wikitext template call, so we have full control. No data would be added to Wikidata, we'd merely be using what's already there. —CodeCat18:47, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I've added Wikidata senseids to Paris (English only) to demonstrate what I mean. Wikidata isn't actually enabled yet on Wiktionary, so these do literally nothing other than provide a senseid anchor on the page. —CodeCat11:54, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Two comments: 1) doing this in large scale would probably require a vote, 2) I guess this idea should work 100% well for place names, but we can't use Wikidata items as senseids for all kinds of Wiktionary definitions. Wikidata probably doesn't have separate items for each sense of the verbs do, have, go, be... I guess the future Wikidata "morpheme" thing should work, but apparently the database would need to be built from scratch. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:03, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, such senseids would probably be limited to nouns only, as Wikidata doesn't currently have items about verbal actions. The important thing to keep in mind is that the Wikidata items are about the referents of words, not the words themselves. The words would have their own items, if we get around to that. This does create some issues that I foresee. The colour green has Wikidata item d:Q3133. But in our entry green, we have not only a noun referring to this colour, but also an adjective. Since senseids must be unique within a single language section, we can't give both of them {{senseid|en|Q3133}}. So which one do we put it on? —CodeCat12:10, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Using Wikidata senseids would probably work well, not only for place names but also for a lot of proper nouns. For common nouns, adjectives, verbs and everything else, I don't have actual numbers, but at first sight I think it would fail more often than not. d:Q9465 is "ethics", so would we use it which sense of ethics and/or ethical, if any? d:Q7242 is "beauty", and our entry beauty has multiple related senses too. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:23, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
We could just add disambiguators to the ids. They are still just strings, after all. So {{senseid|en|Q3133-noun}} for the noun green would work too. As long as the Wikidata id can still be parsed out, it should be fine. As for ethical, I think the issue here is that ethics is a field of study, which the adjective doesn't really have much to do with. If it did indeed refer to the same thing as ethics, I see no reason not to include the Wikidata id there too. —CodeCat12:52, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm fine with adding disambiguators to the ids, with hope that later in the future we can replace all that stuff by the Wikidata "morpheme" thing. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 12:56, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
I've added a tracking template, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:tracking/senseid/Wikidata, to {{senseid}} whenever a Wikidata id is used as a senseid. This allows us to keep track of them for the time being. The process of adding all these senseids to entries will be a long one. I've thought of a possible way to speed it up, though, once Wikidata is enabled. Module:headword can be modified so that it checks if a Wikidata label exists with the same name as the current page. If so, it could track the page. This would give us a list of all pages that could probably have a Wikidata senseid added to them. —CodeCat19:01, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Nice work! We should use senseid / senselinks more often, but as you said they are quite tedious to add at the moment. A gadget could also be an option, with a Wikidata suggest-style dropdown. – Jberkel (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
User:Barytonesis recently created a template {{deverbative}}. This is a good idea but I think it's wrongly named and should be {{deverbal}}. Both terms are synonyms but "deverbal" is much more common (as well as shorter and easier to type) — about 9x as many hits in Google, plus my spelling checker actually marks "deverbative" (but not "deverbal") as a mistake, plus Wikipedia has entries for Deverbal noun and Deverbal adjective but no entries for deverbative anything, not even redirects. The template puts these terms under the category "Foo deverbatives" (none of which have been created yet, and should not be created at all probably). I think instead they should go under "Foo deverbal nouns" or "Foo deverbal adjectives"; this requires an optional pos= parameter (which should default to "noun"). There are under 50 entries currently using this template and all appear to be nouns. I can easily use a bot to rename the template uses. Any objections? If not I will go ahead and make the changes. Benwing2 (talk) 23:37, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I hereby nominate User:Dan Polansky for administrator on the English Wiktionary, with the one condition that Dan will be disallowed from using the block tool. For some context, quoting Dan himself:
"For context, my admin vote failed in August 2016.
Note that the block tool is one of power over other people, and should not be awarded to people who we cannot trust, no matter how good editors they are. The use of the block tool does not require consensus, and blocks are rarely challenged. Multiple of current admins are not qualified to use the block tool, in my view. The deletion tool can be abused to hide trails of conversation; it was used in this way by an English Wiktionary admin who meanwhile ceased editing."
I believe Dan would be able to delete pages in accordance to the rules and such, and seems to have a need for such. Still not sure about the block tool, but I'm throwing this condition in because it puts some previous opposers at ease a bit. Honestly, a lot of users may most of all fear that Dan may abuse the block tool. I think Dan is a great editor, though he may be rude sometimes and is notorious for such, so the admin tools of page deletion at the very least should be awarded to him. IMO, the admin tools are not supposed to be awarded to people because they're "nice" (and I'm not necessarily saying Dan is not nice), but because it would be useful for them to have to make even more constructive contributions, for instance, by fighting obvious vandalism, deleting pages in accordance to RFV and RFD, etc.
I am somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that someone be given user rights that they are then prohibited from using. Either they should have them with the trust of the community to use them appropriately, or not have them. If there are, as Dan suggests, multiple users who should not have the blocking tools but should be able to delete (and protect?) pages, we could always create another user group with just the rights which are applicable. We could, for instance, give folks in the "template editor" group delete rights, or create a "deleters" group with just the rights to delete and restore. It is even possible to have delete rights without the ability to see deleted revisions, etc. I don't know if the complication is worth the extra effort, but to me it is preferable to the alternative. - DaveRoss19:04, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Yesterday, I went to met my local colleagues, contributors of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons, Wikidata, OpenStreetMaps or OpenFoodFacts. We met several times this year, to discuss about contribution and drink beers. Is there some contributors here that do the same in their local groups? If yes, do you also contribute on Wikipedia and chat about this project or do you give news from Wiktionary to Wikipedians. It's not a sociological inquiry, it's just curiosity. I have no idea how local groups works out of France. Noé10:06, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I think that the concentration of francophone Wikimedians in a relatively small, easily accessible area (France) is quite different from the anglophone community. I just recently met another Wiktionarian and would be happy to meet more, but it isn't likely to happen often. I also have plans to meet some Wikipedians later this year and maybe speak a bit about Wiktionary, although I honestly don't know what I'd tell them. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds17:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I think it's silly that this is protected against non-admins. Surely non-admins also have important news to announce? —CodeCat19:27, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Hmm, the language should probably be added to all the templates on Wikisaurus:కోతి that display Telugu text, so that it can be properly tagged. And the header should have a display title with the Telugu part appropriately script-tagged, as is done by Module:headword for entries in certain scripts. — Eru·tuon18:44, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
Canadian spelling: how to tag entries when both UK and US spellings are accepted
I see this has been discussed in the past but I'm not sure how to proceed. What I would like to do is tag gynecology and gynaecology as both being acceptable spellings in Canada (Royal societies tend to use the UK spelling, national and regional medical associations tend to use the US spelling, universities are mixed even in department names). I made a try at it using colour and color as examples:
{{tcx|Commonwealth spelling|Canada|lang=en}} and {{tcx|American|Canada|lang=en}} in the "Noun" headword
and {{qualifier|Commonwealth|Canada}} etc. in the "Alternative form" sections.
But with deprecated templates and such I'm not sure if I'm doing this correctly. Can anyone give me some pointers? Thanks! Facts707 (talk) 08:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
The label template for headwords is {{term-label}}, for definitions {{label}}. The template for Alternative forms sections is {{alter}}; see the template page for more information. — Eru·tuon17:06, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
Why are we putting links to Wikipedia in reference sections?
This looks like something that could be fixed by bot in a number of entries. If a "References" section only contains instances of {{pedia}}, rename the section to "Further reading". --Daniel Carrero (talk) 21:35, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
I know. What you said sounded like a rhetorical question, though. It seems there's already consensus not to put links to Wikipedia in reference sections. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 21:42, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
I am not the first to put Wikipedia under refs, further reading or whatever. Will up the top do, or not at all? I still regard Wikipedia as a reference though, not as further reading. DonnanZ (talk) 22:10, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
So I need to have both "References", increasingly common is taxon entries, and "Further readings" headings when neither is accurate with respect to links to external databases, Commons, and Wikispecies? I specifically said that I thought "References" was an adequate heading for including Wikipedia as well as the others in a recent discussion in which there were numerous participants.
Over time the same type of content appeared under no less than four different headings. First, "See also", which was deemed inappropriate, with "External links" being mandated by vote. Now "References" and "Further reading" are available, but one of those is also to be forbidden? This seems like pointless makework in service of some silly, content-killing uniformity. DCDuring (talk) 23:13, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
The thing with using Wikipedia as a "reference" is that an editor could reference themselves, so it's better to use published, unchanging sources. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:18, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
I understand the issue about mislabelling wikis as references and wish that there were a better title. We really should have a single vague all-inclusive name for these things. IMO "Sources" would do the job. It is wonderfully ambiguous (of what? for whom? of what authoritative status?). DCDuring (talk) 00:09, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree with using "Sources" as a single vague all-inclusive name. I see the problem you have with the current set-up is that it does not seem to work well for links to databases and images. I agree with the images thing, at least, and would accept using some heading for databases even though I don't think is strictly necessary (just my opinion). But the current set-up seems to work well for basically everything else. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 00:38, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
We also have the problem of too many headers. We may be able to have every conceivable entry because we have "no space constraints", but we do have space constraints to the extent that we remain interested in retaining human individual users. We already suffer because we use headers to structure our entries and retain oversized fonts for them. Right now many entries should have both "References" and "Further reading", typically with just one or two lines for each. Hiding the content by default might be a solution, if one could hide all of the references or all of the further reading and databases. DCDuring (talk) 00:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
In the discussion linked above, I asked if the concept of Germans as a collective ethnic group is compatible with our entry German, which has one sense referring to a single individual of that group. We group singular and plural into one lemma, so in principle the same lemma can refer to one German or many, depending on which inflection you choose (and indeed, in some languages, there isn't even an inflectional difference). However, the idea of many individual Germans is still not quite the same as all Germans collectively: "the Germans" in our understanding can refer to this entire group, but grammatically it's just multiple Germans with nothing to indicate that it refers to all Germans as opposed to merely multiple Germans. Does this merit a separate sense, marked with {{lb|en|in the plural}}, referring to "all Germans, Germans as a group collectively"? If not, why would it not? It is conceivable that a language has distinct terms for multiple Germans contrasting with the collection of all Germans, but whether this occurs in practice I don't know. If there are examples of this, it would be evidence that the concepts are indeed separate. —CodeCat19:32, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
There is difference between the use of Germans with and without the definite article. Without the definite article you have sentences like "Germans drink a lot of beer", which is grammatically the same as "trees absorb a lot of sunlight". With the definite article you have "the Germans have elected a new chancellor", which is grammatically the same as "the trees have started changing color". In both of those cases I'm speaking about Germans as a whole and trees as a whole (which is not quite the same as "all Germans" or "all tree"). The case without the definite article can apply to just about any countable noun. The case with the definite article is more restricted (I'm not quite sure what the criteria are). So I really don't think we need a separate sense line for this. --WikiTiki8920:11, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
As WikiTiki says, this is a general phenomenon, and probably does not merit a separate "in the plural" sense... but then, some entries where a homograph of the singular can be used as a proper noun to refer to the group collectively do indicate that, e.g. Abenaki! I don't know if that should be changed. Is there a difference (besides ethnicity) between "five Abenaki set out; later, the Abenaki reached their destination", "she settled among the Abenaki" and "the Abenaki considered issuing their own passports" vs "five Germans set out; later, the Germans reached their destination", "she settled among the Germans" and "the Germans considered issuing their own passports"? Hmm...! Compare also Chinese.
The fact that some language may have a distinction (and some constructed language, or even some computer 'language'/framework like is used on Wikidata, probably does have a distinction) does not mean that any of the English words, whether "Germans" or "trees", have separate senses. Some languages may distinguish living animals from dead ones, but English has just one sense of chum salmon, not two for "a living dog salmon" and "a dead dog salmon".
That some words in some languages do not match 1-to-1 to other words in other languages (while other words do) has been brought up before in the context of attempts to migrate Wiktionary sense information to Wikidata.
If Wikidata is ever to be comprehensive, it might well need an "instance of" entry for instances of Q42884.
I hear the "the Abenaki" in exactly the same way as the "the Germans". The tangible evidence is that "the Abenaki" still has plural agreement. --WikiTiki8921:19, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
See also links
It seems that it is common practice to restrict links in the "See also" section to the same language as the entry. However this is not explicitly mentioned in WT:EL. Could it be added to better reflect reality/practice? – Jberkel (talk) 21:57, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Because nobody has opened one for other languages, and Scots should be regarded as a dialect rather than a language. To quote Oxford: " The form of English used in Scotland." DonnanZ (talk) 16:01, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
There's a difference between Scottish English and Scots, though. Also, they treat Middle English as English, too, I think. (Do they treat Yola as English?) - -sche(discuss)16:06, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't think links to foreign-language entries should be entirely banned; they are sometimes useful, for example if there is no English word for something, but two or a few languages have a word for it that could be interlinked. (There are those who prefer to create SOP translations targets in such cases, but that gets harder to justify the fewer and more obscure the languages with words for the thing are.) Some of the information could perhaps be shoehorned into etymology sections (even for unrelated words, one could say "compare/contrast how the X language term for the same thing, Y, is formed"), but that seems suboptimal. - -sche(discuss)16:06, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Categories English_N-syllable_words
This may not be the most important issue in the World, but currently open compounds seem to be listed in the categories English_N-syllable_words, see for example this link. I'm not convinced that open compounds such as extravehicular activity or venire facias de novo should belong to these categories. At least in sensu stricto they are not words but dictionary entries. --Hekaheka (talk) 08:48, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
We may or may not be able to change. I'm pointing out that this category is not the only instance of the issue. Equinox◑11:30, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I'd have no objection if we changed words to entries or terms in all such categories. In fact, I've suggested this before at some other forum. — SMUconlaw (talk) 13:58, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
I see no point in a category that lists N-syllable phrases. I could understand words. But then, on the other hand, I could just ignore the part that I find useless. --Hekaheka (talk) 14:21, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Is it possible to provide a consistent heading, so that when I'm copying the hanja for each sino-Korean number, I can just change the hangul in the URL and get directly to the section I want? Alternatively, making both #Number and #Numeral link to the same place would work.
I've created the category derivational suffixes, and moved noun-forming suffixes, verb-forming suffixes, adjective-forming suffixes, and adverb-forming suffixes to be inside that category, rather than in the main category suffixes. This can be undone if editors disagree. — Eru·tuon17:49, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
@Barytonesis: Yeah, it'll eventually update. Once a module change has been made, the software takes a while to regenerate the pages with the new code, and to change the members of categories. — Eru·tuon19:35, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
2/3 majority
At some point, I'd like to mention explicitly in WT:Voting policy that a vote passes if it reaches a 2/3 majority. Apparently that's the true consensus and everybody knows it (although it's challenged and discussed sometimes), but it doesn't seem to be written as policy yet. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 03:54, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
Strange that it isn't mentioned. Are there any types of votes in which a bare majority would be enough? — Eru·tuon04:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't think all vote types should have the same criteria. For instance, a 2/3s majority is not sufficient for CheckUser (due to overriding policy) and I don't think it is sufficient for other user rights. For policies etc. I think that it is a good measure, for user rights I think it is low. Likewise, for removal of user rights I think 2/3s is high. Here is a previous discussion on the matter (thanks Dan). I fully support documenting what we consider a pass or fail (perhaps with a third range for no-consensus). - DaveRoss12:36, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm fine with having 2/3 majority for both addition and removal of user rights like most kinds of votes. But I think I can see the case for doing something different. Are there any specific suggestions? Maybe 3/4 majority for addition of rights and bare majority for removal of rights? --Daniel Carrero (talk) 02:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Latin demonym capitalization
Some Latin demonyms (like Germānus, Carthāginiensis or Celta) are capitalized, while others (like romānus or graecus) are not.
What is the correct way to handle these demonyms? All capitalized? None capitalized? One of the two, with the other as an alternative spelling form?
The dictionary I use capitalizes them all, but I'm not sure how these things are done around here.
I would really appreciate any information about this. –– GianWiki (talk) 22:57, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
@Angr I wonder, what is your motivation for this? Even Italian, Spanish or Romanian demonyms are lower case. If I am not mistaken, you wanted some Sanskrit terms capitalised as well? --Anatoli T.(обсудить/вклад)01:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
@Atitarev: My motivation is that that's the way I'm used to seeing it done in modern editions of Latin texts. I've always seen the first sentence of De Bello Gallico written "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur." As for Sanskrit, I don't recall ever endorsing capitalized terms at all; we write Sanskrit in Devanagari anyway. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
@GianWiki: There's been some disagreement on this topic in the past, particularly in reference to days of the week and months. The Romans only had capitals, so it is an editorial choice on our part (as with the alternations of u ~ v, i ~ j, and inclusion of macra and diaereses). I favor capitalization though I concede we maybe should leave soft redirects from the lowercase entries. —JohnC501:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
@JohnC5: Capitalization with soft redirects from the lowercase entries (unless they have non-demonym meanings: germānus(“pertaining to brothers or sisters”) vs. Germānus(“Germanic”)) sounds like the best option to me – GianWiki (talk) 13:43, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
I wonder, do Latin dictionaries written in languages that do not capitalize adjectives, like German, French, and Spanish, follow the rules of the language and not capitalize Latin adjectives? — Eru·tuon01:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Capitalisation of demonyms is a borrowing from modern English. It has infected even transliterations of languages, which do not have the distinction between lower and upper case letters. Oppose. --Anatoli T.(обсудить/вклад)01:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I have not capitalised any Middle Dutch words because they weren't in the original manuscript. I think the same practice should be applied to Latin and other old languages. If we go as far to include Gothic in its original script, then we should also write lowercase Old English. —CodeCat14:04, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree, although the average reader is most likely to come across Latin in a modernized version, meanng that they are most likely to see and look up the capitalized form. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:59, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
It wasn't the case when I had Latin classes in the former USSR because Russian has different capitalisation rules. I wouldn't be surprised if Latin citations in an Italian or Spanish text followed the capitalisation of these languages.--Anatoli T.(обсудить/вклад)08:21, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
The Latin works I've come across in citing the various Latin country names that were RFVed have capitalized demonyms and place names, so I support doing that just like we normalize consonantal u to v. - -sche(discuss)23:10, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Were these citation in English or German works? It's OK to normalize consonantal u to v but the capitalisation normalisation is going too far, IMO. Latin is apparently closer to the modern Roman languages than English and the majority, including Italian, don't capitalise demonyms. It's not normalisation but anglicisation. --Anatoli T.(обсудить/вклад)03:15, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
@Atitarev: As Vriullop and I commented above, demonyms are capitalized in Latin also in works published in France and Spain. It's not just conforming to English- and German-speakers' expectations. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:22, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
I think it's fine, unless you think there are too many possible derived terms and it would make the page too big. DTLHS (talk) 13:50, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
If there's an overabundance of place names in derived terms, they can be placed in a separate section. I have already done that somewhere. DonnanZ (talk) 14:31, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
One day, I split disease#Derived terms into the current three collapsible boxes. (obviously it's a long list of diseases, not of proper nouns; this is just an idea about how to handle long lists of derived terms) --Daniel Carrero (talk) 14:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
Is "compounded" a subset of "derived"? Maybe it would be a good idea to keep whichever "apple" category is the most inclusive one. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 15:28, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
Why do we need a category for something that will rarely be used and is most likely to be used from the entry itself, eg for apple. The following special search would provide what is needed https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?search=intitle%3A"apple"&title=Special:Search DCDuring (talk) 15:57, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
If we are talking about open compounds, a template containing the above code would generate a list on demand. Compounds spelled solid would require something different. Note that we already have 244 entries that include the word apple with the headword spelled open, including hyphenated forms. DCDuring (talk) 02:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree that they should be listed in theory; if we make an exception, it is only for the sake of page size and navigation. Equinox◑14:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
I think proper nouns should be included in Derived terms lists, but perhaps the list could be split somehow into "compounds derived from x" and something else. — Eru·tuon00:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I think I'd prefer a solution similar to this:
If the desire is to exclude or to separate placenames or proper nouns, let's just spell that out in the category titles or 'headers' of the separate tables: "terms derived from 'town'" vs "placenames derived from 'town'". To distinguish "compounds" from "derived terms" is to do something else entirely: "Sandtown" (and lots of other "-town"s) is as much a compound with "town" as "townhouse", so both belong in the same category if the categories are based on compounding vs other derivation. - -sche(discuss)04:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
As the discussion you link to suggests, "nah" seems to be a relict of Wiktionary's early history when we often copied the ISO's codes for both macrolanguages and their constituent varieties, both unintentionally (as a result of importing codes en masse) and apparently sometimes intentionally as a result of a lax attitude towards such inconsistencies. But it obviously doesn't make sense to have both the macrolanguage nah and the subvarieties nci, nch, nhn, etc. There is considerable debate over how mutually intelligible the varieties are, with some sources saying there is little to no mutual intelligibility and speakers often cannot understand another variety at all, and other sources saying they are "largely mutual intelligible". - -sche(discuss)02:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Let's assume for a second that these symbols are unwanted. In that case, we would probably be able to delete all or most of the entries listed in these appendices. I think we wouldn't even need RFD/RFV to do it. They are unlikely to be found in running text by default. Except the emoticons, but they are mostly found on the internet (which we mostly don't accept for attestation purposes, as you know) as opposed to books. (That said, I added two quotations from a book that uses the domino tile "🁊" in running text.)
On the other hand, let's assume for a second that these symbols are wanted. I would be fine with attesting symbols as symbols -- that is, in drawings, pictures, comics and other contexts, as opposed to only in running text.
Attest map symbols by finding them in durably-archived maps.
Attest technical symbols by finding them in durably-archived technical books or manuals, etc. (I'm thinking ⏸ = pause, ⏻ = power symbol, 🔗 = hyperlink, 🔇 = mute, ⛽ = refueling needed...)
Attest the heart (♥) as a symbol of love by finding it in this context in a durably-archived drawing or something.
I got a quotation for 💡 meaning "idea" from a textbook, but it could easily be found in comics.
Attest computer symbols (like 💾 for "save") attested by finding them in durably-archived computer screenshots, or even consider its actual use in durably-archived software. (That said, I got a quotation for ⭾ meaning "Tab symbol" in running text in a 1989 video game -- "⇆Tab to Move Down to Notes Button". In 📋, I mentioned that Windows 3.1 uses it in lieu of a quotation, but it could equally be from a Windows 3.1 screenshot in a book.)
Accept uses of symbols in durably-archived movies, comics and video games. (I got a few citations for 🛇 meaning "prohibition symbol" from cartoons.)
The last part is true, this is not the job of a dictionary .
Maybe the sense 1 is the only one that matters to us -- we would be a normal dictionary and list words only, not symbols. This is one idea that makes sense, and is the first one I started to discuss in my message above.
Maybe this could be the job of a dictionary of another sense
Google Books has some books called "Dictionary of Symbols" which could be called "not dictionaries" too.
Consider the entry ♥. Do you think we should delete the senses "hearts (on playing cards)", "love", "(video games) a hit point", "(video games) healing" and (Japanese) "An emoticon indicating a smooth and pleasant voice."?
If we kept them, that would not make us a "picture book" as defined in the linked entry. It would simply make us a dictionary that lists meanings for "♥". Which is unusual, I know. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 18:26, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
The "love" sense is important, because it appears as a verb in English syntax ("I ♥ cookies"). The others I am not sure about. The playing-card sense only really says "pictures of hearts are used on playing cards"; so what? A picture of the Grim Reaper/Death appears on a tarot card but that's also a picture. Likewise, the video-game sense isn't a sense of a word: it's just symbology: the heart as an image is generally used to represent life or health. Equinox◑19:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
As I'm sure you know, the entry ♥ has two separate senses for "love" in different languages: the English verb as in "I ♥ cookies", and a general Translingual "love" that is not necessarily a verb. Do you think we should delete the Translingual one? Likewise, ☠ has four Translingual senses: "death", "poison", "pirates" and "toxic". Do you think we should delete them all?
I wish to defend one specific sense we mentioned: I think we should keep ♥ "hearts (on playing cards)", because poker books regularly have sentences like this, using the playing card symbols in running text: "In that situation, you should raise with A♥A♠." --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I also think it's a very, very bad idea for us to take the approach that "anything in Unicode is automatically a dictionary-worthy symbol". Unicode is full of all kinds of rubbish these days. Equinox◑19:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Compatibility relics. Skin colour modifiers for smileys. I know there's lots more crap but I don't want to spend my time hunting it down. Equinox◑20:04, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Some votes (listed at Wiktionary:Character variations) supported redirecting a few compatibility characters to "actual" entries when possible. For example, ㎞ redirects to km (technically this entry was not part of the votes, FWIW).
Skin color modifiers are control characters. They don't have any shape by themselves. I support not having any entries for skin color modifiers. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Sitelinks are enabled on Wikidata for Wiktionary pages (outside main namespace)
Hello,
Short version: Since yesterday, we are able to store the interwiki links of all the Wiktionaries namespaces (except main, citations, user and talk) in Wikidata. This will not break your Wiktionary, but if you want to use all the features, you will have to remove your sitelinks from wikitext and connect your pages to Wikidata.
Important: even if it is technically possible, you should not link Wiktionary main namespace pages from Wikidata. The interwiki links for them are already provided by Cognate.
I tried on Category:English language and it work well. d:Q7923975. Linking pages must be corresponding to the subject as Wikipedia etc. Otherwise, new Q entry must be created such as parts of speech. However, some Wiktionaries do not allow to cleanup (remove) interwiki links. This must be discussed locally. --Octahedron80 (talk) 09:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello, d:Q1860 is used to describe the concept of English language in general. It has, for example, statements like the number of speakers. This is not exactly what we want to describe with d:Q7923975, dedicated to the categories on Wikimedia projects, that's why we use a different item. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 13:01, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I've also noticed this, other non-English wikis often have similar systems. Trying to interlanguage-link between Wiktionaries is complicated and at this point probably pointless due to the lack of a uniform system for the categorization of words across all Wiktionaries. — Kleio (t · c) 16:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
So how do we fix this exactly? Can we just remove the Dutch category from Wikidata manually? What about all the other languages? —CodeCat17:08, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, nl:Categorie:Woorden in het Engels and Category:English lemmas are different in nature (in what they cover) and so they should probably not be linked; there should apparently be separate Wikidata items for "category of all words in English" and "category of all lemmas in English". In general, interwiki links between categories can be handled (not on the technical level of Colgate vs Wikidata, but on the level of "do interwiki links exist?") just like links between main-namespace pages. If nl.Wikt has an entry foobar and we don't, they can't interwiki-link that entry to our wiki, and if we have an entry foo and they don't, we can't link our entry to them, but when both en.Wikt and nl.Wikt have entries for bar, they can be linked. Likewise, there's no page on our wiki for nl:Categorie:Woorden in het Engels to be linked to (unless we regard it as a fit with "Category:English language", which, actually, it seems to be, if it's their highest-level category for English), but other categories can still be linked. - -sche(discuss)17:19, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Part of the confusion seems to be the conflation of several different roles for the categories:
Top-level category for a language.
Contains lemmas.
Contains non-lemmas.
Contains categories for parts of speech.
The Dutch category fulfills all four roles, while we have three separate categories for roles 1-3 while role 4 is combined with role 2. The Italian category fulfills role 1, so it matches our role 1 category, but it also fulfills role 4 which ours does not. The Interlingue category fulfills only role 2, but not 4 like ours does. The Corsican category fulfills roles 1, 2 and 4. —CodeCat17:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
I can confirm that nl:Categorie:Woorden in het Engels is the top-level category for English, that's why it's linked with Category:English language. The highest-level category for a language is always linked with the highest-level language category in other Wiktionaries, even if the subcategories/pages in them differ. The problem of not exactly matching category interwikis was always there; now, the only difference is that the interwikis will be hosted at Wikidata, instead of locally. Pinging User:Malafaya, who has been maintaining category interwikis with his bot (MalafayaBot) and solving category interwiki conflicts for years, in case he wants to share his experience / advice. -- Curious (talk) 22:07, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
@Vriullop Some items related to Wikimedia projects are protected, because they are used a lot and attract vandalism. For these, you can add a message on the talk page, with the links you want to add, and an admin will take care of it.
@Daniel Carrero Thanks for noticing, indeed, this is not supported either by Cognate or Wikidata links now. We're going to investigate on the best way to provide automatic links here.
Theoretically the difference is that semantic loans are single morphemes, like Russianмышь(myšʹ, “mouse”), while calques, such as Latinaccusativus, have more than one morpheme, but this is probably not consistently enforced. Recently I was recategorizingGreekγύρισμα(gýrisma) as a calque, as it consists of two morphemes.
I think it would be much simpler to merge the two categories. I don't see any practical value to the distinction.
No the difference is that in the case of semantic loan in the borrowing language the term already exists and already has some meaning (hence the name 'semantic'). And I think this difference is huge. Yes I agree it is very similar to calques and might as well be a special case but having calques and sem loans in differenct places lets us see what languages enriched what language in terms of new words. --Dixtosa (talk) 04:40, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Ahh, thanks for the explanation. I guess I had misunderstood. That is a more fundamental difference: whether a new word was created or not. — Eru·tuon04:46, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Category names in which "words" should be replaced with "terms"
(An alternative would be to add a |pos=suffix parameter, which would put -oecious in Category:Suffixes suffixed with -ous instead. That may or may not be simpler. The category name does sound a little funny.)
Moving the entries would simply require changing some code in Module:compound. There would be a lot of deletion, moving, and creation of categories. Moving, because some of the categories (see, for instance, Category:English words suffixed with -ious) have text besides the category boilerplate template. Some of that could be done with bots.
I support term everywhere because it has wider meaning than word; it could be suitable for long proper nouns (like countries), proverbs and phrasebook sentences. At the moment, I just use current namings for modules. --Octahedron80 (talk) 10:22, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Well, two things: there should probably be a subcategory for words by syllable count. And what about bound morphemes (prefixes, suffixes, whatever else)? Should they also not be categorized? — Eru·tuon19:50, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me the best solution is to have a category for "terms by syllable count" and within it subcategories for "words by syllable count" and "bound morphemes by syllable count". That way everyone's preferences are accommodated. — Eru·tuon
I think these categories are currently not well delineated. I suppose the firs one is purposed for terms which are only used in a medical context, and not by laymen? --Barytonesis (talk) 14:08, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes; in theory at least, CAT:Anatomy is for technical terms and CAT:Body is for everyday words pertaining to the body, though in practice the distinction is hardly observed. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
I am beginning to accumulate external databases that have vernacular names of taxa for multiple languages other than English and reference templates for them. Before we actually add translations in our usual fashion, I hope we can include translation sections such as the ones in ] and ].
I rarely trust these. They have the same problems that lists of phobias and lists of collective terms do, compounded by the fact that most taxa don't have true vernacular names in the well-known languages- just ones that scientists make up or misapply for completeness. Not to mention that vernacular names often don't match taxa in their distribution: no one in real life uses yam for a boniato, or vice versa, even though they're both Ipomoea batatas. You really have to know the languages and the plants to sort them out with any certainty. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:06, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
At least some people seem to use the names the scientists or bureaucrats prescribe. By the same token, one could wonder about our translations or entries in some languages where the entries are made by non-native speakers. There are lots of redlinks, which makes me worry about their reality as well. At least we wouldn't be endorsing the terms if they are on an external site. DCDuring (talk) 05:00, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I'd be fine with linking to lists like that, as long as we made sure no one started copying them over to Wiktionary itself. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:55, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I'd hope we wouldn't risk copyvio. I'd hope that the external lists might serve as some kind of check on contributions by our less fastidious contributors. But we can't control what folks will do; we may just have to clean up after them as best we can. DCDuring (talk) 07:09, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
@DCDuring: Natures' Window has a beautifully curated list of common reptile names in English, and I think there's German and possible Danish on there somewhere too but the site's navigation is confusing. It does however suffer from the lexicographical problem articulated above of including or inventing common names that aren't so common in the real world, but it's a very nicely put together list all the same. More general sites include: eol.org which collects common names in all languages, iucnredlist.org includes English, Spanish, and French fields, and catalogueoflife.org (many languages). Pengo (talk) 15:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
@Pengo: Thanks for the reminder about these. The hard-to-attest vernacular names are mostly folk names. Others are fish-mongers' names for fish, grocers' for produce, etc. Soon after some entity like the US Dept of Agriculture gives something an 'official' English name there is usage, even if only among a narrow group of speakers. Any group of organisms with a large fan base (eg, large mammals, spiders, marsupials, butterflies) also may have an organization that provides names for the fans.
The databases with vernacular names for taxa seem to show that there are no accepted names for many species in most languages. The number of languages that have such names seems to depend on how well-traveled the species is (alive or dead), how visible it is to the naked eye, and how well it photographs. DCDuring (talk) 17:50, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
There's also the official Australian Standard fish names for 4000 species names that are now commonly used in Australia :) But yes, in general many species appear to have no common name in any language unless the original scientific description decides to include one. Fun fact: Many languages don't even name what we may consider basic colours like "purple" or "orange" until they have commercial significance, such as in dyes and textiles. Pengo (talk) 02:42, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Allowing "Gallery" section
At some point, I'd like to create a vote to formally allow the "Gallery" section in entries.
before "See also", "References", "Further reading"
Heading order (type two):
same as type one, except most of these other headings are not supposed to exist as L3 sections -- in other words, still place "Gallery" before "See also", "References", "Further reading"
Obviously, there should be some threshold to use; an entry with only one or two (or three, IMO) images doesn't need to use the gallery format. - -sche(discuss)12:31, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Good practices: an image per sense, if relevant, only one per sense and a gloss in the caption referring to the sense. More than some threshold I think the point is its purpose, explanatory or potentially decorative. Is there any norm on the use of images in general? --Vriullop (talk) 07:40, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Some pages as listed above have the "Gallery" section with just one image. Do you think that's a problem? I get that it uses up vertical space, but maybe some people prefer doing it that way. I'm not sure there's always a clear advantage to using right-floating images instead of a gallery. Maybe we should allow galleries with just 1 image after all. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 21:33, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Or, in the other direction, almost everyone's native language (if spoken rather than signed or only written in text or braille) is made up of IPA sounds... ;) Maybe it should say "near-perfect" or "near-expert"? - -sche(discuss)00:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
The IPA-4 template itself has the text »This user has a comprehensive understanding of the International Phonetic Alphabet«, so perhaps the category could just be changed to say the same? — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 17:58, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I would be suspicious that the Mediawiki template parser / our Lua modules do not treat this identically with the nonspaced version with respect to stripping or not stripping spaces. DTLHS (talk) 17:32, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Can you add the amended text for the existing first rule of the template section to the vote; "No leading or trailing whitespace in templates (name, parameter name and value), links, categories and so on." The new rule would contradict the old rule, so we should alter the old rule as well instead of leaving a contradiction. - DaveRoss18:09, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
OK. I did two things:
I edited that part without a vote: now it reads "No leading or trailing whitespace in templates (name, parameter name and value)." (the "links, categories" part was out of place and is already said elsewhere, THIS is the "Templates" section)
I edited the vote to suggest a new edit that should remove the contradiction if the vote passes.
I may miss something here, but many of "Further reading" or "external links" (in the main namespace) are proposals based on contributor's intuition (with bad or good intention) of what (s)he would like to read. Why a dictionary like wiktionary might suggest about what is good to read about the lemma? Links, in such sections, that link to other WMF projects are always welcome, but what is the meaning for links to external databases (private or public)? Do we promote them? Does the wiktionarist that added the link believe it would be better for the readers not to come to wiktionary but go directly to another database (especially a private)? Having external links used as sources is for proving what is written here is not fake, is not writers' imagination. And this is one of our goals. Not the proposing of further reading to external sites. As an example Weiterbildung proposes a commercial site having also a Warenkorb ready for buyers! Or ψαλίδι proposes a very good site for researchers, but this proposal is for other places (such as a proposal to contributors to Greek lemmas) and not in every Greek lemma (or, much more suspicious, in selected ones). I must also note that making proposals lacking sources that clearly state that these are good "proposals" (not good books) for that specific dictionary lemma is at least considered original research.
P.S. I added suspicious not because I do not trust the specific contributor but placing any such link in selected lemmas may make it suspicious. --Xoristzatziki (talk) 18:03, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
@Barytonesis: This is not a personal reference. This is a talk about the usage of "Further reading" or "external links" by all users. These were just examples. The problem is not with your contribution, is with the upcoming usage of such links. And, I repeat, it is not personal. It is about how we (all) must use certain things. The 2017-03 and 2016-12 votings were misleading (my opinion) and were mostly about the naming convention of the section and not about the usefulness of the content. I am sorry I missed these votings, but my time was so limited, and I was not concerned about the names of these sections. On the other hand, wiktionary is based in the contributors and if majority prefer links to further reading (which do not have any sense in dictionary's entries) then mea culpa. --Xoristzatziki (talk) 20:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
That some, but not all, entries of a given type have some reference is just a product of the uneven, unsystematic nature of entry development. (Compare the first print OED, for which the first letters of the alphabet were covered about 44 years before the last. Even now some entries there seem not to have gotten much attention in recent years.) Wiktionary may be imagined to be somehow definitive, but that is far from the case. Contributor (volunteer!!!) attention is the scarcest resource here. DCDuring (talk) 21:12, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
@Xoristzatziki: no offense taken. Regardless of the name "Further reading" (vs. "References"), do you actually oppose to adding {{R:DSMG}} on all lemmas? If not, I will continue adding it whenever I edit a Greek entry (I'd be happy to devise a bot to do it, but I don't have the coding knowledge required). --Barytonesis (talk) 23:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
@BarytonesisWiktionary is not an arbiter of what is good English, Greek etc. If an external link is to be a reference for supporting an edit it is ok. Which means that if your edit added something that may lead to {{rfv}} (or already done one), or your edit already have lead to something like an edit war, then add it as a reference to support it (but only if you think it will clearly support it). Otherwise there is no reason to add it nowhere (ok not nowhere, you can include it in a help page for newcomers (or "oldcomers":-) in Greek lemmas). I must insist (here also) that the existence of a lemma in any dictionary is not a proof that word is used. Neither that a word has that specific translation because a)some authors tend to include misleading edits for copy checking, b)some dictionaries have newer editions correcting mistakes. A word included in an old dictionary, or a new one, for time periods where no written material exists for that language can be "supported" by a reference. But only as reference in a specific point of the lemma. Not as a reference for further reading, or as a generic external link. I also created a {{R:Babiniotis 2002}} (a printed material I possess) but only for supporting etymology in articles that a different etymology exists (or existed) in other wiktionaries. And I am aware of the well known fact that this particular dictionary had many corrections in his etymologies (and entries) since 2000 (which means that if someone has a newer edition it would be good to check, and correct if necessary, my editions). So, concluding, no reason to add the {{R:DSMG}} (or any other such external link) in any lemma unless it is for supporting something specific. --Xoristzatziki (talk) 06:34, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I must insert another reason c) some dictionaries (as the dictionary of Babiniotis or ALL ISO and ΕΛΟΤ publications) include entries in what has to be correct English or Greek, which is out of the scope of our wiktionary. --Xoristzatziki (talk) 06:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
@Xoristzatziki: "no reason to add the {{R:DSMG}} (or any other such external link) in any lemma unless it is for supporting something specific": I disagree with that. The whole idea of Further reading is that it does not support anything specific; instead, it guides the reader to another site relevant to the word documented in Wiktionary. I for one think that monolingual online dictionaries containing definitions such as Duden are in general excellent material to add to Further reading. Our readers do not necessarily know where else to look; we tell them. Furthermore, we do not tell the reader what to do with the external link; if the reader does not trust our verification processes and wants to check, that's up to them. In my mind, ideally, every lemma should eventually link to at least one online monolingual definition dictionary if possible, but I don't like when there are too many external links in a single lemma. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:02, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
In general I agree with Dan on this. Including links to other dictionaries (even when they are not being used to support any particular piece of information, like an etymology or pronunciation) is acceptable and even helpful, although not obligatory. Unless there is an issue with the DSMG, such as if it were of low quality, I think it can continue to be included. If there are too many external links in a particular lemma (which I agree is undesirable), or if it is a general problem for particular languages (say, there are a lot of dictionaries of English available, and we don't necessarily want to link to all 50+), we can discuss pruning some of the less-relevant/helpful ones or moving them into a collapsible box. I don't think that a dictionary being prescriptivist inherently means we shouldn't link to it. - -sche(discuss)18:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I have long been using {{R:OneLook}} in English L2s. They include quite a few English dictionaries and many more specialized glossaries etc. It would also be possible to hide all or some external links. But since external links - whatever heading they appear under - are near the bottom of their L2 they interfere with user visual access to definitions much less than overlong Pronunciation and Etymology sections. DCDuring (talk) 21:51, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
"Our readers do not necessarily know where else to look; we tell them."??? No!!! Our job is to gather non-garbage information here. For them. By checking and rechecking and again checking. Adding any "further reading" link just to inform the readers where to find more (reliable or not) definitions is like saying "We at Wiktionary acknowledge that link is a good one and please go there to find more definitions which we may never add here if they are garbage". Further readings are good for wikiversity and wikibooks. But in wikipedia, wiktionary, wikisources and wikiquote the only reason an external link may exist is for supporting something written there (and specified, not to support anything written in the article, ex. to support etymology, or a specific meaning etc.). A link is to inform our readers that we are not writing garbage here. I will take the risk to go a little further and ask: Do you have at least three independent sources that will support your addition of that specific link as "further reading"? Really, do you have at least one source which states that dictionaries (or encyclopedias) should provide further readings? I am not against such links in a talk page in order to inform the contributors where to find material to extend the article. ,Anyway I say all these because I fear that my contributions are only for supporting these specific "further reading" sites and not for gathering the information that may (or may not) provide (free or by charging) for our readers. And I cannot support my opinion more than what I already did. --Xoristzatziki (talk) 01:49, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
We are here to render a service under a free-as-in-freedom license. Adding useful further reading renders more service. I see it as pretty obvious that a link to a monolingual dictionary pointing the reader to a page specific to the word is a useful service. You seem to be opposed to the idea of further reading in general, and only support the idea of references, links serving to back something up. The meta-sourcing problem you hint at (which sources tell you such and such is a good source) applies to sources backing something up as well, and if real, would be more urgent for them; for further reading, it is not so urgent. I don't think that for monolingual dictionaries there exists any serious meta-sourcing problem, that is, we do not have to fear that e.g. {{R:DSMG}} (Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek, 1998) is a very bad dictionary we do not want to link to. Furthermore, if we wished to abandon further reading altogether, we would have to cease linking to Wikipedia: we cannot use Wikipedia to back anything up.
As a contributor of Greek content to the English Wiktionary, you do not need to fear the competition of further reading sources, I think. The English Wiktionary integrates information on multiple languages in a beautiful way; it may not be best of breed, but it sports integration, has place for attesting quotations which these sources often do not have, and has many words these sources miss. Furthermore, a Greek monolingual dictionary does not give you English translations and abbreviated English definitions of the Greek terms. I see {{R:DSMG}}complementing but not replacing information in the Greek entries in the English Wiktionary. As a contributor of Greek content to the English Wiktionary, you are contributing to what a Danish journalist recently described as a miracle of a dictionary, in Et mirakel af en ordbog, www.b.dk, 22 April 2017. Our problem is incompleteness, not extraneous further reading links. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:28, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Just a clarification: Weiterbildung, which I first mentioned, is not a Greek word at all. So even if I was feared...(!!!) it was not about a single language, but about at least one more. --Xoristzatziki (talk) 06:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Category:Evolutionary theory
I've added "evolutionary theory" as a label, and have been adding it to some entries, which are then automatically categorised in Category:en:Evolutionary theory; however, I'm not entirely convinced of what I'm doing.
Adding the label to Lamarckism, for example, might make it look like it's endorsed by current research, when this is obviously not the case; and linking to evolutionary theory, defined as "A theory of evolution, especially the scientific theory of evolution through natural selection" will be confusing for the reader, since it's directly at odds with Lamarckism. What about orthogenesis, transmutationism, etc.?
Don't forget that Wikimedia categories are a navigational aid for finding entries that have something in common, not a statement about the meaning of things. Lamarckism is something that one talks about in the context of evolutionay theory, so readers interested in evolutionary theory would be interested in Lamarckism as well: no one would write about the history of evolutionary theory without mentioning Lamarckism, Lysenkoism, and other obsolete theories. Also, "especially the scientific theory of evolution through natural selection" just means that natural selection is the main evolutionary theory, not that it's the only one. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:50, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
The Wikidata team followed with attention the different discussions (February, March, June) regarding enabling the possibility to display Wikidata informations in English Wiktionary, and the result of this vote.
I want to let you know that we are now ready to enable Wikidata arbitrary access on English Wiktionary. All the necessary steps have been done (deploying automatic links for the main namespace and Wikidata centralized links for other namespaces). Even if some issues still have to be fixed on this two features, we have all the means to allow you to experiment with Wikidata data. It is now up to you to decide if and when you want to enable it. We don't want to push this feature without your explicit consent, that's why we will now discuss about a possible date of activation with you.
Important note: Wikidata is not ready to store information about words yet. This part of the plan is currently in development and the team is working actively on it, to provide in the next months the possibility to describe Lexemes, Forms and Senses in Wikidata. In the meantime, Wikidata only stores information about concepts, and this is how it should be used on Wiktionary as well.
As we mentioned in a former discussion, including Wikidata data in the Citations namespace in order to provide automatically the work, author, date of publication, etc. for the quote seems to be a simple and useful way to start experimenting with Wikidata.
What do you think? Do you have other ideas on how using Wikidata data? When would you like to enable the arbitrary access feature? Do you have any other question about this feature? Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 14:56, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for mentioning me @Daniel Carrero! Do you already have a page to discuss about Wikidata, the different use cases, and to group all the decisions and votes that will be made regarding Wikidata data uses? I think that would be useful to have everything on one place. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 09:36, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
IIRC, at first only the first kind of category existed. When the second was added, it was for words that have some archaic senses as well as some non-archaic (still-current) senses, with the different categories being added by {{term-label}} and {{label}}, respectively. The distinction has generally not been maintained. Technically, "terms with archaic senses" encompasses "archaic terms" (i.e. terms with only archaic senses and no non-archaic senses), even if that is not how a normal reader might understand the name, so it is plausible that it might be best to give up on making a distinction (which has been discussed before from time to time), and merge the categories. - -sche(discuss)17:47, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Because that is not how normal humans use the words. There is more art than set theory in coming up with category names. DCDuring (talk) 00:47, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
It's not redundant at all. Not all tools are machines (e.g. cutlery), and although probably all machines are tools in the broadest sense, not all machines are necessarily thought of as tools (like clocks and vending machines). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:25, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
In what sense is a ship or a locomotive a tool? And consider the following: narrative functions as a powerful and basic tool for thinking
@DCDuring: Our definition of tool defines it as mechanical, which I would say is wrong. Wikipedia's entry defines it as "any physical item that can be used to achieve a goal, especially if the item is not consumed in the process". That would include a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer's use of a stone as a tool, and would include ships and locomotives as well. Our definition would definitely exclude the stone, and might exclude the ship and locomotive as well. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel Carrero: So the remedy for a poorly function, possibly useless, set of categories is to ignore the problem and not try the most basic identifiable steps to attempt a repair?
I assume that most ordinary contributors or label mavens just put something in any nearly-right category so that it can be eventually put in the "right" category. Wouldn't we want to enable the process to proceed in in the direction of a well-defined improvement, rather than stagnation or thrashing? I wouldn't even know how to clean up membership in a category without knowing what, if any, considered intent there was behind it. How many category hierarchies are there that a given sense of a word is permitted? Does scalpel belong in "Medicine" and/or "Surgery" and/or "Veterinary medicine" and/or "Tools" and/or "Medical equipment"?
@Angr: So, what should we assume is the definition intended by those who have established and enshrined the current topical (and/or usage context?) category system? How do we operationalize these categories. By what criterion should we decide to simplify the system so that it can be implemented adequately as is and gradually refined? Should categories be hidden by default and allowed to be displayed to ordinary users when they have met some kind of rudimentary standard? DCDuring (talk) 17:24, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I would suggest renaming the categories somehow. It seems people pay more attention to category names than to their descriptions. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 17:33, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't doubt that, but the process shouldn't end there. If it will, than our categories will not have great utility and, moreover, will put our dilettantism on display for anyone who wanders into the category thicket. DCDuring (talk) 21:34, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I hope I did not give the impression that I oppose editing the category headers. I'm just not confident that it would be very helpful in comparison with the renaming categories as needed. But I support doing this that you said: "We clearly need to specify in the category header what sense of the category name we would like categorizers to use." --Daniel Carrero (talk) 23:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Secret Wiktionary meetup
It's 1 p.m. on Sunday 16 July, in Pint Shop. Look for the guy wearing all black with very short hair and an obvious attitude problem. If nobody appears within an hour then I will run away and start buying books at the numerous excellent book shops of Oxford, which is why I'm really gonna be there. But say hi if you'd like. Equinox◑10:14, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
@Daniel., you pinged my old account (which only idiots do). Strangely, however, that might actually work as a meet-up. If I go, it will be incognito, however. --Recónditos (talk) 17:29, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
This is one of the disadvantages of being Canadian! We're so spread out over here, meeting up with people we meet online isn't an option for those of us who can't afford to travel everywhere... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Haha. See you in a week and a half? I am pretty sure nobody will turn up honestly. But I can spare an hour. Equinox◑21:59, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
@Equinox: I'll try again. See you tomorrow hopefully, why else would I go to Oxford? It's a bit like central London, too many tourists. DonnanZ (talk) 17:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
It would be cool to meet a Wiktionary user in real life, except I don't live in the UK and have no way of getting there, especially not anytime soon. PseudoSkull (talk) 22:10, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
It was fine. Just me and Donnanz though! We chatted and had a few beers. And yes there were too many tourists... Equinox◑16:25, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
I very nearly didn't get there because of problems with the trains (weekend engineering works). But it was well worth the effort. DonnanZ (talk) 16:38, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Any discussion. ("if at all" implies 0 or more discussions) But I guess we don't need to say "Let us postpone the start of the vote as much as discussion requires, if at all." in the first place, because a close paraphrase of it is now part of Wiktionary:Voting policy and thus implied in all votes. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 16:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I think the idea of moving that policy page was mentioned in the recent votes about Latin, but I guess we don't need to create a whole discussion with the idea "moving the policy" before creating the vote. Unless we want to discuss it now. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 16:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
@Dan Polansky: Am I mistaken, or nowhere do I see "Well documented languages on the Internet" defined positively? It seems to only be defined by contrast with LDL: "WDL are the languages that aren't LDL, which are thus defined "? (got your ping on the Latin vote, will respond later) --Barytonesis (talk) 17:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
@Barytonesis: I don't know whether there is such a definition. If the vote passes, it will not matter since the term will no longer be used in the policy; the policy will just say which languages require 3 quotations, that is, which, not what kind of. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:46, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Noé 09:21, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Noé 20:47, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Support. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:42, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Index of U.S. counties on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ) is in my opinion a reference. There's an old saying "horses for courses", and that can apply to choosing a heading. DonnanZ (talk) 07:05, 15 June 2017 (UTC)