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October 2024

The root boxes were a bad idea?

Is it only me who finds it hard to orient amoung the etymologies for the root languages? I mean, Hebrew and Arabic, not the bock saga. I understand that it is a linguistical tradition to use root system for Semitic etymologies, because of the nature of semitic languages themself, when they are root languages.

But all these root-boxes are placed in a weird corner, and many of them do not even created, while many of the words have both etymology AND the root (see for example all the mess at אדום entry). In the same time, many of these root entries have no etymology either (see ث ق ل having no etymology, while its derived word ثقل has both root-box AND etymology).

If everybody think we should only use the root boxes insted of normal etymology system, than am gladly will help to sort out the Hebrew words at least into a root-box etymology system or whatever. But in this case, what we should do with the "Related terms" sections? They are completely useless if we use these root boxes (and we are using them already anyway, so this paradox bothers me even more). Tollef Salemann (talk) 15:31, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The related terms sections are useless, given that they clutter the page, though the benefit outweigh the burden in other languages, and the root system is a better system that centralizes Semitic related terms. The rootboxes are also necessary because otherwise the etymologies are trivial non-etymologies just having the purpose of stating a root. I do not share your impression of weird corners; אדום is a good example: the etymology sections contains actual words, the boxes the superficial structure by which we make relations and new words could be created. Fay Freak (talk) 11:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Should the letters of phonetic alphabets be 'letters' rather than 'symbols'?

I've noticed this discrepancy for a while. I assume it's because phonetic alphabets are usually unicameral, and perhaps it's a pain to have two 'letter' entries under Translingual, one with case and one without. I bring this up because of Latin chi, ꭓ, which has a capital form in Unicode not because of any national orthography, but because it has a distinct capital in Lepsius's phonetic alphabet. We therefore need to link to the capital from the lower case and vice versa, which means that we now have symbols with orthographic casing.

If we have 'symbols' that are cased letters, and used to write languages, what's the difference between a 'symbol' and a 'letter'? Should IPA, NAPA, Lepsius and Teuthonista letters all be moved to under a 'letter' heading? And if so, should we have two separate 'letter' headings for casing and non-casing uses, or can that be handled with a usage note? Actually, IPA and NAPA are occasionally used with casing too, though that's uncommon where they haven't been adopted as the basis of a national orthography. For example, there's an IPA version of Alice in Wonderland that's printed with capitals, and because of it those were added to Unicode when they didn't already exist. But sometimes texts of otherwise unwritten languages are spelled out in a phonetic alphabet with casing.

Might it be possible to add a note of 'rare' after a capital variant we list in the heading for a phonetic alphabet? Something like this:

Letter

ꭓ (upper case (rare) Ꭓ)

kwami (talk) 23:04, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

IMO no. Logically, IPA symbols are symbols not letters. Some of them look like letters but not all. Some IPA symbols like ɔ are also letters in certain languages and then have cased forms, but IMO they should be treated separately. Benwing2 (talk) 00:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

But what's the difference? Shouldn't the difference be one of function? Are casing Lepsius letters also 'symbols', or are they an exception because of casing? If it's casing, what about Georgian? And if it's appearance, what about the Hawaiian okina and the nasalization mark of Pe̍h-ōe-jī? Those cover the full range of IPA letters.

I know dictionary definitions don't always make a good argument, but MW defines a 'letter' as a symbol usually written or printed representing a speech sound and constituting a unit of an alphabet. That would seem to include the IPA. kwami (talk) 01:10, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

BTW, when IPA letters are used in national alphabets, they don't always have cased forms. Some of the orthographies are unicameral. kwami (talk) 01:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I disagree: a letter is a written character that represents a speech sound for spoken languages. While the "IPA" is not a language, the written characters do represent speech sounds, just like any letter in the Cyrillic or Greek or Latin alphabets do. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:43, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Do not automatically expand all sections on mobile

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T376446

In phab:T63447 ten years ago, Wikimedia sysadmins made the decision to enable a feature on the mobile version of the English Wiktionary that automatically expands all sections when a page is opened. The stated reason for this was that it "is pretty rough" when a page only has a single section (like English) and it is collapsed, forcing users to open it manually. However, this feature does not only act when the page only has a single section, but always. This

1. makes pages with multiple language editions annoying to read
2. makes long pages very slow

With pages that only contain a single section, we can easily implement a JavaScript feature ourselves that expands the section if there is only one. This cannot be done the other way around (collapse all sections), because it interferes with other logic (e.g. #English expands English automatically) and does nothing to address the slowdown caused by the browser having to render everything.

Therefore, I propose we seek community consensus to overturn this decision, which by itself seems to have been taken based on a small group of editors (most of whom were never particularly active on Wiktionary), and without discussion, let alone consensus, here on Wiktionary. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 15:52, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Earlier discussions: Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/March#Always minimize all sections (mobile version), Wiktionary:Grease pit/2021/March#Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/March#Always minimize all sections (mobile version), Wiktionary:Grease pit/2021/June#Experience on mobile. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:01, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think people use their mobile phones much these daysDenazz (talk) 18:51, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Where are people not using mobile phones now? 77.18.59.30 20:36, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Denazz was being /s. I must admit I LOLd (non-/s​ly) when I read Denazz's comment. BTW, I support this proposal (non-/s​ly). Quercus solaris (talk) 22:18, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Strong support. Of course having everything collapsed isn't great either, so I propose to have entries only expand the first section, whatever it may be (or it could be a more sophisticated thing that accounts for the height of each section — point being that it should be in our control). Ioaxxere (talk) 21:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. I could imagine for example a gadget that allows the user to customize which section(s) to open (e.g. open a specific language's section), but I agree this should be under our control. Benwing2 (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Support It is a PITA to use Wiktionary on mobile. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 01:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Support This has always annoyed me. Stujul (talk) 10:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Weak support Has rarely annoyed me, but the rationale for the present setting only applies to Wikipedia and some other wikis but not the dictionaries. Fay Freak (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Strong support. This has annoyed me for a while. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:58, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. per Ioaxxare, always expanding the first section until another more sophisticated tool is created. Juwan (talk) 21:22, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. Theknightwho (talk) 23:41, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Support —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 07:29, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Strong support — सौम्य (talk) 14:31, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. IMO it should not always be the first section that is expanded, but the English section if available, and the first section if not (i.e. English should have precedence over Translingual). This is how Tabbed Languages currently works. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 23:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Support Binarystep (talk) 05:12, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Show portlet links to logged-out users

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T377648

On the mobile site, portlet links ("Discussion", "Citations") are not shown at all to logged-out users. This seems unfair. I think this is something that can be changed on the WMF's side, so I'm aiming to get consensus here and create a Phabricator task. Ioaxxere (talk) 21:40, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Support, seems a no-brainer. Benwing2 (talk) 00:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. Also find a way to display Citations when it exists, without the need for a gadget. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 01:51, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Support, I've wanted this for some time (and it's been a discussed problem for some time: I recall it coming up in some long-prior discussions about the utility of ====Quotations==== headers, and I brought it up in the recent vote about them). Weirdly, it seems to be device dependent (?), because if I view the mobile version of a page from a computer, I do see a "Citations:" link at the top, but I don't see it if I view the page from an actual mobile device. (I did just find that if I click the "last edited..." link at the bottom of the page, and go to the page history, I do see a link to the Citations page at the top of that page, but having to click through to an intermediary page is a faff.) - -sche (discuss) 05:10, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Support Fay Freak (talk) 11:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Support —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 07:29, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Support Binarystep (talk) 05:13, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Support This would clearly be helpful. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 04:48, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Support Juwan (talk) 10:52, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Opposite synonyms

The adj utter means extreme and used with words with negative connotation; the adj. sublime also means extreme/complete, but used for positive connotations.

Is there a label for this type of relationship? Should they be added under the section "synonyms? JMGN (talk) 11:34, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Although utter is not used exclusively with negative connotation (e.g., utter joy, utter bliss), no doubt there are some adjectives that are exclusively positive or negative in this way. I can't think of any metalanguage for this particular phenomenon, but I wouldn't be surprised if linguists have a name for it, because it reminds me of things such as some#Determiner versus any#Determiner, either versus neither (which some call an "assertive determiner" versus a "negative determiner"), and positive anymore, all of which linguists have metalanguage for, albeit not carved in stone. I would say yes, they should be added under synonyms, because a short label can be appended to them such as "exclusively negative" or "exclusively positive", or "chiefly negative" or "chiefly positive", or "negative counterpart" versus "positive counterpart", which would be both clear enough and succinct enough. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

ârbros

Please take a minute to look at the Pronunciation section at ârbros. I am not sure if it is the greatest piece of amateur lexicography since Thesaurus:penis/translations, or a massive stinking piece of misleading shit. Thoughts? Denazz (talk) 20:30, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this is garbage. This is @Nicodene's work in conjunction with @Kc kennylau, based on various dialect dictionaries. Benwing2 (talk) 23:43, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I suppose I should be flattered. Nicodene (talk) 01:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I wish that there was less pronunciation immediately shown, but damn. Should be FWotD based on that section alone. CitationsFreak (talk) 04:39, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Wow! That's exactly what we need to get for Norwegian! Currently, we've only got only some few examples like Norwegian Nynorsk furu, and they are very far from being fullfilled, especially compared to this example. Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:43, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Can someone explain what is going on here? I was under the impression that within a certain language community at a certain place and time the pronunciation of words was more or less fixed. Is my understanding wrong or is Franco-Provencal different? Say I want to know how to say the word for "trees" in the dialect of Valais, am I to conclude that I can pronounce it however I damn well please? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 07:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

The areas in question are highly mountainous, meaning essentially each village had its own pronunciation. Valais is not a village but a canton containing lots of villages, so you can't logically talk about a single "Valais" pronunciation. Franco-Provençal seems somewhat extreme in the variation you see, but a similar situation pertains to Rhaeto-Romance, where again each village tends to have its own pronunciation. I think that even within the 7 or so identified "dialects" of Swiss Rhaeto-Romance (which generally go per valley), there are further subvariations in different villages in the same valley. Benwing2 (talk) 07:58, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Do you agree though that the way the section is organised makes it appear like those pronunciations belong to a single dialect? Maybe it's a work in progress and I imagine it's a tricky thing to sort out, but a long list of pronunciations that aren't tied to a specific time and place isn't very useful. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 09:24, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

They are tied to specific places, which can be displayed by clicking “more”. Nicodene (talk) 09:37, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I see. Well, I'm impressed! —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 09:40, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Providing a wrapper for the whole content of the section, to allow show/hide (collapse/expand) with collapsed being the default state, would be reasonable. Another layer of "show/hide" toggle, at a higher level than the existing "more/less" toggle (which would be nested beneath it). I am not one to whine that such collapsibility is desperately needed or sorely missed, but some humans are sticklers about it. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:27, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

• So these linguists went round the Swiss villages with pictures of trees and stuff and asked the locals "what are these?". Not a bad job, really! Phacromallus (talk) 22:07, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Revising the accent's behaviour in WT:AVEC

@IvanScrooge98, Sartma While editing I gradually came to the realisation that the compromise we reached appears a bit inconsistent. Since we removed the accents from mid vowels on piane, I was thinking we could remove it everywhere, because it stands as a weird situation, in my opinion, now that è ò and é ó are distinguished in sdrucciole but not in piane. So I propose amending the guidelines and removing the written accent from sdrucciole and also from the puina~bevuo kind of words, keeping it only on tronche and monosyllables. (Secondarily, this change would also get rid of the issue of whether words like cauxa should be considered piane or not, and headwords would look slightly less clunky.) Of course, IPA will get even more necessary, which is perhaps in a sense also a positive consequence. What do you think? Catonif (talk) 10:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I’m not sure removing accent marks altogether is a good option. Regarding the distinction of é/ó and vs è/ò only in proparoxytones, somethimg similar happens in Catalan and Portuguese, which have very well established conventions for accents. [ˌiˑvã̠n̪ˑˈs̪kr̺ud͡ʒʔˌn̺ovã̠n̪ˑˈt̪ɔ̟t̪ːo] _{(parla con me)} 10:30, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

True, though from my Italian viewpoint saying liéoro with an accent and lievro without it looks a bit weird. Also pinging @GianWiki, Nicodene, Imetsia for further input. Catonif (talk) 19:34, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Personally I would favour an all-or-nothing approach. That is, either marking all stressed mid-vowels as low-mid (◌̀) or high-mid (◌́), or marking no vowel at all that way. The Standard Italian practice of using these diacritics in oxytones and proparoxytones, but not in paroxytones, has never made sense to me. Nicodene (talk) 21:54, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned that we're essentially making up spelling rules. How are such words normally written "in the wild"? We should try to follow whatever is done there. Benwing2 (talk) 05:25, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Your concern is very legitimate, the thing is, as Sartma said in the previous discussion, Native speakers of Venetan dialects use any sort of spelling. [...] I have no issues tanking a bold approach here and go with what we prefer, given that the standardisation attempts are also multiple and often disagreeable in some regards. Note I am very careful to describe every spelling I encounter "into the wild" and place it under alternative forms as an alternative spelling, so in the end no information is lost, but lemmatising at those spellings would be a mess in the long run. Catonif (talk) 09:24, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Catonif I see. In that case yes we should use some sort of normalized spelling and make all the attested variants be classified as alt spellings. Ideally the normalized spelling should match the practice used in dictionaries (or in at least one of them if there are multiple standards). I would also not favor an approach that simply discards all accents. Generally I prefer having more accents rather than fewer, but would not be opposed to following the Italian practice of marking accents only in final-stressed words and monosyllables. Benwing2 (talk) 21:22, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I second most of this. I would rather have ràntego and dexéna than rantego and dexena. Italian accent rules should not be part of this unless they are followed more or less consistently by reputable sources/dictionaries. [ˌiˑvã̠n̪ˑˈs̪kr̺ud͡ʒʔˌn̺ovã̠n̪ˑˈt̪ɔ̟t̪ːo] _{(parla con me)} 22:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

All fine with me. Benwing2 (talk) 06:36, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@IvanScrooge98 I would rather have [...] dexéna than [...] dexena. I'm a bit confused, didn't you say I’d go for accent on neither regarding ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ in the past discussion? That's why we ditched the unambiguousness the system had. But anyways, personally I believe that Italian accent rules do play a role in this since to Venetan speakers they would seem natural and clean, rather than drawing parallels in Iberian orthographies. Catonif (talk) 16:54, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

What I meant is, if we have to choose between accent marks in all cases and no accents at all other than for final vowels, I’ll go for the first option. The parallel with Catalan and Portuguese was merely to point out the current “mixed system” isn’t an outright invention and has a history among Romance languages. [ˌiˑvã̠n̪ˑˈs̪kr̺ud͡ʒʔˌn̺ovã̠n̪ˑˈt̪ɔ̟t̪ːo] _{(parla con me)} 19:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

unhiding the hidden

I vaguely remember someone saying they'd got a list of all the hidden comments in WT. Does this exist? I'm intrigued how much nonsense users have inserted over the years. Denazz (talk) 15:27, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It is WT:BJ. Svartava (talk) 10:37, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Denazz: check out https://paste.ee/p/pew4Z Ioaxxere (talk) 05:26, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks. It is, understandably, mostly very boring. P. Sovjunk (talk) 23:36, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Suggestions for labels

I have made many proposals for labels at Module talk:labels/data/topical and would like others to check them and suggest improvements and implements, as I don't have the appropriate user permissions to do so. Juwan (talk) 11:43, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: make all maintenance categories hidden

Specifically, every category under Category:Wiktionary maintenance. Hidden categories are opt-in, rather than being shown to every logged-out user who visits the page. Our long pages have a massive amount of categories, and I feel that categories like Category:English terms with quotations or Category:English terms with homophones drown out the ones that a casual user might actually be interested in. To be clear, the only change I'm advocating for is to make these categories hidden by default on the entry — the pages will still be in them. What do you think? Ioaxxere (talk) 03:40, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: no objection if there is an option for logged-in users to change the default and make these categories permanently visible. As someone who regularly tidies up entries, it is useful to see the categories. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:37, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: You can check the box at Special:Preferences → Appearance → Show hidden categories. Ioaxxere (talk) 18:29, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: cool, thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:29, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Eminently reasonable idea. Casual readers don't care or need to see these. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:28, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Support Binarystep (talk) 05:13, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Not Category:Entry maintenance by language though. It contains all the requests for translations, pronunciations etc., and I have inferred that we gain new editors, sought for foreign languages, by this. The others seem technical.

Category:English terms with homophones is not even under Category:Entry maintenance by language (but Category:Terms by lexical property by language and then already Category:Fundamental) and hence not Category:Wiktionary maintenance, while Category:English terms with quotations is only there via Category:Entry maintenance by language. You are confused, @Ioaxxere.

Don’t decide this without typically foreign-language editors, anyhow. For now I oppose for inconsiderate reasoning. Fay Freak (talk) 08:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: My mistake, you're right about the homophone categories — in that case nothing would happen to it, but I still think it should be hidden. But I think you've gotten confused as well, since requests for translations and pronunciations are already hidden, so there would be no change. Ioaxxere (talk) 13:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Looking through Category:Spanish entry maintenance, these are the categories that I would find useful as a casual reader: terms with audio pronunciation, terms with IPA pronunciation, terms with quotations. These have strong applications for language learning, especially for smaller languages; all the other categories are more geared toward editing. I almost included Terms with collocations/usage examples, but those are more "nice to see on pages" than "worth clicking through a category", especially compared to quotations. Ultimateria (talk) 04:42, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere Most of these maintenance categories are already hidden, and in general the category system hides or shows categories on a per-category (technically, per-category-prototype, or whatever) basis rather than through blanket rules like "anything under Category:Wiktionary maintenance should be hidden". I think it's important to enumerate all the specific categories you think should be hidden which aren't currently hidden, and we can decide which ones should be hidden. Benwing2 (talk) 04:59, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Also, I think that some of the categories under e.g. Category:Spanish entry maintenance should be grouped into subcategories to reduce the number of categories directly visible. In particular, some of the categories are purely for cleanup purposes (e.g. Category:Spanish terms with redundant script codes), but some aren't (e.g. Category:Spanish terms with quotations). Benwing2 (talk) 05:02, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Benwing2: That's a fair point. Here are a couple of specific examples: X terms with quotations, X terms with usage examples, X terms with collocations, X terms with IPA pronunciation, X terms with audio pronunciation, X terms with homophones (that last one isn't a maintenance category). But I think my proposal was motivated on the more philosophical point that it doesn't make sense to show anons categories that *we* describe as being for "maintenance". Ioaxxere (talk) 05:40, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Right, and I agree with that in general; in fact, as I mentioned, most of these are already hidden. Just keep in mind that sometimes whether a category is considered "maintenance" isn't always clear-cut and whether it's under a maintenance umbrella category or umbrella metacategory may be a historical accident as opposed to something well thought-out. Benwing2 (talk) 05:48, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Automated addition of 1953–1993 Romanian forms

Forms belonging to the previous Romanian orthographic standard should be added to Wiktionary. This unchallenging operation involves creating an alternative spelling entry containing the letter î corresponding to every present entry that contains the letter â.

To this end I propose creating the template {{ro-î-form of}}, displaying 1953–1993 spelling of [term]. The alternative forms would correspondingly be linked from the main entry with {{alt|ro|term||î-form}}.

Romanian-speaking admin Robbie SWE has also been consulted. According to User:Kc kennylau, this measure would affect almost 5000 entries. Potential anachronistic alternate forms for terms which did not yet exist when the former standard was in effect are, I can assure, very unlikely.

A number of such forms as I am talking about have already been created and are found in Category:Romanian superseded forms. The greater part of them claim to have been introduced in the 1904 standard; this is false, as said standard is (in regard to î and â) largely identical to the present one.

To expand on the previous: a small subset of the superseded î spellings had already been in use since 1904. Correction: it is actually the 1899 standard. They are inflections (participles, gerunds and first person plural present forms) of fourth conjugation verbs ending in -î, a closed class.

Special treatment is also required for derived terms of român, which under a 1964 provision were reverted to the spelling with â, identical to the present standard.

The previous two exceptions should be accommodated via a parameter; I propose |var=, which would either take the value ro (for derived terms of român, displaying 1953–1964 spelling) or 4 (for fourth conjugation forms, displaying 1904–1993 spelling 1899–1993 spelling). These adjustments will have to be made manually. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 21:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Support This appears to be a sensible proposal. Einstein2 (talk) 20:38, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I think this is fine if forms are attested somewhat, I try to stick to old spellings for Polish mostly if they exist. They usually do, but I'm the type of person to check everything. Vininn126 (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The Communist period saw scholarly editions of old texts, obviously edited in the then-current orthography, in large numbers. Anachronism in the opposite direction—old words given in this newer orthography they were never printed in—is, while never completely unavoidable, almost as unlikely as the other sort of anachronism I mentioned in my first post. Let’s also not forget that the most comprehensive dictionary of Romanian was, for the most part, also compiled in this period, with the headwords using î. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 08:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Do you have actual proof of that for Polish? Just restating the claim that they did and then being unable to produce many texts for them is kinda the exact thing we're trying to avoid on this website. Vininn126 (talk) 08:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I don’t really understand your comment, but, either way, I have my corpora. And we aren’t doing the three attestations thing for alternative spellings, right? ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 10:03, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I confused my threads. Please disregard that, haha! Otherwise this looks very sensible. I don't always do exactly 3 attestations for certain spellings, but I do check if it's there. Since some words came after certain spelling reforms and as such never had that old spelling, if that makes sense. Vininn126 (talk) 10:05, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ktom It looks like you're requesting two things, a template {{ro-î-form of}} (which seems completely unobjectionable) and a bot job to create î-spellings of word spelled with â. I'm not convinced, however, despite your claim, that there really are no words in â created in Romanian since 1993. I'm sure there have been tons of words that have entered the Romanian language since then, many referring to new technologies, social movements and such that didn't exist in 1993. Logically, many of these words will be formed from existing Romanian words, and many of those words have â in them, so it seems hard to believe that there are no terms in â created since 1993. This means you might need to manually go through the list of the 5,000 or so existing words in â, and pick out the ones created after 1993, so that the variant in î doesn't get bot-created. Benwing2 (talk) 05:23, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Î/â is a letter exclusive to native Romanian vocabulary, and Romanian is not big on coining words based on native roots and stuff like that.

Additionally, mass Romanian addition to Wiktionary was an operation dependent on dictionary entry lists, and any word not found as a headword in a dictionary was unlikely to be added; and given that Romanian dictionaries are laggards when it comes to adding new words, especially non-technical ones, the likelihood that we have a word found in a major dictionary that contains â and did not exist before 1993 is too low for me to consider.

Additionally, the letter â does not even appear in any inflectionary suffixes.

However, as a potential safeguard against adding an anachronistic î-form to some novel slang expression we may happen to have—and also for general cleanliness and anti-pedancy purposes—I do think there should be no alternative spelling entries made for multi-word terms. That may already be the policy, I don’t know about that. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 10:31, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ktom Does â occur in derivational suffixes? Also I don't quite understand your point about Romanian dictionaries being laggards when adding new words; this may be true, but presumably the list of î-alternative forms will be based on existing Romanian lemmas in Wiktionary, rather than in some major print dictionary, and Wiktionary tends to have quite good coverage of slang and neologisms, at least in many languages. As for "there should be no alternative spelling entries made for multi-word terms" I don't know if there is any such policy, but this seems reasonable to me. Benwing2 (talk) 20:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The point about the dictionaries is that Wiktionary does not have good coverage of Romanian non-dictionary terms, so we should expect our list of Romanian entries to align closely to the list of headwords of print dictionaries, a list whose newest additions belong only to international vocabulary. And no, â does not feature in any affixes. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 20:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Bogdan: What is your opinion in regard to this concern? ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 10:43, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Post-1993 borrowings are almost all from Western languages (or through a Western intermediary), so they don't have the î/â sound. Neologisms are almost never created internally in Romanian, the only case could be a slang word, but I don't think there are any that fit this criteria in Wiktionary. In theory, it could happen, but I think it's very unlikely. Bogdan (talk) 08:39, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. I've added î-form (or î), î-form-ro (or î-ro) and î-form-4 (or î-4) at MOD:labels/data/lang/ro, so that now {{alt|ro|cîine||î}} displays cîine — 1953–1993 spelling and {{altsp|ro|câine|from=î}} displays 1953–1993 spelling of câine. I don't think the creation of a Romanian specific alt form template is needed. Catonif (talk) 20:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Benwing2: In light of the qualified opinions presented, do you find your concerns eased? As for me, after considering the facts, I’m relieved at how auspiciously unencumbered this entire measure has aligned itself to be: I mean, from morphological lack of productivity to—unaddressed but personally considered—compatibility with any future historical spellings we may some time implement, this truly makes for a best case scenario. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 20:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ktom Although I'm still a bit leery of blithely assuming there are no post-1993 terms containing â, I won't object if someone wants to do a bot operation to add the relevant entries, and I agree with User:Catonif's approach of using labels rather than bespoke Romanian-specific templates. Also, please be aware that this is not as trivial as you may think it is, because you have to account for the possibility that there's already a Romanian entry using the spelling you're trying to add, or a different-language entry using the same spelling. Instances of the latter can be handled by appropriate bot code, but all such cases of the former need to be skipped by the bot and handled by hand. Benwing2 (talk) 08:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Of course. The already created entries in question are to be found in Category:Romanian superseded forms (along with a few that pertain to different facets of previous standards), as well as cînd, which was in Category:Romanian dated forms. As for the choice of dedicated template, I had simply modelled myself on {{fr-pre-1990}} et sim. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 10:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

alternative form of/synonym of

What is the difference between {{alternative form of}} and {{synonym of}}, and when should each be used? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:45, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Entry_layout#Alternative_forms. This should help a guess. Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:19, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The verb stay mum is defined as an “alternative form of” keep mum, but I think this is wrong. I’d only use it if the terms, read aloud by the same speaker, are pronounced the same or almost the same.  --Lambiam 20:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Right, I wouldn't say the pronunciation needs to be exactly the same, but an "alternative form" should have the same or a similar pronunciation and an identical or nearly identical etymology. Synonyms are commonly etymologically unrelated, but an alternative form never should be. For example, I think fo'castle is appropriately marked as an alternative form of forecastle. I'm not sure what the precise line should be between "alternative form of" and "alternative spelling of" (as used at foc's'le). In the context of languages with more inflections such as Latin, I've used "alternative form" for words where the root is shared and the definition is identical but the endings (and thus, pronunciation) differ, e.g. cornupeta and cornupetus.--Urszag (talk) 20:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Actually, am agree with it in a way, but sometimes I find or create entries with similar construction: to do X or N with Y, where N is alternative to X. In this case it is indeed an alternative form of the phrase, but not word-for-word. We have a lot of such examples in Swedish and Nynorsk, but i can now only remember my own which i recently created: заправлять арапа (literally, to fill a black noble servant). You see, in theory you can put almost any verb in it, even a verb which doesnt exist, and the meaning is gonna be the same. So the difference in verb is not important, and therefore it’s not just synonymous, but rather alternative form.

If not, I will gladly go thru all this kinda phrases in Russian, Swedish and Nynorsk and put alternative forms into synonyms. But in this case we should disvuss it in a more wider discussion with all the editors. Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:26, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Regarding lines between "alternative form of" and "alternative spelling of", it is true that the latter is logically hyponymous to the former, but one facet of the whole relationship that to my mind is clear is that an alternative spelling is solely another orthographic method of writing the selfsame set of sounds, whereas an alternative form that is not an alternative spelling involves a morphologic difference. Thus, neurologic and neurological should be marked with "alternative form of" (not "alternative spelling of"), whereas homolog and homologue, or sulfur and sulphur, should best be marked with "alternative spelling of" (not "alternative form of"). As for what to call idioms that are clearly the same thing conceptually but with a mere substitution of vocabulary (such as "don't give up your day job" versus "don't quit your day job"), this is where people quibble between "alternative form of" and "synonym of", and neither one is wrong (from one viewpoint or another), but I would support Wiktionary standardizing on "synonym of" as a consistent convention even though the alternative option is not wrong either; this would probably accord with what Lambiam and Urszag said. Idioms of that class can take only certain vocabulary item substitutions, not a limitless range of them, so I guess they are probably a different class from the class that Tollef mentioned. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I think I'm in agreement with everyone above when I say something is an "alternative (form|spelling) of..." when it's merely another spelling/form of what is basically ~the same word, with (roughly) the same etymology (and same meaning).
When only the spelling differs, but the pronunciation is the same, it's an "alternative spelling of..." like kinikinic vs kinnikinnick, whereas when the form is different enough that the pronunciation also differs, like killikinick vs kinnikinnick, it's an "alternative form of...". There's been a proposal to make the templates spell this out, and an alternative proposal to give up on making the "form"-vs-"spelling" distinction at all.
When you've got different words for the same thing, like living rock vs living stone, that's when one is a "synonym of..."... but sometimes, people forgo using that template and just define stone as "Rock." (Your question makes me realize how non-obvious and potentially arbitrary our distinction can be to anyone unfamiliar with it.)
There is a smallish grey area when it comes to closely related words: e.g. suppose hofoobar is the Belarusian-derived English word for apple-flavoured vodka, and gofoobar is the Russian-derived word for it: are these alternative forms because they're closely related words for the same thing, or synonyms because they have different etymologies, one coming from one language and the other from a different language? But in such cases, there's often also some semantic difference, i.e. in such a scenario, gofoobar would typically mean "Russian apple-flavoured vodka" or "apple-flavoured vodka, especially from Russia" and hofoobar would typically mean "Belarusian apple-flavoured vodka", so you might just make each of those its own entry with its own separate definition, and link them as related terms...
(BTW, @ Quercus, for my part I'd probably just define "neurologic" as "Neurological.", rather than listing it as either an "alt form" or a synonym"; I suppose it's a similar grey area, as I'd be tempted to say the extra suffix -al makes it not an alternative form but a separate, synonymous word... but I can also see the argument for it being a mere alt form...) - -sche (discuss) 01:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Preliminary results of the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Hello all,

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election. Close to 6000 community members from more than 180 wiki projects have voted.

The following four candidates were the most voted:

1. Christel Steigenberger
2. Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz
3. Victoria Doronina
4. Lorenzo Losa

While these candidates have been ranked through the vote, they still need to be appointed to the Board of Trustees. They need to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications outlined in the Bylaws. New trustees will be appointed at the next Board meeting in December 2024.

Learn more about the results on Meta-Wiki.

Best regards,

The Elections Committee and Board Selection Working Group

MPossoupe_(WMF) 08:26, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami making a mess again

@Kwamikagami has been using {{mul-letter}} for non-translingual entries and has refused to learn and apply proper formatting or case. The history on the page ə is an absolute mess and trying to figure out a solution for the letter entries which are nigh unusable from ones on the edge of usability feels like a futile task. This is not to mention the fact the user has added tons of ill-researched letters without regard for whether they were actually widely used or not, instead focusing on an obsession for Unicode. I'm not even sure how to begin approaching trying to fix this page. We need input from other mods, @Benwing2, @Chuck Entz, @Surjection as bureucrats and @Thadh as an admin who has dealt with the user in question. Vininn126 (talk) 23:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

My initial suggestion on Discord was to just revert all pages to the last known good version before Kwami's edits (bot edits can be redone) but would like to hear from others. Benwing2 (talk) 23:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I also don’t know what to do about changes that he’s made towards even just Nigerian languages. And as I’ve said before, we need more enforcement. If we had indefinitely blocked Kwami as people have requested in the past, the damage would not be as bad as it is right now. We need to stop being lenient with repetitive problematic users that have shown that they’re refusing to learn. Kwami is not the first one, but hopefully he’ll be the last. AG202 (talk) 23:44, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Please provide one example of a problem I caused since my May block, apart from the Efik letter 'ñ' where sources are contradictory. kwami (talk) 19:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

He definitely listens to advice from time to time, and seems to show good faith, but there's an element of randomness in his decision-making that combines with the sheer volume of his edits and with the periods when he doesn't listen to produce lots of sheer nonsense. There are parts of Category:Entries with incorrect language header by language, WT:Todo/Lists/Template language code does not match header, and WT:Todo/Lists/Entries with no headword line that I steer clear of because they're such a morass- he's used just about every combination of L2 header and language code in his single-character entries. Sometimes he does things right, sometimes wrong, but he seems to be compelled to keep going at high volume no matter what. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:29, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I see I did use 'mul-letter' for the Osage entry of schwa back in January. I'd be curious if I've made that error more recently. I do know to use the ISO code for the language, but evidently I sometimes overlook it when I copy-paste from another entry or article. I copy-paste because I've found that I may omit critical things if I create an entry from scratch, or not use the proper formatting. It's best for me to copy an established framework.

If you just drop a note on my talk page that I made a mess of schwa or whatever, I'm happy to correct myself. Or that an a number of errors in some tracking cat are from me, I'll go through them. kwami (talk) 00:57, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

BTW, I'm currently blocked from correcting the schwa article.

I guess what I'm confused by, if I've made a 'shitty edit', or especially a number of them, why not just tell me so that I know to fix them? Certainly if you avoid a whole tracking category because of me, I should take care of it. Vin keeps saying I 'refuse to learn', but there's no refusal -- I need feedback. When I do things that inconvenience other editors, sure, you shouldn't have to clean up after me. Just tell me so I can clean up after myself. It's not intentional. Also, I'd be curious if I've made any errors of fact, or if it's all template and formatting errors. (P.S. In case you think I forgot, an editor did complain not long ago that I made an error of fact with the Efik alphabet and should have know better, but AFAICT the difference is a matter of user or publisher preference -- I followed curriculum materials and monolingual print publication.) kwami (talk) 01:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

AG202 specifically referred to problems with your edits of Nigerian languages, which (as can be seen from this thread on your talkpage) is a linguistic issue, not a formatting one. Vininn126 also said the user has added tons of ill-researched letters without regard for whether they were actually widely used or not, which is not about formatting either. Whatever the merits of those complaints, people clearly have more issues with your edits than merely formatting, so please take the time to read the threads you are replying to properly in future. Theknightwho (talk) 01:34, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's the Efik alphabet issue that I mentioned above. I did of course take the time to read it, and AFAICT my use of the letter n-macron was correct, though I did change it as requested. (AG, if you could respond to that thread, I'd appreciate it.) As for Vin saying saying I've added 'tons' of ill-researched letters, he hasn't provided any examples that I recall of anything I've done since my block. All specific complaints have been about cleaning up tracking categories. Someone once objected that it was inappropriate to create individual entries for Yoruba letters with diacritics, as I had done, but that was years ago and I don't know of any other mess I've made with Nigerian languages since.

Is it inappropriate to create Wiktionary entries for Unicode characters? I often come to Wikt to discover the usage of some obscure Unicode character that I happen across, and it can be frustrating when we have no information here, or when we only repeat the Unicode name. So yes, I have been fleshing out our coverage. If that's not acceptable, please let me know. kwami (talk) 01:50, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

"Officer, why didn't you warn me about the kid on the skateboard? I didn't see him until it was too late. And I'm truly sorry about the medians over that 5-mile stretch." As a responsible wiki editor, you shouldn't require constant supervision to keep you from veering off in the wrong direction, and you shouldn't be going so fast that mistakes turn into huge cleanup projects before anyone spots them. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:16, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

So, basically, the problem seems to be that I add too many quick entries, that I should slow down with my contributions. Well, a block will certainly accomplish that.

There are two kinds of complaint against me. One, that I make factual errors. Vin keeps saying that, but hasn't provided any examples of something I've done recently [e.g. since my block]. So I don't know if this is actually a problem, or if Vin is not letting go of past history [like the Yoruba letters with diacritics]. Two, that I make sloppy edits that cause problems with tracking categories. I've certainly done that. I copy-paste from existing articles to get the formatting and templating correct, but sometimes overlook adjustments -- such as missing a template when I change the ISO codes, or not re-indenting the subheadings. Or perhaps there are other adjustments I don't know to make. That's a problem. I thought it was something that I could fix by reviewing the tracking category when my errors crop up there, but I guess that's not going to work. kwami (talk) 02:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

You've been warned of making a mess before, and while you say you've done that, the fact you've been warned and still need to ask in this thread what you've done shows either you are playing dumb or can't learn from your mistakes while still leaving a massive mess. Vininn126 (talk) 08:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

This edit is from January, 4 months before my block! This isn't evidence I'm not being more careful since. kwami (talk) 17:49, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

For reference, this PetScan should have all the entries in question. It's most Osage letters and quite a bit more, not just the schwa. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 10:27, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that. If someone had notified me before my block, I would have cleaned them all up. kwami (talk) 19:07, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I've gone through them, and where the error is mine, they're all old, from before my block. I don't see anything I've done since then. kwami (talk) 19:12, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• Us Wiktionarians are renowned for making a mess. I make plenty, mostly accidentally. There's a fine line to tread between high-speed edits and high-quality edits. If one user, for example, churns out 98 decent audios in an hour, 2 unclear audios and 1 fart sound that they stick on the Pronunciation section of penguin, we have a net gain - the fart sound will get quickly reverted, while the unclears should get noticed eventually. Yes, it can be annoying to correct, but part of wikiculture is to clean up others' (and our own) shit. We all need supervision - even our bureaucrats! BenWing's bot has brought up plenty of errors (soon corrected) and Chuck Entz....well, he...that joker....err...well....actually that guy is an exception, having a basically untarnished record. By the way, I've not looked into kwami's case, this is just a general observation. P. Sovjunk (talk) 11:58, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, we all make mistakes. I frequently make typos or other things, but the ratio of mess-productivity is what's important, and also I'm open to people asking me to clean it up, you can see my talkpage where Chuck frequently asks me to clean up my mess. Vininn126 (talk) 12:01, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

  Then why not have the same courtesy toward me, and notify me on my talk page when I make a mess, so that I have the same opportunity to clean it up? kwami (talk) 17:51, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

  I literally just explained that you've been warned multiple times. That's the courteousy. Vininn126 (talk) 17:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

  Since my May block, there have been 4 threads on my talk page.

  • One about fixing an error in arrow emojis.
  • One where I followed Chuck Entz's lead in moving Tahitian entries from an ASCII apostrophe to a proper okina, and he reverted me. He later said he didn't remember his earlier page moves.
  • One where someone informed me it wasn't appropriate to do the same for Old Tupi, and I corrected myself.
  • One for the Efik alphabet, mentioned above. Again, I corrected myself, though I doubt it was a correction.

  So, again, if I make an error, why don't you have the same courtesy Chuck has for you, and notify me that I made an error? I am also willing to correct myself. kwami (talk) 18:06, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

As I said before, I think it's time to re-do the the famous vote on this issue and if it passes we'll be done with the whole problem all together. As for specifically this incident, I do think Kwami has a long history of messing up, being told not to do it, and then continuing to do the exact same thing. Thadh (talk) 14:58, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I will strongly oppose this once again. I would hate for people's legitimate work to go down the drain because of a user who was allowed a free rein of terror because you all refused to take appropriate action. It's disappointing. AG202 (talk) 15:42, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Whose work has gone down the drain? Your only objection on my talk page is that I followed Efik print sources for the Efik alphabet, rather than online English-language sources. I changed the letters to match the English sources, though you have yet to answer my question as to why we shouldn't prefer professional Efik-language sources. Regardless, that's hardly a case of people's legitimate work going down the drain, since there was no Efik-alphabet template before I created it. kwami (talk) 17:57, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

And the constant denial begins again. It never changes. Vininn126 (talk) 17:59, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I think you've misread AG202's comment: "I would hate for people's legitimate work to go down the drain" isn't about anything you did. It refers to the loss of useful information that would occur if Thadh's proposal to remove all letter entries not under Translingual passed (it failed, but Thadh is now suggesting trying it again as a way to avoid arguing about the entries you were working on).--Urszag (talk) 18:07, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Yes, I thought it was about me. kwami (talk) 18:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

That seems a strange solution. saph668 just provided a useful Petscan link above, and all my errors are old, predating my May block. I don't see any evidence this is an ongoing problem, and if I'd seen the Petscan results earlier [I had no idea such a thing existed], I could've cleaned them up myself. kwami (talk) 19:15, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

User:Victar and false citations

I have come across two instances of Victar citing sources in support for specific claims, in which if you actually checked the source he cited, the scholar actually said something else.

The instances are:

• On Latin rutilus, he cited this month two scholars who actually made the exact opposite claim to what Victar wrote: he wrote that original second vowel was *-e-, when the two sources cited actually said *-i-, and Victar wrote that this word was a diminutive when the two sources actually say that the -lus in this word was of non-diminutive origin.
• On what is now Proto-Brythonic *giow, Victar in 2019 cited two sources (EDPC and McCone) for a claim that this word came from a Proto-Celtic athematic root noun, when they actually both reconstruct thematic Proto-Celtic *gyos.

I have reminded Victar on his talk page to stop doing this, but he responded that he saw such a reminder as a "waste of time" and told me to "take it to the entries". Surely, false use of citations should not be condoned nor should it rest on the shoulders of other editors to correct after the fact? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 03:41, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

So the whole etymology I cite that line is correct to the source, but because I used an *-elos in the Proto-Italic suffix instead of an *-ilos, the etymology is the "exact opposite"? The suffix *-elos is the correct Proto-Italic reconstruction of the suffix both according to {{R:ine:de Goede:2014|15}} and {{R:itc:EDL}}. We're not beholden to follow sources to the exact letter when they're outdated or wrong, otherwise our PIE reconstructions would look like *ərāu-.

@Benwing2, how about we make exaggerated and false accusations a "blockable offense", per your discord comment. --{{victar|talk}} 05:11, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

First of all, I don't appreciate the snark. Secondly while I do understand the principle of correcting notation to the latest scholarly consensus (although if you think *-ilos is outdated, it is strange that the citation is from 2019), you didn't respond to any of the other points made by User:Mellohi!. Third, why don't you respond on Discord directly if you're lurking in the background? Benwing2 (talk) 05:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Victar, how about we not make exaggerated and false accusations about someone else's accusations? Regardless of who's right here, throwing around accusations of bad faith and requesting someone be blocked because they questioned your actions isn't helping you at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:46, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

It's bad faith for @Benwing2 to threaten a block without even looking at the edit. --{{victar|talk}} 05:51, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Benwing2 specifically said IMO falsely citing sources is a blockable offense. If this happens again, let me know. It is a blockable offence in my view as well, as it shows academic dishonesty, which is something we cannot tolerate on Wiktionary. This is not bad faith to point out. Theknightwho (talk) 16:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

There is an important difference between normalizing the spelling of a reconstruction to a different standard (the case of *ərāu-) vs. claiming that an author used one derivational pathway when they actually used a different one (as with rutilus).

• Prosper says that the adjectival suffix for rutilus is essentially lambdacized -idus - absolutely no diminutive *-elos involved.
• Schaffner specified *-i-los and not *-elos because he is not deriving with diminutive *-elos either; the word does not end in -ulus as one would expect from *-elos (only *-ilos can become -ilus in Schaffner's understanding), and the -los suffix (with no *-e-!) Schaffner derives rutilus with has possessive function (not diminutive function); the -i- is derived by Schaffner from base *rutis.

In neither case should these sources be cited for a claim that rutilus was derived with the diminutive suffix *-elos. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 06:28, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Italic *-elos isn't just a diminutive suffix, see {{R:ine:de Goede:2014|15}}, where it lists its function as forming "desubstantival and deadjectival diminutive nouns", "verbal adjectives", and "desubstantival adjectives". Bare Proto-Italic *-los, as far as I know, was only ever appended to the root -- I don't know of any cases of *ROOT-i-los, or instances of an *-ilos suffix in Proto-Italic.

Additionally, rutilus is also attested as rutulus (Verg. A. 8.430), and Latin is no stranger to -ulus ~ -ilus ~ -illus variants, compare caupulus ~ caupilus ~ caupillus. According to Sen (2015) p22, the -i- in rutilus can be explained as a "dissimilation of lip-rounding from immediately preceding /kʷ/, or /u/ in the preceding syllable".

Again, this could have been discussed on the entry page. --{{victar|talk}} 07:38, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The point is that you should not be attributing your own (or De Goede's, or Sen's, etc.) thoughts on a matter to another scholar who does not share the same thought process (Schaffner in this case).

• Why did you specify "diminutive suffix" in your edit citing Schaffner when Schaffner specifically invokes a non-diminutive function of Proto-Indo-European *-lós?
• Again, why did you cite Schaffner, who evidently does not share your line of thought that "Bare Proto-Italic *-los, as far as I know, was only ever appended to the root...", given he derives rutilus from stacking -los on top of a base *rutis in the first place?
• And why did you cite Schaffner for *rutelos > rutilus when he draws a phonological distinction between *rutelos > rutulus and *rutilos > rutilus?

You have also not explained your citation of Prosper to support a -los derivation when she outright dismisses such a notion in her paper that was cited. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 12:04, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: All you've managed to reply is "Schaffner reconstructs an *-i-", without addressing any of my argumenets or giving any counterexamples. Again, "we're not beholden to follow sources to the exact letter when they're outdated or wrong", and the sources I've given say Schaffner is wrong in reconstructing *-ilos, including Prosper. --{{victar|talk}} 20:08, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of whether "we're not beholden to follow sources to the exact letter when they're outdated or wrong", citations must not be formatted in a way that suggests that the sources say something that they didn't, because this is false representation of the sources.--Urszag (talk) 20:25, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

It does not matter whether you or me, other scholars, or anyone else think Schaffner or Prosper are right or wrong; the point is that you cannot cite them to support a derivation from *rutelos > rutilus when these two do not posit such an etymology in the first place. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 20:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

And the references are there from Schaffner and Prosper to support the derivation from Proto-Indo-European *h₂rew-, which they do. If we had the ability to reference only certain sections of a sentence and not others, then there might be a point to be made about the source being in the wrong place, but we do not. --{{victar|talk}} 21:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Nothing in this version of the page makes it clear that the citations only refer to the derivation from PIE, and not the derivation from Proto-Italic or the affixation, which (together) are the primary statement of the sentence those citations purport to cite. You could easily have provided a reference partway through the sentence, or clarified that the references only support the PIE derivation, but you did not. Theknightwho (talk) 21:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Victar seems to still be failing to understand that the issue is not the accuracy or credibility of the sources themselves, but the fact that it is dishonest to misrepresent what they say. Frankly, the seriousness of the issue, the repeat offences, the failure to properly address the accusation and the baseless accusations of bad faith in return incline me towards a block. Falsifying sources simply cannot be tolerated on Wiktionary if we're going to have any credibility as a resource. Theknightwho (talk) 20:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Just saying, but in case you missed this, there's also this. Relevant quote about *ȷ́ʰárati:

"Having the PIIr entry read "Rix derives the verb from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰérm̥-ti ~ *ǵʰr̥m-énti / *ǵʰr̥m-tór ~ *ǵʰr̥m-n̥tór" is completely misleading." ... "What is actually given by LIV at p.178 is: Präsens *ĝʰR̥-né/n-H-"

(yes, that still needs to be cleaned up, but there are several roots to disentangle) Exarchus (talk) 19:11, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

There's also Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/Reconstruction#Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/Háȷ́ʰāȷ́ʰaršt, where victar made it clear that despite this discussion, he sees nothing wrong with putting a citation at the end of a sentence that is not fully supported by the cited sources (and may even be contradicted by them). I can only assume victar is planning to keep at this practice.--Urszag (talk) 19:27, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The fact that Victar still sees fit to do this even after this discussion is beyond the pale for me. @Benwing2 @Surjection @Chuck Entz I intend to block Victar for a week, pending any objections - please do let me know if you have any. Theknightwho (talk) 22:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't have any objections, and in fact given what @Urszag said just above, I think a longer block might be in order. Misrepresenting cited sources is a serious issue and doubling down when confronted with the problem does not instill confidence. Benwing2 (talk) 22:43, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I am also reminded of Victar once altering the vowel of a reconstruction given by two sources to a phonemically different vowel. Victar still retained the two citations to support his altered form *fellō even though the two sources explicitly said *fillō. Discussion of this incident did not find Victar's alteration of the reconstruction to be warranted. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:06, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I also think Victar/Sokkjo should be more careful with references. Examples where I recently noticed that he used references to support reconstructions that are very far removed from what is actually in those references are *gʰrem- (which has been thoroughly cleaned up) and *ǵéwseti (which still has many problems). —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 22:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I should add that I generally think he does great work, but there are too many cases where he slips up and then refuses to admit a mistake. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 22:44, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

If a statement is followed by an inline citation, then that statement should be accurate to what the cited work says. It’s fine if an editor wishes to contradict some (or even all) the cited sources, but they should make it clear that they are doing so and, ideally, explain their reasoning. Nicodene (talk) 23:22, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I will pile on and say that yes, it is important that we do not make claims that are not present in the sources, or ascribe to sources claims that they do not make, and would support a block if an editor refuses to abide by these principles. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:29, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Generally, this should be obvious. There are times when certain information has to be extrapolated from sources, but as stated above, it should be clear, and Victar's work above is fairly clearly across the line for me. Vininn126 (talk) 20:32, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I think he justly asserted that it is only to be taken to the entries, since it is obvious that he knows the lines. It is just quite challenging an art to clarify in each footnote and referenced sentence in what respect exactly, without also loosing the line of thought of what one actually wanted to do, the citation – which might not even be directly in view, amongst dozens of other ones in view and in mind – corresponds to the points made by the editor(s), suffocating his creativity, which does not arise from a dichotomic phenomonology differentiating conclusions experienced in references and additions to them assessed for Wiktionary, but on the contrary from the combination of all material. Fay Freak (talk) 20:47, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it is obvious that he knows the lines, given the persistent evidence he is willing to cross them: this looks like a real disagreement to me. If it's too difficult to place inline citations accurately, there's no obligation to use them as opposed to citing relevant sources as general references in a "Further reading" section.--Urszag (talk) 21:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

This is a good summary. There's no need to becry a limitation of editors' creativity when we are first and foremost a scholarly source. Vininn126 (talk) 21:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

If one wishes to write a sentence that is only partly supported by a source, one can simply start the sentence with whatever is true to that source, add the inline reference at that point, and then for the rest of the sentence continue with one’s own ideas. Nicodene (talk) 17:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, to me blocking Victar for a week seems mostly counter-productive, to solve this for the long run we should probably add a section to WT:REF, approved by community consesus through a formal vote, where we have a clear and specific description of where to place references in sentences, on the steps of w:WP:INTEGRITY which Urszag mentioned on the PII RFD discussion. Catonif (talk) 16:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn’t have blocked Victar had they not decided to keep defending it in a current discussion at WT:RFDR, which makes it ongoing disruption; as Caoimhin ceallach put it there, It is ludicrous that we are arguing about this. If Victar had shown any kind of willingness to correct the issue it would be different, but the fact is that they haven’t, and instead they decided to keep defending it, wasting everyone else’s time.

I do agree with adding this as a formal policy, though. Theknightwho (talk) 17:19, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I would support such a vote. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:26, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Seeking volunteers to join several of the movement’s committees

Each year, typically from October through December, several of the movement’s committees seek new volunteers.

Read more about the committees on their Meta-wiki pages:

• Affiliations Committee (AffCom)
• Ombuds commission (OC)
• Case Review Committee (CRC)

Applications for the committees open on 16 October 2024. Applications for the Affiliations Committee close on 18 November 2024, and applications for the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee close on 2 December 2024. Learn how to apply by visiting the appointment page on Meta-wiki. Post to the talk page or email cst@wikimedia.org with any questions you may have.

For the Committee Support team,

-- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

• I'll do it! Erp1039 (talk) 23:22, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Cleanup of interwiki links

I wish to request some cleanup for the appendices and Wiktionary namespaces relating to how interwiki links are handled. many of these pages have interwiki links still present at the bottom of the page. these should be moved to Wikidata, and I am dumbfounded how they managed to remain here in 2024.

if any experienced scripters know how to find all the pages that have these interwiki, please feel free to help! Juwan (talk) 10:50, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, how interwiki links are created and stored at Wikidata is different from how it is at other sister projects. See d:Wikidata:Wiktionary. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:48, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@Theknightwho I want to know what was the reasoning for this diff. the page remained fine because it was linked on Wikidata, showing other wikis either way. Juwan (talk) 17:53, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@JnpoJuwan Alright, fair enough. My bad. Theknightwho (talk) 18:00, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Changing the default skin to Vector 2022

I've been personally using Vector 2022 for a little while and enjoying it a lot. I'm curious whether we can reach consensus to enable it as the default skin across the site, and reap a number of UX benefits — namely:

• The Vector 2022 TOC is objectively better than Vector's since it doesn't push the content down.
• Customizable text size and width.
• Dark mode is supported out of the box, and with MediaWiki:Gadget-Palette.css and MediaWiki:Gadget-AutoContrastFixer.js, it works pretty well with our templates.

That's a purely objective comparison, since I think both skins are very attractive in terms of appearance. What do you think? Ioaxxere (talk) 04:28, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

We had this discussion before and a bunch of people objected to Vector 2022. IMO the biggest problem is the waste of horizontal space taken up by the two sidebars. In comparison, Vector 2010 has only one sidebar of smaller width than either of the two Vector 2022 sidebars. You can hide the Tools sidebar on the right, but then, it seems, you don't have easy access to things like User contributions. And if you "hide" the table of contents on the left, the width doesn't get reclaimed; instead you just get a big blank space on the left. Benwing2 (talk) 04:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Actually, if you clear the sidebars, set the text size to "small", and set the width to "wide", you can get more horizontal space than you can in Vector. You're right that this comes at the cost of additional clicks for some things, but I personally haven't found that to be an issue. Ioaxxere (talk) 05:40, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It isn't ready. The last point also comes across as a bit disingenuous to me, because the option to enable dark mode isn't even shown to users (when I last tried). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:39, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

When I've tried to use Vector 2022, drawn in by the prospect of dark mode (I have alternatively considered porting Wikipedia's Dark Mode gadget over to here...), assuming that I'll adapt to the new locations of things if I use it enough, the thing that most immediately made me switch back to Vector 2010 was that at the level of zoom I use, neither the TOC nor the Tools bars were visible, so the TOC and QQ were inaccessible. I see that if I zoom out, they become visible. It is annoying that this site does not just display differently in different skins, it also displays the same skin radically differently depending on your level of zoom and factors like whether you're accessing the mobile version of the site from a computer (where you get the Citations tab/link) or from an actual mobile (on which the Citations tab is absent). (Personally, I also like that in Vector 2010 the TOC is a different background/colour than the entry, whereas in Vector 2022, at least in dark mode, the TOC and the Tools and the entry all have the same unseparated black background. I assume some custom css or even an improvement to the skin itself could make the TOC have a slightly lighter background or clearer border on Vector 2022?) - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Using Vector 2022 zoomed out enough to see the TOC and Tools bars, I'm not impressed with the amount of wasted space (although wasted space is an issue on every version/skin of our site); if I hide the "Tools" bar it is better, but then I lose the "QQ" button and have to click on the tools dropdown ever time to get to it. I would like to think this could be fixed by some css or js change to put the "QQ" link into the same top-bar as the "Read - Edit - View History" links, like is done in Vector 2010, but I don't know. - -sche (discuss) 21:30, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Punjabi Infinitives

Pinging Punjabi group (Notifying AryamanA, Kutchkutch, Svartava, AryamanA, Kutchkutch, Notevenkidding): and @RonnieSingh, عُثمان, OblivionKhorasan, ChromeBones (and others are welcome to comment on this).

Hi everyone, I wanted to have this discussion on Punjabi infinitives, and just understand everyone's thoughts.

Currently there is a difference between Punjabi infinitives with verbs which end in -ā in Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi. From my view, in Pakistani Punjabi (based on Lahori Punjabi), such verbs have the infinitive -āṇā آݨا (āṇā) / ਆਣਾ (āṇā), whereas Indian Punjabi tends to employ the infinitive –āuṇā آؤݨا (ā'oṇā) / ਆਉਣਾ (āuṇā). There is also another infinitive stem which ends in -āvaṇā آوَݨا (āvaṇā) / ਆਵਣਾ (āvaṇā) which is quite common in Pakistani Punjabi. How should this be dealt with?

It's also important to mention that the because of this, Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi conjugation templates currently have differences. نعم البدل (talk) 10:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I would use ਆਉਣ / آوݨ since this form is used in most dialects (it is not always the same form, in Western dialects it can be the direct case form but in Eastern dialects it is oblique case). It is also consistent with the form used in Salahuddin’s dictionary and the PILAC dictionary. عُثمان (talk) 13:42, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I believe that maintaining the difference in the two scripts is necessary so as to emphasise the pluricentricity of Punjabi. A usage note can be provided to better explain this. Having consistency between scripts erases the actual conventions the different groups follow. I vote to keep the separate templates and to add a suitable usage not on both sides. RonnieSingh (talk) 16:17, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I should add that if the two scripts use predominantly the same forms, it is generally better to use a single module and have it conditionalize as appropriate. Otherwise you have a lot of duplicated code. This has been discussed before in the context of how to avoid duplication of definitions. Benwing2 (talk) 20:49, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Wait so how exactly are you supposed to avoid duplication of definitions? —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 01:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2024/April#Punjabi_vs._"Western_Panjabi". This was the BP thread where this was discussed in detail. Benwing2 (talk) 03:06, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I second this, yes. Just to conditionalise the same module. RonnieSingh (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Is -āvaṇā آوَݨا / ਆਵਣਾ related to the double causative ending -ਵਾਉਣਾ as at ਬੁਲਵਾਉਣਾ (bulvāuṇā) and comparable to Hindi/Urdu -वाना (-vānā), or are they distinct? Kutchkutch (talk) 12:35, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

No, they are distinct عُثمان (talk) 12:56, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Category: adjectives with the same spelling as their corresponding adverbs (homographs)

I am referring to forms such as cowardly, but I am not knowledgable enough to do it myself. JMGN (talk) 11:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

What if only non-standard spellings are used?

What to do if non-standard spellings are there, but no standard spelled form is known in use? I came across this problem while creating entries for dialectal forms for ankle malleolus in Norwegian, and all of them are in standard spelling would be compounds of okle + kule. And this word itself (oklekule) is pretty normal to expect to find in some or another book or, in the worst case, in some random blog. But how surprised I were to find the word oklekule not attested nowhere! Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Tollef Salemann Ideally, pick one of the nonstandard spellings (whichever is most common) as the "canonical" form that hosts the definition, and make the other spellings be alternative forms using {{alt form}} (or {{alt spell}} if the pronunciations are the same, but it looks in this case like they aren't). Alternatively, you can host the same definition(s), if short enough, in more than one place and identify each one as having alternative forms using {{alt}} under an "Alternative forms" heading; but that risks duplication. If the prescribed ("standard") spelling is completely unattested, it probably shouldn't be present as a lemma, but if it's rare but attested, it can be defined as an alt form and given labels like {{lb|nn|prescribed|but|rare}} or similar. Benwing2 (talk) 20:56, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The most common form is a good idea for simple words. This one is made of two words, both with very obvious standard spelling, which should only be oklekule. Maybe there are any other examples of such words in other languages? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:23, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Old English editors seem to have chosen to just use the standard form: if I'm remembering correctly, entries with "ie"-spellings such as ielfen have been created freely here on Wiktionary based on etymological/inter-dialectal correspondences regardless of whether that particular spelling is attested or not (this diphthong was only a distinct sound in early West Saxon).--Urszag (talk) 21:04, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with that practice for Old English but I think that extinct languages are a special case because we necessarily have gaps in attestation. For living languages that aren't LDL, if a word isn't attested it probably isn't accidental. Benwing2 (talk) 21:09, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Tollef Salemann: What about oklekul? Chuck Entz (talk) 22:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The mystery is solved! Tollef Salemann (talk) 08:15, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Users' Birthdays

Hello,

You are welcome to drop your birthday on User:Flame, not lame/Birthdays. Please do so in chronological order, and do not record others' birthdays without their permission.

Thank you Flame, not lame (Don't talk to me.) 22:56, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It’s up to users, but to me this seems like an inadvisable idea for data protection and privacy reasons. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:09, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

That is valid. I will not write about other users without their permission. Flame, not lame (Don't talk to me.) 00:43, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

What, you wouldn't support a user page where Wiktionary editors write their mothers' maiden names? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Whenever a user submits an edit on Wikimedia, he or she irrevocably agrees to release his or her text under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License and GFDL. Flame, not lame (Don't talk to me.) 11:17, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Cognates in etymologies for New Indo-Aryan languages

Pinging @Pulimaiyi, @Svartava, @Kutchkutch (and anyone else is free to chime in!). So, we have some NIA entries with massive cognate lists. When the ancestor of these NIA words (usually a Prakrit or Apabhramsa word) has a complete entry with descendants list, I believe the cognate list becomes redundant. I think then we should remove the long list in favour of centralising the information in the Prakrit/Apabhramsa entry. I just did this at Hindi बोलना (bolnā), see the edit history for an example. Is this acceptable for you all? —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 01:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• This has already been discussed a few times. For a related discussion see

Talk:भावजय#Alternative_scripts_in_etymologies

The consensus seems to be that in most cases, if the ancestor has a complete entry with descendants list, then most cognates can be removed from the cognates list.

• Perhaps Early New Indo-Aryan languages should be exempt since it is helpful to have a comparison with other contemporaneous historical chronolects.
• If it is comparatively advantageous to have a small list of cognates to highlight certain important cognates, then that could potentially be allowable.

• Certain important cognates would be geographically nearby languages, cognates within the same subfamily or cognates that share a certain typological feature that most other cognates do not have.

A cognates list on a Marathi entry could be entirely omitted or be limited to show:

Varhadi & Konkani (to compare other Southern Indo-Aryan languages)

Gujarati (to compare the neighbouring state language)

Ahirani (which is transitional between Southern Indo-Aryan and Western Indo-Aryan)

or Hindi/Urdu (to compare with the regional lingua franca).

• Deciding which cognates are comparatively advantageous could possibly lead to some sort of bias.

Kutchkutch (talk) 02:21, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, for pages like बोलना (bolnā) where the lists can be very long for NIA terms, we could remove all cognates since a complete list for that would be found on the ancestor page in that case.

I also agree with Kutchkutch that for Early NIA cognate lists could be exempt because that is a very interesting.

The listing of other "interesting" cognates on NIA entries could be on the editor's discretion but in general we could move towards completely avoiding long and regular/expected cognate lists since that would be completely available now in the centralized descendants section of the ancestor page. Svartava (talk) 03:39, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

change in color to nyms, usex, affixusex

@Ioaxxere It looks like you changed the color of usexes, nyms and such without a prior discussion. Lots of people commented in Discord, some liking it, some not. IMO in general these sorts of highly visible changes need discussion beforehand so they don't come as surprises. @AG202 asked me to revert it pending discussion, which seems reasonable to me, so I have gone ahead and done it. This revert is without prejudice to the change itself; it's just to encourage discussion to make sure there's a consensus in favor of this change. Benwing2 (talk) 05:31, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

The change in question was this: [1] Benwing2 (talk) 05:32, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I'd oppose such a change until we have ample discussion from other language communities, especially those that don't use the Latin script. Font color alterations aren't really that preferable for ex: Korean, especially when compared to the blue and red (and yellow/orange) text that often exists on the same line. Also, I'm concerned about accessibility. Let's please make sure to run major changes like this with everyone, as I've mentioned many times before. AG202 (talk) 05:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I personally have no strong feelings. It's a small change and for me, barely perceptible. If it increases readability, why not? Vininn126 (talk) 09:15, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

OK, I copied some of the comments from Discord so far:

• Vininn126 (not Polish) — Today at 1:36 AM does anyone have an example what it looked like?
• User:LunaEatsTuna (*tablet*) — Today at 1:53 AM (posted screenshot)
• Vininn126 (not Polish) — Today at 1:57 AM Thanks
• [1:57 AM] I hardly see a difference
• [1:57 AM] I do, but hardly
• Svartava — Today at 1:59 AM As a user of eye comfort/night light, I also hardly see a difference and can't say which I find better
• User:LunaEatsTuna (*tablet*) — Today at 2:01 AM For me it is easier to ignore as the text is a different color Which I kinda vibe with since, at a glance, I can see and register all of the senses first Makes it less clutter-y for me
• >User:LunaEatsTuna (*tablet*) For me it is easier to ignore as the text is a different color Which I kinda vibe with since, at a glance, I can see and register all of the senses first Makes it less clutter-y for me
• AryamanA — Today at 2:02 AM yeah i liked this as well
• Soap — Today at 2:44 AM i've had usexes in red for about a year now. it makes them stand out
• [2:44 AM] so i like the idea of them being in a different color. maybe if we don't make it default, we can at least pass around an eaasily copied line of CSS code to do it
• hythonia — Today at 3:39 AM perhaps usexes could use the <marquee> tag

Benwing2 (talk) 09:18, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

OK, here is earlier commentary. Note, this (and the above commentary) is all in the #general channel.

• Stujul — Yesterday at 3:46 PM Usexes are grey now? (:open_mouth: emoticon)
• User:LunaEatsTuna (*phone alt*) — Yesterday at 3:50 PM I just saw that myself! (:sob: emoticon)
• [3:50 PM] I thought it was manual.
• >I thought it was manual.
• Stujul — Yesterday at 3:56 PM What do you mean manual?
• >Stujul What do you mean manual?
• User:LunaEatsTuna (*phone alt*) — Yesterday at 3:59 PM That someone specifically made it grey themselves.
• [3:59 PM] With a template or wikitext.
• Stujul — Yesterday at 3:59 PM Ohh
• User:LunaEatsTuna (*phone alt*) — Yesterday at 4:06 PM Honestly I love the grey text
• Stujul — Yesterday at 4:08 PM Yes I like it too
• Soap — Yesterday at 5:20 PM my css overrides it
• [5:21 PM] btw, i kept this quiet because nobody else is complaining, so it might be just me. but i noticed a few days ago that on m y tablet, all links are underlined and blue
• [5:21 PM] redlinks, bluelinks etc ... all appear the same. on both wiktionary and wikipedia
• [5:21 PM] no Prefs setting can override it. its only on the tablet
• [5:21 PM] that t ablet is old so it might be a browser issue
• AryamanA — Yesterday at 7:32 PM am i losing my mind or are usexes light gray now
• >AryamanA am i losing my mind or are usexes light gray now
• Ser be etre shi — Yesterday at 8:01 PM there's been plenty of comments about this change. yes it's a change (:thumbsup: reaction by AryamanA)
• benwing — Yesterday at 11:28 PM Ioaxxere changed it in [2]
• [11:28 PM] honestly i think he should have posted to the BP before doing this
• AryamanA — Yesterday at 11:53 PM i see!
• [11:54 PM] i think it's pretty good actually, just was wondering when it happened
• AG202 — Today at 12:27 AM can we please revert until discussion has been had
• [12:29 AM] that is one of the things that should've been brought up to BP
• [12:32 AM] affecting every language without discussion is exactly something that I've brought up as frustrating before

Benwing2 (talk) 09:50, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• color is of course good, WT is very black and white. cnrtl uses color well. Anyway, I suggest going even further - using rainbow coloring, or flashing text, or making a ding sound when the cursor hovers over it, or having homonyms fly around the screen on a roflcopter, and hyponyms spiralling in from each corner of the screen to the tune of Bach's Orchestral Suite no. 1 in C major BWV 1066. P. Sovjunk (talk) 09:26, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

As seen in the Discord discussion above, I like the change. It helps differentiate the usexes from the definitions. Though, if it is possible, I would like it to be an optional change, as it may be hard to read for some users.

Stujul (talk) 12:17, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah this kind of stuff should really be discussed on-wiki rather than just on Discord; the Discordification of the community is an unfortunate development of the past couple of years. Major changes should always require on-site discussion. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:29, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't have strong views about the colour change, but agree that this sort of change should be discussed on-wiki. (Updated: sorry, I thought the colour change referred to was the one relating to boxes. I didn't see the colour change in question, so I reserve comment.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

No worries. I'm glad everyone was able to try it out for the couple hours that it was live and form an opinion. We'll have to see whether anyone has strong feelings, although in my opinion it is barely perceptible but serves to emphasize the definitions a little bit more (it's inspired by M-W's site, e.g. [3]). Btw, @AG202, Stujul, with regards to accessibility, the text colour achieves a AAA WCAG rating as seen here so I don't expect that to be an issue. Ioaxxere (talk) 15:55, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

First of all, why wasn't this discussed on Wikt? Second, what about langs that don't have usexs like English (eg Chinese)? Are those accessible? CitationsFreak (talk) 17:15, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

No one should be making any sitewide changes without on-wiki discussion. It's incredibly poor judgement to even think that's a good idea. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:01, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

@CitationsFreak: Chinese has its own usex system through Module:zh-usex so it isn't affected. Interestingly, they have it so the text is black but the romanization is grey. The shade of grey used there is very hard to read in dark mode, so in that regard it isn't accessible, but that's straightforward to fix. Ioaxxere (talk) 18:26, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Blotto's game

User:SemperBlotto may be gone but I am negotiating with IFDB to store his zombie game forever [4]. Hint: don't go down the stairs at the beginning. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:74C9:3FA9:762E:473D 18:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Who are you, IP? P. Sovjunk (talk) 18:56, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

It's User:Equinox as the IP claims (and likely is IMO, but obviously it can't be proved without check-user). Svartava (talk) 19:09, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought Equinox retired. He should get a new account P. Sovjunk (talk) 19:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

The IPs who are actually good editors generally don't want to create account(s), and there is no way he has not thought about that yet... Svartava (talk) 19:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

So, how does one win the game? I wore the bikini, but it didn't help. P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:56, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Isan Romanization

Should Isan be romanized as Lao (to which they are most closely related) or as Thai?. Rodrigo5260 (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

'Wikidata item' link is moving, finally.

Hello everyone, I previously wrote on the 27th September to advise that the Wikidata item sitelink will change places in the sidebar menu, moving from the General section into the In Other Projects section. The scheduled rollout date of 04.10.2024 was delayed due to a necessary request for Mobile/MinervaNeue skin. I am happy to inform that the global rollout can now proceed and will occur later today, 22.10.2024 at 15:00 UTC-2. Please let us know if you notice any problems or bugs after this change. There should be no need for null-edits or purging cache for the changes to occur. Kind regards, -Danny Benjafield (WMDE) 11:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Appendix-only entries in categories

In my opinion, appendix-only entries (entries that do not meet the usual WT:CFI) in languages that are themselves not appendix-only should not appear in main categories, yet they currently apparently do. If these entries don't meet WT:CFI and have a spot in the main body of the dictionary, then they also shouldn't appear on category lists that ought to be dedicated to that main body. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Not really supportive of this. The number of appendix entries in, say Cat:English lemmas is minimal (121 out of 778573, or less than 0.02%), and the vast majority are either snowclone entries, which are hard enough for our readers to discover as it is (so why make it harder?), and Minecraft jargon, which ought to be merged into a single glossary-style page at Appendix:Minecraft rather than being laid out as individual entries (and then they disappear from the categories anyway). This, that and the other (talk) 05:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Linking Philippine place names

Followed through from User talk:Mlgc1998#Consensus on PH places:

I have introduced a way to link Philippine place name entires with each other, by utilizing {{meronyms}}, {{coordinate terms}}, and {{hyponyms}} on each definition line. Examples are in Camp One, Marcos, and Atok. This has numerous advantages:

• It is easier to see which is it referring to (not split up into different headings)
• It clearly states hierarchy (purok/sitio < barangay < (district, if applicable) < municipality/city < province) (sometimes, purok < sitio, like Gusaran)
• It can delineate from a general into a specific barangay (eg. Quirino Hill & Bayan Park)
• It fits neatly with other symantic relations like {{synonyms}} (eg. Pongayan)
• It is easy to just collapse them and make them hidden.

However, I was pointed out by @Mlgc1998 that these should go instead to the "See also" portion. Examples on how they arranged it are in Paco, Malate, and Port Area.

While I am open to accepting it, I have some reservations:

• Will it confuse readers that they are split up, especially on different places with the same names?
• What about the most commonly used name Poblacion? Will there just be endless scrolling under "See also"?
• How can it delineate hierarchy, knowing that people outside the Philippines doesn't instinctively know that barangays are meronyms of cities/municipalities, sitios are meronyms of barangays, some puroks are meronyms of sitios while others are meronyms of barangays, etc.?
• What about the name for a group of barangays (like Upper Bauko and Special Geographic Area)?
• How can it delineate from a general into a specific barangay?

Looking forward for input from others. — 🍕 Yivan000 ^view_talk 08:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

To streamline the process, I have made {{list:places in the Philippines/en}} which supports both options. It also eliminates the concern of upkeep, since all are editable in the module pages as opposed to each entry page.

For clarification, I am asking on which approach is better: (Camp Four used as an example)

The inline definition approach:

1. A place in bla bla bla

   Meronyms: Balococ, Benmetao, Camp 5, Camp 6, Canubas, Forestry, Gawad Kalinga, Goldstream, Lablab 1, Lablab 2, Liwliw, Manayon, Maramal, National Road — sitios of Camp Four

   Coordinate terms: Ansagan, Camp Four, Camp One, Camp Three, Nangalisan, Poblacion, San Pascual, Tabaan Norte, Tadiangan, Taloy Norte, Taloy Sur, Twin Peaks — barangays of Tuba

The 'See also' approach:

See also

• (sitios of Camp Four):
  • Balococ
  • Benmetao
  • Camp 5
  • Camp 6
  • Canubas
  • Forestry
  • Gawad Kalinga
  • Goldstream
  • Lablab 1
  • Lablab 2
  • Liwliw
  • Manayon
  • Maramal
  • National Road

   
• (barangays of Tuba):
  • Ansagan
  • Camp Four
  • Camp One
  • Camp Three
  • Nangalisan
  • Poblacion
  • San Pascual
  • Tabaan Norte
  • Tadiangan
  • Taloy Norte
  • Taloy Sur
  • Twin Peaks

   

Note also the aforementioned pros and cons from my earlier message. TY.— 🍕 Yivan000 ^view_talk 09:34, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Towards a Standardization of Inflection Tables

Currently, there seems to be no policy on what inflection tables should look like on Wiktionary (the only thing I found was WT:Templates#Inflection-table templates, which only states they should preferably be collapsible). Looking through Category:Inflection-table_templates_by_language, this causes a great variety in how inflections are presented. This is not necessarily a problem, but some do pose some issues. I would like to propose a few points to improve the reading experience of readers, without inhibiting editors' freedom in choosing a table style too much.

• Inflection tables should not have a fixed width. This is mainly an issue for mobile users. Some templates use a fixed width, which can cause the table to exceed the screen size, making you able to scroll the entire page sideways. See for example {{lv-decl-possessive pronoun}}. Others set the width to be a percentage of the screen size, which often makes the table very narrow on mobile screens (for example: {{huu-decl-noun}}). This can be fixed by using max-width instead of just width.

Side-note: there are also some templates that use width:100%, such as {{da-noun-infl-base}}. I don't personally like it, but I suppose there is no problem with this.

• Inflection tables should comply with accessibility contrast requirements. Some templates use background colors that make the text quite hard to read. For example: {{eo-conj}} (see here). I believe we should strive for WCAG AAA compliance for black text, and WCAG AA for links (since AAA is then impossible). I made a table with the darkest colors one can use as backgrounds in several colors here. One can also use tools such as [5] and [6] to check compliance.
• Inflection tables should be readable in both light and dark mode. Most inflection tables currently have hard-coded colors. This is understandable, as dark mode is quite a recent development for Wiktionary, but it usually makes them very hard to read in dark mode. Editors should use colors from MediaWiki:Gadget-Palette.css (which, in my opinion, could use some more colors) or use a custom style sheet, so that the colors can be varied between the themes. I understand this is already being worked on.

I am hoping these points are uncontroversial, so that they can be made into policy. Please share your thoughts and opinions about this. Stujul (talk) 16:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Proposal 1 feels uncontrovserial, and I support that.

There has been some discussion over the Discord over the inflection table colors. I know that @Theknightwho has expressed supprt in changing the inflection table due to accessibility, while @Thadh is against that due to the cultures that speak the langs having some sort of connection to the specific color of the table. CitationsFreak (talk) 17:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as CF says, the second change is controversial. Having a defined set of colours to choose from means that the various templates cannot be distinguished as well, which in turn means various languages will be the same. This is a problem. Some people think it isn't, but people actually like to see their language distinguished in some way or another from the mass of tables, and usually this distinction is preferred in the colour of the template, which is then usually shared among related languages. Boo to uniformity! Thadh (talk) 18:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

To be clear: I am not pleading for full uniformity. I have not proposed a "defined set of colours to choose from", I only said that the colours chosen should comply with these contrast requirements. And this restriction is not as restrictive as it may seem: in fact, most templates I've seen already comply with these contrast regulations.

I do agree that the variety that we have is a good thing, but accessibility should never be compromised on.

Stujul (talk) 14:37, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

1. is not straightforward. The best solution I can come up with is making the table scroll horizontally instead of the entire page. Forcing the table to be narrow or wrapping words cannot be considered an acceptable solution.

2. and 3. are much easier if all inflection and other language-specific templates used TemplateStyles. Converting templates to use it is relatively straightforward, but tedious and highly repetitive, yet difficult to automate. I've ensured the Finnish, Ingrian and Votic inflection templates (unless I forgot some) use TemplateStyles and support dark mode correctly. The end result is much better than what can be done by sticking strictly to the palette. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 22:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Generally I'm in favor of standardization in this respect. I would like to add that it would be nice to standardize the colors somewhat, because some colors (IMO) look nicer than others. I particularly like the blue theme used for Slavic and certain other languages, and I don't really like tables that use lots of different contrasting colors, rather than using shades of the same color (it looks gaudy and probably isn't accessibility-compliant for people who are colorblind). Benwing2 (talk) 08:12, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Rather than uniformity, I personally would prefer to see some easily noticeable difference between the declension tables of different languages, which are co-located on the same page. It happened more than once that I landed on a weird looking declension table and looked at it in confusion for a few seconds, before finally realizing that it's just a different language. So I think that having slightly different background colors of at least the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian declension tables could help to resolve this at least for me. But I understand that the others are probably in favor of exactly the same uniform blue theme everywhere for the sake of uniformity. --Ssvb (talk) 00:25, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with different languages having different appearance, but CAT:Inflection-table templates by language currently has 397 subcategories (I hope it's just a beginning!), so there will be a point where having all of the languages easily recognizable by appearance will become too hard to achieve. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm talking about closely related languages with many cognates and identical spelling of lemmas, which tend to share the same wiki pages. Such as the East Slavic languages group. It doesn't matter if any of the other nearly 400 languages outside of that group happen to share the same color, because they almost never clash in practice. For example, have a look at the pages гора or лук. Bulgarian and Macedonian have different styles of the declension tables and the number of cases is different, so any confusion is less unlikely. But Russian and Ukrainian have nearly identically shaped tables. And лось is a purely East Slavic page. Different background colors of the declension tables would help to visually differentiate them. --Ssvb (talk) 14:05, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

This is honestly a good argument for the controversial splitting of pages by language, as it shouldn't be necessary to be able to differentiate languages by how the inflection table looks haha. But let's not open that can of worms.

Stujul (talk) 16:27, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

It may not be straightforward or have an ideal solution, but anything is better than scrolling the entire page. I think it would be good to have a guideline with some "approved" examples of inflection tables with good styling practice so that things like this don't spread from people copying other templates.

Stujul (talk) 16:26, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I would argue that forcing words to wrap is a worse solution than having the entire page scroll. Both are terrible, but the former is simply worse. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Fully supportive of all points. To take one example relating to point 2, the Latin noun and adjective declension tables {{la-ndecl}} and {{la-adecl}} are notorious for using, well, questionable colour choices, but to me the bigger problem with them is the terrible contrast in the header cells. Not to mention that the look and feel is totally different to the verb conjugation table {{la-conj}}!

I feel that, even with a standardisation effort, there is definitely still room for individuality in terms of distinctive colour palettes for certain languages and language families, as Thadh mentions.

My suggestion is to come up with two broad "model layouts" for inflection tables: (1) a "narrow" layout for situations where there are few inflections (e.g. German {{de-ndecl}}, Celtic mutation boxes, Tocharian {{txb-decl-noun}}, ...) - this would not have a set width at all (simply adapting to fit its content), would likely use 100% font size, and may be non-collapsible when it only has a handful of rows; and (2) a "wide" layout which occupies the full width of the page on desktop devices (e.g. most Romance verb conjugations) - this may use 90% font size. This, that and the other (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, those tables would benefit from an overhaul. About the different look: it would probably make sense to encourage editors to keep the style the same across tables in the same language. I have seen multiple examples where this isn't the case, which goes against the idea of languages being recognizable through their table style.

The idea of your two layouts sounds good, but I'm not sure I completely follow it. How would these behave on mobile? Also, I'm not sure that changing the font size is a good idea.

Stujul (talk) 16:35, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Support - I don't have much to add here, as these proposals all seem completely reasonable. Theknightwho (talk) 14:41, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Stujul: Thank you for pointing this out. I've already fixed dozens of inflection tables using hard-coded widths, but there are a lot of obscure ones left. When it comes to using NavFrames, there are only two sensible options: not specifying the width, which makes it take up the whole screen width, or setting max-width: 40em (or a similar number) which tries to do the same thing but stops early if it reaches the specified size (there's also the issue of overflow but that's another story).

As for colours: your table is really cool but I don't think we should ever use 100% saturated colours for backgrounds because they are blindingly bright. I would encourage everyone to use the Palette colours, for which you can see the accessibility information here. @Thadh, the goal is not uniformity but convenience, because I can write <span style="color: var(--wikt-palette-blue)">some text</span> and my text ends up blue and accessible everywhere with practically no effort on my part. Anyone is welcome to contribute new colours although ideally we should avoid having tons of almost-identical colours. Ioaxxere (talk) 15:38, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: I think the main problem has never been light/dark mode but whether or not pastel colours should be mandatory. I think doing that would be a grave mistake. But other than that, I'm fine with there being light/dark mode variants of colours, as long as they are still recognisable as the intended colour. Thadh (talk) 15:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that using max-width together with style="overflow:auto" seems to work the best for most cases. Maybe also "white-space:nowrap" to prevent the wrapping as Surjection mentioned above, but I've not seen that in any template, so maybe there is a good reason to not use it.

Maybe my table is not as useful as I'd hoped it to be then haha. In any case, I like the convenience of the palette as you mention, but I don't really like the palette as it currently is. There seems to not really be any structure to the chosen colors. It could benefit from organizing the palette colors by use-case, as it seems to be on ru:w:MediaWiki:Gadget-common-site.css, on which it is based. In the context of inflection tables, this could mean specifying colors for the header and background.

Stujul (talk) 16:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The palette is simply way too small for it to be used more widely in inflection templates. At the very least we need a graded color system where we have a hue + different levels of brightness, e.g. blue-1 to blue-5 where blue-1 has the least contrast (the lightest in light mode, the darkest in dark mode) and blue-5 has the most (the closest to a pure blue in both). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:11, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: See WT:Information desk/2024/October#Request assistance in modifying the styles to accommodate dark mode where @Ryanlo713 has compiled quite a long list of candidates. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:24, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Support I must support your proposal, as it has consistently been a source of annoyance for me. What are the steps we can take to implement this, and how can we proceed?

Σ>―(〃°ω°〃)♡→L.C.D.（-{に〇〇する}-） 14:52, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@Stujul, CitationsFreak, Thadh, Surjection, Benwing2, Ssvb, Ioaxxere, Ryanlo713 I've had a red hot go at mocking up a standard design template. Take a look at User:This, that and the other/inflection table standardisation and share your thoughts, in particular, whether you prefer Style A or Style B. Surjection is right that the Wiktionary palette will need to be expanded, but I tried to do the best with what is currently on offer. (I might not have ready access to a computer in the coming week or so, so replies may be delayed.) This, that and the other (talk) 10:42, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

My two cents: we want some kind of cell borders, but their color should be relatively muted. I'm not convinced that text is better centered than not. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:47, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Support Thanks for this. I'm working on extracting conjugation data for offline viewing, and it's a pain to adapt the parser to the various table formats. Having a more standardized format will help. But perhaps this proposal is mostly related to layout/colors, without touching the table structure itself? - Jberkel 11:10, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that we want cell borders; they strike me particularly necessary (or at least, their absence is particularly confusing) when tables have multiple cells (rows) in one column correspond to one (larger, merged) cell in another column, like this (apologies that I can't off the top of my head think of a local, Wiktionary example that does this in the "contents" as opposed to just the "labels" section of the table, but I think they exist): if the merged cell has multiple words in it, then without cell borders it may be impossible to tell they belong to one multi-row merged cell as opposed to separate cells/rows... - -sche (discuss) 18:00, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere, This, that and the other perhaps not appropriate, but relevant: I was trying to make a table with params for grk greek periods with lang params (to apply specials, like colours), number columns num=sg or num=pl genders (with outer and inner borders applied), dat=0 (no dative)... or acc=- or acc=0 to make every cell, every case visible or not, with dashes (for empty), grey expected but not attested, asterisks etc. notes= User:Sarri.greek/template4 (the first empty table Module:User:Sarri.greek/grk-nouns-decl). for forms: Template:User:Sarri.greek/lse. Sorry: I do not know how to write templates or modules. Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 12:22, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I prefer Style B as it makes it clearer which row and column a certain word belongs to, especially when there are multiple words in a single cell.

Your use of a lighter text color against a darker background is something I had not considered, and I do like the look of it. But it does bring me to another question: some templates use links in the headers to clarify their meaning (for example {{nl-conj-wk}} and {{sv-decl-noun}}). I think this is good practice as many readers will not be familiar with all the grammar terms, but it does make it harder to pick good background colors. How do you think we should handle this?

Stujul (talk) 13:44, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it is okay to link the column and row headers even if they are in a light colour (so the links won't look any different from normal text, but can still be distinguished on hover or touch). It's not like the links are anything exciting - they only go to our glossary entries for "singular", "nominative" etc. If readers don't notice that these are links they're not really missing out on anything.

I tend to share a preference for Style B too. I'll see what I can do about developing an implementation ... but as mentioned, it may have to wait until after the next week-and-a-bit. This, that and the other (talk) 01:07, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I mainly ask this because the Wikipedia manual of style states: "Refrain from implementing colored links that may impede user ability to distinguish links from regular text, or color links for purely aesthetic reasons." I know we are not Wikipedia, but it makes sense for such rules to also apply on Wiktionary, in my opinion. My worry is mainly that it would create inconsistency and unpredictability between tables, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid.

Stujul (talk) 11:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: I don't really like the inverted text in your first two tables. But I really like the current look of {{it-conj}}, {{la-conj}}, {{es-conj}}, etc. and I think we should have more of that (although they aren't dark-mode compatible just yet). BTW, I realize that there aren't a ton of Palette colours at the moment so please just let me know which ones you'd like to be added. Ioaxxere (talk) 00:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere what particularly is your concern with the inverted text? In my view, you're never going to get everyone to agree when it comes to colour, so I figure it's best to provide a wide range of options, including light text on dark backgrounds. Thadh was not in favour of enforcing the use of pastel colours, and I tend to agree with him. Some languages have long-standing colour schemes in place, with significance to national and cultural identities, and I think they would be reluctant to change them without a strong reason. This, that and the other (talk) 01:13, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I agree with @Ioaxxere about the inverted text. IMO it looks really amateurish compared with the others, and I'm not familiar with very many (if any) languages that currently use such a scheme. Benwing2 (talk) 01:21, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, if there is opposition to using inverted text, I'm not going to insist on it. I do think that providing more colour options will prevent pushback on aesthetic grounds. This, that and the other (talk) 01:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I would also add that my main motivation in creating the mockup of {{de-ndecl}} with light text on a dark background, was because the existing colour scheme seemed to me to be difficult to read, and I assumed it would not pass accessibility contrast standards. But to my surprise, the existing colour scheme of that template is fully WCAG AAA compliant (except for the blue links "indef." and "def.")! So perhaps there is less of a need for inverted text than I realised. This, that and the other (talk) 01:45, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere as far as palettes are concerned, I echo a suggestion made by Surjection earlier to have colour sets consisting of different shades of the same colour. For each available inflection table colour scheme, we need at least (1) a core colour (for header cell backgrounds), (2) a secondary shade (for use in tables like {{de-ndecl}} and {{la-adecl}} where there are two sets of headers) and potentially also (3) a harmonious, much darker shade to use for header text (in the case of light-on-dark, if we indeed want that) and perhaps for header or other cell borders (in the case of dark-on-light). This, that and the other (talk) 02:17, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

English usage examples in Translingual entries

At "+" there are several usage examples, of which "3 + 2 = 5" is Translingual, but most of the others are in English. How do we handle this? Even though it's a bit odd, I could understand that Translingual usage examples are in English because this is the English-language wiktionary. Such a policy should be mentioned on the page wiktionary:About Translingual. A second question would be: What about things that are Translingual, but not found in English? Would they get usage examples in other languages? 92.218.236.85 21:15, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Translingual is not a language, so the usage examples need to be in some language. I agree that it generally makes sense to use English, since this is the English Wiktionary, but there may be occasional reasons to depart from this principle (for example, terms that are not used in English). This, that and the other (talk) 23:35, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Why are many English surnames labelled as countable and uncountable?

We list several thousand English proper nouns as being both countable and uncountable, most of which are surnames (e.g. Selby). Maybe I'm missing something here, but I really don't follow how that makes any sense. @Donnanz seems to have made this change on a number of entries, but I don't know how widespread the practice is. Could someone please fill me in? Theknightwho (talk) 22:23, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

It only happens with proper nouns that include surnames where someone has added the plural, I don't add those myself. Usually the plural would not apply to place names. DonnanZ (talk) 22:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I have only done this in entries that include both surnames and place names. DonnanZ (talk) 23:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Countable in some senses, uncountable in others is pretty much the default for proper nouns: very few are completely impossible to pluralize, but pluralization also generally necessarily involves a change in meaning, so you could say that some senses are "uncountable". From that perspective, you could question instead why there are any labeled as only countable (or only uncountable). Overall, I would have to say that treating the countable/uncountable distinction as a lexically specific piece of information in such cases doesn't make that much sense. (This came up previously with the RFV for Latin plural forms of Oedipus, which are in fact attested because in Latin, like in English, it's not impossible to add plural endings to a proper noun.)--Urszag (talk) 23:04, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

For example: "There aren't that many people with the surname Entz" (uncountable), vs. "There aren't that many Entzes" (countable). Chuck Entz (talk) 23:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz Surely by that logic "the word happy" is an uncountable use, which doesn't really make sense to me. Definiteness doesn't make it uncountable.

@Urszag I was always under the impression that "uncountable" was being used to mean "mass noun", but are we taking it to mean "the plural is not used"? I'm not really sure that's grammatical, is it? It's just a semantic quirk that we don't usually talk about more than one of a proper noun, even though we very much can. It's very different to information, where the plural can only refer to different kinds of information, and it's grammatically incorrect to use it in any other way: compare "he gave me a glass of waters" (ungrammatical use of an uncountable noun) to "we visited three Parises" (semantically bizarre, but grammatically correct). Theknightwho (talk) 23:40, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Good point. I'm not sure whether this really falls under the definition of "uncountable". Also, on second thought, I'm not really sure whether it is ever useful to include the label "countable and uncountable" on a headword line for terms like this (or even for other terms: it seems to immediately raise the question "depending on what?"). I feel like the best thing to do is just mark any uncountable uses (if there are any) with a label on the relevant definition line. That is, I don't think there would be any loss of particularly useful information if "Russia (countable and uncountable, plural Russias)" was just replaced by "Russia (plural Russias)", although I guess you could argue that there's some small value in implying that the plural form might not be commonly used (but that would be better expressed by "usually uncountable" rather than "countable and uncountable", and it's kind of obvious from the definition of such terms that the plural might or might not be used depending on the context).--Urszag (talk) 23:48, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Urszag Yes, I'd agree with that, though I'd prefer "chiefly in the singular" or some other label implying the plural isn't usually required, even though it may be grammatically valid. I'm not sure that it's even possible to have a truly uncountable proper noun, as all nouns (countable or not) can be used uncountably in colloquial language:(e.g. "there's a piece of car over there", after a crash), and any uncountable proper noun uses I can think of fall under that usage. The thing that makes a noun uncountable (in a particular sense) is when it cannot be used countably at all, and I can't think of any examples of that. Theknightwho (talk) 00:06, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Here's an example that has something to confuse everybody: I remember an old documentary on the US Civil War that made the point that the war changed the United States from an "is" to an "are". That is, we now say the United States "is" rather than the United States "are" when talking about the country. It changed the United States from a loose collection of entities that might secede at any time to a unified entity that had to be spoken of in the singular. I'm not really sure if that supports or refutes any of the above, since it's an ad hoc bending of grammatical categories to make a point. It does highlight the pitfalls of taking specific examples too seriously. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:00, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Many more pages, like Kendall, have never had the plural added. DonnanZ (talk) 11:11, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

As an aside (not worth a topic), I now have to declare whether it's AI-generated or not when uploading an image to Wikimedia Commons. DonnanZ (talk) 09:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, regarding Wiktionary's conflation of "uncountable" and "the plural is not used": this is an issue I recall Equinox bringing up several years ago, and which I have questioned at various times since then myself (one prior discussion: 2021, when someone seems to have used "uncountable" for lack of any way to display "[is countable but] does not usually pluralize"). I support the general idea of changing things to better distinguish "is (usually) a mass noun, "we have some water"" / "is (usually) a count noun, "we have a plan B if the launch fails" (not normally "we have some plan B if the launch fails", which makes it sound like you have some of the medicine)" from "(usually) pluralizes" / "(usually) doesn't pluralize", in whatever way we can agree on. I like "chiefly in the singular", but maybe we could go even briefer: "Russia (usually singular; plural: Russias)" or something? - -sche (discuss) 05:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

It's already done for headwater (chiefly in the plural). I guess they can be tailored according to circumstance, but what about the question "How many Washingtons are there in the US?" The answer would depend on whether people or places were meant. DonnanZ (talk) 15:17, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• I have always thought that uncountable noun was synonymous with mass noun. One simple test for uncountability is attestable use with much. Much headwater doesn't make it, with our without an -s. Surnames don't meet the test, except in cases like In normal times four terms would have been too much Roosevelt. DCDuring (talk) 18:51, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, agreed, and that's the kind of colloquial use which can take any noun (e.g. "too much house, not enough garden"). Theknightwho (talk) 18:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Whitespace edits used to leave comments in history.

In sì, whitespace edits keep being used to leave comments in the history despite a talk page is already being used to discuss the comments.

28 October 2024 Theknightwho talk contribs  4,169 bytes +1  That usage note was already at the bottom, so please don't bullshit. undothank

28 October 2024 Emanuele6 talk contribs m  4,168 bytes −1  This is the lamest edit I have seen; I fixed a thing, you undid the fix. Please do not vandalise the page with whitespace edits since there is a discussion in your talk page. undo Tags: Manual revert Reverted

28 October 2024 Theknightwho talk contribs  4,169 bytes +1  Undo revision 82506619 by Emanuele6 (talk) Not vandalism. undothank Tag: Undo

https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=s%C3%AC&diff=prev&oldid=82506654

Is it really acceptable to dirty the wikitext of the page with trailing whitespace just to leave such petty comments in history?

If it is acceptable, I am going to use this technique in the future to fixup mistakes I make in edit messages, in the future.

The wikitext is now left with a trailing space at the end of a line.

o/
 emanuele6 Emanuele6 (talk) 01:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think this is a good idea as whitespace shouldn’t be randomly added at the ends to lines, etc. Use the talk page for comments. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

If it's an undecided matter, my position on this matter is the same. There shouldn't be any trailing whitespace in pages, and you should not just add them and leave them only to leave a comment in the history.

In fact, I tend to clean up all the unnecessary trailing whitespace I notice in pages when I edit them on wikipedia.

---

Not exactly related to this, this is not the case here, but also note that some whitespace changes can actually change how the page is rendered on certain platforms.

I recall this edit I did on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TTNG&diff=prev&oldid=979390957

The newline in <timeline> was invisible on PC, but it was being displayed as a literal "\n" (backslash n) on the android Wikipedia app. Emanuele6 (talk) 05:09, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't do this and don't leave anti-social, hostile edit summaries. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf Given that Benwing2 has pointed out no-one should have been reverting or making those whitespace changes, that also applies to you, so you should not have made any further edits to the page sì. Theknightwho (talk) 12:23, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you think that what someone writes seven hours later should apply retroactively, but I disagree and you shouldn't have done what you did, which is the actual point of this thread. Your distractions and irrelevant noise are not appreciated. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:01, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf It doesn't take a genius to work out why it's relevant. Please take your personal grudge elsewhere. Theknightwho (talk) 18:34, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

"Please take your grudge elsewhere" is actually exactly what you should be doing. Please stop with this and listen to others telling you that your prior behavior was inappropriate. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf Leaving whitespace to add points to edit histories is not something only I have done, not even particularly uncommon, and certainly does not constitute vandalism, as Emanuele6 mentioned. Benwing2 made some good points below about what should and should not have happened for reasons entirely outside of pedantry over whitespace in entries, but unless you can point me to some kind of policy on leaving whitespace in order to make comments in edit histories in particular (or even a guideline or past discussion), I'm not especially interested. Theknightwho (talk) 18:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't recall anyone saying that only you have done this, so in case I was somehow mistaken, I will go on record: don't do this to anyone. Anyway, as I have written multiple times, this thread is about your problematic editing and multiple editors have told you to stop it. Since it seems like you understand that you shouldn't have done it in the first place and that you seem like you're saying you won't do it again, sounds good. Have a nice day. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf Whether or not the comments were appropriate, this thread is not about my behaviour, but about whether we should be able to use whitespace to leave comments in edit histories. Two comments about that doesn't constitute a definitive consensus, I'm afraid. There are clearly situations in which it *is* appropriate, such as correcting a major mistake in an edit summary which would cause confusion. Theknightwho (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The thread was actually begun by someone else and that person began it because of things you did. I've asked you to stop. Please stop. There is no reason for you to keep this distraction going and to keep pinging me. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Koavf Oh, well you'd better tell Wikipedia that w:Help:Dummy edits are a problem, despite being a widespread practice there. This thread was started with a question of whether they were appropriate, and the only mention of me was in the copied log, so no, this thread was about the question, and not about me. This is precisely why I said you were making this about your grudge, in which you have a long history of making mountains out of molehills whenever my behaviour is in question. Enough. Theknightwho (talk) 19:14, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I told you to stop pinging me. Stop it. Your completely exhausting behavior is so wildly inappropriate I don't know why you think it's acceptable. Go away and do something else and quit making this a personality-based grudge and then acting like I'm making it a personality-based grudge. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, you didn't, but what I'm actually doing here is preventing you from claiming some kind of false consensus against a well-established practice because you want excuses to call my behaviour inappropriate. Unsurprisingly, you've now found some other way to do it as a way to ignore the issue. Theknightwho (talk) 19:21, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Edit summaries are for summarizing edits, talk pages are for talking about pages. What I initially wrote was not personality-based, but you made it so. Please be better. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

w:Help:Dummy edits have plenty of legitimate uses, as that page on Wikipedia helpfully points out. There isn't really anything else that needs to be said. Theknightwho (talk) 19:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• mw:Help:Edit summary
• mw:Help:Talk pages
• This isn't Wikipedia.
• Have a nice day.

—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Haha - classic Koavf. I was pointing out those are legitimate uses, not claiming it's some kind of policy. Theknightwho (talk) 20:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Please stop posting attacks against me and continuing this grievance. Have a nice day. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

What attack? Are you seriously trying to pretend that you thought linking to the MediaWiki help pages on edit summaries and talkpages was supposed to be a genuinely helpful response? Theknightwho (talk) 21:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Both of you need to knock it off. Further continuing this discussion is going to lead nowhere good. Benwing2 (talk) 21:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

From personal experience, these two are as bad as each other. No love lost on the pair of them. DonnanZ (talk) 18:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I looked at the whole edit history involving the two of you. My comments are this:

1. I agree that whitespace changes should not be used to leave comments like this, and in general there should not be trailing whitespace. Use the talk page if there's a disagreement (see point 3).
2. You made a bunch of formatting mistakes, which User:Theknightwho tried to clean up. You should be more careful about this in the future.
3. Both you and User:Theknightwho edit warred to some extent, which is not a good idea. It's much better to use the talk page at the first sign of disagreement.
4. I disagree that sì is a "particle". "Particle" is an extremely nebulous part of speech with no clear meaning, and it's best to avoid it. Portuguese, for example, defines sim as an interjection, which to me makes a lot more sense.

Benwing2 (talk) 08:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

> You made a bunch of formatting mistakes, which User:Theknightwho tried to clean up. You should be more careful about this in the future.

I don't think this is true; if you look at what actually change on the page; the only mistake I did is mistakenly using the it-adv head tag instead of head|it|particle. Instead of just fixing that, they undid my edit, moving information back to the wrong location and leaving it there.

---

> I disagree that sì is a "particle". "Particle" is an extremely nebulous part of speech with no clear meaning, and it's best to avoid it. Portuguese, for example, defines sim as an interjection, which to me makes a lot more sense.

The only reason why I chose particle is that both English "yes", and Spanish "sí" have this meaning under Particle. It is definitely not an advert. If it's something else that should also be changed on sí.

yes has both particle and interjection, if you look at the examples for particle, that definitely matches the use described by the "Usage notes" in sì; anyway it is also true that sì can be used as interjection, as well as a particle, so an entry for that could be added in addition.

---

> Both you and User:Theknightwho edit warred to some extent, which is not a good idea. It's much better to use the talk page at the first sign of disagreement.

I don't claim that I have performed the edit on sì cleanly, as I have used the wrong head template, and triggered an abuse warning, but 1) I fixed a thing about that page, and it was reverted; 2) I removed a whitespace added for no reason on that page, that has no right to be there as I always do on any wiki, and it was reverted.

I am discussing those decisions in talk pages.

---

Emanuele6 (talk) 08:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

In your edits you made several mistakes:

1. using {{it-adv}} instead of {{head|it|particle}};
2. your first edit left the ===Adverb=== header stranded with no corresponding headword template (hence the abuse filter that you seem to have ignored or misinterpreted; you must have gotten a warning and then saved anyway, because it left a no-head-temp tag indicating the missing headword template);
3. you made things worse by alphabetizing the parts of speech, instead of putting the most common usage first.

User:Theknightwho made three edits after your two edits, trying to correct these various mistakes. You then complained about the Usage note being in the wrong place, but as noted by Theknightwho, that's how it was previously, and the Usage note ending up in the wrong place again appears to have been a side effect of trying to correct the various formatting mistakes you made, not anything intentional. That's what Theknightwho's comment "That usage note was already at the bottom, so please don't bullshit." was trying to say; it definitely could have been phrased in a more polite fashion, though. Following that you accused Theknightwho of vandalism, which was not the case; you probably shouldn't have reverted his change and he definitely should not have reverted your change.

User:Theknightwho can sometimes be abrasive in his comments, which is regrettable, but at the same time IMO you should assume good faith when it comes to experienced editors trying to clean up your mistakes. Benwing2 (talk) 09:03, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

How is adding a random space, and readding it again, and then leaving it there not vandalism though?

I have no problem with them fixing my mistakes. Emanuele6 (talk) 09:09, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Because it makes no difference to the rendered display, because final whitespace is eliminated from lines before being rendered. That’s simply not what vandalism is. Theknightwho (talk) 12:26, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

> Following that you accused Theknightwho of vandalism, which was not the case; you probably shouldn't have reverted his change and he definitely should not have reverted your change.

Benwing2 I don't understand how to interpret this. I should have left the whitespace because they used it to comment?

"Following that you accused Theknightwho of vandalism"? Maybe you misunderstood that I reverted the change adding of space twice.

I didn't. I reverted it once and then create this discussion after seeing them claiming "not vandalism" readding the space, to learn if it was really acceptable.

It was reverted a second time by another user who commented in this discussion, not me. Emanuele6 (talk) 09:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Request for extended mover

following the advice from @Benwing2 on the Discord server, I wish to request permission for "extended mover" given my editing history. Juwan (talk) 07:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Make Wiktionary:English adjectives an official policy

I suggest making Wiktionary:English adjectives an official policy. It'd forbid adjective senses of present participles and other English words that don't act as true adjectives.

Wiktionary:Votes/2022-01/Excluding trivial present participal adjectives isn't a good proposal, because it'd delete actual adjectives and dealign Wiktionary with other dictionaries. Davi6596 (talk) 13:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Request for review of image policy

this request is regarding the two pages Help:Images and Wiktionary:Images. these policies are very poorly documented and are lacking in content for a prominent aspect for readers of the dictionary. it is unusual for the English Wiktionary which has several guidelines to follow for general entry layout, to lack anything for this. below I have outlined some points that I want to have discussed and added to policy.

• harmonisation: between multiple entries, there should be a layout by which entries should abide. what placement, what size (or lack of size marking), what letter capitalisation, what use of full stops, etc.
• multiple images: mention of the {{multiple image}} template
• senseno: with multiple definitions for a given lemma, it is useful to differentiation images with the given senseno.
• language tagging: as of now, images in different languages are not tagged at all for foreign text. in short, this is terrible for screen reader accessibility, as these would not know how to properly read the given text, see the rationale on Wikipedia.

I am aware that writing policy is hard, but over the coming days I will try to make a draft for others to review and further implement. Juwan (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Both of the pages you cite are years and years old. I think the issue is that most Wiktionary pages aren't accompanied by images and (unlike Wikipedia) most editors don't make it a priority to add images, but I completely agree with having standards. Benwing2 (talk) 22:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Choosing just one image to add to a page, like Lincoln, can be hard work... DonnanZ (talk) 10:38, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I created a subpage at User:JnpoJuwan/Images. still an early draft, but it has what I want to say. Juwan (talk) 20:40, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

removing inactive autopatrollers

The purpose of being an autopatroller is, more than anything else, to reduce the burden on people who patrol Special:RecentChanges by excluding "known good" contributors. In addition, sometimes being an autopatroller gives you the ability to modify an otherwise-protected page, on the theory that autopatrollers generally know what they're doing and can be trusted, at least to some extent, to not mess things up. (Although in practice, I think most pages are either protected at the autoconfirmed level, i.e. below autopatrol protection, or at the template editor or admin level, i.e. above autopatrol protection.) An inactive autopatroller no longer serves the primary purpose of reducing the volume of Special:RecentChanges, and over time autopatrollers are likely to lose the knowledge of how Wiktionary works, both due to simply forgetting over time and due to the gradual evolution of Wiktionary templates, practices and standards. In addition, inactive accounts present a potential security risk, as the account might get compromised by someone whose bad or even malicious changes might then slip under the radar due to the autopatrol status. It's true that an individual inactive autopatroller account presents less of a security risk than an individual inactive admin account, but contrariwise there are a lot more inactive autopatroller accounts than inactive admin accounts.

So I propose that autopatrollers automatically lose autopatrol status after some amount of time. Specifically, I propose:

• Inactive accounts (defined by having no "actions" where an action is any change to the site, such as an edit) lose their autopatroller status after one year (maybe two years).
• Inactive accounts that later become active again may regain their autopatroller status without prejudice as long as some amount of time has not passed (e.g. five years). "Without prejudice" means a request to restore autopatroller status will automatically be granted barring some good reason to the contrary, and in addition any admin may freely restore autopatroller status for such accounts without any consultation (e.g. if the admin is patrolling Special:RecentChanges and sees a previously inactive account become active again). For reference: you (anyone, admin or not) can see what rights a given user has, along with the full history of changes to these rights, by going to Special:UserRights.
• Inactive accounts that have been inactive for sufficiently long (e.g. five years), became active again, and wish to regain autopatroller status will need to go through the normal nomination/approval process for this; see Wiktionary:Whitelist. (FWIW we should IMO consider renaming this, both because its purpose is not obvious from its name and because there is a recent dispreference for the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist". I would suggest something very obvious like Wiktionary:Autopatrol nominations.)

For reference, there are currently 1,063 autopatrollers but only 219 of them have been active within the last 30 days. I'm not sure how to get the list of those active within the last year; if someone knows how to do that, please post the relevant query along with the number of such users.

Benwing2 (talk) 07:38, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

No objection to this. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:56, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

No objections to any of this as well. However, wouldn’t there need to be a vote to make this a policy? Kutchkutch (talk) 12:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@Kutchkutch Good question. @-sche, @Surjection, @Chuck Entz do you think we need a vote here? I know we had a vote Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2017-03/Desysopping for inactivity for the related removal of administrative privileges, but it seems that recently there's been a trend towards consensus rather than formal votes except for things like giving admin or bot privileges to a specific user. (Obviously more consensus is needed than just two votes in support.) Benwing2 (talk) 05:37, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

IMO I would be inclined to say no, as autopatrol rights are also granted without votes. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:02, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, if we get a decent number of users weighing in here, I doubt we need a formal vote. - -sche (discuss) 06:17, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I support the general idea of removing the autopatroller bit from inactive users. I wonder if a longer time (2+ years) might be better, to reduce how often we're having to re-autopatrol users who e.g. mostly edit Wikipedia and only come over here occasionally. Does anyone have experience with a user being made autopatroller, being inactive, coming back, and making problematic edits, that could help us get a sense of how quickly (or often) that happens? - -sche (discuss) 06:17, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Sicilian, stripping the dot from ḍ in page titles

To give context for interested people passing through, Sicilian has a phoneme /ɖɖ/, distinct from /dd/, both having most often been written as dd. Recent standardisation proposals have come up with the orthographic mean ḍḍ to distinguish the former from the latter. Pretty ingenious, but still quite artificial and, although seemingly has grown in popularity especially on the Internet, still far from being the most common way of writing down the phoneme.

This is phenomenon is nothing new, and usually we handle it with the entry_name at Module:languages. I propose we make it so ḍḍ can be used in links, headwords, etc. and keeping dd in page titles. The stripping from links would be automatic, like Latin macrons and Russian accents.

@Hyblaeorum, Nicodene. Catonif (talk) 09:33, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@Catonif Are we sure we want to do this, as opposed to simply using ḍḍ in pagenames? There are already a lot of page titles using ḍḍ, such as aḍḍumari. All of these would have to be renamed and head= added to all of the headwords. This is similar to our use of ё in Russian headwords even though it isn't usually written in the wild (following dictionary conventions). Benwing2 (talk) 23:14, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I would guess that most speakers simply use Standard Italian orthography to write the sounds of their particular dialects, with frequent interference from the spelling of Italian cognates.

We could follow this practice in our lemmas, but I don’t see a problem with adopting a standard Sicilian orthography instead, such as that of the Cademia Siciliana. There’d be more coherence to it (one standard form as opposed to a spectrum of ad-hoc choices by speakers of various dialects) and it would presumably be better-equipped to handle sounds or contrasts that are alien to Standard Italian (like the one that inspired this thread). Nicodene (talk) 00:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

All these are good reasons why the dot should stay, but why on page titles? It only makes searching harder, and /dd/ is not so common anyway.

As for There are already a lot of page titles using ḍḍ, there are only 45 entries with ḍḍ. On the other hand, there are 99 entries with dd standing for /ɖɖ/, and 7 entries with dd standing for /dd/. Anyways, the number of entries involved is not a big concern. Catonif (talk) 21:09, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I would rather ask, why do you not want ḍ on page titles? It seems strange to purposely leave out phonemic information. What do typical Sicilian dictionaries do? Benwing2 (talk) 21:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

{{R:scn:Pasqualino}}, {{R:scn:Mortillaro}} and {{R:scn:Traina}} are the three main traditional dictionaries for Sicilian. Given they're from the 19th century, they all write it as dd. The masterpiece Vocabolario Siciliano in five volumes (1977–2002) uses ḍḍ (remember, most Italian dictionaries employ ṣ ẓ while we obviously don't) alongside ç for /ç/ instead of c which not even we do (we could, stripping the cedilla as well). All literature, of which there is by no means a shortage, uses dd, or less often, more recently, ddh ddr etc., while some of the only places where ḍḍ is used in running text are the Sicilian version of the UNESCO Courier, disgustingly full of Sicilianised Italianisms, and apparently Reddit.

And anyways, I'm not proposing to remove the dot, leaving out phonemic information, the only place where the dot wouldn't appear is at the top of the page and in the URL. Everywhere else there would still be the dot. Catonif (talk) 21:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

FYI the "it makes searching harder" doesn't appear to be the case; typing "addevu" for example automatically brings up aḍḍevu (addevu doesn't exist). Benwing2 (talk) 22:58, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a Sicilian editor, but this proposal seems reasonable to me. It will eliminate the need to have alternative spelling entries for all of the ḍḍ spellings.--Urszag (talk) 22:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Not sure this saves effort (even if this is a valid argument, which I'm not sure it is); in that case all the words with ḍḍ will need head=, more work is required in the pronunciation module, etc. Benwing2 (talk) 22:56, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Those things could be more work for us, but from a user's perspective, it's more useful to get directed immediately to the page for the word you're interested in rather than having a soft redirect that you have to click through. I guess you could also avoid having soft redirects if making pages for "dd" spellings was forbidden, like using "æ" spellings in Latin words, but that doesn't seem good to me based on the facts Catonif described.)--Urszag (talk) 23:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Well by that argument we should dispense with ё in Russian headwords, leave out accents on Spanish headwords, etc. And as I pointed out, there isn't necessarily a need for soft redirects anyway because the software automatically directs you to the ḍḍ version if it exists and the dd version doesn't. Benwing2 (talk) 00:05, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

November 2024

"Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs."

This label appears in the bottom of some Celtic mutation templates, such as {{ga-mut}}, {{cy-mut}} and {{gd-mut-cons}}:

Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Eclipsis
Beer parlour	Bheer parlour	mBeer parlour
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Welsh mutation
radical	soft	nasal	aspirate
Beer parlour	Feer parlour	Meer parlour	unchanged
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Scottish Gaelic mutation
Radical	Lenition
Beer parlour	Bheer parlour
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

But I've always felt the wording is somewhat ambiguous. (Also, the warning makes the template far wider than it needs to be.)

I assume the intended meaning of this disclaimer is that not all of the mutated forms are necessarily attested, even though, for every listed form, it is possible to construct a valid sentence that uses that form. If this is the intended meaning I don't think the warning label is required at all and it should be removed. We regularly include declension and conjugation tables for rare verbs in German, French, Latin etc. where some inflected forms may be unattested, but we still list them in the declension template with no disclaimer.

I also note that the Breton and Cornish templates don't include this warning:

  Mutation of Beer parlour  

Breton consonant mutation
unmutated	soft	aspirate	hard	mixed
Beer parlour	Veer parlour	unchanged	Peer parlour	Veer parlour

  Mutation of Beer parlour  

Cornish consonant mutation
unmutated	soft	aspirate	hard	mixed	mixed after 'th
Beer parlour	Veer parlour	unchanged	Peer parlour	Feer parlour	Veer parlour

Any opinions on removing this message? (Notifying Mahagaja, Mellohi!, Silmethule): This, that and the other (talk) 02:28, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Yep, agree with this. The warning always felt odd, because it makes it sound like we're including grammatically-invalid forms. Theknightwho (talk) 02:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

On a separate point, could we possibly unify the layout of these? I like the Welsh one, but the others just look awful. Theknightwho (talk) 02:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Support removing the note; it is unhelpful. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 02:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with TKW, the warning always read to me as suggesting that some of the forms might be wrong: iff it in fact only means they're not attested (but they're perfectly grammatical), then I agree with removing it; as you say, we don't bother with such notes on the declension tables for German adjectives where perhaps the mixed declension neuter genitive singular is not attested, or is only attested twice and not thrice. (If, on the other hand, some forms are actually avoided by speakers, in the same way that we don't list a plural when one simply doesn't occur, then I think we need a way of suppressing the form and/or providing a clearer note, like "for words starting with xyz, speakers avoid using t-prosthesis and instead use [whatever]".) - -sche (discuss) 02:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

They're dictated by what comes before, so all mutable forms are possible in theory; arguably, they're sometimes not even phonemic, but that's a whole separate discussion, and doesn't change the fact that they're an established part of the orthography, so therefore deserve entries. Theknightwho (talk) 02:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Support removing the note and also Support using the Welsh layout for all the languages. Would like to hear from Mahagaja, Mellohi! and Silmethule, each of whom have contributed significantly to various Celtic languages. If there is agreement for this, I can make the changes as I've rewritten some of the headword modules in question (esp. the Welsh one). Benwing2 (talk) 05:30, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I find unifying the layout for the Celtic mutation templates unnecessary. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 05:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The layout is less of a problem than the colour scheme. The Welsh table matches far more of the recommended accessibility guidelines, and as a result is much easier on the eye. Theknightwho (talk) 05:52, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Mellohi! IMO the current styling of the non-Welsh templates looks amateurish, something straight out of early-2000's harcoded HTML tables. Exact unification isn't necessary but I'd like the overall look to be more similar to the Welsh template: get rid of unnecessary cell borders and shadows, etc. Benwing2 (talk) 06:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I included this note because some mutated forms genuinely don't exist. For example, in Irish, adjectives never undergo eclipsis, so a form like gcairdiúil (eclipsis of cairdiúil) can never appear. (The only exceptions are the handful of adjectives that precede their nouns, like príomh-, whose eclipsed form bpríomh- does appear.) Most finite verb forms never take h-prothesis: I can't think of a context in which the form himíonn (h-prothesis of imíonn) would appear. I'm pretty sure only the imperative and the autonomous past indicative are the only verb forms that undergo h-prothesis. In the standard language, only nouns and preposed adjectives like sean undergo the special lenition of s to ts, because it only occurs after the definite article. The {{ga-mut}} template already has |1=msn to restrict t-prothesis to masculine singular nominative nouns (the only context where it occurs), but the {{gd-mut-vowel}} template doesn't, even though t-prothesis in Gaelic is restricted in the same way as it is in Irish. So yes, these templates generate forms that are not grammatically possible, which is why the disclaimer is there. As for its width, I originally put a line break in the text so it would be two lines long and less wide, but someone removed it years ago. {{sga-mutation}} still has the line break. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:28, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

So IMO this sort of disclaimer is kind of a cop-out; instead the templates should be modified to not generate truly impossible forms, and the disclaimer removed. Having this disclaimer there adds no useful information; if a learner of the language doesn't know which forms are impossible and which are possible but rare, they certainly won't learn that (or anything else) from such a disclaimer. But it's important to distinguish between things that are truly impossible and things simply so rare that they are not likely to be found in any corpus. An example is vocatives in Ukrainian, Czech or other Slavic languages that preserve the vocative; it's very rare that someone will use the vocative case when addressing an inanimate object, so for most inanimate objects you won't ever find the vocative in any given corpus, but examples do exist and there's nothing theoretically preventing someone from addressing an inanimate object (esp. in poetry or poetic language). And in general we don't add any disclaimer by Ukrainian or Czech vocatives of inanimate objects stating that they are rare; this is something we assume the reader can figure out. In your example of cairdiúil, is it truly syntactically impossible for it to precede a noun, or merely rare? In the latter case, I would argue we should keep the mutation and remove the disclaimer; in the former case, fix the code to not overgenerate the mutation, and once again remove the disclaimer. Similarly for restricting t-prothesis to the masculine singular nominative forms. Benwing2 (talk) 08:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, it's syntactically impossible (or, in linguistics jargon, ungrammatical) for cairdiúil ever to precede the noun it modifies, but I'm not a native speaker. I also don't think it's possible for it to be substantivized (used like a noun), but again, I'm not a native speaker, and for all I know it's possible in poetry or other exceptional circumstances. Making the templates powerful enough not to generate impossible forms is a great idea in principle, but in practice, going through all existing uses of all templates included in Category:Mutation templates by language and marking them for which mutations are grammatically possible and which are not would be an overwhelming task, and while some of it could possibly be done by bot, I think most of it would have to be done by hand. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

This should have been done years ago with manual overrides instead of papering over the issue with an unhelpful disclaimer, in my view. Not everything has to be automatable to be implemented. Theknightwho (talk) 13:53, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Adjectives used to be eclipsed in the genitive plural, e.g. ar bruach innbhir na n-éigne mbán, an example from a text called Aisling na Binne Buirbe from 1679. I don't know when this stopped being the case and whether this usage justifies our templates showing such forms. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 19:32, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

That's true; in Old Irish adjectives were also eclipsed after neuter singular nouns. Both types of adjective eclipsis might well be found in place names and possibly fossilized phrases. In my opinion, this is an argument in favor of overgenerating mutated forms. It's probably better to have the template produce forms that are predicted to be nonexistent but might simply be very rare or archaic or nonstandard (since you never know what might be lurking in the darkest corners of a language) than to tailor it to avoid them. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:06, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Does this also apply to colloquial mutations? I'm particularly thinking of Welsh tsips → jips, but this can theoretically apply to any term starting with ⟨tsi⟩, even though they're rarely written that way as it's not part of the literary language. (t)siec → jec is another common one in speech (or used to be when people still used cheques, anyway). Theknightwho (talk) 00:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I think a case could be made to include ts → j as a colloquial mutation in the table, especially if it's found in writing, but this thread isn't the place for that discussion. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

@Mahagaja thanks for the insights. I can see I was wrong! It's clear to me that, if nothing else, the message needs to be reworded. Here's my attempt: "Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Modern Irish. All possible mutated forms are displayed for the convenience of the reader." (broken over two or three lines as needed). This, that and the other (talk) 10:01, 2 November 2024 (UTC)