User talk:Connel MacKenzie/archive-2005

If you are here at the top of the page, you are lost. Go here instead.

{{Recent changes}}

Hippietrail, Sorry about all that. It must've been a shock when you saw the Recent changes template, apparently a gazillion miles wide. I had tailored that view to the way it renders in Special:Recent changes...that is, it breaks the line in two, whereas the direct template edit does not show that (because it is not in an HTML/wiki table context.)

I had left messages for you over at MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext, that apparently you didn't see before you reverted that. C'est la vie.

If you want to see what I was trying to describe, open my user page, where I have it now rendering two separate templates for the two (related but separate) lists.

To my eye, the separate lists look fine. But they ultimately are trying to achieve the same goal and it could be said they are too closely related to be separate lists. My experiment {{Most linked undefined words}} only appears on my user page...I can't imagine that hurting anyone for now at least. --Connel MacKenzie 02:06, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template goatse vandalism

Hippietrail, the Wiktionary:Wanted entries was vandalized with hello.jpg twice tonight/this morning. Reverted after a few minutes, as the server decided right then to be *very* slow (error pages x 10). Perhaps it is time to think about protecting those templates? Or dragging it all back into MediaWiki:Recentchangestext? --Connel MacKenzie 09:54, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, any page can be vandalised, even the front page. I don't think there's much point protecting each page that's been attacked once. If it become a repeated target we might want to do something. — Hippietrail 23:23, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Had a fun revert war with Kenneth tonight. I'd like to apologize for filling the template up with queued entries. The last time I needed more words, I went to the end of the Wanted Pages history, and pulled undefined words off there. Alas, there were too many typos in that old old version. Eyeballing a few of them, the entries on the current request page with text to the right describing what they are, seemed likely "OLD" candidates. So I blitzed them onto the queue. By the time I was done, the vandal was gone. Now it looks like quite an ugly mess. --Connel MacKenzie 06:59, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Parts of speech

Hi Connel. Sorry to have to revert some of your work. But "w:part of speech" refers only to the labels used to categorise words in a language. The simplest are "noun", "verb", "adjective", and "adverb". There are a great many more linguistic and grammatical terms which have nothing at all to do with parts of speech. "Accusative" is one such word which I just reverted. Accusative is a case, which is something very different. It belongs in a different category along with nominative, possessive, dative, and a whole lot of rarer ones.

What to call that category is a problem. Since English doesn't really use cases any more, "English cases" would be wrong. There are English words for many cases used in all kinds of languages which are not used in English. I'm not sure what a concise yet accurate name for this category might be.

Keep up the good work though! — Hippietrail 03:38, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(Response on your talk page. Need to remember to ask on Beer parlor.) --Connel MacKenzie 23:32, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hippietrail, Regarding your message to me on my talk page: No problem! Fortunately, I saw you revert that right before submitting another batch of them. (Yup, even I have learned to use "PREVIEW".) The only one I didn't cancel at that point was "Part of speech" iteself, as that really ought to be in the category category:English parts of speech. I've been cooling my heels waiting to see what else would get reverted, while I keep thinking "what the hell was I thinking?"

How about a category Category:Grammar terminology (or Category:Grammar or Category:Grammar terms or Category:English grammar or Category:Grammar: English) for those like me who are so easily confused? Ultimately, it'll get broken into sub-categories via wikimagic. Hmmm, maybe this should be reposted in the Beer Parlor? Whadaya think? --Connel MacKenzie 03:56, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A correct set of categories really would be a good thing. We just have to come up with a good way of naming categories which can reflect the language the words are in, the language the words might pertain to if they are of a linguistic or grammatical nature, and those which can reflect both. I think it's been brought up on the beer parlour before but I'm not sure. If yes, add a comment, if not, start a topic there. — Hippietrail 04:07, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anti-semitism

Hello Connel. I'm very sorry if I offended you with my comments on "anti-semitism". --Richard 22:28, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hello Richard; thank you, apology accepted. I too am sorry if I was too harsh towards you or your post. I had stumbled into what is certain to become a flame war unwittingly, and I needed to bow out quickly. Had I known what the complaint was, I would not have dared to claim myself an authority on the subject (and I don't think I ever did.) Your specific post wasn't terribly harsh, but it is representative of what is certain to follow on such a flash-point topic. I think I worded my caution well enough that people MAY keep cool heads on that discussion now (I hope so - for all of your's sake!) But I forgot to mention in my farewell that that term is also used as an adjective. Please keep your posts technical on sensitive topics. And save the flame war about the term racism for another day; work on only one at a time. Mixing emotions into a technical discussion about a word makes your opinion sound less valid. Good luck on sorting that one out! --Connel MacKenzie 05:51, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Excessive Wikification

Oh, no, you're picking on wikification now? I've been doing a lot more of it lately. :-) (Note that smiley is not wikified.) --Connel MacKenzie 06:04, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think there was a discussion a while ago to the effect that too much wikification hurts performance, and we can use all the performance help we can get (though matters seem to have improved lately). My personal beef with it is more that when everything is emphasized, nothing is emphpasized. Wikifying a term in a definition calls special attention to its relevance or anticipates that the term is obscure enough that many readers will want to look it up.

There is a lot of room for interpretation in what could be wikified, all the way from nothing to every word. I try to be conservative in my own use, but I'll generally dewikify if it looks really gratiutous (as the entry for blow football did — now there's an interesting dialectal difference: In the US, that's an imperative sentence, not a noun phrase :-)

It would be cool if the ability to drill down on any term were handled automatically (perhaps in the browser, but handling multi-word terms could be tricky). As it is, you can always cut and paste into the search box. -dmh 06:29, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Abbreviations

I notice you've been going through the list of abbreviations. If you change the header line to {{abbreviation}}, it will point to the automatically maintained category instead of the manual list, and automatically add the term there (and if we want to restore the old behavior, only the template has to change — but I hope we won't).

You might want to ponder the distinction between abbrevation, acronym and initialism, though right now they all get put into the same category (again, this could be changed by changing the templates).

In any case, thanks for the work! Hadn't seen you in a while. Tagging the states as such is good in any case. Though a template might be better ... -dmh 05:33, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at the entry for Kansas. With the template, everything gets done at once. I think the category should be "US States" and not "State". The "US" because not all states are US states, and the plural because that seems to be the convention. -dmh 05:42, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

dmh,

At 17:12pm (I think that's MST) user 68.7.228.146 posted an entry for Alaska, with a troll comment asking for a list of US States. I scratched my head looking around and realized they were correct; there was no list to be found here, so I started blitzing the abbreviations (which were all present, except for Military PO in territories) with the category under politics: State. It was rather clever of me, that yes, States (US) also can be considered relevant to the State (Country/Government) category. Anyway, I took the troll's bait...

Had I paused for half a second, I would have realized that I was making it more painful than needed. And now, there are slightly over a hundred entries that need to be "better" categorized. {Sigh}. Almost worth a bot. At least, as you pointed out, they are all tagged now.

I think US States would be an appropriate Sub-category of State. I would've named the template USState not USstate, or more likely usas (USA States.) Template:cattag2, right?

I'm not sure if cattag2 applies, but it's easy to define one template as an alias for another. Just define Template:usas as {{USstate}} (and likewise for Template:USState, if you like). Similarly, it's no problem to make Category:US_States a subcategory of Category:State. Just add the link. However, I still think Category:States (plural) would be more consistent. -dmh 15:06, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You said: Hadn't seen you in a while. Perhaps you hide logged in users' changes? Maybe I should log out more often. Maybe I should log out more than once a week. I need to work out a way to wiki less. This is powerfully addictive stuff here. (Compared to cigarrettes, or other addictive substances, that is.) --Connel MacKenzie 06:51, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think I had you confused with someone else. Apologies -dmh 15:06, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

British/US spellings

Hi Connel,

Wiktionary does not neutral when it comes to variant spellings on different sides of the Atlantic, so color and colour are treated equally and neither is redirected to the other. I'll copy the contents of crenelate to crenellate, which is the spelling used in the UK. There has been some discussion in the beer parlour on how to resolve this issue. See the page color, colour for one suggested solution - this system has not yet been adopted. — Paul G 18:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No problem. ARTFL listed it as an alternate spelling; I had no idea it was a US/UK variation (I wouldn't think it is; just because it is a spelling difference, doesn't mean it belongs in the US/UK flamewar.) Also, I thought the color/colour issue is still up in the air...if I had know this was involved I would not have created the article. As it is, I think I may take these off my watchlist. --Connel MacKenzie 18:44, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, you're already aware of the color/colour thing, then. Is ARTFL a US project? I would imagine that "crenellation" would be the British spelling, as it comes from the French, which has a double "l". According to US spelling rules, as the stress is not on the syllable ending in the "l", there is only a single "l" (as in "traveling" - compare "compelling", where the stress is on the syllable ending in the "l" and so is spelled thus both sides of the pond). I don't know for sure - I will have to check my Oxford English Dictionary when I remember to do so.

On a related issue, I prefer to use "Variant spelling" over "Alternate spelling" as "alternate" means "alternating" in UK English rather than "different but equivalent" (we would write "alternative"). "Variant" does the job and avoids bias, although I think you can use "alternative" in this sense in US English.

May I may butt in on this conversation?

It has been discussed elsewhere whether "alternative" or "variant" is better. I use, but do not love "alternative". I do not like "variant" because it suggests that A is a variant of B, which is the original or correct form. Thus B is subordinate to A which is a value judgement. — Hippietrail 12:51, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(Curious fact: "crenelated molding" required two spelling changes to give it its UK spelling.) — Paul G 18:52, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

According to dictionary.com, which is a US resource, "alternative" can mean "Allowing or necessitating a choice between two or more things," so I suppose from this that it would be an acceptable NPOV term to use. (There is a usage note that quibbles over whether "alternative" can be used of more than two things, but that is a separate issue.) Given Hippietrail's comment, "alternative" might be the appropriate term to use, unless someone can come up with an, er, alternative. — Paul G 15:14, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

crenelate/crenellate

PaulG,

No problem. ARTFL listed it as an alternate spelling; I had no idea it was a US/UK variation (I wouldn't think it is; just because it is a spelling difference, doesn't mean it belongs in the US/UK flamewar.) Also, I thought the color/colour issue is still up in the air...if I had know this was involved I would not have created the article. As it is, I think I may take these off my watchlist. --Connel MacKenzie 18:44, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

1. PaulG, I guess my problem with the whole thing is that just because crenellate is the only British spelling, does not cause the US spelling of crenellate to be invalid; it just implies that crenelate is preferred in the US (which I have no way of checking.)
2. ARTFL I link to when editing entries using {{artfl}} during preview (+ open in new tab) then remove the template once the separate windows/tabs are open, before saving. ARTFL I *think* is a US university project, making Webster 1913 available online, unencumbered.
3. As for "Variant" vs. "Alternate", I'm just going off what I think is in Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained. Unless it's changed since I last looked (which was fairly recently.) --Connel MacKenzie 19:09, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gaaaah! You changed it January 8th! {sigh} Perhaps alternate has a different meaning "across the pond" as well. My oh my. If I ever get bored, I'll look that discussion up. (It WAS discussed, right?) --Connel MacKenzie 19:18, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So if ARTFL is based on Webster 1913, it does indeed have American content.

Which way are you going across the pond? I think "alternate" means both "every second one" and "different but equivalent" in the US, whereas it is only used in the latter sense in the UK.

Yes, I made that change. I don't remember it being discussed. I think it is one of those things that just came about because a couple of people started doing it, maybe after a similar discussion to the one we are having now. — Paul G 10:01, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm in the US. As someone replied on my talk page, variant is apparently more POV than alternate. --Connel MacKenzie 14:04, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the laugh. Thanks for the insight, and rational discussion! --Connel MacKenzie 17:19, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So, were you going to change it back to alternate in Wiktionary:Entry layout explained? --Connel MacKenzie 06:25, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I've changed it to "alternative", which I am assuming is universally understandable. I have also added "Alternative forms" as an extra header, which is midway between alternative spellings and synonyms. This is especially useful for phrases, where there might be small variations in phrasing that are not changes of spelling and don't make the phrase different enough to count as a synonym (such as those phrasal verbs ending in "around" where "about" may be used instead in UK English). — Paul G 16:17, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What's up with the EARLIEST USENET from google stuff?

Hello Hippietrail,

I owe you some large amount of thanks for the various information on your user & discussion & robotuser & robotdiscussion pages. You are one busy guy! Keep up the awesome stuff.

I've noticed recently you seem to be adding a great deal of text from early USENET posts, gleaned from google. Is this automated? Or just a strange experiment? It seems to me to be very interesting. But there is one formatting anomoly; if you append those posts to an ongoing conversation (yes, under a clean, new heading) the end of the conversation is no longer readily apparent by holding the space bar down or pressing END to get to the bottom of a page. Other than that one tiny glitch (hmmm, glitch is too strong?) other than that, it does seem to be pretty curiously fascinating stuff. --Connel MacKenzie 07:16, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel. Phew, your heading made me expect a rant against it - I'm glad that's not what I got (-: No it's not automated, I'm doing it manually though I think about creating a bot to do it sometimes. I began doing it for words which have appeared after Usenet to pin down a little the time of their appearance and popularity. But then I realized that it's also interesting to see when words jump from noun to verb or vice versa, when they start picking up inflections and derivations. It's also fun to see what kind of subject matter they are first popular in. And of course the contexts provide insights on the how the words are used too.

I'll have to keep an eye out for the glitch you've mentioned - I haven't noticed it before.

Thanks for the message! — Hippietrail 21:47, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Webster's abbreviations

Hi Connel.

Does Webster use the abbreviation "OHG." or "OHG" for Old High German? It seems a bit strange if they only put a point after the G. I would have thought it would be either "O.H.G." or "OHG" but not "OHG." — Paul G 10:07, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Paul, the abbreviations I've seen are all "OHG." not "OHG". Strange. I'm about to redirect OHG to OHG. for a little consistency. --Connel MacKenzie 10:10, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I didn't think you would have made that sort of mistake, so I am surprised at Webster. Maybe it's something they corrected in the later editions. Redirecting from the "correct" abbreviations to Webster's ones makes sense. — Paul G 10:17, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A ipdf

Connel, I've nominated this entry for cleanup, or preferably deletion. What I said was:- a) If we have to have this entry at all, it should surely go in as ipdf, without the leading A b) I don't think the entry, as it is, adds any value to a dictionary. There is no defintion as such. c) If it is needed simply for reference from somewhere else, then put into the Wiktionary: namespace d)it would have to have a language setting of "Portugese" (or the Portugese language equivalent of that. e)It's not a word, an acronym, an abbreviation, nor exactly a well known initialism. Not useful, nor necessary.

Personally I'd take it out as mere clutter. Connel, think about if we really need it.--Richardb 14:01, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. I'll respond on RFD. --Connel MacKenzie 14:05, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

dieseling

Are you sure it's an adjective? It looks like part of a verb to me. SemperBlotto 08:32, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've added a verb section to diesel. SemperBlotto 08:53, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Parts of speech are my Achillies Heel, followed closely by my spelling. I honestly wasn't sure if the mechanic was making the word up, or if it is common jargon in auto-repair shops. Sounded convincing though. Anyway, yes, please correct the part-of-speech designation, if it's wrong. --Connel MacKenzie 08:37, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. But what is petrol? (Kust kidding - I have heard of it. At least twice now in my lifetime.) --Connel MacKenzie 09:05, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

IPA pronunciations - HELP

Hello Hippietrail, my friend,

I understand the importance of pronunciation for most definitions. Without a pronunciation key of some sort, all acronyms are mostly useless entries. I've been trying to grok IPA, but I keep failing. I am hopeful that you can help me understand it.

Part of the problem stems from our bizarre IPA pages here on Wiktionary. I don't readily think of myself as stupid, but trying to read the initial words of Wiktionary:About International Phonetic Alphabet leave me at a loss.

• Appendix - ok, an obsolete organ of the human body
• International - Someone from outside the US
• Phonetic - pertaining to telephones
• Alphabet - ABCDEFG...
• Consonants - Alphabet minus AEIOU
• Pulmonic - ? Pertaining to a pulmonary function? The beating of the heart?
• Bilabial - Two lips. Sounds almost obscene.
• Labiodental - Lip-tooth. Again, almost an obscene reference?
• Dental - TEETH. OK, I got one.
• Alveolar - Pertaining to aveoli - the tiny sacs inside one's lungs? Oh, does this mean sounds that sound like one is coughing up phlegm?
• Postalveolar - ? The sound of spitting, after couging up phlegm?
• Retroflex - Pertaining to disco/1970s? A John Travolta sound?
• Palatal - Sounds that are caused by having peanut butter stuck to the top of your mouth?
• Velar - OK, now I'm really lost.
• Uvular - Pertaining to a female reproductive organ? A sound made during cunnilingus?
• Pharyngeal - Pharyanx...hmm, what's a pharynx again?
• Glottal - HEY! This is the first term on the page that pertains to pronunciation (to this insane American.)
• Plosive - Somehow related to TNT or atom-bombs?

I'm trying to determine a reasonable answer to the question you posed on klingon, but aparently I'm too fucking stupid. OK, maybe I'll have luck in the second sentence of the page...

• Consonants - still Alphabet minus AEIOU
• Non-pulmonic - Shit. Sounds made when your heart stops?
• Clicks - Sounds made from one's keyboard, not one's mouth.
• Voiced - Um, spoken, orated.
• implosives - the sound a lightbulb makes when the glass is broken?
• Ejectives - very obscene.
• Bilabial click - ?
• Bilabial voiced implosive - ? I just can't figure out how these words can go together.
• For example - {Ah ha! English words accidentally appearing on this page!}
• Dental click - The horrible sound of a dentist's drill being turned on?
• Dental/alveolar voiced implosive - Sounone punched your teeth into your lungs?
• Bilabial ejective - Very, very obscene.
• (Post)alveolar click - ? A sound heard after one's lungs are removed?
• Palatal voiced implosive - The sound a dog makes after eating peanut butter?
• Dental/alveolar ejective - Again, very obscene.
• Palatoalveolar click - Spitting, after coughing up lung cheese?
• Velar voiced implosive - Gasping for air?
• Velar ejective - Exhale?
• Alveolar lateral click - The sound one makes as a roller coaster turns?
• Uvular voiced implosive - MMmmpph, umpmphh, {gasp}
• Alveolar fricative ejective - Most obscene yet.

Ok, I'm hopeless. The table of IPA examples seemed like maybe I'd be able to figure out what all these really meant from examples, but damn, that table seems scattered.

Seriously though, is there any reasonable way for me to learn this system? I'd honestly like to try to help, but this is just not a good starting point...Wiktionary:About International Phonetic Alphabet may as well be written in Klingon. (Perhaps this questions should have been on that page's discussion page.)

--Connel MacKenzie 17:22, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I saw this and have posted a reply to Connel on his talk page. — Paul G 18:08, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: Template: Wanted Articles

Richardb,

I have done some lengthy investigation into templates on Wiktionary lately. I am absolutely stunned that you broke the recent changes page. I do not understand what "rules" you are refering to in your note when you moved them, because evidently, you haven't written them yet.

User:Eclecticology told me that templates boil down to what gets used, what becomes popularly used. (Perhaps that is poor paraphrasing; I'll find the direct quote if you really would like me to.) With that in mind, I recently have added what *I* find to be useful templates to me. (You see, you vandalized my talk page also, when you deleted the Wanted articles template.)

Template:Wanted articles and Wiktionary:Wanted entries have been under a considerable onslought of vandalism recently. While I agree that that is problematic, I fail to see why you didn't simply protect the page(s) in question.

For me, personally, I'd be interested in helping define and catalog all templates. But I'd really like some explanation as to what happened tonight, or for you to restore the template:Wanted articles, before I can see any reason to get involved in such an effort.

--Connel MacKenzie 05:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: Template: Wanted Articles

I've been on a bit of a mission to clean up Wiktionary, trying to inhibit the tendency to not bother looking how something is done currently, rather just creating another page. That tendency leads to a lot of confusion, anarchy and duplication and cross-purposes in how we, as a team, are tackling the building of a useable Wikitionasry. (Anarchy etc is fine in the actual content of the Wiktionary).

To me, the usage of Template:Wanted Pages was totally contrary to the intended usage of Templates - that is, to contain text to be copied into articles. There was already a page directly addressing wanted pages. So I merged the contents of the two.

I'm sorry if this caused some offense, but, I'm at a complete loss how come you thought it was OK to use a template page for a project page of sorts. If you want a project page of sorts, why not create a page such as Project:Wanted Articles. The Template namespace has a specific intention. Not respecting that purpose can cause a lot of confusion - confusion being what I am trying to reduce.

Tell you what, I'll put it all into a page called Project:Wanted Articles, and change all the links and references so it works for you as before, but leaves the Template namespace free.--Richardb 05:36, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Whoa, wait a sec. PLEASE.

1. I did not devise this use of templates.
2. Although I have asked a couple times in the past, I never once heard it said that templates are specifically limited to what you say.
3. On certain pages, templates have a dynamic nature. Perhaps the Projects methods you refer to are better for embedding dynamic content - I don't know as I haven't investigated that yet.

Can you not see that simply deciding for yourself that templates "should" be used a certain way, will not guarantee they will not be used in other, MORE USEFUL manners? The capability exists. Unless you change the underlying software, a similar tack is likely to rear it's head elsewhere at some time in the future.

The only downside I ever saw to template:Wanted articles was that as a result of its usefulness, it became a #1 target for vandalism. It certainly did encourge newcommers to contribute. It certainly did add variety to old-timer's contributions. (Where old-timer:==wiktionarian >3 months.)

--Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Using a redirect from a template, ummm. Well first off, it hoses a preview of a page that contains the template. Secondly, it breaks the differences view. Lastly, it breaks the EDIT button on there (I'm sure I can fix that, when I find where the page got to.)

Can other pages be dynamically merged in with Projects? --Connel MacKenzie 05:57, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK. I fixed it up so it all works the same for you, without using the Template name space at all. No hard feelings I hope.--Richardb 06:03, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You can *DO* that? Oh cool. OK, since that works, then yeah, I'm behind you all the way. Hmmmm...what else have I screwed with in templates recently that belongs there? ...template:artfl for sure... hmmmm...

No, no hard feelings; thanks for working through the misunderstanding patiently. --Connel MacKenzie 06:09, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

There was a couple of false starts along the way, and I'm still cleaning up, so give me half and hour or so (while my dinner is going cold)--Richardb 06:05, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience and understanding too./ My feeling is we could create a useful standard, like having all dynamic content pages named something like Wiktionary:Dynamic Content:Wanted Articles, with a category of "dynamic content".

Um, for embedded stuff that gets reused in several places, SHORT names are better. Just a side-thought. --Connel MacKenzie 06:21, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

IF there is a problem of making these pages too accessible to vandals, then we can lock a few of the pages.--Richardb 06:13, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So far so good; surviving just fine without locking the pages down; just giving me and other newcomers lots of reversion practice. --Connel MacKenzie 06:21, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

List of Templates

Hi there Connel, to see ALL templates go to Special:Allpages, select Templates for the drop down list, and press "Go". They are in alphabetical order with no categorization. Good hunting. SemperBlotto 12:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Deletions

Hey, sorry to bug you, but I noticed that you have made {rfd}'s without adding them onto the {rfd} page. And I was wondering if that page was just meant for requests up for debate, or what. I'd hate to fill up the page with things that will obviously be deleted, if they can get deleted without being put on there. And by the way, I thought your turnup defs were pretty good. Thanks--Alia H 06:10, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just couldn't help myself with the pull an Alia on turnup. I figured as long as it's not deleted yet, I'd have some fun. I know I'll have to remove the link eventually, so I've been keeping an eye on the deletions page to know when. You've been very helpful, thanks again!--Alia H 07:35, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I cleaned up the ones that were obviously not Wiktionary material. To get them processed quickly it's not enough to put {{rfd}} on the page. It also has to be nominated on the Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion page itself with a reason. Then it can be discussed and subsequently deleted. Could you put the remaining ones over there? Polyglot 10:32, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'll try to get to them tonight. Is that the official policy then? {sigh}. Oh well. At least the list is premade for me to run through... --Connel MacKenzie 16:21, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Great work on List of Templates

Seems we might be thinking along the same lines in a few areas. Great work on the List of Templates. I earlier wrote some response to you in Wiktionary talk:Index to Templates--Richardb 14:14, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'll go look for you response there. Thanks. It's not easy, but it is fun learning how to do wiki tables. The rest, I've been thinking about for some time now, wondering why there was no "roadmap to templates." Now I know. --Connel MacKenzie 16:21, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Calling card

Hi Connel,

I see you have corrected all kind of silly mistakes I have made around the site recently. I think these will reduce in number as I get used to it. I am familiar with Wikipedia but find some of the local practices on Wiktionary a little hard to remember sometimes. Please be patient with the newbies, esp. me. :-) -- Dizzley 08:27, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I dropped a few replies on all these on my talk page. --Dizzley 09:07, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Shorten

In reply, I want to delete the WikiSaurus:Shorten page, and the WikiSaurus:shorten page needs to be changed into a real WikiSaurus page for 'shorten'. Can you help?

It seems I got the wrong end of the stick having read the text in the WikiSaurus template. Dizzley 08:37, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, how can you be told off for nominating a page with the RfD template? The RfD page states:

This page lists all articles / entries / pages that have been nominated for Deletion in one of two ways.

* Check the alphabetical AUTOMATED LIST of all those entries / pages tagged with the code category:Requests for deletion...

* There is a manually created and maintained list within this page, below. You can use the Make a new nomination link below to add your nomination to the list, and a brief explanation...

template inuse

Richardb,

I know you hate the template concept, but perhaps you could use the template:inuse while you are working on the policy pages, if for no other reason than to let everyone know implicitly when you are "done" with an individual policy page? --Connel MacKenzie 14:52, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about this template. And, I don't hat ethe Template concept, just the misuse of it. This I think is an appropriate use - just quicly inserting some standard "code" into a page.--Richardb 15:11, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And, I've finished editing for a few hours. I've just got to go to bed !!

Objects

Connel -

You say keep objects - do you expect a redirecting entry for every plural noun in the dictionary? It seems wrong to me.--Dizzley 21:56, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) (Copying this to Talk:objects).

Sysophood

Hi Connel,

I see you have been making some good contributions during the last three months and I believe you would make a good sysop. Would you be interested in the 'privilege'? Then I'll nominate you. If no major obejctions arise, we can ask Eclecticology to give you sysop rights. All you would have to do is to shoot obvious vandalism and spamvertising. The stuff that's less clear, still has to go to {{rfd}} for debate. Polyglot 09:07, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dear Polyglot,

Thank you very much for your generous offer. I am flattered and honored. I honestly do not desire to have the ability to delete pages. Sometimes the distinction is very subtle; occasionally my gut instinct has been dead-wrong. In those cases, I've been rewarded and informed by other's review of my rfd. But there are sysop features I do desire, such as one-click edit-reverting, block users and protect pages. (That is, if I understand sysop correctly.) There are still facets of deletion that I do not understand; e.g. can Transwiki pages be deleted (or do they have to be moved first, to a temporary name?)

This (curiously) is a difficult decision for me. I'd like to think about it for a day or two before you do any such nominiation, if that's OK with you.

--Connel MacKenzie 09:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

It's not exactly up to me to make you a sysop. But I pay attention to who contributes a lot of time to this project and who makes good changes to improve it though. Then I ask them if they are interested. :: It is good that you want some time to think it over. It's not like a lot more will be expected of you, all of a sudden. All that is needed is good judgement.

Blocking users and IP adresses is even worse than deleting pages that are obviously spam or vandalism. IP addresses can be shared by many users, or somebody else can get a DHCP lease that we happpened to have blocked. It is to be used with caution.

Where it is not obvious, the pages should be nominated for deletion, so we all can decide what to do about them. An other good way to go about the less offensive ones, is to nominate them and have them deleted by another sysop. Then at least two people have been able to express their opinion.

Lastly, it's not because you have the powers that you have to use them. Sometimes/quite often I wonder if I'm not exaggerating myself. OTOH the tree needs to be pruned in order to grow in a healthy way. Anyway, the most important part is that you keep contributing like before and don't get too distracted by the sysop duties.

It just seems like a good idea to have some more people who can deal with the blatantly obvious vandalism and spamvertising. The situation has worsened a lot over the last few months. Polyglot 15:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vandal?

Regarding Wikipedia (the sister project of Wiktionary): I try not to let my sense of humor slip through too often, as it doesn't come across well in text, but I also don't think I was using any here. And two hours seems like a pretty long time to have a request stuck in a queue somewhere. Your network lag can't be THAT bad! Did I make some untoward change? --Connel MacKenzie 20:56, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, that was strange. I saw the vandalism by "Hello" but not your subsequent revert and addition. I've put it right now. Sorry. SemperBlotto 22:44, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I nearly made the same mistake, back to you (1/2 hr after making the above post) when I had "Hide logged in users" from Recent Changes on. (I keep RC in a separate browser tab, so that attribute stays on with each reload.) Now THAT would have been really embarassing! --Connel MacKenzie 22:52, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Asshat

You're welcome. Still not convinced that's the source, it seems like it probably had something to do with it though. That threat saw good use in the James Caan movie Thief. E. abu Filumena 06:29, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki

Hello Connel, I see you have been having a go at this corner of Wiktionary. Some time ago I had a little play and moved one article. I was thinking of writing an article in the Help namespace on how to find these articles, how to evaluate them, and what to do with them - but I haven't gotten around to it yet (so much to do, so little time!).

I think that your method of adding them all to a Category first might be a bit labour intensive. Whas fink? SemperBlotto 10:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes. I'm not convinced its the easy way to do it either. About two or three weeks ago, I moved a dozen or two dozen entries. Since then, I think the template:Move to Wiktionary got deleted, making it harder to find them. Last night, when I looked at apecial:Allpages starting at "Transwiki:" I saw a whole bunch more that didn't have that template at all, I started tagging them into that category. I made it through the "A"s. Looks like only about 1/3rd of them had the aforementioned template (and therefore were previously moved.)

Perhaps I was more sleepy than I realized, when I did that. I don't know. Clearly, it is uncharted territory. The Wikipedia Move to Wiktionary page is not much help either, as that focuses on articles pending a move from Wikipedia to Transwiki. That was why I was focusing on only putting "unclean" entries into category:Transwiki.

What does "Whas fink?" mean? --Connel MacKenzie 14:01, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sorry - native Bristolian - "What do you think?"

I'll see if I can come up with a rational methodology - but don't hold your breath. SemperBlotto 14:06, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Egads, is that really what that log is for? The first few times I read that, I thought they wanted only articles that are being sent *to* Wikipedia from here. I may have a fair amount of cleanup to do. --Connel MacKenzie 19:27, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dont't rush. I'm still experimenting and investigating. I think that the log may possibly be overkill. More soonish. SemperBlotto 19:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry about me; I'm in no rush. What you've done so far has been intruiging. Tell me if you notice a correspondence between the list I was working off (List of words starting from Transwiki]) and the list you found. Since the latter looks like a manual list, I would think some slip through the cracks (therefore making the category approach more comprehensive?) I'm glad you volunteered to write the help page. Good luck! Let me know if you want help filling out a section. --Connel MacKenzie 06:36, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm reaching the top of the learning curve, but I'm going to London today. More soon. SemperBlotto 08:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at Help:Transwiki - does it make sense? SemperBlotto 11:07, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely wonderful! Nicely done. Unfortunately, I think I probably should go back and add my previous entries to the log. Perhaps Wikipedia:Things_to_be_moved_to_Wiktionary should link to your help page? --Connel MacKenzie 15:34, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Note: the former entry was intended to be funny, but on reflection, maybe the wikiPEDIA TW article really should mention it. Maybe? I'm glad you saw my two-cent tweak. Again, nice work - thanks! --Connel MacKenzie 15:48, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi again. Yes, I think that the log is the prime document, so ought to be updated if you can remember which ones you had a go at. I am going to add an /Archive2003 subpage soon, and an /Archive2004 one later, and hive off the old entries so that the log doesn't get too big (that's what -pedia does). I won't tell any -pedians about it, we don't want that lot mucking about. I shall process a few entries every so often, and I'll let you know if I find any strange ones (I think that I saw one that was a list of foreign words). Cheers. SemperBlotto 16:17, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aslan

Thanks for the intial cleanup on Aslan, I guess I was just too timid to do the overhaul. Thought I'd let somebody else do the dirty work. I didn't want to step on any toes by removing the majority of the content, also I hadn't thought of the external link. . . .I'll get this all figured out eventually, I promise.Alia H 23:11, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Connel MacKenzie

I don't know if you saw the personal attack against you (follow the link in the title and look at the deleted edits) - it was probably posted while you were asleep. I have deleted it and taken the offender to task (see User talk:207.71.213.36). — Paul G 15:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

It most certainly wasn't the meaning to revert to that version. Apparently it's hard to get the right version. Sorry Polyglot 18:51, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The "professor/terrorist" vandal

Paul,

Thanks for the support. I was actually having breakfast with some friends. I assume it was more of the same "censor" type nonsense. I'm trying to think of a polite way to instruct this person on the finer aspects of NPOV, but keep getting caught up in what seems like absurd vandalism. That the "professor" is sincere I do not doubt; that he is correct I doubt highly. Who knows, maybe he really is a professor, and he's just sleep deprived or drunk or something.

Perhaps I'll just take a day or two to mull all this over. It makes me wonder why people think of Wiki* as a good place to push an agenda. I don't know why that is a natural human response, but it does seem to be prevalent.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:36, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

From Talk:country:

Connel MacKenzie is attempting to police and censor a psycholinguist and etymologist who studied under Calvert Watkins, John Ayto, Joseph T. Shipley, and Eric Partridge, and who has done psychological research for the U.S. government for 9 1/2 years. It will be interesting to see if MacKenzie's fear of facts succeeds in supression and control of information in Wiktionary.

Nice try at slander there. Indeed, what you say sounds impressive but does not pan out. First of all, I was not the one who last reverted all your changes (although I will again soon.) The word Terrorist has been around an awful lot longer than Ronald Regan. Why you insist on vandalizing that and other entries with no justification remains a mystery. Simply saying that you are smart and have credentials (as an anonymous IP?!) is absurd. Your subsequent edits are reviewed (by others; not just me) as profoundly suspect, when you repeatedly post nonsense. Your changes to the etymology of Country do not match references I have at my disposal, and sound vulgar. Taken in the light that you are a known vandal, they will continue to be reverted if you do not supply references. No one should trust an anonymous IP post very much, and aparently, I'm not the only one that sees your posts as suspect, absurd, or simply vandalous. --Connel MacKenzie 00:04, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

______________________________

You should try studying something other than a pan. I'm not the only making changes either. Yes, terror has been around a long time but Reagan popularized it and applied it to only small defense units rather than large ones to create a new spin, or double talk, aka hypocrisy. Vandalism is from the Vandals who raided villages. Your use of vandalizing here is slanderous, as you say. Supplying definitions of words is not vandalism but I will post it as such in Wiktionary and make you the creator of this particular use. There is nothing absurd about my entries. They are based on science. Just because you post a name does not increase your qualifications as a censor. Yes, in the current American society many ancient words sound vulgar. But vulgar only started after the Vugate. I supplied a list of references. Go study. I realize that recent discoveries in science challenge many people's belief systems and they cannot manage to open their minds.

---

Where and when did you supply a list of references? Ronald Reagan did not affect the meaning of the word terrorist at all. You still have not justified your vandalism of the Wikipedia entry's "etymology" text.

• P.S. I did not coin the term "vandalism" for defacing Wiki* pages.

• P.S.S. Your assertion that someone posting from an anonymous IP address in activities apearing vandalous with no justification whatsoever, riddled with typos, should be deemed as scholarly, sadly, yes, is still absurd.

• P.S.S.S. My previous contributions convince the comminity at-large that I am a serious contributor. Associated with my username and password, they have every reason to believe that my assessment of you as a vandal is somehow justified.

--Connel MacKenzie 00:51, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

_______________________________________

So, my fellow scholar, what is P.S.S.S.?

When you wrote, "what you say sounds impressive," you were referring to my references I previously listed. However, since you did not realize who they were, you did not recognize that they are highly recognized and leading references in the field of etymology and lexicography. By the way, no one, including you, has listed references. Dictionaries do not usually include references. I am not getting paid for this and I am not giving away all my inforamtion. I'll provide all the references and explanations I need in my own dictionary.

This Talk is about the article "Country," not terrorism, or Reagan. I will not continue to wander with you so much.

OK, you do not get credit for being the first to misuse the word vandalism to describe making entries in Wiktionary. I accept that there are other twits who abuse language by trying to be forceful. Some are running the government as George Orwell predicted. Sloppy language causes sloppy thinking. You think that you are slaying the vandals or dragons by deleting entries in Wiktionary.

What you are declaring by "vandal" is that you cannot tolerate any entry that you disagree with and will insist on deleting it. If any "vandalism" occurred, it would be the censorship.

Censorship is neither academic, nor scientific, nor scholarly. Leave the entries, and allow people to make up their own minds what they accept or reject. It's not your responsiblity to make choices for the world. All you are doing is trying to control and ridicule. Academics and intellectuals recognize this.

Yes we both make typos. This is not a standard format and I am not acquainted with this system. Tell me more about your "comminity."

I realize that you are a serious contributor. I never doubted that. I remain anonymous because you seem so seriously controlling that you might try to shoot me if I told you who I am. I imagine you have a gun or two around your house. Remember both Kennedys were assassinated by serious censors.

What is clear here is that we disagree but you cannot agree to disagree. You are intolerant, prejudice, and willfully controlling in an area you have only pedestrian experience. Perhaps you are dangerous. Maybe not, but high profile people must remain cautious. The first three people to translate the Bible into English were all executed. The church ridiculed psychology for a century. Now priests study psychology but I can guess that you have not. "--The Professor"

---

Dear "Professor,"

Thank you for your thoughful response. What I was trying to convey was that several of your edits were not reverted by me, but rather, but others in this Wiktionary community. I admire your perseverance.

It is incorrect to say that I (and others) cannot agree to disagree with you. What you have submitted conflicts with other reference material available. That is why I have been asking you for references. As demonstrated by the recent spate of vandals posting goatse links, there is no minimum intelligence level required for someone to obtain an internet connection. I don't claim to be an Professor; you now are making that claim. In real life, I would know your name, perhaps where you live, where you work, who can vouch for you. On the internet, your anonymous IP address conveys no such prestigious credentials.

To simply maintain that you are correct (when references disagree) and repeatedly repost contested information is very much like a teenage vandal spray-painting a wall. Your submissions will be reverted because they are wrong, much like normal vandalism is painted over. That is not censorship. You are quite free to construct your own "ProfessorWiktionary" using the Wiki* software if you so desire. You are perfectly free to construct your own web site that has all the definitions you want it to. Correcting entries to reflect accurate, attested information is the goal here, however.

--Connel MacKenzie 07:44, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Conel MacKenzie's manipulative art of ridicule

If you, Conel MacKenzie, could agree to disagree, you would allow others to contribute.

Yes, I have submitted entries that conflict with other reference material available. You have to.

No one, including you, has submitted references with their entries. When others have put up references to my satisfaction, so will I.

There is no minimum intelligence level required to dominate, censor, and control. Just manipulation and force.

We do not give our name, perhaps where we live, where we work, nor who can vouch for us to controlling censors who may be dangerous.

Whether we are correct or not (when your references disagree) is not for you to decide unless you own Wiktionary. If you do own Wiktionary, I will gladly ignore it.

Your image of a teenage vandal spray-painting a wall is just another one of your manipulative ridicules.

Dear "Professor,"

I must start by repeating that I have not been the sole person reverting your entries. For now, I have given up; others seem to have redoubled their efforts.

When someone questioned my entry of ACRONYM I did a little additional research. My original entry I had done from memory, and it was erroneous. I posted the results of the google searches that I did as part of my research. In that way, others here were able to verify that I was not, in fact, simply making something up out of whole cloth. When I request references from you, I do not mean any great tome; I simply would like to see something (yes, preferably online) that validates what you assert. So far, you have not provided any clue as to how I (or anyone) might find some attestation for your submissions.

Again, your characterization of me as a censor is wildly misplaced.

You repeated unsubstantiated portayal of me as one "who may be dangerous" is slander. But the point that your anonymous IP address carries no credintials still stands.

Are you schizophrenic? Why do you refer to "we"? Any why am I not permitted my opinion that you are incorrect? Others obviously agree with me.

The use of the word "vandal" to describe a wayward adolescent is perhaps the most common meaning of the word today. How that might be considered manipulative speaks volumes about you, not me.

--Connel MacKenzie 18:01, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Beating a dead horse

You keep repeating yourself Conel. To let you know that I am afraid that you might be dangerous is not slander. You forcefully try to silence people, you are in the U.S., and everyone knows that the U.S. is a violent country. Just two days ago, an American policeman shot a 13 year old kid 10 times just because the kid didn't know how to drive and while playing in a car, accidently backed into a police car. Americans kill each other all the time. So, no, I'm not going to tell you how to find me. But I will let you have the last word because I know it will not be any different than your first.

I must say, if you studied under Calvert Watkins, you didn't learn anything. His etymology of the word is printed in the American Heritage Dictionary. Incidentally, "cuntrée" does not appear in my Old French dictionary, and "tri" does not mean "tribe" in Latin—the Latin word is tribus; in Old French, tribu. —Muke Tever 02:19, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

/* Damaged file??? */

Is the article page for "Country" damaged in some way? I've just attempted to open it, but there is no Edit tab at the top. I haven't encountered this problem before.

— Stephen 09:29, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This article was the target of a troll's repeated vandalism, so someone (no, not me) protected it (as is the Main Page.) I think it may be unprotected soon. --Connel MacKenzie 09:52, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It has now been unprotected again. So you can go ahead and add contents to it Stephen. Polyglot 09:56, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Various

1. Funny that our friend carrying on about Ronald Reagan should be using an ISP based in Santa Barbara, CA. :-) Anyway I've provided him with the opportunity for a 72-hour time out.
2. I've assumed that the translation changes at country from original scripts to Roman script were accidental.
3. (Without prejudice) Someone has nominated you to be an admin. If you accept the nomination please indicate this at Wiktionary:Administrators. Eclecticology 20:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Browser

Hi Connel,

Which browser do you use? Apparently something is going wrong with extended UTF-8 characters (Japanese, Arab, etc) when you revert. I believe Firefox should be able to avoid this. It also has convenient tab based browsing, which is very convenient for this site. Cheers and keep up the good work. It is appreciated. Polyglot 21:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Right now I'm using Lynx Version 2.8.5dev.7 on Fedora Core II. Other times I'm using Netscape 7.1 (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) ) on WinXP. Netscape 7.x also has tabbed browsing, but alas, LYNX does not.

My /etc/lynx.cfg has [iso-8859-1] as the assumed document character set. I think that may be the problem, but I'm unsure what the correct value should be. For now, I will switch it to [utf-8]. Could you please post some sample characters right here so I can experiment? Connel MacKenzie 21:35, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

a5i5u5e5o5 haA6MeRiKada._

a5i5u5e5o5 haA6MeRiKada._

That must be mangled. Let me try again in one moment... Connel MacKenzie 22:08, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hm. These characters do not seem to be extended character set characters. They posted find last time while I was still iso-8859-1?

I think that Polyglot has found the glitch. I had been concerned about the 18:47 Feb 10 edit for country where you reverted our friend but a lot of other things happened too. Sorry if I left a wrong impression. Eclecticology 22:14, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I had no idea I was mangling the entries. To paraphrase an old saying, 'In ASCII-7, no one knows you're UTF-8' or something like that.

OK, how's this? ????? ????????? I had to mess with my PuTTY settings as well, to see that these. --Connel MacKenzie 22:31, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

????! Jun-Dai 22:38, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, please let me know how you were able to see it in PuTTY. I spent hours trying to do that once, to no avail.

Um, OK. ????!

In PuTTY, I use saved sessions. Esentially, one for each host I connect to. Open up blank PuTTY, go to sessions, and LOAD one, then under WINDOW and TRANSLATION the right-panel top field is a drop down that allows you to select UTF-8 instead of ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin 1, West Europe) which is selected by default. Go back to Session, and SAVE. Then press "open". --Connel MacKenzie 22:45, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jun-Dai, I lied (unintentionally.) When I said I could see it, I mean it was appearing as the "double character" and not ASCII-7 text. They all still look just like a funny box. --Connel MacKenzie 22:56, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh. In that case, I guess my dreams of having a shell to linux in Japanese are still going to require research and hard work.  : : sigh : : </Jun-Dai>

Jun-Dai, I did figure it out. I posted that comment on your talk page. Connel MacKenzie 08:07, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WikiThanks

Here's a little flower to say WikiThanks for all the effort you have put in to fighting vandalism. SemperBlotto 23:10, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! Connel MacKenzie 08:07, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Persistant political vandal

Connel, I thought you might find this of interest. I searched the ARIN database to try to learn who this Jé Goolsby / Jezeus / 207.71.213.36 might be, and where he is operating from, and here is what I found out:

207.71.213.36 = [ 213-36.adsl3.netlojix.net ]

  OrgName:    Silicon Beach Communications 
 OrgID:      SBC 
 Address:    501 Bath Street 
 City:       Santa Barbara 
 StateProv:  CA 
 PostalCode: 93101 
 Country:    US 
 NetRange:   207.71.192.0 - 207.71.255.255 
 CIDR:       207.71.192.0/18 
 NetName:     SBC-NET-BLK 
 NetHandle:   NET-207-71-192-0-1 
 Parent:     NET-207-0-0-0-0 
 NetType:    Direct Allocation 
 NameServer: NS1.NETLOJIX.NET 
 NameServer: NS2.NETLOJIX.NET 
 Comment:    ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE 
 RegDate:    1996-03-21 
 Updated:    2001-05-30 
 TechHandle: AD-ORG-ARIN 
 TechName:   Silicon Beach Communications 
 TechPhone:  1-805-884-6333 
 TechEmail:  [email protected]

This seems to be the telecommunications company that handles his Internet access. --Stephen 10:51, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Stephen, thank you. When I lived in San Diego, for a time I had SBC/Pacbell as my ISP. Their connection speeds were quite pathetic compared to cable modem, and I was delighted when I was rid of them. Unfortunately, that ISP's address range covers most of southern California. That particular class-B netblock may be limited to Santa Barbara, but I don't think so. (Ironically, that's where Ronnie first entered politics, as Governor.)

I don't think Je Goolsby did anything overtly illegal - he's just a troll. So there really isn't much point in contacting his ISP and having his parent's internet connection yanked. I'm not sure SBC would do it anyhow. Other than some annoying vandalism on a public-constructed page, (of questionable harassing nature) he didn't do anything that we have laws against. (Can't even arrest him for spelling errors.) As Eclecticology pointed out, after this brief "time-out" he is welcome to come back and try to make real contributions.

--Connel MacKenzie 17:28, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

wedge

Thank you for noticing my goof at wedge. The word seems to be related with gaggle, but obviously I shouldn't just have copy pasted... I don't remember what the relation was anymore, but it had to do with collective nouns. (I found a site back then listing all of them). It's kind of scary that it takes almost two years before somebody notices errors like this... Polyglot 14:53, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I tried to fix wedge. Doesn't it look better as it is now. The only thing I don't know about is the relationship with gaggle. I think there is a relationship though. Polyglot 22:18, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wedge is fine...perhaps the archaic cavalry wedge could also have a listing? Gaggle I thought also applied to a whole mess of <anything>, not just geese. Also, should google be listed as a derived term from gaggle? Thanks for cleaning it up. --Connel MacKenzie 22:24, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The thing is; I'm not really able to clean it up. At one time I found this list with collective nouns and I thought it would be a good idea to take it apart and add the info to Wiktionary. English isn't my native language though, so I don't know all the meanings a word can have in it. I don't think google and gaggle are related though. Polyglot 22:36, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You are so fluent, I thought it was your native language. I added that fringe meaning of wedge. My recolection seems to be pretty far off for google though. Good catch. --Connel MacKenzie 22:48, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

IPA

Hi Connel,

I see from Hippietrail's talk page you've been trying to get your head round IPA. Let me see if I can help at all.

First of all, IPA is based on sounds (phonemes) rather than letters, so, whereas a dictionary might say "'t' is pronounced as in 'cat', 'top' or 'butter'", IPA does not. The way that an English person pronounces the 't' in "butter" is different from how an American might (it's more like a 'd' to him) or an Indian (it's a "retroflex t" to her, pronounced with the tip of the tongue curled back). IPA recognises these differences and so gives symbols for sounds rather than for letters or combinations of letters.

All of those rude sounding words on the page about IPA describe how the tongue, teeth, lips, etc are positioned or juxtaposed when forming the sounds. For example, "bilabial" sounds are formed with the lips close together, like "w", for example. It's more or less a case of putting the various parts of your vocal tract in the positions described and blowing to get the sound. Some sounds are voiced (meaning the vocal cords vibrate - for example, "g") while others are unvoiced (the vocal cords let the air through without vibrating - for example "k").

The vowel sounds on that page are given as a table showing how far back in the mouth they are pronounced (that is, where in the mouth the tongue is held closest to the palate) and how open the mouth is. So /i/ (as at the end of "hungry") is pronounced at the front with the mouth quite closed, and /?/ (rather like the vowel in "ma") is pronounced at the back with the mouth wide open.

I believe that pulmonic means "pronounced while exhaling", while non-pulmonic refers to sounds made with the mouth, teeth or tongue alone (such as smacking one's lips, tutting or making the clicking sound to urge a horse on). These sounds are not used in English but appear in some African languages.

So if it's all based on sounds, and different people use different sounds for the same word, how can we show the pronunciation of anything? The answer is that a standard has to be agreed on. For British English, that is Received Pronunciation (RP). I don't think there is an equivalent for American or Australian English.

There are 40-odd phonemes in RP. The others appear in foreign languages.

Consonants

p, b, t, d, k, f, v, s, z, l, m, n and h are all as you would expect.
g is as in "gag"
? is as at the end of "hang"
r is, strictly, a trilled r (but is often used for various other forms of r)
? is as at the start of "think" (it's the Greek letter theta)
ð is as at the start of "that" (it's "edh" or "thorn", used in Old English and Icelandic with this sound)
? is as at the start of "shy"
? is the sound in the middle of "vision" (or at the start of the French "je")
x is the sound at the end of the Scottish pronunciation of "loch"
j is the sound at the start of "yes" (or at the start of the German "ja")

Vowels

i? is the "long" "ee" sound in "beat"
i is the medium-length sound at the end of "hungry" (like "ee", in unstressed syllables)
u? is the "long" "oo" sound in "boot"
u is the medium-length sound at the end of "into" (like "oo", in unstressed syllables)
? is the "short" "i" sound in "bit"
? is the "short" "oo" sound in "foot"
e is the "flat" "e" sound in a posh British pronunciation of "bed"
? is the more commonly used "e" sound in "bed", pronunced with the mouth wider open than /e/
? (called "schwa") is the neutral sound in unstressed syllables, as the vowel in the second syllable of "neutral" and "second"
? is the "short" "u" sound of "cut"
æ is the "short" "a" sound of "cat"
?? is the "long" "aw" sound in "hawk"
?? is the "long" "ah" sound in "ma"
?? is the "long" "ur" sound in "fur" (ignoring the final "r", if you pronounce it)

Diphthongs/triphthongs

a? "ow" as in "cow"
?? "oh" as in "no"
?? "ure" as in "pure" (without the final "r" sound, if any)
?? as in "ear" (without the final "r" sound, if any)
a? as in "eye"
a?? as in "fire" (without the final "r" sound, if any)
a?? as in "our" (without the final "r" sound, if any)

I think that covers more or less all of them... have a look at some of the pronunciations that have been written using IPA to see if it makes more sense now.

— Paul G 15:24, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I like this page: Wiktionary_Appendix:IPA_Examples. Polyglot 19:08, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

pronunciations

Paul,

Thank you for taking the bait. Pronunciations are a gigantic subject that it is very hard (at least for me) to get started with.

The IPA pronunciations do not "read" well, as the AHD style does, but there seems to be concensus that IPA is better. I don't understand why, but I also don't speak more than a few dozen phrases outside of American English.

Your example for "bed" vs. "bed" has me baffled still. How does a Britton say "bed"?

The Dipthongs/Tripthongs: um, I'm still lost on those.

I think your explanations deserve a place in the pronunciation guide somewhere. What do you think is an appropriate place for them?

I'd like to start by recording the sounds of all of these. Before linking them to the pronunciation pages, I think you'd better check my pronunciations of them. (Maybe this next weekend I'll record them? Maybe?)

I'll start this week tying to enter pronunciations for items appearing in category:acronyms - I would appreciate it if you gave them careful review, so I can learn this pronunciation system.

Thanks again. Looks like this will take me a few weeks to get comfortable with.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After the lecture, time for questions :)

That's right, IPA doesn't read as well as, say, AHD, but AHD is designed for used with American English only, whereas IPA is designed for use with all languages. Some symbols will be familiar in some languages, others in others, and some in none at all. Unfortunately the alphabet wasn't big enough to cover all phonemes, so extra symbols were brought in.

That's why IPA is considered better - AHD has a go at representing some of the sounds of French or German, but doesn't cover, say, Xhosa, or some of the phonemes of the sounds of Italian. So what you lose in immediate readability, you gain in scope. It takes a while to be able to read it, like it does to learn to read music or any foreign language.

Yes, that much is clear; but because it is a black art simply to read it, I can't imagine ever providing an IPA pronunciation without an AHD one also. --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

/e/ versus /?/: some dictionaries use one, some use the other. We agreed at some point to use /?/ rather than /e/. I might have missed out /e?/ from the diphthongs. This stands for the "ay" sound in "day". Try saying "day" slowly and notice that there is an "e" sound that blends into an "i". Now say "bed". In RP, the mouth is more open for the latter than for the former. You might not notice any difference in your way of pronouncing these words.

I grew up in NY. I don't get this. Day sounds nothing like bed; the /ay/ sounds nothing like the /e/ to me. I don't "hear" an /e/ sound in day anywhere. Hmmmm. --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm still having trouble thining of "bed" as anything other than one sylable. Does a thick British pronunciation of "bed" come out as [howling at the moon] \bay-ud\? --Connel MacKenzie 17:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or is it more of \bAY-ud\ or \bay-UD\? --Connel MacKenzie 18:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Diphthongs/triphthongs - here I'm referring to groups of two/three consecutive phonemes used in a single vowel sound. So, for example, in "no", the vowel is written using one letter, but is pronounced as two sounds - this is a diphthong. IPA recognises this and transcribes the sound as two symbols (/??/ - try saying the word slowly in an RP accent to hear the two sounds) rather than one, which is what AHD does (o).

I don't pronounce the /o/ in no as two sounds. Do I? How would Homer Simpson's Doh! sound? Isn't that /oh/ a single sound? --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a pronunciation guide somewhere - I don't remember where - maybe in an appendix - which tries to give examples of many of the IPA symbols in various languages, not just English. I didn't write it. It's a bit messy though. I've tried cleaning it up but it could still do with some more work. Definitely, though, it would be useful if this could be put somewhere for other users to refer to, as IPA can be seen as a bit of a black art. Perhaps called Wiktionary:xxx and linked from the "Articles" section of the main page would be a good place.

Recording the phonemes is a great idea, but if these are to represent RP, then we will need an RP speaker... can you do that? Even though I'm British my English is rather like Estuary English so I might not be the best person to do this either. But by all means go ahead and I'll be happy to review them for you.

Absolutely, positively, NOT. I want to record them, not to be the "offical" pronunciation, but so that I can check with you to see if I'm getting even close. Uploading all the separate sound files will likely inspire someone adept at RP to offer corrections (I hope!) --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After Easter, (and posting concordances) I'll start on these. --Connel MacKenzie 17:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you want me to look at your IPA contributions, perhaps you could post links to the pages on this page, as then they'll be flagged up every time you add a new one and I'll be able to check it as soon as you do, provided I'm on Wiktionary, or the next time I'm on otherwise.

OK. I haven't started yet. Sounds like a plan. --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good on you for taking this on :) — Paul G 17:29, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If it proves to be too cumbersome, I'll quickly drop it.  :-( --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

Paul,

I'm not normally such a slow learner. But when you say Homer Simpson's "d'oh!" is a diphthong, my brain still gets stuck. He has a few variations on how he says it; I'm talking about the very short one - are you talking about "D'oOOoooOOOoooOOOh!" or "d'oh!"? --Connel MacKenzie 18:49, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Admin

This is just to let you know that after waiting for a full week, I have preocessed your nomination as a sysop. Welcome aboard. Eclecticology 02:03, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Deleting things already, eh? Congratulations on your (?)promotion! Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, etc.--Alia H 07:01, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Congrats on gaining sysophood! (That looks like it should be read as "si-sof-ood" to me.)

I'm bringing the discussion of pronunciation to your page as it's getting a little unwieldy on mine.

The "o" sound in "no" is transcribed as /??/ in British RP (imagine someone like Julie Andrews saying "No!") but as /o?/ in standard US pronunciation. So if you say "no" very slowly, you should hear a "o" as in "pot" and a "oo" as in "foot". Yes, even Homer Simpson's "d'oh!" is a diphthong!

The "ay" sound in "day" is also a diphthong - there is an "e" sound followed by a slight "i" sound. This is clear if you say the word slowly. The "e" sound is (in RP, at least), the sound in a "posh English" pronunciation of "bed", made with the mouth fairly closed and the lips drawn apart at the corners.

But it might be that in your pronunciation, these are single vowels and not diphthongs at all. — Paul G 13:03, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

rollback

A rollback brings the page back to the state it was before the last user touched it. It doesn't rollback all that user ever did. That would be quite awsome, but not very useful. Sometimes (after an edit war, for example), the rollback is not good enough though. Then you have to find a version of the page that looks all right and edit that. The system will warn you with red letters that you are editing an out of date version of the page. So make sure that is really what you want. Polyglot 23:07, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh yes, when a user created a page, it seems like it is possible to roll back what he did. This is a bug, as far as I'm concerned. Try it one day, you will see the software is not able to roll back, since there is no previous version. All you can do with it, is to delete it. Polyglot 23:10, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, I only meant the case where it is a new entry. (The rollback *is* line-by-line in user contributions; since that user had only one, I wondered if it was about to somehow do "all.")

My next question is about blocking. I'd like to see what it looks like - perhaps block myself for an hour? I think I'd better set up a sockpuppet account for that instead. --Connel MacKenzie 07:17, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

template change propogation

Dmh, while you were away, we collectively did some experiments; articles in namespace 0 ("normal articles") have a special property where they somehow copy the version of the template at the time they are edited. User pages, Special pages, Wiktionary pages (etc.) do not exhibit this behavior.

In particular, if a template assigns a category, and the category's CaPiTalIzAtIoN is is changed in the template, the article that includes that template will still appear in the old category until it is edited (even if no change is made at all during the edit, it still needs to be saved again, to use the new version of the template.)

--Connel MacKenzie 19:03, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hm. This is definitely worth noting. However, I don't think it means we shouldn't use templates and categories. It does seem worth agitating to get the current behavior changed or at the very least clarified. -dmh 19:08, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

: I'll be interested to see how this progresses. Templates and categories could go a long way toward making Wiktionary more useful and easier to maintain, particularly if they're enhanced just a bit. Note that the idea here is not to re-invent the database, but to make better use of the underlying database technology. -dmh 15:46, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikidream

This may sound really sad, but you were in my dream last night. So was Blotto. You were two 14 yr old twin brothers who happened to be kids in my school, and I asked one of u "So what are the perks of being sysop?" and u showed me what ur Wiktionary screen looked like, and u had loads more colourful wonderful buttons to play around with. Then u added "They give u loads more priviliges than they tell you, but ur sworn to secrecy about what u can do. I'll show u one now, but then I'd have to kill you.". And, annoyingly, u then killed me and I woke up.

I thought I should share that with u. --Wonderfool 10:43, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Hadn't even noticed that the page had been messed with. Thanks for the fix.E. abu Filumena 06:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

ooo busted

OK Connel. New to me. Can you sort out a decent definition and fix the number of ooos? Thanks. SemperBlotto 07:52, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

blocking.

I guess "Connel MacKenziebot" is too long a user name here. I need to get ready for a trip to Oklahoma next week; so I'll recklessly play with blocking myself. Bah. Maybe just one hour for starters... --Connel MacKenzie 08:31, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Blocking yourself.

You are braver than I am! SemperBlotto 08:35, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Scared myself. Didn't think I'd make it back easily, for a moment there.

When you share an characteristic with someone/ip that is blocked, you get an autoblock entry. Aparently, I triggered that feature last night, and an autoblock was on me. Oddly, I still had the ability to remove the lock.  :-)

I'm back. --Connel MacKenzie 15:53, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The moral of the story is, you can't block a sysop (etc.) But if you do, said sysop will get a good night's sleep. I'm off to work now...perhaps I should block myself again during work hours?  :-) . --Connel MacKenzie 15:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also: blocking only (of course) blocks Edits. Another curious side effect of blocking a sysop is that said sysop will forget about the existence of the "Show preview" button. The text that appeared for me first was:

User is blocked From Wiktionary

Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Connel MacKenzie.

The reason given is this: Testing block feature

You may contact Connel MacKenzie or one of the other administrators to discuss the block. Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a valid email address registered in your user preferences. Your IP address is <<my ip addr>>. Please include this address in any queries you make.

Return to Main Page.

Then, after trying again (after the original block expired):

User is blocked From Wiktionary

Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Connel MacKenzie.

The reason given is this: Autoblocked because you share an IP address with "Connel MacKenzie". Reason "Testing block feature".

You may contact Connel MacKenzie or one of the other administrators to discuss the block. Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a valid email address registered in your user preferences. Your IP address is <<my ip addr>>. Please include this address in any queries you make.

Return to Main Page.

I had to go to special:list of blocked users and ips, to unblock "#80". I didn't pick "#80" to unblock; that was what it stuffed into the unblock field when I clicked on the "unblock" link of the blocking page. --Connel MacKenzie 16:09, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

I noticed something really cool today. I recently had blocked the goatse freak. Wiki* autoblocked him when he tried to submit more. I extended the autoblock (by the user #106 reference) from the link at the bottom of "Special pages." Today, on the Ip blocked list, the User #106 no longer shows up (as the user block has expired?) but now the raw IP address appears as blocked (because my extended block is still in effect.) I think that is a product of manually extending the block on the autoblock (that is, extending the block on the individual user would not likely have the same effect.) The IP addresses in question do not have a reverse DNS entry (thereby garnering additional suspicion.) I shall try to remember to keep an eye out for 221.196.195.246, 81.196.249.168, and 81.196.233.92.

Oddly, when I try now to extend the block on "#109" it won't let me. Perhaps because I didn't initiate the original block that was then autoblocked?

It is too bad we don't have a "probation" mode for IP addresses as they unblock...where their changes are not visible to anyone but themselves and admins/sysops, until the entry is patrolled by an admin/sysop. --Connel MacKenzie 06:43, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Tonight, I was unable to extend the block on #120. Rats. --Connel MacKenzie 04:50, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki status

Yo! There are nine Transwiki: articles remaining.

Transwiki:Goumba is waiting for a native Italian speaker to verify slang (won't take long).

Transwiki:Aibohphobia is in Rfd (you can delete it if you like).

The rest are just redirects that need to be deleted, but they won't go at the moment due to a wiki-software bug to do with compressed data.

You can delete the Category if you like. Cheers. SemperBlotto 17:28, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Looks like someone beat me to it. Excelently done Jeffrey! --Connel MacKenzie 18:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Multilingual associations

Hello, Connel

I was glad to see your response on Associative Wiktionary page. From previous discussion it seemed that some people did not object to having a "===Multilingual associations===" section in the latter part of articles. So such section was added in several articles. Sometimes the sections were deleted, sometimes not. I still do not understand whether the Wiktionary community accepts the idea or rejects it. And I search for participants in the project. May be the right place for associative phrases are articles of foreign words. For example, in article of Russian word "???" /l'es/ we can place the phrase "listen ???? ???" /l'esa son/ (dream of forest) at the end. It helps to remember the foreign words.

--wikigs 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Furigana articles

Hi, Connel MacKenzie. I'm new to here and wrote some articles of Japanese Furigana, e.g. ??. I'm wondering my article have appropriate style or not. Could you tell me some example articles or MoS about them? Thanks, eG 15:49, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hello Electric Goat,

My fledgling entries are questionable, at best, created by following translation links. I have been peppering the Wanted articles list recently with an occasional foreign language entry from the list of most-linked undefined words. Every time someone creates an entry, I am amazaed and impressed, as with your entry. The results of the Japanses entries have been much better than I could have dreamt they might be.

Perhaps one of the contributors that actually speaks/reads/writes Japanese could comment on the correctness of your entries. I am overjoyed by the simple existence of the entries. Anything that provides the English translation of an entry is great; anything more is a welcome bonus.

--Connel MacKenzie 19:02, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I see, perhaps I would ask on Tea room or someone's Talk later. eG 09:45, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool

When I looked up LART in the Jargon File, it was listed as Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool. Would you please restore that deletion? --Connel MacKenzie 08:24, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have recovered this entry. However, I still think it is not worthy of Wiktionary. It is listed for deleteion on Wikipedia. What does the first word mean? Is it a spelling mistake for loser? SemperBlotto 09:41, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. It is listed for deletion on 'pedia because it is a dictionary definition, and belongs here. (It's on votes for deletion for 2/21/2005 - the day after vfd was added.) The first word is a mangling of loser and user. It is w:hacker slang from the 1980s. --Connel MacKenzie 09:51, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maveric 149

I will be rejecting this without prejudice. Since he is already a steward, he would have no need to become an administrator. Eclecticology 06:33, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I nominated him because he does not seem to have the ability to edit MediaWiki:Sitenotice, ref: MediaWiki Talk:Sitenotice. --Connel MacKenzie 06:42, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Oh, OK. --Connel MacKenzie 06:43, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

User:Maveric149 does not appear on http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Listadmins so I wonder if there is something I'm missing. As a steward, is he supposed to give himeself Admin privs? --Connel MacKenzie 22:28, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a list of stewards on Meta. These effectively already have admin powers on all projects. This generally allows them to deal globally in the way that Mav has been in his capacity as financial officer, without the need to get involved in the daily operations of a project. Eclecticology 23:33, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Category discussion

There has been some talk in the Beer Parlour. #101 Questions, questions etc. Cheers SemperBlotto 08:11, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

D'oh and diphthongs

I've just seen this, which has been hanging around unanswered on my talk page for a few weeks. Sorry for not having seen it sooner.

Recently, I was too busy to think of this, anyhow. Connel MacKenzie 18:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

> I'm not normally such a slow learner. But when you say Homer Simpson's
> "d'oh!" is a diphthong, my brain still gets stuck. He has a few
> variations on how he says it; I'm talking about the very short one - are
> you talking about "D'oOOoooOOOoooOOOh!" or "d'oh!"?
> --Connel MacKenzie 18:49, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Compare the vowels in "fit" and "fear". In "fit", the sound of the "i" is the same from beginning to end. In "fear", it starts off something like the "i" in "fit" and ends up a bit like the "ir" in "bird" (in a US accent) or the "er" in "manner". So it's really two vowels, or a diphthong.

The same applies to "oh". In UK standard English, it starts off like the sound at the end of "Hannah" and ends up like the "oo" in "foot". In US English, it starts off as one vowel sound and ends a bit like an "oo". So, again, this is a diphthong. If you were to take a recording of Homer Simpson's "d'oh" - even a rapid one - and slow it down, this change would be clearly audible.

— Paul G 18:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, I still have trouble grokking that. "D'Ooh" (what you seem to be talking about) is very different from "D'oh." In my brain, "D'Ooh" is a homynym of "dough" and "d'oh" a homynym of "doe." I can see how it can sound as a dipthong, but more often, it is not. Is that the rule then? If it can be then for IPA pronunciation, it must be listed as a dipthong? That would explain some of my difficulty with IPA. --Connel MacKenzie 18:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm, maybe it's a single vowel sound in your accent. We would have to speak to each other for me to be able to explain it. You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to... :) (No one really says "po-tah-to", but we do differ on "to-may-to" and "to-mah-to".) — Paul G 09:31, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Discussion about gerunds, participles, etc.

Please enter the discussion "Gerunds, Participles, etc." in the Beer Parlour. I'd like to her your opinion, especially since you voted for keeping fisting — Ncik 15 Mar 2005

Corrupted page???

Connel, I have been trying for 2 days to go to the Fire page, but every time I do, it shuts my browser down (IE 6). I've never had this problem before. The report that Microsoft performed left me with the impression that there might be a virus, worm or spybot of some sort attached to that page, and my Windows 2000 will not allow me to view it. Very strange!! —Stephen 11:22, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Viewing fire gave my copy of IE 6 had no problems whatsoever. I do have my "Windows update" current. I assume you've loaded Windows XP SP 2 also? --Connel MacKenzie 07:01, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm using Windows 2000, but I do have all the Service Packs and updates installed. I can't imagine what the trouble is.

—Stephen 11:33, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Reason for Fire crashing...

I have finally discovered the culprit that causes the Fire article to crash every time I try to view it. It's the two Laotian characters on the page (either one of them will do it). I don't understand why they have this effect, but my Windows 2000 does not like them! Not only will a Laotian letter shut down my Wiktionary window, it also causes my MS Word to close. If I try to google a Laotian letter, my browser (IE 6) closes. If I so much as google the two English words < Lao Unicode >, it causes my browser to shut down. —Stephen 10:05, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stephen, have you loaded the language pack for East Asian languages? Control panel --> Regional settings --> Language (sorry, don't know where it is in Win2k, only WinXP.) --Connel MacKenzie 07:05, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have that loaded already. However, in Win2K it only seems to support Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai as far as I can see. But Thai and Laotian are so similar that they are little more than dialects of one another. Looking at the Unicode from my Macintosh, I see that the Laotian Unicode range is u+0Exx, and apparently it's this [0E] (or [^N]) component that creates the conflict. —Stephen 07:42, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Trouble at Template-Hellenicindex

Hello, I have a troubled user and he reverted one of the edits, will you ban Bobtail for putting inappropriate table underneath the index. Bobtail is outta control. Make sure you revert every edits that Bobtail did to previous edits. And also protect the Template:Hellenicindex page, if you're not an administrator, ask some administrator to protect the Template:Hellenicindex page.

This page has now been protected. If you want to edit it again, just ask me or any of the administrators (you may need to explain that it was blocked by request, as a result of being a short term-vandalism target. --Connel MacKenzie 00:34, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Programming

Connel, it is not a verb. You define it yourself as "The Act" - that makes it a noun. Jeff. SemperBlotto 23:11, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if the automatic rollback message is too terse. How does the entry look to you now? --Connel MacKenzie 23:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I still think that the verb is "to program" (and to "brainwash") and that "programming" and "brain-washing" in your first section are just forms of that verb. I realise that you are not going to have separate entries for "he programs" of "he programmed" but it still doesn't feel quite right. Perhaps we should ask the Beer Parlour or Tea Room - there might be someone who understands the finer points of grammar.

When I added bathing, I got similar stick from someone (Hippietrail?) who took exception to both the "Verb form" and "Adjective" entries, (saying they were both nouns) but it has never been "corrected", and I still don't know if it is correct. Jeff SemperBlotto 08:43, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think I see an important difference though: there really isn't a common gerund form of bathing (not in American English, perhaps there is in UK?) but there positively *are* some normal gerund forms of programming. How much programming will it take? vs. I am going to take a bathing. (WTF?) Oh wait... "Bathing is fun." makes it work as a gerund. But you can't say "I'm going to take some bathing." - you would have to substitute the root-noun form a bath (offhand, I do not know why that is incorrect, but it certainly is.) But you can say "I'm going to do some programming." I do not know offhand what makes bathing act as a present participle almost all the time, while programming gets to be a noun most of the time. But that does seem to be the case.

I think your suggestion regarding the Wiktionary:Tea room is a very good one. --Connel MacKenzie 07:28, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Jeff, I was rummaging through my talk page looking for IPA stuff, and came across this. We never got a satisfactory answer in the Tea room, did we? IIRC, the input was rather cold. Dictionaries I'm checking at the moment refuse to list "bathing" (but do list "bathing suit" as a noun) as a verbal form. "Bath" by the way, also refers to the tub in which one takes a bath. From what I've seen so far, it looks like because it is transitive (with no instransitive verb forms) it doesn't get the normal English "conjugations."

Oh crud, I just read the discussion page in question (Talk:Bathing.) If you re-read what Hippietrail wrote, with a purist literal interpretation, you might get what it was that he didn't like. He wasn't saying it shouldn't be listed as a verb, he was asking you to split gerund and p.p. apart into noun and verb headings (of course!) For the Adjective sense, he wasn't complaining about it being listed as an adjective, he was complaining about the overly-British example.

Reading your example (as an American) I'd normally interpret the wrong meaning from your sentence. Having just two minutes before read Fowler's couple paragraphs on American vs. British "Bath/Bathe/Bathing suit/Bathroom/John/Can/Lavatory" I realized that when you said "paddling" you meant swimming?!?! WOW. The only "bathing machine" I know of was from the movie Sleeper when Woody Allen stepped into a closet for a bath one time, and a different closet later to simulate sex. Anyhow, I posted my comments and questions on Talk:bathing. --Connel MacKenzie 11:54, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

"Paddling" isn't swimming, it's really "walking" through the surf and playing about (as well as propelling a canoe). I'll define bathing machine if it hasn't been done yet (it is nothing machine-like). SemperBlotto 12:12, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, as far a Victorians use the word paddling, the closest word for it in American English probably is swimming...but yes, still nothing at all like swimming. Neat. Very interesting things, these w:bathing machines. I had no idea.

Is bathing in bathing beauty' an adjective? I'm too tired right now to think it through clearly...it seems adverbial. Is bathing in bathing suit an adjective, or an attributive noun? Uh, I dunno. Hmmm. Can a gerund be an attributive noun? Hold on a minute, what mercury-brained grammarian decided there should be any distinction between adjectives and adjectives-from-nouns? Or is this a grammarian curiosity that is ignored in the English language? --Connel MacKenzie 13:30, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

In English, pretty much any noun can also be used as a modifier (adjective), so a gerund can also be used as an adjective. So bathing in bathing beauty is simply a gerund acting as an adjective modifying the noun beauty. Unless you (less likely) mean that the beauty is bathing at the moment, in which case bathing is a present participle. Cheers, RSvK 23:39, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

rfd page

I see that you've protected this because of the annoying activities of Mr. Ass pus. The problem is that this is a page that needs to be generally editable by everybody so they can let us know about what they want deleted. Eclecticology 06:45, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ec,

Yes, of course the page is left open to edits. I used the "protect from moves only" checkbox. I thought that appears in the protection log, but apparently not. --Connel MacKenzie 07:05, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Googlesearch

Hello!

I think that
<input type="hidden" name="num" value="50">
should be inserted to 
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Googlesearch

so that 50 search matches could be displayed at one time. Greetings --Dubaduba 20:26, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

recent contributions

please check over my recent contributions to make sure they look alright. i added some images (sorry about the night vision one, i tried real hard to find a military image that had muzzle blast (shoulda looked at howitzers) and didn't really find anything appropriate), per request. anyways, just wanna make sure i'm drinking the right kool-aid and so on. been managing to piss off a lot of people on the wikipedia (see my user page over there), wiktionary is downright quiet in comparison. :) Avriette 03:21, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

a.

Hello,

I have a series of entries intentionally including the trailing period defined as Webster abbreviations. Please do not nominate them for deletion without first cleaning up <what links here>. As they are sometimes handy, I personally would prefer they not be nominated for deletion, but if that's the consensus...

Note: I first saw an anonymous user wikify the abbreviations, and realized that is a natural way for someone to perhaps try to figure out if Webster meant "from" or "French" when using the abbreviation "fr.". Or if the Webster abbreviation "a." perhaps meant "Adverb" instead of "Adjective". --Connel MacKenzie 17:01, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. I see the point, but on the other hand this seems inconsistent with most (but not all) of the existing abbreviations in Category:Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms. I'm most concerned with consistency here, both with the other abbreviations and with the "abbreviation" subsection of a. Also, IMO, it's better not to slice the headings too finely as it makes things harder to find by heading. That said, I'm not violently opposed to A. per se. Perhaps this should go to the Beer Parlour for further discussion? -dmh 17:57, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me. --Connel MacKenzie 18:44, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

gasp

Hello,

Last time I checked WT:ELE, the parts of speech headings go alphabetically, not in order of importance. Has that changed recently? --Connel MacKenzie 23:12, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hello Connel. I must admit, I had never realised that there was any convention. I have just been doing them as I think of them. By the way, have you noticed that fox (one of the supposed good examples) doesn't have a verb entry? (and leap (another one) has verb before noun). Cheers. SemperBlotto 07:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stepping on toes

Sorry about reblocking that vandal. Recent changes (with grouping of changes) made it look like he was back for a third time... --Connel MacKenzie 19:24, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You planning on being here for a while then? I'll be back in a few hours... --Connel MacKenzie 19:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

delete this

sapphir --Wonderfool 10:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deleted. --Connel MacKenzie 06:50, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism at Wiktionary

I saw a vandal name Bobtail and he must be banned and stopped. Will you protect "Template:Hellenicindex" and "Template:Englishindex" for me and revert the edits that the vandal named Bobtail did back to the previous edits. I will talk to you at your talk page incase if I see problems again. Pumpie, 21:15 Apr 23, 2005

Squishy

Thanks for deleting the proper definition of Squishy, bastard. Squishy is real and is the fastest growing religon in the world. Just wait and see. By 2010 we'll have converted half of the United States. When the Squishy Army hangs you for treason, don't blame me, blame yourself.

Vandalism

Kevin, thanks for the info on the vandalism. Sysops have no quick way to revert changes - only the slow laborious one available to everyone else (go to a vandalised page, look at the history to find the vandal, find their contributions, revert them all manually one by one, then block the vandal).

If you notice vandalism again in the future, please report it on this page. Thanks — Paul G 09:53, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kevin, I just put in my vote for you for admin. It always seems like the 11pm PST AP flurry is unattended by the existing sysops. Semper doesn't come on until midnight or later here, and Connel has usually finished up by then. Is there any difference between a user reverting vandalism and a sysop reverting vandalism? Does it stay in the history, either way?

Oh, and I did get your note on the transwiki stuff. I have had a particularly busy week (real life happened), and it looks like I didn't quite find time to respond before the deed was done. I really haven't had that much to do with the transwiki effort just yet, anyhow. I may resume someday when I don't have 30+ word-covered slips of paper littering my desk, or when I find myself lacking inspiration. Take care! --Dvortygirl 07:50, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I also added a kind (I hope) word. I'm not usually finished by the 11PM PDT/12AM MDT/1AM CDT flurry, just otherwise occupied. The difference between the reverts seems to be the one-click revert (that reverts all changes by a particular user, and adds the nice looking comment.) Sysop also means you have delete, protect and block privs. All are easy to inadvertently abuse. --Connel MacKenzie 08:05, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Don't be surprised if your name stays on the administrators page for a wikieternity. Cheers for the vote of confidence anyway. --Wonderfool 21:50, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

block

Good evening. I think you should reconsider the 10 day block of User:24. I reckon he was meaning well (in the same way i was when slapping on numbers on ppl's user page with their ranking on the stats page). So give him another chance, if you wouldn't mind. He wasn't really block-worthy I dont think --Wonderfool 21:58, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Fine. Unblocked. Be nice to newcomers? Ugh. This may be a really LONG learning curve. --Connel MacKenzie 23:32, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

What are you doing?

Why are you reverting my changes? User:24 23:26, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Because they are not in keeping with general Wiktionary practices. NOTE: I am not reverting all your changes. --Connel MacKenzie 23:29, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

May I remind you that you are not the sole authority? Your sysopship only grants you extra abilities, not extra "power" to dictate what to do and what not to do. There is no benefit in having an ugly list of year-old vandals under the "new" header and it hinders work. Explain your reasoning. 24 23:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Why yes, thanks for the reminder. I actually though I did explain my reasoning on that page. Your changes to Talk:Main Page I haven't gotten to comment on yet, as your not the only one up to mischief. (Yours apparently, is well intentioned, unlike some others.) Your changes to talk:MP only added obfuscating code, instead of the easily understood <center>, and the comment about "CURRENT" referred to the variable names themselves, which is not something that can be changed at this time. --Connel MacKenzie 23:40, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Email

I, 24, sent an email to you (so I'm asking you to read it). I am using a friend's computer to write this and will not be using it again, so don't block it. 2 4 00:06, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I got this message after responding to your e-mail and talk page. Whoops, previewed message to your talk page, now saved. You are for the second time, unblocked. I shall personally, specifically avoid reviewing your future posts for 24 hours. Good luck. --Connel MacKenzie 00:27, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

24,

I have temporarily reblocked you, as I am taking a little time to review your earlier changes. Clearly you believe you are making worthwhile contributions, and if I can I'd like to help you sort out how things are generally done on Wiktionary.

Many users have adopted the practice of keeping the full history of edits on their talk pages. Many do so for the sake of transparency, i.e. they have nothing to hide. Blanking people's changes to WT:VIP regarding yourself are particularly taboo. Repeating edits before the discussion as even ensued on the relevant talk page is impolite.

The changes of yours I rolled back I did for several reasons. Again note: I did not roll back all your changes. Archiving of other user's pages is clearly not desired (see above.) Those will probably be discussed more on WT:RFD or WT:BP.

Your user page redirects elsewhere, making it annoying to get to your talk page. That is also impolite. Archiving comments posted to your talk page (almost immediately!) is almost inexplicable. I guess you just prefer to have a perfectly blank talk page? Well, um, OK. Most people here don't do that though (see above.)

Lastly, my apologies. I blocked (er, re-blocked) you without hitting the three revert rule...although at the rate things were going that did seem a certainty. Nevertheless, I am sorry.

--Connel MacKenzie 00:25, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. 24 00:35, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

One other note about immediately archiving comments: If someone comes along and makes an edit to something I enter, then you archive the text (only) to your archive page, it is much harder to identify that my post was tampered with. I do now know of any way to keep edit histories around, other than using the Move function. But that implies that the archive page is unable to grow...that a separate archive page is needed for each move. --Connel MacKenzie 00:59, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Pelican shit is User:Tehbung now.. 24 01:00, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

punctuation in titles

Hello,

Please try to avoid using periods at the end of abbreviations. You have no idea how much grief I've gotten (well, still occasionally get) for including periods in titles of Webster abbreviation templates. (I did that as an exception to the rule, to match the screwy Webster abbreviations as directly pasted in. A couple others have also started using those particular etymology templates.) --Connel MacKenzie 06:09, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

abbr sans .

Ok, will do. Thanks for the heads up. TheDaveRoss

Wait on the vote?

Starting a vote while Eclecticology is absent might be looked at poorly. I certainly think two weeks (even on such things that aren't controversial) is too short. --Connel MacKenzie 06:43, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Eclectology

Where is User:Eclecticology and is he coming back? Kevin Rector 13:58, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I wish I knew. He's been absent since the 17^th of April...I'm starting to get worried about his well-being. He is the single user here with Bureaucrat status (able to do everything Sysops cannot.) WikiMedia stewards and developers can intervene here when they want to, but they very rarely do so. He has pages on Wikipedia and Media as well. Even though he and I see eye-to-eye only infrequently, his constant input has shaped Wiktionary into what it is today. One thing (in general) I do agree with him about is that Wiktionary does not need to be overwhelmed with rules & policies (as Wikipedia now is.) Because we are still so very much smaller, we simply do not need the rigorous, tedious overhead that Wikipedia does.

Right now, he's only been gone three weeks. Who knows, maybe a death in the family, maybe an international Wiki* conference - who knows. I can imagine he might be put-off seeing issues put to vote in his absence. Admittedly, that's his own problem, but if there is any way to not have him feeling left out, your vote stands of better chance of not being vetoed when he returns. --Connel MacKenzie 17:31, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Sysop

Congratulations! I noticed this after my previous post. Good luck! Perhaps I can take a few days off, while three new admins learn their way around the special pages. --Connel MacKenzie 17:54, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Hooray! I am certainly looking forward to having a few extra folks looking out for all of us and helping keep all our hard work in order and vandal-free. Good luck! --Dvortygirl 07:03, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

ELE revert

Please see my comment under Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Voting for Wiktionary:Entry layout explained Ncik 06 May 2005

I just noticed that Jun-Dai created Wiktionary:Entry layout explained/Change proposal draft of 20050505. So if you want to revert my changes at ELE, fell free to do so but please consider making individual changes instead since I am convinced the current version of ELE is much better than the one before my editing spree. I will make future radical changes on the proposal page. Ncik 06 May 2005

Rollback

User Ncik rewrote this entire page to his on liking, with little or no discussion. Then referenced it as justification for taking on several new tangents, directly opposed to 90% (probably more like 99%) of the existing articles. While some of these suggestions are perhaps admirable on their own, simply dropping them in and claiming it to be a fait accomplis just cannot fly. I hit the rollback button once, and all his recent edits have been reverted. Since each of his changes are being introduced as topics (and most are meeting significant resistance) it does not make sense to me, to pick individual changes that might be worthwhile, at this time. --Connel MacKenzie 05:31, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 06:17, 6 May 2005 (UTC)> Ncik's radical change was uncalled for, but I've restored the changes at Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained/Change_proposal_draft_of_20050505, because I think there are some good points for discussion in there. Also, unless people have an issue with it, I'm going to start archiving some of the older discussions on pages like this one, because it is beginning to feel a little like dead weight, and I think it inhibits further discussion. I don't think we should feel too constrained by the discussions of yesteryear. Agree? Disagree? I'll wait awhile before I start doing it.</Jun-Dai>

I confess, it is true that there are some good points for discussion in there. But if this page is about to undergo some serious debate, it may as well just build up in one place (rather than having it fragment all over the place like talk:tsunami did.) --Connel MacKenzie 06:39, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 06:53, 6 May 2005 (UTC)> :) I think the talk:tsunami problem wouldn't have been a problem if we'd had a Usage:Words for big waves's talk page to flame each other on. But that's a separate soapbox. </Jun-Dai>

Vandalism in progress

At 10:28, 6 May 2005 User:Ncik reverted the page Wiktionary:Entry layout explained to his previously contested rewrite, with the flat-out-lie comment "reverted Connels revert to SemperBlotto's version. Connel: See your talk page". Doing a comparison from that version to his previous version show only a miniscule number of changes. Doing a comparison from that version to SemperBlotto's version show a complete rewrite. Do we (Wiktionary) have any policy regarding blocking subtle vandals? --Connel MacKenzie 17:15, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Archive of Beer parlour discussion, 22-May-2005

Voting for Wiktionary:Entry layout explained

I would propose that the Wiktionary:Entry layout explained semi-official policy should be voted on to make it official policy.

Here's what I'm proposing, the voting should be open for two weeks, all registered users can vote, simple majority will carry. The question is simply should this be policy yes/no. The voting would happen on the talk page.

If someone will second my proposal for a vote then I think we could get the polls open. If you think the policy needs more discussion then vote against it. If you think it's good (or at least workable) then vote for it. Kevin Rector 05:17, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

My opinion for the item above this one applies ten-fold for this one. Our policy is currently a rough guideline, and it needs to stay that way for a couple of years, I think. If we apply it as a real policy (nevermind the fact that it's not even half-finished), we are in much graver danger of turning people off of this project than we are of making it more appealing to others. We've never reached agreement on whether it should be forte(1) and forte(2), and if we did, those on the losing side (who have invested much into this project) would feel slighted. Let is remain a guideline for now, and let those who like forte(1) and forte(2) keep doing it, and those who don't keep writing consolidated articles. At the moment we need more articles, and more fleshed-out articles, and that is a much bigger concern than having more consistent articles. For example, I have strong feelings towards the idea that we should have articles for romanized Japanese words, and links to those articles, but there is a user here that feels very strongly the other way. If one of us "wins" this argument by means of a vote, the other is likely to leave (I would certainly feel inclined to). Better that I write my articles my way, and he write his his way (and limit himeself to small changes to his satisfaction on the articles I've started) than one of us leave. I'm convinced that if he is still here after a year, he will see things my way. He may feel similarly. Jun-Dai 07:21, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

If you look at the history of the page you will find that only recently I gave it a thorough overhaul. Haven't had any feedback though. But that's not much of a problem since there are still many things left that will have to be changed. It is far too early to implement any binding layout rules. Ncik 06 May 2005

I hadn't noticed. I have now. I very strongly agree that it is far too early to implement any binding layout rules. I am amazed that you would take on such a task on yourself, with hardly any input from others. And that the end result would conflict so strongly with the majority of existing articles. --Connel MacKenzie 05:48, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 06:35, 6 May 2005 (UTC)> Actually, I think that what Ncik did was, in a large sense, commendable. We shouldn't do everything by committee, and there is some worth in having a single person periodically take a stab at (re)architecting such things as our Entry layout. That said, I'd like to mention to Ncik that the correct way to do this is to set up a proposed changes page -- either as a subpage of the real page (with a datestamp in the title, please) if you are bold, or as a subpage of your own user page if you are humble. That can be a starting point for dicussion, and if you feel like no one's going to respond, then give a mild threat like "if no one comments on this for a whole month, I'll implement these changes." Even if the initial (re)design(s) of things should not necessarily be done by committee, any formal decisions about the design most definitely should. The main proposal pages should not be modified willy-nilly. </Jun-Dai>

I ought to set up a proposals page indeed, and will do so in the near future. A short outline of what changes there will be (some of which are mentioned on ELE already): The main objective is to improve the structure of entries by organizing headers as follows:

==[language]==
===Etymology===(===Etymology 1===,===Etymology 2===, ... if required. So when adding a second etymology a "1" will have to be added to the existing etymology header)
====[part of speech]====
Certain inflected forms (E.g. for English words: Singular and plural for nouns, infinitive & third pers. sing. & past tense & past particliple & present participle for verbs; comparative and superlative for adjectives, etc.); spelling variants; pronunciation (including homophones, rhymes, etc.); definitions (with illustrative sentences, quotations, usage notes, etc.) =====Synonyms and antonyms=====
=====Translations=====
====Derived terms====(i.e. morphologically derived terms as I understand Hippietrail)
====Related terms====(i.e etymologically related terms as I understand Hippietrail)
"See also" can have four or five ='s to each side depending on where it appears. Furthermore, I was going to put inflected forms, spelling variants, and pronunciation in some sort of table (I experimented on break, please comment). I haven't had a convincing idea how to handle grammatical information like transitive, intransitive, countable, different plurals (see dice) etc. They have to be definition specific but both giving the information in headers (such as =====Intransitive=====) and giving it in a bracket after the definition number (#''(intransitive)'') lead to problems. Another thing is the introduction of a ===Forms and variants=== section (could do with a better name) which will, if it is added to a page, preceed the etymology sections. This section will list spelling variants, inflections, etc. and should provide as little information as possible (which instead should go on the page the word it belongs to links to). A big problem is that I don't know anything about languages which are not major, still in Europe spoken, Indo-European languages. Ncik 06 May 2005

---

I'd like to callenge the heiarchy under etymology concept. Wiktionary entries describe words. Words spelled the same way, that have separate etymologies should not necessarily be kept separate; the homonyms' meanings merge over time.

It makes more sense to me to list the etymologies all under a single etymology header. The etymology of a word is interesting - it is an interesting factoid about a word. But there is no official English Language entity that creates rules for how English words are created and used. It is debatable that every word has a distinct unshared etymology, and that homonyms do not sometimes share connotations because of them.

I think we have lost something by over-emphasizing the importance of etymologies. The language itself is much more fluid than a single decree saying such-and-such a word came (only) from so-and-so.

I propose flattening the recommended layout, instead of making it more obscure, nested and harder to navigate.

English

Etymology

#etym 1
#etym 2

Pronunciation

#pron 1
#pron 2

Adjective

#meaning 1 (e1, p2)
#meaning 2 (e2, p2)

Noun

#meaning 1 (e1, p1)

Verb

#meaning 1 (e2, p1)

etc. --Connel MacKenzie 20:24, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I would like to draw attention to the nip/Nip article. It's... a perfect laboratory for this proposed system. -- Bennmorland 07:51, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My two cents

I agree with Connel, in fact the way he describes it is how I thought it was supposed to be and is how I have been doing my entries. I think that if there are two distinct etymologies for two rdistinct meanings of a word however, it would be wholly appropriate to note that in the etymology section. Kevin Rector 22:06, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, but I think the current practice is to (only in the case of multiple etymologies) arrange the words one level down from the etymology. In the case of a single etymology/single word, the language header would be a level two header, all other headers would be at level three. I'm proposing abolishing that inconsistency, and having the only exception being translation headers (but they would be consistently at level 4, instead of sometimes 3, sometimes 4, sometimes 5.) --Connel MacKenzie 23:07, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Ok, well, I've never worked on a page with multiple etymologies. I'm mostly a janitor you know. Kevin Rector 23:13, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 00:33, 7 May 2005 (UTC)> See forte. This is along the lines of what the current practice is supposed to be. Certainly we should reopen this discussion, but I'm hoping that the consensus will be in favor of keeping it, as it's my preference to separate from the top based on etymology, as most print dictionaries do (note: I am not arguing that we should do it because most print dictionaries do it). </Jun-Dai>

I don't see the advantage of Connel's proposal. Numbering etymologies is exactly what we do right now and what my proposal also does (only it clarifies the current structure by putting the parts of speech under the etymologies not only spatially but also structurally by lowering the header level), and I'm convinced the present structure is much easier to survey for the reader and also principally right: As the Connel justly remarks "Wiktionary describes words." Unfortunately he seems to have a blurred idea of what a word is. His claim that "It is debatable that every word has a distinct unshared etymology" is wrong. Roughly speaking, a word is its etymology! A word is somthing we learn by hearing it in certain variations (e.g. in an inflected form which is necessary to relate it correctly to other words in the sentence it is used in, or in a high-pitched hurried modification signalizing urgency, panic, etc.) from infancy onwards, and whose meanings we derive from the contexts it is used in (which we know because, er... better ask a philosopher here). These contexts change due to circumstances, and so do the percepted meanings of the word. This trace of a word in history is its etymology. But how do we know the etymology of a word? Well, we don't... until someone came up with the ingenious idea of letters. The correspondence between words and their spelling has to be agreed upon and learned. Agreeing on a spelling is difficult, so if one wants to be understood one has to create a correspondence between spelling and meaning (e.g. hieroglyphs). However, there are systems which relate the spelling to its pronunciation (e.g. alphabet). In alphabetized languages it is of course tempting to identify a word with its spelling, and is indeed what we do. The etymology has become a spelling etymology but retains its quality of being a word's trace in history around which certain variations (now reflected by different spellings) appear, disappear, and change. Hence if we look up a spelling in a dictionary (that is what dictionaries are for) it makes perfect sense to say what word it is first; and that's exactly what the etymology does. Ncik 07 May 2005

That's why I had the word unshared in there. You are wrong. Words' meanings change over time. Commingling of homophones, homonyms and rhyming words contribute extroardinarily to that. Reducing a word to only one particular etymology is the epitome of prescriptivism...and I'm told that that is at odds with the goals of Wiktionary. --Connel MacKenzie 07:38, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I would not consider etymology to be in any way an attempt at reductionism. Eric Partridge said in his essay "The Etymology of Etymology" from his book A Charm of Words: "Etymology ... is therefore etymologically, as well as by definition, a discourse on the true word, the real word, the original word, hence on the truth of words collectively, especially on the true origins embedded in the reality of words. Etymology, in short, forms the philological aspect of the philosophical problem of truth and of mankind's search for truth." I would emphasize the word "discourse". The study of etymology helps us to understand a word in the full context of its origins, which can at times be quite rich. Eclecticology 07:22, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Are you agreeing with me Ec? Most words in Wiktionary contain an amazingly brief etymology. In the cases where there are more than one, it is rare that a particular meaning gained popularity due to a single etymological branch. The older a word is, the more likely the intermingling of heteronyms affects their meanings. Just because etymology is the search for something's origin, should not mean we ignore later influences. Since we do not have a paragraph (or several pages) on each word's etymology, the (best case one or two sentences) current etymologies are approximations of that search for truth. Indicating that multiple influences are shared and/or related seems correct to me. --Connel MacKenzie 21:46, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pending Deletions

Why are you protecting articles tagged with {pending deletion}? We're trying to get rid of them, right? --Connel MacKenzie 20:01, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I was doing it how it is being done on Wikipedia. The theory is that renaming them and then deleting the old one doesn't really accomplish anything other than making the link red and taking up more space in the database. The next version of MediaWiki is going to handle the problem, so when it is released all we'll have to do is go into Category:Pending deletions and delete them all. With the page blanked and the pending deletions template on it the article has a similar effect to one that was deleted (notably that there is nothing there). If you want to go through and change the names of them all and delete the redirect be my guest, but it doesn't really gain us anything. Just my 2 cents. Kevin Rector 20:05, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Kevin, I'm not at all sure they protect the pages on Wikipedia that have been so tagged - I had the impression the only time they protected them was due to repeated vandalism. Just curious, really. Anyone that can delete it (when the time comes) can also unprotect it. It just seems odd to me.

I've been doing the renaming thing for a couple reasons. 1) We're small enough that it is not a big deal, 2) I like the links to be red when they ought to be red. (That is the point of having a delete function, right?) --Connel MacKenzie 20:31, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Résumé

Hi Connel. Re your recent work reproducing the entries from various dictionaries. I think you've chosen the wrong letter "j" in your pronunciations. "?" is not used in English in any dialect. In fact I can't think of any common language I know which has it. You probably just want the regular old "j" which is the usual sound of the spelling "y".

Also, "°" is probably not the symbol you want. It's the degree symbol. You probably want hyphenation point symbol "?" though the middle dot "·" is basically identical and probably works on all browsers.

Nice research by the way! — Hippietrail 07:36, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

WOW! That is quite an incredible compliment, coming from you! Thank you! Yes, I did want the "j". Thank you for the "·"...I will go paste it in now. --Connel MacKenzie 07:40, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'll dig through my dictionaries a bit later and try to add them to your list. — Hippietrail 10:16, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

theatre / theater

Should we have both of theatre / theater? Or should one of them redirect to the other? I think airplane / aeroplane are in the same situation. Cheers. SemperBlotto 09:56, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Should we have both? {expletive} YEAH. See the WT:BP archives for the very lengthy color/colour flamewar.

That flamewar notwithstanding, as I entered the US version, I found that they are a bit different.

--Connel MacKenzie 10:27, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

• Have both separately, and have them cross-reference one another. The usages aren't the same for both (and neither are the etymologies). (U.S. English usage for theater is not the same as Commonwealth English usage for theatre. U.S. English uses both theatre and theatre in different contexts.) Uncle G 12:47, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Argh. I should be more consistent about where I reply. I meant to copy my reply to User Talk:SemperBlotto back here.
    • I see that you and I agree that we should have separate articles. Uncle G 23:16, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Absolutely. --Connel MacKenzie 10:23, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I had a nice POV usage note.  :-) You seem to have over-corrected it to no longer reflect the common (mis)use. Oh well. --Connel MacKenzie 16:52, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I wasn't even thinking of NPOV at the time. I was simply thinking of verifiability, and trying to back up whatever we had with cited sources. I merely took the sources that w:theatre cited and tried to do a better job with them than Wikipedia had. What's the mis-use that I've eliminated a reference to? We should perhaps take this to talk:theater (I presume that it's theater that you are referring to.), so that others can join in, or at least find this discussion in the future. I'm all in favour of expanding the usage note further to reflect differing opinions of other sources. I only did a quick search, which didn't turn any up. Follett and Horwill are silent on the matter, moreover. Uncle G 23:16, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Um, I was just trying to be humorous, here. Verifiability would be extroardinarily difficult, I would think. Your usage note is fine. --Connel MacKenzie 10:23, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Namespaces

You were off by exactly one letter. Try Wiktionary:Namespace. A plural-to-singular merge and redirect seems in order. ☺ Uncle G 12:47, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. Wiktionary namespace (I thought) didn't follow the same singlular/plural restrictions that main articles do (much like categories.) Thanks for finding it for me though...yes a merge is needed. --Connel MacKenzie 16:48, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

It appears to be a parallel to w:Wikipedia:Namespace, and over on Wikipedia several such articles in the "Wikipedia:" namespace have plural-to-singular redirects, no doubt in part because of the exact same situation occurring as occurred here. (You'll find that there is, indeed, a w:Wikipedia:Namespaces.) The Wikipedia convention for category names is to use the plural, incidentally. Uncle G 23:23, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Did I redirect in the wrong direction? Oh, you mustn't have seen it when your posted that. OK. Please review what I did to Wiktionary:Namespace. Having essentially finished it, I very much (from an asthetic view) dislike the look of the page. If I get around to it, I'll scrunch the initial 18 into something smaller (although Wikipedia's wiki table is also gross looking.) Maybe just a different kind of index thinggy up top? I dunno. If you have ideas to streamline it, please do. --Connel MacKenzie 23:40, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

In the beginning there was...

Well, I wanted to beg pardon for my pungent yet welcoming words addressed to you through the hrunk template in the early days of your contributions. Since then I have been dramatically changed in many respects, including my mentality and attitude towards people. And now I beg your pardon as an act of purgation. ;) --Dennis Valeev 23:08, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Dennis,

I've tried to restore my talk page to, you know, have some level of transparency, so people don't have to fight their way through the edit history. If you would prefer now to soften the tone of your welcome message to my talk page, please do so. But please, other newcomers have looked at my talk page (of all things) as a kinda resource, of which that Hrunk is a critical part. So please, if possible, leave the template (modified, if you wish) in place.

If I've totally misunderstood your request, then, please explain it to me again. Thanks.

--Connel MacKenzie 23:28, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Welcome back.

Et la réponse est...

In reference to nouveau riche:

• (cur) (last) 22:43, 12 May 2005 Connel MacKenzie (how do you spell riche in French? Riché? Rîche?)

It's just plain riche. --Wytukaze 21:54, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! --Connel MacKenzie 21:56, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

No problem :) --Wytukaze 21:59, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I was about to chip in and say the same thing. You might find this a useful resource - I do. — Paul G 09:18, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! I've added it to my references bookmarks. Hopefully I'll remember to use it now... --Connel MacKenzie 05:36, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

prima, prima-

Connel, Muke Tever and I are puzzling over the entry prima- at the top of Recentchanges, since prima already exists. Please take a look and let us know if we've handled it right. Please join the growing group in Wiktionary IRC sometime, too. We've found it quite helpful for sorting this stuff out in advance, but we would welcome a few more good minds there to keep us straight. Thanks! --Dvortygirl 04:18, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd love to join you on IRC, but various firewall issues prevent me from IRC at this time. Also, I've had unpleasant experiences with IRC software in the past and am rarely in the mood to reexperiment. Lastly, I'd probably not think through any of my statements on IRC - here at least I can preview and research before posting. I think that is a better method of approach for this material in general. Bah, perhaps it is time I gave IRC another go.

The words I place on that list come from Special:wantedpages. At the moment, I don't know what happened. I added prima- on 00:18, 23 Apr 2005, which implies to me that it was on the list (with hyphen) at that time. It appears numerous times on the WhatLinksHere list as a template reference as prima so at the moment, I have no idea how it got there. Perhaps I thought it was a prefix, and I errantly added the hyphen. Doesn't look like it was a template reference that was changed, so it very likely was an error I introduced. I think I was thinking of primadonna (incorrectly as one word, instead of prima donna.) Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think I mucked it up.

I think the redirect works for now, but ummm, it is a prefix syntax. It probably would have been better to fix Wiktionary:Wanted entries to point to the existing term. For now, I'd say leave the redirect. --Connel MacKenzie 06:33, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd been wondering about that too. Thanks for resolving it. — Paul G 08:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

listing

Just noticed your (and User:SemperBlotto's) changes to listing.

A listing can technically be an item on any list, but the word "listing" is chiefly used 1) in a nautical context (very rare), 2) regarding a printout of a single computer program, or 3) in reference to the MLS. Other uses of the word are either in the plural form, or just don't happen. #3 is the only really common use.

Is the word "listing" really used that differently on the East side of the pond?

I need to add the adjective sense, but before I do, I'd like to know if these should be tagged as US vs UK.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:43, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I don't know about US vs UK usage of this word, and I was unfamiliar with the sense that I commented out (or did I remove it?). Please go ahead and restore it - my apologies. The commonest usage of "listing" in the UK is as an entry in a directory or list, as in "He has a listing in the phone book" ( = his phone number is listed in the phone book) or "look in the TV listings to see what is on tonight" ( = ... the lists of TV programmes ...). — Paul G 08:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Wow, was I in a bad mood yesterday, or what! The uses you indicate are of course, valid over here as well. But the real estate twist on the word kindof takes listing's meaning in a different direction. I think I'll just add the adjective sense to highlight that. But while I'm asking, could you please explain to me how splitting the gerund into a separate heading from the noun helps? A verbal noun/gerund is still a noun. Wouldn't the distinction (of interest only to grammarians) be better highlighted as an italicized note at the start of the line? It certainly is my preference not to notate the difference at all, since the distinction is so fluid. Does a word being a verbal noun make it more of a noun than the others? Less? {shrug} Would be interesting to know why you and others think it is an important distinction, anyhow. --Connel MacKenzie 07:26, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. It's too late - I need sleep. I tried again at listing but now it seems to convey even less meaning. --Connel MacKenzie 08:21, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Language Guessing

Hi Connel. A good language guesser (Fuzzums) and other translators are available free at http://translation.langenberg.com/ . Cheers SemperBlotto 07:51, 21 May 2005 (UTC) (The homebrew translation does look most like Spanish)

Wow. Thanks! --Connel MacKenzie 21:51, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Webster 1913 public domain

On WT:RFC#Steam you said:

This is appalling - and people (naming no names) are still adding Webster definitions instead of proper ones. It is too late now, but I shall create a proper definition from scratch tomorrow. SemperBlotto 21:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I hope you're not talking about me. But if you are, then I really would like to know what the problem is exactly. I know that when I import a definition from a Webster 1913 source such as ARTFL, I reformat it, tag it as {{webster}} for proper attribution, and if the definition is too dated, edit it as a second pass (so that the attribution makes sense.) Perhaps I should check the wording of template:webster again, but I thought that was what one should do. In particular, I thought it was better to attibute content to Webster 1913 (when it is from there, initially.) If my assumption is wrong, please enlighten me! --Connel MacKenzie 03:51, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Hello Connel. Of course, everything that you do with these entries conforms to Wiktionary guidelines. It is just that I think we should be aiming higher. The wording often seems to me to be very old-fashioned (and I'm 62) - I don't know what it must read like to a teenager. Cheers. [[User:SemperBlotto|SemperBlotto] 09:15, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

The beauty of having them tagged is that it is very clear-cut which ones need another set of eyeballs. When I finish my WikipediaTop5,000 todo list, I intend on re-attacking concordances. (And these days, I only get to one or two words on my list a day.) After that, I plan to revisit the list of {webster} entries...that should give others plenty of opportunity to take a stab at them before me. But if I were providing the definitions on my own, I seriously doubt I'd be including etymologies (and If I did, they would be wrong, or would suck.) Possibly the worst thing about {webster} entries are the archaic quotations. I retain those aprox. half the time. Sometimes they are really interesting, other times they are obscure.

I don't know. Well, yes, the wording often is archaic. But is no entry better? --Connel MacKenzie 11:35, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Stratagem

Connel, I just wanted to appologize for placing the copywritten def. in. I think I fixed it now. Cheers, Eric J.

Eric, Welcome to Wiktionary. Thank you for re-entering the definition in your own words. I think your new version is much improved. Please do set up an account for yourself; if nothing else, it makes this sort of communication easier (for you to read, especially.) As you find yourself entering a few new definitions here and there, you'll find the Wiki* syntax is actually pretty easy to get the hang of. I hope to are able to find Wiktionary enjoyable and to learn how to submit well-formatted articles before you even realize it. --Connel MacKenzie 23:12, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Re: Admin

<Jun-Dai 17:36, 26 May 2005 (UTC)> Humor acknowledged. Certainly I know I've made comments late into the night and received prompt responses from you.  :) I'm just disappointed that we don't have an entry for "sick puppy" </Jun-Dai>

Words in the News

Do you archive them off somewhere, or just whack them? I'd think a horizontal line (----) would be all the archiving it would need. The older entries are that much more interesting. --Connel MacKenzie 18:46, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

I've just be deleting them so far. I can't really make up my mind if it useful, and several days pass with no activity. One problem is that Wikinews (my feed) has few contributors, and lots of newsworthy stuff never makes it. If you think it worthwhile, we should really link to it from somewhere on the Main Page - possibly protected. Cheers. SemperBlotto 21:28, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Moiety

Etymology entries have foreign language words in italics. The word the page is about (and other forms of only that word) are what are supposed to be in bold, last time I checked WT:ELE. --Connel MacKenzie 23:43, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

When I first started contributing to the Wiktionary, I put the etymological words in italics, but was then told by one of the more experienced contributors (Muke Tevor?) to put those words in bold, and the English translations in italics. So I switched. This seems to make more sense, because it makes the parts of the word being defined stand out more clearly. See the second paragraph on this page. RSvK 16:19, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

No, Muke seems to be talking about the inflections of a verb and/or links to plural forms of nouns. The particular format of those has been under debate this year in WT:BP...specifically concluding that they should be bolded and wikified as glosses.

What I was referring to was the===Etymology===section, where none of a word's glosses appear! Only related terms, primarily from other languages. These therms should be in italics and optionally(?) wikified. --Connel MacKenzie 15:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let's try this again:

Muke seems to have been talking about Wiktionary entries for non-English words. The Wiktionary syntax in that case is not to have translations (even to English) bolded.

Within the etymology section of an English entry on Wiktionary, rather than detracting away from the definition, the terms listed are supposed to be in italics and wikified. Most people do not bother wikifying the foreign terms, instead leaving them only italicized. --Connel MacKenzie 16:27, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Octopus

Seeing your edit not five minutes after the latest Ass Pus vandal struck, I almost blocked you for deleting "==English==" as a common vandal. Please restore that line. Also note: you added a typo of "\" to the Korean translation. --Connel MacKenzie 05:27, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Recent changes commingled your changes with User:205.188.116.14's vandalism. --Connel MacKenzie 06:12, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not a vandal, thank you

No, I'm not a vandal. I've been contributing to the Wiktionary for about a year or so, and the last time I checked, one of the pages said I was 24th in the number of contributions I've made. I am a registered user, know a fair amount of Spanish, German, and Latin, but no Korean. Thanks for backtracking your previous comments about me. RSvK 02:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mass

I just rolled back your marking of those derived terms as obsolete. I asked a Roman Catholic friend; this terms are very much still in use, with these meanings. --Connel MacKenzie 05:01, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I did not mark those terms as 'obsolete'; I marked them as 'obsolescent'. Different meaning. I am Roman Catholic, and studied in the seminary for six years, including several years of graduate theology. I worked for many years as a liturgy director and liturgical music director.

The terms 'high mass' and 'low mass' referred to the Tridentine Mass as it was celebrated before the Second Vatican Council, with or without music and incense. Since the revision of the liturgy after the Council, there is no such thing as 'high mass' or 'low mass', just various degrees of solemnity. So the terms are falling out of use and are no longer accurate. They are still used to some extent by 'Tridentine Catholics'--those who oppose the changes of Vatican II and plead for the restoration of the Latin Mass. Please restore the marking of these terms as 'obsolescent'--they are indeed falling out of use. RSvK 19:47, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation! Perhaps this belongs on its talk page? --Connel MacKenzie 20:01, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps--or perhaps on the pages for 'low mass' and 'high mass'. The explanations probably don't belong on the page for 'mass'. Cheers, RSvK 22:37, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Usage, etc.

<Jun-Dai 17:30, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)> What happened to the policy page? Well, I hadn't realized that Richard was up to similar (better organized, IMO) mischief, and I'm going to see how that plays out, though I'll be sure to put my fingers into it.

As for Usage: (thanks for the Namespace page, I hadn't seen it before), I'm thinking about what I want to tackle next (book/tome/text?, song/aria/tune/melody?, nuts/testicles/testes/balls?). I've convinced myself it's a good idea, but I have to juggle it with a few other things (I'm going to try to write an article on w:Mikio Naruse next week), and I have a Japanese final on Monday. Needless to say, I'm doing more work at work, leaving me less time for play. Life just gets harder--that's what it's for. Thanks for checking in, tho. You're easily the most approachable person here, even if we find ourselves on the opposite ends of arguments more often than not.  :) </Jun-Dai>

Reading your last sentence, I'm convinced now, you must be smoking crack. Oh wait, I see the smiley. Whew.

I think immediately below, I've joined a new flamewar (this time, of my making, apparently.) semi-, bi-, semiweekly, biweekly, biminthly, semiannual, biannual, biennial, bicentennial, etc., could all you such a usage note link. Particularly describing the subtle differences - biannual vs. biennial, as opposed to biweekly vs. semiweekly...that is that for years (but not weeks, months or centuries) the "a" becomes an "e" to make things that much more confusing by adding even more regional variety. --Connel MacKenzie 23:07, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

biweekly

Biweekly really does mean both "twice a week" and "once every two weeks"... - TheDaveRoss

Audio

Connel, could you please take a quick look at aisle and admit and tell me if I'm on the right track formatting/uploading/license-wise, preferably *before* I do another 150(0) edits? Do we have a convention yet for which comes first, IPA/SAMPA or audio? Thanks! --Dvortygirl 23:18, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't know of a conention yet for which comes first...but I would think the audio should probably come after? Otherwise, yes, this does look great. --Connel MacKenzie 02:05, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Block

Hi. You blocked me for a violation of the three-revert-rule. Until now, I was unaware that such a rule existed on Wiktionary. However, upon closer inspection (using Wiktionary's search function), I found the page. It seems to be a draft (so the template at the top informs me, anyhow), so, in that case, it is not in effect. I ask that my block be lifted (as I stated on the talk page before my block, I was going to stop reverting anyway and work on the page). Twenty Four 20:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

---

I am willing to cooperate, though I'm not sure how to demonstrate that... If I am unblocked, I will not touch the mean article; instead I would like to create a mean/24 subpage to propose changes. Reverting is definitely, as I have seen today, not an effective way to go. Twenty Four 21:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. 24 22:22, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

:Category:English:Clothing

Why do you want to move Category:English:Clothing to Category:Clothing? Ncik 04 Jun 2005

I answered to your remark on my talk page Ncik 04 Jun 2005

Ncik,

I think the words that are currently in Category:English:Clothing have absoluteley nothing to do with English words. They are types of clothing, much more than they have anything to do specifically with the English language. Would you exclude sari from a category "English clothing"?

Lastly, what I noticed about the category originally was its improper formatting, having the colon between English and Clothing. But that immediately suggested the notion to me that the label "English" was inappropriate there as well.

--Connel MacKenzie 23:16, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The word "English" in :Category:English:Clothing indicates that the words in this category are English words. If there is another convention, please let me know. Ncik 04 Jun 2005

With the flurry of archiving recently, I am at a loss providing a link for you. But the conversation got to the point where Ec suggested the keyword "English" only for categories that applied to the language. Specifically not for groupings of words in that language, instead only words about language. --Connel MacKenzie 23:29, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There must be a way to indicate that the words in a category belong to a certain language. Hence I suggest sticking to :Category:English:Clothing for now. I shall raise the issue in the Beer Parlour. Ncik 04 Jun 2005

As I recall, their categorization on the English Wiktionary was the way to determine their language - non-English words aren't supposed to be categorized here, only on their own wikt:. I don't think you had promoted your notion that (poorly paraphrased:) "treating English differently on en.wiktionary is POV" when such a decision was discussed. But it certainly makes sense that on the English Wiktionary, where not otherwise noted, things are in English. --Connel MacKenzie 23:47, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. I have objections, but in this case it's not too serious, and I can't be asked to start a discussion about this. Feel free to recategorize. Ncik 00:11 4 Jun 2005 (UTC) (I'll timestamp from now on)

Ncik, is there some reason you sign your entries without a timestamp? You won't be giving away your timezone, if that's what you fear. --Connel MacKenzie 23:47, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm happy to see the category moved, but I was also hoping to be a little diplomatic about it. Thank you for timestamping. There is a conversation at the very end of WT:BP right now about categories; this might be a good time to ask for clarification. --Connel MacKenzie 00:35, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Autoblock

Hi, please unblock #316. 24 00:20, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What? What for? That could have undesired side effects; right now you clearly *are* able to post here. Autoblocks only last for 24 hours. Unless the world is in danger of stopping its rotation, I'd rather leave this autoblock in place for the duration. --Connel MacKenzie 00:27, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unblocking autoblocks does nothing bad, I'm an admin on several MediaWikis and have tried. I'm posting this with the help of a proxy, #316 is my static IP. 24 00:31, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Connel MacKenzie 00:48, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

idiot

how dare you change my valued addition to wiktionary...i hope you have something merciful to say when i'll friggin slay you...i'm gonna murder you!!!!...i'm going to kill your family...gonna exploit your mother...gonna castrate your father...

Gosh! My first internet death threat...for rolling back your definition of idiot. Hmmm.

cache1.syd.ops.aspac.uu.net [203.166.96.235]
  

So, how is the weather in Sidney Australia these days? --Connel MacKenzie 06:26, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Blocking

Jun-Dai,

The argument about spurrious blocking is actually bogus. There is no "nightmare" for any university that is blocked...they can still access pages in read mode to their heart's content. They cannot upload content during the time they are blocked.

The addition of new content is not significantly affected by one (or several) institutions being blocked for a week at a time.

If, for some strange reason, a univerity finds a "need" to be unblocked, they can request an unublock, and within an hour will be back in business. If subsequent vandalism occurs, they will have to identify the troublemaker within their own network, then request another unblocking. This can happily go on indefinately, until they catch the troublemaker red-handed. Then, punitive actions will be for them to pursue.

Even the above scenario is a bit far fetched though. We've never had significant contributions from the targetted university that was mentioned, right? It is my guess that we've never had any contributions from there...that the vandal just compromised a box somewhere, did a traceroute on it, and posted nonsense here about it.

In reality though, a typical 24 hour block won't be noticed by anyone but the vandal. Anyone else encountering a block might shrug and try it from home that evening. A less typical ten-day block has a possibility of being noticed, but again, not likely. I am beginning to think that all blocks should be permanent...that until a network admin requests unblocking, an IP (that inherently is known to have been compromised) should stay blocked.

I think better auto-blocking tools might do better to save the day. E.g. anytime an image is deleted with a comment "goatse" the CRC of the image is saved off on a prohibition list. Whenever someone tries to re-upload that image, (or any image of the same size, with the same CRC) they are automatically blocked for 24 hours (or permenantly...as above.)

I am no fan of bowdlerizing, but these particular images are readily available from thousands of places on the internet if anyone would actually like to see what all the hubbub is about. --Connel MacKenzie 21:58, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Connel,

on the one hand, you are right. For all practical purposes, it isn't especially meaningful, for now. But, should a vandal somehow manage to access the Wiktionary from inside a large proxy, say of a large company, or of a university, that one of our contributors uses, it would prohibit any contributions of that user, logged in or otherwise, until the block was undone. There are certainly IP addresses that affect tens of thousands of people (I'm on one), and the main reason that this isn't a problem right now is the mere fact that we don't really have more than a dozen and a half contributors anyhow, most of which have their own IP, or share it will a small number of people. But the number of contributors will increase over time. If it doesn't, Wiktionary won't reach any real state of usefulness this side of the 22nd century.

I am a little concerned about the idea of the "if the university wants to contribute, let them chase down the vandal first" attitude - that's the sort of approach that would ultimately limit our expandability. If there is a vandal using a university IP, and it effectively blocks the whole university, and members of that university want to contribute, then we would making a big mistake to simply tell them they can have their IP unblocked once they find the vandal--instead, we would have to find alternative solutions to the problem, either living with the vandalism from that IP, or getting better tools built into the MediaWiki. I hope that the software will someday allow the banning of only anonymous contributions from a particular IP address, instead of only having the option to block all contributios from an IP.

Jun-Dai

Jun-Dai, there is another reason I'm not concerned. Wikipedia has to deal with this problem long before we do. I will happily bet $1.00 (US) that the Wiki* software will allow registered users to be exempt from blocks long before we have even one such (verified) occurance on Wiktionary. I will also guess that Wiki* software will eventually allow blocked IP's to register new users, and that the new user accounts will be limited to only one or two or three new entries per account (until that edit is "patrolled") or something to that effect. Right now, that is not even an issue for Wikipedia, let alone the order-of-magnitude-less-popular Wiktionary. (BTW, I am quite happy we are under the radar for now.)

Honestly, I'm a little surprised that Mr. Ass Pus hasn't started creating accounts that have a half-dozen legitimate contributions first (to throw us off a little) before blasting away. When it gets to that point, I'm sure something else will be done to slow him down. (5 second delays for all new users, patrolled edits, that sort of thing.) --Connel MacKenzie 22:34, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

D&D

I thought we wern't supposed to use ampersands in titles? --Connel MacKenzie 07:35, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• That's the way it is in -pedia. SemperBlotto 07:37, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vegetarian

Hey! Please follow the procedure of moving removed text to the talk page, with justification as to why you think it does not belong.

I disagree that it is a vandalous entry. POV, yes. But it is a meaning the word seems to have...

--Connel MacKenzie 04:32, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. If you really think it belongs, let's argue about it, but I'll warn you that I'm pretty strongly of the mind that it does not qualify as a definition. Jun-Dai 04:41, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. It really is hard to guess which direction the objection is coming from when you just remove text. (And no, I generally do not check talk page spelling as closely as main article text.)  :-) Responding on talk:vegetarian... --Connel MacKenzie 10:26, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

todo lists

I have made a start Connel. What a mixture! The odd thing is, that they almost all have definitions - it is other things that are mostly missing. And yes, it might be a good idea to move them somewhere where other people would have more chance of finding them. SemperBlotto 22:08, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I will not get a change to download the latest this weekend; maybe next weekend. When I do, I'll rerun all this then post it where? Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup of articles that are really poorly formatted? Wiktionary:Ancient articles formatted wrong?

Is there a specific part-of-speech header (besides===Interjection===) that I missed on that last run? If it can be refined, that would probably help a lot, right? --Connel MacKenzie 23:14, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Have you got===Preposition===or===Phrase===or===Number===(numbers are in a poor state). SemperBlotto 17:04, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I missed all three. I'll try and split numbers out as a separate list. --Connel MacKenzie 00:50, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I missed===Contraction===too. --Connel MacKenzie 23:45, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Finished section 2 except for Acknowledgement - I'll have to get myself psyched up for that one! SemperBlotto 14:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think that it is simply: (US) acknowledgement vs. (UK) acknowledgment, right? With the normal article duplication because of the e...acknowledg(e)ment. I wonder if that affects pronunciation? I wonder if it is worth noting that is is usually the UK adding the extra letters, but not this time? (Or is that my screwup?) --Connel MacKenzie 16:00, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I hate indenting with "*" bullet marks. Cascading bullets don't work if you have any intervening whitespace. Colon indentation always works consistently. --Connel MacKenzie 16:00, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they are the same word. The two sets of definitions just need synchonizing (if we are not allowed to redirect). The definitions in the badly formatted one are better than the rather dated ones in the well-formatted one. Feel free to have a go at it. Cheers. SemperBlotto 16:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Next time that you run your little routine, do you think that it would be a good idea to ignore anything in the Wiktionary and Transwiki pseudo-namespaces - they are almost bound to have bad formats. (we're getting there slowly) SemperBlotto 29 June 2005 12:14 (UTC)

I'm glad I found these notes. Removing Transwiki and Wiktionary from run now. (Note that this is only of namespace zero anyhow. So any Wiktionary Appendix:... stuff was appearing only because that *is* in ns:0. --Connel MacKenzie 19:59, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Image:WikiThanks.png

Our AssPuss friend uploaded a new version of this. Wiki won't let me revert to the old version. Could you give it a try. SemperBlotto 08:17, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC) OK - it worked that time. Cheers. SemperBlotto 10:01, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Images are cached by the intermediate file servers, then again by apache. It freaks me out to see these updates taking over five minutes sometimes. --Connel MacKenzie 15:57, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

English

Hi there. Could you start your English language entries with a==English==line please. Cheers. SemperBlotto 21:30, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but I thought English was the default. When did we start putting==English==on all English entries? What did I miss? RSvK 15:20, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The most recent time it resurfaced in WT:BP archives was October 2004. There are several reasons for including the language header:

1. Introduces newcomers to wiki* syntax
2. Indicates (by implication) to newcomers that a single entry can have more than one language
3. Indicates that which parts are English
4. Allows someone to add other languages (since they see the convention example)
5. Helps with automated tools' parsing of the article
6. Helps with auto-indexing bots
7. As a community, we have agreed to (as spelled out in WT:ELE)

Whereas the only advantage to not including it is saving a couple characters typing or mouse pasting. (If using a template, then it takes effort to remove it!)

Other recent conversations that touched on this topic were consolodated into Wiktionary:Policy Think Tank - English Wiktionary, Foreign Words & Translations.

--Connel MacKenzie 19:50, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Abbreviations

One of the advantages of removing the wikified heading is that it rids us of that long-winded and redundant Category:Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms. Linking to the relevant sub-category should be enough. That long name can then be kept as a sort of meta-category. With some 1100 templates already, many not used at all, it would be a great advantage to reduce their number. Eclecticology 20:43, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

I don't at all complain about the three (or four) separate categories. Only about showing the combined category in addition to the relevant separate one. Eclecticology 20:55, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

Of course an article can be in several categories, but when a category is a subset of a larger one there's no point to have a direct link to a circle of categories with ever larger sets of contents. A lion belongs to the category of cats, then of carnivores, then of mammals, then of vertebrates, then of animals. Is it necessary to mention them all? Eclecticology 21:21, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

Vandalism

<Jun-Dai 21:51, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)> Connel, please explain why my change constitutes vandalism. It seems to me that such a loose sense of the term is irresponsible. </Jun-Dai>

<Jun-Dai 21:59, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)> I can see where the frustration might come from, though I wasn't really involved on your debate with Ec., and the point I was modifying was one that I had made some time ago. I apologize for causing you anxiety, and let's make friends and agree not to overuse the term vandalism? I'm pretty sure I've abused it once or twice in the past myself. </Jun-Dai>

<Jun-Dai 22:09, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)> Oh, you! Vandalism has its uses, alright. It's just that we should probably be careful with it, since it has a special meaning to us here. Oriental, however, is simply an out-dated and useless (because meaningless) term. </Jun-Dai>

Template:Chemistry

Templates are harder to work with since they can not be editable for more "special" needs. Using a template on another template is pretty useless, if you ask me: not only does it put more strain on the servers (source: Jamesday), but it also complicates the process of editing the templates in question. A subst: is more useful. 24 23:34, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Common crossword puzzle words

So you were serious about the crossword thing? Fair enough, I'll revert it --Wonderfool

Hm, what constitutes a "common" crossword word? This depends on a lot of factors. Or do you mean words commonly used in cryptic crossword clues, such as "flower" (meaning "river")? — Paul G 15:07, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As an American, my brain does not grok the cryptic-style British puzzles. You are correct in pointing out the subjective nature of this category (perhaps more subjective than most other categories so far.) Perhaps I'd better skip this side-project for now. --Connel MacKenzie 18:53, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Peer

On peer, you put Homophones, and then pear (weak). What does that mean, weak? In some dialects its a homophone? --Wonderfool

They are not homophones in RP, and not in American English (dictionary.com distinguishes the vowels). {peer, pier} and {pear, pare, pair} are homophones. — Paul G 15:10, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I replied on Wonderfool's Expurgigator's talk page about this. Yes, I had already removed my erroneous addition of the homophone. --Connel MacKenzie 19:07, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re:Etym- & Pronstubs

You didn't come across at all foibly, Colonel, sir! <snap to attention>

But seriously, I understand and agree completely. If the stub could be changed so that it was indeed silent, I would begin using it again. As it is, I just manually enter the Category:Pronunciation stub and Category:Etymology stub tags in the entries lacking an etymology and/or pronunciation key.--Benn M. 19:14, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On Dookie

I'm not too worried about it surviving. Someone I was talking to used it in context, and referred me to Wiktionary for a definition—none existed, so I added it. If it's not attested, it makes perfect sense to delete it. Colin 21:29, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fixing vandalism

Just delete everything that doesn't have the history and move the page with the history back to the original page. Uncle G's suggestion was silly. 24 27 June 2005 19:44 (UTC)

Welcome

Please remember to use {{subst:welcome}} not {{welcome}}. --Connel MacKenzie 28 June 2005 15:10 (UTC)

OK - I now see the difference. But I can't guarantee to ALWAYS remember. SemperBlotto 28 June 2005 15:16 (UTC)

Protection?

Why is santorum redirected in such an odd fashion and protected to boot? Are certain slang terms not allowed in here or what? Karmosin 29 June 2005 17:09 (UTC)

Hello,

I locked the entry at santorum down as it matched the pattern of a recent vandal. I shall unprotect it for today, to allow you to enter the "proper" definition, then relock it. The previous entry was as ridiculous as it was vulgar; as bad as something you'd expect on the site urbandictionary. Enjoy. --Connel MacKenzie 1 July 2005 23:15 (UTC)

But the definition he inserted is the correct one, whether it's vulgar or not. Since when is obscenity reason enough to exclude a notable word?

Karmosin 13:35, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

1. As best I can tell (having done very little research on it myself so far) is that it is a concerted personal attack against United States Senator Rick Santorum, through indirect association. Far from NPOV, that could conceivably make Wiktionary party to slander.
2. The word does not seem to exist in running text. Particularly not likely to be used in everyday text.
3. The definition that was given seems to be a copyvio.

--Connel MacKenzie 06:11, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

That it's "a concentrated personal attack" is really not relevant in the least if it's notable. For a good analogy over at Wikipedia see GNAA. Very offensive, yet notable enough to get an article (that Ta bu shi da yu) has tried 6 times to get it deleted, and failed, is a good sign that it's staying for good). Number 3 is not really relevant either since it is just a simple matter of changing the wording. Does number 2 actually have any connection to official Wiktionary policy? If so, please link and quote. Otherwise, we'll have to accept it as a valid entry.

Karmosin 11:19, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

You are wrong on every point. GNAA is not a personal nor an individual attack. Slander is a crime. What goes on at Wikipedia is irrelevant; Wiktionary policy is our guideline here. Copyvio's mean the entire article is removed before being resubmitted. And yes, WT:CFI (every contested version says this in one way or another) specifies it must be in running text. Additionally, not only does it not have a single running text citation, it does not have multiple citations spanning more than a year.

Furthermore, the lack of any repudible dictionary to include it (after years of attempts at promogulating the slanderous term) is validation that the attempt to include the term as a "word" fails to meet even the most liberal criteria for inclusion. --Connel MacKenzie 14:58, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Karmosin, Connel is right. Notability is not a dictionary concept. Attestation is. If you can provide evidence that santorum is attested as a word, please do so on Talk:santorum, where this discussion is best continued. Uncle G 17:15, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the proper policy citations. I would recommend quoting policy instead of getting working up about the slanderous nature of a word next time; it's not relevant to these discussions. And why not just delete the article if doesn't qualify? You should either find a definition or no entry at all. "--error: link target missing--" just looks confusing.

Karmosin 00:58, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Because it was entered apparently by a vandal, at the approximate time a vandal struck, in a similar style as that vandal, under an anonymous IP. Simply deleting it means it is recreated 12 hours later during the next round of nonsense. Redirecting it to Main Page is also unacceptable.

By the way, we here at Wiktionary are not so rabid about policy as our counterparts at Wikipedia - our policies are guidelines. Just because it doesn't say we shouldn't be libelous doesn't mean we should be party to libel or slander or whatnot. Your earlier asertion that an entry must be accepted if explicit prohibition is lacking, seems more appropriate for Wikipedia style policies. (Generally, that is not true here on Wiktionary.) --Connel MacKenzie 05:23, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Obviously you're rabid enough to follow your own guidelines. Very friendly too.

Karmosin 22:35, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

bathydemersal

I'm a bit confused by the definition for bathydemersal was blanked out by yourself. You mentioned a link to some web page and claimed, a copyright violation? I just added the entry myself and the link you provided does not contain the same language. I mean, I didn't even know that link existed! Obviously it contains the same meaning, being a definition to a word, but that is not a copyright violation. Please explain. Ram-Man 7 July 2005 19:12 (UTC)

See Also:

• Definition 1
• Definition 2
• Definition 3
• etc...

Whoops. I did a straight google search on the first sentence and got precisely one exact hit. That usually is inidicative of a copyvio. I am checking again now. --Connel MacKenzie 7 July 2005 19:27 (UTC)

The term is quite specialized and so you wouldn't get many hits, as it doesn't show up in many popular dictionaries. Ram-Man 7 July 2005 19:29 (UTC)

Yes, too true. Sorry again. (See reply on Talk:bathydemersal. --Connel MacKenzie 7 July 2005 19:34 (UTC)

mulch

Hi!

Why did you delete a derived word "mulching" from the article mulch? Mulching has its own entry in the Wiktionary and in my opinion it's not a mistake. It's not just a participle from mulch. Marac 8 July 2005 10:38 (UTC)

Yes, mulch should (and does) link to mulching, as an inflected form of to mulch (verb.) Having it listed as a regular inflection, there really is no point in listing it again as a derivation. If you want to put it back in there, I'll try to not remove it...but it is redundant. --Connel MacKenzie 8 July 2005 15:52 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. I just didn't notice it is already listed as a regular inflection. I thought you removed the only reference to "mulching". :) Marac 8 July 2005 22:12 (UTC)

Deleting redirects

Hi,

Can you please not delete redirects to upper-case pages. It is useful to leave these so that users entering searches in lower-case (which most people do) will be directed to the correctly capitalised page. Thanks. — Paul G 09:56, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I think that most of them can be safely deleted because the "Go" button finds the right page automatically - try, for instance lake district and lake District, or even LaKe diSTRict - the "Go" button will find Lake District in all cases. SemperBlotto 10:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, that's good. Thanks for letting me know — Paul G 14:15, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Um, pardon me butting in here. I just noticed this now. Althought the [Go] button might be unaffected, external links (especially from Wikipedia, but elsewhere as well) break horribly. Please do not delete redirects. To quote Brion (a Wiki developer) from IRC: "<brion> anyone who deletes a redirect to a legitimate page is a retard and should be kicked out of the project" followed by "<brion> but that's just my opinion". Mind you, this is completely out of context. But I though you might like to hear some people's take on the capitalization issue. --Connel MacKenzie 18:37, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is wrong to delete redirects to otherwise-capitalized pages (but I shall continue to delete the transwiki redirects, especially as they form a chain these days). So, should we generate otherwise-capitalized redirects of all new pages? SemperBlotto 21:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Given names and family names appendices

I had been meaning for some time to get around to putting templates onto the first names and surnames appendices, so that the navigation and structure is consistent. I turn around only to find that you've beaten me to it. Excellent! ☺ Thank you. Uncle G 17:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm done with Surnames, female given names, and I've left off at "M" (one or two a day) on male given names. Once female and male names are template-ized, I can move them en-masse from Wiktionary Appendix: to Appendix:... --Connel MacKenzie 21:00, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Please also see WT:RFD#Wiktionary Appendix:First names female sha-shd. --Connel MacKenzie 21:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Help with categories

Hi, I'm kind of new to Wiktionary and I would like to ask for some help. I've been working mostly on Bosnian and Serbian entries for the past month or so. Anyway, the problem that I would like you to try to help me with is that in the following categories (I've seen this happen in categories of other languages as well) the words that start with letters not found in the English language (no matter if they're Roman or Cyrillic) do not appear in the categories. The categories that I work on and am refering to are Category:Serbian common nouns and Category:Bosnian common nouns. However, this is happening in all categories. The words starting with those letters do appear, but the little bold header does not. All the words starting with those letters will be located at the end of the list in the category. Can you please tell me how or can you please try to fix this? Thanks in advance... --Dijan 04:23, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Welcome! The way to correct an article's placement in a category is to use the pipe syntax. For example, to correct cimbala, at the end of that article I would add this category link instead:

[[Category:Serbian common nouns|cimbala]]

unless I've completely misunderstood your question. --Connel MacKenzie 04:31, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi again. I just tried that and it didn't work. I don't know what you think that I meant, but I'm going to try to explain again. When you go into the category, you will see that under the bold little a (a) all of the words that start with a are located there. But, there is no little bold 'c' under which all the words that start with that letter are located under. And the same goes for Cyrillic letters. --Dijan 04:38, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I did misunderstand your questions. You want non-roman-alphabet headings? I do not think that that is possible at this time, on the English Wiktionary. Let's ask this again over on the WT:BP. --Connel MacKenzie 04:54, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't know. It was working all this time up until couple of hours ago. I don't know if there's a template for this and if someone has messed with it. I'm really not familiar with templates nor anything past traslations and just simply adding words. I know that people have been moving and editing categories and templates for the past few days, but I don't know if this was caused by them on accident or even on purpose maybe. --Dijan 05:01, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

OK, here is an example of a working category of what I was talking about. If you lookin the Hindi_nouns category, you will see that all the words are located under appropriate letter that starts the word. But, if you look in category:Arabic nouns, there's the problem again that is occuring in Serbian_common_nouns and in Bosnian_common_nouns categories. So, we have ruled out the idea of it not being possible. :) Right? --Dijan

This is a bug I noticed yesterday, see bugzilla:2835 — we asked brion in #wiktionary about it, he's looking at it right now. —Muke Tever 05:42, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I hope this thing gets fixed soon...I'm really annoyed by it. It doesn't seem like a big issue, but still I'm annoyed...hehe! --Dijan 05:47, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Hehe. Bug is fixed. You can thank Brion for the rapid response. --Connel MacKenzie 05:51, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm...I don't see any changes. It still appears the same to me, without the heading or sort key (whatever it's called). However, when I looked on the history page of the category, the sort key seemed fine, nothing looked wrong. But, when I come back into the category itself, there have been no changes. I'm really annoyed now... --Dijan 05:57, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Scratch that...it's working now. THANKS EVERYONE! --Dijan 06:02, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Template:top

Hi Connel, I saw you removed the "width=48%" from the templates used in translation tables. I don't know if I agree that it's a good idea, since already existing tables now varies wildly in widths. See e.g. cat, or the article I was working on when I found out about it, cover.
I suppose that it should be possible to construct something which can take a parameter to control the number of columns, but which by default yields two evenly spaced columns... If I knew how to do it, I would, but as it is now... well... it doesn't really look all that great. \Mike 12:12, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

That was both template:top and template:mid. I will revert those changes now. Whatever solution I come up with, will need to use different named templates to do it. Sorry! --Connel MacKenzie 14:43, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I recently created {{top4}} and {{mid4}} for four-column layouts, with normal white background. I'm trying to perfect an off-line auto-adjuster for their semi-automatic use. (I think someone from the French Wikt: had the same idea.) --Connel MacKenzie 22:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for creating a Wiktionary account

Thanks for your message to me. I'll quote it here, as I'm not sure of the correct procedure to respond as a non-logged-in user:

Quote

User talk:213.208.107.91

From Wiktionary

Thank you for reminding me to look closely at anonymous contributions. I almost clicked on rollback for quash.

With that said, you seem to have a significant number of good contributions. Please consider creating an account for yourself. I try to be careful, but it would be a shame if I accidentally undid some of your changes, while blasting through the "recent anonymous edits" lists. Thank you!

Unquote

I do have an account, Pol098 (or was that for Wikipedia?). I rarely use it, considering that what is said is important, not who says it, and I have a fixed IP address (unless I happen to be connected via VPN to a another account, in which case I inadvertently post with a different address). I see your point, and will try to remember to login.

Thanks for your useful comments. The Wiktionary edits I think were really necessary were "respect" (I essentially wrote the article, and it has not been changed significantly since), and the specification that a true "war" must be between parties who control territory and have some governing body or person.

I also copied Samuel Johnson's humorous definition of "lexicographer" into Wiktionary as homage to him, but that has been relegated to a footnote.

Curiously, you could probably find out the identity of "anonymous" 213.208.107.91 if you tried to -- it's no secret -- but Pol098 is far more evasive (unless I provide the information).

I don't know if I should be posting all this here, but it can be deleted if unwanted.

Best wishes, 213.208.107.91 00:19, 21 July 2005 (UTC) aka Pol098

Again, thank you for using the account you created. And thank you for reminding me that indeed, it is what is said, not who said it.

The Wiki* software protects the IP address for registered users for some reason. So unless you provide revealing information, there is no easy way to link a Wiktionary username to an IP address.

It is perfectly acceptable to reply on talk pages as an anonymous contributor...but please do try to sign talk page entries with "--~~~~" or just "~~~~".

Welcome! I hope you enjoy finding your way around. --Connel MacKenzie 02:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

irc

negative: /'n¦[(e)g????v/

/'n?(e)g????v/

Your /?/ got mangled. --Denelson83 05:32, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, within PuTTY, running ircii, the /????/ characters also did not render (but they cut-n-pasted just fine!) --Connel MacKenzie 05:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Thomas Kuhn's 1962 paradigm shift

Hi Connel. Nice work tracking down the date. I wonder if this means you also have the actual text/context in which he first used it. This would make a great citation/quotation. — Hippietrail 00:08, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Sadly, no, I do not have a copy of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I wondered when the term was coined, and checked Wikipedia. --Connel MacKenzie 00:24, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionarian etc

What would you call a person who contributes to MediaWiki? A WikiMedium? - spooky! SemperBlotto 17:47, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Nah, not a little or big, just a MediumWikian. --Connel MacKenzie 17:53, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

abbreviations, etc.

Connel -

I'll try to compose a treatise on how abbreviations, etc., might be arranged and propose it on the beer parlour. I'll run it by you first. Give me some time to think out an outline. But just because we're not exactly sure how to do things - I don't think this should be an excuse for me not to add new entries.

Good job on moving the abbreviation section. Looks great!

Cheers,

-- Stranger, SSL69 11:58, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

rough first draft of abbreviation treatise

Connel -

The following is an incomplete, rough first draft. FYI, I generally go through several versions. This is the first version - what I call the Muse version which I have to write in order to Get-It-Out-Of-My-System. Subsequent versions gradually reduce the fluff until the final rendition which is in the glorious strands of Policy Monotone.

Cheers,

-- Stranger, SSL69 16:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Glad you were laughing! Just let this sit a for a while. I have to give it more thought. And my Internet connexion has grown rather capricious. Am desparately seeking another I-net solution . . . Cheers, Stranger, SSL69 18:03, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Can you put this on a new page? That way, it will clean up this page and when/if it's ready for the Beer Parlour, we can just include a link to the page without having to repeat the whole thing on the Beer Parlour page. It will also allow me a chance to do some of the formating which you have done - a lot of work, by the way. Thanks. -- Stranger, SSL69 17:43, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

As a reminder, you said that the Policy page might be a home for this tome. I thought I would run this by you first so you could reign me in before submitting it for general comments. Moving it to another page can allow me to work on it - format wise - too. I've been reluctant to add to it since it might take a couple hours. On your "to do" pages, you have this "in use" or some such similar flag - can I use that on your main User talk page? Just looking for a solution. Thanks. SSL69 12:33, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Use an editor to extract the stuff from this page, to a file on your system. Create the new policy page under whatever seems most appropriate, and label it as "Proposed - Comments Solicited" or something. When you have that page to your liking, then come back here, and edit these sections away (probably can do them all in one fell swoop.) Normally I'd object to removing stuff from my talk page, but this is too huge. Oh yes, and while you are editing it, please attempt to shorten it, if possible...and add a summary section atop. Thanks. --Connel MacKenzie 13:31, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Is this what you meant me to do? Cut and pasted to: Wiktionary:Policy_-_Abbreviations --SSL69 17:02, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Another question: Do you want me to save this Muse Version so it can be referenced? Or just get rid of it? --SSL69 17:08, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I've thought about it overnight. Okay if I just include the Muse version on the Discussion page? That's where it is now. Cheers -- Stranger, SSL69 11:59, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

And I've now editted the policy (a tiny bit). Please let me know what you think. Thanks. --Stranger, SSL69 12:13, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

SSL, Yes, I think you've done what I had hoped you would do with this. Let's see what others think about it. Perhaps one or two people review it before advertizing on WT:BP? --Connel MacKenzie 14:00, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Sure. I suppose I'd ask Semper to look at it, since it was he who invited me to Wiktionary (which means I kind of feel obligated to him). And Eclecticology seems to be like a god around here; I suppose his/her opinion would carry a great deal of weight and we should ask. BUT, I throw this into your hands - please ask those whom you think would be good. Also, I expect to be away from the Internet this weekend, so please feel free to take charge of this if you wish and post it to the Beer Parlour if you want whilst I'm away. Thanks for all your support --Stranger, SSL69 17:26, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't look like you've done anything with this. I had a couple more thoughts. I would like to drop the last point (that was separating single-letter abbreviations from the alphabet letter) because I would prefer to put that into place soon rather than have it as a policy. Also, while I haven't read his userpage fully, Richardb seems to be the policy guru, so maybe he would be the correct person to ask. At least he could put the correct header at the top of the page (draft, think-tank, or whatever). The other thought is that I would clear the discussion page and make a new "sub-directory" for the first draft - again, because it is so big and I think it would be rather distracting; I would put a link to it on the main discussion page, though. What do you think? Thanks, --Stranger, SSL69 12:02, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

A question related to editing pages

Hi again.  :) Since you know a lot here I wanted to ask you something. When I edit pages, on the bottom of the box, "Save page" button, and under the "Templates used on this page:" there is a pull menu with different characters and scripts that you can choose from to use in the page you are editing. I just wanted to know how that pull down menu can be edited so that more characters can be added. I write and edit a lot of Serbian pages in Cyrillic script, however under the "Cyrillic" option in the pull down menu, only the Russian Cyrillic characters are displayed. And I wanted to ask if the "Croatian" option for characters could be renamed "Serbo-Croatian" because the script is not specifically Croatian-only and Serbo-Croatian implies Croatian anyway. If you know anything about this, please leave me a message on my talk page, and if you don't, could you please help me find more about this? Thanks... --Dijan 05:32, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Hello. There are two places to direct you to: User talk:Hippietrail and MediaWiki talk: Copyrightwarning. I know some people modify their own javascript pages (yours would be User:Dijan/monobook.js to force extra characters but I haven't been bother to myself, yet. --Connel MacKenzie 05:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi and thank you for that reply. It helped me understand this a little bit better, but I'm still a little confused. I've looked at MediaWiki talk: Copyrightwarning, User talk:Hippietrail, and User:Hippietrail/charinsert. So, if I add "some" code to my "monobook.js", the characters will display in the drop down list when I'm logged in and am editing a page, right? Now, what code do I put in my monobook.js? I really don't know what kind of code or what should be in the code. The User:Hippietrail/charinsert is an HTML code, right? I don't think that that would be a sample code, would it? I'm really sorry if this is a bother for you, but I do very much appreciate your help. --Dijan 06:25, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

I actually hoped you would add the characters you wanted on the request section of MediaWiki talk: Copyrightwarning so that I or someone could add it in there. MediaWiki pages can't be unprotected, so I can't just let you, or I would. --Connel MacKenzie 07:11, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Please take a look at User:TheDaveRoss/monobook.js and see if you can copy relevant parts to your own monobook.js file. --Connel MacKenzie 07:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi again. I have tried to use the code from User:TheDaveRoss/monobook.js but it didn't work. I even closed my browser and cleared my cache to see if it would work, but it didn't. I modified the file (just added the characters that I needed; you can go and see what I did at User:Dijan/monobook.js), but that didn't work either. OK, I'll put up a request on MediaWiki talk: Copyrightwarning and see how that goes. I've posted on Hippietrail's talk page about this (actually, I made a request there). I'll just copy the stuff from there and post on MediaWiki talk: Copyrightwarning just to make sure. Thanks again. --Dijan 07:51, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Pejorative, coarse, slang

Just in case you'd forgotten about it: I've responded to your Tea room query about Dick. Hv 23:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, I had forgotten about it. I replied on your Wikipedia talk page as well as the Tea Room here. --Connel MacKenzie 15:19, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Cyrillic

Yes, you added that correctly. Thank you very much! --Dijan 02:00, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

CartooNovel

I've deleted CartooNovel without bringing it for discussion here. It looked encyclopedic to me, and obscure at the very least. If there any sound reasons for keeping it, it could be restored. — Paul G 09:25, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

When I first saw it, I too found several reasons it should be immediately deleted, and no apparent reasons it should be kept. Looking only a tiny bit closer, I saw that SemperBlotto had done the same the day before. After I deleted it, it was re-added several times more with someone other than me deleting most of them. Sometimes it was cartoonovel, other times Cartoonovel or cartooNovel. The talk page of one of those (at one point) had the person's rationale for resubmitting it from numerous anonymous IPs. I was going to nominate it on {{rfd}} so we could explain why that reasoning was wrong and did not meet WT:CFI, but it was deleted again, by the time I previewed it.

Perhaps this conversation should be moved to WT:RFD now. --Connel MacKenzie 14:18, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

cruzin

I saw your comments on this word - could you update the page please? I would but I am unfamiliar with it. — Paul G 09:28, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I expanded the definitions a bit. I suppose I could find citations, but I'd rather not; I think it accurately depicts the word now. If you want to add other warngings like "Even as slang, in the UK this is considered incorrect" or similar, I think that would be better than leaving the rfd tag. --Connel MacKenzie 15:11, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the article and formalised the definitions. It was far too slangy as it stood. — Paul G 09:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I like your version. Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 09:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

user talk and requests

Connel-

Just some miscellaneous questions. First, you seem terribly busy and have your fingers in many different pies. If I should talk to someone else in order to lighten your load, please let me know. I don't wish to be a burden, but I sincerely value the fact that you have taken me under your wing. I don't see it said very often: Thank you.

The other day, I put found a nonsense word with an "I wuz here" definition; I put a rfd flag on it; did you see it? I was just wondering if I did it correctly. I didn't read the five or so pages of How to Nominate A Word for Deletion, etc.

Similarly, I was wandering around and thought I saw a copyright violation. I wasn't sure what to do, but posed a query to that effect on the word's discussion page. All the words I see, the discussion page tab is always coloured red. Is this something I'm not supposed to do. Who sees it when I do it?

I also happened to notice that one of my contributions, "App", had been flagged for deletion. But I don't see that listed on the Request for Deletions page. Furthermore I didn't get a "you have new mail" notice about this so I had no knowledge it was done and would never have known about it had I not stumbled across it. Is there any way to subscribe to the Request for Deletions page or the Beer Parlour so that I am informed whenever a new message is posted? I don't want to miss a chance to pontificate! :-)

And these user pages have a significant disadvantage to e-mail. When I read your user page, for example, I only get half the conversation. It's like listening to one end of a telephone conversation. With e-mail, you can follow the discussion thread more easily. Anything that can be done to modify this? Is there a "copy user talk contribution to page _________" or something that I'm missing?

Thanks,

--Stranger, SSL69 18:12, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Re paragraph #1 You're welcome.

Re #2 Adding "{{rfd}}" is all that is needed to give a word some more attention, eventually. But for now, the other sysops and I are in catch-up mode and rarely peruse Category:Requests for deletion. Someone will get around to it - not me just now though.

Re #3 Talk pages start out red, when they are blank/empty. They are colored blue when a discussion is started. For copyvio, you can use google or dictionary.com to verify that it is a word-for-word copyvio. Note that some of dictionary.com's material was also from the public domain Webster's 1913...so you should generally check ARTFL also. If it really is a copyvio, you can blank the whole entry, and replace with {{copyvio}} or {{rndc}}.

Re #4 Your "watchlist" will have all articles you have ever touched. (Top right of this, and every, page.) Keeping an eye on your watchlist will alert you to stuff happening to your favorite articles. (Careful on the pontification - you are the newbie! Most disputes I've been in...)

Re #5 I use cut-n-paste to accomplish that. It is true that it is sometimes difficult. But this is an offline medium - people can be gone for days or weeks. Having Wiktionary relevant stuff only *on* Wiktionary does make a bit of sense, even with the moderate inconveniences. --Connel MacKenzie 19:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I use pontificate very loosely but point taken. Did you see my post on the abbreviation treatise? Is there a way to make these posts stand out more - perhaps with a flag that you can delete after you read them? Cheers - Stranger, SSL69 21:55, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

When I get a "new messages" alert, I often head for the "history" of my talk page. Otherwise, I'd lose comments that are dropped into the middle somewhere...so yes, I did glance at your other changes. The Wiktionary:Policy page might be a good place to start, for looking for a home for your Abbreviation book (above) to go to, so others can comment on it. --Connel MacKenzie 22:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: App - I discovered two things. The first was that I entered the word anonymously whilst at a public library terminal so it didn't show up in my contributions list and second that you were the one that nominated it for deletion. I noticed that second fact while also at the library. As a pre-emptive apology, I removed your RFD and included a discussion of word on its page. Simply removing your RFD was likely the wrong thing to do, especially before discussion was held. Just shows that I should work on the Abbreviation Policy since I was following the capitalization related to me by Semper (i.e. whatever is found in The Real World). No response needed. Obviously, I remain, a

-- Stranger, SSL69 12:40, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I think I recall tagging App because it is not listed as APP but then, on reflection, perhaps you are more correct than I. Hmmm. Well, when your policy page is in place, we can all discuss which is should be...my understanding was that all types of "shortenings" were to be in upper case for some reason. At the moment, I'm not sure why.

Anyway, since it did not make it onto the WT:RFD page, it wasn't a very agressive nomination. I don't think you are supposed to remove an rfd tag, without some prior discussion, but you seem to be going above and beyond the single word; you are addressing the policy ambiguity as the root of the problem. Very well done indeed! --Connel MacKenzie 13:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

French dump page

J'taime Wiktionary:List of words without articles! I wonder if it would be better (or possible) to integrate this with Wiktionary:French index as a second section? Broken out by letter should work?

--Connel MacKenzie 20:35, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I will take care of putting it in the french section though being a dump and having all those characters that are no alphabetic like, the list is better if separated in section just like encyclopaedic articles missing on WP. Lincher 01:27, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

shalt

Isn't shalt present..? 24 02:19, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Whoa, missed this message amongst the various others. Remind me to check this again, if I don't fix it in the next few minutes.

Yes. Thank you for noticing. 'Tis fixed. --Connel MacKenzie 02:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello

Thank for the message again :)

I'm wondering if you can tell me what 's the meaning of "f", "m", and "c" at the end of the word translation section engineer. --Manop 03:52, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

You are welcome again. Gender is the only thing that is allowed to be abbreviated in Wiktionary, at least in the body of the definitions of words. {{f}}, {{m}} and huh? C? I don't know what {{c}} is for, in engineer. Maybe a typo? I don't know.

Since you are better at languages, than English, perhaps you could help out more efficiently by looking at Wiktionary: Things to do#Category: Check translations or the individual words inside the category: Check translations? --Connel MacKenzie 04:05, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

An admin over at the French Wiktionnaire directed me to w:Swedish grammar which identifies the "c" as meaning common (as opposed to neuter. --Connel MacKenzie 21:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I was going to add my two cents here, but I decided against it. However, I do have a query: is it considered proper on Wiktionary to drop in on a conversation like this and kibitz? Obviously, still a, --Stranger, SSL69 11:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Quite acceptable; please do. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 19:58, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Martyr etc. pol098 & POV

Please be more careful to maintain a NPOV in your contributions. Your most recent couple will probably end up rolled back if not toned way down. We are not an encyclopedia! --Connel MacKenzie 04:33, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that some of my contributions showed a POV. I typed in a rather lengthy response in what I thought was pol098:talk, but I can't find it, so it is probably somewhere inappropriate. I have corrected the most obvious candidate. Pol098 16:47, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Dynamic Text Index

Since I've been bothering you with queries anyway . . .

Do user pages appear in different categories and other pages? Like, for example, Request for Deletion? The question comes up as I try to construct, for lack of a better term, a Dynamic Text Index. This problem would be resolved if there were already a list someplace on Wiktionary where all these expandable abbreviations were listed - is there such a place? Perhaps I can make such a place and announce on the Beer Parlour what I'm trying to do so that (a) they know not to delete that page and (b) so that they can add to it if they wish and (c) also use it as a reference if they find it valuable.

To a lesser extent, this problem also comes up as I try to create a template; I mean, I don't want my user page to appear on a list of idiom pages.

Thanks,

Stranger, SSL69 14:00, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there is such a place. It is the Index to templates that we maintain manually. If you are trying to construct something more list Special:Allmessages then I would recommend building such a thing at Wiktionary:List of templates starting by taking the items from the list that can be found here. --Connel MacKenzie 15:18, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Now, regarding template...

• This type of thing has been done several times before, to varying degrees of acceptance. WT:ELE is the common accepted "standard" these days. It should not be changed without some kind of conversation about the change.
• It is absolutely essential that new users be shown why the==LANGUAGE==header is a required header.
• The pronunciation "table" is very disfavored. No one likes the appearance of the IPA/SAMPA table, and it makes the editing difficult.
• Things like "===See also===" are missing.
• Generally, WT:ELE has had a significant amount of discussion that made it what it is now. Ignoring that history may be unwise. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with this. --Connel MacKenzie 15:56, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

No, no, no, my Dear Sir, you misunderstood - I didn't mean you to critique the "template" - it is in no way in final form, and it was just for me. I was just trying to format what I found in ELE (and other places) in a way that was more understandable to me. (For example, having a "translation" section and also a separate major==Language==section always confused me; but I think I finally got it.)

Still, I appreciate your comments and will make sure I, for instance, eliminate the pronunciation "table" at once.

My original question about the template remains, though. I don't want my attempts at learning to screw up someone else's list of (for example) idioms. Is there a way that I can make my user page not show up on their lists or in their categories?

No. --Connel MacKenzie 18:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

With regard to "dynamic text", I appreciate the list you supplied - it was what I was looking for. The problem this list was suppose to solve involved the "template". I was looking for a finite number of brief descriptions I could use as a prefix to definitions. Examples include (vulgar), or (UK), or "(medical) Range of Movement - ROM" to distinguish it from "(computing) Read Only Memory - ROM". The list you supplied is darn near infinite. Do you know of a "definition classification" list or a list of definition prefixes used in the 1913 Webster's dictionary?

Yes, WT:I2T#Category - Specific Topic Templates. --Connel MacKenzie 18:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks --Stranger, SSL69 16:55, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

My pleasure. --Connel MacKenzie 18:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Help Proposal: Tips

Another thing which I have discovered as I have poured over other people's user pages, talk pages and the beer parlour is that there is a lot of wisdom floating around out there which doesn't appear to be in any sort of organized or indexed form. I have only one example I can show you: transwiki redirects. This is very dependent on sub-directory linked reference material. Because of this, it cannot be easily moved if it turns out to be of benefit to the entire Wiktionary community. Therefore, is there a place where I can park this now (perhaps someplace in Help?) where it can be more readily accessible by the community?

And what do you think of this in general? Like kibitzing, am I violating a social norm? And some things which appear in Tips may be no more than someone's pet peeves, and I don't want to elevate those to some sort of policy rank; but on the other hand, if no one has any strong opinion one way or the other, why not follow the opinion of someone who does feel strongly?

I never intended to become so involved with this. How did this happen? And I have to pack - we're moving in two days. Aaarrrggghhh!!! --Stranger, SSL69 17:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I try to be cautious with sub-page linking for that very reason. I only sub-link pages when I have a heavily wikified list. Making the server determine *if* a word is defined or not, and changing the link from blue to red happens for every wikified word. If there are a thousand wikified words, the page should probably be split. Unfortunately, many of my little projects here do exactly that, so I'm forced to use subpages even when I'd rather not.

I consolodated the Surnames/Male names/Female names pages from a couple thousand pages to 82. Of all those pages, only one or two might have been broken into sub-pages; the rest fit sufficiently well on one page.

Anyway, your "Tips" thing is an interesting proof of concept. (Note also that I recently indicated that I don't care about transwiki redirects, particularly, one way or the other.)

Rather than sourging through user talk pages, I think you'd do better to attach WT:BP and for each conversation of importance, create a Wiktionary:Policy - ... page. User:Richardb was doing this task intermittently for some time, but has been MIA for a while now.

Wiki policy doesn't really exist. The voices of those who participate at any given time determine the direction a wiki takes. That is what makes this "social experiment" such a communal effort. What I've learned (and often forget) is that it is most important to be nice. Pissing off someone like User:Uncle G or User:Paul G or USer:SemperBlotto can have long term effects, to no one's satisfaction. Sometimes it is hard to remember that almost everything that is contributed here is contributed in good faith, with good intentions.

I do not know how to adequately regulate my wikitime. Don't look to me for advice there. --Connel MacKenzie 18:43, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the tips, not just on Tips. You're right that there's plenty of advice in the BP to keep me busy if I'm to pursue that - and the BP is static, so I needn't create any new subdirectory - at least the archive is. And the newer stuff - well, maybe I'll end up volunteering to clean that up - but in spite of your assurances, it is on the administrator's section and to-do list. No, not up to that yet. Maybe after sifting through a couple years of previous BP discussions I will be, but not now. I gotta go - I'm starting to ramble. --Stranger, SSL69 19:18, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Special: Wanted pages - Russian

Hi Connel,

I see you've been entering Russian translations. Thank you! We have some linked on this list:

http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Wantedpages&limit=150&offset=0

that have remained undefined for a long time (#118-#144). I think they are Russian? If you know anything about them,' and can enter something, it would be nice. Thanks!

--Connel MacKenzie 16:59, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they are Russian. However almost all of them are forest industry related terms in which I am no expert to translate right on a spot. I'll do some digging around.

FarEast 17:30, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Do you understand why they are linked so many times? Does it look like they are linked appropriately? --Connel MacKenzie 15:22, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

It looks like it all started here: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81&oldid=131622 Apparently Stephen_G._Brown had a dictionary in front of him with all those forestry terms and as he was working on a list of forest related words he put in a bunch of crosslinks in related terms sections. As a result now you have same list of related terms repeated over an over on every page having anything to do with the forest. Does it have to be this way? I really don't think so because quite a few of those words have very little usage outside the specific industry. There are also noun-adjective pairs (119-120, 126-127, 132-133, 137-138, 139-140) which in essence mean the same thing and don't have to be mentioned separately. FarEast 16:09, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Mcbridean logic

Hello Connel, I was just about to delete Mcbridean logic when I noticed that you had made it into an Eponym. Do you know something that I don't. I believe it is a joke entry. SemperBlotto 09:23, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Oops. I was in a rush - I formatted the article without reading the contents. --Connel MacKenzie 09:25, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Good one for WT:BJAODN though. --Connel MacKenzie 09:28, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

drug

Hey again, just wanted to ask you a question regarding the word drug. Under the Bosnian and Serbian section of the entry, why did you wikify the declension forms of the word in the declension table (and at the top)? Wouldn't that just create extra entries that are unnecessary since they can be seen on that page? When I create entries, I try not to create both plural and singular forms because that can cause a lot of work for me or someone else who does Serbian and Bosnian entries, because then you might as well do the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms for each word and for adjectives it would be much longer than this. --Dijan 10:25, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I appologize. My brain was stuck in English mode. I think, on reflection, you are right. We want separate entries in English for the different forms, and we certainly want the various translations for the different forms, in English. But since foreign language entries don't get translations, the same division does not make sense. Didn't I do that to three entries? What else do I need to roll back, I wonder? --Connel MacKenzie 07:16, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki DoubleRedirects

Hello Connel. You are more up to speed on MediaWiki than I am, so - in Special:DoubleRedirects there are a number of MediaWiki entries pointing to templates. Would you like to have a look and see if anything needs to be done (and, if you have time, fix them). You need to elect the "500" option to see them (wikibug). Cheers. SemperBlotto 07:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

OK...

Doesn't look like anything "needs" to be done, but yes, these should be normal redirections.  :-) I'm doing the first 5 now, then sleep. These are the interwiki links that appear in the left column when someone includes an interwiki code in an article. Correcting them to lower case is correct.

Has the "500" option bug been reported on bugzilla yet?

--Connel MacKenzie 07:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

p.s. A couple of days ago, I thought that I saw that an article generated by your new boilerplate had the wrong category. I didn't have time to investigate, and now have forgotten the details. It may have been adverb or adjective.

Thanks. The easy way to find those templates is to enter something like "foo bar bar bar" in the search box, [Go] then review what is there. I don't think anyone's given them a thorough review yet. --Connel MacKenzie 07:50, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Greetings; unified wiktionary outreach

Hey Connel,

I just drafted a project idea to get people talking about unifying wiktionary languages: Wiktionary:Project - Unified Wiktionary outreach. What you think of the idea, and the current proposals?

+sj + 16:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Project_-_Unified_Wiktionary_outreach#Concerns

Categories and entries

Hi there. I was thinking, the purpose of a dictionary is to give the reader an idea of the meanings of a word. That involves providing definitions just as much as it is to describe the relationships between words with other words (synonymy, antonymy, etc). Not to put too fine a point on it, but a thesaurus is meant to provide a function that is ordinarily the dictionary's job. This should be recognized as part of Wiktionary's mandate. Also, the easiest way to accomplish these two goals, it seems to me, is to make every entry a Category, so that it is much easier to create coherant inter-wiki links. Even better (but more of a hassle) would be to change the code so that it was easy to link synonyms and antonyms together: i.e., if there were a tag much like the |[Category: etc]| one, called the Synonymy and Antonymy tags, that were designed to link two wikis together by creating an appropriate subsection in each wiki to one another. As a plus, the relationship between wikis could then be mapped in a kind of network (perhaps as a project in the far-distant future). Lucidish 00:25, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

The "Ultimate Wiktionary" project is in the works. Interesting fresh ideas like this are, well, interesting and fresh. I don't think the Wiktionary community at large would be eager to attempt such a large scale change. Nor the developers, for that matter. I think at this point, we need to wait to see how UW will pan out. Asking the devs to look at a new project at this point is unwise.

You are correct about the Thesaurus being part of our baliwick...but only the tiniest meagre start has been made over at Category:WikiSaurus. The approach they have taken does not appeal to me. But I do try to enter synonyms and antonyms at least occasionally. At some point in the distant future, it is conceivable that someone will use that data to fill out WikiSaurus. More likely, UW will have a better mechanism for those relationships. Until we see a demo of what it might look like, it is pretty hard to say. --Connel MacKenzie 15:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

a LAZY Stranger

As one of your e-mail messages to me indicated I would, I am becoming less and less a stranger here and this is becoming less and less a strange land to me and so my moniker is becoming less and less apt. Granted, I haven't been bold enough to step toe into the beer parlour yet and demand that they spell it correctly and there are still things which I don't understand (transwiki, and I still can't find the "edit summary box"), but I suppose we all have things to learn. Like knowing how not to ramble. But I'm a novelist. I THINK in terms of chapters. Sorry, sorry. Anyway, would it cause a lot of disruption if I created a new account as "--Stranger" (which is how I've been signing my posts and is what people are familiar with) and moved the "SSL69" pages to the, then, newly created "--Stranger" pages? And I mean it: Thank you. --Stranger (SSL69 15:48, 24 August 2005 (UTC))

>>>

Stranger,

Only a Bureaucrat can merge usernames. At least, I think they can do it, but I don't recall ever seeing it being done. Perhaps it really is a developer-only thing? So yes, changing usernames today essentially means abandoning your old account.

Well, I don't want to cause any trouble. But then, what does this "move" button do on the top of my user page? I think I'll create a new "test" account and just try it out and see what happens - unless you think that'll really mess things up somehow.

I'm dissapointed to hear that you (or anyone) is afraid to "step into" the Beer Parlor. To me, the name connotates rowdiness, general mayhem and an occasional brawl. OTOH, being too bold helps some earn a bad reputation; but the BP is exactly the place one should ask. OTOOH, the mantra "be bold" pertains to entering new, undefined words first and foremost.

more on this later

Transwiki actually relates to Wiktionary's raison d'être. Wiktionary was split off from Wikipedia when someone realized that real encyclopedias do not include dictionary words. So, they took all the cruft that they did not *want* in Wikipedia and made a new project called Wiktionary. These days, when someone arrives at Wikipedia (from google) and the light-bulb goes on and they realize they can enter stuff...and enter a dictionary definition, Wikipedians tag it for "Move to Wiktionary" because Wikipedia is not a dictionary (but Wiktionary is.) The article then gets moved to a Wikipedia holding area where it is voted on; then one of several bots makes the Wikipedia entry go from there to here, into the transwiki namespace. (Namespace in this meaning, means that the article name gets "Transwiki:" prepended to it.)

I think I get it. So then we go in and format the article according to Wiktionary style and enter a redirect to it on the old "Transwiki:" prepended page? The reason I ask is that Eclectiology described this as possibly the most thankless task on Wiktionary on the administrator's dishwashing section and Semper signed up for it; I'd like to try to lend a hand.

The edit summary box appears when you edit existing entries. It is labelled "Summary:" and appears below the edit box. (Note that if you use the ["+"] to add a new section, it is not considered an edit, but an add.)

So it was, perhaps, the name that threw me off. It's the "Summary" box, not the "Edit Summary" box. (1) But sometimes, like now when I'm editting this on my userpage, I notice it's already filled in with "/* Misc. resps */". (2) I was looking through the tutorial again to see where it said "edit summary box" and the tutorial is in even worse shape now than what it was when I first looked at it - clinking on all those suggested helpful links which happened to be red in color that brought up edit screens really confused me as a new newbie. I didn't know what the different colors meant right away. Surely the Tutorial would be correct, wouldn't it? - I assumed as a new newbie. Now I know a little more about how things don't work around here. Maybe I should go through it and . . . but that's not really a newbie job either, is it?

Thanks again. --Connel MacKenzie 16:41, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for sticking in there with me. Your support is always welcomed. Cheers, --Stranger (SSL69 17:13, 24 August 2005 (UTC))

e/c: your user-page

I think the acct thing has been straightened out as much as it can be. --Stranger 19:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

a black and white

Not that I think you're old or anything, but can you check this and its talk page. Maybe you can be more definite. Cheers, --Stranger (SSL69 23:22, 24 August 2005 (UTC))

This took you a full 18 minutes. What took you so long?!?  :-) --Stranger (SSL69 23:47, 24 August 2005 (UTC))

Hehe, I was about to point out that I was in 4 separate conversation on 2 IRC channels, *and* my boss called. I need to do a whole lot less wiki'ing. --Connel MacKenzie 00:20, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Don't we all. --Stranger (SSL69 00:24, 25 August 2005 (UTC))

LOL!!! A Cookie? Are you bloody serious? SSL69 00:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Very serious. It is a NY, NY thing for decades now...therefore listed in inches not centimeters. --Connel MacKenzie 01:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

the VIP page

So, report vandalism on the VIP page? Y'all monitor this page? This is the fastest way to get in touch with you, is that what we should do?

If so, can we make something a little more clear: like: at the top, put an ER section or something.

A recovering, --Stranger (SSL69 22:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC))

Posting the latest username (signed, of course) at the bottom should be sufficient. --Connel MacKenzie 00:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

84.12.165.92 added an entry 36dd which appears to be - errr - educational actually :-)

Finding the bottom is rather difficult. What if it is like 36dd and not from yesterday? The same - put at the bottom? --Stranger 00:38, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Report all that I see? As I look, there's an awful lot. douchette Gamem8ker Sensis - some worse than others, but all, I think: Mostly Harmless. It looks like User_talk:Hippietrail is online now; can I just assume s/he(or whoever's the sysop on duty) is getting this stuff? Cheers, --Stranger 01:39, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

No no nononono. No one is ever "on duty!" We're all volunteers here. On my browser, pressing the "End" key jumps all the way to the bottom, "Home" jumps back up to the top. In the Table Of Contents at the top, you can click on the section you want to go to. From there, you can use the "[Edit]" link on the right, to edit just that section. Once the edit page loads, use ALT-"," (Alt comma) to jump to the edit box...at the last character. Pressing the up arrow then, will show that you are at the end of the selection.

As for what to report, try to limit it to just the serious offender...and only after a couple minutes have passed with no sysop response. --Connel MacKenzie 05:09, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Sensis is rubbish, isn't it. I noticed you didn't delete it. Just wondering 'cause there's another one like it: ceynet Cheers, --Stranger 20:06, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

boilerplate

The basic new addition boilerplate has "noun" hard-coded. It is getting to be a pain adjusting things like collegial. Could you have another think. Cheers/ SemperBlotto 19:28, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Aye aye! I'll get right to it. (I was hoping for some feedback on the Basic/Intermediate/Advanced before going ot the trouble of re-adding the P.O.S. templates. I was also hoping someone else might take a shot at enhancing those templates.) --Connel MacKenzie 03:46, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

All better now? --Connel MacKenzie 04:38, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

It is a difficult problem to solve, isn't it. Whatever is done, the newbies will mess it up. What would be good, would be a method of leading them by the hand, one step at a time, by asking them questions - what language is it? what part of speech? what does it mean? do you know its etymology? . . . But Wiki can't do that sort of thing (can it? Javascript?) I suppose we could write an offline application that users could use at home to produce articles, then come online and load them. Anyway, Yes, it's better now. We'll see what they do next. Cheers. SemperBlotto 14:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• Maybe pepper that table with help links? (Or at least that first column, since none exist for the latter ones.) Obviously, we need to start with "Do you know what a 'part-of-speech' is?" then go on to explain that a noun is a person place or thing...
• Actually, the "better" place to have help links available is when they are editing, not before. I suppose I could also add a fairly POV warning against IE users: "Dude, the browser you are using doesn't have tabbed browsing! What the fuck are you doing?" or something. That way that could at least *try* wiki with a real browser, and see how nice it is to have other tabs openning up in other tabs in the background. I know it has sped me up significantly here.
• Hmmm. Time to throw more brains at this problem? That is, should this move to WT:BP? --Connel MacKenzie 14:39, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
• Yes, I would like to know what other people think - chuck it at WT:BP. SemperBlotto 14:46, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

put foot in mouth - need help

please see: A-B Porn then Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion#A-B_Porn

Cheers --Stranger 00:19, 27 August 2005 (UTC) :)

Please try to keep comments professional. An awful lot of nonsense comes through...unless you have a very, really very funny joke (that translates to UK and Canada and Australia and India flavors of English) it is usually best to treat the ridiculous as neutrally as possible. We are nerds trying to write a dictionary, not comedians! --Connel MacKenzie 04:43, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry. --Stranger 13:57, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Don't be. I'm just trying to give helpful guidelines. If I'm being overbearing, tell me so. --Connel MacKenzie 14:08, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

VIP?

I don't know if it's VIP or just a gross NPOV violation, but look at terrorist by 24.228.21.207. I'm going to bed now, just after midnight here, so I don't know if s/he'll strike again. And sometimes I worry about you, dear sir. Feel free to drop by and drop a note off at the Wikt Anon section of my user pages. Cheers. --Stranger 04:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the rv tip. I was wondering how y'all did that. You guys do look at the substance of the rvs before invoking the 3 rv rule, don't you? Or doesn't that exist anymore? Now I don't have to bother you people - things like the recent Muslim and terrorist rvs (which I got help from from Polyglot) really offended me. But that would be two of my three strikes. Anyway, sorry, worrying too much again . . . --Stranger 01:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. No, we do not honor the three rv rule. I invoked it once, incorrectly. Since then it has gone away entirely. Generally, we're supposed to only block for flagrant vandalism. All A.P. images get permanent blocks, because they represent compromised IP addresses...either open proxies or zombies, neither of which have any business here. (If a zombie gets the virus cleaned off it, they can petition for unblocking and they'll get another chance.) --Connel MacKenzie 01:55, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Shrivel

Connel--you requested the word shrivel be added to Wiktionary...and I have done so. Your welcome! corypark. (Sorry--I don't have a userpage yet!) User:68.21.6.1 18:06, 29 August 2005

quick note

quick note before bed

I wanted one place to index things - so I wouldn't be recording my changes in five different places. I chose the existing "Index to Internals" to index things (meaning, old BP discussions). As I was searching, I found a couple things (like Utilites and the Glossary) were repeats of this index or other things or could easily be combined into this index - that's the only reason I was touching Utilities and Glossary.

For BP summaries and whatever else I said, I would include those in the index as well, but not destroy the list that exists in the BP at the moment - instead, I would archive that list for posterity. BUT the index would be the place to go to find that info.

In general, I let other people delete things. I save everything. I just move it from BP to other places that seem logical to me at the time.

Like VIP. I didn't touch VIP. That's beyond my remit. I noticed, however, that some conversations on the BP were about vandalism, so I had to find a place to park those conversations. Thus, I created an archive subdirectory to VIP since that seemed like the logical place - keep all the vandalism stuff in one area (so it's easy to find in case someone has to show the FBI what a mess AP made of things - for example). The key to survival is being able to put your hands on something when you need it.

Oh, and I didn't keep vandalism conversations on the BP for very long (i.e. less than one month). This is for the same reasons we deleted the "NOTICE" conversation we had on your user page. We want to try to hide this stuff. This is the same reason why I want to keep the VIP-archive "secret" - that is to say, not include a link to it from other pages.

All I can think of right now. I value your comments. Bedtime.

Cheers,

--Stranger 04:37, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Just so I don't forget these.

I realize there is significant irony in temporarily keeping this list on my talk page...

arguments, agreements, advice, answers, articulate announcements

babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker, brouhaha, balderdash, ballyhoo

comments, cliches, commentary, controversy, chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat, conversation, contradiction, criticism ...cheap talk

debates, discussions, dialogue, duologue, diatribe, dissention, declamation, double talk, double talk

expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations, enfadulations, elephant talk?, elephant talk..., elephant talk!

ncik

Hi Connel, could you please enlighten us as to what is going on between you and ncik? The two of you have the honor of having produced our very first mini edit war ever. He has been shut out for the moment. It would have been better to ask an other sysop to do that. I had a quick look at the entries that are involved, but I'm not able to judge what is going on. I hope Ec, Paul and Hippietrail come along soon to sort out what's going on. But in the mean time, maybe you can give your side of the story. Polyglot 22:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello, yes, the email address is correct. I had hoped you would explain what's going on over here on your talk page. So some other long time contributors can have a look. I don't really feel like having to judge one way or another, but it bothers me that a productive contributor has been blocked. Usually we try to reach some sort of consensus by discussing the problems and trying to solve them. Polyglot 22:38, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Edit war

I have removed the block which you applied to Ncik. Please avoid continuing your edit war with him. I realize that several different points may have been involved, and I would find it premature to engage in a detailed analysis of each one. Suffice it to say that in the case of "endeavor/endeavour" where either form could be correct, priority should be given to the first form used in the article.

I do not think that it is appropriate when an administrator uses his privileges to impose his will on an established user who does not have those privileges, and who has not acted as a common vandal. Persistent application of that technique may leave you vulnerable to the same treatment for the same amount of time.

If you feel that an edit war is getting out of hand you would do better to bring the details to the attention of the community. Eclecticology 00:06:56, 2005-09-05 (UTC)

The following articles are affected: employ, agendum, résumé, cleave, FedEx, as dry as a dead dingo’s donger, and project.

• employ: I'm not going to revert again. Was, for me, just a matter of irregverb vs. en-infl-... template.
• agendum: I think Connel has accepted that "agendum" is an English word.
• project: I've removed "endeavour". Hope that's acceptable for Connel.
• résumé: No idea why Connel doesn't accept that "résumé" can simply mean "summary". Tried to establish this meaning against Connel's conviction before. I'm not going to give in again.
• cleave: This is the one that upsets me most. Connel deleted the etymologies and the corrected inflexions.
• FedEx: The old part of speech thing. I extended the noun defn a bit, don't know if he's got a problem with that. I'm pretty sure my, more general verb definition is correct, although I've never actually asked anyone who's FedExed something if indeed FedEx was the courier service. Maybe we should have two definitions, as on "google".
• as dry as a dead dingo’s donger: Part of speech again. Ncik 14:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Connel's comments

• I am still shocked by Eclecticology's absurd support for User:Ncik in this matter. Inventing a convention after the fact, applied retroactively is unfair. He certainly could have assumed that what I did had some degree of reason behind it. But rather than investigate, underhandedly taking sides is childish.

• Ncik, your misrepresentation of fact is unsettling. There are several disputes.
  1. Hand vs. résumé. User:Ncik's anti-policy edits to Hand (to wit, adding translations to English of foreign language entries) is in fact, not at all similar to his vandalous removal of American English meanings. As an Austrian, I can't imagine why User:Ncik thinks he is an authority on American English. Even if he were, flamboyant removal of content is akin to vandalism. At any rate, a quick look at talk:résumé shows that User:Ncik is a blatant liar. He not only has not participated in the discussions at all, he thinks his POV is the only god-given correct POV, and that research covering weeks of time should be ignored at his whim.
  2. Inflection templates. Uncle G created a series of templates, with significant input from the Wiktionary community. User:Ncik decided to simplify them in a way that no one (other than himself) thought appropriate. When asked repeatedly to stop, he simply refused to listen. Instead, he escalated the issue by removing the correct templates and inserting his own. Some iterations incorrectly commingled data from other sections. Again, this was objected to, but User:Ncik responded by refusing to listen.
  3. US vs. UK. User:Paul G entered a compromise alternate spelling of a term. User:Ncik removed that without explanation from project. Much confusion exists on this topic still, as User:Polyglot currently holds a very different interpretation of the issue than others. But vandalizing User:Paul G's edit does not make much sense, as a way to help reach an acceptable solution. Combined with a refusal to even discuss the issue on WT:BP or elsewhere is unsettling, to say the least.
  4. cleave. Nesting incorrectly. User:Ncik made such an astounding non-WT:ELE conforming mess of this, I (one-click) reverted it, then started editing it to re-insert the content he had added, while nesting the header levels according to WT:ELE. As it was such a mess, I did not get a single edit in, before User:Ncik had started another round of incorrect reverts. And again. And again. It was at this point, just trying to get a single edit to post, that I blocked him, with a message to e-mail me when he had calmed down. Instead of calming down, he ran off screaming to User:Polyglot and Eclecticology. At that point, I spent more time dealing with nonsense than actually finishing the edit to cleave, which I think is still quite broken even now.
  5. FedEx. Part of Speech vs. Third level Heading. Several rounds of this issue exist. User:Ncik must be a really smart Austrian, to also know English well enough to not only speak it, but to contribute to the English Wiktionary knowledgeably. But we don't exclude anyone who wants to contribute, right? Well, User:Ncik unilaterally decided that third level headings, so-called (loosely) Part-of-Speech headers, should only have valid parts of speech. This has not been true, and is not the true community desire. The Parts-of-Speech that are valid are generally limited to the big eight that most of us learned about in school. Notable exceptions are "Proper noun", "Idiom", "Phrase", "Number", "Abbreviation", "Acronym", "Initialism", "Symbol", "Transitive verb"/"Intransitive verb" and possibly several others that elude me at the moment. (From my POV, splitting verb sections in half is very misleading to someone just reading the Wiktionary entry. If any distinction is made, it should be on the "meaning" line as a tag of some sort.) Once again, User:Ncik has responded to criticism by pretending he did not hear. In this case, he removed the carefully constructed categories that User:Hippietrail had entered, from the template that he removed.
  6. as dry as a dead dingo's donger. Part of speech again. Indeed.
  7. agendum. A reasonable edit by User:Ncik. Taken in context of the flurry of other nonsense, it seemed that this was more of the same. I was far too quick with the rollback button on this one. This was his only "reasonable" edit in this time-frame. Had he not been abusive with his other edits, I might have looked at this clearly, the first time around, instead of the second. (Of note: this one did not see the same level of "revert war" the other terms did.)

---

I've taken a week off from edits. I've gotten a degree of perspective from taking time off. I think in the near future, I will concentrate my efforts on automation (helping Allan w/ Webster import however I can and filling in entries from the Project Gutenberg frequency lists.) Monitoring Recent changes, WT:RFD, WT:BP etc. are proving to be utterly useless. If Wiktionary wishes to condone abuses by User:Ncik, it is far beyond my power to curb or even slow that deterioration. What I can do, is monthly, to keep the cleanup lists up to date, after each database XML dump. It is certainly more important to me, to maintain my level of happiness and satisfaction with my efforts, by tremendously reducing my day-to-day involvement here. If User:Ncik then decides to vandalize every entry I make, so be it; this is a wiki. I would hope that others here would instead take a very close look at all of User:Ncik's contributions to date. I think anyone that does, will reach similar conclusions to mine. --Connel MacKenzie 16:57, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Polyglot's responses

Connel, by blocking Ncik, you acted like a bully and you abused your powers as a sysop. The only logical thing Eclecticology could do was to unblock him. I don't see that as taking sides. In fact I should have done that, but I wasn't able to investigate properly what was going on, so I passed on the hot potato.

The convention for the creation of entries in American or UK spelling has been - for a long time already - that the first one entered gets to stay. Why? Because it is easy to see which was the first spelling entered. And thus easy to arbitrate which entry gets to stay. The entry in the other spelling becomes either a redirect or in case of different etymologies or pronunciation a more fleshy entry with pointers to the main entry, where all the common properties are. Just like it doesn't make sense to create translation tables with all the foreign language entries, it doesn't make sens to duplicate information. It can only get out of sync, that way. Every time you put the same content in two different places they will start to diverge, so I think it's not wise to do so. If people do decide to do so and the majority of contributors decides it's a good idea, I won't do anything about it anymore, except for saying: told you so when (initially the same) content changes independantly in two places. I'm not attached to either spelling, although I usually seem to use the US spelling in my own writings.

Putting synchronise/synchronize for political correctness' sake, simply makes definitions harder to read. We also don't use abbreviations for clarity, this is in the same vein.

First of all, I'm sorry I messed up the automatic numbering of your comments. I probably should have used the preview button to check I wasn't messing it up.

The bully remark came from you using a power you have, for resolving a conflict with somebody who doesn't have that power. The reason you got that power is because we want to be able to trust that you won't do exactly that. Kicking out vandals is one thing. Kicking out a long time contributor whose intents aren't entirely malicious is another. Yes, there are things he is doing wrong or in the wrong way, but that should be resolved differently.

Anyway, please understand I have no axe to grind with you. I/we value your contributions very much and it's great to see you care a lot for the Wiktionary project. Polyglot 14:24, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Inflection templates

I have to admit I was absent while these templates were made. The problem I have with them is that there are too many of them and that the forms in their parameters are not complete anymore. It doesn't make a lot of sense to try to add rules of grammar to such templates. OTOH, I don't like Ncik's templates either, since he doesn't delegate formatting to them.

Something like { { en-verb|swim|swam|swum|swims|swimming|have} } that expands to:

'''to swim''' ([[swam]], have [[swum]], it [[swims]], [[swimming]])

would have my preference. It's clear and if necessary the formatting of the output can easily be changed later on. To a full table for example)

Don't pin me down on the name I chose, or the parameters. It's more a concept than a finished product.

So called part of speech headings

There I fully agree with you and I'll fix those as I go, while scrutinizing the entries he made.

I made a proposal to start calling those headings Definition headings. Their most important content are the definitions for a specific spelling. That way nobody has to come and complain their titles are something else than possible parts of speeches. Polyglot 14:24, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Great!

Glad you're back! I've missed bugging you and learning from your accumulated wisdom. I hope I can still query you about things beyond Allan's project.

I also want to commend you on the difficult decision you made to limit your Wiktionary time. I know you had a passion for the project - but, you're absolutely right: your happiness and peace of mind must come first. Saying no to a passion can be a difficult but necessary step toward maintaining our fragile health. I hope I am as wise in drawing my own Wiktionary limits.

Loose ends: just to make sure everyone is on the same page, would you remove yourself from the administrative dishwashing tasks you no longer wish to perform.

Brave heart,

--Stranger 01:46, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the reminder and the kind words. --Connel MacKenzie 08:21, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

List of languages

Ray,

Could you please tell me which languages should go? I have compiled a recent list of "level two" headings at User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo2#Level two language headers. It is not clear which of these can or should go. I do not know where to find a list of which of these (even those with only one or two terms) are not artificial languages. Of the artificial languages, I do not know which ones are "allowed." If you could reply with a finite list either here or on my talk page, (or perhaps Beer parlor?) of the ones that "should not" be allowed, I can assist in hunting them down. It would be nice to have an offical list of the conlangs that we've seen here, but that we simply don't want, rather than to continue with the current ambiguity.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:39, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

It looks like you've been working hard with the level 2 list. The question of which artificial or constructed languages to accept is really still undetermined. The number will be somewhere between five nbased on the list at Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion and the 24 which have an ISO 639-3 code. See Wiktionary:Requests for deletion under "Novial". Any language that is not on the longer list should not be accepted unless the proponent can come up with some extremely convincing evidence. This leaves 19 languages in a relatively undecided state. Some of them have been discussed before, but I could be open to reconsider under the right circumstances. In particular, I would make a linkage to the principles of verifiability and no original research. Romanica and Ekspreso are definitely out, but with over 600 entries for Romanica alone, plus redirects from the decapitalization process it will take a while to get rid of these.

There are some weird things on your list, but once you clear out the known items, including typos, there shouldn't be too much to re-check. As somebody said, "There are the known knowns ..." :-)

Eclecticology 00:39, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I did the first pass on this list over a month ago. This is after the first round of cleanup (second round just begun.) Knowing Romanica and Ekspreso are cetainly on the hit list is very good information. By my list, I am much more concerned about the entries in those languages, rather than the translations. (I can almost see keeping the translations for the obscure conlangs - or rather not expending effort to chase them down until there is a more automated way of doing so.)

It is a little surprising that in less than a month, five new misspellings of "English" were entered as level two headers.  :-)

Anyhow, from the entries on the second half of that list, (level two "languages" that have less than 50 words entered) which of those is a conlang, and which are genuine languages is giving me trouble. We have no list anywhere...only an exhaustive list of allowed languages (including zero conlangs.)

I shall take the liberty of adding Romanica and Ekspreso to a "known prohibited" section of that list.

What I'd like to know is, what can go, from the following list:

aari afrikaans akkadian alabama albanian arabic aragonese aramaic armenian asturian baagandji balinese bambara basque belarusian betawi bosnian breton brithenig bulgarian burmese cantonese catalan celtic chamorro chickasaw chinese chuvash cornish croatian czech danish deutsch dutch ebonics esperanto estonian ewe faeroese faroese farsi fijian filipino finnish flemish french frisian fula ga galego galician gallegan gallo gamilaraay german gilbertese gothic greek greenlandic guarani hawaiian hebrew hindi hindu hungarian ibu icelandic ido indonesian interlingua interlingual inuktitut irish islanti italian italiana italiano japanese javanese kapingamarangi karelia karelian kashubian katakana kirwanda klingon korean kurdish laitin latin latvian lingala lithuanian livonian loglan lojban luganda luxembourgish macedonian makua malay malaysian maltese mandarin mangarevan manx maori marathi marshallese mongolian nahuatl nauruan navajo neapolitan nederlands nepalese niuean norwegian norweigan novial occitan ouchish palauan pali patois persian philipino piemontese pinyin pitcairnese pitjantjatjara polish polynesian portuguese prefix preterition protuguese punjabi quechua quenya rarotongan rohingya romanian romany rotuman roxhai russian samoan sanskrit sardinian scandinavian scots scottish serbian seri sicilian sindarin singlish slavic slovak slovene slovenian slovio solresol somali swahili swazi swedish tagalog tahitian tamil tatar tetum tibetan tokelauan tokipona tongan tuamotuan tupi turkish tuvaluan ugaritic urdu vaasa vaduz veps vietnamese votian waage welsh westron wolof yiddish yucatec zulgo zulu

--Connel MacKenzie 04:03, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Regretably, I think the only way to deal with this is the hard way. We do get people who delight in adding words in the most obscure languages they can imagine. I just found out that Aari is spoken by over 150,000 people in Ethiopia. With Ethnologue recognizing 2600 language codes, and many more synonyms for language names it's impossible to know them all. You will need to check them one by one at http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp?order=name&name=name&letter=a

IIRC slovio and solresol are rejected conlangs. Eclecticology 06:05, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Gutenberg frequency lists

While I have you here I would like to comment on you Gutenberg frequency lists. These could be useful, but having them in blocks of 10,000 makes them slow to download. Since they are all Wikified it means that the software needs to check each one of them to determine whether it should be red or blue. If the list is reasonably stable it could be interesting to put a Gutenberg ranking on the page for every English word. Eclecticology 00:39, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

That is a very cool idea...including the ranking on the individual pages. Perhaps I should try several different formats on the top 20 to 50 entries? That'll have to go to the beer parlor. for more comments.

I was very concerned about the page size too, intially. Now that several other languages (fr:, la: and others, I think) have replicated the list for comparison on their Wiktionaries. But from what I can tell, those pages get very, very few hits. And when they do, the pages are static (cached.)

Now that I've seen what I expected to see with them, I suppose de-wikifying them (the large lists) would be a pretty good idea. If the gurus see these pages getting lots of hits, I'm sure they would just go ahead and dewikify or delete the lists. Performance lately has been catastrophicly bad...ever since the fundraiser. (I noticed a massive performance degradation the last time we had a fund raiser too.)

What I use (and tell other to use) is User talk:Connel MacKenzie/Gutenberg for entering new terms. This has the benefit of being broken down into lists 100 times smaller, plus links for auto-template propagation. (Since those are HTML links, there is a lot less overhead - certainly no wikification checks on the URLs.)

One thing I've noticed about the Gutenberg frequency lists: there are no typos. The unusal capitalization on some of the legalese at the top of every Gutenberg book threw only a handful of words off. In a dictionary of 100,000, essentially <0.1%! Entering redirects for those words from those three sentences seems harmless enough for right now. There are also a handful of odd abbreviations from that same text that show up. But that is a tiny number compared to the all-capital words. But from what I've seen in the frequency list, there just aren't any misspellings in the most popular 10,000 words. And only very obvious typos in the top 20,000 words. (i before e, except...)

I guess I could run the ranking again with the rank number, excluding ALL CAPITAL WORDS, and listing them only de-wikified. Sometime soon, I guess. --Connel MacKenzie 04:03, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

When I first looked at the list I thought that the Gutenberg people had provided it. Now that I realize that you did it yourself it is more impressive.

Rather than dewikifying the list my first idea was to break it down into smaller blocks.

The fact that you calculated the rankings yourself probably gives us more flexibility in what is possible, including adapting to refinements in the list or the addition of further volumes to the corpus. Is it possible to put a function on each English language entry to give a word's frequency and ranking by looking it up on the current version of the table? Is this idea too far over the top?

If there is anything that is going to make Wiktionary special it will be these value added features.

Having seen some Gutenberg texts I suspect that most of the all capitals words are from chapter titles. Keep up the good work. Eclecticology 06:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I really like the idea of extending this to indicate the word's rank on each individual page. I cannot see how that can be done without a 'bot though. (Polyglot, please comment.) I'll think on it more. But meanwhile, someone artistically oriented (like the guys over at Wiktionnaire) should try a couple different layout div thinggys, on the top 10 entries, then let everyone take a vote on their favorite format?

You should ask the developers themselves if the ranking could be added dynamically. I assume not. Wikimedia servers are astronomically overloaded as it is. For that reason alone, I'd think that avenue is not likely to be pursued.

Anyone is welcome to split the main frequency lists up onto separate pages - that is why I have the sections the way I do. I just did not find the inclination to subdivide a hundred (or a thousand) pages. The collection of tools I use are not even a collection of tools. So far, I've written two programs, with several subroutines each, that do different tasks. Nothing I've written is particularly web-oriented; instead it is very much stand alone, & cut-n-paste into Wiktionary.

I grabbed my copy of Project Gutenberg using rsync, so re-running this annually should not be a big problem, just a big task. Counting the words from all those separate files took weeks (admittedly, because most of the time it was not running - like when I was at work) so rebuilding the ranking is not something to be done monthly.

Filtering these by language and having separate rankings by language will be cool someday, but right now there are significant counts of French and German words, that seem to be throwing it all off. Looking at a filename like /gutenberg/6/0/6/6065.zip really gives me no indication of what language the file is. I suppose I should try talking to someone over at Project Gutenberg and seeing if there is an easy way to get only the English texts. Also, just eyeballing the disclaimer text of some of these, the boilerplate disclaimers aparently *did* have a significant effect. I am open to ideas on filtering them out. (I think there is a **BEGIN CONTENT** or something, but on this first run I did not even try to figure it out.)

I wouldn't put too much stock into using this as a promotional selling point of Wiktionary. By merit of the GFDL, right now any of our "competition" is more than welcome to "steal" my list - that is the point of the GFDL after all. (As long as they meet the GFDL license requirements.) There are much better linguists than myself out there, there are better programmers too. To see where others take this is will be very interersting indeed. Is this worth mentioning to WikiMedia Foundation? I'm not active in that realm, myself...just having fun with word games. --Connel MacKenzie 20:04, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

entries

Requested entries is it then. And you know how the other sidebar things have got a little pop-up window that comes up when the pointer hovers over? Can we get one of these for the requested entries too? I had a peruse round in the MediaWiki namespace pages list, but it was all a bit complicated for that. WF

Drat. I thought I did add that to MediaWiki:Monobook.js. Wait-a-sec...that does work, for me. --Connel MacKenzie [+] (contribs) 16:47, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

correlatives

Hi there. The next time that you generate your giant todo list, could you allow "Correlative" as a valid part of speech. It is used in Esperanto. Cheers. SemperBlotto 09:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Hrmmm. I wonder why they didn't use ===Related terms===. OK, I'll add that to the filter(s). --Connel MacKenzie [+] (contribs) 13:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

User:Polyglot/monobook.js

Jo,

Thanks for taking a look at this. So far, my experiment has not gone very far. Obviously, it is not ready for prime time. Like the Russian Wikipedia (where I got some of it) it should be activated by a button. Or perhaps a row of buttons, for each of the different actions (which may end up with their own controversy.)

I'd like it to auto-Show-Changes whenever it changes something. Right now, just opening up a page for editing causes many "invisible" changes - if I'm not careful, I won't even notice the extent that I modify articles now. Making the action button-activated would alleviate some of that, I suppose.

Anyway, I am interesting in hearing how well it works (or doesn't) in other browsers. Well wait, no not I'm not - at least not yet. This intermediate version will never end up being the "final" version anyway. I'd rather get the header nesting pinned down (politically and technically) long before going that route. Make that 'and' an 'or'.  :-)

--Connel MacKenzie [+] (contribs) 02:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I did look at monobook.js. The first question that popped up is: is all this executed as soon as I start editing a page? Your comment on my talk page seems to confirm that it is.

What would it take to add buttons to your javascripts, so that one can select which action is performed? That would make those scripts very useful to me. I don't know the first thing about javascript and I'm not very motivated to find out. It's not laziness, it's trying to be efficient. You seem to know where to look. You stated that on the Russian Wiktionary/pedia they have buttons. Could you add an example of how to do it? Feel free to add it to my monobook.js if it's not useful for yours.

Many thanks, Polyglot 07:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Jo,

I'm sorry, but I will not feel free to modify your monobook.js. No way. I would not feel comfortable doing that. I did figure our how to get the "Show changes" working the way I want it though. So you may wish to copy User:Connel MacKenzie/monobook.js to User:Polyglot/monobook.js again.

I started dissecting the Russian Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Monobook.js to find the parts that I wanted to reuse. I ended up just poorly copying the concepts. They modified several other pages with that, to add one or two "Format" buttons. I found the links from the English Wiktionary's list of tools. Looking at the top row of this edit box (as I type right now) I see eleven buttons. I know in theory, I can add more buttons there dynamically with javascript...but I am very rusty at javascript.

I'm leery of trying to do that sort of thing for several reasons. 1) Most of the cleanup I am doing these days comes from my generated lists of "messy" articles from the XML dump. Normal entries should not need this severe a cleanup. 2) Some of the cleanup I do will not be appropriate in the future - it is only for these very badly formatted articles. 3) Some of the changes (such as adding {en-infl-reg...} are controversial. 4) Splitting the formatting tasks up into separate functions is a better approach than the all-formatting-changes-at-one approach I am using right now.

When I finish clearing off User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo3 I'll want to revisit the possibility of adding buttons. Things like auto-level correction, POS alphabetizing, translation table left/right balancing could each get their own button. But not today. Nor this week.

--Connel MacKenzie [+] (contribs) 14:50, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't seem to get this javascript to work. It seems like something very powerful and I think it's what I have been looking for for a long time. It's probably the reason why I'm writing the bot, although that gives even more possibilities, of course. I opened some pages from you todo lists at random, then clicked the show changes to see if something had been done automatically, but no. Nothing at all.

What I need is something that can insert the following with one click of a button:

====Translations====
'''
'''
{{top}}
{{bottom}}

That would save me a lot of typing and it would mean the difference between actually editing an entry and tabulate those translations or simply leaving the numbered mess and going on, as I'm doing more and more often lately. Can you give me a clickable link to this .js file on the Russian Wiktionary? Maybe I'll go and have a look at it myself and try to tackle it myself. I had decided I was only going to learn Python anymore, but apparently this Javascript has a lot of promising possibilities.

OK, let's back up a second. What browser are you using? I'm using Netscape 7.x for my testing of this. Testing it now also with IE doesn't get very far...

Line: 96

Char: 34

Error: Expected '/'

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page

So I guess I should figure out what I've done wrong there...then things will probably start working for you.

After that, I'll chase down that other link. --Connel MacKenzie 06:02, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Daytime: Mozilla 1.7.2 on Windows

Evening: Firefox 1.? and Mozilla on Mandriva Linux

Anyway, it works now. It's no small feat what you have accomplished. Even multiple lines seem to be converted to { {top} } or { {mid} }. Now I can start to fiddle with it myself and see how dangerous I can become...

In the mean time I have been looking around a bit and I even found a firefox extension for editing Wikimedia sites... I looked at the *.js pages on the Russian and Dutch Wiktionaries, but they don't contain anything that can explain why those eleven buttons appear on my edit window. Then I went into my preferences and I switched them on. This is probably something that got added in a version of the Wikimedia software that was released after I started editing here. Anyway, I also switched on some other nifty things like an enhanced recent changes.Polyglot 12:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

That link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools#Wikifikator

I don't read Russian. I don't pretend to comprehend Russian. Using AltaVista language tools to translate the page, I still couldn't comprehend it.

If you look at the edit history of User:Connel MacKenzie/monobook.js you'll see how hard of a time I had chopping the majority of their code out. I guess the only thing I really learned from it was that txt.replace(/regexp/g "replacementText"); works. If you edit a page on the Russian Wikipedia (NOTE: not rht Russian Wiktionary, although come to think of it, that probably has it too) and remember not to save your changes you should be able to see how they have it set up. You either select text, then press "MagicFormat" button, or select nothing and get an alert. Either way, ctrl-Z works for undoing changes.

I was not at all careful about the DOM. Netscape vs. IE differences still exist. From the notes I could comprehend, not all browsers work (but most Linux ones do.)

---

Drat. I really was in a rush, when I was first trying to get this to work. They had a good amount of browser-independent code that I chopped out. Looking at their code again tonight, I think I shall have to redo this entire thing.

That is all well and good. I have needed to chop this into coherent sections for a while now anyway. The main code should call 5 general format sections (which each could correspond to a MediaWiki:Summary button) and each of those sections should call the 3-10 formatting items that are applicable for that set of tasks.

--Connel MacKenzie 07:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

did I miss anything?

-) I couldn't resist the question. I did notice y'all had some rather unusual activity whilst I was away.

I, myself, was actually thinking of resigning - but going out on a bad-way kinda thing. I'm apparently not as healthy as I had hoped. And I think it's unfair to you people if I sign up for dishwashing but can't fulfill my obligations. And I don't think Polyglot meant that 14 y/o knowledge comment as a prerequisite for contributing, but . . .

Anyway, sorry. Thanks for listening.

I've been out of it, and haven't quite caught up. Is cycle coded in a new and improved way now? It seems odd that the French lists "1. cycle" and "2. cycle".

And is there a way to link to Wikispecies? I would ask in the BP but don't know if y'all have covered it yet. Specifically, I just added List conch.

And one final thought that I had before my holiday. {wjargon} could replace the manual glossary list.

Are these queries beyond the limits you set for yourself?

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Cheers, --Stranger 00:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello, welcome back from your short hiatus. Or are you not back in a full capacity? I wouldn't worry about WT:DW at all. The idea is to try to coordinate activities; much akin to herding cats (as is often said about managing computer programmers.)

I've learned recently that I have at least a little thick skin. The childish antics of others I can ignore...no matter what their role here, eventually Wiktionary will be a comprehensive respectable resource. I feel that all my edits are done in good faith - it rankles me when I see others who do not behave in that way. But that's OK. There was a quote from Wikimania this summer...Template:find quotation and post it later

Anyway, I choose to not act like those I don't respect. I'm sure someone will come along, and find a copious amount of research commented out with the nonsensical slanderous comment "POV" and again reach the conclusion that such a thing was not a good-faith edit.

I haven't looked at cycle yet. Maybe when I return later. Likewise wikispecies...I think Semper and Uncle G and Muke were active in that arena. You could ask on irc, perhaps?

What I've seen of {{wjargon}} I like. I still think it should be expanded to all Wikimedia terms. Hopefully that survives as a better approach than the awkward glossary.

--Connel MacKenzie 01:22, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

javascript greatness

Hi Connel,

Yes, it's great to be editing this way. Poor servers. I guess they'll have to upgrade them with all that money they gathered. Anyway. I compared your version of monobook to mine yesterday, as I have also been making some changes to it. I put off incorporating your changes and now I'm glad I did. I also tried adding a button. I managed to get a button, but it ended up all the way in the top left corner, where it was useless... Anyway, now I can concentrate on those translations again and leave the monkey work to these scripts. Thanks! Polyglot 20:48, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Just a tidbit for both of you guys. I emptied the {-en-} template and Semper deleted it (I think). I tell this to you, Connel, because I think I saw a note that you used it in some .js application (which I have no understanding of). And I tell this to you, Poly, because I previously asked if your robot could do it - now it doesn't have to.

I'm sure y'all are doing a great job, it's just above my head. So: keep up the good, incomprehensible work :-) --Stranger 12:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I took over your last changes and applied the differences I think are important. The most noteworthy is the empty line after the level 2 header. Is it really necessary? I got used to having the level 2 and next level 3 header being glued together. I do like to have some air between the inflection line and the definitions though.

And then there are some backslashes that seem to be missing from the gender substitution. I see you took over a few other of my changes. Is it done on purpose to not have those backslashes? Polyglot 07:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jo,

It is with great amusement that I note that "whitespace" is your greatest critique!

For English entries, my personal editing style is to leave a blank line before every third level header. Visually this breaks the sections up for me, so I can see at a glance where I'm at. Whitespace within a section is therefore to be avoided. (For ===Verb=== sections that have a Transitive: line and Intransitive: line, the whitespace is rendering formatting and cannot be avoided.)

Hypocritically, for all foreign entries, I try to remove all whitespace. One blank line before categories, then one blank line, then interwiki links.

Did I miss some backslashes? No, I do not think that was intentional. I'll try to look closer later.

Thanks for the feedback. Still no where near ready for prime-time. Might be nice to add one or two more beta testers soon. You are the only one brave enough to copy it so far. (Good thing too; without a general understanding of regexps, and some understanding that the automated edits are sometimes wrong, much of this could be viewed as potentially harmful.) The {{PAGENAME}} substitution section is probably ready to be added to MediaWiki:monobook.js though. --Connel MacKenzie 13:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Not sure I'm up to being a full beta-tester but I'm interested in helping. Correct me if I'm missing something but if I copy your monobook.js to the right place the servers will automatically do various edits as I save pages. e.g. replacing PAGENAME with the name of the page? I know bits of various programming languages & can usually amend programs given enough motivation but I don't know java (yet).MGSpiller 00:08, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Great. I wanted to learn if @import syntax works here, so if you could, edit User:MGSpiller/monobook.js and put @import [[User:Connel MacKenzie/monobook.js]] and see if that works. If not, then just copy mine to your's until I can find out what the wikisyntax is for that. Also note: this is w:Javascript language, not Java language. I am moderately good at Java, but my Javascript (obviously) is kluggy at best. Most of this javascript uses one single method of the text object: replace. The replace method uses w:regexp expressions to select sub-strings, then replaces them with the second parameter to the method. (My language of choice is w:MUMPS, which I use to generate the numerous "todo" lists. I don't like doing http sockets in MUMPS though, so python seems to be the best way to go for 'bots.)

Please let me know the parts of it you like, the parts that break, as well as the parts that are undesired. Remember that you can always cancel an edit. Right now, if the entry has a colon in the title, the javascript is supposed to exit immediately (and usually does.) --Connel MacKenzie 01:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid @import [[User:Connel MacKenzie/monobook.js]] didn't work. I got an error message saying "illegal character" in the javascript console. I think I'll copy your monobook a section at a time rather than just copy the whole lot at once. That way I can get used to what each bit is doing.MGSpiller 21:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Fantastic! On-line code review. Please let me know what sections you rewrite, so I can snarf them right back. --Connel MacKenzie 02:00, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

sorry I gave in & chucked it all in. I'll probably chop big sections out again though. MGSpiller 21:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Requesting articles.

Hi there. I'm sure that you have come across empty articles, or ones that just contain the headword. These are "cries for help" and mean that a user wants to know the meaning. Could we change the "No page with this exact title exists" page to offer the possibility of adding the word to "Requested entries" ? I'm sure you're the one who knows how to do such things. Cheers. SemperBlotto 17:51, 1 October 2005 (UTC) p.s. Wikipedia does this.

I'll take a peek at how they do it. But I thought they just drop you on the requests page? --Connel MacKenzie 17:52, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

You're the man. SemperBlotto 18:11, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Con & Poly

alternate
Is this good approach for intransitive/transitive verbs? Thanks, guys, --Stranger 22:01, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Audio

Hi there, Connel. You're welcome about the audio. I'm not sure about the formatting/text though. Do you think it's explicit as I put it? The (PT) means it's the pronunciation of Portugal ((BR) would be the one of Brazil)... Cheers, Malafaya 13:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I loved your audio - I heard the Georgian and the format seemed great for that one. The volume seemed a little low on água. If you are using Audacity, make sure you maximize your microphone volume. --Connel MacKenzie 13:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi again, Connel. It's strange that you say that. The sound in ორშაბათი looks slightly lower than the one in água to me... Anyway, I'll put the mike's volume up. The letters in parenthesis are supposed to be the country code, right? I put KA for Georgian (the language code) but I guess it should be GE (country code for Georgia). Do you agree? I'll change it.

Malafaya 16:21, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

You are correct that the other one is lower even than água. I know my recordings could not be heard unless I had the input volume all the way up to the top. But any audio is quite helpful. I make my recordings as en-us-... for language-region-... then put only the region code in parenthesis. That seems to work well, and follow other contributors' conventions. --Connel MacKenzie 19:02, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

WF

I saw the new user, and almost slapped the welcome template on here.

I'm glad to see that you seem to be OK. Would you like to be blocked here as well, or are you able to limit your wikitime adequately yourself?

If you would not like to be blocked, then welcome back. Please don't scare me like that again.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Nah mate, its all cool. I think I can curb my time adequately!! I had a couple (maybe 3) weeks off, enjoying freshers' week and the likes. But I shouldn't be a problem here. So don't block me! Unless I start doing nasty stuff, which I'm in no hurry to do. I should've really just deleted a few important pages, and then, while i was still an admin, block myself. Then by the time I'd've slept and awoken, the extra vandalism would've not been there and my admin status wouldve been gone anyway. tant pis. --Newnoise 20:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

No, you should have requested to be de-admined. I would have brought it to Brion's attention on #wikitech or whatever irc channel he happened ot be on at that moment. As it was, it looked like you were drunk and might regret it in the morning...I couldn't tell if you meant to do that or not.

Anyway, welcome back. Glad to hear you are OK. --Connel MacKenzie 20:37, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi

Thank you for your nice template-ly welcome message (-;. I almost reached the 1000 edits on Wikipedia, so I've got some wiki experience. A dictionary is harder than an encyclopedia though, especially because I'm {{user en-3}} and no native speaker. But it'll work (-: Gerrit 21:27, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Translation templates

Well, I did not know at all anything of this! :-( Anyway, I will follow the standard from now... Thanks. --Angelo.romano 01:27, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

back-pedal

I have reverted this to its original state - feel free to do what you think best with it. SemperBlotto 07:27, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Categories?

You wrote:

Hello and Welcome!

I love the culinary related entries you are doing. Are you interested in helping them find their ways into appropriate categories underneath Category: Foods?

I hope you continue having fun with these!

--Connel MacKenzie 22:54, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

My reply:

Actually, what they have in common is that they are on Wiktionary:Requested articles:English under the letter A. But I'll take a look at getting them categorized. I shouldn't leave the job half done. JillianE 00:18, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Nice cleanup

I like the way you cleaned up puree, it looks great!. Thanks. JillianE 03:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Irregular verbs

Please stop adding regularly inflected verbs to Category:English irregular verbs. Ncik 23:28, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

An unfortunate shortcut; I shall avoid that more carefully. --Connel MacKenzie 23:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Late ?

Just a little comment, your welcome is a little late ; )'. I'm at en:Wiktionary since November 2004 lol. Keep on doing this better! e-roxo -talk to me- 01:27, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh... lol let me explain, I mostly come here to check some spellings or definitions because i mainly work at portuguese Wiktionary - i'm a sysop there, we're partners in some way, the only little difference is that portuguese wiktionary didn't have even 10% of this project's size ... - I'm sorry to say this, but I rather prefer helping my main language's project growing, than improve english Wiktionary... Other problem is that my english is not very good (you probably have already understood that) ... Maybe you should learn portuguese and help us! Lol, just kidding... But a little course of portuguese will be good for you, I assure you. Or maybe it will be good for me... hehe. Ok, sorry for this stupid talk... like i said to a companion of yours, it is wikioverdose's fault... e-roxo -talk to me- 02:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Lol! Well maybe when i'm sick of portuguese language and portuguese (or even worst - in a patriot way - brazilian) people i visit our bigger, and biggest, brother... Meanwhile, i've created puré just for your pleasure ; ) (please, put the section expressions in the right place...). Maybe you should give pt:wikt a try... ; ) e-roxo -talk to me- 02:33, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I read the discussion on Commons but, or my english is realy bad, or i'm getting sleepy ( 4:19 a.m here... ), or that is really confusing... or all of these options... I read something about elemination process of images, how the elemination of some images can affect all or most of the Wiki projects. I read sometinhg about Wiktionary and Wikipedia having lots of different logos, and how this shouldn't be possible (That is offensive for me, because... why should we use english logos? aren't the links enough?) and how all the logos should be the same because of newbies (most the newbies aren't that jerks... a logo ok any wiki project is recognized worldwide, even if it is written in arab... the aspect is the same... Only the gl: is truly different...). There was something about coloured or non-coloured WikiSpecias logos - and pt: have the b&w version. Concluding, i'm not sure if i understood right waht you meant on my talk page... you said something about standarizing but what? the wiktionary logo or the wiki projects section? Lol, this is my doubt... Make it clear please! What a messy answer... e-roxo -talk to me- 03:30, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Procedures?

I'd just like to make sure I'm following appropriate procedure.

I've been adding new articles for nouns and listing singular and plural forms. Then redirecting the plural to the article just created.

I've been adding the wikipedia template where I can.

Are these normal procedure? Thank you! JillianE 21:24, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Browse feature

You know, I was looking at that page just 10 minutes ago and wonering if I dare change it - but I chickened out. It works fine, as far as it goes - but 50% of the time you would need to browse back, and it doesn't want to do that. Also, of course, the user might search a Capitalized word and may not find what he wants. Better than nothing though - cheers - SemperBlotto 15:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Yet another reason to dislike the way capitalisation is now handled. Not that it couldn't also be fixed by the developers to make the browse thingy case insensitive. — Hippietrail 15:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow! Two comments about an experimental change, on my talk page, before I finish my thoughts on WT:BP about it. So do both of you agree it should be rolled back then? --Connel MacKenzie 16:09, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Request for programming

1) pooched ?

2) I was wondering if, using your "todo" methods, you could generate a list of those entries whose title consists of two or more words, with the first word uncapitalized, and the second capitalized e.g. new York. I'm sure that there are a few that still need correcting. Cheers. SemperBlotto 21:19, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

---

s x=0 f  s x=$o(^wiki2(x)),n=^(x,"name") i n?1L.50A1" "1U.A,'$d(^wikir(n)) w !,""_n_" " w:$x>60 !

Thanks Connel - I shall delete them as I fix them. SemperBlotto 10:21, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

First lot done. SemperBlotto 17:16, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

---

second list moved to User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo#Proper nouns

Plerome and Ennoia

These seems to be copyvios, but I've forgotten the template we use. SemperBlotto 22:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

misspellings

Yes, your format for liason was better than mine. I hated putting ==English== at the top, because it isn't. Will it show up in your next todo list though? SemperBlotto|Talk 15:50, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

No, I exclude anything that contains "common misspelling" if it is two lines or less. I think we have a total of three or four dozen entries like that. I think here on en.wikt:, we limit misspellings to those of English words, but that would also be good to have Beer Parlor confirmation on. --Connel MacKenzie 15:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Afrimerican

Seven out of ten postings about Afrimerican have been deleted, thus one suspects aversive racism under the guise of misdirection, you are not alone, and while I am disappointed wikipedia/wictionary, et.al. is not as inclusive as proclaimed, I am glad that my experiences therein/on are documented, and can be noted in the book about the Afrimerican Word and Definition, and it's author being published by a major publisher.

You stating Afrimerican can not be found on Google, untrue, and claiming it to be a typo is as blatant as one can be, considering anyone can go there, and see that's not true, and any good researcher would research at least three sources before stating such a conclusive dismissal, and disregard.

Thank You

(unsinged posting from 05:26, 21 October 2005 71.129.50.191)

Dear 71.129.0.191,

If you check closer, you will see the word (or abbreviation) for print referring to http://print.google.com/ the tool that Wiktionarians have used for months now to check for published citations. Citations that are not published are not likely to be valid, as yours does not seem to be.

Furthermore, the correct spelling Afroamerican does exist and is well attested. You can find references to that as as well in my deletion comments. Also, please see Wiktionary: Criteria for inclusion to discover the rules we use here, as well as why we have them.

To say that checking millions of books at once is somehow less than three is quite silly.

We are quite accustomed to receiving unwanted submissions of protologisms here on Wiktionary. To call a routine removal of absurd content "racist" is more likely merely you yourself being racist. I wish you good luck on getting your term published, but please don't be surprised when publishers demand that you correct your spelling.

--Connel MacKenzie 15:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

CamelRedirects I think we could lose

I know this is heresy, but I honestly believe that we do not need such redirects as united Nations Security Council or vE day. Nobody is going to search for them; most of them are not linked to by anything. SemperBlotto|Talk 13:44, 22 October 2005 (UTC) p.s. Nice work with the bot.

Get rid of 'em I say! — Hippietrail 16:20, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

The reason I think they should stay is twofold: interwikis and direct links. We do no know how many other WikiMedia projects (such as pt.wikt: or nl.wikt:) link to en.wikt: incorrectly, to the camelCase redirects. Certainly, GerardM's interwikibots were doing it wrong for a period of time where they existed as the wrong case. We have *no* way of finding them. Keeping the redirects hurts nothing. Deleting the redirects breaks those interwiki links. Future pyinterwiki.py runs will gradually correct them. Same for "direct" en.Wikipedia links that were auto-corrected earliy on. --Connel MacKenzie 18:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the redirects could safely be deleted in, say, the beginning of 2006. Then all interwikis should have been updated. Jon Harald Søby 19:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Only six months after? I guess I could go with that. I wonder if we have a deleteRedirects.py 'bot? My objection that they hurt nothing to keep stil stands. --Connel MacKenzie 20:23, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia MUMPS article

A recent discussion near the top of the w:Talk:MUMPS concerns me. User:Spinoza1111, self-identified as Edward G. Nilges, seems far from neutral in his personal opinions of MUMPS. This does not mean he won't be able to edit neutrally. He may provide useful balance in some parts of the article. Don't overreact to his edits, but do keep w:MUMPS on your watchlist. See his comments at http://www.developerdotstar.com/community/node/279 . BTW He says he is downloading a free MUMPS and intends to familiarize himself with it before editing the w:MUMPS article. 68.160.176.54 14:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Hehe, thank you. I'm a sysop here not over on our sister project Wikipedia. They are quite accustomed to POV vandals there, but yes I'll try to keep an eye on that article. --Connel MacKenzie 14:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, yes, it does look like vandalism to me. Wild stuff. --Connel MacKenzie 14:34, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

pronunciation

Is there a template/category to ask that someone add a pronunciation to an entry? JillianE 18:01, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

{{rfap}} requests an audio pronunciation, but I don't think we've set up a Wiktionary:Request for IPA thinggy yet. I won't get a chance to be bold today, tomorrow, or the day after, but perhaps someone will (even you) before I get to it. --Connel MacKenzie 01:56, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I've been bold and written {{rfp}}, modelling it on {{rfap}} (with a corresponding category too). I'll announce it the in the beer parlour so people are aware of it. — Paul G 13:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Fixing images

Desaster: [1]. I will try to fix all the wiktionaries in the next 3 houres. I get myself a bottle of wine and off I go! All the best. --Paddy 16:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, the Matrix is great help. OK, we need to organise this properly and get the right attention on village pump. We need a sub page that needs a lot of attention and help. I do not want to be the only idiot to go through all projects. That is too much to ask for. I need volunteers, helpers,... OK I am very glad to have you. Maybe you help me with solving the problem. So far I can only say thanks. best wishes --Paddy 20:34, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Linking language names (to Wikipedia)

I object to your linking langugae names (to Wikipedia). There is no need to cram entries with not really useful links. If you don't know a language, you look it up once, and that's it. Ncik 20:05, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Your characterization of me is 100% incorrect as usual. When you say "your linking" you could not possibly be more mistaken. As usual, I expect your character assassination to go unpunished, lucky you.

I surprised you have such difficulty navigating history elements of entries here on Wiktionary. It would behoove you to get your facts straight. Automatically replacing a template with it's "subst:"'ed value does not "cram" anything new anywhere. I suggest you look to the history of the templates themselves, as well as Beer Parlor archives to see the long discussions about them.

Most have been that way since before I made my first edit here.

"Subst"ing template values changes the rendered page in no way. The edit page becomes less opaque, so that English speakers have a less difficult time alphabetizing translations.

I wasn't aware that this is done automatically. But what's the point? Tell me if I'm wrong, but you only seem to substitute language templates, and they are deprecated anyway. And substituting non-deprecated templates would contravene the idea behind having templates. Can you point me to the corresponding BP discussions, please? Ncik 23:40, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

It is only in your imagination that templates are depricated here. Your personal exploits certainly fall into the category of making and using "unfavored" templates. There is a group of contributors that visit periodically from other lanuage Wiktionaries that do favor those language templates. We benefit from them adding content in a slightly disfavored format. If you don't feel like searching the BP archives (since the topic interests you so) then why not bring the topic up anew there? It's not like you're about to heed my opinion. --Connel MacKenzie 07:28, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

aka me

Thanks for marking my IP address up yesterday as me having trouble staying logged in. Hopefully I'll be all right today. — Paul G 08:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)</nowiki>

mademoiselle

When I view this article under Noun it displays {{{1}}} f . Is this supposed to expand to the page title and if yes how come I don't get to see it? You were the last one to edit this article which is why I'm asking here. -- Nick1nildram 11:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't noticed it when I edited it, as I was concerned with the language template getting "subst:"'ed...that was the particular cleanup I was after at the time. I do not know why User:Wonderfool thought that was correct, but I have fixed it now. --Connel MacKenzie 13:19, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

A hole in the net?

Hi there. benzoin does not have a ==language== section, but is not in any of your todo lists? I have left it for you to look at. SemperBlotto|Talk 11:50, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Also quaint

Looking again at your preamble, I see that you don't actually look for this. Did you ever? SemperBlotto|Talk 12:01, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

---

IIRC, those should appear in /todo3. Finding the "zero level" entries was the initial goal I had with all of this; I just approached the problem backwards.

There is a new backup XML dump as of last night. I'll try to look at those two specifically to see where and why and how...

--Connel MacKenzie 13:27, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Please remind me to revisit this issue in December. I dropped the pass that lists entries with no level two header at all, if there is another section that is well formed. I'd like instead to address the problem as a skipped level check (i.e. when level two is skipped, or jumping from two to four, etc.) But not this week, probably not this month. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 19:01, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

todo trends

Hello Connel. Do you have any idea how the number of entries in /todo3 is decreasing? I'd like to get it as low as possible before the big milestone. I was thinking that there might be some sort of press release when we get to 100,000 and I'd like us to have as little rubbish as possible then. SemperBlotto|Talk 18:10, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I suppose we could delete all the {{nolanguage}} and {{notenglish}} entries, but that might stall 100k off until next weekend. (I estimate the rate of entry will now dramatically increase, from now through Wednesday.)

You have been making steady progress on the /todo lists at about 200/week, I'd guess. I have not done any statistical analysis on it; I'm more interested in just getting them out of the way. Sadly, I don't think I'll be around much this week. /todo2 is the worst of the lot of them.../todo seems about done right now. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 18:36, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Deleting plural words

Can I ask why you are deleting plural words? What is the problem with having them? Gmcfoley 19:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

From User talk:Dvortygirl#Delete:

Why do you delete all the redirects? It makes no sense to me --Dangherous 18:32, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

We are on a cleanup phase right before 100k, at the moment. On IRC, I asked for some help from other sysops in clearing those off. On the English Wiktionary, stem forms of words are not redirected but instead get entries of their own. It is more difficult to (re)enter a term correctly if there is an incorrect redirect in the way.

Each term has different pronunciation, translations, derived terms, etc. Lexically, there is a difference between the various forms of words. This is most exaggerated when translating words.

The redirects very recently can into focus again, due to the Double Redirect Bot that compounded cleanup efforts when correcting redirects that were incorrect to begin with. To be able to run the double redirect bot before 100k, the majority of the incorrect redirects need to be removed.

Non-sysops can help out by re-populating the entries deleted with "correct" non-redirect entries. But only sysops can delete the bogus redirects.

Many of the double redirects (from the de-capitalization) point to the entries they "should", if the incorrect redirects are replaced with proper entries. So the two-pronged cleanup effort is to first delete the incorrect entries.

I hope my explanation cleared up more questions than it causes...

--Connel MacKenzie T + C # 18:55, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Also of important note: redirects do not count toward the count of total articles that appears on our Main Page (and Recent changes, etc.) Deleting the redirects does not lower that count either. Re-entering them as "proper entries" does count however. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 19:20, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't fully understand why all this is necessary, and I think it will make it harder for people to find words, but it sounds like you know what you are doing. HAVE FUN! Gmcfoley 01:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:irregverb

Please do not remove the irregverb template from entries. If you don't like it, please make suggestions how to improve it or propose a better template. Ncik 23:50, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

wed

I suggest you discuss it on WT:RFV#wedded.

As for your ilicit templates, no. Your templates duplicate existing, accepted templates. They also needlessly complicate the layout, very much against the look and feel of the rest of Wiktionary. Asthetically, your layouts are unpleasant when rendered. Lastly, using the table mechanism you do, they are not extensible. (The accepted template can be "subst:"'d easily, if the form you supplied passes RFV.) --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 00:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

They don't duplicate anyting: Have a look at duplicate. In my opinion the templates make the pages easier to survey. What do you mean by 'not extensible'? Because looking at the templates you use I can only find that many of them are less extensible in the way I understand the word. Template:en-infl-irreg in particular is not versatile enough to be suitable for irregular verbs (as to wed demonstrates). Ncik 01:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:rank

What is this template for? Ncik 14:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

My Project Gutenberg ranking of English words. I've been soliciting comments on it on WT:BP#Rank. I've done entries 1-10 manually (recently using the template, since that seems to be the preferred format.) If you would like to take a shot at alternate formats, please do so (without a template for now) on any of #11 through #20. If you have an eye for elaborate, but concise formatting, then by all means, put some more experiments there. Nothing is set-in-stone just yet. Perhaps you could make Template:rank2, Template:rank3 etc.; I will abstain from commenting on them if I don't like them.

So far, the comments I've gotten imply that no more than three entries before and three entries after should be there. Minimizing vertical pixel space seems to be a large concern. Sidebar formats were disliked for some reason. I found no satisfactory color gradient scheme (besides grayscale) that looked OK on my 7 different browsers.

I'm nearly ready to test the automatic entry of 21-100, using template:rank, so please don't modify that template. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 03:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The template should, concisely, indicate what it is all about, or be placed under a 'Project Gutenberg frequency' ===header===. Also, most people using Wiktionary won't be interested in how often a word occurs in the Project Gutenberg texts. Therefore the template should be moved to a less prominent position, as the end of the language section. In addition I would welcome some documentation on how you decide which language a word belongs to, and how you handle capitalization of words at the beginning of a sentence. Ncik 00:07, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

That is quite an opinion you have. You should express it at WT:BP#Rank. --Connel MacKenzie 19:06, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Japnoun2 Template

I have replaced the japnoun2 template with janoun2 so you can now delete the japnoun2 template. Thanks, Gerard Foley 19:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 19:49, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:obsolete

Hello Ray,

I saw your edit to the template, and replaced it with the previous value "subst:"'d. I think it is often used with a trailing colon also.

Are these "line tagging" templates falling out of favor? I was hoping to use this particular one for Webster's Dictionary auto-conversions/imports.

--Connel MacKenzie T + C # 18:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion. I was working on replacing the "dated" category from various articles, and often replacing it with "obsolete". I was really reacting to nested templates when I edited the obsolete category. It had a "cattag" in the category description. I didn't see the "subst." in there though. Am I missing something?  :Eclecticology 20:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

You won't see "subst:" anywhere; it is a Wiki function that replaces the template tag with the actual template contents. To welcome newcomers, we don't type {{welcome}} --~~~~ but instead {{subst:welcome}} --~~~~ so that they see some of the basic editing features right away. The minor drawback with that method is that you don't see the changes until after the entry is saved. So I didn't know that by entering {{subst:cattag|Obsolete}}, I had hosed the parenthesis. --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 20:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Ahhh! The penny drops. :-) I'm sure that you will appreciate that some of us luddites never learn these tricks until they're slapped in the face with them. There's probably a place where they are listed?? Still, I feel more in my element tracking down the origins of some old word. At times tracking down new techniques can require a lot of effort to figure out that putting a comma in the right place can make a world of difference. Then too, we luddites have a role in maintaining wikiability, and hopefully a counterweight to techies that sometimes seem to go in the other extreme. Eclecticology 22:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

If I sound too didactic, it is mainly because many other people besides yourself read your user talk page. Features like "subst:" are described somewhere on meta, (I can't seem to find the page right now) so perhaps we should have a section on WT:I2T about the technique. The documentation on meta was not very descriptive, as I recall.

It is interesting to watch Wiktionary evolve. Other Wiktionaries (fr:, nl:, de:) seem to use templates very extensively to compensate for the encyclopedic nature of the media wiki software. Unfortunately, at least to me, it means editing entries is becoming an art form of utilizing the right templates. As much as I enjoy the convenience of templates, I have to admit that some of our templates are now monstrously complicated, especially the Latin inflection templates. It will be pretty interesting to see what happens in the next year. Hard to believe I've only been contributing here one year! --Connel MacKenzie T + C # 03:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

common misspellings

Yo! Some common misspellings are getting into /todo3. See the final section for examples. Maybe I have misspelled misspelling ! SemperBlotto|Talk 10:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

When I was more active here, I used to patrol anonymous recent changes, from 2000 to 1500 most recent. Patrolling those entries turned up a tremendous amount of garbage. Additionally, those entries were a couple days old, so the anons that drop in to enter a protologism usually check on their word the next day to see that it is still there; three to five days later they don't bother. Now that no one is patrolling anonymous edits, a lot more crap is getting entered and slipping through the cracks.

Right now, my off-line tools check only for the most rudimentary formatting. As you well know, entries that make it onto my "/todo" lists are often just garbage entries. The last hundred (therefore the most recent hundred) are likely the worst of the lot. --Connel MacKenzie 22:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:MediaWiki custom messages

There is a series of "Redirect messages" on this page that were written up by User:Emperorbma more than a year ago. They don't appear ever to have been used since by anybody. I was about to simply delete the lot of them. Is there any technical reason for keeping them? Eclecticology 02:58, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:MediaWiki custom messages certainly doesn't hurt anything. As I recall, I learned about the "msgnw:" keyword from that page. (We should probably use that instead, on WT:I2T.) This seems to be just the sort of arcana you were asking about the other day?  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 03:06, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, you meant Wiktionary:MediaWiki custom messages#Redirect pages? Yes, those seem like they can go. --Connel MacKenzie 03:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:English irregular verbs

Please do not add verb phrases, phrasal verbs included, to Category:English irregular verbs. There is a separate category for these: Category:English irregular verb phrases. Ncik 01:21, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

That's a pretty ridiculous sub-category. Did you get any community approval, or is this an experiment of yours? --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Though I find it a bit superfluous, I'll support him since it will keep the basic category down to just the basics, which is what makes it useful for people studying English as a foreign language for instance - the main use of such lists in any language. — Hippietrail 01:44, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Redirects

Thanks for your comments. I sorted out the lists of place names redirects, which I was pleased with, but from what you say it appears that my understanding of how Wiktionary works was slightly broken. I was aware of the big switch from Caps to lower case as default, but not that every word form was intended to have an article, rather than a redirect. Presumably mis-capitalisations count as mispellings (with, as you suggest, phrasal varients) to qualify for redirection. In that case the majority of double redirects are failing becasue the second redirect is wrong. E.G. Convinced → convinced → convince. This can only be fixed by writing the entry for convinced, not within my current timescales.... Rich Farmbrough 20:15, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Mis-capitalizations count not as misspellings; they are merely aids for searching. Most people arriving here (reasonably) expect case-insensitive searches. As a result of the decapitalization, many default searches don't work quite right. Redirects that had been in place for different forms of the word now result in broken entries. That is, Convinced should redirect to an entry at convinced, but convinced should not redirect; it should be an actual entry.

You are correct that the intent here is to create new entries (that were formerly redirects.) I have User talk:Connel MacKenzie/redirects set up to assist in that large effort.

Also of note: we don't create entries for misspellings. Capitalization: yes, misspellings: no.

Lastly, the capitalization redirects are only in place for entries that existed before the conversion. There is no reasonable way to determine what links to the "incorrect" entry (from either other WikiMedia sites or from external sites) so the redirects stay, but are not needed for new entries. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:26, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Delete of continuing

You deleted continuing, can you also delete Continuing please. Gerard Foley 15:55, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Its OK, I got it! Gerard Foley 16:01, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Hehe. I like problems that solve themselves! Yes, please see User talk:Connel MacKenzie/redirects. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:02, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:wiktionarylang

Can you please put فارسى (Persian) in the list of Wiktionaries that have b/w 100 to 1,000 articles? Note that the current version, besides placing it in under 100, also uses Farsi (which is to Persian what Español is to Spanish) and should be corrected. In addition, we are at nearly 800 articles, so it wouldn't hurt placing it in the over 1000 category. Kaveh 15:58, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I've unprotected the page so that you can do it correctly (I'm afraid my character set defaults might mangle it.) I'll reprotect it tomorrow. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. Kaveh 03:48, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:34, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Connel need help

hello connel i need help editing the entrys to the wikionary. thanks cleanup. 130.111.98.244 21:14, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

User talk:Gutenbot

Hi, GutenBot. This looks like an interesting project... Just one criticism: It looks like you're putting extra backslashes where they don't belong. (e.g. in the entry for started) It would be nice if you could remove those. Otherwise, it looks good! -- Calcwatch 21:46, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for catching this. If you find other glitches, please contact me on User talk:Connel MacKenzie where I'm more likely to notice it. Thanks again! --Connel MacKenzie T C 02:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletions (again)

Some of the redirects you are deleting deserve to be entries in their own right (such as "satisfied", which is an adjective as well as a past tense/past participle) rather than deleted. I agree that they should not be redirects, but is deleting them the right thing to do? — Paul G 16:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. Entries are much easier to recreate properly if the redirect is first deleted. I've set up User talk:Connel MacKenzie/redirects to assist in the effort. For now, I am simply trying to clear off the double redirects list by deleting the entries that clearly should not be redirects. However, my wikitime these days is quite limited. I do intend to go back to the redirects list, but not until I've cleared the double redirects down to something manageable. After that, I plan to devote the rest of my time to filling in entries from User talk:Connel MacKenzie/Gutenberg, but not until I've reentered all the deleted redirects as proper entries. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ojibwe

Could you please look at Talk:Main Page#How do I batch upload?, and see if there is anything that can be done. This looks like it could be interesting material. Eclecticology 21:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I posted a reply there. --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:41, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Quick_index

I've This is currently the oldest thing on the RfD page. Although my instinct still favours deleting it I know that you felt something could be done with it. Could you please look into it. More generally, I find that a lot of stuff in the Wiktionary name space is a mess. A lot of this arises from new ideas or cleanup programs that people got bored with and abandoned. Eclecticology 21:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

My view on its usefulness has changed, I guess. I don't agree with the philosophy of deleting stuff just because it is a relic; at least, I think that was my objection. Now I feel you are right - it should just go.

The Wiktionary namespace will be much cleaner once the Index: and Appendix: namespaces are made into formal namespaces. Right now if I start moving stuff, I'd just be clogging the main namespace with these pseudo namespaces. I'd rather wait on moving stuff until we discover what "gotchas" await for the entries that are already there.

The Wiktionary namespace cleanup is one thing I'd like to get to, but not this year. Next month, perhaps. All the moving, tracking down WhatLinksHere, correcting pointers and finally the deletions pretty much should all be done manually.  :-( The upside is that the other cruft there will get more attention in the process.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 22:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup progress

Hi there. I've got to the end of level3. There are still a lot outstanding and waiting for verification etc. I'll have another go when it gets refreshed. I've started to look at level2 - I'm wondering if you could write a bot to change all ==stuff== to ==stuff== ? User:SemperBlotto

User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo2

Now that todo3 is nearly done, and todo2 is also mostly clean, I guess I need to re-enable the logic that displays entries with no language heading at all. The last time I did that, I think I got about 27,000 entries. I need to figure out how to exclude the entries from Special:Contributions/NanshuBot somehow. I'm sure that besides those entries, there are still many with no level two heading at all (that are not on todo2 or todo3.) I'm open to ideas. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

---

I was composing this message to you when you sent your message. Weird.

The bot "replacy.py" is what I'm using now for individual substitutions. Yes, I can change all ==stuff== to ==stuff== but it is often incorrect to do so. Perhaps I could use the list of todo2 to build an exception list. The problem with that is that it is the obscure languages that should be wikified. That's why I've been doing todo2 manually. I'd guess that any language that has less than 100 entries here on en.wikt: probably should be wikified.

Slightly higher on my list, is to 'bot replace =={{stuff}}== with =={{subst:stuff}}== since those are always wrong. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Common mispellings template

Since we found a compromise, I think it would be nice to have a template for these which takes the name of a language as an argument and adds to some category, possibly taking into account the language name. Would you like to make it? I think you're more into templates than me. — Hippietrail 20:05, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I honestly can't think of a good name for it. Any ideas? Thanks for being amenable, by the way. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I think Template:spelt might be short enough to use. If the typo applies to more than one language, the auto-category thing won't work. For English, I think template:spelt, for others, template:spelt2, right? If spelt2 is passed the language code then it can display the template (e.g. {{es}}) and add it to the correct sub-category. Yes, I think this can work. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Christmas cake

Thou claimeth these to be "Generally inedible, even if soaked with liquor then lit on fire". I guess British Christmas cakes are different to American ones. We have very edible Christmas cakes! but we set Christmas puddings alight (normally with brandy). --Wonderfool 00:10, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, they are advertized as edible. Not enough people have died eating them yet, so there's no warning from the Surgeon General...yet. Here it is customary to say "Thanks!" then pass it off on someone else the next year. No telling how old a given brick is; so I wouldn't advise trying to eat one here.

I didn't think that humorous comment would last very long...but sheesh...under a minute? --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

They're gorgeous cakes! I should send one of my aunt's cakes to you, she makes damn good chocolate Crimbo cakes for my family nigh on every year! And I had to notify you about your entry within a minute, we can't be having erroneous material being enterred into Wiktionary now, can we, what will they think! ;) --Wonderfool 00:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

24.85.85.76 <laughs>

Yah... sometimes it's too much time to do that. - Amgine/^talk 20:10, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Conjugation templates

I'm pleased you agreed a 100% with what I said under Transitive and intransitive verbs in the BP. I'd be delighted if you were consequent now, and stopped using those conjugation templates which require you to know (or find and read) all these rules about which template to use depending on how the last syllable of the verb is spelt. May I suggest using Template:en-verb, and if this is unsuitable, Template:en-verb2, instead? Ncik 18:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Well no, not at this point in time.

I have no problem "remembering" which to use because my javascript remembers for me. I have several specific critiques about your substitute templates. The BP discussion about them is still quite fresh, and certainly active. The removal of the irregular verbs category hasn't been discussed yet (as the other issues seem more pressing) but eventually I'd like at least to understand the rationale behind that.

I've propsed alternates as well. Hopefully, the community (not just me) will tweak whatever templates to a state of mutual dissatisfaction. Once all contributors settle on a solution, I'm ready to 'bot replace each of these varients. So for now, while discussion is both active and sometimes heated, it is probably better to leave the variations alone. Your choosing to use a different order of inflections made me pause, but the 'bot replacement handles it adequately.

I have no desire to change my javascript while these issues are still up in the air.

It is good that you have expressed your views on these matters. Some in the community like some of your ideas and think they should be partly adopted. It is still much less abrasive to the entire community, if you discuss your changes (with perhaps one or two examples) first, rather than barging ahead with hundreds of edits that clearly don't match existing formatting choices. To go ahead with such changes after being invited to discuss them, is a sign of bad faith.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 23:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

enya

You cleared out all the contributions for 130.111.98.241 last night, I moved their contribution enya to Enya, as it was a proper noun, you have since deleted Enya, so presumably the redirect needs deleted as well? TheSimpleFool 10:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. (Yes, Enya might meet our CFI, but I doubt it.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 12:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

dodgy

I heard the word dodgy used on NPR this morning. Can you look at some sample uses at NPR use of the word 'dodgy' and see if the entry is complete? For one thing the entry says it is primarily a British word, but I found a number of uses at NPR. I'd do it myself but I'm having trouble extracting the meaning from the context in this case. Is there a better place for requests like this? JillianE 14:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the word probably originated in England, but I doubt it is limited to that region now. (NPR is a BBC broadcast, reaired here though.) I think the tea room is the appropriate place for this question. Or Talk:dodgy (or both.) Welcome back. --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:43, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I put it at the tea room. Thank you. JillianE 17:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary needs official MediaWiki devs

G'day / Hola.

I've been thinking for a long time but specifically for the past few days about how badly we need representation on the MediaWiki development team.

• We need to be able to propose and support enhancements for Wiktionary.
• We need to be able to discuss technically with the current devs how they could work and what their impacts would be.
• We need to be able to submit patches.
• We need to be able to develop our own extensions and see that they are installed.

• It would be nice to have a Wiktionary section in Bugzilla to track bugs and feature requests that are Wiktionary-specific.
• It would be nice to be able to run scripts directly on our database from time to time to make global changes, rather than relying on much slower bots.

• Is your PHP as good as your Javascript?
• How good is your MySQL?
• Are you interested in learning them if not?
• Have you tried installing MediaWiki on your own machine?
• Have you looked at the MediaWiki code?
• Have you tried modifying the MediaWiki code?

Or can you think of any other contributor who would be capable? I want to do some work myself but it won't be possible for at least another six months when I get back from this overseas trip.

I once tried to hack the MediaWiki code to make page titles fully case-independant. It kinda worked but I discovered there were parts of the code I didn't understand fully which depended on case dependency plus it seemed that maybe another database field might have been necessary.

For me learning PHP was easy, it's like a dialect of Perl. Learning MySQL was hard because I'd always been uninterested in databases before.

One first project I can think of is to make MediaWiktionary language-aware by adding a database field which takes into account all of the level-2 headings in every page in the main namespace.

What are your thoughts? Please move this conversation to a subpage or a Wiktionary:xxx page if you think that's best. Comments from anybody else passing by are also welcome.

Cheers. I've very impressed with your work so far Connel. — Hippietrail 17:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Wow. I'm nearly speechless. In theory, a Wiktionary section in bugzilla would be great. If one of us decided to dig into the MediaWiki code for real, much good could probably come of it. I'm pretty sure they'll accept patches from us now, if we follow their procedures right? My PHP is as pathetic as my JavaScript; I can slog through it only when I have to. I kindof doubt the current devs want to take the time out to train newbies. (With the notable exception of Brion, they tend to be a little on the hostile side, at least on IRC. But my outbursts around the time en.wikt: was depaitated may have something to do with that.) My MySQL knowledge is very limited. When I do use SQL, I find myself checking the manual for the most basic SELECT statements.

Given earlier conversations (with you) I kindof doubt Wiktionary data layouts can be improved in any straightforward way. Certainly it would be fantastic if Wiktionary has someone who could run updateSpecialPages.php once a week. Adding other direct DB functions is something I wouldn't want to do without a healthy amount of code review, and some checks and balances in place. Something like a PHP script that generated a list of "zero level" entries would be an very easy starting project.

As far as doing things with 'bots: I'm getting comfortable with the concept. I like the accountability of 'bots; that might be lost with direct database manipulation. They are also easy to block (when running amuck.)

Having a Wiktionarian who was able to run the maintenance pages would be big relief. As far as submitting new requests, we have that ability now (we just odn't exercise it enough.)

I think I should download MediaWiki and start it running locally, so I can see exactly what the different privilege levels can do. That is a large can of worms though. And probably another hard drive.

I need to sleep on these ideas. I'll let your ideas percolate for a week or two. There is a lot to mull over here. --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

dead words archive

Try Project:Requests for verification/archive. Now that actual discussions are being archived on by-month subpages, I put the list of killed words on the main page. Feel free to refactor it any way that seems convenient. —Muke Tever 19:21, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Pretty fantastic. Thanks! --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

08:54, 16 December 2005 220.245.178.136

m8 - sumtimez things should go anywhere, why cant people make up bullshit if it actually dont exist, or if the thing is not notable, who cares, maybe it will be one day... as if bill gates was notable when he was 12 but hes the guy behind me writin this... geez - regarding sethramoth

I'll try to summarize the Wiktionary communities' opinions that I've read on the beer parlour.

If we allow anything then it becomes too difficult to tell what is vandalism/(or a joke,) vs. what is a genuine submission. The line in the sand that Wiktionary has drawn is one of attestation. Personally, I think that is too generous but I try to abide by it.

Also, since we aim to build a respected internet resource, allowing just anything makes Wiktionary look foolish. http://www.urbandictionary.com/ does allow "anything." Wiktionary is not aiming that low in terms of vulgarity and depravity.

I have considered at times creating a new Wiktionary consisting only of items deleted from Wiktionary. Having that sort of resource on a very different website might serve a purpose. But right now, with just over 100,000 words defined (about 50,000 of them English words) I'd say we have a very long way to go. OED lists over 301,000 words, Webster's 1913 Dictionary had over 110,000. diclogos has 3,000,000 English terms (I've heard.) We are far from covering "real" words right now; why make it worse by encouraging nonsense? Especially when there are so many other outlets for made up ones? --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Our anonymous friend

Hello Connel. You know the one I mean. If I am online when he is in full flood, I give him his head for a while then block him for 1 day when I get bored with chasing his entries. At least half I delete on sight, but the rest are able to be converted into reasonable entries. I think that you do much the same. There is no point in talking to him - he'll get bored eventually. Cheers Jeff SemperBlotto 17:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, yes. It is hard to tell if it is a case of "don't bite the newcommers" or maybe a school-aged contributor, or what. It wasn't apparent that this had been going on for some time. I've better things to pursue right now anyhow. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I can't edit the Main Page anymore

The first two interwiki links (Italiano and Polski) are broken links! Whatmore, I don't reckon the bil-Malti and Nyorsk pages should be linked on the Main Page. --Wonderfool 18:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Um, thanks. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Error

Can you please delete hors d'oeuvré for me. It should be a plain e at the end. (I was doing a different word that does have an accent mark and got carried away). JillianE 02:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Connel MacKenzie T C 02:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Amgine's RFA

Hello,

I wanted to make sure you were aware Methodology edited your list of new users to add my name [2]. I do not care much about being on this list since I am new to Wiktionary  :) (though not on Wikipedia as he has me erroneously listed), but his edit was to a signed comment of yours. On WN and WB this would earn the user a short ban.

The other thing I wanted to make sure you were aware of was the CheckUser tool. This tool lets a developer or Steward if requested confirm if a user shares an ip or if you can gain enough support access to the tool can be given to a local user as well. --Cspurrier 20:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Your Comment on the Administrator Page

I find it ironic that you claim that I’m not a contributor to Wiktionary. I’ve been here since November 12 (six days after you arrived) and have already created 23 definitions ([3], [4]). This stands in contrast to your six [5] (most of which are pablum [6]). The remainder of your work is unnecessary clutter [7]. (You must tag a lot of these articles because you’re too lazy to do the tasks in question yourself.)

I also find it ironic that you claim I’m new to Wikipedia, since I arrived there in September of 2004--a month before you--and have contributed several magnitudes more than you to that project.

If this isn’t your third strike, then I don’t know what is. You should realize by now that you can’t say any thing on those talk pages without lying or looking stupid.

Sincerely,

Primetime 23:29, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

You are off by a year (both in your claims about yourself and your accusations against me.) I suppose I should be nice and not bite the newcommers, but you sir, are a troll. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

audios done

Hi Connel,

I did the French audio for États-Unis since you requested it. Also, Dvortygirl cleaned you {rfap} yesterday ;-) --Kipmaster 18:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Help: vandal

Mayodan (I suspect an known vandal because I reverted one of his revandalisms) is very active tday. I elft a message at th tea room asking where I report vandalism. Sorry to mess up your Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

JillianE 20:28, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

WT:VIP is also a good place to report active vandalism; probably the IRC channel is the very best (if you have an IRC client.) I'm on a dialup connection at a relative's house right now...see you next year. --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:01, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

WRT [[--error: link target missing--]]

You might want to do what the WikipediA does: Have a template that basically says "This page was repeatedly created with no good reason and is now deleted" and then protect that, instead of redirecting to a fake error message. 68.39.174.238 02:42, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Originally we did copy the Wikipedia message, but there were objections to even keeping the entries with nasty titles. Deleting them outright didn't work, or course. Redirecting them to the Main Page left the title of the nasty entries, giving the appearance of a hacked site (at least for various external link and cracker screen capture sites.) Redirecting to an error page stymied the last one, while retaining links to Main Page for those arriving at the site from an evil link.

I agree that the page could use some rewording, to at least admit that it may be a prankster at play rather than a server error. But then again, it is an error that some people poison the gene pool...I suppose labelling it as a "server" error has more truth in it than originally intended.  :-) Giving the bogus pages any stamp of legitimacy is incorrect, in my opinion. I don't object to rewording it or adding a sentence that it might be a prankster...but I'd rather leave it alone as it is, myself. Perhaps this question should be moved to the beer parlour. Someone may have already thought of a better improvement.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 04:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)