Wealth Maker: Wiktionary - Recent changes [en]: User talk:Metaknowledge

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User talk:Metaknowledge

Nov 7th 2013, 02:34, by Wikitiki89

Revision as of 02:08, 7 November 2013 (edit) Metaknowledge (Talk \| contribs)		Latest revision as of 02:34, 7 November 2013 (edit) (undo) Wikitiki89 (Talk \| contribs)
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	::::Yes, but you can't hardcode ''veln'', because from the pagename alone you can't predict which of the two conjugations it will take. Those will need special special-casing.		::::Yes, but you can't hardcode ''veln'', because from the pagename alone you can't predict which of the two conjugations it will take. Those will need special special-casing.
	::::Well, I suppose we just have different philosophies regarding Hebraic words. I figure we might as well do it your way unless another editor has an opinion, since you did all the work. —[[User:Metaknowledge\|Μετάknowledge]]<small><sup>''[[User talk:Metaknowledge\|discuss]]/[[Special:Contributions/Metaknowledge\|deeds]]''</sup></small> 02:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)		::::Well, I suppose we just have different philosophies regarding Hebraic words. I figure we might as well do it your way unless another editor has an opinion, since you did all the work. —[[User:Metaknowledge\|Μετάknowledge]]<small><sup>''[[User talk:Metaknowledge\|discuss]]/[[Special:Contributions/Metaknowledge\|deeds]]''</sup></small> 02:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
		+	::::: Well, who else here is interested in Yiddish? What happened to that [[User:Sgold84]] guy? --[[User:Wikitiki89\|Wiki]][[User talk:Wikitiki89\|Tiki]][[Special:Contributions/Wikitiki89\|89]] 02:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

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De lingua Latina[edit]

Salve domine linguae Latinae peritissime,

If you don't mind, I would like to ask you a few questions.

how would you say "if you don't mind"?

how would you say "once a week"?

how would you say "what a pity, what a shame"?

do you think sodete as a plural for sodes exist?

what do you think of what I wrote on the talk page of video? --Fsojic (talk) 15:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, I am not so skilled as you may think I am; trusting me will often work, but not always.

"if you don't mind" = si tibi non molestum

"once a week" = semel in hebdomade (there is probably a better way to say this)

"what a pity, what a shame" = tam misericors, tam ignominiosum

If sodete exists, I doubt it, for I have never seen it.

I agree, but the whole sentence feels wrong; I have substituted a better one. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! And I have a few questions back :-)

For semel in hebdomade, don't you think it could mean "once in this week" (like "I'll do it this week, I don't know which day but I promise you it'll be done")? Shouldn't we add quisque to highlight the idea of repetition?

For "what a pity", I was rather thinking of the meaning of too bad. As in "You can't come to the party? Too bad."

For sodete, I haven't found it in dictionaries indeed. So it seems sodes can be used even when addressing several people? (don't hesitate to point out the English mistakes, they sure are legion) --Fsojic (talk) 10:06, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, adding quisque is a good idea. I can't really imagine how a Roman would be coerced into saying "too bad"; maybe you want to say tam infelix or something like that. And yes, sodes is an adverb, so it isn't really used for address (which would explain why it is invariable). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:08, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

You might be interested: I found displicet for this. Displicet quod nimis multae sunt reliquiae nec otium est nobis singulatim eas videndi. (Desessard's Assimil, Lectio Nonagesima sexta). --Fsojic (talk) 18:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcome back[edit]

I hope that you had a good trip. :) -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 05:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, it was excellent. The wikibreak may have been a good thing as well, although as you can see from my contribs, I miss editing Wiktionary. While traveling I carried a notebook in my pocket to record any words in Spanish that I found that I hadn't seen or heard before, and now I'm adding them all. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:35, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I've got the same habit. I absorb interesting and unfamiliar words that I encounter, and file them away in my brain or jot them down on whatever's conveniently available. -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 20:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Does that really make a difference? I figured {{conjugation of}} was preferable for cases like this. —CodeCa t 20:16, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

We use {{form of}} for all the Yiddish conjugated forms, in part because the excessive parameters are annoying (like specifying that it is indicative - in Yiddish, this is assumed). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh but you can remove those easily. Of course if it's normal to use {{form of}} then that's ok, but what about something more like {{got-verb form of}}, where the different "parts" are customised for Yiddish usage? —CodeCa t 20:25, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't particularly need customisation, but if you want, we can. My only request is that if you make a template, that you apply it to the existing entries. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:35, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

If you are interested, see Template_talk:mul-proper_noun. DCDuring TALK 00:09, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Foreign Word of the Day[edit]

Do you still want to actively work with FWOTD? You seem to have kind of given up. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 23:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The answer is mixed. It's true that I've been beyond negligent, and the only way I made myself feel better about forcing all the work on you was that you seem so suited to the job. I will admit that I edit Wiktionary more for the preservation of my own state of mind than out of true altruism, which explains my irregular editing patterns. I don't find FWOTD as rewarding, but I also think I should help to make up for a tiny bit of the labor I foisted upon you. But I think it's undeniable that you're the dictator of the FWOTD cabal (if you want to step down, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish to deal with). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't plan on abandoning it, but I've been doing a horrible job. I really need someone else to help; would you be too angered if I asked for someone else to join as the third official co-FWOTD-setter? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 02:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't get angered by statements of fact. CodeCat has expressed interest before, but she may very well be too busy; Angr would be a great choice as well if he is interested. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, I replied to the post you made on my talk page. Cheers, Razor flame 21:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I know; I just had nothing to say. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I was kinda wanting you to reply since I still don't know why you brought it up. Sure, I know that I might be stepping out of my boundaries in terms of the languages I'm editing, but I'm only doing so after extensive research. I know that I have been careless and reckless in the past, and I mean to make up for it by being more careful now more than ever. I'm pretty much teetering on the brink of an indef ban at this point in time, and I don't want to ruin my ability to edit here simply because I was too careless or reckless. That's why the edits I make after extensive research only account for 2-3% of the edits that I'm going to make in the future in languages that I'm learning, and I will only do so after extensive research and validation to make sure that it is absolutely 100% before I even submit it. The only 97-98% of my future edits will be in Esperanto, Ido, Spanish, Kannada, and a little Italian. I hope to eventually be able to get proficient enough at Finnish to be able to make entries in that language here, but I know that I'm a ways off from being able to do so. I will be eliciting the help of a certain Finnish-speaking user here on the English Wiktionary for more help in getting used to the language, and in a few months time, I hope to be adding entries in Finnish :) Anyways, sorry for this rambling post, as this is going to be part of a message that I will be leaving the entire English Wiktionary community tomorrow, and I don't want people to jump to conclusions about my intentions like they have in the past. Anyways, thanks for reading this and cheers, Razor flame 21:56, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it should be obvious why I brought it up. You made an oath, and you broke it. Normally, that would be your own business, but in this case it may compromise the quality of Wiktionary entries, which makes it my business. The only conclusions I jump to are the ones suggested by your own history, much of it as detailed on your talkpage archives. By the way, I don't know anything about Kannada, but I can muster up some conversational ability in Esperanto, Ido, or Spanish if you want to talk in any of those languages. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I did make that oath, however, that oath was broken way in the past. Three years in the past, to be exact. Therefore, as I stated above, I'm making amends for what I've done in the past. The second I believe I'm harming this project is the day that I will stop editing in this project. Razor flame 22:07, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "ab ovo [usque] ad mala"[edit]

May I ask why you reverted my addition of "usque" to ab ovo ad mala? — Singlestone

The saying in its standard form is without usque and the headword line on that page should reflect the page title. Perhaps ab ovo usque ad mala should be created as an alternative form, but it can just as easily be made a redirect in my opinion. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

What makes you say that the form without usque is the standard form? Horace uses it with usque in Satires book I, 1.3. I can't find a Latin citation of the other form. — Singlestone

I went searching around, you're right. Oddly enough, both forms with and without usque are cited to Horace, but the only copy I have handy uses it. I'll move it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

SC history[edit]

I don't want to continue a thread others have wisely decided to drop, so I'm posting this here rather than on Ivan's talk page, but I want to note that the vote to unify Serbo-Croatian actually didn't pass. It reached an insufficient level of consensus because of a lot of sock- and meat-puppeting and voting by non-members of en.Wikt, and histrionic comparisons of the merger to genocide (by respected veteran Wiktionarians!). It was only in later discussions that consensus was reached to merge BCSM. That absolutely does not invalidate the merger—most dialects which en.Wikt has merged have been merged following discussion rather than a formal vote—and I share your and Ivan's opposition to splitting them. But I want the history to be clear. - -sche (discuss) 21:36, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Why are we whispering? But in any case, you're right. I guess my retroactive application of Wiktionary policy is merely wishful thinking. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Ha! I thought I was the only one who knew this. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Pywikipediabot[edit]

I've configured it, but still unable to get the hang of it... I suppose I'll learn. What syntax should I use to replace {{foo|bar}} with {{quux}} (via replace.py)? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't normally use the pre-made scripts, I write my own in Python itself. If you don't know Python then that may take a little time to learn, but I learned Python more or less by making MewBot, so it's not that hard I think. Here is what I would write, based on the description you gave:

  import wikipedia, catlib, re, string, sys     try:          # Create a reference to the page "Template:foo"          transc = wikipedia.Page(wikipedia.getSite('en', 'wiktionary'), u"Template:foo")             # Retrieve a list of all transclusions to that page, and go over them one by one          for page in transc.getReferences(onlyTemplateInclusion = True):                  new = old = page.get(get_redirect=True)                     # Do the replacement                  new = new.replace("{{foo|bar|", "{{quux|")                     # Skip saving if the page contents hasn't changed by the above                  if old != new:                          # Get editing restrictions                          rest = page.getRestrictions()                             # If there are no restrictions, save the new page                          if "edit" not in rest or rest["edit"] == None or rest["edit"][0] != "sysop":                                  page.put(new, comment = u"Replace {{foo|bar| with {{quux|", minorEdit = False)                          else:                                  wikipedia.output(u'Skipped [[{0}]], page is protected'.format(title))                  else:                          wikipedia.output(u'Skipped [[{0}]]'.format(title), toStdout = True)     finally:          wikipedia.stopme()

The above is probably not the fastest or most ideal way to do it, but it works. —CodeCa t 11:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

It's throwing an error report that mentions line 25 as the culprit; I tried fixing it but couldn't actually get it to work right. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

[moved to your talk page] Which line is 25 in your file? —CodeCa t 16:30, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

  wikipedia.output(u'Skipped [[{0}]]'.format(title), toStdout = True)

—Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:27, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I see why. Try changing "title" to "page.title()"? —CodeCa t 01:39, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to tell you that it all works. I think I'm going to use regexes instead though, as it's nearer my comfort zone. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:05, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Odd, though. I still can't get a simple (non-regex) text replacement to work; when I put in python replace.py -cat:Swahili_nouns summary:Template_update {{head|sw|noun}} {{sw-noun}} -ns:0 it responded:

  -bash: noun}}: command not found  -bash: sw: command not found

And then precedes to scan the category's contents and tell me that there are no replacements to make, which is untrue. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

The pipe character has a special meaning in bash, so you should use double quotation mark. --Z 07:13, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I tried that already, putting the text to replace and text to be replaced in double quotes, but then I get a different error message:

  Traceback (most recent call last):   File "replace.py", line 967, in <module>     main()   File "replace.py", line 755, in main     raise pywikibot.Error, 'require even number of replacements.'  pywikibot.exceptions.Error: require even number of replacements.

So I was trying to avoid that as well. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Well this error is a progress actually, the previous error message was from bash which means the code could not be run at first place. The problem was that you didn't put a hyphen before "summary". --Z 08:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Wow, my errors are so exceptionally stupid... Thank you, all is well now. In any case, I'm doing it semi-manually, so there won't be faulty edits. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:22, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I thought that regexes would be easier, but when I tried searching for Swahili nouns beginning with Ki by using -titleregex:'^(?=Ki).+' it ignored the regex. I learned regexes long enough ago that I wouldn't be surprised if I've forgotten things, but I don't see it. Or should it just be '^Ki.+' perhaps? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:37, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
- What is the ?= for? I think just ^Ki should be enough. —CodeCat 11:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
  - It's quite frustrating... in case anything else is obviously wrong, here's the whole line I'm inputting: python replace.py -summary:"Template update" -cat:"Swahili nouns" -titleregex:'^Ki.+' "{{sw-noun}}" "{{sw-noun|ki|-}}" —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:02, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
    - Regular expressions are case sensitive, so maybe you need a lowercase k? —CodeCat 16:57, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
      - I actually want an uppercase K. It doesn't particularly matter anymore, since I've found most of the offenders, but I'd still like to be able to use regexes. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:59, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, since you agreed to try, here is the first request. I had created {{hy-example}} for Armenian and Old Armenian usage examples before we had {{usex}}. Now I want to delete {{hy-example}} and switch to {{usex}}. Can you replace all instances of {{hy-example|1|2|tr=}} (tr= is optional and usually is not provided; in rare cases 2 is also absent) with {{usex|1|t=2|lang=hy|inline=1}} or {{usex|1|t=2|lang=xcl|inline=1}}. The bot will have to determine the L3 header, either ===Armenian=== or ===Old Armenian===, and use lang=hy or lang=xcl, as appropriate. I realize this is not trivial and won't be sad if you are unable to help. --Vahag (talk) 09:10, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

The answer is "maybe but not now". I think that sounds like an AWBish job anyway, but I might be able to do it, I don't know. However, I'm currently using the bot to delete thousands of deprecated templates, which will take many hours more (and it only runs when I'm online). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:40, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, no problem! --Vahag (talk) 06:55, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

From Mammal Species of the World:

Didelphys Schreber, 1778, is an invalid emendation of Didelphis Linnaeus, and Leucodidelphys Krumbiegel, 1941, is an invalid emendation of Leucodidelphis Ihering, 1914. Didelphus Lapham, 1853, is an incorrect subsequent spelling of Didelphis Linnaeus.

I wonder if the spelling confusion contributed to gender confusion. I really don't see much gender confusion that is not eventually resolved. OTOH, there are cases where I can't tell what the gender might be because neither specific epithet not Etymology resolves it unambiguously, AFAICT. DCDuring TALK 17:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, the spelling problems are likely because in Anglo-Latin (and I think in German Latin as well) all those spellings are pronounced identically. The gender confusion is more because 3rd decl -is nouns can easily belong to either gender; see google books:"Didelphis virginianus" versus google books:"Didelphis virginiana". But anyway, you know my opinion on gender and Translingual. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:22, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand what you have based your opinion on, so it's hard for me to share it. ~99% of the genera I have seen have genders that can be inferred from specific epithets or etymology. Of the balance some have no such evidence and a very few seem to have conflicting evidence, which might be resolvable if one knew more taxonomic history. DCDuring TALK 20:38, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

On some level, I don't think we should have taxa at all. I often wish we could just export it all to Wikipedia, whose content we're duplicating anyway, or hell, Wikispecies, which is designed for this purpose. But in the end, I'm willing to accept it, I guess, but only in that it leaves Latin alone — true Latin, the Latin of running text. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:08, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

If they had all of etymologies, translations, interproject links, and vernacular names, then I'd be in favor of removal too. WP and WS don't seem to like each other and have no links between them. WP doesn't have much by way of translations/vernacular names and WS is quite spotty. Neither bother much with etymologies.

But I was interested in your statement about there being many genus names for which multiple genders were used. I just don't haven't seen all that much of it. Where would I look to find it? DCDuring TALK 22:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

What you've said is just false. Have you ever read Wikipedia? WP entries have etymologies and vernacular names more often than we do, and they link to WS as a rule. If they agreed to take us up on the offer of exporting it (and it wouldn't be hard to convince them, I think), they'd be doing pretty well with the combined info.

I don't know, nobody makes lists of these sorts of things IME. I was always just taught the correct scientific names (or, to be more exact, what was considered correct at the time), and gender discrepancies are just one of those things you start to notice if you read old comparative vertebrate anatomy books for fun. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:36, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

You're mighty quick with accusations. WP rarely has morphological etymologies and is spotty on the others. Considering the neglect of our entries over the years, I'm amazed by what we have. WP has hardly any vernacular name coverage for taxonomic names, though WS does. You are right about the links in WP to WS. It is the other direction that is mostly absent. DCDuring TALK 23:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, that was pretty rude. I have a habit of writing what I want to say, and then deleting it because it's too rude, but sometimes it slips out. What the heck is a morphological etymology? I'd still contest the bit about WP and vernacular names, but WS is enough to cover it, in any case. But I think you want to keep it all at WT and improve it, if I understand your position correctly. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:35, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

OK. I get pretty nasty sometimes, so a little rudeness reminds me of how it might feel for others.

I have since narrowed my middle-term focus for adding taxonomic entries to:

those for which we already have uses in enwikt, especially in non-Translingual entries.
those that have vernacular names in Wikispecies
those I find in my readings

Obsolete names, especially supergeneric, are neglected in the world at large AFAICT and confusing when found in older works. There is value to be added though the task may be beyond what Wiktionary can do. [[Saurornithes]] is a possible example of the revival of an obsolete term.

Together with bringing existing entries up to a standard, these items will take quite some time.

As this effort progresses either the lexicographic value will prove itself or taxonomic names will revert to the shunned backwater it was. DCDuring TALK 17:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

What are they for? —CodeCa t 19:00, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Formerly, if WT:About Proto-Algonquian didn't exist, there'd be an ugly redlink at the top that's not likely to get created anytime soon. Now it only links iff that page exists. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

That's the point of red links though, to show that something needs to be created. Trying to hide them defeats the whole point. If you just don't like the red, use CSS styling to make it black or something. —CodeCa t 19:21, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, because I don't really think that the creation of protolanguage About pages is especially important. There are some exceptions, like your WT:AGEM, which is useful because there are a few different contributors regularly editing and creating PGmc pages, but for most protolanguages, only one person is going to be dealing with them for the foreseeable future. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:32, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Flood flag removal[edit]

You really should remember to remove the flood flag after you're done with it. This is the second time I've seen you do other things with it on other than what you were going to do with it on...you should get in the habit of removing it right after you are done with it, even if you still have more stuff with it left to do. Razor flame 04:50, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

This is why I de-flagged you the other day, btw: I noticed you weren't making any more mass edits, and didn't notice that you were still making mass deletions (sorry!).

Don't feel bad, I've forgotten to de-flag myself quite a few times... - -sche (discuss) 05:04, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

@Both of you: Yeah, I make some edits while I'm flood-flagging, although a lot (most?) of it is vandalism reversion, or edits on discussion pages. Hopefully, after the Luacisation period we'll never have to delete thousands of templates on Wiktionary ever again, which is the only reason I'm using my main account for this job.

@Razorflame: You don't seem to understand quite how it works, but more to the point I feel like you're writing this message as an oblique response to my last message to you. Yes, I'm not perfect either, but in light of your editing history, I feel like you have even less of a right to be patronising to me than I do to you. (Not that I should be patronising at all, but I'm frustrated.)

@-sche: It doesn't really matter much; you can de-flag me if you notice I'm done before I do. This category should be the last for now. At a rate of 6 deletions per minute, though, RC stands no chance of being useful at all if you de-flag me prematurely. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Nope, I wasn't writing this in response to what you wrote on my talk page. Furthermore, I have every right to patronise someone if I see they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing with the flag. I think you are forgetting that I've actually been an administrator on another project in the past, and in addition to that, I also know everything there is to know about the flood flag. I know it should only be used if you are going to be flooding the recent changes, and I know that that's the only reason it should be used for. If I were in your situation, I would've deflagged myself before talking on other people's talk pages and then reflagged myself to finish what I was doing. So your comment isn't that valid. Furthermore, just because someone has a bad edit history does not mean that they have any less right to be critical of someone else. Razor flame 23:31, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

If you were in my situation, you wouldn't be running a bot, because you have a history of questionable editing and your bot is blocked AFAIK. So yeah, I think we should all stop being patronising based on the principle that being an asshole is bad, but right now I'm really annoyed at you, so I'm having trouble convincing myself of that precept. I should think that if you started following the rules I wouldn't have any problem with you lecturing people, including myself, now and then. At the current time, however, I'll gladly see you spend your time tagging the entries you added in error for deletion rather than telling me exactly how to do my work. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to that. I was saying if you and I had switched places and we had inherited each others' reputations and everything, that's what I wouldn't have done. Furthermore, I'm not telling you how to do your work. I'm giving you a suggestion. As for the entries, I'll get to marking the ones that I can't find any sources for for deletion tomorrow. Razor flame 04:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

If it's really a suggestion, then you ought to learn how to phrase it thus. It sounds like a polite command, really. In any case, I await your long-promised weeding. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:33, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

True, I don't have a good way with words. Anyways, I wanted to clean up my Kannada entries and mark those for deletion today, so I'll start on the Ido entries tomorrow. Razor flame 04:43, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

That's ironic to say the least, considering your lexicographic aspirations. You can't keep putting off the Ido protologisms forever. More than a week ago you told me you'd hope to have it done in a "few days", and you keep saying "tomorrow". You are still not engendering trust. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:12, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

True, however I should have it done within a fairly decent period of time. I'll start working on them today and will have them done in a few days. The reason why I'm putting them off for so long is because I'm trying to find sources for some of the entries that I've made, and that is taking up a good portion of my time. I'm trying to do the right thing here. Razor flame 02:51, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Razorflame's Ido entries[edit]

I've done as you asked and marked the entries that I could not find any sources for deletion. All other entries have at least one other source or reference. In case you ask what my sources are, you can find them on my userpage, underneath the "Ido" section. Thanks, Razor flame 04:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, thank you. However, dictionaries are not acceptable as sources to cite a word unless they actually use it in an example sentence (see use-mention distinction). If I look at Ido entries that you have created recently, will all of them have three uses somewhere in durably archived media? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

No. Most of them will only have one or two durably archived uses. Ido is not a language that has a lot of readily available resources, which is what makes it so difficult for me to validate a lot of the words that I'm adding. I know they're real words in Ido; the problem is that hardly any of them are readily documented elsewhere on the Internet. I will continue to look for more sources for the entries that I've made, and if I cannot find any within a couple of days, I'll start marking them for deletion.

Furthermore, most of the Ido language is only found in dictionaries, and to disclude them from the English Wiktionary just because of that aspect of the language seems a bit unfair to me. I mean, if I can find sources for each word, even if they are dictionaries, they should be allowed to stay because it shows that they are found elsewhere, and are not protologisms. The main issue with constructed and artificial languages is that most of the words are going to either be protologisms or words that don't have enough resources to allow them to be added to the English Wiktionary. I'm trying my best to find sources for all of the words that I've added, but the issue is is that there are very, very few resources from which I can draw from. Razor flame 21:24, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

That's the exact definition of a protologism. A word that has sources, but is not actually used. We don't allow those kinds of words in English, and I don't think we should allow them for Ido. Idists have compiled long wordlists of terms that they think others might like to use, but that doesn't mean they are in fact used; some may never be. Wiktionary's job is to describe existing use of language, not to list words that could be used (that's one of the purposes of the Appendix, where such material could be accepted). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is that these "wordlists" are used in the official web site of the Ido language, and are very well-known throughout the entire Internet. They are words that are used every single day (most of them), but actual references in "books" are very few because most of the time, they are found in Internet chat, word lists, and other such things. Your stance is kind of like saying Ido itself is a protologism since the majority of the words in the Ido language falls under this category. Ido hasn't been around as long as Esperanto, and therefore, hasn't had the time to accumulate the book references that Esperanto has yet. I'm willing to give the language a chance if others are. Razor flame 03:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

If they were truly well known and used, you'd think they'd come up in books and Usenet posts, no? A lot of your words are not realistically going to be used "every single day", like alotropo, and that was never the purpose of the official wordlists. I believe that Ido itself is not a protologism, just that many of its words are. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:09, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I kind of get where you're coming from now. I don't think that very many of the words that I've made here are protologisms at this point in time. Though they do lack resources, I don't think that they are fundamentally going to be protologisms. The one word I will mark for deletion is desferizar. After much thought, I don't see it being used very much. Razor flame 20:33, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I still don't think you get it. ferizar is just as much a problem as desferizar. It doesn't matter whether you think the word will be used much. What matters is whether the word actually is used enough. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:36, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I do get it...I guess I just fail at wording a lot D: Yeah, since I marked desferizar for deletion, I'll go ahead and mark ferizar as well. It matters whether the word is actually used. You are right XD Razor flame 20:38, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

But it still feels like I'm not getting across. It's not that you should mark for deletion the entries which I point out. You should, as you promised, actively look through your contributions to ensure that they are CFI-compliant. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:41, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, every entry that I've made since this discussion has started are definitely CFI-compliant. I'll actively go back through my thousands of entries and mark the ones for deletion that need to be marked. It will take some time, but there will possibly be some marked for deletion every day from now until I'm done. I'm not going to do it all at once, but over a period of time. Razor flame 20:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

You're basically approving his behavior with what you did. Was this really necessary? -- Liliana • 22:39, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I think preventing him from posting on his talkpage is needless assholism, especially since we all know he can keep using proxies if he wants to. And it's not as if I reverted your removal of the whole tumor from his talkpage, which seems questionable enough to me on its own. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:42, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

It's not like I'm giving him the finger on purpose, I just want to prevent any further damage to be done to Wiktionary. The climate here is already intoxicated due to this RF/Dan conflict thing, I don't want it to get even worse. -- Liliana • 22:44, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, the block is a purely symbolic move, so it does at least superficially resemble giving the finger. I personally have had negative interactions with both of them, so I probably wouldn't block either unless they do something egregious. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:50, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Too bad we don't have something like an interaction ban. That would be the best option by far. -- Liliana • 23:03, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

They do something like that on some Wikipedias, I think. It's pretty stupid, and it reeks of ArbCommunism. If en.wikt ever got like that, I think I'd leave. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:06, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

edit: By "that" I mean how en.wiki is now. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:07, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not talking of Arbcom. We should never have stuff like that. Wikipedia is not communism, it is an oligarchy and should stay that way. But the idea by itself could work out if it were actually enforced. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon. -- Liliana • 23:10, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a socialist myself. Wikipedia just reminds me of the government in Laos, which btw is called "communism" even though it isn't. I just think that the enforcement of topic bans, interaction bans, etc lends itself to that kind of power structure. Hell, the admin discretion policy out here is like the Wild West, so if you want to try it, more power to you. But if it goes horribly wrong I'll never forgive you. ;) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:14, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok, you know more about politics than I do. You win. -- Liliana • 23:16, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I doubt it, but ok then... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:28, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Afrikaans adjectives[edit]

I am looking at an Afrikaans grammar book and I think that the current {{af-adj}} template is really insufficient. Although it lost the distinction between genders and definiteness, Afrikaans appears to have retained all the inflections more generally. So it has the predicative, attributive and partitive forms, and the comparative also has a partitive form, while the superlative has only one form. So that gives 6 forms altogether. I don't think that would fit on the headword line, so we probably need to make a small inflection table for it? —CodeCa t 22:47, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have access to any complete Afrikaans grammars. Do you know of a good one I can read in full online?

In any case, I'm afraid I don't know all the forms. The only ones I think are needed on the headword-line are: headword, inflected form, comparative, superlative. Are there others that are both distinct and not just, say, the inflected comparative form (which does not need to be on the headword-line)? By the way if you have a specific question, I do have a native Afrikaans-speaking acquaintance to whom I can shoot an email. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

PS: Verbs that end in -eer almost always seem to have two past participles, one with ge- and one identical to the headword. Is it safe enough to make that default behavior, you think? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:06, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be easier to generalise once we have a lot more verbs covering a lot more cases. After all, the best statistics are in our own entries. :) Once we have like 1000 verb entries, we can configure Module:af-headword to categorise entries based on their endings and such, much in the same way that sort keys are currently categorised. We can then see what proportion of verbs follows the rules you propose, and which don't. That will then give us an idea of how sensible it would be to add new rules to the module for specific cases, and for how many it would not work.

For groot there are at least the following forms: predicative groot, attributive grote, partitive groots, comparative pred/attr. groter, comparative partitive groters, superlative grootste. Those same six forms are also found in Dutch with the same meaning, except that in Dutch the comparative has its own attributive form grotere which Afrikaans lacks. See the table at groot. The source for this is "A Grammar of Afrikaans" by Donaldson, which is partially available on Google Books (I haven't found a full version). I was actually surprised that the partitive survived into Afrikaans, as it's not really a very frequently used form in Dutch either. In Dutch, it's only used after indefinite pronouns, like in iets groots "something big", weinig leuks "not much (that is) fun". Afrikaans also uses it this way, although the book mentions that it's starting to fall out of use in colloquial speech, but not in standard Afrikaans.

The approach we currently use for Dutch is to put only the comparative and superlative in the headword line, but I'm now wondering if it would not be better to put the inflected and partitive forms there instead. After all, those are the forms that would be more immediately useful, and the comparative can be derived from the inflected form by adding -r in most (but not all) cases. In any case, {{nl-decl-adj}} shows all the forms, so presumably we need a {{af-decl-adj}} as well. —CodeCa t 12:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and I fixed some entries you created: regeer, studeer. groet has the past participle gegroet and not begroet which you put there. That's a separate verb altogether (like in Dutch). —CodeCa t 12:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if trusting our own entries is really the best method. I for one am relying on Google Books heavily to make sure that the forms I put in exist, but I often have trouble with present participles, as they aren't used much and I haven't had great luck filtering out Dutch.

I must have seen the partitive forms before, but if I have I never thought about it. They are certainly used in Afrikaans, not with frequency, but will at least be attestable for common adjectives. I chafe at Afrikaans inflection tables, but I suppose I don't see a way around it. That said, I hope we don't just copy the Dutch ones, because I've always found those to be much too big for the few forms they contain.

Thank you for the corrections. The one at groet was just a thinko. I wanted to put that in Related terms, and mixed the two. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

In a way it's like the etymological work I already do with Germanic and such, except that I speak the ancestor language. :) Figuring out Afrikaans versions of many words just kind of comes naturally to me, in most cases it's the same as the Dutch and there are sometimes just a few small predictable differences. So intuition helps me a lot. The hard part for me is more in knowing which grammatical forms have been retained and which have been lost, but those that have been retained will normally have more or less the same meaning and usage. I can read Afrikaans without much trouble at all even though I never studied it.

Knowing Dutch helps especially with the present participle. In Dutch, the present participle is probably the most regular form of all because it's just the infinitive with -d. But because while the Afrikaans infinitive is derived from the Dutch present singular, they're much more different. However, the present participle resembles the Dutch one much more closely, and is usually more or less identical, so knowing the Dutch one lets you figure out the Afrikaans one as well. —CodeCa t 17:16, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Diminutive for pl-noun[edit]

I wish there's a parameter for diminutive and/or augmentative forms of Polish nouns, like the one for Lower Sorbian nouns. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 03:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Done. I updated the documentation accordingly. Check that it works as you would like. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

TY. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 04:55, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

You could take a look at grusza, which has an augmentative form, I think. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 06:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Fixed, but make sure other stuff doesn't pop up. Try one with both a diminutive and augmentative. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:16, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi,

I saw your post. Are you able to run a bot to fix Russian nouns, verbs (and possibly other PoS) that don't use templates, please? Even identifying them would be helpful. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:10, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Certainly, although it will be a little while until it's done with Polish. I would need to know exactly what the format of the headword-lines looks like when it uses {{head}}, and how it should look once fixed. For example, can I just change all {{head|ru|noun to {{ru-noun or will things like g= and inflection information confuse the template? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:15, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps splitting by situations would be easier. Most often nouns have no template at all, just bolded like this: TERM (TRANSLITERATION) m, the gender is added at the back m, the transliteration is given in the brackets. I don't know what's possible. Practice with Polish first, please let me know when you can do it. Nouns should look like this: {{ru-noun|g=GENDER|tr=TRANSLITERATION}}. {{head}} should be converted to {{ru-noun}}. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:32, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

OK. Going case-by-case is a lot slower, but it may be necessary. When I do Russian nouns, I will post here so you can scan the bot's contribs and make sure that everything is going as you wish. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:36, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, sounds good to me. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

It's very, very slow but MetaBot is indeed now working through Russian nouns. Please peek through the contribs; I haven't seen anything go wrong yet but I'd like to have a native speaker be scanning over the changes. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. It's looking good mostly but I found a problem with noun forms like бега. {{head}} is updated to non-existent {[temp|ru-noun form}}. So, "noun form" should not be updated, unless I missed something. Is the bot only updating cases with {{head}}? Will it work with entries with no templates? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

1. I didn't think of that, so for now I made a temporary {{ru-noun form}} and I'll remove all uses of it when I'm done with this run, then I'll delete it. Thank you for noticing! Please be on the look out for stuff like that.

2. I'm just doing the ones with head first, because they're easier, but I intend to do them all. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:26, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm not sure, perhaps {{ru-noun form}} could be used if it's working. I have reverted changes for "noun forms" but perhaps it was better with the template. Need to check with other languages. Yes, I'll be on the lookout. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:33, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

No need to revert, the bot will do it. The template is just a temporary filler, if you like it then we'll need to add more capabilities. If you want to improve it then I can proliferate it with the bot. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Keep {{ru-noun form}}. I think it's useful, I've made a small change. Please let me know when you start checking for other problems. I can't find a noun problem but here's a verb, which uses no PoS templates: [[баять]]. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, it'll need transliteration and the rest, maybe gender support too? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:48, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm trying to find examples like you mentioned but I'm having trouble. Are you any good at regexes by any chance? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I never worked with the DB dump. What sort of regex do you need? Awk? Not sure I may help. I need to learn to work with DB dump. You can test on verbs if nouns can't be found. Yes, ideally gender and transliteration should be supported but only if {{m}}, {{f}}, {{n}}, {{p}} are provided and the transliteration is given in brackets. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not working on the DB dump, I'm doing it directly. For example, looking for rogue Russian nouns I tried (.?)\s?\(?(.?)\)?\s?{{.+ but I think I made a mistake. And when I mentioned gender etc I was talking about {{ru-noun form}}. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

No, no need to support gender in {{ru-noun form}}. I'm curious, where do you apply this regex? In the search window? How do you use (.?)\s?\(?(.?)\)?\s?{{.+?--Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Take a look at mw:Manual:Pywikipediabot. I'm using Terminal on my Mac. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:29, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you but it seems a bit too complicated. Sorry, I couldn't help. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:53, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Are you sure that this doesn't mean "brotherly bond" or "fraternity" or similar? Brotherhood is broederskap. —CodeCa t 23:33, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that, actually. FWIW, Afrikaner Broederbond says "brotherhood", and I trusted that. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:38, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

But "brotherhood" has multiple senses. One refers to the abstract concept of being brothers (like parenthood, friendship), while the other is an actual group of people. —CodeCa t 23:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I assume -bond is countable senses and -skap uncountable. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The Dutch senses of bond might clarify things. —CodeCa t 23:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

How's my gloss? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:52, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

That looks better yes. —CodeCa t 00:13, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I noticed you were unsure so I added an etymology there. Does that help? —CodeCa t 13:03, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

That does help, but I more or less knew the etymology (well, I knew it came from zijn). The part I'm most unsure of is the inflection. By the way, I see that you've been looking over and editing my entries, and I appreciate that. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:04, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

In Dutch, adjectives ending in -en that originate as past participles or "material made from" don't get an -e in the inflected form, unlike all other adjectives. Afrikaans lost all past participles in -en unless they were converted into adjectives, but it also lost the -n so these would now all end in -e in both the predicative and attributive forms. At least that seems like the most likely outcome. So I think the inflection is correct. Also, I've noticed that most verbs that end in -we tend to have an alternative form ending in -f in Afrikaans. That might be something to check when you add such verbs. —CodeCa t 20:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, good to know. I've noticed the -we/-f alternation, and I've been making alt-forms, although I'm never quite sure which should be the lemma and which the alt. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Quotation translation reply[edit]

I've gone ahead and taken a look at the translation, and for the most part, it was correct. I just needed to make two changes to two words: proxime and pruvas. pruvas is the present tense of the very pruvar, which is to prove, and proxime is best translated as approximately, or closely. Nearly and closely are fairly close translations, so I substituted in closely there. There are two other notes that I need to make: bonstando is not an Ido word as far as I can tell...if it was, it would be a compound of bona and stando. Stando does mean situation, but in a permanent condition. I have no idea why the quotation made bonstando an Ido word when I've never heard of it, nor is it in the Ido Wiktionary. Pro-porcionale is the other word. This is the alternative form of proporcionale, which as you correctly translated, does mean proportionally. Cheers, Razor flame 22:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, it was good to get a little Ido practice. Are you sure about proxime though? The sentence makes a bit less sense with "closely", maybe your suggestion of 'approximately' would be the best choice after all. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I put closely over approximately because with approximately, it didn't make as much sense as with closely, but if you think approximately works better, feel free to change it :) Razor flame 03:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Could I ask for your opinion on something? There's a Latin cite at aeruginosus which I'm trying to translate; in it Seneca is referencing the colloquialisms of the other orators, and I'm struggling to work out exactly what they mean. Could you have a look? Thanks, Hyarmendacil (talk) 06:33, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I fixed the quote. It's a terrible choice, though, because obviously 'rusty' is being used as a sexual euphemism. I'm not sure, but my best guess is that Bassus Julius is alluding to the way that the virginal purity of her hand has metaphorically rusted as she uses her hand for sexual purposes. It's better to get a quote that actually supports the definition in question, and if you can find a scholar who has decided exactly what this use means, you can create a new definition line to put this under. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:12, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Managed to get another quote. I can't find any info on the euphemistic sense; I'll leave that quote up until somebody can. Hyarmendacil (talk) 05:53, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Would this be a candidate for {{only in}}? —CodeCa t 18:16, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I was wrong — the sense of usuarius that you're thinking of is a WMF protologism, but there is another sense attested in relation to the finer points of Roman law. I'll add the entry. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I found a source that mentions the user of "usuarius" by William of Ockham, to mean "user". It's also not just a WMF protologism in the modern sense, there are also plenty of results on Usenet, although I don't know how many of them are actual uses. Still, I do suppose that this is at least in some minimal use under a {{context|New Latin|lang=la}} banner...? —CodeCa t 19:31, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

What I was really thinking of was usor, which doesn't seem to have been used before la.wp took it up (see WT:RFV#usor). But I'll take a look on Usenet and if I can find two uses of it there I'll add the sense to the entry. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:34, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

swb = Maore Comorian ≠ Comorian[edit]

See http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=swb So when one uses swb in the Wiktionary,

Maore Comorian: maji should appear, and not * Comorian: maji. Code changed in 2009. Water = madji [maji] in Ngazidja Comorian and maji [maʒi] in Maore Comorian. I'll try to create an 'About' page soon, after some reflection on it. --Echtio (talk) 22:04, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Gah, I'll change it and hope it doesn't break something. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:51, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcoming users[edit]

Hi Meta! I'm glad to see you're still active on Wiktionary. Things have calmed down and I can contribute again a little, and was wondering about our project where we welcomed people who made additions to rare languages. Would you be interested in alerting me when you run across newbies like that? I think that would be a way I could contribute without too much of a time commitment. BB12 (talk) 05:36, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, nice to see you again, so to speak. I've less time on Wiktionary nowadays, as can be seen from how little I've edited this last week. The only user I can think of off the top of my head is Echtio (talk • contribs) (see previous section on my talkpage), who's working with Ngazidja Comorian, which is pretty exciting. It might not be hard to change some of the Swahili templates I've written to work for the Comorian lects. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:35, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Very cool, thanks. Keep me in mind if you run across others. BB12 (talk) 19:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Classical Nahuatl needs your help again[edit]

Hey! I'm back-ish (I don't know if you remember me). I was working on some Classical Nahuatl entries again and noticed some of the changes that were made to simplify the use of some templates, like not having to provide macroned and non-macroned versions of words when using {{l|nci|}}. Was that you? (it's such a blessing)… That aside, I'm here to bother you in that regard again; it'd be pretty useful if there were a way of indicating when a noun functions as a locative (as I have done manually in tōnalco, for example (much in the say way we can indicate animate and inanimate nouns now). I noticed you're really busy… like really, but I hope you can give it a try sometime soon. Hi again, and thanks in advance for all your help. —Косзмонавт (talk) 22:53, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Of course I remember you, and if I didn't I would pretend. I'm busy to be sure, but hopefully not "really busy".

First of all, I didn't have anything to do with the macron thing, that was part of a big improvements to our linking capabilities that other users have been working on. Glad it's helpful.
In response to the locative thing, do you want it to categorise locatives a certain way? If so, what would the name of the category be?
Oh, and a minor thing, but templates like {{nci}} will probably deleted someday, as their capabilities have been usurped by Module:languages, so in discussions if you don't want to write out the full name you should probably put {{subst:nci}} instead.

Cheers! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:04, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm way behind an all the updates thanks for the heads-up.
Yeah, it would be great if it would. Category:Classical Nahuatl locatives as a category name, maybe? (On the pattern of Category:English locatives), even though locatives in both languages don't really serve the same purposes or work the same way, I don't think it would be a problem. What do you think? —Косзмонавт (talk) 00:40, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I added the feature and created the category, and tōnalco looks good, so I think locatives are set. Feel free to give me any more requests, as long as you bear in mind that I may take a while to get to them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:30, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Nice. Now I'll get to replacing locatives I indicated manually. I did have some other stuff in mind, like possessives, but I want to be sure I understand them myself before burdening you with a confusing request. As always, thanks a lot! —Косзмонавт (talk) 22:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I lied, I'm back. Something like {{nci-proper noun}} would be useful in general. (I would point out that some proper nouns are also locatives (Mēxihco, for example) and I know of at least one that's a plural (Tlālohqueh). Maybe there's a way to incorporate some of the same features that {{nci-noun}} has?)

I've also been adding entries to Category:Classical Nahuatl reduplicated forms manually and it occurs to me now that maybe there's a way to shortcut the process. Tell me what you think. —Косзмонавт (talk) 23:13, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

PS: I'm not so sure about Tlālohqueh anymore, maybe it's a regular plurale tantum… I'll see to clearing that up for myself later, but the locative thing is definitely a must. —Косзмонавт (talk) 23:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

So are macra, locatives, and plurals the only things I have to account for with {{nci-proper noun}}?

As for reduplicated forms... I can't think of how to automate that off the top of my head. A good place to ask that (indeed, a good place to go for any technical needs you have that I am too slow or inept to deal with myself) would be the Grease Pit. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:04, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

(moving this thing left) Yeahhhh… I think that's it, at least nothing else came to mind from looking at the proper noun entries for Classical Nahuatl that we have around right now. I'll see what the grease pit people can do for me in regard to the reduplication (I've never been a big forum type person, but anything for the sake of extinct languages, I guess), thanks. —Косзмонавт (talk) 05:55, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

OK, I made {{nci-proper noun}}, and now I'm converting existing entries to use it (by hand, so I can fix bad formatting at the same time). I find it funny that you have an aversion to the fora, considering that it's mostly people like me who are active there anyway... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:52, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

You're the bessst. Thanks! —Косзмонавт (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Some help please[edit]

You have straightened me out in the past, so perhaps you might be so kind as to explain the reasoning behind this edit, which reverted an addition I felt was helpful and useful? As you'll see, all I did was to add a link to the Wikipedia article and a link to the Wiktionary adjective page with a brief usage note. There is a link from the adjective to the noun, so why not a link from the noun to the adjective? Is there a policy or guideline against what I did? – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 19:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

It had several problems and ignored rather a lot of local formatting rules. A couple users have since cleaned it up; you would do well to check out the edit history of the page. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:23, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

chemist?[edit]

Hi there. Are you a chemist? -WF

What I wanted to ask is if chemistry is an area of expertise. While I'm here, what other areas are you good at? Knowing this, I can persistently bug you on certain topics, without having to do the hard work researching for myself -WF

Hell no. I do have a lot of experience in science, though — mainly stuff like geology, biology, and oceanography. I am pretty interdisciplinary, especially within the natural sciences, and I know a little about a wide range of things scientific and otherwise. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:26, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Woohoo, you're my new science go-to-guy -WF

SB would still be better for chemistry and physics. Msh210 is best for maths, and Chuck Entz for botany. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:32, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I took a couple of courses in college, and it's an interest of mine, but I have a vague recollection that EncycloPetey is actually a botanist in real life. Probably my main area of near-expertise is ethnobiology: the study of the relationships between plants and animals and human culture. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:24, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

He's a teacher, although I don't know of which subject. The problem is that he's not that active. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:58, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

My job in RL is English teacher. I can´t claim expertise in much, however. I just have lots of free time and creativity. -WF
Kinda handy that, as it means nobody asks me for any favours. -WF

geology[edit]

The geological term hinge point came up in my search. Reckon it's worth an entry? -WF

Probably not. We usually talk about the "hinge line", actually; the "hinge point" is a kind of stupid thing for those 2-D diagrams (I mean, you could argue that the hinge line is composed of infinite hinge points, but whatever). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:18, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As you can see, I have created a Yiddish transliterator. Before we start using it though, can you double check my test page to make sure the transliterations are accurate (ignoring Hebrew spellings), especially with regard to yudn and vovn. Thanks --Wiki Tiki 89 17:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

And by the way, before I Luacize create the Yiddish conjugation templates, do you think we really need to fully conjugate the past tense, or is it enough to just give the past participle and auxiliary verb? --Wiki Tiki 89 21:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

A sheyne dank! However, there are some problems with the transliterator:

Geresh, gershayim, and Hebrew hyphen should become apostrophe, double apostrophe, and Latin hyphen respectively.
For some reason, ניו־יאָרק doesn't transliterate right. All the rest looked good.
Instead of attempting to transliterate Hebraic words, it should reject them where possible (so anything with e.g. a tav in it should cause the output to be nothing).

I agree that the past tense is unnecessary; you can do as you like with it (keep it or remove it). When I dealt with the Yiddish inflectotemplates, I didn't really touch appearance much, just copied it from other editors' preferences. Feel free to change the aesthetics while you're at it if you feel so inclined. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:32, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I fixed the first two things. As far as transliterating Hebraic words, since it is not always possible to tell it would be inconsistent to sometimes transliterate it and sometimes not. Any template that will use this transliterator will be able to override the transliterations anyway and the transliteration that it does give is, in my opinion, better than nothing. Thanks for finding the bugs! --Wiki Tiki 89 02:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Another question about the verb conjugator, I'm basing it off of CodeCat's Dutch conjugator and I noticed that it handles the case of separable verbs (see aanbakken for an example). Should we do this for Yiddish separable verbs also (such as אויפֿשטיין)? --Wiki Tiki 89 03:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we definitely need separable verbs! I haven't made any entries for them because of this problem (although to be honest I'm always worried I'll mess up the conjugation).

Re Hebraic words: I disagree with that. There's already an inconsistency between words that can be transliterated and those that can't. I don't want people to think that not giving transliteration for Hebraic words is ever OK.

Have you a plan for handling irregular verbs? (Our current attempts are somewhat sad-looking.) I think that the two conjugations of veln, with all the odd and missing forms, could be a problem. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, I'm basing code off of CodeCat's dutch conjugator and Dutch is similar enough to Yiddish so I can just follow it for the separable and irregular verbs. The way it works is the forms of the most common and most irregular verbs are hard-coded in the conjugator and their derived forms can just add prefixes or separable prepositions.

Regarding Hebraic words, since it is not always possible to tell I don't see the advantage of sometimes detecting them and sometimes not. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:00, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but you can't hardcode veln, because from the pagename alone you can't predict which of the two conjugations it will take. Those will need special special-casing.

Well, I suppose we just have different philosophies regarding Hebraic words. I figure we might as well do it your way unless another editor has an opinion, since you did all the work. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, who else here is interested in Yiddish? What happened to that User:Sgold84 guy? --Wiki Tiki 89 02:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Wiktionary - Recent changes [en]: User talk:Metaknowledge