User talk:Connel MacKenzie/archive-2007-12

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Attitude toward new users

I noted your welcoming response on the info desk to the user who wanted to edit stubs. I've gotten a bit paranoid about trying to help users because it seems as if Wiktionary is trying to make editors prove themselves by investing in self-education. Is my perception wrong? It gets back to my own early experience here where I felt attacked, although I certainly quickly came to see the error of my ways. The "nevermind" user's case comes to mind in this regard. I could imagine his frustration at getting no response to his entry talk page posting (not that one gets quick response on most WP pages either). I'd be willing to try to deal with a few users who are having trouble of "nevermind"'s sort if you think I could help. DCDuring 01:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

As I find myself spending less and less time on-wiki, I find it easier and easier to AGF. On Information desk, it is partly "give them enough rope" but much moreso, because that is a fairly common question - and a lot of people besides the poster have that same question on their mind.

On a slightly more philosophical note, the goal of Wiktionary is to document all words in all languages in as useful, accurate and complete a manner as possible. Everyone that contributes regularly here finds themselves learning little things as they go - either subtle things they didn't know, or simply forgot, or perhaps just never noticed, about language - pretty much every day. I (obviously?) put a much greater emphasis on the resulting entries, rather than on the people writing them.

While Wiktionary has traditionally hated 'welcome-bots' as space-wasting nonsense, the situation you describe is a bit different. For nevermind, I suspect the issue was that it is uncommon over the pond to conjoin the words never and mind. Offhand, I can't remember the last time I saw it as "never mind" - I'd be inclined to correct that to "nevermind." At any rate, yes, in a situation like that, it is more helpful to talk it over with the anon IP. Explaining the hows and whys of why things are different (from Wikipedia) is both frustrating and time-consuming at times...that's why the {{welcome}} template tries to cover as much as it does.

When something like nevermind happens though, you really can't tell if the sysop is acting on other vandal-fighting tools, the anon's previous (edit-warring) contributions, or what. So doing things to defuse the situation (before it becomes a situation) as you did, is recognized as being helpful. If you want to step in whenever you see something like that happening, you are welcome to - but do be careful not to go to the other extreme; sysops are human too. --Connel MacKenzie 02:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

It's easier for me to see where SB would be coming from now. I certainly didn't want to bust his chops though I suspected he was wrong on the the word and a bit quick on the trigger - not that I can't myself doing that. Anyway, thanks. AGF is good. DCDuring 02:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, when I screw up, it is usually an order of magnitude worse. SB only makes one error per year (on average) so his "scorecard" is far beyond my reproach. --Connel MacKenzie 19:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

HI

hi how are you.--Lohrengirl17 17:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Please control your urge to be a WikiNazi

Twice I have added a useful definition of "FOC" to that page. Twice you have deleted it.

The second time, you made the comment "If you wish to link the Wikipedia disambiguation page, go ahead and use regular wiki-syntax." on my talk page.

Firstly, with your presumably superior judgement and knowledge, you should use it to improve conditions by correcting my syntax rather then being deliberately destructive by repeatedly deleting the entry.

Secondly, if it is the links you do not like, you could have deleted those and left the new definition in place.

It might be wiser to be a little less impressed with yourself and be more respectful of others' contributions. Consultation will go a lot further than running others over with a steamroller. People like you are the reason good authors stop trying to contribute.

Got it? — This unsigned comment was added by Andrew8 (talk • contribs).

We don't put those links in the definitions, they go in External links, and there is syntax for a wikipedia link [[w:title]] that does not use the http:, also see {{pedialite}}. Just making a mess for us to clean up despite being told more than once isn't helpful. So it is easier to just revert/undo. Robert Ullmann 06:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Besides, in naval/marine terminology, FOC doesn't mean "First of Class", it means "Flag of Convenience", and in aviation, it means "Full Operational Capability" Robert Ullmann 06:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Archived

Hey Connel. I archived the first bit of your talk page, to make it shorter, to User talk:Connel MacKenzie/archive-2007-8. You can do what you want with it from there, but it wasn't archived by the time you said you would, so yeah. --Neskaya ^talk 07:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 15:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm not quite done, I'm going to also archive all ones that haven't been active since the beginning of October -- but this is a big start. --Neskaya 23:53, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

talk:Accord

I see you just deleted talk:Accord which had had the RFD/RFV (I forget which, or maybe it's from before the split) vote archive for Accord (which was deleted). Are you sure such pages should be deleted?—msh210℠ 19:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, (thanks for asking) quite sure. The fails don't get talk page archives - they do end up in WT:RFDA (or similar) but not copied to talk pages of main namespace entries. --Connel MacKenzie 19:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, okay, thanks for the clarification.—msh210℠ 19:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Connel MacKenzie/typos

Since people shouldn't (at least in general) be editing other people's posts, is it possible to exclude from the typo list all Talk:foo and Foo talk:bar pages, as well as TR, BP, GP, VIP, VOTE, others I've missed, and their subpages?—msh210℠ 21:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I really need to rethink how I generate that, entirely. ===Translations=== sections should be excluded too. I'm actually a little surprised no one else generates a similar list. Anyhow, at one point, I excluded all non-main namespace entries. That was less than satisfactory (templates and categories obviously got missed.) It should also exclude any lines that contain {{SIC}}. Probably ===Etymology=== sections, too. If I get a chance this weekend, I'll rewrite the whole shebang. If January comes and goes (and I've forgotten about it) then please remind me to get around to it. --Connel MacKenzie 21:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I should probably generate a couple different flavors of it. One that goes through only #definition lines. One that includes non-main namespace, non-discussion pages. One that does target talk & discussion pages. Perhaps. More ideas are welcome. --Connel MacKenzie 21:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I'm more surprised that the four or five people that have requested it, don't periodically run through it. --Connel MacKenzie 21:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanx for defining half shell

Thanks, I was really confused by that word. Keep it up!!!! Language Lover 01:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Recreation block

Why did you block me for recreating a redirect used by Wikipedia? There was no logic behind the deletion anyway. --208.138.31.76 19:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Please note that Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia. We are not Wikipedia and unlike Wikipedia, we do not use redirects as extensively. --Neskaya ^talk 19:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Your edit summaries (particularly of deleted content) clearly indicate there is no good faith to assume on your part. Please go crawl back under whatever rock you came up from under. Your main-namespace redirects are not wanted here; stop feigning ignorance and stop trolling my talk page. --Connel MacKenzie 21:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

death by spellcheck

I couldn't find much about this, but it seemed to be a closely related, but distinct issue. Feel free to correct me if you find quotes that contradict. Circeus 20:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Related terms, perhaps? --Connel MacKenzie 20:09, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, perfect. Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 20:10, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

BJAODN

Did you see this edit yet? --EncycloPetey 05:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

...and BTW, the irc link has disappeared from the upper corner of my screen again. Is something amiss? --EncycloPetey 05:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Whoops, forgot to announce that change on WT:GP. My bad - you have to turn it *on* now, it is not on by default. Hippie et al. kept complaining about reversed defaults in WT:PREFS. (There might be one left?) --Connel MacKenzie 05:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. At least this was an easy one to fix. --EncycloPetey 05:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

vonk

• w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vonk (pubic toupee)
• w:Talk:Vonk (pubic toupee)
• w:Special:Contributions/Jmckean55
• Special:Contributions/Jmckean55

Just to let you know: Some people on some discussion forum somewhere are having a Big Fight over whether this is a word and what it means, and are adding information to Wiktionary and Wikipedia to "prove" their sides of the argument. Uncle G 19:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Athang1504 and etymologies

Well, I left a message on his talk page. So if you see a block in the next few days you know what happened... (It seemed like going to BP would take a month and in that month we'd have that more many articles to continually clean up, since he has been reverting people's cleanups.) Thanks for your advice too. ArielGlenn 22:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

TheCheatBot error

See Wiktionary:Tea room#Oaxacaner. It looks like TheCheatBot created Oaxacaner and Oaxacanest even though Oaxacan has been marked as "not comparable" since its creation. Any idea what went wrong? Dmcdevit·t 02:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the old version of {{en-adj}} required two "|-"'s. I'm pretty sure that had been addressed a while back, but won't hurt to recheck it. --Connel MacKenzie 03:46, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Colloquial vs. Informal

I'd like to hear more from you regarding this issue, as I have posted a rather lengthy answer to you on WT:BP. Circeus 02:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Transwiki archive Robot

Hi Connel: Question/suggestion about the Bot that imports Transwiki's for you. How would you feel about changing the programing just slightly so the first character is no longer a star bullet point (*) but a counter number sign (#)? I think people like to count and it may even inspire more help as people try to bring down the counts on each month. I could convert the already prepared lists with my Word processor so we can get a feeling for the counts for each year, both past and present. Let me know what you think. Goldenrowley 04:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Your wish is my command. Done. Starting tomorrow, they will be "#". --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I may as well change the existing Wiktionary:Transwiki log while I'm at it... --Connel MacKenzie 05:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, what a spectacularly great idea. Wanna compose a montly/annual summary atop that page? --Connel MacKenzie 05:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Connel! When you're inspired so am I. Summary would be neat. is there a template for that? Goldenrowley 03:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Only if you invent one. Maybe something similar to the WT:BPA sidebar thing? --Connel MacKenzie 03:12, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly like what I had in mind! See this draft Template:Transwiki TOC ... although I am not sure how to get the count into a second column that's the intent. Goldenrowley 05:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

There's no auto-summary that I know of - so manual tallies are the way to go. One column for "Copied to Wiktionary" and one column for "Remaining" (not yet dealt with.) But whatever seems workable... --Connel MacKenzie 14:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Headings

malapropism

Please use valid headings. ===Examples=== is not one. That's why I retained that link, in a real section. --Connel MacKenzie 18:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

For example, if you turn on Conrad's language view, you get an idea of how such an entry is typically parsed by external (and internal) software components. Invalid headings disappear. --Connel MacKenzie 18:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I understand. Thanks for the more detailed explanation. I was only trying to preserve some idea of what content one would find in the nondescript "appendix" link. Now I've added "For examples of malapropism, see appendix." Is this kosher? -- Thisis0 18:20, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely yes. --Connel MacKenzie 19:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

lead/experiment lead/experiment2

Interesting, experiment2 is a good way of separating main senses from lesser senses, but I am not sure how well it would work for less gargantuan pages. Though I am not sure I am fond of mixing the parts of speech like that, it makes things harder to look up - as it is often possible to tell from context what part of speech you are looking for. Conrad.Irwin 19:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I must've misread what you wrote on WT:BP, then. --Connel MacKenzie 23:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Template:prescript0unverified

Template:prescript0unverified mean anything to you anymore? I was having a cleanout of some templates which were created before my time. It is such a boring job...--Keene 01:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Good find. Deleted. Hippietrail had been imploring me to device something analogous to our current-day "context" templates - apparently this was some detritus from that experiment. --Connel MacKenzie 04:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, {{prescriptivism}} does sortof use it. Likewise Special:Prefixindex/Template:prescrip...

I think this is all now accomplished by {{neologism}}, but not with any granularity. The whole series (sadly) should go through the one-week of WT:RFDO, to see if anyone can find where it is (was?) called from.

This was quite an eye-opener, though. All this time, templates really *have* evolved an extraordinary amount. It is pretty amazing, the stuff we had to go through back then. (Through 4' of snow, uphill both ways, on compliers that didn't have ones *and* zeros...) I can almost appreciate people saying they need help "programming" a template. 'Course, I still grumble about "HTML programming," so what can ya do.  :-)   Makes me wonder if we still have {{~if}}. --Connel MacKenzie 04:27, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

217.198.148.36

217.198.148.36 (talk • contribs • whois • deleted contribs • nuke • abuse filter log • block • block log • active blocks • global blocks) What had they done that warranted a ban? The only edits I can see (other than the prior leprechaun experiment) were good faith/useful. Globish 21:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Those don't look intentionally incorrect to you? Hmmm. OK, I'll unban and take a chill pill. But those do seem to be intentionally misleading - all that can be said of any of them, is that they generate clean-up work for others. (That is putting aside the fact that any of the results are questionable entries, even when cleaned up.) --Connel MacKenzie 21:50, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

They look like someone unfamiliar with Wiktionary trying to be helpful unless there were prior, more dubious entries that were deleted. I know this isn't Wikipedia, but blocking them for that with nothing on their talk page and no obvious vandalism seemed like too much is all. Globish 21:56, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Only one previously deleted entry, FWIW. --Connel MacKenzie 22:29, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

...I guess I won't be defending any more questionable cases given the latest edits. Globish 22:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

No, no. Calling me on it, whenever you think I'm wrong is fair. (And a request here is certainly preferable to noise on WT:BP.) I do make plenty of mistakes. And the current atmosphere is of the give 'em enough rope variety, so I should probably start adapting to the Wiktionary of 2008, right about now. --Connel MacKenzie 01:39, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Someone has become obsessed with me. I noted in "Politcon's" first nomination for adminship that there was likely little coincidence in a random nomination with no specific reason given coming after the vandalism spree, and several open proxies voted to "draft" me after I had declined. The user should be investigated and probably blocked indefinitely. Globish 22:27, 3 January 2008 (UTC)