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Wiktionary:Grease pit

Mar 2nd 2012, 13:25

Revision as of 13:04, 2 March 2012 (edit) Mglovesfun (Talk \| contribs)		Latest revision as of 13:25, 2 March 2012 (edit) (undo)
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	::I didn't realize they were deprecated. Don't we want to use them, to keep a uniform appearance across Wk? [[User:Kwamikagami\|kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami\|talk]]) 07:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)		::I didn't realize they were deprecated. Don't we want to use them, to keep a uniform appearance across Wk? [[User:Kwamikagami\|kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami\|talk]]) 07:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
		+
		+	::: They're not deprecated, but they're also not endorsed: there are some editors who like them and use them, and some editors (such as myself) who think they're a huge broken mess that should never be used. —[[User: Ruakh \|Ruakh]]<sub ><small ><i >[[User talk: Ruakh \|TALK]]</i ></small ></sub > 13:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

	== including gender (definite articles) and verb principal parts ==		== including gender (definite articles) and verb principal parts ==

Latest revision as of 13:25, 2 March 2012

Wiktionary > Discussion rooms > Grease pit

Wiktionary discussion rooms (edit) see also: requests
Information desk comment \| history Newcomers' questions, minor problems, specific requests for information or assistance.	Tea room comment \| history \| archives Questions and discussions about specific words.	Etymology scriptorium history Questions and discussions about etymology- the historical development of words.	Beer parlour comment \| history \| archives General policy discussions and proposals, requests for permissions and major announcements.	Grease pit comment \| history \| archives Technical questions, requests and discussions.

All Wiktionary: namespace discussions 1 2 3 4 5 - All discussion pages 1 2 3 4 5

A grease pit

Welcome to the Grease pit!

This is an area to complement the Beer parlour and Tea room. Its purpose is specifically for discussing the future development of the English Wiktionary, both as a dictionary and as a website.

The Grease pit is a place to discuss technical issues such as templates, CSS, JavaScript, the MediaWiki software, extensions to it, the toolserver, etc. It is also a place to think in non-technical ways about how to make the best free and open online dictionary of "all words in all languages".

It is said that while the classic beer parlour is a place for people from all walks of life to talk about politics, news, sports, and picking up chicks, the grease pit is a place for mechanics, engineers, and technicians to talk about nuts and bolts, engine overhauls, fancy paint jobs, lumpy cams, and fat exhausts. That may or may not make things clearer... Others have understood this page to explain the "how" of things, while the Beer parlour addresses the "why".

Permanent notice

Tips and tricks about customization or personalization of CSS and JS files are listed at WT:CUSTOM.
Other tips and tricks are at WT:TAT.
Everyone is encouraged to expand both pages, or to come up with more such stuff. Other known pages with "tips-n-tricks" are to be listed here as well.

Grease pit archives

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

All subject headings

[edit] Spam mails are coming from whittiermen@wiktionary.org

Please check as spam mails are originating from "whittiermen@wiktionary.org".

Anyone can send emails coming from anyone, it's easy to fake the sender address in emails. I doubt these emails are coming from Wiktionary. —CodeCa t 21:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Wikt calls Google search in a faulty way

Type a term (eg "qwez") in the search bar and search for all pages containing it. On the search page that comes up ([1]), check the bubble for "Google", rather than the default, "MediaWiki search". Press "search". It searches for "qwez site:ktionary.org", rather than "qwez site:en.wiktionary.org". Bing and Yahoo call the correct complete URL. Is this a local issue we can fix ourselves, or an issue that needs to be submitted to Bugzilla? - -sche (discuss) 01:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Good catch, thanks! (You may have to do a hard refresh, though.) It was our own code, at [[MediaWiki:SpecialSearch.js]]. It happened because we were using wgServer.substr(7, wgServer.length - 1 ) to compute the domain to search within, and wgServer recently changed from http://en.wiktionary.org to //en.wiktionary.org. (This is part of a family of changes that have broken a lot of stuff, actually. You never realize that you're depending on an explicit scheme until suddenly it's not there!) —Ruakh_TALK 02:29, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! - -sche (discuss) 15:11, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Edit request

Hi, I don't know how many people actually watch MediaWiki talk:Edittools, so I'm asking here: would an admin please be so kind as to add Ḟ ḟ and Ṡ ṡ to the "letters with dot above" section of MediaWiki:Edittools? It would make adding Old Irish entries much easier. Thanks! —An gr 13:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Done by Mglovesfun (talk • contribs). —Ruakh_TALK 14:20, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! —An gr 15:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Changing form-of templates to use `{{form of}}`

Sorry if this has been discussed already, but isn't it a good idea to change {{plural of}} and others to use {{form of}} internally, so that we don't need to reinvent the wheel for each template? A handful of templates already do this. —Internoob 23:27, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

There's also {{deftempboiler}}, which I personally like quite a lot. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Adding sort key to French words

A new script that adds sort keys to French words is here. Please, have a look, any comment would be great. I might also need some help with headword templates that do not support the sort parameter very well, if any. --flyax 20:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Sort key in French verbs

There is a conflict between the categorizing statements of {{fr-verb}} and {{fr-conj}} which embeds {{fr-conj-table}} and is "inherited" by {{fr-conj-er}} and others. An example: ânonner. I think that conjugation templates should only add lemmas to "French 1st/2nd/3rd group verbs" categories, not to the general "French verbs" category. What is your opinion? --flyax 15:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've always assumed it was a 'hack' to avoid having to add {{fr-verb}} to hundreds of verbs which lacked it but used a conjugation-table template. I did a sweep about a month ago, perhaps six weeks, and after I'd finished every French verb had {{fr-verb}}, and it would be very easy to locate any which do not. So no, categorizing via {{fr-conj}} isn't needed. {{fr-conj-table}} also isn't needed, you could subst: it into {{fr-conj}} which is eventually what I did with {{fro-conj}} and {{fro-conj-table}} with no ill effects whatsoever. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorised Babel Categories

The Mediawiki function or unauthorised bot User:Babel AutoCreate flooded Special:UncategorizedCategories. Could some one write a bot to go through its contributions and add [[Category:User XX]] to each Category:User XX-#, and add [[Category:User languages]] to each Category:User XX? — Beobach 07:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Babel AutoCreate is not a real user, it's part of the Babel extension. (Apparently it can be renamed by editing MediaWiki:Babel-autocreate-user.) There's no need for a bot, I think. According to the documentation, the category text is set from MediaWiki:babel-autocreate-text-levels. --Yair rand 08:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hm, actually, I'm not sure that would actually modify the existing categories, it might only change the text of categories autocreated in the future. --Yair rand 08:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] One minor issue

We can no longer mark edits as minor when creating a page, such as accelerated plurals, alternative forms (wherever we deem fit, basically). It's not a problem, but in the same place is the 'watch this page' button, meaning I've ended up watching a load of irregular French verbs forms I created last night. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

There's no checkbox. But can the edits not be marked minor at all?—msh210℠ (talk) 02:43, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I just added some code to my common.js that adds the minor-edit checkbox when creating a page, and I checked that checkbox when creating [[ההיסטוריוגרפיה]]; but it didn't work. (I didn't get any sort of error message, but the edit doesn't seem to have been marked as minor.) But obviously the failure of one attempted hack doesn't necessarily mean that there's no way. It might be worth trying the API.
Oddly, this change doesn't seem to be mentioned in the released notes linked-to from [[mw:MediaWiki 1.18]].
—Ruakh_TALK 03:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

New-section-creation edits also lack the checkbox.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:56, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I was about to say that. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Code for Tarantino (dialect)

Category:Tarantino language says that the code for Tarantino is "roa-tar". However, linking to the Tarantino Wikipedia with this code doesn't work (see tarandine‎). The Tarantino Wikipedia is at "roa-tara.wikipedia.org". How can we fix this? SemperBlotto 17:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

fixed -- Liliana • 17:17, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

{{wikimedia language}} isn't it? --Mglovesfun (talk) 10:12, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I suppose this useful category was added in the recent upgrade. It automatically catches all pages with broken file links, be they audio or pictoral. We should create it and put it in Category:Wiktionary:Maintenance, right? - -sche (discuss) 20:27, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Done, thanks! —Ruakh_TALK 21:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Namespaces listing on search page

The listing of namespaces in the search-results page takes up so much space that, on my screen at least, no search result appears without my paging down. This makes it more likely that users will fail to find what they want even when the search engine has found it. We will never have all the hard redirects that would be required to ensure that users would be automagically directed to the appropriate entry. The listing of namespaces will certainly not get any shorter than what we have now, so the problem will not go away and may worsen.

Could the listing of namespaces be hidden until needed? DCDuring TALK 12:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The set of namespaces to search in defaults to {Main}. If someone has fiddled with that at [[special:preferences]], then perhaps he should see the list of namespaces before his search results (i.e., if the wgSearchNamespaces variable is set to something other than [0]). Also, if someone has chosen, for any given search, what namespaces to search in, then the list can also appear (i.e., if the URL of the search results page contains [?&]ns or [?&]profile). Otherwise, we should hide it (which is probably best accomplished by appending &profile= to the search-results-page URL). This seems like an easy bit of JS.—msh210℠ (talk) 15:11, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I guess

if (wgCanonicalNamespace="Special" && wgCanonicalSpecialPageName=="Search" && wgSearchNamespaces.length == 1 && wgSearchNamespaces[0] == 0 && !window.location.href.match(/(&|\?)(ns|profile)/)) window.location.replace(window.location.href + window.location.href.match(/\?/)? "&profile=" : "?profile=");

, though someone who knows JS better than I definitely should check that.—msh210℠ (talk) 17:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

When you say "hide", I hope you mean that it defaults as hidden with an option to display, no matter what one's default choices in special preferences, which is what I meant.

OTOH, the problem I am trying to solve is not mine, but that of unregistered users (and inexperienced registered users whose first exposure to a failed search may not show the entry most likely entry to meet their needs on the screen without a pagedown. IOW, I am interested in the default situation, not in what we can customize.

If it has to be done in JS, so be it, but any users without JS would not be well served. Worldwide, how many of them are left? DCDuring TALK 18:36, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I mean what you hope I mean. I wasn't trying to solve your own problem: the above can be added to sitewide JS (assuming it's good JS. As I said before, someone else should check it). I agree a non-JS way would be better: I can't think of one.—msh210℠ (talk) 00:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It makes sense. Just eyeballing the code, the only problem I see is the use of = for == in one place. There are some other things I might do a bit differently — for example, I think we're supposed to use (e.g.) mw.config.get('wgCanonicalNamespace') now, rather than just wgCanonicalNamespace (the latter being deprecated as of MediaWiki 1.17, from what I understand) — but none are actual problems. (But I haven't tested it at all, and anyway I'm not much of a JS-ican.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Accelerated Mandarin pinyin entries

It occurred to me that if Mandarin pinyin entries are merely 'soft redirects' to the Tradtional and Simplified forms, can't they use WT:ACCEL? Note I've been using {{new cmn pinyin}}, which works a lot like {{new en plural}}. Thoughts? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Protocol-relative links

Now that we have native https and protocol relative support, we should change our explicit local & wikimedia project URLs to remove the http: part (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple → //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple). I've corrected links in Template:, but we should think about which of the other namespace we should cleanup. Obviously (main); probably: Appendix, Category, Concordance, Help, Index, Wikisauru; Not: Talk* and User. What about Citations? One thing to note is that a bare URL with protocol automatically links while a protocol-relative one does: So http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple but //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple (is this a feature?). --Bequw → τ 13:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] English entries without pronunciation

How difficult would it be to generate a list of all English non-form-of entries which lack a ===Pronunciation=== section? A lot of the complaints at WT:FEED are that the entries lack pronunciation and it would be nice to have a list to work on it from. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 23:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Not too difficult, I imagine. But it would be enormous. Would you include form-of entries as well? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

No, that would make it horrendously big. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 13:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Until such is generated, you can work from [[Category:Requests for pronunciation (English)]].—msh210℠ (talk) 02:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I am making a list now...it will be ridiculously huge. Until that is done I put the first 1719 of them here. - TheDaveRoss 10:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Whew! I guess I've got my work cut out for me here. ^_^ Thanks. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 13:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

So the whole list without form-of entries is about 240,000. Let me know when you finish with those 1700 and I can give you plenty more! - TheDaveRoss 20:07, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Would you be able to import it into subpages of this, as /A1, /A2 etc? — lexicógrafa | háblame — 20:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that can be done, I want to clean it up a bit more first, I think there are some which can be weeded out, and I think there may be a way to make some one click magic happen for things like multi-word terms and initialisms. - TheDaveRoss 01:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, as soon as you can get that up here, that would be fantastic. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 15:51, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The Greek headwordline template {{el-noun}} has two apparently identical statements (the second is nested) for optional feminine forms. o/p can be seen in χωρικός. Can anyone tell me why - on my screen at least - the second feminine form has smaller characters to the first?
{{#if:{{{f|}}}|, ''feminine'' {{Grek|[[{{{f}}}]]|face=bold|lang=el}}{{#if:{{{f2|}}}| ''or'' '''{{Grek|[[{{{f2}}}]]|face=bold|lang=el}}''' }}}}
thanks —Saltmarsh^{talk-συζήτηση} 05:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

The second form on χωρικός looks smaller on my screen, but when I take a screenshot and count pixels, it's the same height (in Firefox and Opera). Optical illusion? If it's actually smaller, I don't know why. - -sche (discuss) 05:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I changed my browser's (Firefox) sans font to Arial and the problem disappeared - but experimenting showed the following changes for the second (nested-f2) form: Tahoma-bolder, Lucida sans-thinner, Verdana-bolder, Trebuchet-shape (ie with Tahoma the nested if produces a bolder output). —Saltmarsh^{talk-συζήτηση} 06:53, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be a Firefox 6.0 problem - the same experiment with Chrome does not show the same effect. —Saltmarsh^{talk-συζήτηση} 07:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Do we have a list of recommended fonts? —Saltmarsh^{talk-συζήτηση} 07:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

See MediaWiki:Common.css, use control f on your keyboard to find 'Grek'. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:41, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Bot task requests

Per WT:RFM, that task I'm requesting to do is change as an example Category:zh-cn:Plants to Category:cmn:Plants in simplified script. This is a pretty easy bot task, and as A-Cai said, to do it by hand could take literally years.

So to sum up, to change zh-cn and zh-tw to cmn and add in (simplified|traditional) script. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:32, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Anyone? Mglovesfun (talk) 14:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll start with a test run to make sure my regular expression syntax is ok. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:02, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, please do this by bot; it would be impossible to do by hand. :) - -sche (discuss) 19:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a list of all the categories you have moved entries into? Many (or all) have not been created yet, and it's frustrating one of our Chinese editors. - -sche (discuss) 03:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Surnames sorted into a subcategory are needlessly also listed in the main category. For example Abbott is listed in both Category:English surnames and Category:English surnames from Middle English. It happens in all languages. Given name categories are O.K. --Makaokalani 09:42, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Not needless at all; anything in Category:English uncountable nouns should be in Category:English nouns too. I fixed this a few weeks ago as a lot of English surnames weren't categorized properly. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

What I think you actually mean is that {{given name}} is broken, since anything in Category:English male given names from Latin should also be in Category:English male given names. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:38, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Can we have some more opinions here? {{given name/new}} solves the issues I've raised above (that is, if you consider them to be issues as opposed to 'advantages'). Mglovesfun (talk) 09:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Words can and must belong to etymology and grammatical and topic related categories. That's not an issue. The new template looks OK to me. --flyax 11:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I have always used the name lists outside subcategories to clean up and sort entries. You are making my work difficult. Who will bother adding subcategories if you have to click on a thousand entries to find out which ones are needed? Also, Hawaiian and Greenlandic given names outside subcategories all derive from Hawaiian/Greenlandic. Creating "Category:Hawaiian male given names from Hawaiian" seemed pointless since that's the norm. The same probably applies to Persian names - I remember Kaixinguo asking about it in the Beer parlour- and possibly other languages too. The surname or given name template has never combined all names in a single list, and editors work with the tools they are given. You should not change the tools without discussion. Personal names are something between PoS and topics; you cannot blindly copy what applies to nouns. Subcategories of surnames and given names are often topic related (from given names, from occupations). The etymology section will place the name in an etymology category.

If you want to list all the surnames and given names together, I think you should first restore the information you'll destroy: 1. Create subcategories like "English surnames outside subcategories",or something similar, and make the template list all the names without a from= parameter there. (Not needed for categories that have no subcategories yet.) 2. Create a bot that adds from=Hawaiian/Greenlandic/?Persian etc(should check) to all given names in those languages that lack the from= parameter.--Makaokalani 12:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You've got it totally the wrong way round; the new version will add new categories, not 'destroy' them as you put it. The template won't add Category:Hawaiian males given names from Hawaiian unless someone specifies from=Hawaiian in the template. In fact that won't change. The only thing the new version would change is it would add all relevant categories rather than just the most specific. This aligns it with well, every part of speech template I can think of! For example {{en-noun|!}} adds Category:English nouns with unattested plurals but in the process doesn't remove the Category:English nouns. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You did not understand me. I'll try to give concrete examples. Template:given name/new will add all the entries in the subcategories, for example, Category:Hawaiian male given names from English and Category:Hawaiian male given names from the Bible, to Category:Hawaiian male given names. So, Kahale, Kakalia, and Kale will be listed in "Hawaiian male given names". Earlier, all names in "Hawaiian male given names" derived from Hawaiian. Now there is no way to tell that Kahale derives from Hawaiian and Kakalia and Kale don't, except by looking at each entry individually. So Category:Hawaiian male given names from Hawaiian must be created, and either I'll have to add from=Hawaiian manually to all the relevant names, or someone will create a bot (not a template) that does it. And I'll have no way to separate unclassified entries in for example Category:German surnames. How can I know that Albrecht is in a subcategory but Abendroth isn't? Information (not categories) is destroyed by carelessly mixing names to old categories. I'm not opposed to combining these categories if it makes you happy, but please try to think of my problems in editing too. I seem to be the only one here who regularly checks given name and surname entries. --Makaokalani 15:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it is important to have all Hawaiian given names in one category, the same way we have all Hawaiian nouns, all Hawaiian insects etc. I think that this is what readers would desire from a dictionary. If I had to look at three different categories to find for example all given names starting from "H" I'd be frustrated. You ask how to find unclassified entries in a given category. That's not so difficult at all. A unix comm command can find it in seconds. If you don't know how to do it, just ask. --flyax 21:23, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with Makaokalani (and hence agree with flyax). What does it matter that 'native' Hawaiian given names and ones of 'non-native' origins will be in the same category? It's a bit like says word and parole shouldn't both be in Category:English nouns because one's Germanic and one isn't. Category:Hawaiian male given names from Hawaiian. You might personally choose to create it, but don't make it sound like someone has put a gun to your head. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, flyax, for finally offering technical advice. Please do explain in words of one syllable how I can make visible for example the English surnames without a from= parameter. This is what I ask from the Grease pit: technical help so we can both have our way. Repeat: I'm not against listing all Hawaiian names in one category, as long as I also have access to the old unclassified categories.--Makaokalani 15:03, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Suppose you have all members of Category:English surnames in a file named list-1-all and a second file list-2 with all members of the Categories English surnames from Arabic, Korean etc etc. In a unix/linux system the command comm -23 list-1-all list-2 > list-3 will create a third file with all words that belong to the first file but they don't belong to subcategories. Thus you'll be able to add the from=English parameter to those entries and create a new category "English surnames from English", if you think this is important. --flyax 15:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand. How do I create the list-1 and list-2 in the first place? What's unix/linux? What's a command? I work from public computers, one-hour sessions at a time. I've no education at all in computers, it's all by trial and error. I began by moving the mouse in the air.--Makaokalani 16:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

OK. I can do it for you. Just tell me what you want. --flyax 16:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

A list of all English surnames without a from= parameter. The category could be called "English surnames without a from= parameter" (not "from English; there already is Category:English surnames from Middle English.) You can store it in my user space (create any new title) if it's not allowed in the main namespace. Unlike the Hawaiian example, this is a clean-up category. The entries keep changing, it should be updated once a month at least.Is that possible? Similar lists are needed for every language with subcategories, e.g. German, Swedish, Finnish. There is a Category:es-proper noun usage without gender that is automatically updated. Is something similar possible for surnames?--193.111.93.47 16:40, 24 October 2011 (UTC) Sorry, that was me.--Makaokalani 16:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Since you want something that can be automatically updated, the use of external tools I proposed is not the best option I guess. A slight modification of the given names template could create such clean-up categories. See {{given_name/new-1}}. --flyax 19:12, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

This new template works like magic, and it would solve all my problems in editing. However, it seems needless and even confusing in languages that have no subcategories yet. All the 5040 Japanese male given names would just be repeated in Category:Japanese male given names without from= parameter. Also, maybe it should be hidden, or newbies might imagine that the from= parameter must be used, and end up creating very strange subcategories. Is it possible somehow to exclude the languages without subcategories? Or, specifically include every language whenever subcategories are created? Would a similar scheme work with the surname template? Thank you very much for your trouble.--Makaokalani 11:30, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed that diminutives are listed as not having a from= parameter. That's not necessary, because "Diminutives" is actually a subcategory. I wonder how native speakers of Russian etc. would feel about diminutive and formal given name categories combined? Would it make more sense to keep pet forms out of the main alphabetical list? There isn't such a big difference in English of course.--Makaokalani 11:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

{{given_name/new-1}} has been modified to exclude diminutives from the clean-up category. I suppose you are right about hiding this category, I don't know how to do it, though. --flyax 16:22, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Technical help needed with "Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms"

I have acquired a 1996 CD from the U.S. Bureau of Mines containing a Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms. The work is a product of the U.S. government and is in the public domain, and contains tens of thousands of definitions. The problem is that it is in a program called TextWare Lite for DOS, and I have no idea how to extract it (I can see the entire thing in one huge DOS file, but can't copy/paste). Any suggestions? bd2412 T 16:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a link to the file? - TheDaveRoss 19:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not online. I'd be glad to upload it somewhere, but it's 43MB. The CD actually contains two folders with various documents in them. I suspect that all the definitions are in a file named MINING.TWC, which is about 20MB. The USBM itself was shut down and folded into other agencies in 1996, so there is no online source that I can find. bd2412 T 20:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Oops, unless I happen to be an idiot, that is. Here is the entire thing being hosted on someone's website. bd2412 T 20:41, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

"Someone" being the National Archives and Records Administration. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 20:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that, as nara isn't in the url. Looks like a U.S. government site. I guess all that's needed now is copying it over here to be worked through, since USBM didn't include parts of speech and such. bd2412 T 20:51, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That site looks like it would be an incredible pain to crawl for the definitions. If you can 7zip the file you have into 3 or 4 pieces and email it, or one piece and put it in a drop box that would be awesome. - TheDaveRoss 10:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I can send it in two pieces. Send me an email, I'll send the files in reply. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:48, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

By the way, there are 22,647 terms, most having a single definition. I copied just the list over to Wiktionary:Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms, but it is a very large page - about 396k - so it will likely need to be broken up some. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:32, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

So I was able to parse it into term-definition sets, how would you like it back? Just a big text file or some sort of XML or what? - TheDaveRoss 23:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! A big text file would be great. My plan is to post it all here in project space in manageable chunks, to be sorted out into individual definitions as warranted. bd2412 T 02:37, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I have them now, thanks again! bd2412 T 16:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

All of the definitions are now posted to subpages of Wiktionary:Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms, if anyone is interested. Some of them are likely SOP or encyclopedic, but I think we can accommodate those in a glossary while putting the CFI-worthy terms into our lexicon. Cheers! bd2412 T

[edit] always show conjugation tables

Is there something in user preferences where I can make conjugation tables always appear by default, instead of having to click the "show" button every time --Rockpilot 10:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Show the translation sections expanded, instead of having them collapsed., perhaps? It should work for all boxes. -- Liliana • 12:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I use the 'Vector' skin and the "visibilty" menu on the left has a "hide/view" declension/conjugation/inflection control which stays in position between sessions. It's there for example when viewing amo. But I don't know what triggers it, but it seems to appear with most pull-down tables. —Saltmarsh^{talk-συζήτηση} 15:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Lils x --Rockpilot 22:29, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Can someone fix the extensions for the french wiktionary site?

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29596

so that the dynamic pages work for the function incategory?

This question has been posted several times, including in fr:Wiktionnaire:Demandes_aux_administrateurs/octobre_2011#Fonction_incategory. JackPotte 18:02, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Verbs without conjugation

Can someone rustle up a list of pages without a conjugation, similar to User:Rockpilot/Portuguese verbs needing conjugation but for German verbs? And also for French, Catalan and Spanish verbs? If so, I'd request they appear at User:Rockpilot/German verbs needing conjugation, User:Rockpilot/German verbs needing conjugation and User:Rockpilot/Catalan verbs needing conjugation and User:Rockpilot/Spanish verbs needing conjugation--Rockpilot 13:00, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I have a little program written up in Python for the German verbs: I think I'll have a list of German verbs (missing conjugation tables) done by today. —AugPi _(t) 15:04, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Interwikis for language templates

Is it desirable to have interwikis for language templates, now we have /doc subpages? For example Template:en could have a lot of interwikis. A bot would have to do it of course, because of the enormity of the task. But is there any value in it to start with? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:46, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I doubt it, personally. -- Liliana • 12:57, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Anonymous feedback

Hello,

Where can I read the results of the anonymous feedback on a given page ? Theo F 11:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean the little poll or WT:Feedback? - TheDaveRoss 12:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible to know how many people have voted "good" or "bad" or "messy" or "mistake in definition", etc. for a given article? Theo F 16:15, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

It is possible, it looks like there hasn't been a lot of feedback recently, it is possible that there is a problem with the databasing. |Here is the feedback archive. - TheDaveRoss 17:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. Is this link mentioned somewhere on a help page ? So it is not possible to know which article was mentioned as "Entry has inaccurate information" or "incomplete" and try to remove the inaccurate information, or add whatever seems to be missing ? Theo F 21:14, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Wiktionary Android educational game

The game magnetowordik uses semantic relations extracted from the English Wiktionary. While you are playing in this game you can find (and repair) incorrect synonyms, or antonyms, etc. in Wiktionary entries (so this game may be usefull for Wiktionary itself, I hope). Your feedback about game is welcome!

P.S. The first run of the game requires 10-20 sec for the database copying. Please, wait. In next version I will add something like Progress Bar :) -- Andrew Krizhanovsky 08:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Change template

I've posted this in a couple of places and got a response from one person who 1) disagrees and 2) disavows any decision-making power (although he locked the current templates). I was trying to tag a definition as figurative, and posted the respective template. However, the current state of figurative is that it redirects to figuratively, which, to me, sounds like a bad joke. Usage tags are almost universally adjectives, with a few nouns (usually attributive) sprinkled in. Not adverbs. So we have expressions that are regional, rare, obsolete, not "regionally" or "rarely". "Figurative" should be treated the same way. Alex.deWitte 21:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

And how do you feel about "literal" vs. "literally"? —Ruakh_TALK 21:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

This is a different issue, as it occurs in entirely different places in the text. The "fig." tag applies to definitions, used either in the beginning, tagging the entire lemma, or at the end, as "also fig.". The "lit." tag is more appropriate in etymology or usage notes and is not appropriate in the definition. We are not working on a narrative text, where these two might have been set up as antonyms--we're working on a dictionary, with its own structures and terminology. For example, I wanted to create a lemma--with multiple subentries--for the word "soup". The common interpretation is for "soup" being a kind of "liquid sustenance". But the figurative meaning could identify almost any substance that has the appearance or consistency of "soup", e.g., mud, fog, chemical solution, primordial goo from which life supposedly came, etc. It's impossible to claim that any of these are literal uses of "soup". Nor is it necessary to claim that ordinary meaning of soup as food are somehow "literal"--they are not. Nor would it be proper to say that the extra uses are metaphorical--really "figurative" is the only possible tag here. "Figuratively" is utterly inappropriate. In contrast, I may give a "lit." tag when writing etymology of a borrowed word or phrase that is not used in its original meaning. Thus, the tag would be a part of the etymological description and mean "literally"--i.e., the word literally means something but it is used to describe something else. As you can see, these two are not opposed to each other and do not occur in parallel constructions. Alex.deWitte 07:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think (figuratively) Any mixture or substance suggestive of soup consistency. sounds entirely grammatical, as does the half-as-common parallel construction (literally) The feces of a bull. Perhaps only because I'm used to them, I prefer the adverbs to adjectives: *(figurative) Any mixture... and *(literal) The feces... sound odd.

At the end of a definition, you can't write {{figurative}} by itself; to produce (also figurative) with {{figurative}}, you'd have to write {{context|also|figurative}}, which is a nonstandard use of context, let alone of {{figurative}} — it would be clearer to write {{qualifier|also used figuratively}} or {{qualifier|literally or figuratively}}, which don't call/use {{figurative}} or {{figuratively}} at all. Those phrases seem slightly clearer than "also figurative", anyway — the brevity of the latter saves space in paper dictionaries, but Wiktionary is not paper. - -sche (discuss) 08:16, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] A few Catalan templates

Am I ok to replace by bot {{ca-feminine of|foo}} with {{feminine of|foo|lang=ca}}, ditto for {{ca-feminine plural of}} and {{ca-masculine plural of}}. There is an extra parameter to add a Valencian form in these three templates; however the replacement above would not modify entries that use the parameter. Therefore, this would orphan the templates if and only if the {{{val|}}} parameter is not used in any entries. {{ca-plural of}} has already failed RFDO. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:39, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there is a problem with replacing them. —CodeCa t 11:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, these should be deleted and merged into {{ca-form of}}, though {{feminine of|foo|lang=ca}} works perfectly well unless I'm missing something. IMO alternative forms should be under the alternative forms header, rather than in the definition line. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I see; they're for things like anglès which is spelt anglés in Valencian Catalan. Still, I propose to make {{ca-form of}} do more, then these individual templates won't be needed. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:29, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

ca-form of now has some 'shortcuts' for things like {{ca-form of|f|anglès|val=anglés}} for anglesa. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:19, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

{{langcatboiler}} contains code designed to add orphan languages — those with no family information provided at Template:CODE/family — to Category:Languages needing family, but this code doesn't work (look at Category:Aghu language). Could someone repair it? - -sche (discuss) 06:01, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the above template is broken. Looking at long-range, see the quote, and all the wrong bits are bolded. --Rockpilot 14:19, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's broken. (Actually, all the reference/quote/cite templates are broken: the underlying concept is broken. But the specific problem that you're seeing was introduced quite recently, by Robin Lionheart (talk • contribs), and is readily fixable, so I'll focus on that.) The problem is in {{reference-news}}: it determines if a work has been specified by checking if {{{work|}}}{{{newspaper|}}}{{{journal|}}}{{{magazine|}}}{{{periodical|}}} is non-blank, but it actually displays the work using ''{{{newspaper|{{{journal|{{{magazine|{{{periodical|{{{work}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}''. This means that if (for example) journal= is specified to be blank, and magazine= is specified to be Time, then {{reference-news}} will produce '''': magazine= is non-blank, so the template will try to display the work, but journal= supersedes magazine=, so the work that's actually displayed is blank. Since {{quote-news}} uses {{reference-news}} internally, and passes in all parameters, this problem affects hundreds of pages, not just [[long-range]].

Since {{reference-news}} is used on hundreds of pages, it should have been protected. I don't mean to excuse Robin Lionheart's carelessness, but (s)he shouldn't have been able to break the template to begin with.

—Ruakh_TALK 14:59, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear, I'm sorry. I'll go fix that right away. ~ Robin 15:31, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! For what it's worth, you're not the first person I've seen led astray by this. The software distinguishes between unspecified parameters and parameters that are specified to be blank. The {{{foo|bar}}} notation only falls back to bar if foo= is unspecified, not if foo= is specified to be blank. —Ruakh_TALK 15:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

By the way, I found a similar problem in {{reference-book}} where author=| clobbers last and first. I created another version with a fix for this in {{reference-book/sandbox}} and ran it on testcases in Template:reference-book/testcases. ~ 15:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, that is awesome. I'm a big supporter of that sort of testing. Thanks! —Ruakh_TALK 15:52, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I reckon Template:quote-film could be a nice thing to exist. Anyone wanna make it? --Rockpilot 18:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I think that falls under {{quote-video}} now, but it would be useful to have specialized TV episode and film input templates, even if they ultimately just end up mapping fields for {{reference-video}}. I'll look into it. ~ Robin 19:00, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I made this by clicking on something. It included the dumb "References" section. This is probably a bad thing. --Rockpilot 01:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, why do our preload templates preload reference sections? We'd prefer citations. - -sche (discuss) 19:41, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Template tutorials

Where can I find guides on making templates? --KoreanQuoter 14:40, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Please have a look on MW:Help:Templates. It works on all the Mediawiki (Wikipedia, here...). JackPotte 18:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Any particular sort of template you're considering making?—msh210℠ (talk) 19:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Templates for verb conjugations and for noun declensions. --KoreanQuoter 01:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

You could be inspired by {{en-noun}}, but to my mind the best would be to import the intelligent template which displays automatically the plural pronunciations from the singular ones (and maybe soon from the singular orthographies). JackPotte 19:14, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I assume you mean things like {{he-decl-noun}}? I'd copy an existing one.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:39, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I know that I'm not skilled enough to make better templates. But anyways. All I want to say is "thank you very much". --KoreanQuoter 15:29, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I do think that it would be useful to have a kind of guide for 'common best practices' in templates on Wiktionary. —CodeCa t 16:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I forgot to say that I will ONLY edit templates in the Korean Wikitionary, a Wikitionary that lacks sufficient templates. --KoreanQuoter 14:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I tried to make the plural be niveles de agua but it showed up as nivel de aguas and I do not know how to fix it. —This unsigned comment was added by Celloplayer115 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 30 October 2011‎ (UTC).

Fixed. Like most templates, {{es-noun}} is documented at its own page: Template:es-noun. —Ruakh_TALK 21:40, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that at the bottom of "recent changes" there should be a link or button that will take you further back in the history. Is this available in a different skin perhaps? Fugyoo 22:25, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

At the top there is "Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 changes in last 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 30 days". Equinox ◑ 22:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

[e/c] I've never heard that that's doable. Adding &from=... to the URL merely limits changes to those not before the specified datetime, but does not reach back to it. However, there is a "Show last 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 changes in last 1 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 30 days" line ato pthe page that shows more diffs. And there are other ways to see diffs further back, such as by using the limits available there ("Hide minor edits | Hide bots | Hide anonymous users | Hide logged-in users | Hide patrolled edits | Hide my edits"), limiting to a specific namespace, or using things like [[special:newpages]] and [[special:abuselog]].—msh210℠ (talk) 22:33, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] no more bad titles

Trying http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/[ gets you to special:badtitle which no longer exists. (Special:badtitle used to be a special page that included MediaWiki:Badtitletext.) Any idea why, or what to do about it?—msh210℠ (talk) 17:16, 2 November 2011 (UTC) slight edit 17:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

It's bug 31886. --Yair rand 17:19, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks.—msh210℠ (talk) 17:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Fixed now.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Rat Patrol

I'd never tried Rat Patrol before today, and tried it today. It didn't work. That is, it seemed to work, but edits I seemed to be patrolling were not marked as such in the logs. Any idea why? Does this have something to do with the fairly recent change to require a token of some sort in the patrolling URL? Should I not bother trying to use RP?—msh210℠ (talk) 01:10, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: "Does this have something to do with the fairly recent change to require a token of some sort in the patrolling URL?": Yes. To mark an edit as patrolled, Rat Patrol sends a GET request for /w/index.php?title=%s&action=markpatrolled&rcid=%s, but that no longer works. It needs to either:

GET /w/index.php?title=%s&action=markpatrolled&rcid=%s&token=%s. The token for this depends on the rcid, and must be obtained by screen-scraping. Despite its ugliness, this is probably the easier option if your goal is a minimal change to Rat patrol.
POST to /w/api.php, sending action=patrol, rcid=%s, and token=%s (and probably also format=xml or format=json). The token for this can be obtained from the API (GET /w/api.php?format=...&action=query&list=recentchanges&rctoken=patrol), and is valid for a while. This is the approach I used for MediaWiki:Gadget-PatrollingEnhancements.js, because using JavaScript to screen-scrape an HTML page is not my idea of a good time, and also because I preferred to get a single token upfront. (The only downside to this approach, IMHO, is that the patrol-buttons had to be buttons rather than links, which breaks the browser's visited-links feature; but the only way to make the other approach not have this downside would be to prefetch hundreds of HTML pages and screen-scrape the token out of every last one of them. No, thank you!)

Either way, it's probably not a very hard change to make, but I'm not volunteering, since I'd have no way to test it.

—Ruakh_TALK 02:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Perhaps I'll try to tinker with it. (Not now.)—msh210℠ (talk) 20:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken (certainly possible), this no longer works. (I don't see why not, unless it's because the script looks for &action=edit&section and finds &action=edit&section. But I wouldn't necessarily.)—msh210℠ (talk) 20:10, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

For me it still half-works: it still creates the links, but the linked-to page now has a confirmation-button rather than instantly adding/removing the page. So it's not completely broken, but even so, not terribly useful. I take it that you, however, don't even see the links anymore? —Ruakh_TALK 20:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. Neither at [[WT:V]] nor at [[WT:ES]]. I don't know when they stopped being there: I only noticed it yesterday. (FWIW, besides user:msh210/vector.js, I also have the PatrollingEnhancements gadget enabled.)—msh210℠ (talk) 19:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem is in User:Msh210/vector.js; beginning with this edit, it imports MediaWiki:SectionWatchLinks.js only if wgCanonicalNamespace=='Special', that is, only on pages in the Special: namespace. —Ruakh_TALK 16:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

D'oh! I'm a moron. Thank you so much!—msh210℠ (talk) 19:37, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Pinyin, Pinyin syllable

Is it uncontroversial enough to do by bot to change these two headers to Romanization? It was discussed on the Beer Parlour and I think only two people contributed, but both preferred a single header (Romanization) as opposed to two or three to do the same job. --Mglovesfun (talk) 18:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Done Mglovesfun (talk) 22:40, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] I want this app, please make it

Hi. I want there to be a Wiktionary ap where you can go to any website, click a shiny button, and it will add a sentence as a quote to Wiktionary. Can someone make it, please. --Rockpilot 10:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Please paste this Javascript into your websites, then empty your cache and just double-click on any word to see its definition and have a link to complete it:

 <script src='http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AWiktionaryLookup-external.js&amp;action=raw&amp;ctype=text/javascript' type='text/javascript'></script>

JackPotte 11:19, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, how do I paste Javascript into a website? --Rockpilot 11:28, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You must be its webmaster to proceed. Otherwise, I invite you to test Wikilook. JackPotte 16:24, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

This seems better done as a bookmarklet. But how would any sort of app figure out author, date, publication, etc., from an arbitrary web-page? —Ruakh_TALK 16:31, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

for the non-webmasters, anything we can do? --Rockpilot 06:04, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds useful, good luck!Lucifer 06:21, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Langcode prefixes, revisited

So, after the new langcode system has been established, I thought it would be the right time to look back at it to see what it has done.

Let's start by saying that the original idea of language prefixes was so people don't start creating entries in reconstructed and foreign languages, and I lobbied a lot for these. This however didn't work out because you can still use the language codes if you really wanted, by writing out the full prefix, like {{infl|conl:art-html|noun}}. Therefore, it doesn't fulfill its original purpose. It did, however, add a great deal of complexity which makes the whole concept harder to understand and work with.

Presumably, there are other, better ways of preventing these to be used as entries. Insofar, I believe we should just get rid of those prefixes. -- Liliana • 21:41, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

It didn't actually add any complexity. What added complexity was the insistence of two users that the distinction between mainspace and non-mainspace entries be absolutely transparent to editors, with every template being able to auto-detect the language type and add the necessary prefix so that equivalent wikitext would generate opposite results. That said . . . I've been complaining about this for years, to no avail. Those two editors are too willing to make drastic template changes without community consensus. So, I'm ready to give in now. I've been thinking about this for a few months now, and:

I think we should get rid of the concept of "appendix entries". Unattested languages such as Proto-Indo-European, and unattested words in attested languages such as Vulgar Latin, should just have mainspace entries that are manually prefixed with *, and links should be given accordingly. If something deserves to be banished to an appendix, then it doesn't deserve to have a full entry; an appearance in a word-list, with a brief definition and part-of-speech indicator, should be plenty.

Anything that doesn't deserve entries, doesn't deserve a language template here. Anything that does deserve entries, and a language template, doesn't need to be prefixed.

—Ruakh_TALK 01:51, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, they should just have regular entries, without any prefix. So long as they have {{reconstructed}} or {{PIE entry}}, it's not likely someone would think they're actually attested words. --Yair rand 03:09, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd be O.K. with that, but I'd prefer that the asterisk be in the pagename, in part so there's no confusion about how to link to those entries; for example, {{etyl|la|fr}} {{term|*crudalitas|lang=la}} rather than, say, {{etyl|la|fr}} *{{term|crudalitas|lang=la}}. (Obviously the latter would work fine if we chose to do it that way, I just think the former is nicely self-enforcing.) —Ruakh_TALK 04:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The asterisk would also allow interwiktionary linking. I know German Wiktionary uses the same format (with asterisk), other Wiktionaries might as well. -- Liliana • 05:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The asterisk will break templates that rely on {{SUBPAGENAME}} though. And the asterisk is in itself not part of the lemma, either. —CodeCa t 12:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

What templates are using {{SUBPAGENAME}}, and how are they using it? It may be worth re-evaluating them. —Ruakh_TALK 14:30, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

It's used in headword-line templates and inflection-table templates for sorting. —CodeCa t 14:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

You could import w:Template:str_right I guess, and at least subst: it to add the correct sortkey. -- Liliana • 18:21, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

True. And {{#ifeq:{{PAGENAME}}|*{{{sort}}}||{{attention|ine|Parameter 'sort' is missing, or its value is incorrect.}}}} would make it easy to track down and fix any mistakes. —Ruakh_TALK 18:31, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Urgent Paper

There is urgent need for an article on "solid tumors"

Try Wikipedia. This is a dictionary - I would guess that they are tumors that are relatively solid. SemperBlotto 12:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

w:Solid tumor is a redirect to w:Tumor. Solid tumors appear to be tumors that consist of tissue rather than being filled with liquid. I notice that meaning 1 of the adjective [[solid]] uses the definiendum in the definiens, which is very bad lexicography. I don't know whether meaning of 1 of the adjective is sufficient to call solid tumor too SoP for an entry of its own. —An gr 19:42, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the medical definition may be specific enough that it would warrant an entry, especially in order to contrast solid tumors with leukemias. - TheDaveRoss 20:15, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving RFV / RFD talks once discussion is done and a decision made

This might sound like a stupid question, but as a new admin, I'm trying to figure out the best ways of doing things, and I'm not sure of the best way of archiving RFD / RFV discussions for pages that have been deleted outright. Do we create the Talk page for the now-deleted article and copy the discussion there? I think I might have seen someone else do that a few months back, but my memory is fuzzy. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:30, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I can think of no good reason not to, unless the discussion contained no useful dialog or information. If that is the case even a note that "this failed RfV" is important because not everyone can see deleted revisions and someone might add it not knowing that additional criteria are required for previously deleted content. I also think there is a bot or script which is doing this at the moment. - TheDaveRoss 23:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget to wait seven days after the decision is made! Otherwise, Ruakh will slap you. -- Liliana • 23:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, very good to know. I'll cool my jets in the meantime then. Thank you, Dave and Liliana! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with what TDR and Liliana-60 wrote, and am adding only that if you, for whatever reason, delete an RFV/RFD/RFDO discussion without archiving it, and delete the page also, then it will be very hard to later find the discussion that led to the deletion. For that reason, paste to [[WTcode>:DEL]] a link to the then-current version of RFV/RFD/RFDO and a link to the deleted page, so that someone checking the latter's special:whatlinkshere will find it listed at WT:DEL alongside a link to the deletion discussion.—msh210℠ (talk) 20:40, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] `{{cite web}}` should not put language inside title

When {{{language}}} is passed to {{cite web}}, it outputs "{{{title}}} (in {{{language}}}).", as if the language is part of the title. Language belongs outside the quotation marks. ~ Robin 07:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Done ~ Robin 14:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] amusing if trivial bug

Why does Wiktionary talk:Main Page appear in Special:UncategorizedPages? --Mglovesfun (talk) 10:46, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Title blacklist

I made some additions to the Title Blacklist. Ruakh thinks they should be discussed, so I am doing that here.

The first one is intended to catch IPs who try to create an article by searching the archives (like the one here). Try it: search for something like "test", and MediaWiki will come up with "Create test prefix:Wiktionary:Grease pit on this wiki!", and some IPs do exactly that. As the literal string "prefix:" should never occur in a valid entry (or so I hope!), I blacklisted it.

The second one bans the entire range of Arabic Presentation Forms. Shortly, these are various forms of Arabic characters in isolated, medial, final and initial position, plus combinations of the previous. They should never occur in Wiktionary, as Unicode support made these fully redundant, and in fact they cause display errors with some combinations of fonts and browsers. If you for some reason need a character in a specific position, you can use the ZWJ character. (However, I did exclude the range U+FDF0-U+FDFD, which contains some interesting symbols needed for Islamic eulogy.)

Feel free to discuss them here.-- Liliana • 18:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! For .*prefix:.*, it makes sense to me; but it sounds like .*prefix:Wiktionary:.* will cover all the cases you have in mind. (I think it's good to make blacklist-entries as narrow as possible. What if someone wants to create an {{en-prefix:re-}}? What if we rename the prefix-categories to the form Category:English terms with prefix: re-? It could take us a long time to notice that non-admins are prevented from creating things like these.)

For the Arabic Presentation Forms, would it make sense for any of these to at least be redirects, rather than enforced redlinks? If nothing else, it seems like we should have entries or redirects for the individual characters.

—Ruakh_TALK 18:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Are there any cases where there's an archives search box outside the Wiktionary (or Wiktionary talk) namespace? (I'm thinking of user talk pages, in particular.) If not, "prefix:Wiktionary" might work just as well.
As for the other, I don't think redirects are necessary, as MediaWiki is smart enough to find the regular form when you search for any of the presentation forms. -- Liliana • 18:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't the different forms of the Arabic letters require usage notes to distinguish them? (I'm talking abut one-character-title pages, not whole words.)—msh210℠ (talk) 16:42, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

You mean like is already done at ex. ح, or how? -- Liliana • 18:04, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but with a usage note indicating it's used only word-medially (or whatever's true), and one indicating that that Unicode character is less used than the standard (or whatever's true). Or thereabouts.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:50, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh! Actually, it might be worthwhile to have something like Wikipedia, where they have a table that labels the forms as isolated/initial/medial/final. That should be less confusing than what we have at the moment. -- Liliana • 15:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I had a look at {{ja-noun}} with a mind to tweak it to ensure that romaji links are always to the #Japanese section, since numerous romaji words are also words in other languages, such as kake or ni or kabu. Upon opening the template code, though, I see calls to {{wlink}} all over the place, where I'd just expect to see the usual [[]] square brackets.

Can anyone explain:

What is {{wlink}} for? I read the documentation and Talk page over at {{wlink}} and I'm still not clear on why this even exists. It seems to be intended to be able to handle both plain-text terms and wikilinked terms, but if a term is already wikilinked, why would you pass it into {{wlink}}? I'm baffled.
Is there any compelling reason to use {{wlink}} in {{ja-noun}}? Couldn't we just use square brackets and have done with it? That'd make the code easier to read and understand. I can't think of any instances where the rom argument being passed in would be anything other than plain text.

-- TIA, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:49, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

{{wlink}} is used when one wants a wikilink, but it is unknown whether the parameter as entered into the template already has one (or several), in which case the extra brackets must be dropped. It can be useful e.g. in templates where you want to be able to use [[word A]] or [[word B]] instead of [[word C]]. The template spares you the need to explicitly create a link in the common case of only a single word being used, but allows you to manually manage the links in case you need more than one. As to the practicality of its use in {{ja-noun}} I can't really say. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a simple way to find out whether there is a page using this functionality in the ja-noun template. – Krun 19:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation, Krun. I'll be sure to keep {{wlink}} as it is when editing {{ja-noun}} then, just in case. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:28, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Abuse Filter bug

 (diff | hist) . . Nm famoizana · · ‎; 22:33 . . (+106) . . Jagwar (Talk | contribs | block)‎ (Importing Malagasy word) (bad-iw)

But it wasn't, though (bad i-w = bad interwiki). I replaced the interwiki by copying the page name over the existing text and they were the same. Explanations? Mglovesfun (talk) 21:36, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

This was due to the use of the magic word {{subst:BASEPAGENAME}} --Jagwar 21:41, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok then. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:47, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

And is fixed, I think. Thanks.—msh210℠ (talk) 22:04, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] link to page with quotations visible

Is there a way to link to a page so that the quotations (or translations, m.m.) will be visible to users without cookies? Can there be?—msh210℠ (talk) 23:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there? No. Can there be? Yes. First, we need to decide how we want the URLs to look; I assume we'd want to use either query-strings (?...=...&...=...) or fragments (#...) in some fashion. Once that's hammered down, it looks like all we'd have to do is change the definition of VisibilityToggles.currentStatus (search MediaWiki:Common.js for currentStatus) to examine the URL before examining cookies. (We'd also probably want to change the hrefs of the visibility-links in the sidebar, but that can be done later.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:50, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that this would be beneficial for those who wish to link to a Wiktionary page for the purpose of displaying, e.g., a translation. What do y'all think?

As for the "how", I suppose a query string would be better than an anchor, as the latter would conflict with real anchors (for example, if there were a desire to show all quotations and link to the Verb section). OTOH, in addition to expansion based on query string, perhaps the script could expand translation sections when they're linked to directly. Thoughts on this?—msh210℠ (talk) 16:39, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree on all points. How does this sound? :

If one of the query-string parameters is (for example) hidegroups=quotations,!translations, then quotations are initially hidden, even if they otherwise would not be, and translations groups are initially not hidden, even if they otherwise would be. As a special case, hidegroups=all would mean that all groups are initially hidden and hidegroups=none would mean that none are. I suppose that something like hidegroups=none,translations would then mean "hide translations, but nothing else". (Not that I'm really expecting anyone to use this behavior; I'm just describing how it would end up working, if it were implemented as I imagine it.)

This is just one idea. If anyone has a different idea for how the query-strings would look, I'm all ears. (Any sort of query-string parsing is going to be easy to implement. The hard part is deciding what we want the query string to look like.)

If the initial fragment, at time of page load, is (for example) Quotations or Quotations_2, then quotations groups are not initially hidden, even if they otherwise would be. (This is not exactly the same as your idea, but I think it's much easier to implement, since everything is currently implemented in terms of "groups" rather than "sections". It also works well with the fact that, when you edit a section named ====Translations====, the link in the edit history will be to #Translations, even if what you really edited was #Translations_2.)

—Ruakh_TALK 18:59, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

And that second major bullet point would override the first? Then it sounds great (to me FWIW).—msh210℠ (talk) 19:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

O.K., sounds like a plan. I'll wait a day or two to see if anyone else wants to weigh in, before I go ahead with it. —Ruakh_TALK 00:08, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Inflection template for Latin Ābraham (genitive Ābrahamae)?

Any suggestions? It is masculine, first declination, but the nominative is just Ābraham.

Maybe the first declension template could be changed so that it works the same as with second declension nouns ending in -r? —CodeCa t 00:24, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I have created {{la-decl-1st-AM}}. --Robert.Baruch 01:28, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's quite right, the genitive is 'abrahae' now. The stem includes the -am so it should be present in all forms. What's different is that the nominative and vocative singular has no ending rather than -a, just like ager has no ending rather than -us. —CodeCa t 12:14, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but the gentiive is Abrahae, at least based on what little research I've done. See, for example, here. A quick search on Google Books turns up lots of references to Abrahae and none for Abrahamae. I know, I was as totally surprised as you! --Robert.Baruch 18:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if this is evidence that by that time, -am had come to be pronounced the same as -a... —CodeCa t 00:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

[edit] language categories

I wonder if it would be possible to create empty language categories for all the languages.

I am asking this for two reasons:

even if a language has no entries, specifying family and script is still useful when the language is referred to in etymology sections and the like.
it makes it easier for new contributors if all the infrastructure is already in place.
it serves to quickly depopulate Special:Unusedtemplates

So, is it possible? -- Liliana • 13:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's possible but we would first need to make sure that all language templates have the right names, to avoid creating categories that we don't want. And it will also be hard to sort the two-letter codes from their three-letter equivalents. —CodeCa t 16:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

The latter should not be a problem if the redundant three-letter codes are deleted. As for the former, I thought we went through the language codes a while ago to check for duplicate names and such? -- Liliana • 20:43, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If we're just talking about one category for each language (just the top-level category, the analogue of Category:English language), then I don't think it's a big deal if some of the names are imperfect. We can figure out the right names if and when we actually start worrying about those languages. Moving one category does not take a lot of effort. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 21:07, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's just what I meant. -- Liliana • 13:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] A little problem with the one-line Perl dumper

As some of you may know, I have earlier created a free ePub/mobi (Kindle) English - English dictionary based on Wiktionary and CIDE (i.e. Webster's 1913 Unabridged with some additions). There's also now a Wiktionary only edition. Links to these are on my web page http://personal.inet.fi/koti/korhoj/.

I think there's a little problem in the Perl script that creates the dump file http://toolserver.org/~enwikt/definitions/enwikt-defs-latest-en.tsv.gz. Namely there are some entries that have spanning HTML comments and these aren't recognized. As a result, the dump has some dangling comment end tags. Such as in end of "Chelsea Proper noun # A type of porcelain once manufactured there." The comment continues in the next line like this: "A football club based there. Football clubs don't belong in Wiktionary" (click Edit to see it).

I couldn't think of an easy way to fix this and am not good in Perl anyway. Currently I just remove those entries which I can't convert to well-formed XHTML.

Korhoj 08:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Tagalog and Indonesian

I am doing a comparative study of the vocabulary of Indonesian and Tagalog, two closely related languages. If I look up the Indonesian word pulih, the Wiktionary entry will say "Compare Tagalog puti" and if I look up the word bawang there will be entries for both Indonesian and Tagalog. Is there any way I can pull out all the Wiktionary entries which gives comparisons for both languages and entries for both languages, please? —This comment was unsigned.

The following code shows words that are both Tagalog and Indonesian nouns. You could modify it to find other parts of speech. SemperBlotto 08:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

 <DynamicPageList> category=Tagalog nouns category=Indonesian nouns namespace=0 count=100 mode=none order=ascending </DynamicPageList>

bunga
abang
bawang
kambing
kulit
bola
lapis
mangga
anak
bakal
hangin
hari
kapal
laki
langit
mata
Panchen Lama
pinggan
sayang
suka
urat
durian
rambutan

[edit] Protect against users without autopatrolling permission

The current protection options for pages aren't really sufficient in some areas. Sysop protection seems too much in many cases and prevents many users from making useful contributions and fixes, but autoconfirm protection takes away our ability to keep a check on who is trustworthy enough to be allowed to make edits. It would be nice if there were an additional block option which allows editing as soon as the user is an autopatroller. Could this be added? —CodeCa t 21:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, the software only supports two protection levels, "semi-protected" (editable by users with the autoconfirmed access right) and "protected" (editable by users with the protect access right, which also confers access to protect/unprotect/modify-protection-of a page). So I don't think we can add a new protection level in between. However, I think it is possible to change things so that members of the "Autoconfirmed users" group don't actually have the autoconfirmed access right; we'd have to file a Bugzilla ticket to make the request. —Ruakh_TALK 21:55, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Purely out of curiosity, has there been a spate of vandalism by people who are auto-confirmed? I will also make the requisite statement concerning our desire to have as much of the project editable by as many people as possible yada yada yada. - TheDaveRoss 21:03, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The box doesn't need to be full width. I've looked into making it less, say 50%, but I can't work out how. Is it possible to just have it fit the width of the content of the table? Thank you, Mglovesfun (talk) 17:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I used the CSS display:inline-block; but it doesn't work in IE7 (surprise). —Internoob 04:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I've rolled this out into a few other templates. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

When there is more than one definition in the WOTD, as there commonly is, the RSS feed shows only the first one, and when it has a term with a link inside it, it doesn't display anything. —Internoob 04:32, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Is that true whether the link uses [[ or {{l}}?—msh210℠ (talk) 18:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I've not tried {{l}} but {{transitive}} breaks it too. —Internoob 00:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll get back to you on that on December 19. —Internoob 02:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

{{l}} also breaks it. Anything with a link. —Internoob 20:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

So I guess delinking and putting the most interesting definition first work unless/until this can be fixed. Whose RSS feed is that, anyway?—msh210℠ (talk) 18:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

It's Connel's. Here's the Toolserver page. —Internoob 19:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

But Conrad (I assume Irwin) is listed on that page as author. I've posted a note to his talkpage here.—msh210℠ (talk) 00:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The WOTD RSS feed appears to be stuck on February 17: ultracrepidarian. Is anyone else seeing this? Apologies if this is not the correct method/place to comment on this.

[edit] Some PREFS not working

In Wiktionary:Per-browser preferences, I have "Replace text in deletion log comment" checked - but it is not working. Is this related to the nasty look of the current site? SemperBlotto 08:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It was a bug in TabbedLanguages from the Mediawiki 1.18 upgrade. It's fixed now. --Yair rand 09:10, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Having preloadable templates?

I am a very occasional user at Wiktionary, though do contribute widely through WMF. I find it difficult to quickly add simple entries, or to add citations due to not having ready ability to quickly insert data in the right format. In the end, it is easier to add nothing rather than try to struggle through when I come across old words from my efforts at Wikisource. I wonder whether your community had considered the use of Editnotice to preload templates/text. Here I am thinking of an example like how Commons uses their Creator template into their Creator namespace. If something could be preloaded into the right format for Citations, or for new words, so it is all preset I know that I would find it really useful. Even it was all within html comments, and I unblock the needed bits. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:08, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

User:Yair rand/newentrywiz.js is linked to whenever you search for a term which doesn't exist. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:24, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

That may be the case, it often isn't how I am arriving when I am building at Wikisource to link through archaic words. I probably go straight for the entry though a trial [[wikt:|]] style link. Would there be a means to get that javascript to be built into the editnotice component? Alternatively, could some of that be gadgetised as an alternative? Also for when trying to link from the word back to the presented word in the work at WS, it would be useful to have an easier citation schema. (… yes, I know that it is my laziness in a time-scarce world) — billinghurst sDrewth 01:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

You could add the following to your Special:MyPage/common.js:

 if (wgAction == "edit"){  var tosSummary = document.getElementsByClassName("mw-tos-summary")[0]  tosSummary.innerHTML += "<pre> #*{{quote-book<br/>|year=<br/>|author=<br/>|title=<br/>|chapter=<br/>|passage=}} </pre>" }

To display whatever you want for copy and paste just below the terms of service summary when you edit a page. What you have here is the code for {{quote-book}} but you can just change it. —Internoob 03:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Lost the alpha-bar

I seem to have lost the "alpha-bar" (can't remember what it's really called — the JavaScript thing that loads after the main entry and shows you the previous and next few entries, like "Abba - abbey - abbeys - abduct - abducted"). I think this happened when the new visual layout appeared (the aforementioned Godawful boxes). Are the two things incompatible? Equinox ◑ 22:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I dunno what happened in December, but the alpha-bar is back. Hurrah! Equinox ◑ 22:58, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The 'hide quote' function isn't working. Have tried clearing my caché, which suggests it is server side, not my computer. I use Firefox and have disabled the current admin-only trial. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Works on my side. -- Liliana • 17:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah it's working now, weird! Mglovesfun (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That's probably because cite-book has been replaced by quote-book. SemperBlotto 17:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I seem to think with cite-book you have to use prefix=#*. Don't ask me why this is, it seems to be a clever feature to make the template more difficult to use. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The whole prefix= thing was an attempt, on the part of various editors, to make quotation templates work both on entry pages (where citations are nested under a definition) and on citations pages (where they are not). There's a much simpler and better way to do that, which I've implemented at various templates as I've come across them, and I've now fixed {{cite-book}} to use said better way, but plenty of templates still use the prefix= approach. (Better yet, IMO, would be to get rid of these templates altogether — they're more trouble than they're worth — but I suppose that some editors must feel differently, or else they wouldn't keep using them.) —Ruakh_TALK 19:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

{{quote-book}} is preferable in a number of respects. It recognizes more parameters (including "editor", "location" and "publisher"). Also, if you don't end your {{cite-book}} parameters with a page number, {{cite-book}} will print the citation line so that it ends with a comma instead of a colon. But, I agree with Ruakh -- best of all is the old fashioned way of just typing the citations without using templates. -- · 21:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That page beats even water in inefficiency; it uses 1 MB of the 2 MB limit! Anyone able to figure out what causes it? -- Liliana • 20:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

addendum: I think I found it, the {{list}} template is the culprit. Can't we just get rid of this obvious duplication of topical categories? -- Liliana • 20:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Would an admin be so kind to update the file Mediawiki:sp-contributions-footer, one to update ~vvv's script to be quentin's scrip, and two make the toolserver urls protocol relative. I have done that at s:Mediawiki:sp-contributions-footer if you need to peek. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

See Template_talk:wikipedia#Sidebar_display_bug. Does anyone else experience this bug? —Michael Z. 2011-12-15 16:20 z

I do. As I recall, we also used to have the same problem with the "visibility" section; but I don't remember who fixed that, or how. —Ruakh_TALK 20:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

In MediaWiki:common.js there is the section

     // Add a new global toggle to the side bar     addGlobalToggle: function(category) {...

I don't know the exact code problem, but it would seem that the icons to use for open, show close, and vice versa. It will need a sysop to get in and edit. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

(Actually, the relevant section is function Projectlinks() { ...) --Yair rand 06:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. --Yair rand 06:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Non-English categories and tabbed languages

Is there any way of making the links on pages in the Category namespace go straight to the appropriate language section when using tabbed languages? —Internoob 20:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

That may be worthwhile even without Tabbed Languages . . . yes, it's possible, using JavaScript to modify the links on the category-pages to include hashes. I won't volunteer, though, yet, because there's another programming task on this page that I volunteered for a while back and still haven't done. :-/ —Ruakh_TALK 17:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

If you're talking about #link to page with quotations visible, which was my request, then, if my 2c have any weight with you, I think the current request is more important.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Hm, if we're going to be fiddling with category member HTML, we might as well also fix it so that the scripts display right, and the lang parameter is set... --Yair rand 00:09, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Here we go: User:Yair rand/catfix (template to be added to category templates, first parameter is the language code), and User:Yair rand/catfix.js. --Yair rand 21:11, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant! Very smoothly done, in every detail, except that I believe the template should have a sc= parameter for categories of words not in their default script (e.g. Serbo-Croatian in Latin script), and perhaps it should just use {{Xyzy}} rather than jumping directly to (e.g.) {{he/script}}. Aside from that, my only concern is that, if I'm not mistaken, it would fail ungracefully if (e.g.) {{he/script}} or {{Hebr}} didn't exist, or if {{Hebr}} started with something other than an HTML element. (I admit, I'm not aware of any script templates with the latter property, but SFAIK nothing currently forbids it. In the past we've discussed the possibility of {{Hebr}} wrapping its contents in bidi characters to prevent internal RTL directionality from "leaking out" in the case of interstitial punctuation and/or subsequent digits, especially the latter.) Similarly, it could behave rather oddly if {{Hebr}} did start with an HTML element, but that element wasn't intended to directly hold the templated text (say, if {{Hebr}} used two layers deep of HTML elements for some reason). It might be safer to use some sort of placeholder text, such as %PLACEHOLDER_TEXT%, and resort to the less-fancy approach of manipulating innerHTML. Oh, and by the way, p should totally be named li. :-P —Ruakh_TALK 22:29, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I've added the sc= parameter, changed the variable name, and fixed the bug with script templates not beginning with HTML element, and with those without an HTML element at all (ex. {{Sgnw}}, which should really be fixed, if just to pass the lang parameter). If there is no script template at all, quite a lot of templates would break, so I think it's okay to assume that one exists. --Yair rand 01:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Re: "If there is no script template at all, quite a lot of templates would break": Are you sure? I thought that most script-using templates used {{Xyzy}}, which copes with a nonexistent {{he/script}} by falling back on {{Eror}} (though it does not, I admit, cope with a nonexistent {{ {{he/script}} }}). —Ruakh_TALK 02:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

A quick check of a bunch of the most-used templates: {{l}} doesn't use Xyzy, {{t}}, {{slink}}, {{term}}, {{makelink}}, and {{wlink2}} do use Xyzy. So, yeah, most templates can handle it. --Yair rand 02:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Implemented for part of speech categories. Hopefully nothing broke as a result. --Yair rand 05:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
- Just a suggestion: is it possible to alter the line height somehow? Category:Tibetan nouns looks pretty bad because some words run into each other vertically. -- Liliana • 21:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
  - I'm not seeing any vertical overlap, but if on some users' computers Tibetan script has an issue with that, then the line-height CSS for {{Tibt}} should be modified so that it can be fixed for all situations, not just the category pages. --Yair rand 23:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] ^ above numbers

Is there a character that looks like a ^ that can be placed above numbers in normal text and in page headers? Celloplayer115 18:53, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

You mean like the scale degrees 1̂, 2̂, 3̂, 4̂, 5̂, 6̂, 7̂? You can use U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT (̂). —An gr 21:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. Thanks. Celloplayer115 03:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Getting collapsible tables to fit their contents

I recently got a widescreen monitor, and since we use collapsible tables a lot on Wiktionary, I noticed that a lot of the time, the tables are stretched to the entire width of the screen, leaving a lot of empty space in between. Is it possible somehow to make the table only as wide as its contents, so that it becomes wider or narrower as the words in the table are longer or shorter? —CodeCa t 15:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This is what I asked at #Template:fro-decl-adj. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:19, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

There's been some recent activity here. Can we get one for French, as our current French one sucks? --Simplus2 14:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The most used word isn't something we should change every month. Please tell us if you see some examples of list we should copy or go toward. JackPotte 22:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Antiblue

Hi all. Can someone tell me how to quickly unlink to pages with a specific language section. I'm thinking of stripping all entries on User:Simplus2/more French crap which already have a French section. --Simplus2 20:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

This tool is free if you download AWB on a Windows PC. JackPotte 22:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] "familiar" and "slang" templates

Hi there,

can someone in the know fix the said templates to accommodate for this type of edit, please? http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=reek&diff=15713037&oldid=15505223
Thanks, --Jerome Potts 06:15, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Why would adjusting them for that be a fix? Use {{qualifier|slang}}.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Aha, thanks. --Jerome Potts 21:11, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jerome Charles Potts I actually thought you meant 'can someone fix all these edits'. I probably can, I'll give it a go. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist issue - deletions and blocks not showing up

I've noticed recently that I'm not seeing page deletions or user blocks on my watchlist. I remember seeing blocks a while ago, but I'm not sure I've ever seen deletions. Is this an admin-privileges thing, or a site issue? — lexicógrafa | háblame — 19:57, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, but here are some data: I'm an admin here, but not at enWP. I picked an arbitrary deleted-today page at enWP and watchlisted it, and the deletion shows up on my watchlist. I did the same at wikt, and the deletion doesn't show up on my watchlist. Both sites are using the same version of the site software.—msh210℠ (talk) 20:00, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I deleted ceiler a little while ago. I've just gone back and "Watched" it. It shows up when I "view and edit watchlist". SemperBlotto 20:17, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Should have specified - I meant the "relevant changes" page of the watchlist, I can see recently deleted pages on the edit watchlist page too. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 20:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Ditto.—msh210℠ (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Babel for language varieties

Do you think it would be useful to have babel templates for specific varieties of a language? It might be useful if you need someone who specifically speaks Belgian Dutch for example, or Valencian Catalan, especially for pronunciation sections. —CodeCa t 18:30, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Our pronunciation sections need to be based on reliable sources rather than users' personal intuitions anyway, don't they? —An gr 18:33, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Ideally they ought to be, yes, but that's not how it's usually done AFAICT. Knowledge of what dialect someone has may be useful for things other than pronunciation.—msh210℠ (talk) 20:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to replace the current contents of {{does-template-exist}} with the current contents of {{does-template-exist/temp}}. Since that is one of the most widely transcluded templates on the entire project, and it depends on weird parser edge cases, I thought I should post here first, and request review.

This is the change:

<onlyinclude><includeonly>{{safesubst:#switch:{{safesubst:urlencode:{{safesubst:Template:{{{1}}}}}}}|%5B%5B%3ATemplate%3A{{safesubst:urlencode:{{{1}}}}}%5D%5D=|%7B%7Bsafesubst%3ATemplate%3A{{safesubst:urlencode:{{{1}}}}}%7D%7D=|#default=1}}</includeonly></onlyinclude> {{documentation}}

As you can see, it's a small change. I believe it should have only the following effects:

Currently, {{subst:does-template-exist|/...}} always reports that {{/...}} doesn't exist (even if it does), and {{does-template-exist|/...}} always reports that it does exist (even if it doesn't). After the proposed change, both versions will correctly report whether it exists or not.
- The main situation I've encountered this is {{/script}}, which frequently gets tested-for when lang= isn't specified in a template like {{term}}.
- This effect is the purpose of the change.
Currently, {{subst:does-template-exist|User:...}} (or any other namespace) correctly reports whether User:... exists, but {{does-template-exist|User:...}} (transcluded rather than substituted) always reports that it does exist, even if it doesn't. After the proposed change, both versions will always report that it doesn't exist (because it will actually be testing for the existence of Template:User:...).
- In particular: whereas {{subst:does-template-exist|Template:...}} currently correctly reports whether Template:... exists and {{does-template-exist|Template:...}} currently always reports that it does exist, both of these will now always report that it doesn't, because they'll actually be looking for Template:Template:.... This special case could be (mostly) addressed, by testing for the existence of {{safesubst:#ifeq:{{safesubst:padleft:|9|{{{1}}}}}|Template:||Template:}}{{{1}}} rather than the existence of Template:{{{1}}}, but I don't think the currently-proposed behavior is a problem, since there should never be a need for the caller to specify Template: anyway.
- In particular: whereas {{subst:does-template-exist|:...}} currently correctly reports whether ... exists and {{does-template-exist|:...}} currently always reports that it does exist, both of these will now always report that it doesn't, because they'll actually be looking for [[Template::...]].
- This effect was not specifically intended, but it doesn't seem detrimental to me.

I've tested this at User:Ruakh/Test.

—Ruakh_TALK 22:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I won't pretend to understand all of this, but it looks good, and more importantly, I trust you. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ditto.—msh210℠ (talk) 17:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Done (once it clears the job queue . . . so, it'll be awhile). If anyone notices any adverse effects, please speak up. —Ruakh_TALK 22:53, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Default script for Serbo-Croatian

Right now this is Cyrillic, but that's only used in Serbia as far as I know, Bosnia and Croatia use only the Latin alphabet if I'm not mistaken (I don't know what Montenegro uses). So wouldn't it be better to make Latin the default script? —CodeCa t 20:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. —Ruakh_TALK 23:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably more important for us is that we have more sh in Latin script than we do in Cyrillic. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wiktionary very slow or not loading at all

Since I got home last night, Wiktionary is very slow or not loading at all. This also affects AWB. Am not having any problems with other websites. Mglovesfun 11:13 18 01 2012

I am getting instant responses. I assumed it was because -pedia is blacked out. SemperBlotto 11:15, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

The interface has been getting faster and faster for me all day; still a bit slow now, AutoWikiBrowser can't load Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:infl in order to change it to head; by the way, down to about 50 000 now which will be about two days work, starting from whenever AWB can load the list. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:11, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Back to normal again, hmm. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:52, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

That was the same on fr.wikt. JackPotte

[edit] A little bug

If, in Recent Changes, you try to look at the diff of a page which has been deleted in the meantime, you get an inappropriate error message: "Sorry: the page title you requested is not supported by our software." (Example, a page I deleted: [2]). Equinox ◑ 19:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

That's the same on fr.wikt. JackPotte 17:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Collapsible templates, especially {{trans-top}}

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

With MW 1.18 there are two classes, mw-collapsible and mw-collapsed¹ which are available to make nearly any html element collapsible. This may obviate some of the measures currently in use on en.WT. This is particularly relevant to mobile use of wiktionary, with the infamous example of the translation tables at en.m/water. The mobile site is served using Extension:MobileFrontend², which strips out a range of content deemed inappropriate for mobile devices - apparently including the show/hide scripts used by Wiktionary via common.js.

The reason this has been noticed as a problem is a group of student developers are working to create and improve a Wiktionary-specific Android app. They have a working product now, but are working on adding wiktionary-specific features and functions, and very very long translation tables which do not collapse correctly are UX issue for their project. - Amgine/ ^t·e 05:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

A simple demo is at Template:trans-top/new. It would be easy to move the correct styles over. It should be straightforward to tweak User:Yair rand/TargetedTranslations.js and User:Conrad.Irwin/editor.js. The visibility toggling might also have to be tweaked, but I can't remember how that's handled. If it's possible, the shift sounds like a good idea since we'd be shifting to more standardized mediawiki structures as well as helping mobile users. --Bequw → τ 21:04, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The mobile site does not load the scripts for mw-collapsible and mw-collapsed, either. It would be difficult (if not impossible) to switch everything over, but even if it was simple, I don't think it's a good idea. The $.makeCollapsible script used is not better than our NavBar script.

What I'd like to have would be the expandable tables using the <details> and <summary> elements to allow native handling of expandable sections, with a JS fallback for nonsupporting browsers, but unfortunately those elements are not in the Mediawiki tag whitelist. --Yair rand 22:50, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] categorytree

Apparently, trying to do {{#categorytree:en:Canids}} tries to load up Category:Canids instead, while all other languages work fine. This seems to be a remnant from when we still had English words in the parent category, so can this be fixed? -- Liliana • 05:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think this is because [[:en:]] is this wiki, so it strips out en: from the beginning of any links. {{#categorytree:Category:en:Canids}} works. --Yair rand 05:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

The link on the upper right of the entry for α that should go to β is a redlink, but β is definitely an article. What's going on, and how do I fix it? Metaknowledge 20:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. SemperBlotto 20:58, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Similar problem at ζ and σ, except worse: no link appears. Metaknowledge 21:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:29, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] A question about template transclusions...

Does anyone know if a template with no parameters that is transcluded many times on a page is any slower than when it's transcluded only once on the page? —CodeCa t 23:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Normally, the hard work of transclusion takes place when you edit a page that uses the template, or when you edit a template that is directly or indirectly transcluded in such a page. (This includes the case where you edit the template itself, of course.) So it shouldn't have a noticeable effect. (Unless the template itself does expensive things, of course, but it doesn't sound like that's what you mean?) —Ruakh_TALK 23:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering mostly... if a page includes many language templates, would it hurt to include them all a second time on that page? —CodeCa t 23:45, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Not noticeably, no. —Ruakh_TALK 00:32, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with accelerated entries

For a little while now accelerated entries I've created have ended up looking like this. Could someone fix this so we don't have to replace {{subst:?}} with #? I would ask Conrad.Irwin, but he hasn't been active in a while. Ultimateria 22:13, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I bet someone with a non-Unicode capable browser broke the script. -- Liliana • 22:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It works for me. I don't know if that's because someone has fixed it, or because there's some relevant difference between our browsers. (FWIW: I'm using Firefox 9.0.1 on Windows 7.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:02, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Since posting this, I see no green links even where I know they should be (anomal for instance). I use Chrome on Windows 7 but I also tried Internet Explorer, I checked my per-browser preferences, and I connected to a different network. I'm not sure what else to do... Ultimateria 23:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Update: takeover bids appeared as a green link, but non-English forms are still redlinks. Ultimateria 00:04, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I fixed the {{subst:?}} issue; the lack of green links for non-English entries is new to me, I have no idea why that is. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:10, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

By the way, {{♯}} (a really bastard to type) isn't needed anymore, is it? WT:ACCEL uses it for section linking, such as {{plural of|nocat=1|[[casa{{subst:♯}}Spanish|casa]]|lang=es}} whereas as {{plural of|nocat=1|casa|lang=es}} does the same thing. No piped link needed, not for about 18 months now. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Everything is working again. I don't know if it's something you guys did...but just in case, thank you. :P Ultimateria 18:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Quotations

Hi, may I ask my question here? If not, please tell me where to go ...

I've got a question regarding quotations, and another Wiktionary (no.wiktionary.org): We like your way of making quotations collapsable (with the text "quotations [arrow]", but so far, I haven't been able to adopt the script to no.wikt ... Is there anyone that could help me? If you know, I would appreciate it a lot! Mewasul 18:28, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that you're making reference to the paragraph Hidden Quotes of MediaWiki:Common.js. JackPotte 19:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-HiddenQuote.js can help you to install the function. JackPotte 20:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I am refering to that paragraph exactly .. and I can copy it, but I still don't get how to make it work on no.wikt. What exactly do I write in on the entries, or at the quotation template, to make it use that function? Mewasul 10:24, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Nothing special needs to be added. Any unordered list inside an ordered list will be collapsed:

 # ... #* ...

--Yair rand 10:27, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I see – thank you so much, every one of you!! It works perfectly. Greetings, Mewasul 13:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Beer parlour --> 敠

Why on earth, when I click on Wiktionary:Beer parlour, does it redirect to 敠? This is unusually infuriating. Metaknowledge 23:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

It appears to have been vandalism. Liliana-60 (talk • contribs) has reverted it now. —Ruakh_TALK 01:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be useful, if when you hovered over ' * ', a tool-tip saying "unattested" appeared. If we are replacing '<' with 'from', this should be done too; not everyone knows what * means. --Vahag 09:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. --Yair rand 09:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. --Vahag 11:56, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there a way to put a six above a four as shown on the ⁶₄ page but on only one line and smaller instead of using a table with the images of both numbers? Celloplayer115 01:15, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I used head=⁶₄. It's not perfect and you can do what I did on ̥ if you have an image of the thing. —Internoob 02:49, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

How about now? —Ruakh_TALK 17:54, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

FWIW combining digits have been proposed for inclusion in Unicode, so in the future this ugly hack shouldn't be needed anymore. -- Liliana • 17:59, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

<math>6\atop4</math> displays correctly ( $6\atop4$ ) but is an image. (FYI, the spacing before and after \atop doesn't matter.)—msh210℠ (talk) 21:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Combining diacritics

In the entry " ̥", the title is placed in an odd position, since there isn't anything for the character to combine with. It'd be nice to have a placeholder there to combine with:

In MediaWiki:Common.css, add the following rule:

 .combining:before { content: "o"; speak: none; color: #aaa; margin-right: -1ch; }

Create a template {{Combining Diacritical Marks title}} containing with the following wikitext:
```
 {{DISPLAYTITLE:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}} 
```
Include the template in entries named after a combining diacritical mark. Unfortunately we can't just stick it in {{Combining Diacritical Marks character info}}, because that infobox is used in some non-combining entries.

In browsers that support CSS generated content, the title would look like:

o̥

Browsers without generated content support would be unaffected. An alternative to the letter "o" would be the dotted circle (◌).

– Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 10:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

No objections from me though the dotted circle would really be better than the letter o. -- Liliana • 12:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It would, but many fonts render the circle way too small. We could specify font families on the placeholder, but its metrics might not match the diacritic, then. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 16:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Could it be used with a no-breaking space? —CodeCa t 16:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

A non-breaking space likely wouldn't be wide enough (depending on the user's font). Though that is an idea: without modifying any stylesheets, we could just apply padding-left: 1ch; to the title using a template. I still like the idea of indicating somehow that the character is combining, though. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 17:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem with using the letter o as a placeholder is that it may cause confusion with the actual combination of o + diacritic, especially if that entry exists as well. -- Liliana • 16:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────┘
That's why I made the "o" a light gray. But it turns out that, in Firefox on the Mac, the diacritic also turns gray if both characters come from the same font. (For me, Firefox was doing font replacement on the diacritic, so it showed up black.) Typically you'd use a dotted-line "o", which is what the Unicode standard uses in its code charts. [3] But ironically, the closest thing in Unicode itself is "◌", which doesn't render well in fonts other than Arial Unicode MS. So how about using a dotted circle and specifying that font for the entire title:

 .combining { font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; font-size: 110%; line-height: 1em; } .combining:before { content: "\25CC"; speak: none; margin-right: -1ch; }

◌̥

Note that this is just a simulation; if these styles are implemented, the placeholder character won't be selectable, just the diacritic.

– Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 17:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to use the existing unicode class, instead of defining just a single font? -- Liliana • 17:31, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

And what about those who don't have that font? —CodeCa t 21:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

True, for now I've created the template to simply shift the title over by one character. I added it to all the entries I could find. It still would be nice to display some kind of placeholder, to indicate a combining character. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Using language templates in entries directly

As far as I know, our practice has been to subst: these templates whenever they are used directly in entries. But I'm not sure why; it seems to me that a lot of the benefits of using templates are lost this way. Can someone explain this to me please? —CodeCa t 12:46, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

There are two places where these templates could conceivably be used in entries: headings, where they break section linking, and translation sections, where they make sorting unnecessarily difficult. -- Liliana • 12:52, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm also thinking of language names in etymology sections and in descendants. —CodeCa t 12:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

In etymology sections you should really use {{etyl|nl|-}} or similar (which displays "Dutch"), but it isn't that widespread yet. As for descendants, same argument from translation sections applies here. -- Liliana • 12:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

User:msh210/format.js has a 'lang subst' function, in User:Mglovesfun/vector.js I changed this to change {{nl}} to {{etyl|nl|-}}. The script looks for two or three Latin letters wrapped up in {{}}, so codes like {{roa-jer}} get ignored. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there a reason why that would be preferred in etymology sections? It seems to me that it just complicates things and results in more code and slower pages without any benefit. —CodeCa t 13:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It gives a Wikipedia link for (1) languages that aren't linked in translations sections and (2) all languages, if you enable the relevant option at WT:PREFS. —Ruakh_TALK 13:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Sorting out the multitude of linking templates

Right now we have a wide variety of templates used to create links. Some are more commonly used than others, some are used only to support other templates. But in many cases there are several templates that fulfill a similar function. The overlap is quite huge, as people who don't know of the other templates decide instead to create their own. It's hard to see the template forest with the trees in the way, and I wouldn't mind pruning some of them! I'd like to make an inventory of linking templates and their different functions. I think it would be nice if we had a set of small templates that perform one function and nothing else. For example, one template that creates just a link, nothing else without formatting or scripting. (I propose that we use {{l}} for that purpose, by offloading the additional things like scripts, transliterations, glosses and genders to another template (which in turn transcludes {{l}}).)

{{l}}, {{lx}}
{{term}}, {{termx}}
{{onym}}
{{proto}}
{{recons}}
{{t}}, {{t+}}, {{t-}}, {{tø}}
{{slink}}
{{makelink}}
{{polytonic}}
{{etyl}}

Are there any others? Please add them to the above list. —CodeCa t 16:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Category:Internal link templates, though some of them aren't quite 'linking templates' in this way. I created recons to do the same as {{proto}} but for any language, not just one's that start 'proto'. So you can link to Appendix:Frankish/foo or even to languages that are attested but have unattested forms, like Appendix:Old Dutch/foo. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

{{recons}} is a nice template in itself, because it can be widely used. To me it makes {{proto}} a little redundant, especially now that reconstructed languages have their own language codes. Instead of using {{proto|Germanic|dagaz}} why not use {{etyl|gem-pro}} {{recons|dagaz|lang=gem-pro}}? This practice might even make {{termx}} redundant as well, as it does the same thing. —CodeCa t 16:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

{{termx}} is needed for Qapla' I think -- Liliana • 16:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Proto may do the same job as etyl and recons separately, but it's easy to use and saves a little bit of space. I find that a bit like saying {{feminine of}} is redundant to {{form of|feminine}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Recent changes

What is all this rubbish at the top of "Recent changes" - after "Wanted" and before the "options"? SemperBlotto 19:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Developers must be fiddling with something, it's happening at en.wikiquote as well. -- Cirt (talk) 19:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Gone away now. SemperBlotto 20:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, must've been a temporary glitch. -- Cirt (talk) 20:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Language templates listed as unused templates

Currently most of the templates in Special:UnusedTemplates are language code templates along with their corresponding script subtemplates. This doesn't really seem desirable to me because they aren't 'unused' in the sense that they may be deleted; they're just waiting to be used. And in the mean time they clog up the list, which is limited to 5000 entries, so there is no way to see the remaining actually unused templates. Is there a way to make it so language templates are not shown in the list? —CodeCa t 18:29, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Create a page that embeds them. It can even be in the User namespace. As long as they're embedded *anywhere*, they won't show up in the list. -- Liliana • 18:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh I didn't think of that... Wiktionary:Etymology/language templates and Wiktionary:Index to templates/languages seem like good candidates, but the bot that generates those pages would need to be modified. (Why do we have both pages though, aren't they the same?) —CodeCa t 18:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you just need to stop interpreting 'unused' as 'may be deleted'. That seems like the quickest possible solution. --Mglovesfun (talk) 19:24, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the issue is the interaction with the 5000 entry limit, which problem occurs in some other Special Pages lists as well. DCDuring TALK 19:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh I see. I think 5000 is the limit for all special pages. The number of unused categories is over 1500, which is why I'm in favor of regularly deleting unused categories. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

In Wiktionary:Index to templates/languages, instead of linking the name of the language like [[English]], use [[{{en}}]]. That'll do it. Just need to get the agreement of the bot owner that updates this list. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:06, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Import bot for translation pairs

What follows is a request for help (or input) with creating a bot for volume import of translation pairs into Wiktionary.

I am in contact with a person who is considering to donate some English-Czech translations to English Wiktionary. He asked me whether the following could be done using a bot:

Let us have a list of tab-separated records of the form <headword>\t<translation-gloss>\t<translation>\t<gender>. For each row of the table, the bot should add the translation to a suitable translation table in the entry <headword>, by finding "{{trans-top|<translation-gloss>". As the tab-separated list has been created using translation glosses extracted from Wiktionary, the bot can assume that <translation-gloss> perfectly matches the string found after "{{trans-top|". To make it generic, one column of the input table could contain language code. For simplicity: if the translation table already contains a Czech translation (or that of another specified target language), the bot should skip the record or row; this can be made more complex by requiring the bot to append the translation to the list of translations of the target language unless the translation is already in the list.

Does anyone have a bot whose parts could be used to create such an importing bot? Does writing the bot seem doable with a fairly low amount of effort?

Here is a test set for import:

 pumpkin fruit of this plant     dýně    f decade  a period of ten years   desetiletí      n Armenian        person  Arménec m

The target language is Czech, thus "cs".

Thank you for any help. --Dan Polansky 18:22, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Remember this page, which caused us so much trouble due to starting in an invisible character so it can be allowed as a page title?

Well as I just found out, Unicode has a solution for this: ꞉. This isn't the IPA colon, but a new character, which is intended for languages which use the colon orthographically. Even though it might not be supported by older systems, it would be a perfect fit in this case, in my opinion. -- Liliana • 02:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

No idea. Use your judgment, it's been serving us well so far. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:39, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant!—msh210℠ (talk) 07:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Moved to na꞉k. -- Liliana • 17:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Right-to-left Babel boxes

So I know WT does a lot of things different from WP (and in this case from Commons and WB as well). But is there a particular reason that the language codes for languages written right-to-left, like Arabic and Hindi are on the left rather than the right? --Quintucket 21:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

That's what Wikipedia does as well. Or did I miss something? -- Liliana • 21:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Odd. I just realized that I'm completely wrong. Wikipedia, puts the language code for rtl languages on the left for native speakers, and right for level 1 speakers, but all other wikis put both on the left. I wonder why it is that I didn't notice it when I put my Babel boxes on Commons and Wikibooks. --Quintucket 21:25, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Georgian blends

I've just added the Georgian language tag "ka" to არაფერი to move it out of the "English blends" category and into a new category "Georgian blends". First of all, that is the right language tag, isn't it? Secondly, the new category isn't showing up here. Is there something I need to do to make it appear? — Paul G 15:37, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is the right language tag (/ language code). The category wasn't showing up in Blends by language because it hadn't been created yet. :) --Yair rand 16:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, OK :) Thanks for doing that. — Paul G 18:02, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Bot not working

Although I can edit normally (but somewhat slow?) my bot is not working - I get "HTTPError: 504 Gateway Time-out". As far as I can tell, no bot has run since 18:11 yesterday. (They are running OK on -pedia) SemperBlotto 08:44, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Now it is almost working. It adds one or two words then goes into a loop of dozens of "Pausing 300 seconds due to database server lag" messages. It will never catch up at this rate. SemperBlotto 14:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Server lag now down to single figures. Light at the end of the tunnel. SemperBlotto 15:00, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- I had the same problem using AWB this morning; a couple of hours later, it was okay. --Dan Polansky 15:47, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Template not discriminating language when categorizing

This discussion (Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup#Category:en:Chemical elements) points out that the template in question is adding the word to an en: category, even though the template is in the section for a specific non-English language and not in the English section. How hard is it to make the template aware of what language section it's in?—This unsigned comment was added by Chuck Entz (talk • contribs).

Very. But a bot can add a lang parameter based on section. (Liliana, you reading this?)—msh210℠ (talk) 07:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

To repeat myself, the problem with this template is quite small; with context labels, I wouldn't be surprised if there were between 10 000 and 100 000 pages using context labels with the wrong language. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Subpage problem

Talk:error/mistake distinction ought not to be a subpage of Talk:error; its content relates to that of Citations:error/mistake distinction. How do I prevent the software from treating it as a subpage of Talk:error? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 12:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you can. I tried adding the entry (with a definition based on guesswork) - but that didn't help. SemperBlotto 12:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

It's strange; neither the mainspace page nor the Citations: page is affected. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 12:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

That's because we don't have the 'subpage' feature turned on in those namespaces. (See mw:Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages.) —Ruakh_TALK 14:49, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Do we want subpages to be enabled for mainspace talk pages? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Good question. We don't use talkpages anywhere nearly as much as WP (which needs subpages for archiving), but we do use them. Conceivably, we'll need to archive one at some point. Can you think of a way to do so without the use of subpages? (The subpage feature is necessary if we're using subpages for the "Entry" link atop the archival page to link to the correct entry.)—msh210℠ (talk) 18:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't know; I'm no good at this sort of thing. Do we have any mainspace talk pages with archival subpages? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 04:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Not that I can find. I think we have to assume that we will, though. I suppose we can put them in project namespace (Wiktionary:Talk archive/entrytitle). (Archived talk is as valid there as in the talk namespace, since it's Wiktionary-related and is no longer actual talk.)—msh210℠ (talk) 16:32, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there a way to use JavaScript to test for the existence of a page? If so, we can have JS test for wgNamespaceNumber=1 && wgTitle.indexof('/')>0 && exists(wgTitle) and set the CSS of body.ns-1 div#contentSub span.subpages to display:none. I think that would work (but only, of course, for users with JS and CSS, which is far from ideal), though it may need some tweaking.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

But Talk:error does exist... —CodeCa t 17:05, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Right, but that JS would test for the existence of [[error/mistake distinction]]. (Come to think of it, that might not be ideal, as we sometimes have talkpages for nonexistent pages, especially where the latter have been deleted. I suppose if the JS could check for the existence of a page or a log entry therefor....) The existence or non- of [[talk:error]] has nothing to do with it.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

That's certainly possible, though I'm not sure it that would be a good idea... --Yair rand 16:43, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Technically speaking, to test for the existence of the mainspace page, we can just check if the "Entry" tab is a redlink, with something like document.getElementById('ca-nstab-main').className.search(/(^| )new( |$)/). That said — this approach seems error-prone. Note that the talk-page that sparked this discussion, Talk:error/mistake distinction, was orphaned (or rather, not-yet-parented) when the discussion began. If we want to suppress the breadcrumb for non-archive pages, I think it's simpler to check if the pagename looks like .../Archive.... (But to be honest, I'm not sure how much harm the breadcrumb really does. And that's the only effect of being a subpage, so far as I can tell, aside from parser variables like {{SUBPAGENAME}} that we're not using, and that couldn't readily be fixed by JavaScript even if we were.) —Ruakh_TALK 17:53, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I suppose there's no way to escape characters in strings used as headers, but is there any look-alike Unicode character that could be substituted? It might be good to look for such look-alikes for all the syntactically-significant characters, which would be used like a non-breaking space substitutes for a space. Chuck Entz 18:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

There are some, yes — see mw:Help:Subpages — but that cure would be infinitely worse than the disease. —Ruakh_TALK 18:56, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The bug is still present at enwiki more than 10 years after it was brought up there, so that pages like w:Talk:OS/2 still have a "backlink" to w:Talk:OS. Soap (talk) 02:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

That's because it's not a bug. —Ruakh_TALK 19:48, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Concordance:Wikipedia

An editor has asked whether Wikipedia has a concordance of its own most-used words. This seems to me like a useful thing to create here, if we can do so. Obviously, since Wikipedia is in a constant state of flux, it would need to be date-specific. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:46, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Someone was reaping words common on WP that we don't have entries for. (That's not the same thing, of course, but I thought I'd mention.) I forget who, or where it is.—msh210℠ (talk) 19:10, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Haven't found it. bd2412 T 23:23, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] creole languages linking to the creole cat

Languages like Category:Greenlandic Eskimo Pidgin language are placed in the blue Category:Pidgins and creole languages, but link (in their descriptive text) to a nonexistant Category:Creole and pidgin languages. This is possibly Template:etyl:crp's fault, but I can't work out how. Can this be fixed, so that the descriptive-text link is also a blue link to Category:Pidgins and creole languages?

Done -- Liliana • 22:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Aha, thank you! And thanks for expanding the number of countries langcatboiler can handle a language being spoken in... I've started to fill up Category:Languages of the United States now, and have just about reached the old limit. :P - -sche (discuss) 22:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Wiktionary trigraphs

Which language does ang stand for? Is there anywhere I can get a complete list of Wiktionary trigraphs (and digraphs) —This unsigned comment was added by Rdurkan (talk • contribs) 21:59, 22 February 2012.

{{ang}} -> Old English. You can find a complete list here: Category:Language templates. Maro 21:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] unpatrolled edits in own userspace

This edit showed up in Recentchanges as unpatrolled. I marked it as patrolled, but I thought all edits by users to their own userspace were supposed to be auto-marked as patrolled. - -sche (discuss) 01:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

No, currently only edits to [[Special:MyPage]] and [[Special:MyPage/Sandbox]], not edits to other subpages; see Wiktionary:Whitelist?oldid=5774202. But that can be changed quite easily, if so desired, by modifying [[MediaWiki:Gadget-PatrollingEnhancements.js]]. —Ruakh_TALK 02:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah. That's a good point about promotional material. OTOH, there's no reason to think promotional material couldn't just be added to a /Sandbox page, so... I would favour extending protection to all userspace pages (or removing it entirely). - -sche (discuss) 03:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Edits reverted, but still marked as unpatrolled

New question: this edit showed up as unpatrolled, although by the time I looked at it, it had (long) been reverted. Is it possible/practical to mark any reverted edit as patrolled? - -sche (discuss) 07:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that feature would be very useful too. It would also be nice if an edit were marked as patrolled if a patroller makes any further edits to the page, or perhaps just the sections that were edited before, with the assumption that if they made further changes, they also saw the edits and therefore agree with them. —CodeCa t 13:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

de.Wikt's "Stabilversionen" (apparently an official Mediawiki feature) function that way: patrollers making edits to a page must specify if they don't want to mark it patrolled despite making a change. Patrollers can also simply approve the current version, which approves all revisions up to that point. However, that system also has the downside of not displaying the actual/current revision of a page until it's approved, which can be a long time. - -sche (discuss) 14:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

What would it take to enable {{only in}} to direct users to the subpages now at WT:LOP? Doing so would enable us to eat our cake and still have it, by letting us:

keep new terms out of principal namespace until they met our standards,
appear to be reasonably open to new terms, and
discourage creation of full entries which then attract RfVs and RfDs.

We could even go so far as to set up a tickler system, based on a parameter in {{only in}} to remind us of when we might have hope of meeting the "spanning one year" requirement. DCDuring TALK 03:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Separate issue, as long as we're modifying {{only in}}: per Template talk:only in, let's simplify it to simply take the target (e.g. "w:Word" or "WT:LOP/Word") as a parameter, rather than the convolution it presently requires. - -sche (discuss) 03:39, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Could Conrad.Irwin have been trying to make the display consistent? How could we otherwise consistency of appearance? DCDuring TALK 04:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Set the text of {{only in}} to something like Wiktionary does not have a dictionary entry for this term. See [[{{{1}}}|{{PAGENAME}}]]. Help us collect evidence of this word being used at Citations:X.? Or we could make it obvious that the link wasn't to a main-namespace place, ...See [[{{{1}}}]]. Help... That would work for any link, whether to [[Appendix:whatever]], [[WT:LOP/whatever]], [[w:Whatever]]. - -sche (discuss) 06:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Would the shortcuts appear as shortcuts or expanded? DCDuring TALK 06:39, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean by "shortcuts"? Viewers would see "w:Whatever" if they looked at the second code I suggested; they would only see "Whatever" (actually, PAGENAME) if they looked at the first code. - -sche (discuss) 06:43, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I was focused on the second approach because I think we want to have a match between what the link says and the landing page after clicking. I guess someone would have to type in Wiktionary:List of protologisms/A-P#L to get within a couple of pgdns of the entry for "Linsanity". That looks ugly. And it doesn't really get the user very close, so that a new user might miss what we would have. I suppose diligent page maintenance (adding two- and three-letter section headings when required) would address the second concern. DCDuring TALK 07:06, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, we could make the person adding the template specify a long, 'piped' string like Wiktionary:List of protologisms/A-P#L|Linsanity (and w:Whatever|whatever, and Appendix:Things#W|whatever). The would produce something that didn't look ugly. It's a long string to put in, but I wouldn't mind it: it's still easier that the current mechanism, which requires users to remember and call different templates for different places. In fact, the more I think about it, the better I like it, letting the person adding the template specify exactly where the template should point and what the displayed link should say, all with just one template and one parameter. I would change the template right now, but I'm not sure how to not break existing uses of the template. - -sche (discuss) 09:05, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Would it work to have named parameters for the new options that bypassed the error-handling for the old? What about another template like {{only-in}} or {{only in2}}? DCDuring TALK 15:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

A new template would be the easiest thing (although my ideal solution would be to switch all the existing uses with the aid of a bot). I think it'll be easy enough that even I can design it, and make it accept links to anywhere: WP, Appendices, LOP... now the question is, does anyone have any objection to linking to LOP? - -sche (discuss) 19:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I had been thinking that I should have gone to WT:BP first, but I was wanted to make sure that there wasn't some fatal flaw or that it would require a technically complicated solution. There might be some better idea, but at least it seems that there is a simple solution and no obvious problem. DCDuring TALK 19:54, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Whatever the desirability of changes or an alternative to {{only in}}, there seems to be an emerging consensus @ WT:RFM#Wiktionary:List of protologisms to move Wiktionary:List of Protologisms and subpages to various "Appendix:lang code:List of protologisms" pages. DCDuring TALK 14:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I've created {{only-in}}, which can handle links to anywhere. (Even off-wiki webpages, I think, although I presume that's disallowed.) - -sche (discuss) 01:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. We might need it for unattestable terms in WT:Glossary. It might be desirable for terms that appear in Citations namespace, but not principal namespace. Gee, we could have many terms that are "only in" both LoP and Citations namespace. At the very least, the LoP entry and the Citations namespace entry for a word should link to each other. DCDuring TALK 01:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

We voted to not link the display of context information and topical categorization. We have not implemented the change. To see the problem consider Category:en:Arithmetic. It contains such terms as odd, even, half, fraction, sum and more than a dozen others which clearly have senses that are not limited to an "arithmetic" usage context. Other terms are clearly so restricted, eg, rabdology, augend. Others may be more uncertain, eg, integer, divisor.

Though the fundamental problem is that the usage context labels should never have been used for the purpose of populating the topical categories, a simple solution is to edit each and every context label inserting a bit of code that allows a switch that suppresses the display by default. If a registered user wants to display topical contexts, they can do so by some appropriate preference selection. What say all? DCDuring TALK 17:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Be careful, the vote does only apply to context labels, not to categories. So manually adding [[Category:en:Arithmetic]] is ok. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:38, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course. Though I think the implementation of topical categories is an arbitrary and closed process, it is not inherently wrong. DCDuring TALK 19:08, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

It's subjective, but isn't all human activity subjective? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm just an engineer (at heart) not a metaphysician. DCDuring TALK 19:55, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] http links in Mediawiki interface pages

Because Wiktionary can be accessed directly using https for some time now (without secure.wikimedia.org), a problem with interface (Mediawiki:) pages still including http:// links or which load pictures or scripts using http only has shown up (those should be replaced by links like //en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Hoo_man which are protocol relative). If Wiktionary gets accessed using https:// now, this can cause a security risk and annoying warnings might appear in some browsers. The problem has already been discussed on meta and I fixed all the smaller Wikimedia wikis. But we've decided to let the big wikis decide over that at their own. That can be resolved either by me, because of my global rights (if you reach consensus for that just contact me) or by a local administrator using pywikipedia with the following fixes.py extension (I've used it to fix all the smaller wikis, you can start the script then using python replace.py -fix:https -namespace:8 -start:MediaWiki:! -family:wiktionary -lang:en). All edits need to be reviewed per hand (sometimes manual fixes are required and sometimes fixes would break something). Because of that the admin who does that should know what he/ she does (Javascript and CSS knowledge is a must-have) - Hoo man (talk) 01:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect classes

Lately I notice .... appears in redirects from capitalized titles. Is this a bug, or is it something to do with my browser? I know it's not a big deal, most of those pages don't have any useful content, I just think if it's possible to change it should be changed. Soap (talk) 02:50, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Previously the page-title appeared directly inside <h1> tags, but now it appears inside tags within said. —Ruakh_TALK 20:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Using Template:l on rhymes instead of bare links

Could the template {{l}} be used to link to rhymes on rhyme pages, instead of bare links? This will need some bot work to update and the script that adds the rhymes would need to be changed as well. —CodeCa t 19:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, but it would need to be used consistently. If it was only used on some rhymes pages it would break the alphabetizing system in the rhymes adding script. --Yair rand (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes that's why I'm discussing it here. If it's changed, it would have to be changed all in one go, or things will start breaking... —CodeCa t 22:49, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It's a good idea... don't ask me how to actually do it. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Google books and quotes

The search google books:"lap cheong bao" seems to treat the quotes poorly; this used to work correctly. Any ideas how to fix it? --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:43, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

It's a bug in Google Books. I'm guessing they don't plan to fix it, because they haven't kept the books.google.com search interface up-to-date with the new interface that's more closely integrated with web search. So, I've changed {{google}} (and hence {{b.g.c.}}) to link to that new interface instead. —Ruakh_TALK 20:25, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Mass entry of words

I wonder if someone could guide me a little with this: I am trying to mass-enter a number of nouns with identical declinations into the Norwegian Wiktionary (my native W). I already have a handy template (called side) that creates all the necessary information when you want to create one word. A subst works fine. So opening a new entry I do like this: {{subst:side|no|sub}} and that word is created.

I have created a long list of words that do not have any definition. And a template that marks an entry as «entry to be checked for quality». These would take forever to enter manually one by one. I have no idea if one can build a template around another template that does this or if there is a specific javascript that does the trick. I am no programming expert but can read and understand templates as long as they aren't overly complicated... Any help would be welcome! --Teodor (talk) 21:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

no:template:side already includes {{uttale mangler}} and others; it can likewise include {{whatever the name is of the template that marks the entry as to-be-checked}}, can't it? Or am I misunderstanding your question?—msh210℠ (talk) 21:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think you are talking about the actual template. This works fine. I have my own template based on this one that does include some more information. What I am talking about is creating a routine that can create, say, 50 words at a time. If all words are of the same type I should get 50 new masculine nouns at the speed of one. I want to do this as a pilot to see if it is feasible to enter literally thousands of words very fast. This, however is something we won't do until we are sure we are all right with so many words lacking a definition. That still has to be entered manually I think. --Teodor (talk) 21:13, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I have been unclear about an important detail. The list I was referring to is from a public domain list of Norwegian words. These are currently not in the Norwegian Wiktionary, or washing the two databases is fairly simple. Copying these into Wiktionary and making entries for them is what I want to achieve :) --Teodor (talk) 21:18, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Assuming you get permission from the no.wikt community, I think you should create a bot account and run this as a bot. If you have a Perl interpreter, I can help you with this. —Ruakh_TALK 21:28, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer to help. I assume I would get that kind of permission. I am probably the most active contributor there at the moment. But I am not familiar with bots and Perl. Does it take a lot of effort to get the knack of it? --Teodor (talk) 21:34, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If you have programming experience, then it's pretty simple. If not, then . . . I don't know. I guess you can try it and see? —Ruakh_TALK 21:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

You can also use Python instead if you prefer, using the pywikipediabot framework. My bot User:MewBot uses it too. —CodeCa t 22:01, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I have installed both Perl and Python and tried to suss out how to use these. Since I have very little programming experience I realise this would be a very tall order for me. So I won't try to learn them for the moment. But could someone tell me if it's possible to write a short programme which could batch submit some new articles based on a common template, a subst and a list of words to be created? I would appreciate if someone could give me a code I could try out with a few words. I could tehn post-correct these manually if anything went wrong. Best regards, --Teodor (talk) 23:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If you e-mail me detailed information about the format of this list, and how to translate from that list-format to Wiktionary-entry-format, I can send you a Perl program to run. —Ruakh_TALK 02:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

That is very kind of you. The list is at :no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma and the template I intend to use is {{subst:sideteodorm1|no|sub}}, located at the Norwegian Wiktionary. Not sure how to link that template directly for you... That template marks an article as one that needs to be checked, as well as a number of other things, so it is okay to create a small number of articles for test purposes. However we need to discuss how to proceed before we start using it. If you write such a Perl programme I would appreciate it very much. If you are able to write comments to the places where I need to change templates etc that would also be excellent. I obviously need to use different templates for different word classes and declension styles.--Teodor (talk) 11:09, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, that's simpler than I expected. In that case, a JavaScript solution might be more convenient; you can follow these steps:

Create a preload template, say, no:Mal:preload-subst-sideteodorm1-no-sub, with the contents {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>sideteodorm1|no|sub}}.
Modify no:Bruker:Teodor605/common.js to do two things:
- When you visit no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma, it can go through all the redlinks and change their URLs from http:///no.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=edit&redlink=1 to http:///no.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=edit&redlink=1&preload=Mal:preload-subst-sideteodorm1-no-sub&save=instant
- When you visit a URL of the form http:///no.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=edit&redlink=1&preload=Mal:preload-subst-sideteodorm1-no-sub&save=instant, it can automatically click the "Lagre siden" button.
Slowly go through the page, opening each appropriate redlink in a new browser tab.

Does that sound good to you? If so, I'm pretty sure I can put together the JavaScript you need. (I've done the same sort of thing on en.wikt before.)

—Ruakh_TALK 12:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

This sounds good to me. I am just not sure if you wanted med to modify my common.js file before you start testing out a javaScript. I haven't modified an javascripts before; only copied other user javascripts to my own page (not really understanding the code).

Seems to me what you are suggesting is the same thing as what I have been doing previosuly, only without a script. I visit no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma and then click on a redlink, paste {{subst:sideteodorm1|no|sub}} in the edit window and save. So 50 new entries takes me about 50 minutes. And that is before the real work of writing a definition, checking the etymology and writing any translation has even begun.

Feel free to do the necessary changes to my common.js page if you think that is wise. I can try out the javascript.

Before I start any mass production of entries I am going to discuss my experience with this apporach with the other contributors at the Norwegian Wiktionary. The no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma list is very big, so I am dead scared to let any javascript run wild, thus creating thousands of new words lacking definitions. I would like to be able to excercise some control, like being able to decide if I want to do 1, 10, 50 or any specific number of new entries. Once again, thanks a million for you willingness to help! --Teodor (talk) 21:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW the no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma list is only one of several. It contains regular declension masculine nouns starting with ‹A›. There is one for all the others letters of too, and new lists for verbs, adjectives etc. Only these have not been uploaded yet. I need to be able to substitute no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma with any other of these lists. Hope that isn't complicating things for you. --Teodor (talk) 21:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

If you copy the contents of no:Bruker:Ruakh/common.js and no:Bruker:Ruakh/common.css into no:Bruker:Teodor605/common.js and no:Bruker:Teodor605/common.css, you'll be set for no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmma. You should find it easy to create entries as quickly or as slowly as you want. (Or, nearly so.) After you've used that approach for a bit, you can decide for yourself whether you're happy with it, or whether you'd prefer to try the bot approach instead. —Ruakh_TALK 22:29, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that looks beautiful! One entry takes just one click. I was thinking more like batch submissions, but this is blisteningly fast anyway. Thanks a lot!!! Now if I want to use this approach on no:Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank bmmb I understand I substitute that in the common.css. But if I want to use it simultaneously for many list, do I then just write several more if-statements, like

if(mediaWiki.config.get('wgPageName') != 'Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank_bmma')

else if(mediaWiki.config.get('wgPageName') != 'Bruker:Teodor605/Ordbank_bmmb')

return;

Correct? Hope you can guide me through that last question too! --Teodor (talk) 23:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Re: "One entry takes just one click. I was thinking more like batch submissions, but this is blisteningly fast anyway": I use Firefox, which lets me middle-click on a link to load it in a new tab in the background; so when I use this sort of interface, I can quickly load a dozen links at a time, then quickly go through and close those tabs. Does your browser not support that?

Re: using it simultaneously for many lists: I've modified no:Bruker:Ruakh/common.js to be more extensible in that respect.

—Ruakh_TALK 00:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I see how you modified the common.js file. Think I know how to modify it further now. I use Firefox too, so I'll have to look into that. Didn't know one could... I usually right-click and choose "open in new tab", but your suggestion should be even faster. --Teodor (talk) 00:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you using a Firefox plugin to be able to middle-click to open a link in a new tab? If so, which one? I tried to to this yesterday but I couldn't find any solution. --Teodor (talk) 09:00, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

No, no plugin; it's the default behavior. To verify it, open a new tab, navigate to about:config, and type the filter browser.tabs. The browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclcik option and the browser.tabs.loadInBackground options should both be true. —Ruakh_TALK 13:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

There seems to be some vandalism somewhere in regard to Navajo entries, but I can't locate it. For example, the Navajo translation in goat says "{{hot spisy deder dum duderdum ow '|lang=nv|tłʼízí}}". At tłʼízí, under Noun it says "{{ hot spisy deder dum duderdum ow ' |tłʼízí| face=head | lang=nv }}". —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:38, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I found it. The vandalism was in Template:nv/script. Fixed. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I have applied cascading protection to Wiktionary:Index to templates/languages/protection (warning: massive page!) and the pages of families and scripts it links to. At the moment, the protection is so high it prevents any non-admin from editing the pages. If a helpful IP wanted to add family info, that would be a problem, so other admins might consider reducing the protection to "block new and unreg users only". For now, I explained in the protection that users who need to edit the templates should comment at WT:ID. - -sche (discuss) 19:25, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

It's okay. If someone wants to change these, they can come here or to the BP. -- Liliana • 22:38, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

In the options below the editing window (below the 'save page' button), could we add templates for citations? "quote-book" and such. Currently, we have 'Templates' for things like "en-noun" and 'Headers'; below that it would be nice to have 'Citations', where choosing "quote-book" would insert the following blank citation template:

#* {{quote-book |year= |author= |title= |page= |passage= }}

I don't know where I would go to do this myself, and I probably don't have authorization to mess with such things. kwami (talk) 13:29, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The downside of that is, it might promote the use of those templates. —Ruakh_TALK 17:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't realize they were deprecated. Don't we want to use them, to keep a uniform appearance across Wk? kwami (talk) 07:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

They're not deprecated, but they're also not endorsed: there are some editors who like them and use them, and some editors (such as myself) who think they're a huge broken mess that should never be used. —Ruakh_TALK 13:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

[edit] including gender (definite articles) and verb principal parts

Discussion has been consolidated at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#including_gender_.28definite_articles.29_and_verb_principal_parts.

[edit] pages such as 4

See Template talk:overline

Jcwf (talk) 03:26, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Asturian reflexive verbs

I'd like to create a category for Asturian reflexive verbs, for example matase (kill oneself). I tried copying something from {{es-verb}}, but that template is far more complicated than {{ast-verb}}. I'm looking to add something like ref=y to add a verb as reflexive, like I put in matase. Can someone help me with this, please --Cova (talk) 12:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Bot task

Does anyone object to automatically performing, using MglovesfunBot, edits such as diff? That is, to remove brackets and anchors created by the hash symbol and replace with simple text inside form-of templates? The reasons are discussed further up this page; the form of template automatically links to the section of the language in question, such lang=es links to Spanish. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:56, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Go for it. (there are lots in old Italian verb forms) SemperBlotto (talk) 13:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

My principle is to always remove redundant code, code that does literally nothing. For example I replaced a load of {{en-noun|s}} with {{en-noun}}, as -s is the default for plurals. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

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Friday, March 2, 2012

Wiktionary - Recent changes [en]: Wiktionary:Grease pit