Wealth Maker: Wiktionary - Recent changes [en]: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2013/June

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Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2013/June

Jun 6th 2013, 23:42

Revision as of 23:36, 6 June 2013 (edit)		Revision as of 23:42, 6 June 2013 (edit) (undo) CodeCat (Talk \| contribs)
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	**::: Again, I think Semantic Wiki does everything good that you describe (enforcing structure, validating data, etc.), only without the ugliness -- data is entered using forms, not raw XML.		**::: Again, I think Semantic Wiki does everything good that you describe (enforcing structure, validating data, etc.), only without the ugliness -- data is entered using forms, not raw XML.
	**::: Besides which, doesn't MediaWiki filter out or disallow certain kinds of markup in the raw wikitext? Or does that only apply to a small subset of HTML, like <code><a></code> tags? -- [[User:Eirikr\|Eiríkr Útlendi]] │ <small style="position: relative; top: -3px;">''[[User talk:Eirikr\|Tala við mig]]''</small> 23:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)		**::: Besides which, doesn't MediaWiki filter out or disallow certain kinds of markup in the raw wikitext? Or does that only apply to a small subset of HTML, like <code><a></code> tags? -- [[User:Eirikr\|Eiríkr Útlendi]] │ <small style="position: relative; top: -3px;">''[[User talk:Eirikr\|Tala við mig]]''</small> 23:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
		+	**:::: No, the whole point is that we can ignore ELE because of the XSL processing step. The XSL style sheet will determine which parts of the XML tree go where, so it will rearrange the source to match whatever we like. The order of elements in the source would be dictated by the XML schema but it would not affect the end result. So you could put translations first or last in the source, or even reorder all the languages, and they'd still show up the same on the page thanks to XSL. {{User:CodeCat/signature}} 23:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

	== Make [[Template:alternative form of]] explicitly say that a US/UK spelling's definitions are found in the other entry ==		== Make [[Template:alternative form of]] explicitly say that a US/UK spelling's definitions are found in the other entry ==

Revision as of 23:42, 6 June 2013

← MAY · JUNE · JULY →

Thoughts from an experienced outsider

As a nine-year Wikipedian and very occasional editor here at Wiktionary, I would like to offer insight into what this community's atmosphere feels like to an outsider. Here are a few thoughts from 42 short hours of interacting with six established contributors (on various pages) with respect to the subject of untranslatable terms:

Content upon which articles, books, research, and most members of the public express interest is useless
Content upon which articles, books, research, and most members of the public express interest is irrelevant
Content pertaining to knowable terms should be omitted because it could be contradicted by unknown information
Content should be omitted if inspired by the popular press
Content should be omitted if it requires substantial effort to produce
The most widely acclaimed translation of a nation's most seminal work is unacceptable as a reference
Scientific meta-analyses consist of subjective opinion and cannot be used as a reference
Two books and an expert's paper aren't to be considered durably published references
Verbal challenges to the veracity of references may not be overcome by verbal verification with one or more native speakers of an obscure language
Verbal challenges to the veracity of references may not be overcome by directly contacting its author to obtain explicit provenance

These observations are not intended to ridicule the associated contributors in any way as individuals – in fact, I hope to work productively with each and every one of them even on this very issue. However, most new contributors to Wiki-projects cannot endure more than two or three blows like these before getting a pretty sour taste in their mouth or just outright leaving forever. — C M B J 09:08, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you are from Wikipedia. Having to follow these rules doesn't seem much different from having to follow Wikipedia's rule about "no original research" (which talking to a native speaker would also be, unless it were published and peer-reviewed). Perhaps it's just a matter of understanding why these rules exist, and adjusting to them? Equinox ◑ 09:19, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

No original research is a fine policy, but that was not a point of concern for three very sound reasons: (a) the content was published by multiple sources and veritably by at least one, (b) its criteria for inclusion is lower due to special considerations for rare languages, and (c) past thinking on the matter was that attestation by a native speaker or knowledgeable individual would be considered appropriate. I am more than able to navigate policies foreign to me and I do not believe unfamiliarity or confusion on my part to have been a factor. — C M B J 09:40, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

These are very quickly formed opinions and based on comments by individual users rather than the community as a whole. We cannot stop individual users having opinions, nor would we want to. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

'Source' here isn't a good word, we don't source entries, we cite them. If you see Appendix:English dictionary-only terms you'll see we can source quite a lot of words that don't appear to exist. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:22, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

As per above, I am here speaking on good faith and, frankly, I really don't appreciate being accused of trying to break the project's rules for personal reasons, of being ignorant and uninformed after providing this explanation, or being disparaged for identifying with Wikipedia, or being asked to stop talking (while simultaneously being told "we cannot stop individual users having opinions, nor would we want to"), all because I dared to disagree with unsubstantiated claims. These unprovoked and irrational ad hominem attacks are ironically representative of why I felt that it was necessary to go out on a limb and share my experience in the first place. This environment is toxic. — C M B J 10:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I think there are two issues going on here, and some of the disagreements may stem from different understandings of what's under discussion. The sources you've cited for these words are fine (at least as far as I'm concerned) for having an entry on words like tingo#Rapa Nui. The sources are perfectly adequate in terms of WT:CFI for less well attested languages. What's more problematic is putting them in the Category:Terms without an English counterpart (or even having that category) because deciding what words do and do not "really" have an English counterpart is highly subjective. At some level of philosophizing, no word in another language has an exact English counterpart because each word in another language will have slight shades of meaning and connotation that the English word doesn't have. I think all of the words listed over at WT:RFD/O#Category:Terms without an English counterpart is worthy of having a Wiktionary entry, provided it's in the correct script with the correct capitalization and as long as confirmation from some published work by a recognized expert in the language (as opposed to the popular press) is provided to confirm the term's existence in the case of less-attested languages, and as long as three cites from durably archived sources are provided in the case of well-attested languages like German. But deciding what goes into the category of "English doesn't have a word for this" is problematic because there are no objective criteria for it. I myself have worked on Sättigungsbeilage, a word with no obvious English translation, and brought it to the attention of word mavens by nominating it for WT:FWOTD, but even I'd be wary of putting it into that category. —An gr 10:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I wish to associate myself with Angr's comments. DCDuring TALK 11:42, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with much of what Angr said and have replied on his talk page to help keep this thread on-topic. — C M B J 12:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

CMBJ, please don't see disagreeing with you as a personal attack, as we can't agree with you purely so you don't feel attacked. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:29, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

To quote:

…here's a tip. If you don't know what you're talking about, stop talking."
"…become better informed, please!"
"You come across as a Wikipedian trying to get round the rules for his own personal reasons."
"I'd suggest if you have nothing relevant to say, say nothing."

These are not spirited disagreements over the issue at hand. They're wanton personal attacks, and even worse, they're non sequiturs. I am willing to forgive and forget and move beyond them, but I will not for one second tolerate further denigration—especially in a safe place and from an administrator. It's doubly unacceptable. — C M B J 12:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I stand by all of that. What's wrong with being better informed or not making ill-informed comments? What exactly do you object to? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:02, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The insulting tone, the implication that he doesn't know what he's talking about, has nothing relevant to say, and should shut up. I find these statements insulting too and I'm not even the one they're directed at. Any reasonable user would take these as personal attacks. —An gr 18:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I wish to associate myself with Angr's comments immediately above, as well. Even though I sometimes have delivered abusive comments, I don't think it is good practice, especially directed at a new contributor who is making good faith efforts to contribute. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I mostly agree that WT editors and admins, myself included, sometimes come across too tersely or even insultingly, perhaps as we let our frustrations get the better of us.

However, the comment above that "You come across as a Wikipedian trying to get round the rules for his own personal reasons" does not itself strike me as all that accusatory -- it is simply a description of what CMBJ's push-back might be viewed as. Within the greater context of CMBJ's interactions, I can see how CMBJ might interpret it as inflammatory, however.

Online discourse can be difficult. Without all the visual social cues that humans have evolved to give and receive, intent is often hard to discern. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:39, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear here, these comments were not a clumsy exchange of benign text that just came out sounding wrong. Mglovesfun was not even a participant in the associated discussion prior to stating, with candor, that I was insidiously "trying to get round the rules" (what applicable rules?) for my "own personal reasons" (what possible reasons?) and that I should "stop talking" until I "become better informed" (about what subject?). There is also no reconciling "we cannot stop individual users having opinions, nor would we want to" with "I'd suggest if you have nothing relevant to say, say nothing" because they're contradictory advice in principle. Moreover, if dissecting and attempting to calmly refute unsubstantiated claims is perceived as frustrating push-back, then something's very wrong here, because that's how consensus is supposed to be developed.

For what it's worth, I'm thick skinned. I'm not here calling for his de-sysopping. I respect his right to say anything to me, even if accidentally misconstrued or necessarily offensive, and even if in violation of the letter of policy if he genuinely felt it was justifiable for some reason. But that doesn't mean that the other 99 contributors who don't have the nerve to speak up will stick around after such shoddy treatment, which is the focus of this thread. — C M B J 04:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

CMBJ, I recommend reading Wiktionary:Wiktionary for Wikipedians. --Yair rand (talk) 11:48, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I seem to have already picked up just about everything it describes, but it would've undoubtedly been helpful to me not that long ago. Maybe an eventual goal should be to automatically display it in a dismissible sitenotice for unified accounts that have >500 Wikipedia edits and <25 Wiktionary edits. — C M B J 03:35, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

CMBJ, you came in with your personal project. Many people who join Wiki-projects with broad ideas of how it should be leave frustrated. Your sources do not match up to what we expect for the project, and many of us don't think your new category is useful. Personally, the fact that your signature links back to Wikipedia doesn't inspire me to treat you as other then a Wikipedian tourist.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

First of all, this is not my personal project and I did not come here with an ulterior agenda based on broad assumptions of how everything should be. I did, however, come here and find that an expected level of detail was missing in an area that is of particular interest to many readers, and whether that information is most appropriately presented in the form of a category or not is aside the point. The problem here is that, for a new user, participating on this project is painful, and not for reasons that can be explained away as normal responses to personal fault. This is a chronic problem and that is made abundantly clear by the reactions that articulating it has provoked.

Even in your case—and I stress that you're not even involved—the response has been to just further make this about me. The fact that the thought would even cross your mind to view cross-project editors as "tourists" is very telling of the climate here. The fact that you would for some reason consciously treat them differently, and feel comfortable and confident about stating that intention openly amongst peers and moderators—and to justify the behavior of others, no less—is even more telling because these are the very people who should sense the utmost of hospitality and collegiality and support while making their first contributions.

Further to that point, this "we're not Wikipedia" mantra does not resonate with me at all; both projects are funded by the WMF and both projects labor for the same central goal. The fact that their content guidelines differ is not an excuse for abrasive and callous attitudes toward those who are stellar enough to contribute in multiple areas of concentration. — C M B J 03:30, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

You can't say I stress that you're not even involved to any editor at this point, because you are making negative accusations about the entire project, i.e. all of us. Strictly regarding the project, if the issue is that the environment is toxic and painful, some users may experience that in isolated cases, but overall I think the editors do their best to be civil and helpful. When they fail, it's because of the limits human nature and of communicating via online forum. That's my opinion. The empirical support would be that 1000 active editors made it through the supposed toxicity somehow. --Haplology (talk) 04:48, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, yes, I can, and previously did, and will continue to do so, because my perception of this problem is that it is systemic in nature. This is not an unreasonable assertion because attitudes and norms are contagious social factors. In this case, I am already familiar with the complications that you speak of from Wikipedia and other communities, but it is my view that, with respect to this particular community, they are above and beyond what would be considered normal. It is also more than possible for thousands to unknowingly endure such tendencies and then inadvertently and unintentionally perpetuate them forward without ever taking notice. — C M B J 09:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't view editors who also edit other projects as tourists. I view editors who set their signature to link to another project as tourists. It's an obnoxious habit, and it makes my eyes roll on any project I see it on. And anybody who waves a flag saying "I'm not interested in working with this project" is not really the person to devote extra care on.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:29, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

"I don't view cross-project editors as tourists, I just view cross-project editors like you as tourists" isn't exactly making the premise any less malicious. For your information, I personally provide a link to my home wiki to centralize my identity and so that others can receive a timely response to messages. I consider this configuration to be of mutual benefit and so I utilize a dirty workaround to make possible what will likely be a standard MediaWiki feature at some point in the future. Regardless, this has yet once again devolved into ignoring the issue while making this about me. — C M B J 09:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Granted, Mglovesfun was pretty rude, and your experience overall hasn't exactly been pink horsies and rainbows. Still, you aren't completely blameless, either. Before you came along, the discussion consisted of 5 edits totalling 778 characters. SemperBlotto called it a "useless category", but otherwise the comments centered on practical issues. Pretty mild stuff.

A week later, you decided to weigh in. Ignoring the entire discussion, you set out to educate us about how your category was the only thing preventing us from descending into a morass of error and mediocrity. You started out with "This concept is itself independently notable and such categorization is necessary for the eventual completeness of our project".

From your very first sentence, you set yourself to the task of telling us in absolute terms what Wiktionary has to have in order to be any good at all. Your comment later on is telling: "The fact that their content guidelines differ is not an excuse for abrasive and callous attitudes toward those who are stellar enough to contribute in multiple areas of concentration." No false modesty there. The fact that most of us also contribute to Wikipedia seems to have escaped you.

Except you don't seem to understand what you're proposing to change: notability is strictly a Wikipedia concept- our CFI center on usage. What's more, categories aren't content- they're tools for organizing and navigating through the dictionary entries, which are the real content. The completeness of the project has nothing to do with categories.

We do things differently than Wikipedia not because we don't know any better, but because Wiktionary is a dictionary, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Dictionaries are highly structured and concise- we don't go into much detail, because people come to us for very specific types of information, and everything else is clutter. Your category has all the markings of a typical Wikipedia list article, starting with the interesting concept. As I mentioned above, our categories are mostly for organization and navigation- not for telling a story.

You then added almost 50 lines of unnecessary examples regurgitated from popular websites, complete with footnotes/bibliographic references, for a total of 6 edits and 5876 characters- 7 1/2 times the size of the entire discussion- before even starting to address so much as a word of what anyone else had said. I'm pretty verbose, myself, but that's a lot!

To sum it up: you tried to graft encyclopedic concepts onto a dictionary, jumped into the discussion about it without addressing anything already said, dumped huge amounts of verbiage on us while still missing the point, talked to us like you were introducing civilization to the heathens, and then wondered why everyone got annoyed at you.

What it boils down to, is this: the category that you thought of as the ideal way to dress up this nondescript little backwater of ours was nominated for deletion as useless by the locals. You seem to have taken this as a criticism of your judgment, and have a very strong emotional vested interest in fighting off the challenge. You don't want to hear that, so you've been repeatedly ignoring the issue while making this about Wiktionary. I would say more, but this has grown to almost half the size of your original post... Chuck Entz (talk) 09:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

We now have one account across Wikimedia Wikis, and come August, the chance that anyone might believe there's two CMBJs editing on Wikimedia will be removed with the renaming of unified accounts. It's not mutually beneficial; it left me on another wiki when I was trying to check your contributions, I would have had to deal with completely irrelevant material if I wanted to leave a message there, and certain users may not be able to leave a message at all. (I know of at least two major editors on Commons that are blocked on en.WP.)

You keep saying it's not about you, but you were one party in all these discussions. How could we have best informed you that we were deleting the category in all forms? If you can't think of a way, you're saying the members of this Wiki don't have the right to choose what content they find acceptable.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Discussion is rapidly becoming uncivil and unproductive. Caution is advised. --Yair rand (talk) 10:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
- Don't feed the trolls! —This unsigned comment was added by 82.18.16.213 (talk • contribs).
- Agreed. I spent so much time trying to come up with a coherent explanation of the problems I saw in all this, that I just ended up tired and grumpy. I take back the negative tone of my comments, but I don't have time or energy to rework everything right now. It will have to stand in its current ugliness until I can rework it and address the real issues I was trying to get across. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Individually,

"Granted, Mglovesfun was pretty rude, and your experience overall hasn't exactly been pink horsies and rainbows. Still, you aren't completely blameless, either. Before you came along, the discussion consisted of 5 edits totalling 778 characters. SemperBlotto called it a "useless category", but otherwise the comments centered on practical issues. Pretty mild stuff. A week later, you decided to weigh in."

The reason that I weighed in a week later on this matter is because no one had the courtesy to notify me of the deletion discussion. I found it accidentally while navigating for unrelated reasons.

"Ignoring the entire discussion, you set out to educate us about how your category was the only thing preventing us from descending into a morass of error and mediocrity. You started out with "This concept is itself independently notable and such categorization is necessary for the eventual completeness of our project". From your very first sentence, you set yourself to the task of telling us in absolute terms what Wiktionary has to have in order to be any good at all."

I strongly disagree that I ignored this discussion and in fact my original response was intended to address prior concerns ("useless", "difficult to manage", "necessarily subjective") by presenting a cogent case otherwise ("independently notable", "necessary for completeness", and as a clarification, "scholarly examples exist"). Moreover, I do believe that this information is necessary for the eventual completeness of this project. I base that view on the observation that many publications have expressed interest in this particular area.

"Your comment later on is telling: "The fact that their content guidelines differ is not an excuse for abrasive and callous attitudes toward those who are stellar enough to contribute in multiple areas of concentration." No false modesty there. The fact that most of us also contribute to Wikipedia seems to have escaped you."

This was not false modesty and this assertion may very well be the most offensive remark made since this ordeal began. The comment does not refer to my self-image but my view of each and every individual who meets this description, many of whom are truly stellar in every sense of the word.

"Except you don't seem to understand what you're proposing to change: notability is strictly a Wikipedia concept- our CFI center on usage. What's more, categories aren't content- they're tools for organizing and navigating through the dictionary entries, which are the real content. The completeness of the project has nothing to do with categories. We do things differently than Wikipedia not because we don't know any better, but because Wiktionary is a dictionary, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Dictionaries are highly structured and concise- we don't go into much detail, because people come to us for very specific types of information, and everything else is clutter. Your category has all the markings of a typical Wikipedia list article, starting with the interesting concept. As I mentioned above, our categories are mostly for organization and navigation- not for telling a story.

The only thing I was/am proposing is that this information—which, again, I believe to be necessary for the project's completion—not be needlessly eradicated. The way it is presented in makes little difference in my mind, so long as it's easily accessible to readers.

"You then added almost 50 lines of unnecessary examples regurgitated from popular websites, complete with footnotes/bibliographic references, for a total of 6 edits and 5876 characters- 7 1/2 times the size of the entire discussion- before even starting to address so much as a word of what anyone else had said. I'm pretty verbose, myself, but that's a lot!"

These examples were preceded by the question of "what would go in these categories?" and I consider them to have been a decent response. The sources were presented in such a way that would convey their journalistic nature, attributions were provided to avoid plagiarism, and they were formatted in the usual way.

"To sum it up: you tried to graft encyclopedic concepts onto a dictionary, jumped into the discussion about it without addressing anything already said, dumped huge amounts of verbiage on us while still missing the point, talked to us like you were introducing civilization to the heathens, and then wondered why everyone got annoyed at you. What it boils down to, is this: the category that you thought of as the ideal way to dress up this nondescript little backwater of ours was nominated for deletion as useless by the locals. You seem to have taken this as a criticism of your judgment, and have a very strong emotional vested interest in fighting off the challenge. You don't want to hear that, so you've been repeatedly ignoring the issue while making this about Wiktionary. I would say more, but this has grown to almost half the size of your original post."

No, I simply tried to incorporate popular lexicographical information into Wiktionary. I found that information silently nominated for deletion and sprung into action to help save it. I attempted to address the other participants' concerns individually and have continued to do so as best possible. I did and still do take issue with the unwillingness of multiple participants to address cogent counterarguments.

Again, and as a final note, I want to reiterate and make unequivocal that this thread was not intended to be focused on the RfD. It is not about and was never about me or my opinions here. It is, however, about how toxic this environment feels from the perspective of a new user, which unfortunately has been further echoed by this discussion. — C M B J 11:19, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

It seems most people here (especially judging from Mglovesfun's comments) just tried to bash the new contributor instead of taking their time and help him to contribute what he want in the "right" way (which differs in every project); of course because it's the easiest way to deal with new users. The worst part was the comment by the idiot who accused him of being a troll. Chuck Entz is right about the purpose of the category namespace, and CMBJ is also right that this information is necessary and quite useful. The solution here is that these informations should be put in the appendix namespace, as a list, and I think it would become a quite useful one. --Z 12:07, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I hereby admit to being rude and promise to try to do better.

Support DCDuring TALK 12:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly accept instances of this gesture as making amends. Additionally, if my own actions led to ill feelings for anyone involved at any point, then I ask forgiveness and offer my commitment to continued cooperation and respect in all efforts that contribute to the advancement of our common mission. — C M B J 11:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Silent deletions are really infuriating. Every {rfv, rfd}-ed page should have all of its respective contributors notified on their talk page (perhaps by a bot, it's easily automatable). Or even better - through a notification gadget like the one on Wikipedia. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:07, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

That is apparently part of the basic software and is available in user "Preferences". I find it very useful to track the limited number of pages I watch in WP, Species, Commons, and MediaWiki. DCDuring TALK 16:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I've created a proposal to help prevent this from happening to others in the future. — C M B J 11:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I imagine we want to convert {{context}} to Lua at some point, so I am wondering what the best way would be. Ruakh made a start with creating a replacement some time ago, {{label}}. It's used on a few pages but it's template-based and uses subtemplates instead of "raw" templates. One of the advantages of using subtemplates is that it eliminates any conflicts between context labels and other templates. {{context}} would use any template that had the same name as the label, which often causes problems (the recent issue with {{abbreviation}} is one example). On the other hand, because {{label}} doesn't use the "bare" template as the label, it's not possible to write something like {{intransitive}} by itself, you'd need {{label|intransitive}} instead.

The most straightforward way to convert these to Lua is probably something like Module:languages, with a single data module containing all the information for the context labels, and a separate module to handle the processing and display. I think that the approach used by {{label}}, in which labels always need {{context}} or {{label}} prefixed, is preferred for a Lua implementation. It would drastically reduce the number of context templates we need to maintain, it would remove any conflicts between labels and other templates with the same name ({{plural}} for example!), and it would also prevent any desynchronisation between the templates and the module. For example, if someone creates a new context label, they'd need to remember to also create a matching template, which would not really add much value to the system and just be there for convenience. It makes more sense to not create those templates in the first place and to always require the same template to "initiate" the process. Another advantage is that bots, if they want to parse entries, no longer need a long list of which templates can possibly be used as context labels, because there'd only be one.

Another change I would like to make while we're at it, is to use the first parameter to specify the language code. It's common for editors to forget to specify the lang= attribute because they're not aware that some context labels add categories. The problem is compounded by the fact that only some labels categorise while others do not so editors need to remember this for every label. {{intransitive}} does not categorise for example, so it's easy to miss this and, when you want to add a second label like {{rare}} (which does categorise), to forget the language. I believe that requiring the language as the first parameter will help with these problems because then it can never be forgotten or skipped, so it makes editors more aware that they need to put something there and that they need to change it when copying content to another language.

I'd like to hear what you think and if you have any specific points to raise. —CodeCa t 16:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I support everything. My only suggestion is that if we are going to make {{context}} obligatory, we should create a shorthand, like {{x}} or something, redirecting to it. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 19:23, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

We could also use something a bit more descriptive like {{con}}. {{x}} is really vague. —CodeCa t 19:27, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

That's a language code, and {{c}} is a grammatical label. What about {{ct}} or {{ctx}}? (But let's not forget that any 2 or 3 letter template is a timebomb waiting for ISO to release it as a language code.) — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 19:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, we're phasing out the language templates, so we don't have to worry about that. And {{c}} may also be phased out if we decide to do so, since we now have a module to replace it. We could also decide to use Ruakh's {{label}} instead, which is a bit shorter. —CodeCa t 19:34, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

In that case, I state my preference for {{c}}, since that's the smallest increase possible in the amount of characters one will need to type. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 19:40, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good, but let's abandon the misleading name "context." Labels like {{pejorative}}, {{plurale tantum}} and {{abbreviation}} are nothing to do with context.

Context means two different things in lexicography. One is the context a word appears in in its citation, esp. in corpus lexicography. The other is in something called discourse analysis, and seems to be only vaguely related to usage as we consider it here.

We are using this template for both usage and grammatical labels, or tags. —Michael Z. 2013-06-03 20:34 z

[after edit conflict] We shouldn't be wedded to the somewhat misleading name "context" as we use the beginning-of-the-definition-line position for many things, including topical labels, sense-specific complement information, semantic-grammatical classification (eg, intensifer, modal adverb), as well as register and regional and other context.

One thing that might be very helpful in the long run would be to build in support for various default types of display for various types of tags. One useful thing would be to differentiate topic from usage context typographically. Another would be to allow semantic-grammatical tags to be non-displaying by default. This might also be useful for maintenance-related tags. I suppose such things could be done using CSS to make it easier to users to use common.css to customize display of such tags. DCDuring TALK 20:40, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

With all of the labels codified in a Lua table, it should be easier to categorize the labelled entries, as well as to inject CSS classes. Perhaps something like class="label-subject-history" or class="label-grammar-intensifier", so CSS can be used to style or hide individual labels, general classes, or all of them. —Michael Z. 2013-06-03 22:22 z

We have 935 labels that might want to have their own CSS class or ID. For myself, I would rather be selecting groups, if at all possible. For some types I would think that we not need individual CSS classes. I take it that CSS does not allow one to select members of a class equal to specific text. DCDuring TALK 01:32, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Are you asking whether CSS can select and style based on the text of the content? No. But if we are putting that text into the page, then there's practically no overhead in also putting it into the class attribute.

Actually, using simple class selectors would require separate classes for the levels of categorization, as class="label label-subject label-subject-history", allowing one to style all labels, or labels in a category, or a specific label. Leaving out the individual label class would save a tiny bit of overhead in loading time and page weight, but I guess it would be insignificant.

If we used only class="label-subject-history", then we could use a substring selector in modern browsers (MSIE 7+), as in *[class*=label-subject] {. . .}, as long as we made sure that *label* didn't appear in any unrelated classes. —Michael Z. 2013-06-04 16:28 z

Why over-Luaize everything? {{label}} seems like a simple enough solution that should fit all our needs. -- Liliana • 20:42, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Template:label's subpages all have a common piece of code, which I don't like. It's harder to maintain, if one decides to perform any change then a lot of pages need to be changed. I support the proposed change. --Z 21:09, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Both {{label}} and {{context}} have the problem that they don't properly separate code and data. {{context}} is impossible to modify thoroughly for that reason, but I don't know how much better {{label}} is. —CodeCa t 21:11, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Although I do think there's a risk of going too far with Lua, {{context}} is one template that absolutely should be Luacized, for performance, for readability, and for correctness. (The demo that I created, and that Liliana-60 copied illegally to {{label}}, is an improvement over {{context}} in all three respects, but a Lua module would be a much greater improvement. I would never have created that demo if I had known that we'd get Lua so soon.) —Ruakh_TALK 06:44, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
- Illegally? Are you the dictator of Wiktionary? -- Liliana • 09:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
  I think Ruakh is referring to the copyright violation. --Yair rand (talk) 09:42, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
  I believe that anything we save in our user space is released under the open licences. It can be republished freely, but does requires attribution, e.g., linking to the source in an edit summary. Caveat: I might be wrong. —Michael Z. 2013-06-04 16:34 z
  Exactly. Liliana-60 has a habit of ignoring the attribution requirement, and refuses to acknowledge that it's a problem. Frankly, I don't see how we can keep an administrator who insists on violating copyright, but wev. —Ruakh_TALK 17:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Then if nobody minds, I will convert the few uses of {{label}} that are still present back to {{context}}, so that we can work on it and eventually convert {{context}} to the new Lua-powered {{label}} altogether. —CodeCa t 11:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I've been working on adding an explicit call to {{context}} to the labels, but there are a lot of them (160 thousand...) so it will take some time even with a bot. The progress is at Category:Context label called directly. I noticed that quite a few pages misuse the templates by using them as something other than a context (like where {{qualifier}} whould be better). But I have also realised that there is a more fundamental problem with some of the labels we need to address. Labels can have different "scopes" so to say: it can be used to specify a topic, it can indicate restricted usage (by field, place), and so on. Currently, the labels are just names and do not distinguish between these types, but there can be some ambiguity in quite a lot of cases. For example, it could be desirable to use a label to restrict a term to the topic of a particular country, but all of our country labels are currently used for restricted usage (that is, dialectisms), so this is not possible. If you write {{context|Britain}} then the term is assumed to be a Britishism, even when you really want it to mean that the term pertains to Britain. So you may get something like Category:British Dutch when you really wanted Category:nl:Britain. I'm not really sure how to solve this currently, but I do think it's important. —CodeCa t 15:51, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Trademark discussion

Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team's statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)

Universal Language Selector to replace Narayam and WebFonts extensions

On June 11, 2013, the Universal Language Selector (ULS) will replace the features of Mediawiki extensions Narayam and WebFonts. The ULS provides a flexible way of configuring and delivering language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings).

Please read the announcement on Meta-Wiki for more information. Runab 14:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC) (posted via Global message delivery)

Excellent. We'll finally have an easy way of typing in different languages. --Yair rand (talk) 15:50, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Format of articles, why not put the definition in a lede at the top?

Take a look at toches as just one example, wouldn't that article be a lot more useful (and nicer) if right at the top of the page there was a lede that gave the definition? As it is, the definition is dead last to many various and sundry less important things. I'm sure this question has come up, but I did some looking and couldn't begin to find it. 108.54.62.155 17:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It comes up on WT:FEED quite a lot. There's an argument for it, one argument against it is when say 'the definition', many words have more than one definition, some words have dozens of definitions. Since we're a multilingual dictionary we do need to put what the language is. The definition of lit changes a lot depending on what language you're speaking. Inflection is quite important but could I suppose go after the definitions, as could just about everything else. I've seen at least one suggestion to use the ===Definitions=== headers which I quite like. I suppose, one factor that shouldn't be underestimated is how users will get used to the format if they use Wiktionary enough. It's pretty simple; I'd've thought most people can learn it in a matter of minutes. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:43, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It would be a good idea. If we were able to separate data from presentation (the two concepts are currently hideously intertwined here), we could easily generate custom layouts with javascript. Until then any change would be counterproductive. DTLHS (talk) 18:03, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

But remember that in most documents, certainly in web pages, the text is serialized – it has an inherent order. This order will manifest itself in many contexts – excerpts, search results, mobile view, in non-visual browsers including screen readers and braille readers, when our data is reused elsewhere, etc.

We could expand this to a discussion about whether an entry is a page or a database. —Michael Z. 2013-06-06 17:11 z

As things currently stand, we've got data that's supposed to have a specific structure, but that structure is enforced manually by humans (and by bots), rather than by the system itself. This is rather horrible, in a number of different ways -- it's terribly inefficient, it's error prone, it unavoidably mixes data and presentation in ways that have been recognized to be huge no-nos, and it's very labor intensive. Building a database by hand is not the best way to go about it. ;)

In a couple of my jobs now, I've had occasion to poke around looking at various terminology management apps. One that was quite interesting was TermWiki, which (as best I understand it) is mostly MediaWiki with the semantic extensions added in (http://semantic-mediawiki.org/, itself relying much upon mw:Extension:Semantic_Forms), one or two other openly-available extensions, and some custom whizbang. I have no idea how much pull or push we have with regard to how the Wiktionary back-end is set up, but Semantic MediaWiki is high on my wish list for this site.

If any MediaWiki extensions are entirely off the table, I think we should explore building tools ourselves to emulate that kind of automated structure building and integrity management. Why should I be expected to remember all the wrinkles of WT:ELE? That kind of structure is exactly what a database provides, automatically. Users shouldn't have to even be aware of this; it should just happen. We would avoid a huge class of entry maintenance problems if we could do this. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:31, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Basically I agree. On the other hand you could look at it though as being similar to Wikipedia pages about people: they start out with the person's childhood, even though that is often not really what most people care about. Yet it's natural to begin at the beginning. The etymology is sort of a description of how the word grew up, if you will. --Haplology (talk) 15:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia's articles about people start with a summary of one's life and important achievements. It is strange to talk about the etymology of a word for which no definition has been given yet. I've also never understood why pronunciations are placed before the definitions. On fr.wikt we've moved the pronunciation some time ago, but the etymology remains at the top, too (but in our case we still have a general section for all homographs, which is both good and bad). Dakdada (talk) 16:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I think the original reason for putting the etymology at the top was to distinguish words with different etymologies. I'm not really sure that is the best solution, though. -- Liliana • 16:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Also print dictionaries traditionally put etymology and pronunciation before the definition, so our order matches what you might see in one of them:

horse [OE. hors] /hɔrs/ n. 1. A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work. 2. A piece of gymnastics equipment with a body on two or four legs, approximately four feet high with two handles on top. [...]

However, all the print dictionaries I currently have to hand do in fact put their etymologies at the end of the entry, not at the beginning. They do all put the pronunciation first, though. Instead of ===Etymology 1===, ===Etymology 2===, and the like, maybe we could find some other heading like ===Word 1=== or ===Form 1=== or ===Lexeme 1=== to use instead. One thing that's bothered me about separating by etymology is that people are often tempted to separate parts of speech this way, for example listing the noun house as ===Etymology 1=== and saying it comes from Old English hūs, and the verb house as ===Etymology 2=== and saying it comes from Old English hūsian. Which is strictly speaking true, but not the way I think we should be using those headings. —An gr 17:08, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

In Japanese, that (breaking an entry down by each etym) does actually seem to be the best organization -- sometimes you have a single "term" as written, but it's actually umpteen different "terms" as spoken, and each has its own etymology. Lumping all of those different readings and definitions together and then trying to explain the etymologies of each after the fact would be horribly confusing. C.f. 愛#Japanese, 大人#Japanese (multiple readings shown, but the entry still needs etyms & pronunciations, etc.), 目#Japanese, and so forth.

One suggestion would be to amend the CSS or JS to make etymology sections auto-collapse, so users only see the text if they want to (by either clicking or by customizing their CSS/JS). Just the etym text itself, not including the subsections thereunder. Inspecting the rendered page shows that the etym headers are <h3> elements, generally followed by a series of <p> elements until the next header. I know that some of our subsections use collapsible divs, like in {{der-top}}; I have no real idea how difficult it would be to auto-collapse a series of <p> elements based on their relative position in the page. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:18, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I have always thought that XML would be more suited to making a dictionary, because it more strictly separates formatting and structure. It also has the advantage of being able to validate pages and reject them if they are invalid. That would allow the software itself to check the formatting, and add categories for missing inflections and so on. —CodeCa t 17:40, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

That or JSON. Anyway, some things that would have to happen: 1. write a parser / validator (in Lua?) 2. create a new editing interface (javascript) 3. figure out how to make it work with our existing template, Lua and javascript infrastructure. 1 and 2 are easy enough but I'm not sure how 3 would work (can you call templates from a string in Lua?). DTLHS (talk) 19:51, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Writing our own parser seems a bit pointless because we would want to make use of something like XML schema for validation, and XSL as well to transform the data into HTML. —CodeCa t 19:56, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes you're right. How do you envision something like this working with our existing infrastructure? Or would we have to scrap everything. DTLHS (talk) 20:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Just write a new mw:ContentHandler (though this would probably require some coöperation from the WMF…). As for scrapping everything, I would implement migration this way: first split pages into per-language elements containing blocks of wiki markup, and then successively refine the markup schema to capture more of the entry structure, and rewrite pages into the new schema. With current quite consistent usage of templates, I think Wiktionary markup is already quite machine-readable, so actually bots could be doing the conversion. And when they fail, they could just leave wiki markup in place as a fallback. Keφr 20:28, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Something like that would work, yes. One effect of having a strict separation of content and presentation is that we would need to split our templates and modules in the same way. A template or module could, under this scheme, either generate content or display it, but not both. This would have quite a few consequences that we would need to work out. Inflection tables are probably the easiest to do, but other things will need more thought. —CodeCa t 20:41, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

@CodeCat, we already have the database, no? Why recreate it using XML? And if we're about to embark on anything that "would probably require some coöperation from the WMF", shouldn't we first look at things like Semantic MediaWiki, given that they've already done a lot of the work? I know some folks like reinventing the wheel for the thrill of learning how it was done, but I'm more interested in having a back-end that works well, and sooner rather than later. ;) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:39, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
- XML and a relational database are very different things. Databases are meant for representing raw data without structure, whereas we definitely do want structure. XML is also much easier for people to edit because it's human-readable text, whereas for a database we'd need to make a whole interface as well. —CodeCat 21:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
  - Really, I think we need to look at what's already out there before embarking on anything this major. What you're proposing sounds to me an awful lot like something that's already been done. To wit:
  1. We already have the MW database. Readily available extensions already provide much of the functionality required to ensure structural consistency and integrity. See above about the semantic and form extensions.
  2. Wikitext is also human-readable, and it's much less verbose than XML, and it's already supported.
  3. Those same readily available extensions also already supply an interface.
  Jumping right into creating a whole huge infrastructure for reworking everything about Wiktionary to use XML and then reworking everything about the UI to deal with that XML, all pretty much from scratch, strikes me as potentially foolhardy. Again, I'm sitting here looking at something that looks an awful lot like a wheel, and that already exists. And then I hear you talking about plans to invent one. :-/
  Note, I'm honestly not trying to be obstructionist, I'm really just trying to make sure that we proceed with our feet on the ground, and in possession of all the relevant facts. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
  Why would we need a whole new UI? My intention is that when you click edit, you are served with XML-ified page content instead of wikitext, and you edit it in that form. Then you save, and saving will validate the page and if it's valid, it's done. The editing process itself would not change at all. The only thing that would change is that there is an XML validation step followed by an XSL-driven pre-parser which converts the XML into wikitext (or directly to HTML cache). So from the wiki's point of view we would still store things in pages like we do before, only the source code of those pages would be the more data-oriented XML instead of the current presentation-oriented wikitext. —CodeCa t 23:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
  I'm confused -- it sounds like you're suggesting that editors would still have to remember everything about WT:ELE, and now a lot of stuff about XML, and would still be editing the raw code -- the only addition you describe that seems to make sense is the validation.
  
  Again, I think Semantic Wiki does everything good that you describe (enforcing structure, validating data, etc.), only without the ugliness -- data is entered using forms, not raw XML.
  
  Besides which, doesn't MediaWiki filter out or disallow certain kinds of markup in the raw wikitext? Or does that only apply to a small subset of HTML, like <a> tags? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
  No, the whole point is that we can ignore ELE because of the XSL processing step. The XSL style sheet will determine which parts of the XML tree go where, so it will rearrange the source to match whatever we like. The order of elements in the source would be dictated by the XML schema but it would not affect the end result. So you could put translations first or last in the source, or even reorder all the languages, and they'd still show up the same on the page thanks to XSL. —CodeCa t 23:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Make Template:alternative form of explicitly say that a US/UK spelling's definitions are found in the other entry

Continued from User talk:Dbfirs#Double_links.

Recently, I noticed several edits like this, where a second link to sense of humour is put immediately after the templatised one, explicitly stating that the definitions of sense of humor are found in [[sense of humour]]. Is this desirable? Dbfirs thinks it is, because "users will expect to see definitions for a valid word in their region, so the repetition makes is clearer that the definitions are only a click away". I think it isn't, because users are no more likely to expect content on favour/favor than on their preferred spelling of kinnikinnik/kinnikinnick/kinnickinnick/etc, and no less likely to understand how a soft redirect works on one of those pages than on the other. What do you think? If it is desirable, can the extra text be added by {{alternative form of}} itself (or by whichever other template we use to redirect US/UK spellings; e.g. {{form of|Standard form}} or *{{standard form of}}), rather than being added by hand? - -sche (discuss) 22:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Redundant links with different link text are confusing for users.

The link text is also wrong, because English spellings cannot be divided into binary US and British sets. Humour is a British and Canadian spelling, while curb is a Canadian and US spelling. Unless you disavow the classic linguistic meaning of British English, in which case humour is a UK, Irish, Canadian, Indian, South African, Australian, and New Zealand spelling.... —Michael Z. 2013-06-06 22:48 z

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Wealth Maker

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Wiktionary - Recent changes [en]: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2013/June