Wiktionary:Grease pit/2022/September

Hey, is there any way that I can remove the button that says "undo" (leading to a revert)? I just don't even need that button. It's too tempting and causes heated emotions. It's fine for other people to have it, but I would just like to have the option to click a box in Preferences somewhere to remove the 'undo' button from my field of vision in day-to-day editing. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:47, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Add to Special:MyPage/common.css:

.mw-history-undo, .mw-diff-undo { display: none; }

98.170.164.88 18:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Can someone please assist: I can't see why *kuningini is not appearing in Category:Proto-West Germanic words suffixed with *-ini but instead is showing up in Category:Proto-West Germanic terms suffixed with *-ini Leasnam (talk) 02:27, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Because Module:compound has been updated to use "terms" instead of "words" in affix categories, per the discussion here. The others were still in the "words" category because they had not been purged, which I've since gone ahead and done. 98.170.164.88 02:33, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thank you for explaining ! Leasnam (talk) 02:35, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm trying to write a constructive suggestion on Talk:後起字 but it's been flagged as vandalism automatically and I can't post it.

It's not harmful or vandalism, character evolution is my research interest and Wiktionary is an invaluable source for me in this regard, but this concept may have been misinterpreted on Wiktionary. I wasn't rude or vandalistic. 88.106.20.178 15:32, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

For some reason it didn't like that you ended your paragraph in a long ellipsis like this...... — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I've encountered this a few times when adding quotations from Usenet (which don't always follow standard punctuation rules). My solution has been to break long ellipses up using comments or nowiki tags, e.g. ...<!---->.... But if you're writing a comment from scratch instead of copying a quote, you can simply rewrite it to avoid the problem. 98.170.164.88 20:05, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Discussion moved from WT:BP.

ъ and щ (šč) are both technically part of the Mongolian alphabet, but they're extremely rare - to the point where they sometimes get substituted for ь (ʹ) and ш (š). I can only find 4 terms spelled with щ at all. Would it please be possible to have categories for words spelled with them? They'd be useful, because it'd help keep track so that alternative spellings can be added where appropriate. Theknightwho (talk) 16:30, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho This is not so hard to do but we need to create a standardChars entry for Mongolian that lists all the characters *NOT* to create such categories for; then all the rest get such categories. Can you help with this? For example, the Russian entry uses "ЁА-яё0-9—" .. PUNCTUATION, where PUNCTUATION is a variable holding a string of ASCII punctuation characters (space, comma, question mark, exclamation point, and several others). Benwing2 (talk) 05:54, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 No problem - I’ll need to include the Mongolian traditional alphabet too: "ЁА-ШЫ-шы-яёҮүӨө—᠊-᠙ᠠ-ᡂ" .. PUNCTUATION Theknightwho (talk) 12:21, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho Done. Categories like Category:Mongolian terms spelled with Щ should populate gradually. Benwing2 (talk) 17:53, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Thanks! I realise I forgot the Mongolian Latin script - could I please amend it to A-PR-UX-Za-pr-ux-zÇÖÜçöüŞşƟƵƶɵЁА-ШЫ-шы-яёҮүӨө—᠊-᠙ᠠ-ᡂ if that's okay? Thanks again. Theknightwho (talk) 21:20, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho Done. Benwing2 (talk) 22:03, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Cheers. Theknightwho (talk) 22:04, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I found plumafobia today, where an editor made a typo in the template name resulting in a redlink to the non-existent template page. Shouldn't mistakes like this be categorized someplace for cleanup? JeffDoozan (talk) 19:52, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

We have Special:WantedTemplates. Special:SpecialPages has lots of interesting material. DCDuring (talk) 21:16, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

That almost all (ie, more than 4,970) of the 5,000 (maximmum) places are taken up by "template tracking" pseudo-templates is of a kind with the abuse of many of the special pages. Many of them have been appropriated without any express authorization or even notice by our technical mavens. A template (or pseudo-template) must be "wanted" at least 11 times in order to earn inclusion on the special page. I don't know what the turnover of items on this list is, but I suspect it is very low. Thus, these pages are no longer available for their intended use. I think this kind of thing is called technical debt, or should be. See Technical debt on Wikipedia.Wikipedia .

I don't know whether there is any practical tool for finding wanted templates of the kind you have discovered short of yet another special run against a recent wikidump. DCDuring (talk) 21:21, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

@DCDuring This is the fault of the template tracking mechanism, which tracks pages using template space. This mechanism is incredibly useful so we can't just remove it; but potentially we could move the tracked pages to a different namespace. One idea is to create a special namespace, something like "Tracking:...". This might result in those pages moving to Special:WantedPages instead of Special:WantedTemplates, but that is probably a lesser evil. Maybe we could even prevail upon the Wikimedia maintainers to ignore the Tracking namespace when computing Special:WantedPages. I think we have to file some sort of request to create a new namespace, maybe User:Chuck Entz knows the procedure. Benwing2 (talk) 01:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The "template tracking mechanism" is not "at fault". One or more persons are responsible. How is the "template tracking mechanism" used? Who uses it? How is it populated?

It is not much help to further clog other special pages, thereby further trashing their usefulness. DCDuring (talk) 11:38, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be the creation of @Kephir, an inactive administrator, who authored Module:ugly hacks, the documentation of which is 'intentionally incomplete'. Would anything bad happen if it were disabled? DCDuring (talk) 12:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

No, I believe it's done by Module:debug, which is used by just about everything. Module:ugly hacks is something else that Kephir wanted to discourage use of except when absolutely necessary- which it is, at times. I'm pretty sure that you would definitely not like it if were disabled. As for "clogging other special pages", the point of a Tracking namespace would be for it to "clog" pages that don't even exist yet, and leave Template space alone, along with the special pages tracking it. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:03, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I was responding to the suggestion that we use Special:WantedPages instead of Special:WantedTemplates.

In any event, who is actually using this list? Supposedly actual tracking templates are supposed to be created. Twentynine (29) have been so far, the last in 2017, I think. Fewer than half a dozen contributors have created any templates. We seem to be quite a few thousand short, with the mechanism for creating wants acting like the errant creations of w:The Sorcerer's Apprentice. See Template:tracking, which clearly suggests that tracking templates should be created. The documentation even shows concern about overloading Special:UncategorizedTemplates. I have the feeling that User:Kephir would be either horrified at the mess we have made by not utilizing what he created or embarrassed to have created an infrastructure that no one cared to use.

Maybe the solution is to disable the function in Module:debug that "wants" the templates that will never be created. DCDuring (talk) 17:49, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I can definitely see use for this - I hadn't realised it existed. Theknightwho (talk) 18:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Are you going to make a few hundred tracking templates? Can you recruit 10 others who will also? DCDuring (talk) 20:45, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

No, but they can obviously be created by bot. Theknightwho (talk) 20:47, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't. Off the top of my head, @Erutuon seems more knowledgable on such matters. My impression from when we've done similar things in the past (I believe deletion of the Index namespace was the latest) is that it would involve showing consensus (probably by a vote), then submitting a request on Phabricator with a link to demonstrate the consensus. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

For a more useful list generated from the dump, see User:Erutuon/lists/wanted templates not tracking in entries. I will update it soon. — Eru·tuon 18:55, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Actually, they've just made a change to the way transclusions are stored in the database and haven't made part of the data available in the dump yet. I can't update the list until they do. The latest version of the list is from May. — Eru·tuon 19:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

User:Erutuon/lists/wanted templates not tracking in entries is up-to-date with the October 1st dump. — Eru·tuon 02:44, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

If I go to the page Appendix:Portmanteaus, which does not exist, I get a message with a link to the same page on Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia has no Appendix namespace and the link is hardcoded, these links will never work as coded .... I'd say it's likely they won't be helpful even if we change the coding because our appendix namespace consists primarily of content that would not be on Wikipedia at any address. Should we simply remove the useless link? —Soap— 20:35, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Something broke. I have posted to the ES where the topic appears in the September page as it should, but it is not transcluded to WT:ES. The same happens to someone I saw in WT:Information Desk (Sept. ).

I did use the prominent start a new discussion big blue button reactive component, if that made a difference. Now I edit the september page directly without js, hoping that somebody will see it. 2A00:20:600F:DE55:F874:8F33:3A57:D257 11:48, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

It's possible that the main Etymology Scriptorium page hadn't been updated by the server yet. The month page is transcluded there and transclusions don't update instantly. So you just have to wait awhile, and it doesn't matter how you edit the month page, with or without Javascript, it'll take the same amount of time to update the main page. You might be able to get the main page to update by doing a null edit. But there's not much of a point. — Eru·tuon 17:42, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Non-English speakers when writing a definition may explain what the term means not knowing that there is an English word that means the exact same. For now I think {{rfc-sense}} is what should be used, but I don't think it would be very effective, since a person that knows English very well will likely still not browse "Category:Requests for cleanup in Langyouveneverheardof", while if there was a "Category:Requests for English equivalent terms" it would probably be more appealing. With a |topic= argument maybe. Catonif (talk) 12:40, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

There have been times where I would find this very helpful. rfdef doesn't seem like the right template for it. Vininn126 (talk) 13:05, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello ! In lieu of having no template for Modernising Middle English terms to modern spellings, I have added a categorize template to wrengthe, which created a redlinked wikt:Category:Middle English modernised forms. However, this page has an error. can someone please investigate further and hopefully repair/fix ? Thanks in advance ! Leasnam (talk) 20:00, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

I looked at the disgruntled template, and I think I may have corrected it, so closing this for now. Leasnam (talk) 20:07, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The problem is that there is no " modernised forms" item in the modules. The way our module infrastructure is designed, such things are language-independent and can be applied to any language where appropriate. Are such things described that way in other languages, or is there some other term used? If the latter, we might want to consider changing one or the other. With a word like "modernised", there's also the matter of Pondian variation- you would also want to look for categories spelled with "modernized". We would also need to consider where in to put this in the category tree. Otherwise it ends up in Special:UncategorizedCategories for someone else to fix. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:34, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

I just noticed that there are hundreds of Babel user categories in Special:UncategorizedCategories because the Babel user extension wraps category references in <includeonly></includeonly> for all the categories it creates. That makes it impossible to navigate between these babel categories, or from one of them to the language categories, etc. The categories from those references do, however, show up on any page the categories are added to.

Of course, many of these don't correspond to our regular language codes, so it's probably more complicated than bot-replacing their content with a standard template. Do we have some kind of process for dealing with them? If not, should we? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:10, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Can we have a bot edit all the ones that are valid Module:languages language codes so they categorize themselves into our usual categorization scheme? And then, for any codes which we treat as dialects, subsume them accordingly (like making "User sr" a subcategory of "User sh")? Then list all the remaining codes somewhere we can deal with them, and ask whoever's in charge of the AutoCreate function to make it categorize its categories by default. - -sche (discuss) 21:36, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

We have around 200 translations that currently use the word Uyghurjin to refer to those using the traditional Mongolian script (in contrast to Cyrillic) - mostly added by @Atitarev and an IP. However, that word only refers to early forms of the script in the Middle Mongolian period, when it was recently derived from Old Uyghur. It's simply wrong to use it to refer to modern Mongolian.

Would it please be possible for someone to run a bot to amend them to say "Mongolian"? We could use the word "bichig" if we think that listing "Mongolian" twice looks silly (for the language and then the script), but that's pretty rare in English. Theknightwho (talk) 14:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The right word is "Mongolian" as the name of the script. It's supported by the modules. Since "Uyghurjin" was reverted as the name of the script, I have been updating to use "Mongolian" manually.

BTW, "Uyghurjin" wasn't my original invention for nested translations into Mongolian. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:19, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

No worries. Theknightwho (talk) 00:16, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

@Atitarev, Theknightwho I made these substitutions based on the Sep 1 dump file (so if any translations have been added since then using "Uyghurjin:", they won't have been caught). It found 190 instances in the dump file (although some of them may already have been fixed). Benwing2 (talk) 03:54, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Thank you! Theknightwho (talk) 15:53, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

It would be nice if {{semantic loan}} had a parameter for |senseno=, and that if that parameter were filled, it would automatically print the text "Sense No X is a semantic loan from" with a lower case s. (compare akompaniament). This seems like what should be the default usage of the template as it is inherently referring to specific uses. Vininn126 (talk) 14:23, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Another aspect to this are when there are multiple semantic loans - allowing for multiple |senseno= ID's would allow the template to automatically print "are semantic loanS", compare akcja. Vininn126 (talk) 20:32, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The parameter should be the sense ID, not the sense number (but the output could display the number using {{senseno}}). 98.170.164.88 20:33, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorry yes - as my dad used to say do what I mean not what I say, but you are right in that it should be that. Vininn126 (talk) 20:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

@Vininn126 Implemented in Template:semantic loan/sandbox, see here for an example. I made the delimiter between multiple values '!!', following the precedent of {{IPA}}, because some senseids contain commas or semicolons. 98.170.164.88 00:55, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. This seems rather intuitive. If there are no other issues we can probably implement it to the template and update the documentation. Is there anything else that we are missing? Vininn126 (talk) 08:16, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I can't think of anything else, unless you or someone else has further suggestions. Note that implementing this required changes to three modules (, , , although part of the first one was changing it to use other /sandbox modules, which would not need to be done in production). 98.170.164.88 17:03, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Wait, I'm going to have to update Module:etymology/specialized, what else? Vininn126 (talk) 20:39, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

@Vininn126:

1. Copy Module:etymology/specialized/sandbox to Module:etymology/specialized.
2. Copy Module:etymology/templates/internal/sandbox to Module:etymology/templates/internal.
3. Copy Module:etymology/templates/sandbox to Module:etymology/templates, but remove both occurrences of "/sandbox" before saving.

98.170.164.88 20:44, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Cheers! I'm not the best at coding and I'm absolutely terrified of touching those modules. Vininn126 (talk) 20:50, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

This is exactly what I wanted, thanks again. I updated the documentation. And thanks for going the extra mile and helping convert them! Vininn126 (talk) 21:03, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

In the same vein as June's "why is the Twitter search page blacklisted when tweets are not", why is youtu.be/foobar — the type of link YouTube generates when you right-click a video and select "copy video URL" to post it to a discussion here to illustrate the pronunciation of something — blacklisted when youtube.com is not? Can I whitelist it? Every link of the form youtu.be/bsaRKb_MmhE (blacklisted) corresponds to and can be replaced by a link of the form www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsaRKb_MmhE (which is not blacklisted) so I don't see how the site's official .be links are any more spammable. - -sche (discuss) 21:45, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

(see Template_talk:zh-x#Incorrect_pinyin_for_著.) AmberWing1352 (talk) 04:19, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

According to the documentation of the template {{zh-x}}, you can override the automatic romanization by adding the corrected romanization in curly braces directly after the character in question.

By default, the code {{zh-x|一面 跑 她 一面 揉 著 她 的 膀子}} outputs:

一面跑她一面揉著她的膀子

yīmiàn pǎo tā yīmiàn róu zhù tā de bǎngzǐ

(please add an English translation of this usage example)

But if you instead write {{zh-x|一面 跑 她 一面 揉 著{zhe} 她 的 膀子}} then you get:

一面跑她一面揉著她的膀子

yīmiàn pǎo tā yīmiàn róu zhe tā de bǎngzǐ

(please add an English translation of this usage example)

P.S. You can also force the simplified form to be 着 using the code 著{zhe}, which would yield:

一面跑她一面揉著她的膀子
一面跑她一面揉着她的膀子

yīmiàn pǎo tā yīmiàn róu zhe tā de bǎngzǐ

(please add an English translation of this usage example)

The usage notes at 着#Usage_notes_2 leave me confused as to whether or not the separate simplified character should be manually specified here. Please check. 98.170.164.88 05:21, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Ohh. Thank you very much! AmberWing1352 (talk) 17:11, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

The entry rax is currently emitting an error because the Poqomam language (code poc) has no ancestor set.

What needs to be done to fix this: In Module:languages/data3/p, change the ancestor (the third array value) for the code poc from nil to "myn". For good measure you can do the same for the code poh, i.e. the closely related Poqomchiʼ language. 98.170.164.88 05:01, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

 Done (diff). 98.170.164.88 10:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Can someone who knows the modules connected to topical categories incorporate this category into the existing system so that {{auto cat}} will work for it please? User: The Ice Mage ^{talk to meh} 15:37, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@The Ice Mage This should be fixed; I also (tried to) move all the polygons into Category:en:Polygons, and the polyhedra into Category:en:Polyhedra. Benwing2 (talk) 05:11, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Great, thanks for sorting this out! Acolyte of Ice (talk) 08:31, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

It would be okay if they just popped up as useful hints, like when programming in Visual Studio, but they block your view of what you are typing, and even worse they mess with the typing, so if you aren't looking then you haven't typed what you expected. They steal the focus. Appalling design. Equinox ◑ 21:19, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

If you're referring to the "Convert formatting to wikitext" thing, that annoys me a little too (but it has been helpful a few times). 98.170.164.88 03:04, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

It would save me time if the language data module were edited so that diacritics were stripped automatically by linking templates.

entry_name = {
		from = {GRAVE, ACUTE, TILDE, MACRON},
		to   = {}
}

Thanks. 98.170.164.88 03:01, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Bump. 98.170.164.88 08:43, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

The table of contents has somehow disappeared from at least WT:BP and WT:GP. Could we please have it back. I find it useful. I'm using the skin 'vector legacy'. --RichardW57m (talk) 15:15, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

This might be phab:T317857. Note that the MediaWiki version was to be updated today according to Wiktionary:Wikimedia_Tech_News/2022#Tech_News:_2022-37. It's the same with d:Wikidata:Project chat (before vs after), s:Wikisource:Scriptorium (before vs after), etc. As of writing, the English Wiktionary is on 1.40.0-wmf.1 (2fc21db), while the English Wikipedia is on 1.39.0-wmf.28 (9019cd7), so en.wikipedia isn't affected yet. 98.170.164.88 16:37, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

The table of contents has now been restored. --RichardW57m (talk) 09:25, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Code: {{cite-book|author=John Smith|quotee=Robert Placeholder|title=Book|year=2020}}.

Output: John Smith quoting Robert Placeholder (2020) Book.

There's a space before the comma and the placement of the year is confusing. I think either of the following would read better:

• John Smith (2020), quoting Robert Placeholder, Book.
• John Smith (2020), Book, quoting Robert Placeholder.

My preference is for the latter but the former is more consistent with how {{quote-book}} works. 98.170.164.88 21:13, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

The quote/cite templates are in urgent need of Luafication; they are almost unmaintainable in their current state. I don't think there is any chance of solving this issue without WT:LUA. This, that and the other (talk) 11:23, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

As the editor who’s been trying to maintain the reference templates up till now, I can confirm that these issues with commas are very hard to solve because of all the possible combinations of parameters (author and quotee, author and editor, editor with no author, author and translator, etc.). I’m afraid, though, that I have no experience with Lua. Perhaps @Benwing2 or @Erutuon can help. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:34, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing Etymology 2 at berry.

I also rolled back an edit from an anon, but not sure what's going on ... Leasnam (talk) 03:36, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

What's going on is @Almostonurmind has no clue what he's doing and trashed the entry. There's an old template called {{derived terms}} that works the way he thinks {{rel-top4}} works. Unlike {{derived terms}}, {{rel-top4}} doesn't convert the items after it into links, and it requires {{rel-bottom}} at the end to tell it where to stop. Without {{rel-bottom}}, everything gets eaten by the collapsible box- in this case Etymology 2 and whatever else came after it. If you had looked inside the collapsible box, you would have seen a jumbled mass of unlinked plain text separated by pipe characters followed by the rest of the entry, all squeezed into 4 columns.

He never bothers to preview his edits, or to even check the pages after saving, so he never learns how to do things right. It's sort of like telling someone you'll cook dinner, then throwing an unopened can of soup in the microwave, turning it on, and leaving. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:31, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Yep, I screw up that one! Sorry... Almostonurmind (talk) 19:57, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Almostonurmind FYI, you probably wanted {{der4}}, which isn't still in testing and also works (nearly) in the way you thought. Theknightwho (talk) 20:05, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I normally use that one, or {{der2}} or {{der3}}. My edit at berry was one of the 0.4% of my edits that are crap. I'd humbly accept a block from anyone who feels it is best :) Almostonurmind (talk) 20:23, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I would like some help with creating a reference template, because I’m too dumb to figure it out myself. The name of the template should be “R:HERO”. The output should look like this:
example in the Ontology of Heraldry (HERO)
The second link and its corresponding displayed text should always remain the same. It is the first link that should be modifiable by two parameters, in the following manner:
https://finto.fi/hero/en/page/p{{{second parameter, page number}}}?clang={{{first parameter, language code}}}
The displayed text (“example”) should always match the page title / name of the entry. Would someone be so kind as to create this template, alternatively explain to me how I would go about doing it myself? —VulpesVulpes42 (talk) 11:48, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@VulpesVulpes42 How about:

in the ''''

? In practice we would probably have the template use {{cite-web}} internally, but better to start simple. The code of the template page, like all templates would then finish with the obligatory <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>.

You can create your template in the Template namespace: Template:R:HERO. This, that and the other (talk) 13:45, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@This, that and the other Thank you, that works beautifully! —VulpesVulpes42 (talk) 13:58, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

example:𱍐, 𱍑, 𱍒, 𱍓, 𱍔, 𱍕, 𱍖, 𱍗, 𱍘, 𱍙, 𱍚, 𱍛, 𱍜, 𱍝, 𱍞, 𱍟

対応するフォントとブラウザがインストールされていても、表示されないようです。最近、Unicodeのバージョンが15.0になったばかりでMediaWikiが対応していないのでしょうか？-- Charidri (talk) 05:51, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't speak Japanese, can you write in English? However, I'd oppose adding pages for these codepoints unless they come with useful info (see the discussion on your talk page). Benwing2 (talk) 02:44, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 The question is why the characters are still showing up as boxes even though they have a compatible font installed, as they seem to think we don't support them. They actually seem to be talking about extension H (released in Unicode 15 a few days ago), so I highly doubt they actually do have a font that supports them. In any event, they'd need to change their CSS settings to get any font to work. Theknightwho (talk) 13:30, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

∅ represents the null morpheme, which occasionally features in etymologies in the form of affixes - most notably in Navajo, but quite a few other langugages too (e.g. see Mongolian комисс (komiss)). The etymology templates make it appear italicised, which isn't really appropriate as it's not orthographically part of any langauge, but merely a representation of the lack (or disappearance) of some other morpheme.

Would it please be possible to change the link module to prevent that from happening? It's too complex for me. Theknightwho (talk) 13:37, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho This change could be made in various places (e.g. at least the etymology module or the link module) but I'm a bit reluctant to do it because it's essentially special-casing a single character. Are we sure it looks so bad for it to be italicized? Benwing2 (talk) 03:24, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I think the issue is that it's not actually a representation of a character used in the language, but a placeholder. To me, at least, the italics imply that it's actually written down. Theknightwho (talk) 16:25, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho Any other characters or classes of characters that should get this treatment? Benwing2 (talk) 03:10, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

So I undid my previous edit because my request was fulfilled - defdate now accepts two parameters and automatically puts an en-dash between them. Would it be possible to bot update pages with the en-dash or using a different dash to use the two parameters and thus cleanup the Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:tracking/defdate/hyphen category? Vininn126 (talk) 14:12, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Vininn126 I went through last night and cleaned up a bunch of these. Many of the remainder in the tracking category are spurious, typically due to 'mid-19th c.' and similar. Benwing2 (talk) 05:00, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 It's down to under 500 which is great! I wonder what we should do with those remaining ones. Vininn126 (talk) 08:50, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Also, were you able to replace the ones containing en-dashes? Vininn126 (talk) 10:26, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Vininn126 I checked and almost all occurrences of en-dashes are in things like 'from ca. 1350—1470' (in many cases, there was a hyphen there that I converted into an en-dash). Benwing2 (talk) 04:00, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I see, I suppose there hasn't been any established rules for ranges, unlike {{etydate}}. Vininn126 (talk) 08:48, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

As in this post, first line "indentation" using a space does not work any longer.

Yet, the second and successive lines show no such issue. Backinstadiums (talk) 10:19, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I can't duplicate the problem. DCDuring (talk) 16:15, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

The text box does not include the first line, so you have to publish the post, go back and edit it Backinstadiums (talk) 13:54, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

The "New topic" interface strips leading and trailing whitespace. This only applies to the start and end of a comment, not every line. 70.172.194.25 16:18, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Let's fix it asap- Backinstadiums (talk) 13:53, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Even more annoyingly, when using "Reply" (as opposed to "New topic"), indenting with initial space doesn't seem to work at all. But then again, that doesn't work with plain source editing either, so I guess it's expected. 70.172.194.25 21:02, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Yea, let's fix that too. But who is in charge tho'¿? Btw, DCDuring are you abreast of issues now? been'bout a month now Backinstadiums (talk) 14:25, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Not abreast, but don't need to be. DCDuring (talk) 15:53, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

TBH, you lost me there then... Backinstadiums (talk) 14:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Your original description of the problem wasn't specific enough for me to understand your actual problem. I still haven't experienced it. I don't need to experience or know about it, apparently. DCDuring (talk) 16:08, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

"Apparently"? SMH, at least I tried 👍 Backinstadiums (talk) 08:06, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

What does setting something as a "former separatist state", which I noticed by chance is an option in the documentation of Template:place, do? The only entry I can find that uses that parameter/value is Estados Confederados da América, where AFAICT it neither displays nor categorizes; the definition of the CSA/ECA as a former secessionist state is specified separately. - -sche (discuss) 17:50, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

@-sche There's an entry in the placetype_links table that causes 'former separatist state' to display as former ] ]. There's also an entry in placetype_equivs that causes 'historical separatist state' to be categorized the same as 'historical polity', which will categorize e.g. as Category:pt:Historical polities. There might be code that maps 'former separatist state' to 'historical separatist state' for categorization purposes; I don't remember exactly as it's been awhile since I worked on the code. The existence of 'former separatist state' as a placetype is almost certainly a holdover from the original code written by User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV; I remember seeing it when I was working on the code, but I didn't add it. Benwing2 (talk) 04:45, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

The archiving tool used to archive discussions on pages like RFD and RFV isn't appearing consistently. Sometimes the archiving link appears on only the top few discussions, and other times it doesn't appear at all. Can this be looked into? Thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 08:30, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

What edit filter did I trip there? I avoided it by adding a bunch of <!--comments--> but I still don't know for sure which part was problematic. 70.172.194.25 15:42, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

It says "New user adding external link". Dunno why it thinks you're a new user; maybe User:Chuck Entz can comment. Benwing2 (talk) 04:37, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 IPs aren't accounts, so the system keeps no record of how old they are. Considering that most IP addresses can be used by anyone with the same ISP in the same geographical area, that's probably a good idea in general. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:49, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz I see, makes sense. Benwing2 (talk) 04:54, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Also: that filter only tags. What stopped them was abuse filter 32, "various specific spammer habits". It checks for a whole lot of things typical of spam and other bad edits. It checks for so many different things in so many different ways, I don't really understand it all. Not that I would discuss details where vandals and spammers might read it, anyway. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:00, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

The edit hit the filter even when omitting the text parameter, which made me wonder whether it had to do with the link to Twitter. And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm reminded of an old edit where I think I ran into the same thing: . Maybe this filter makes some sense, IDK. Do a lot of spam bots link to Twitter? 70.172.194.25 07:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

The filter doesn't check for specific sites. It looks at the edit as a whole, and containing a URL is just one of the things it looks for. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:17, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

By the way: in case you weren't already aware, you can view the abuse logs from the revision history. The only difference between what you see and what an admin sees is our version has links to pages with more details. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:26, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Currently, there is a minor issue that can occur with multi-source etymology templates when an entry doesn't exist. For example:

{{cog|it,fr|example123}} => Italian and French example123

The "Italian" link points to the same redlinked entry. It would be better to link Italian to the Wikipedia article on the language.

I have implemented a change to the module sandbox that will correct this:

{{cognate/sandbox|it,fr|example123}} =>

Note that I did take into consideration the edge case where link normalization results in different page titles:

{{cognate/sandbox|la,lv|exāmple123}} => (the Latin normalizes to ], while the Latvian retains the diacritic as in ], so having separate links makes sense).

70.172.194.25 17:59, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

This seems like a good change so I pushed it to production; thanks for the contribution. Benwing2 (talk) 04:32, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Module:pra-decl/noun/testcases/documentation suddenly showed up in cat:E yesterday (or possibly a few days earlier. I've been monitoring the category frequently as obscure corners of the Welsh system of numbers keep spewing errors via shortfalls in Module:number list/data/cy). Was this a matter of it being deliberately unhidden? If so, how should I be able to tell? I tried looking for a recent change somewhere, but couldn't find one.

I removed it from the category today by changing two settings. If one needs to reverse the settings, which had caused it to compare the tested module with two superseded rivals, todays changes can simply be undone. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

The translation adder seems to be broken. I tried using it, and got the following error message: "Could not find translation table for 'de:plötzlich'. Glosses should be unique". — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:56, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, it seems to be working again … — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:29, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I noticed, that the Turkish and Armenian editions of Wiktionary have issues with their translation adders as well. --Apisite (talk) 19:39, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Poor snake... GreyishWorm (talk) 20:47, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@GreyishWorm: — Sgconlaw (talk) 07:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

On the page for Mara Salvatrucha, we have the English definition listed with links to the supposedly "English" words Mara and Salvatrucha. I would like to replace these with ordinary bolded words since there is no need to click through to spurious words. The documentation at {{en-prop}} was unhelpful. Is there a way to unlink those words? Alternatively I could remove the template altogether and then add the word to the category manually, but I try to avoid solutions like that whenever possible. Thanks, —Soap— 20:09, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I've added |head=Mara Salvatrucha to suppress the links. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 20:19, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

@Soap That parameter is also a good way to change where the words link (usually capitalisation, e.g. if you want to link to white from White House), or if you want one of them to be a multiword term etc. Theknightwho (talk) 20:32, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I have added links to the appropriate Spanish words in the template. We can use w:MS-13#Etymology to create an entry for Salvatrucha#Spanish. DCDuring (talk) 21:41, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

All items are displayed in a single vertical column, regardless of the presence of the columns parameter or its value. The column is also displaced strangely: neither left-aligned, right-aligned, nor centered. All instances appear to be affected, including the example on the template's documentation page. I'm almost certain it's Firefox's fault, as it just updated today. --- 2600:4040:A05D:F000:B01B:AFCD:48E6:6996 01:27, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Let's hope this is the correct diagnosis of the situation. I have disabled FF updates on my PCs for now, staying with 104.0.2, even though the problems does not have serious consequences. Is there someone who is willing to keep us non-techies informed about this? DCDuring (talk) 03:23, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I guess it's because {{der-top}} had a div element with the column-count CSS property containing a ul (unordered list) element, but we want the column-count to have an effect on the ul. I'm not sure if that was even supposed to have the effect we wanted, so Firefox may be doing no wrong. Doing an edit like this applies column-count to the ul, which is definitely supposed to work and still does in Firefox 105. I'm trying to make the same edit on all templates with this unreliable HTML code. — Eru·tuon 08:14, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the info and the effort. DCDuring (talk) 12:14, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! - TheDaveRoss 12:37, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

• The problem remains with {{col3}}. I haven't looked at any others. DCDuring (talk) 16:07, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

I found out that some pages in Category:Wiktionary-namespace discussion pages would be in the top results in certain Google searches, which is annoying. Can someone get the Phabricator people to change the robots.txt, so that pages in that category (and maybe other pages such as ] and ]) no longer appear in Google search? Judging from the current robots.txt there has been precedent from other wikis to do so, and I would assume that this affects Wikt heavily, as it is a common thing to google with double quotes for searching cites. – Wpi31 (talk) 14:06, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Note: I should be clear and mention that this also includes the RFD and RFV pages. – Wpi31 (talk) 14:10, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

We could try throwing a __NOINDEX__ on the offending pages and see if that is enough to delist them. I am guessing most of their search juice is internal linking. - TheDaveRoss 15:04, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

9_9, :D, and :d need to be added to MediaWiki:UnsupportedTitles.js. Binarystep (talk) 05:31, 30 September 2022 (UTC)