Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2010-02/User:Doremítzwr for admin

• Nomination: I hereby nominate Doremítzwr as administrator. He is a long-time, good-quality editor who also does some recent-change patrolling and {{delete}}ing, and is IMO tooltrustworthy.​—msh210℠ 16:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
• Vote starts: as soon as the nomination is accepted
• Vote ends: 24:00, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
• Acceptance: I accept msn210’s nomination of me for administratorship.
  • Languages: en, cy, la-1
  • Timezone: UTC+0 (GMT)

  † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:15, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

1. Support as nominator.​—msh210℠ 16:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
2. Support and hope you won't use admin powers to push archaizing agenda. --Vahagn Petrosyan 16:24, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
3. Support Ƿidsiþ 16:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC) Oh god. All right
4. Stronȝe supporte. —Ruakh_TALK 16:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
5. Support Caladon 16:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
6. Support The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
7. Support Razorflame 19:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
8. Support --Anatoli 20:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
9. Weak support Equinox ◑ 20:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
10. Support Cdhaptomos 23:27, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
11. Support Tohru 18:43, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
12. Support —Internoob (Disc.•Cont.) 21:33, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
13. Support, although I would wish you had a more normal-looking signature, like "Raifʻhār Doremítzwr" instead of "† ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿". --Dan Polansky 10:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    I too would like that. Your god-intimated signature may scare newbies. --Vahagn Petrosyan 11:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    Is this one any better? Funnily enough, the † was only ever meant as an obelus, not a cross. (I'd've used ✝, ✞, or ✟ for the Latin cross.)
     ※〖 Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 〗 〰 ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ 〰 16:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    No, Raifʻhār. I am fond of your antecedent signature and find it enthralingly elaborate and shapely. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 17:21, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    Hmm. What am I to do? I do not wish to have an overly-distracting signature, yet I can't help but make it a little bit arty. :-) ※〖 Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 〗 〰 ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ 〰 17:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    Haven't you seen Spiderman? With superpowers comes responsibility: in this case, of having a normal signature despite the penchant for artyness. --Vahagn Petrosyan 23:18, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    I have; the third film was bloody awful. ※ Raifʻhār Doremítzwr   〰 ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ  〰  23:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

    What about one of the following?

    • — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr  ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ 00:01, 1 January 1970 (UTC)
    •  Raifʻhār Doremítzwr  ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ 00:01, 1 January 1970 (UTC)
    •  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr  - ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ - 00:01, 1 January 1970 (UTC)
    •  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr  – ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ – 00:01, 1 January 1970 (UTC)

    The character "〰" looks really odd on my screen with Verdana, whatever the cause.

    The character "※" fails to tell me that what follows is a signature.

    I would recommend hyperlinking "Raifʻhār Doremítzwr" to the user page, as that is very common, and thus expected.

    The main purpose of a signature is to identify the speaker while being recognizable as a signature; the secondary purpose is to show personality or uniqueness of the speaker beyond that provided by the unique combination of letters of the alphabet, but the secondary purpose should not dominate the primary one. The signature is read by users on a variety of devices with varying support for special characters. There are also screen readers, but I have no experience with how well they do when reading fancy characters. A signature is in effect an element of user interface. User interfaces suffer when they contain unfamiliar features for no good purpose.

    A hyperlinked proposal, dispensing with "ⓤ ":

    • "— Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ⓣ · ⓒ 00:01, 1 January 1970 (UTC).

    --Dan Polansky 07:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

    ※ is a reference mark and 〰 is a wavy dash; just FYI. The point of the ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ trio was that it mirrored the parenthetic (UTC) of the timestamp; it doesn't really work as well if there are only two of them. Anyway, I hope my newest, toned-down signature suffices. ∿’d: Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 09:27, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

    The signature "∿’d: Raifʻhār Doremítzwr" is best of the signatures that you have proposed; thank you. Still, the character "∿" looks aliased or pixelized while all other characters are antialiased on my Windows Vista machine with Verdana font. And what does "∿’d" mean? How is a newbie to understand it?

    Your signature is something of a challenge to me even without the fancy additions: I can't type "Raifʻhār", and I don't have a clue how to pronounce "Raifʻhār Doremítzwr"; the string "tzwr" looks especially suspect, but I am likely missing some background such as in historical linguistics. Be it as it may, "Raifʻhār Doremítzwr" is already rather unusual and outstanding if you ask me. --Dan Polansky 10:54, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

    Well, ∿ is a sine wave, so the pun should be obvious. I once put together this IPA transcription of my name for Ruakh: replace ʦ with t͡s, invalid IPA characters ( ʦ); bear in mind that my IPA may not be 100% accurate (I'm not happy with the bit, for example). ∿’d: Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 03:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    I don't understand the pun. Is "∿’d" to be read as "Sine wave'd:"? What does it mean?

    Maybe native speakers are better at deciphering this pun. --Dan Polansky 08:29, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    It's meant to be read as (deprecated template usage) sine’d; it hinges on the fact that (deprecated template usage) sine and (deprecated template usage) sign are homophones (sīn), hence, sīnd. Maybe I'm just a nerd. :-S ∿’d: Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 10:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    I cannot understand why an elaborate and beauteous signature as the one before 11 February should be sacrificed in order that the administrator status be conferred? Is this a requirement, a recommendation or an advice? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

    It's not a requirement, it's a recommendation/advice. You too could use some signature-simplifying: I can imagine newbies having a stroke seeing uſer and hight Bogorm. --Vahagn Petrosyan 10:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

    Notwithstanding, Atelaes has λάλει ἐμοί in his signature, Ivan had embraced the Glagolitic form of his name briefly, before he was compelled by various users to abandon it (I must admit that I myself could not distinguish the Glagolitic letters appearing as senseless squares, but I did not join the criticism, because I knew that the Glagolitic alphabet is beautiful and because it is part of the heritage of the South Slavic nations). I assure you, that one additional byte for a sharp s (or the ornated brackets or the obelus) is a piece of cake compared to various images, hearts and so on which I have stumbled upon in the signatures in several Wikipedias. In nuce, de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 12:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

    (Unindenting) I did not realize there was a pun with UTC in the signature. What about this hyperlinked signature that honors the UTC pun, hyperlinks the user name, and uses the usual "—" character to introduce the signature:

    • — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ⓤ · ⓣ · ⓒ 00:01, 1 January 1970 (UTC).

    --Dan Polansky 08:41, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    Adopted (with minor alterations). :-)  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ ⓤ · ⓣ  · ⓒ ~ 10:41, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    But why don't you hyperlink your name :)? It is very rare for a name not to be hyperlinked. Other than that, the signature looks great now. When I see a signature and want to go to the user page, I automatically click the user name without much thought. --Dan Polansky 11:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    Well, the avoidance of redundant linking was my main motivation. Also, I find that >90% of the time, it is the user's talk page, and not his user page, that I want to get to from said user's signature. (Also, I just reckon the name looks better in black as opposed to variable blue / magenta, or whatever the colour scheme is.)  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ ⓤ · ⓣ  · ⓒ ~ 23:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    But the black name no longer looks wholly like a name of a user in a wiki signature, because its being blue is one of the outstanding markers of its being a name in a wiki signature, regardless whether it looks good to someone. My point was that a wiki signature should above all look like a wiki signature; it should be recognizable as a signature extremely quickly with a minimum amount of mental processing. Anyway. --Dan Polansky 08:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

    I see your point, but I'm sure the preceding em dash and the timestamp that inexorably follows will hint pretty strongly that it's a signature; moreover, the body of text to which it forms a coronis may contain many such blue links, which obscures the distinction. Anyway, I've toned down the signature considerably, so I'm sure you will not object if accessibility bends to æsthetics on this minor point. :-)  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ ⓤ · ⓣ  · ⓒ ~ 09:11, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

    I don't know. It seems that in general you just don't care that much about what I would call usability of written communication. "æsthetics" is an obsolete spelling; by using it you contribute to proliferation of obsolete spellings; "coronis" is a word marked as obsolete and rare, one I had to look up, so it has made decoding the message more expensive on my part. The language and signatures should above all be means of communication, IMHO anyway. I can't deny that you have toned down your signature drastically, and am only grateful for that. Cheers, --Dan Polansky 09:42, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

    I do care about accessibility; I just don't consider it a totalitarian motivation. (See, for example, User talk:Doremítzwr#Your spelling.  :).) (deprecated template usage) Æsthetics is not an obsolete spelling; the OED (2^nd ed., 1989) lemmatises the spelling, and it is still very much in use, as evidenced by my addition of a quotation from a 1995 international bestseller to (deprecated template usage) æsthetic and of two quotations from very recent (read: past fifteen years) works to (deprecated template usage) æsthetics. Bear in mind that Google Books Search totally sucks at picking up ligatures and (especially) diacritics in English texts (e.g., I used œthels, not æscas, to find those two examples of (deprecated template usage) æsthetics), so searching for any English terms with such spellings will yield results of a disproportionately smaller number than the reality. (If you're interested, I keep a woefully incomplete list of b.g.c.'s scannos of (deprecated template usage) æ at User:Doremítzwr#Stuff.) Granted, spellings with ligatures aren't nearly as common as they used to be — largely thanks to the now-barely-overcome technical restrictions of the past few decades, I hypothesise — but their use has always fluctuated: “usually written as a digraph or ligature, but also, and in the earliest times, separately ae”. Your objection that “by using contribute to proliferation” defeats itself: a spelling, word, or anything else is only obsolete insofar as it is “no longer used or practised”; if a spelling becomes prolific, it necessarily ceases to be obsolete. I know the sense I used of (deprecated template usage) coronis is obsolete and rare — I'm the one who created the entry and marked it as such — but so what? Many of the most interesting "new" terms one encounters are resurrected obsolete ones. I'm engladdened if, in the course of reading something, I am taught a new word; and whilst getting up to fetch a lexicographic tome whilst one sits to read may be a resented inconvenience, surely you can't say the same of a centre-click and a quick scan (which is all you had to do, seeing as I provided you with a link). Finally, whilst the primary motivation of everyone who contributes to this project is or ought to be the dissemination of knowledge, it is worth recalling from time to time that each of us is a volunteer, and that as such there is a limit to the extent to which we ought to subordinate other considerations to the demands and mantras of customer service.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ ⓤ · ⓣ  · ⓒ ~ 11:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

    I am speaking of usability, not accessibility. The former has to do with the mental cost that a piece of user interface or writing passes to its user or reader. The latter has to do with the need of some disabled users to use screen readers to access user interfaces. An unfamiliar element can worsen usability while leaving accessibility intact. And a piece of user interface can be very usable and intuitive for users with unimpaired sight and at the same time unaccessible for its lacking support for screen readers.

    Yes, I undestand that you are trying to bring obsolete or at least no longer common spellings out of their obsoleteness by using them, but your using them does not make them any less obsolete. --Dan Polansky 12:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

    I understand and accept your usability–accessibility distinction; I had been using the latter to include the former. It's an interesting question: whether the fact that a single person or a small group of people uses a particular obsolete spelling renders that spelling no longer obsolete. It would seem intuitive to say not. However, at some point, a spelling's use by a sufficient number of people does render it no longer obsolete; so, how many people, exactly, does it take to drag a spelling out of obsolescence? The problem reminds me of the sorites paradox…  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ ⓤ · ⓣ  · ⓒ ~ 23:41, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

14. Support Ultimateria 17:58, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
15. Support. Seems trustworthy and knowledgeable and has been around for quite some time. Being a nerd is definitely not a con for this project ;) Krun 11:19, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
16. Support Your signature is awesome please don't change it. --Ivan Štambuk 14:54, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

    Heh, danke. :-D But which form do you mean?  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ ⓤ · ⓣ  · ⓒ ~ 23:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

17. Support at long last. DAVilla 07:50, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
18. Support Neskaya ^{contribs – talk?} 23:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC) But with the note that the characters in circles are exceedingly difficult, and could you just go back to the signature you had before but without the † in it? It was definitely the best of them. You could maybe use some other, more neutral symbol ? --Neskaya ^{contribs – talk?} 23:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

    I agree. The unlinkified username, in particular, seems less-than-ideal. —Ruakh_TALK 15:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

    The symbol † which Raifʻhār construed as an obelus, is an entirely neutral one, unless it be misapprehended. The symbol ☾ (whose only meaning is that of a crescent without any construing) is also an entirely neutral one. Another symbols whose meaning does not transcend their religious application, may certes be considered non-neutral. Thus I am wholeheartedly favourable of Raifʻhār’s original signature. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 18:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

    I can't think of any Unicode symbols that don't "transcend their religious application", but surely that doesn't make them non-neutral. That said, I'm not sure where this notion comes from that a signature must be neutral. Wiktionary:Signatures says no such thing. If someone wants to include a cross or a star-and-crescent or a yin-yang to their signature, whether they intend it religiously or not, then more power to them. (But not all religious symbols are fair game; a swastika would run afoul of the "must not be offensive" clause, no matter how the user intended it.) —Ruakh_TALK 00:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

    My original comment was simply stated because people seemed to originally have trouble with the original version of the signature at the beginning of this vote. However, since the start of the vote and the changing, I am even more confused than I usually am. I personally haven't a care about obelus', crosses, stars, whatever, provided that the overall signature is both legible, not offensive, and not overdone. The versions where there are things in circles and whatnot just seem to be more on the overdone and confusing versions of that. 'Tis all. --Nesksock ^{kanetsv verify?} 22:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

    Yup, and I still agree. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 22:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

    The enclosed alphanumerics are gone; can we drop this minutia now? BTW, two things:

    1. Neskaya / Nesksock (?!), whatever's causing it, please disable (if you can) the automatic character substitution of the kind that I reverted. Thanks.
    2. The "offensive" clause is not easy to define. Some atheists (I'm thinking the Dawkinsian variety) would find any religious representation offensive. Regarding the swastika, both neo-Nazis and members of Falun Gong wouldn't be too fond of having their symbol forbidden. (You may say that we shouldn't give a monkey's what Nazis think — and I would agree; however, this introduces the question of whose offence matters, and why. And then there's Falun Gong.) All this concern about offence, when taken too far, results in super-bland restriction of expression. Up to a point, I would say that it doesn't matter whether one is offended. All that is theoretical, anyway; the Christ-hinting obelus is long gone.

     — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 20:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

    I have a dumquotes script. I'm not sure that that is what is causing it. I use the sock when I'm trying to make sure that I don't log into an account with admin privileges from a computer that is insecure, because that's usually my idea of good policy. I really don't know how it affected an edit window though, but it's a system preference on that computer that I would have to contact the administrator to disable. I'll see what I can do. Really didn't mean to do any sort of automatic character substitution, and I'm sorry for it, but it could be worse. :O --Nesksock ^{kanetsv verify?} 17:39, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

    Yes, it's no big deal. I just thought I'd point it out in case you hadn't noticed. I've seen it happen twice before; once to an entry (here). Just FYI.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:43, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

    It (forbidding said symbol) may disconcert Jainists too. Jainists are more numerous than both neo-Nazis and Falun Gong. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

    Hither twice! And anyway, aren't Hakenkreuze generally slanted diagonally?  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 10:07, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

19. Support Daniel. 18:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
20. Support Conrad.Irwin 18:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

1. Oppose Mglovesfun (talk) 20:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC). Stubborn, arrogant. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

   Well, not everybody loves fun. DAVilla 07:53, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

20-1 passes--Rising Sun talk? 23:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for the >95% support. I will use these new privileges responsibly.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:46, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• Made it so. SemperBlotto 19:32, 1 March 2010 (UTC)