User talk:Connel MacKenzie/archive-2007-4

Votes/pl-2007-02/Trademark designations
Greetings! Since you participated in the discussion at Beer parlour, I thought you might want to cast a vote at Votes/pl-2007-02/Trademark designations. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Very tricky stuff.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:00, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

page deletion text
re: the note on WT:BP about using the WT:PREFS option to replace deletion text; that's fine, but the text linked to is very specific to you ... if either the text could be made a bit more generic, or the option use the sysop's name so we can have our own text? Robert Ullmann 14:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, it isn't intended to be specific to me, but to a sub-page of mine. Please move it to the Wiktionary namespace, and update User:Connel MacKenzie/del-cmnt.js to point to it, to your satisfaction.  --Connel MacKenzie 15:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, did you mean the wording in User:Connel MacKenzie/custom.js? Please be bold there!  --Connel MacKenzie 15:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sheesh, that was getting out-of-date. It is all shuffled around and sanitized now.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:00, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia questions
Hi, I have a few questions for you regarding Wikipedia articles on words. I'm having a minor discussion with a few people on Wikipedia regarding to what extent it makes sense for Wikipedia to have articles which are about actual words, rather than topics. One of our featured articles, for example, is Thou, and we also have lengthy articles like Truthiness or Nigger (offensive term, but probably one of the most written-about words in English). As someone who is intimately familiar with Wiktionary, and at least has some familiarity with Wikipedia, I'm wondering to what extent you think it might make sense for Wikipedia to have articles on words.

Does the structure of Wiktionary entries prevent you from having the quantity of information we can have in Thou? Can Wikipedia offer more information than Wiktionary can on highly notable words, or are we pointlessly duplicating your effort? These questions to some extent look to the future of Wiktionary, as from my understanding your project is, in a sense, in its infancy, as given the vast scope of your project, you are perhaps 1% finished. --Xyzzyplugh 10:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I wouldn't call that 1% "finished" by any stretch of the imagination. We have a long way to go, to get basic coverage of "all words in all languages" - but the entries we have will certainly change significantly, as moods, policies and practices vary.


 * Some word genuinely deserve encyclopedic coverage. Usually, that means there is some inherent redundancy with the dictionary counterpart.  Deciding when that redundancy is appropriate is very problematic.  Will the entries ever look the same?  Impossible.  A dictionary entry shouldn't look anything like an encyclopedia entry.  Should all the content that is covered by the dictionary be in the encyclopedia?  Not likely.  Will the dictionary entry be more compact and detail-laden?  Usually.


 * Part of the problem is meeting people's expectations of what they expect from a dictionary or an encyclopedia. Deciding when a word has enough historic importance to merit an encyclopedia entry is a question I honestly haven't considered at length.  The last time I looked at your "notability" criteria, it was, in my ever-so-humble-opinion, inadequate.  User:Uncle G was working hard to rectify that, the last time I checked, but progress on that front is certain to be very slow.


 * On the Wiktionary side, we have a different problem. As a secondary source (as opposed to a tertiary source like Wikipedia) we have to be much more diligent about copyright violations.  As of right now, we only find copyright violations from chance and periodic sweeps.  As our number of languages covered increases, this is getting enormously trickier.  Quite frankly, I wish we had stuck to English, where we have the reasonable ability to check on those violations.


 * The other major problem on the Wiktionary side, is the "fair use" clause. Dictionary definitions themselves are governed by different regulations that the rest of the dictionary entry contents.  Etymological information, in particular, is something we cannot treat the same way we treat definitions.  The likelihood of a "word history" being a copyright violation is (in my estimate) somewhere above 99%.  Likewise "folk etymologies."


 * Regarding structure, it is important to note that Wiktionary entries for thou, thee, thine, etc., are all separate entries. The encyclopedic counterpart is understandably reorganized into a single entry.


 * So, to answer your questions, the structure doesn't prevent Wiktionary from duplicating that content, but the copyright concerns do. Wikipedia can, does and should duplicate very notable words, particularly of historic importance.  I would caution Wikipedia to pay particular attention to likely copyright violations stemming from entries such as Thou.  But then, Wikipedia has perhaps a better infrastructure for addressing that problem.  :-)


 * --Connel MacKenzie 15:40, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your well thought out answer. I'm trying to puzzle out what our notability criterion should be on Wikipedia articles about words.  Right now, our actual practice most of the time is the horribly inappropriate habit of deleting all short articles on words, while keeping most long articles on words as long as they appear well written.  --Xyzzyplugh 18:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Copyvios usually are well "written." --Connel MacKenzie 18:41, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * A little birdy pointed me at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-March/066346.html

I would like to advise you to pay particular attention to what Eclecticology says there. Ray signs his posts as "Ec". What he said reflects what I said above rather perfectly. People like Mr. Benett don't seem to understand what an encyclopedia actually is. Good luck with that flamewar. I can see it quickly degrading, but there perhaps is some chance you could get a policy refinement out of it. Is Sheldon Rampton just a troll? Ugh, now I remember why I refuse to subscribe to those mailing lists!

I don't know how I missed it yesterday...Thou is a FA? Yikes. I do find it hard to see how that word is notable enough for an encyclopedia. What other encyclopedias carry that entry? --Connel MacKenzie 12:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

IRC bugginess
No, that didn't work either and now I can't login as either my primary or secondary name :P

I had no link to follow, and when I tried going to the root directory, there was no listing for the channel in the pull-down menu. Worse, once I went to the root directory, I had no way to get back to the wiktionary channel. The back button didn't work correctly and I couldn't log back in because my name was "in use". The system is very buggy. --EncycloPetey 16:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I'll caution you that it is my JS link to it, that is so buggy. In case you were wondering, no I didn't ever find the right person to actuall ask if I could do that link.  If you go through http://chat.wikizine.org/, instead of the "beginner's" link I added to these pages for sysops, you'll get a new "guest" name every time.  E.g. EncycloPetey_, EncycloPetey__, EncycloPetey___, etc.  If you register EncycloPetey with  /msg nickserv help  you can then ghost the ghosts away, on reconnections.  The work-around is to always use "/signoff" cleanly.  X-Chat on Aqua, is probably worth investigating.


 * Also of note, the trickiness was all from trying to goof around with the restricted channel #wikimedia-checkuser. (Sorry about that.)  Normal #wiktionary channel stuff should still work, for all sysops except you, just by clicking the "irc" link to the right of "log out" at the top right corner of this web page.  (Granted, we're all a bunch of reclusive bookworms in that channel; but some of us at least try to be friendly.)


 * I do wonder if it would be worth-while to make that available to everyone, instead of sysops only. It is intended as a temporary work-around for people that can't figure out the basic connection stuff/install stuff.  Once you've been in the channel a week or so, you probably get the concept of the different channels.  With the caveat that most other channels are quite hostile, in comparison.  --Connel MacKenzie 18:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it might be worthwhile for MediaWiki to properly develop its own chat client so as to be compatible with Macintosh. After all, no one else seems to have done that... Also, I've never gotten the hang of ghosting, though I've tried it once or twice.  Does "/signoff" close open connections from a user?  Is it really any different from "/quit"? (I still can't log on under my usual nick, which is odd because it normally times out after this long.)  --EncycloPetey 21:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, maybe. You can submit it to bugzilla I suppose - but they will come up with a solution similar to chat.wikizine.org, since that is the pre-made component on http://sf.net/.  On my todo list, is setting one up on toolserver (just begging to have my access there revoked, I guess) that allows better parameter passing inbound, so a direct link can be plopped onto Main Page (that uses your username by default, and cycles through others when busy) while connecting directly to #wiktionary with your wikt username.  But I'm lazy.  Or busy.  Or something.  Note also that a bugzilla request might be met with significant derision...given the breadth of different IRC clients that exist for every platform (yes, even VMS.)


 * If I hadn't goofed up, your /nick would be available. But because I /kick'ed it, the CGI gateway still has the status channel open to freenode.  I think that takes 24 hours to timeout...but maybe not until chat.wikizine.org is next rebooted.  :-(  If you had been using the normal chat.wikizine.org connection when I did that, the status channel would have gone away when you closed that browser window.  --Connel MacKenzie 21:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess we should note somewhere that the CGI-IRC timeout seems to be about 12 hours. Welcome back, by the way.  --Connel MacKenzie 12:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

RFD's?
Connel, I noticed that you put rfd tags at General Mills, Garbage Pail Kids and Kellogg Company, but have not yet followed through with rfd listings. Just wanted to remind you of that. FWIW, I'll be voting to delete Kellogg Company as a non-idiomatic construction and Garbage Pail Kids as probably not meeting CFI, but to keep General Mills as very idiomatic (since it does not mean "mills, in general". Cheers! bd2412 T 21:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reminder. I wasn't planning on WT:RFDing them right away, as I was blitzing through the crap list and was pretty sure they'd get picked up as the WT:RFD list is cleared.  (Since they eventually would show up as "oldest RFDs" in the right column.)  Also, I was vaguely aware of your policy proposal regarding them (unofficial still, right?) and wanted to have them tagged, but not generating noise, during that discussion.


 * The more I look at the overall issue, the more I am baffled that we have "trademark entries" at all. The argument that I've made on their behalf, in the past, was that referent proper noun names deserve entries.  The counterpart to that argument was that we should have internal links to things, not external links to Wikipedia.  But that seems (now) to be a fallacy.  There simply is nothing lexical to say about General Mills (as opposed to general mills.)  Are promotional entries worth keeping just for translations?  I think not.


 * From my perspective, we define words and in some cases phrases. A trademark use of a word is a definition of the word (for example, Pledge as a furniture cleaner has nothing to do with any other definition of the term). But the trademark use has to be widespread enough that people can and will use it without further explanation of what it means. bd2412 T 22:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * But that would put us in the same bind that Wikipedia is in with "notability." We should avoid that battle, diligently.  Even when one side or the other "wins" in that dispute, it will still resurface after three months, only to start over again.  --Connel MacKenzie 22:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * At one point, I was floating the idea of having Wiktionary entries for every Wikipedia entry, gleaning the first sentence or two from the Wikipedia preambles. I think I lost sight of what a dictionary is while blinded by having that goal in mind (at least for a short while.)  Fortunately, that idea was quashed before it got any real momentum.  (If nothing else, it would incorrectly be violating attribution rules.)


 * --Connel MacKenzie 21:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Transwiki of Metaescaline
Your bot transwikied the article "Metaescaline." does "transwiki" mean move the article from wikipedia to wiktionary, or copy the article onto wiktionary, leaving the original? User:Use_the_force (from wikipedia)

PS. i left a copy of this message on your wikipedia talk page too.


 * It means "Copy to Wiktionary, and tag the Wikipedia entry for cleanup or deletion" as per whatever the rules of Wikipedia are, today. --Connel MacKenzie 00:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: patrolled.js
I suppose putting on the its talk page a list of the form * ~ to show the last time someone checked that the IP is still doing good works would be enough.

Is there any reason to keep registered users on that list who are now admins, or who haven't contributed in ages, or such? Cynewulf 14:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No, and no. (I keep admins on the whitelist for one day, after they are sysopped.  Originally, the flag wasn't pushed onto sysops, so their older edits had to be explicitly whitelisted.  These days, there are only a few residual entries from new sysops.)  So yes, please clear them off!  Thank you again!  --Connel MacKenzie 17:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

similiar issue :)
Thanks for the help with schmutz. And I saw how you handled shmutz. Is that the correct way to handle misspellings? I ask because I just tested against similiar, a common misspelling of similar. What is policy on commonly misspelled words? Shenme 05:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think there is an official policy. The practice, is to generally delete things labelled as "misspelling of" unless they are very undeniably obscenely common errors, that every usage guide lists as a "common misspelling."  I returned "Chicago Manual of Style" to the library recently, so I don't have a list handy anymore, but "similiar" isn't likely to survive an .  ('Shmutz', as a borrowed term, has an exotic flavor, so it might pass under the radar.)  --Connel MacKenzie 05:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Automated text replacement
Hi Connel. Your automated text replacement gets used on a page move as well as a delete. Is that what is supposed to happen? SemperBlotto 07:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No, that is a bug. When I was the only one using it, it wasn't too annoying.  I suppose I really should fix that one of these days.  --Connel MacKenzie 10:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Benjamin and spam
Why did you delete "(usually used in the plural)" in Benjamin? And why did you label the deletion spam? Ben 14:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I had cautioned that user that promoting their web site with those external links was likely to be considered "spam"; they reacted by starting to load more entries here with those links.


 * I corrected the syntax of the layout - did I goof?  $100 bill vs. $100 bills - no, I don't see any way that the singular form cannot be considered the lemma.  It isn't a pluralia tantum at all.


 * --Connel MacKenzie 14:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I had missed the intervening spam - you are fast! Thanks for cleaning it out. About the phrase you deleted: Sorry to be dense, but I still don't see why we shouldn't note that the word is "usually used in the plural." Ben 11:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. I'm thinking of when I've hear it used (uncommon, but used) and I recall it usually in the singular.  Searching b.g.c. has too many proper noun uses to be helpful.  But the scene, in some movie, of a guy trying to bribe with a Jackson, then a Grant, then a Benjamin is lying at the fringes of my memory.  That said, I think benjamin is wrong in the same way.  Ugh, should it really be at both Benjamin and benjamin?  --Connel MacKenzie 13:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking of "It's all about the Benjamins" which appears in:
 * The title of a Puff Daddy hit recording
 * Dean Ornish's column in Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12256977/site/newsweek/
 * The title of a 2002 movie starring Ice Cube
 * Many blog entry titles
 * ....and so on...

What is b.g.c.? --Ben 00:25, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * b.c.g. = http://books.google.com/
 * I dunno. It certainly seems common enough in the singular too, with no special meaning attached in the plural (other than "more than one.")  &lt;shrug&gt;  Please remember not to cite blogs; they don't last very long.  Add a few durably archived links as references, I suppose.  --Connel MacKenzie 03:25, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Do any other dictionaries list it as "usually plural?" --Connel MacKenzie 03:26, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

L2 See also
Finding a lot, are you? ;-) There are still cases like A- and Jan Mayen where just pushing it to L3 puts it in the wrong section (sigh). That's why I've been tagging it at L1/2 with rfc, pushing 3 to 4 if under a single POS (usual ELE style for these things), else leaving it at 3, leaving anything 4-6 alone ... Robert Ullmann 20:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No, I'm on a semi-auto pass now, but have slowed down, once I saw how many were really bad. Also, the ones that I missed will show up on the next XML dump, so I'm not overly concerned (they were AFU to begin with...)  --Connel MacKenzie 20:25, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * And no, not really a lot...180. About 1/3rd the way done, now, but I'll do the rest slower (over the next 15 minutes or so) with my eyeballs looking at each one before clicking ALT-S.  --Connel MacKenzie 20:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Ouch. These all suck, formatting wise.  Each one will take time, I guess.  --Connel MacKenzie 20:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Guess I'll return to these some other time. --Connel MacKenzie 20:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I can understand that ;-) btw, the AutoFormat code was stalking your changes, fixing other things, I've been watching it carefully. (for example 4 was missing a couple of inflection/headword repeaters). It waits 15-20 minutes (minimum) so it doesn't cause edit conflicts (or simple irritation!) Robert Ullmann 20:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The 15 minute delay is ingenious. If had been 60 minutes, I wouldn't have noticed.  Sounds like a perfect scheme for normal Recentchanges patrolling.  (When you say stalking, I hope you mean it was Recentchanges patrolling, right?)  --Connel MacKenzie 22:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, "stalking" is just snark; it is following RC; it picks up entries that have been patrolled. (Otherwise it would be annoying when it did something to an entry that needed to be rolled back.) Still not sure exactly how this would be most useful. Robert Ullmann 14:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

hitch
Yes, indeed, I apologize. I promese I'll be more careful. 16@r 15:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks,
I'm trying to coy it over from wikipedia. You should see my monobook there. It has a ton. Cheers, --Darkest Hour 18:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Please help!
I cant import my monobook here to my monobook(difff)! Whats wrong? Is my function winc wrong?--Darkest Hour 18:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I haven't stolen the importScript function from Wikipedia yet. For now, you'll have to import it just like WT:PREFS imports scripts, or copy it over manually.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:01, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * By the way, you probably don't want to install either Lupin popups or TWINKLE just raw here. I'll see about linking TWINKLE into WT:PREFS for a Wiktionary flavor of it.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

TheCheatBot question
Can TheCheatBot be taught not to create plurals (or similar branches) or entries that have an RFV or RFD tag? It would save work - if, e.g. Cartogram is deleted, Cartograms will have to be ditched as well. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I have the "cleanup" tags defined as a set elsewhere, so I'll exclude them all. Excellent suggestion, thank you!  --Connel MacKenzie 19:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Another minor thing: it says "automatic import of articles" or some such. "created from XX" might be more useful? ;-) Robert Ullmann 19:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, if I'm going to fix that...what would a meaningful message there, be? --Connel MacKenzie 19:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Automatically created from entry foo (en-noun plural) Robert Ullmann 19:34, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah. Yes, that makes sense.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)  Remind me later, when RL calms down.  --Connel MacKenzie

Cloud cuckoo land
Your bot (copy to wiktionary bot) has marked the page w:Cloud cuckoo land as being copied to Witktionary. However it is in neither of the places the template says it will be, and it doesn't appear in any logs? Thryduulf 11:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, that one is the first completely inexplicable error. (There have been at least three other errors, due to massive edit history - but that isn't the case here.)  I've re-imported it now, to Wiktionary's Transwiki: namespace.  I know there were bot problems in early February, but I had thought they were all resolved.  I should problably check nearby "transactions" for similar problems.  --Connel MacKenzie 14:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Feeding a hungry bot
Any ideas? ;-) The tag and category are fine, but only if we get people in the habit. It is easy to read RC, not so easy to figure out what to do when. (Must wait for other changes to be patrolled, must wait so you don't annoy people with edit conflicts. Then what is worth doing? and that is just an experiment anyway)

Tell me what you think of this edit ... Robert Ullmann 17:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Figured out how to chase RC; coded only pick up patrolled edits, and wait 10-15 minutes so someone making a few changes doesn't get annoyed. Seems to work fairly decently, running it for a little while. Robert Ullmann 23:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

You, or something in your fmt code, is collecting all the cats to the end, even when they have been carefully placed in the language sections, where they are available to section editing. I do think they should be in the language sections; do you disagree, or is this left over from some past form? Robert Ullmann 16:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No, that is usually me, manually. Categories go to the end of the article.  Vildricianus and I went back and forth on that for a couple months, but in the end, the only viable solution is to follow the Wikipedia convention of having them all in one place at the end, just before the interwiki links.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I still prefer to see them with language. Otherwise it becomes a real headache to edit language sections of long pages with mutliple languages.  You can't tell whether the category comes from a template or is hard-coded. --EncycloPetey 16:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you tell me what the problem is? I.e. why is that the "only viable solution". I can't offhand think of any category explicitly added to an entry that doesn't belong semantically to one particular language? (And note that when bots and such read the entry, not having the cats in the language section is painful if the bot wants to do anything. My conversion code to Kinyarwanda/Swahili just drops all of them, not much else it can do. Likewise things like a wikipedia template outside of a language section, which it has to just discard.) If it was just "too hard", well, it isn't really; and most people seem to put them in the language sections anyway ... Robert Ullmann 16:53, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, and there is a visible difference! The cats are listed in the order that they (first) appear in the entry. So cats generated by templates will be listed in order by language, and then the cats at the end (even if also sorted by language). Putting them in section means they are always alpha by language. Robert Ullmann 17:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

--Connel MacKenzie 17:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) No conversion exists for changing the majority of entries that have categories now, which have them at the end.
 * 2) No conversion can be devised to do so correctly.
 * 3) Any well-behaved bot will move them to the end, currently.
 * 4) Including the categories in the language section is inconsistent - you are certain to have a harder time finding them (when editing manually) than if they are kept at the end where they are supposed to be.
 * 5) Templates before the language sections are perfectly valid.  If you are dropping them, you are in error.
 * 6) If a mechanism for moving them to sections were devised, all existing bots would somehow have to be changed to accommodate the new style.
 * 7) etc.

(4 first: when I am extracting entries from the en.wikt to add to sw.wikt or rw.wikt, the code must discard templates before the first language header because they aren't in the language section that they apply to, and the bot (mudasobwa or kompyuta) can't determine whether they should go with the language section being extracted.)

1) the majority of entries now have cats in the language section. Specifically, there are (25.2.7 data; 397K total entries): 12880 have more than one language section, in those there are 31112 cats, 25186 in the correct language section, 5921 not, of which about 30% aren't recognized as being in the correct section (although they are) because the language code template is missing. The ones that are not occur in a smaller number of entries that have them sorted to the end. All in all, something significantly more than 9512 entries have the cats in the correct language section, while something significantly less than 3368 have them at the end, or otherwise in the wrong place (L2 See Also section ;-).

1.1) Why do you think it is so hard to do so correctly? It is fairly easy. (Would that most things were that simple.) The only case that seems to occur is topic cats that haven't been re-arranged yet into code:topic, and those are almost always in the relevant section, so they can just be left where they are.

2) I'm not aware of any (other) bot that moves categories. AWB does this on the pedia; but was fixed a long time ago not to do it on wikts. I've never seen any bot edit move a cat.

3) If the cats are in the language section (as they are almost all the time) they are easy to find; as I and EP point out, if they are at the end, it effectively precludes language section editing.

5) what "all existing bots"? They are doing fine reading the majority of entries now that have the cats in the sections. What bots are moving cats? There are bots adding tags (English nouns lacking inflection templates) but those are temporary, and it doesn't matter much where they are. (would be good if they were in the English section, so you could section edit ;-) So what bots?

In normalization of articles, the argument seemed to be that fixing the 71K entries (then) was too hard. Now we have ~400K, and it isn't hard at all. Robert Ullmann 15:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Erm what? On one hand, you say your bot is capable of surprising logical leaps, and on the other, it can't determine what to do with line one of duoshao?


 * That it can tell by the template name. But most things, like wikipedia templates, or images, it has no way of knowing what language section they belong to. Robert Ullmann 13:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm quite sorry, but it seems quite crazy to move things from "section 0" that were put there precisely for formatting, based on a whim. There is no reason you can't track "section 0" separately.  --Connel MacKenzie 13:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Within the en.wikt, I can certainly keep track of a section 0 (AutoFormat calls it "language" *prolog). But look at papillon. When the Kinyarwanda mudasobwa bot extracts the French section to create rw:papillon, it can't take the WP template from section 0; it doesn't belong to the French word for butterfly. And there is no way it can tell. If WP templates for the English meaning were inside the English section, and so forth, then it could pick them up correctly. Robert Ullmann 14:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * What bots? Well, any catagory.py runs I do to rename a category using pywikipediabot, would be one set of examples.  --Connel MacKenzie 05:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Use -inplace? Robert Ullmann 13:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't keep my copy of pywikipediabot up to date - when did that get added? Besides, that doesn't do the magic that you are proposing for AutoFormat.  --Connel MacKenzie 13:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, but it doesn't move them to the end either. I got the pybot framework about 5 months ago. Robert Ullmann 14:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * So, if I understand you correctly, you'd like me to start a vote to eliminate the current practice of doing edits like this, right? Because you have devised some method of automatically re-sectioning those, sorted better.  I get that right?  --Connel MacKenzie 13:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes; it seems natural for people to put them in language sections (except for dedicated pedians :-), and we can sort them, and it overall seems better. So I think it would be a better policy (WT:CG already says this, but that's because it didn't say anything, and I thought in-section was the policy! ;-) I've told AutoFormat not to edit ura. Robert Ullmann 13:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No, I mean, let AutoFormat have a shot at it, for demonstration of how you have it working now. Then get a vote started, so it isn't just yours and my opinions, but definitively an answer to the long-standing question.  --Connel MacKenzie 13:53, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

RE:Welcome
Thanks, nice to get noticed after 4.5 months ... do you have an account on Wikipedia (right now I feel too lazy to search)? Wiki  bean  dude 7 00:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for patrolling
Thanks for patrolling and keeping Wiktionary safe. I did have a minor question. I finally figured out how to view logs of pages, and I see you deleted permadeath, instadeath and Floydian with no RFV/RFD and didn't even specify any reason for the delete. I wonder if you can tell me what was wrong with these original words, which caused you to delete them so urgently? So that in future I can amend my ways and not cause you offense :) Thanks :) Language Lover 11:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, they aren't part of the English language. Seeing that you've re-entered them with three citations means they each squeak by our inadequate CFI, now.  But they still each are unhelpful entries.  The gaming terms are a particular flavor of vandalism; the fact that no texts contain those "words" is good evidence for refining CFI further.  "Floydian", on the other hand, is a rather different case; again, not a part of the English language, but a distinct piece of slang restricted to a very narrow segment.  For all three terms, no basic tests show them as being likely candidates for being dictionary entries.


 * Your "keeping Wiktionary safe" comment is both insulting and obtuse. Please explain precisely what you mean.  I see you are learning how to game this system, but I don't see how that can be considered helpful for creating a comprehensive dictionary of the English language.  Gaming the system to enter garbage is offensive to everyone that has spent considerable time building en.wiktionary.org in the past few years.  --Connel MacKenzie 14:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the hostile tone there. I'm not sure if you can appreciate my annoyance with these; perhaps you could do me a favor.  Try taking a night course in a local college, on just about any topic, and try using those three words in the opening paragraph of a term paper.  Would you expect to be able to point to en.wiktionary.org with a straight face, when the professor returns your paper covered in red ink?  Would you expect the usenet citations you've supplied to be adequate evidence to that professor, that those terms are now an accepted part of the English language?


 * Of course, en.wiktionary.org covers a much wider scope than just a collegiate dictionary. On the other hand, if you can be sure a term would not appear in one, it is fair to assume it will meet resistance here.  This web site has sustained lots of criticism over the years for being a magnet of useless junk.  A lot of people have spent an enormous amount of time refining Wiktionary, so that it can be established as a viable resource.  Focusing on entering only garbage entries is a common tactic for anyone seeking to directly attack Wiktionary's public image, particularly right before a magazine article is published.  --Connel MacKenzie 14:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Very interesting to hear your side of this story, and don't worry, no offense taken at the hostile tone :) I didn't mean "keeping Wiktionary safe" in an insulting way or anything, I meant it literally, since you've been pretty active fixing vandalism.  Who else has the skill to fix, for example, nasty redirect vandalism?  Our hats are off to you :-)  I agree insta/permadeath wouldn't belong on an English paper, save maybe in an appropriate CS course; I was careful to go above and beyond a  and actually manually typeset (gamer slang), thereby dispelling any risk that someone would think the -death words were widespread.  I've been in academia for a long time and these days I give out almost as much of the red ink as I receive, so I hear you on the college thing.


 * I hope maybe you'll see my side better when I say that I'm interested in these words because of their fascinating agglutinative properties. English agglutination is mostly nondestructive, "fire" + "man" becomes "fireman", not "fiman", and so on.  This makes instadeath, permadeath, etc., very interesting linguistically.  This is a sample of widerscale language change patterns occurring because of the internet, videogames, and so on.  We have an opportunity the paper dictionaries lack, to take a forefront position documenting those changes for the world; at the same time, by carefully using appropriate tags like (gamer slang), we avoid dangers of people mistaking the words for being standard.


 * Forgive me for not checking magazines/books more thoroughly for cites. You understand of course that the types of written media to use gamer slang are less likely to show up on b.g.c., things like strategy guides, subscription magazines, etc.  As always, bgc is only a sample, it's not the whole Library of Congress.  Incidentally, I did put one paper cite on permadeath. Language Lover 20:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your polite response. Incidentally, I haven't noticed any pagemove vandalism lately - at least not in the short time you've used this username.  I probably do not really want to know any of your former identities here, as you do seem to be making a large volume of good contributions.  The past, as they say, is history.  I'm glad you stopped short of making an unverifiable claim of credentials, as that would have automatically raised my suspicion level.  As a final note though, please use <tt>  </tt> or <tt>  </tt> for better categorization, instead of <tt> (gamer slang) </tt>.  That way, derivative programs and not just people, can recognize it as nonstandard.  --Connel MacKenzie 21:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I didn't want to further bother you about this at the time, since I thought we had reached a happy agreement. However, it seems from your response to Keene's vote that you now hold a grudge against me because you think I'm a sockpuppet. Forgive me for giving that impression :) I knew about the pagemove vandalism from looking at your archives.  Someone there (possibly Ullman?) asked you for help fixing pagemove vandalism and your response was very good.  Unfortunately I'm now having difficulty finding it since your archive is really huge.  Anyway, I certainly thank you for reasonably acknowledging that extraordinary accusations require extraordinary proof :)  I don't really care about adminhood, but I'd be really happy if people not accuse me of being a vandal when every single change I've made since coming here has been one which makes Wiktionary better. I know you've gotten your share of crazy people saying you make Wiktionary worse, so I know you can sympathize with me here. I'd really like to forge an alliance with you since you and I both have the best interests of our readers in mind :-)

On a totally different subject, I always see you doing tons of work on transwiki stuff and I'd like to help if I can, but I really have no idea what that all is about or how it works. :) Think you could teach me about it? :) Language Lover 04:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is as big a difference between "holding a grudge" and "having reservations" as there is between being an active contributor, and being a sysop. A few months down the road, I'd expect much different reaction on WT:VOTE.


 * My automated transwiki imports & automated bot edits to those imports, is simply the other half of w:User:CopyToWiktionaryBot. WT:MTW is where I started describing the latest transwiki cleanup activities.  With 150-250 transwikis per month, the whole scheme will need a group of volunteers willing to take a shot at one or two Special:Randompage/Transwiki:'s per day.  Or two or three of us to clean out 500 at a time, once a month.  --Connel MacKenzie 05:08, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Request: Could you please set up Template:comparative of to auto-categorize things into the Category: (Language) comparatives of the specified language (with default language being English)? I would do it but I'm only able to "view source" for that template, thank you!!!!! :)

Deletion
Hi, Could you delete English vacabolry? It has been listed for deletion for a while. Thanks, Tim w. 05:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Got it, cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 05:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

uniqueness
Hi,

I noticed you deleted uniqueness. What was wrong with it? Tim w. 06:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There was no content, other than spam. Please feel free to enter a real definition!  --Connel MacKenzie 06:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've entered it. Thanks, Tim w. 06:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 06:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Statistics
Ummm.....Ancient Greek got left out again. You did this just to spite me, didn't you! I'm going to go cry in a corner. Atelaes 06:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, if you haven't already seen it, you may find Beer parlour interesting. Atelaes 12:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

DAVilla
Hi. Sorry, I screamed at her. She doesn't know enough about s/w eng; and the template language isn't a programming language.

I have lots of things to do (e.g. like not the wikt?) lots of things here; I spent half the day tripping to the hospital with my SO, and she has been admitted. The last thing I need is to be hitting rollback on DAVilla changes before I can fix things.

And then there is context, which has to be re-done by someone, someday. She overloaded the function of the "subst" parameter (from cattag/equate) onto the "lang" parameter, and the result is a mess. (see Special:Wantedpages) The easiest way for someone to fix it is to start over. I'm not doing that this [insert time period]. But at least I can get t working without this cruft?

End of rant ... Robert Ullmann 22:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, just go look at (look at source) ... btw, I added the trans-top conversion to AutoFormat, and it is working fine. Robert Ullmann 00:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Anabelle is female; all the other participants in that conversation are male.


 * I am very sorry to hear about your SO. You two are in my prayers.


 * I have a long standing pet peeve about the complexity of context/cattag. But that is out of scope of this discussion, and hitting below the belt.  Myself, I reserve that tactic, for proven sockpuppets.


 * --Connel MacKenzie 13:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Patrolling
Just from curiosity, how are edits marked patrolled? For example "07:40, 7 March 2007 Cynewulf (Talk | contribs) marked r2167446 of light patrolled." Thanks, Tim Q. Wells 05:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Sysops on en.wiktionary get an extra parameter on all (diff) links on Special:Recentchanges. The "rcid=" parameter, when on any other page, will add a "Mark this revision as patrolled" link, somewhere on that page (it varies.)  Clicking that link marks the entry as patrolled, and returns the sysop to a navigation page where they can get back to Special:Recentchanges.


 * Alternately, the sysops can use WT:PREFS, and turn on the sysop-only stuff there, to auto-click them, as per my "patrolled.js" javascript thingy. This allows the sysops to view the diffs (using Lupin Popups) then patrol the edit, without leaving the Special:Recentchanges page.


 * --Connel MacKenzie 06:07, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, thank you, Tim Q. Wells 06:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Superfluous period
Connel, the "third person singular" template automatically adds a period. Your edits have resulted in a double period, so whatever method you're using isn't picking up on that fact. --EncycloPetey 07:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Ouch! --Connel MacKenzie 07:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, fortunately, I only did third person in the last 50 edits or so. If even that many.  --Connel MacKenzie 07:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

cranefly
In the UK daddy longlegs is the normal everyday word for a cranefly - most people probably don't even know the correct word. SemperBlotto 14:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Ahhh. In the US, that is a type of spider.  --Connel MacKenzie 14:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

shijian
How did this edit happen? Still needs to be cleaned up, but it isn't Japanese ... Robert Ullmann 06:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Um, I removed a single "=" to balance the equal signs of the uneven heading. I have no idea what messed up, where.  That looks like WM/MySQL corruption.  --Connel MacKenzie 06:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That was a subsequent edit, the first one (linked) replaced L2 header "Pinyin Romanization" with "Japanese"? I cleaned up the entry. Robert Ullmann 06:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * WTH? No, that's not what I see when I click the above link.  --Connel MacKenzie 07:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It doesn't show you your "Revision as of 19:54, 5 April 2007" ? Huh? In which you sorted out the shi forms and formatted it a bit better and managed to change the header to Japanese? (new DB dump already I see ;-) Robert Ullmann 07:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC) You were fixing the L2 header on your to do list, I just don't know how it got to be "Japanese" ;-) ;-). Is okay now. Robert Ullmann 07:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * While it is highly likely that I totally screwed up an edit in a language I don't know, three days ago, that is not what the diff link above shows. --Connel MacKenzie 07:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow. Error, upon error, upon error (and they are all my own errors!)  I was reading the diff, seeing the imbalanced "="s, thinking it was the (later) correction of it.  Ai-yai-yi.  OK, two demerits for Connel.  --Connel MacKenzie 07:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

perceived slight
You know that really did come out the wrong way. At any rate, you might be interested in my latest revision, with much better filtering. User:Connel MacKenzie/Gutenberg/2007/4/1-100 lists lots of red-linked words that are archaic or Middle English, if you are still interested in that sort of thing. --Connel MacKenzie 06:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks for commenting. I think I was just in a bad mood when I read it...  Widsith 08:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

WT:LOP
Hey,please tell me where I can find as big numbers conencting with googol, for example, googoldalplex, googolgijplex etc., as in web of wiktionary and just more numbers. Please, write me this informations in email to me, &lt;e-mail removed&gt; Thank you very much!! :)


 * I haven't deleted Appendix:List of protologisms/numbers recently, so you may find that a "useful" resource. --Connel MacKenzie 15:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok :) But could you get more big numbers as googoldalplex on this web? or give me a adress of source where are so big numbers? and from which did you take this big numbers? From some mathematical book or other?


 * My objections to having that page have met significant resistance. I don't look at that page.  It is supposed to list references, somewhere on that page.  --Connel MacKenzie 15:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Undefeatable :)
Hi :) It was interesting to read that undefeatable is illiterate, I never knew that. I know it's not your job but I was hoping if you have a moment you could tell me why it is so, I'd like to learn from you :-)  Interesting, keep up the good work :-)  Thanks for the ton of format fixes you've been doing "every which where" lately (hehe, "every which where", now there's a phrase which will make 6th grade English teachers go into seizures!:) Language Lover 22:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Could you please let me know what dictionary or dictionaries list it as standard English? --Connel MacKenzie 23:11, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * OED2 lists it with references spanning over three centuries, but I don't suppose that counts if you think it's a monstrosity or sixth grade teachers are unaware of it. 87.112.24.177 19:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Microsoft Encarta Dictionary does not have it, but, paradoxically, their thesaurus does: . As does thesaurus.reference.com.  Very strange, that they are putting words in the thesaurus which they aren't putting in the dictionary.  If it weren't for your tagging the word with illiterate, I would have just assumed it was left out of most dictionaries because, due to the high regularity of the "un-" words, it's only worthwhile to include the most common, memorable, or subtle ones. Language Lover 01:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * They left it out, because it is proscribed! It is prohibited unconditionally by every 6th grade grammar teacher.  --Connel MacKenzie 04:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, quite a lot of words are not listed in paper dictionaries. For example a lot of "-ward" words, "-like" words, and so on.  Most people on here seem to agree that paper dictionary inclusion is not very relevant.  I thought maybe there was a particular reason you singled out undefeatable and I sincerely was interested why, please don't read it as an attack against you or anything... :-) Language Lover 23:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You seem to be thinking of Wikipedia, not Wiktionary. Anyhow, as I was going through the various cleanup lists, lots of un- words looked fine - that one is simply a monstrosity, so I applied the best tag I could think of.  --Connel MacKenzie 00:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Please know I'm really trying to see your viewpoint. Are you saying it is phonologically a monstrosity?  I know the rules about "un" vs. "in" vs. "im" vs. etc., are subtle, so that was my initial thought, but undefeatable has huge usage whereas all the others (like "indefeatable") have zilch.  Are you saying it is morphologically a monstrosity?  Or is it possibly ambiguous (since an unskilled English user might think, "capable of being undefeated")?  I know it seems monstrous to you, and I respect that, I just really wish I could understand why. Forgive me. Language Lover 01:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know why, but instinctively, it always must be invincible. Perhaps it was drilled into my head at a very young age that when a "better" word always exists, the "normal" replacement form is always wrong (as reiterated by http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/invincible et al.)  I suppose undefeatable is equally as illiterate as vincible, but for a completely different reason.  The word invincible is a word in the English language; the back formation vincible is not (although it may have been valid several hundred years ago.)  On the other hand, using a prefix (un-) and a suffix (-able) to contrive a word form, that is already served correctly by a real word, is an error.  Perhaps that is why it is universally considered to be "baby-talk".  (Yes, like all other similar errors, there obviously are adequate citations available, for it to meet our pathetic WT:CFI.)  --Connel MacKenzie 04:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Being a teacher myself, I would suggest that you leave yourself open to re-evaluation of what you were taught as a child. I could tell you something now and you would take it with a grain of salt. But I could say something to a little Connel in one of my classes and he would treat it like the Gospel truth. Personally I am still discovering small truths that are counter to what my teachers had indicated. DAVilla 18:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm really glad you were able to articulate the reason above, and now I see much better your standpoint. That makes good sense :) I hadn't even thought of it that way.  After reading your response, I thought for awhile about how to handle such things.  I hope you will be happy with what I have done to undefeatable.  I hope you will find the new  template very handy :-)  Together, let's make wiktionary the greatest dictionary in the universe!!! :D Language Lover 17:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Well, before you go off in that direction, let's see if we can work towards the same goal here.  I'm obviously much more interested in making this resource usable programatically.


 * Your approach certainly has some appeal, as it is obviously less offensive to people using the term incorrectly.


 * Perhaps I should consider this some more, and give a more detailed response. --Connel MacKenzie 17:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * (after the rollback of rollback, and edit conflict flurry) This conversation needs to move to WT:BP. You and I shouldn't be having this as a "private" conversation.


 * I don't like the implementation of it; it needs a "#" line-specific format. But it certainly is a better approach the the overall problem.  It needs rewording and perhaps a less formatting-intense method.  But the concept is spot-on.  --Connel MacKenzie 17:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Who says your conversation is private? :-)

Connel, you have to be slower in assuming that your initial gut reaction to word is universal opinion. To answer your first question to LL: Webster's Third, Random House Unabridged, and OED Online (i.e., the first three I checked) all list "undefeatable" without a whisper of criticism. The 647 b.c.g hits and 405 scholar.google hits suggest there are at least several hundred writers, copy editors, and anonymous reviewers in the universe who don't universally consider it to be baby-talk.

Looking over the s.g.c hits in the fields I'm familiar with, I can't see a single one where replacing undefeatable with invincible would be an improvement -- in most cases it would be... the opposite of an improvement [senior's moment there], and in a couple cases maybe even factually wrong.

There are thousands of pairs of near-synonyms in English where one is more regular and less Latinate and the other is less regular and more Latinate. The more Latinate versions have almost invariably accumulated extra senses and connotations over the centuries. When you want those extra senses and connotations, the more Latinate version is the one to use; when you don't want them, the less Latinate version is the appropriate one to use. Literacy has nothing to do with it. -- Keffy 19:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Gee, that's why I checked other "real" dictionaries first and noticed none of them even listed it. Because it isn't a "real" word.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * So you do not believe that OED2 is a 'real' dictionary. From your smug and self satisfied comment it is obvious that you are an arrogant fool who is a liability to this project. 87.112.24.177 19:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Keffy, when you cite three different "unabridged" dictionaries, really, what sort of support for your position are you asserting? I cannot believe your audacity. Having given an inch, Wiktionary now has a preposterous WT:CFI, and WT:RFV (a system being sorely abused.) But even one, such as I, with general "inclusionist" tendancies can recognise garbage.

But the audacity! You realize you are complaining about a word being tagged correctly? We're not discussing some kind of deletion here! Yet I get kilobytes of grief, and for what? Not deleting it on sight???

--Connel MacKenzie 07:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * About -able, for information: my Pocket Oxford Dictionary states that this suffix is attachable with absolute freedom to any transitive verb (even when resulting adjectives are not in actual use, or when there exists a more common form). There is no such statement for un-. Lmaltier 08:09, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree everything I find from "Oxford" references is strange. Looking at ''Oxford Reference Online" these non-results come up:

Displaying 6 of 6 results Search level: All search terms in full text [info] Subjects searched: All 1. Irish mythology The first point to be made about the branch of Celtic mythology associated with Ireland is that although it comes down to us in the form of manuscripts written by Christian monks, linguistic evidence suggests that the subject matter of those ... (From The Oxford Companion to World Mythology in Mythology & Folklore) 2. median voter theorem Also Black's Theorem. For a set of choices on which a group will vote, the theorem demonstrates that the choice preferred by a majority of voters over all other choices will be the choice preferred by the median voter. As the name implies, there is a ... (From Dictionary of the Social Sciences in Politics & Social Sciences) 3. impregnable adjective an impregnable castle invulnerable, impenetrable , unassailable , inviolable , secure, strong , well fortified , well defended ; invincible , unconquerable , unbeatable, indestructible. (From The Oxford Paperback Thesaurus in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses) 4. invulnerable adjective invulnerable fortresses impenetrable, impregnable , unassailable , unattackable , inviolable, invincible , undefeatable , secure , safe , safe and sound. (From The Oxford American Thesaurus of Current English in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses) 5. invincible adjective an invincible opponent unconquerable, undefeatable , unbeatable , unassailable , invulnerable, indestructible , impregnable , indomitable , unyielding , unflinching, dauntless. (From The Oxford American Thesaurus of Current English in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses) 6. indomitable adjective invincible, unconquerable , undefeatable , unbeatable , unassailable , impregnable, unyielding, unsubmissive , stalwart , stouthearted , lionhearted , staunch, resolute , firm , steadfast , determined , intransigent , inflexible , adamant, ... (From The Oxford American Thesaurus of Current English in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses)


 * So, indeed, perhaps across the Atlantic, it may be valid. Over here, it is obscure nonsense. , , , , etc.  --Connel MacKenzie 13:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The last external link, Merriam-Webster, says that it has one entry. (It asks for my credit card, so I can't confirm what that entry says.) DAVilla 17:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Since we are being so pendantic here: not quite. It says it found it in another dictionary, the m-w 'unabridged dictionary, but it isn't in the normal on-line dictionary.  --Connel MacKenzie 21:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Since we're being pedantic, note that it is still an on-line dictionary, even if it isn't the "normal" one, being more a sort of unrestricted membership-required sort of thing. And what do you have against that? Wouldn't you consider Wiktionary to be "unabridged"? DAVilla 21:43, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't take this comment to mean I agree with Connel, but note that he's not suggesting that we exclude undefeatable, only that we indicate that it's wrong. That would make us an unabridged dictionary with helpful-sounding commentary. (I say "helpful-sounding" commentary because to be genuinely helpful, commentary must be accurate; but you get the idea.) —RuakhTALK 22:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Quoting dictionaries as arbiters of truth isn't my style. You're the one who asked for references. My apologies if I was mistaken in assuming the question was sincere.

The correctness of the "illiterate" tag is precisely what I'm questioning. You obviously had a negative initial gut reaction to the word. LanguageLover and I obviously didn't. You're faced with two other Wiktionary editors who hear nothing wrong with it, the staffs of three major dictionaries who heard nothing wrong with it, and a thousand writing professionals who heard nothing wrong with it. All I'm asking is that you consider the possibility that in this particular case it's your ear that needs retuning, not everyone else's.

More generally, this discussion has actually reinforced my faith in the CFI (even though they're not relevant to this tagging). You and I could quote our gut reactions at each other all week, with increasing proprtions of bold print, end up calling each other every name in the book, and still get nowhere. Whatever your problems with the CFI, at least it allows objective facts to resolve such otherwise intractable disagreements of subjective opinion. If you ever hope to change my mind about the CFI, whatever you propose to replace it had better have that simple virtue. -- Keffy 21:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You aren't here to help, are you? You make the very insulting, bold statement, that I should consider things, which in fact, I had already checked!  Real dictionaries don't carry the word.  And it very obviously is wrong.  You then use circular logic to attack me from every conceivable angle, for doing precisely what you have been demanding all along?


 * Go check your head. --Connel MacKenzie 22:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

"You aren't here to help, are you?"
What the ?*!@?

Clearly I have nothing to say about undefeatable that you won't misinterpret as a personal attack. So I won't bother, and I've taken this out of that section. And since you clearly have personal criticisms misattributed to me floating around your head, I might as well make clear what personal criticisms I actually now have based on this exchange.

Everybody has reactions to certain words that aren't shared by other English speakers. That's not a criticism; it's the human condition. I have words like that. You have words like that. You used to admit it.

When I first got to know you last winter, you would occasionally make an iffy call on some word or other -- not surprising, since you were dealing with such a huge number of words that even a minuscule error rate would add up. When somebody challenged you on one of those iffy calls, often you'd say, "Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way" and change it. Sometimes you'd give good reasons for your initial judgment and convince the challenger (good reasons, not things like "It isn't in a deliberately incomplete dictionary, so it can't be English"). Sometimes it would turn out to be a genuine dialect difference and a decent region tag or usage note would be crafted.

For some reason, this winter you've been acting more and more as if you believed you're infallible. Now if someone challenges one of your calls, you instantly dig in your heels, wave off all evidence as unreal, simply repeat over and over again how "obvious" your judgment is, and if the person fails to see the obviousness, you accuse them of malicious motives. Since I'd learned to expect more from you, every time I saw this happen I managed to convince myself I was hallucinating or missing part of the conversation. I was wrong. If you're insulted by the fact that your behaviour gives this impression to other people, so be it.

So now it's obviously my turn to ride on Connel's non-stop train to evil. I've seen that train zip by before with other passengers and I know where it's headed. First I was just illogical, now I have bad faith, before long I'll be cast as a lying, cheating vandal who devotes my life to persecuting you and stuffing Wiktionary with entries I know are crap. Not interested in that destination. So if you don't mind, I'll jump off the train right now while I can still manage to respect you.

If you have a civil explanation for that last outburst that I'd actually be interested in reading, you can leave it on my talk page, or you have my e-mail address. Meanwhile, you'll have one less "attacker" to worry about. I won't be coming around your neighbourhood for my next brush with the Twilight Zone.

-- Keffy 17:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well then, since you aren't reading this, I'll practice my "civil explanation" here.


 * You said numerous times things that seem quite preposterous: "consider that you are wrong...before tagging." What the @#$%?  How many @#$%ing times do I have to say it?  I did consider that possibility, before tagging - and I did check other available references, before tagging.


 * You said "thousands of professionals see nothing wrong with it" but that statement is flatly untrue. Those same thousands of professionals quite consciously decided, again and again, that such material belongs only in "unabridged" (AKA garbage AKA useless) versions.
 * You are now saying that OED2 is 'garbage' and useless'. You really do have an unbelievably high opinion of yourself, don't you? 87.112.24.177 19:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Only a conceited Brit could make such a statement. The OED is irrelevant and useless for American English.  But more to the point, it is useless for verification purposes, here on Wiktionary.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * While it obviously is true I've dug my heels in on this one, and the possibility exists that anyone reading this page could interpret it as purely a personal response (i.e. digging my heals in because of a perceived attack) that wasn't actually my problem with undefeatable. It is the word itself.  Yes, some amount of investigation into it, seems to indicate regional variants.  Yes, some amount of investigation shows considerable {obsolete} references.  But there is one thing I wish to make perfectly clear: I've "dug my heels" in on this one, as the result of the additional investigation I did.


 * I still have no explanation for the (British) grammatically-correct example from LL. Your "Latinate" hypothesis comes close to explaining why in that rare case, the weird form works for en-UK.
 * However, the hypothesis that it is a valid word in en-UK does explain why it suddenly had support popping out of the woodwork.


 * Seeing how many wish to throw in their two cents on WT:BP, I'm not sure where to begin. Is Ptcamn crazy?  His definition of useless obviously is.  Unless, of course, this were an en-UK dictionary.  Last time I checked, though, it purported to be of much wider scope.  Misleading readers into thinking they can use an invalid "Britishism" in en-US, and still be understood, is useless.
 * I'm sure that if someone were to wonder around the wiktionary noting US usages as 'illiterate' rather than regional you'd be doing overtime on the revert button. You really do seem to have a problem with this being a 'whole world' English dictionary. 87.112.24.177 19:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That is a demonstrably false statement. You'll note with delight that the broad majority of the top-10 en.wiktionary contributors are British, and often simply delete GenAm terms, rather than devoting efforts to properly describe them, one way or another.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Now, opening several different text editors today, most indicate "undefeatable" is a misspelling. The one that doesn't seems to be because I turned on "allow UK spellings" at some point.


 * DAVilla, on the other hand, seems insistent on citing very rare cases, where prominent authors had been granted considerable license from their editors. I can't see those rare instances as being at all indicative of normal en-US, though.  He of course, implies that they are (inherently.)


 * * Now, (hopefully not too late,) I have realized the insipid nature of the original "question." Your post (immediately after my initial movement towards building a workable compromise) solidified my doubts about the original "question."  That is, a year ago, this "nonsense" would have been deleted without a blink.


 * As a result of a recent conversation with a dictionary professional, I had not followed my gut-reaction to simply delete it, but instead applied the most reasonable tag I could think of, to it. For this, I've been run through the wringer, insulted, slandered and harassed.


 * Yes, now I'm pissed.


 * All this seems to indicate, is that there is no hope of en.wiktionary.org ever becoming a usable resource.

&lt;end draft 0.3&gt;


 * Civil responses aside, I wonder why people want me to stick around? Do you think I started the vote for a replacement just for grins?  There is no "50 vote minimum, so anyone can vote.  --Connel MacKenzie 07:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You never mentioned "replacement". Say it again and I might withdraw my vote ;-) The question may have been rhetorical, but you should know that I want you to stick around because:
 * You do a hellova lot of useful work here, including vandal-spotting (though I understand if you want to cut down)
 * You know a lot of the site's history, and somehow remember and find old discussions to save us reinventing the wheel too often
 * You have some excellent ideas on future development
 * but
 * I'm still waiting for your next essay on how to make a small(er) NS:0 + specialist NSs work, so as to allow Wikt to be useful, by both your definition and mine, while still being unabridged, containing jargon, region-specific words, place names, surnames, and even those typos/scanos/spellos/illiteros which are frequent enough that they are likely to be looked up. If we can achieve that, in usable format and without propagating the "mistakes" via search engines, then we will have done something which no print dictionary could ever do, and which no other online resource is AFAIK attempting.  If we cannot, then agreeing which bits to exclude will continue to be a time-consuming challenge.
 * None of this will be worthwhile if it wrecks your life or your family.
 * Personally, I'd rather that, in what time you can reasonably give us, you concentrated on the bits that only you can do well, and passed on the other bits that seem to get you (and then others) upset, while taking up a lot of time. --Eng in ear 18:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think, if the community is developing something that is completely unreasonable to Connel, we should expect him to want to go on fighting vandalism and hush up on his views at the same time. While I disagree on specific points that have been raised in RFV and RFD for instance, the overall aim as recently stated in the BP is definitely something that needs discussion. A very liberal CFI is not broken, in my opinion, but the labels we use certainly are if there are no objective criteria for them, and if a visitor cannot even use this dictionary as the most rudimentary instrument to check spelling. DAVilla 08:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Latest IRC problem
Someone has made changes to the IRC interface. I can no longer access the IRC because my browser can't find the server. --EncycloPetey 03:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow. http://chat.wikizine.org looks nothing like it did a day or two ago.  I'll send you an e-mail about irssi access off my web server.  --Connel MacKenzie 06:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, http://chat.wikizine.org/ is back, but I'll think twice before turning that javascript back on. --Connel MacKenzie 06:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Templates in Transwiki entries
Would it be possible to (automatically) strip Wikipedia templates from Transwiki articles as they arrive? I check Category:Stub every day and it is filling up with such items. p.s. I forget - are we allowed to delete items (such as Transwiki:Our kid) when we already have a reasonable entry (our kid)? SemperBlotto 07:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you delte directly? Absolutely.  I think it is more productive to replace it with a redirect to our kid, generally.


 * When the imports were much higher volume (initial few weeks) I didn't have a practical way of reviewing the daily transwikis - sometimes the regex to remove category stub would errantly remove the entire entry. I'll turn that feature back on - at least that can more likely be caught now.


 * --Connel MacKenzie 13:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I prefer simple deletion for two reasons: redirects are most helpful in case someone is following the links from its original home and deletion wold break the trail, but if it is not used, that isn't true so it is unnecessary; and, having redlinks in transwiki logs facilitates faster checking when there is no need to double check blue links that turn out to be redirects which is a waste of time. IF you've already checked it, and find it to be a duplicate with no value, deletion ensures no one does that again. No one is searchin for anything in the redirect namespace, so I don't see the positive utility.
 * Also, could you finish that list you started on my talk page (matching duplicates between the transwiki and main namespace) with uncapitalized entries this time? That should be the bulk of them. I'll get to it sometime. Dmcdevit·t 17:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Redirects (and other very short entries) appear brown not blue or red. Or is that not a default Special:Preferences?  --Connel MacKenzie 05:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * In the [Misc.] tab, set "Threshold for stub display:" to 50, and they are brown. --Connel MacKenzie 05:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't realize that. It still feels like clutter, though I guess that's not an important concept here, if it's not in teh main namespace. Dmcdevit·t 05:58, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the more important thing is to try to prevent it getting recreated and re-transwikied. --Connel MacKenzie 06:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with that. Hm, I'm trying to get the redirects to show brown, but it isn't working. I cleared my browser cache. Dmcdevit·t 06:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Argh! That applies to Special:Index only, still!  Brion, fixit!  --Connel MacKenzie 06:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I moved it to a subpage. It looks like there's a bit of simple mistake, it'll be obvious when you look at all the red links: User:Dmcdevit/Transwiki_duplicates. Dmcdevit·t 06:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Right - fixed...after the edit conflict of the move. :-)     --Connel MacKenzie 06:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, I should stop bugging you tonight. Thanks again. :-) Dmcdevit·t 06:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * np. GN8.  --Connel MacKenzie 06:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Back to the original question: no. I can't safely remove the (mostly subst:'ed) Wikipedia templates.  If you see a very clear pattern, I can try again.  But I haven't seen any consistent pattern for them.  --Connel MacKenzie 05:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Stripping Wikipedia templates
It looks like at some point you ran a script to strip transwki: articles of all Wikipedia templates (or that's what it looks like, the edit summary seems inaccurate, or incomplete). One problem with this is that on Wikipedia, many non-Latin script and IPA, which is relevant to Wiktionary, is contained in templates. For instance, here and here you inadvertently removed the Hebrew script along with the Wikipedia stuff. Is there an automated way to try and go back and catch the script that might have been removed? Dmcdevit·t 05:58, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * As I recall, you caught that error the same day I made it. I thought they were all rolled back already.  --Connel MacKenzie 06:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

List of "trusted" users
Hi there, could you add Makaokalani to the automatically-patrolled list. All his edits (and there are quite a few) seem reasonable. SemperBlotto 13:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * No, I can't - I've gotta run, but you can edit User:Connel MacKenzie/patrolled.js... --Connel MacKenzie 13:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 14:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Greek
Sorry my proper nouns were so messy. I was planning on going back and cleaning them up (now that I know the proper header)...........sometime. Thanks for beating me to it. :-) Atelaes 08:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * &lt;shrug&gt; You can pick a section of /todo2 and edit a quick 100, to make up for it! :-)  Still, would you have learned what the correct format was, if you never added them?  That is, thank you.  I'm glad you've fixed your template since then, way back when.  --Connel MacKenzie 08:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Patrolling
Sure thing. May I ask why? Atelaes 07:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Just on the off-chance that someone will notice the vote is going on, and vote, so that I can off-load CU stuff to someone who knows more about it! --Connel MacKenzie 07:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah. I'll bet we can round up a few stragglers for that if need be. :-)  Atelaes 07:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd like to note with perverse happiness at this point, that the "minimum 50 edits" thing was soundly rejected. Votes/2006-09/Minimum 50 edits.  --Connel MacKenzie 07:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Soundly rejected? Looks to me like there was no solid decision.  Atelaes 07:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Which means a revert to the existing practice of not having any minimum at all. (40% in favor, soundly defeats a motion that requires a clear majority.  The ones that did support, did so with reservations, anyhow.)  --Connel MacKenzie 07:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh? What is with you? Since when do we subst inflection line templates? Eh? Robert Ullmann 11:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. No, that is not right.  I had marked an errant "preload" template.  I must've subst'ed and RFC'd the wrong one there.  WTH?  --Connel MacKenzie 14:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

attestation criterion
No, after #3, very, very, very clearly is the word "or". --Connel MacKenzie 02:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Given that I had never noticed it before, I'd say that it's not so clear. Is the list intended to be "any of the four", or "the first two plus either of the latter two"?  If it's "any of these four", then the introductory text should read:
 * "Attested" means verified through at least one of the following:
 * In any case, the phrase I deleted does not meet any of these criteria as far as I can see. --EncycloPetey 02:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, for this particular case, as I said, I don't particularly care; it is your name in the deletion log, so they'll be bugging you, not me. I wasn't happy about the "and" being changed to "or" but the community was quite vocal in opposition to me.  Of those first three, please; yes, obviously each of those certainly apply.  --Connel MacKenzie 02:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

CheatBot - French plurals
Could your CheatBot possibly add plurals of non-English words? I'm sure you have enough know-how to add a little code to make entries from eg. Template:it-noun or Template:fr-noun. --80.47.159.220 13:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * No. French, maybe...no, not even that.  I just don't have the requisite knowledge to verify them.  I will consider creating a "/todo" page with them, but that may take a while, as offline concerns seem to be taking over all my remaining "free time."  Using Special:Whatlinkshere may be enough to get you started, though.  --Connel MacKenzie 14:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Alternative forms
You are changing "Forms and variants" to "Alternative forms" ? Shouldn't it be "Alternative spellings" ? Robert Ullmann 15:04, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, just for interest, there are a reasonable number of uses of "Alternative forms", but the random sampling I've looked at should all be "Alternative spellings":

as of 6 April 2007

Robert Ullmann 15:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Good catch. Muke complained no end when I automatically changed those to "Alternative spellings" and garnered quite a bit of support from others, for "Alternative forms."  So when I semi-automatically correct those, they all go to "Alternative forms" even if not perfectly appropriate.  (Rather than listen to more bickering from Muke et al.)  --Connel MacKenzie 15:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I see. I'm changing "Alternate spellings" to "Alternative spellings", and "Forms and variants" to "Alternative forms". Then there is "Variants and pet forms". (My favorite header is still "Related fishnames" at blackchin ;-) Robert Ullmann 12:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

range blocks
I just blocked User:Crowddrawn for being fairly certainly WF; but I can't be totally sure. SB range-blocked Tiscali a few hours ago, but it seemed to have no effect at all; WF continued using an IP address in the range (!). I think it was done correctly? Robert Ullmann 15:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * They are fixing the message, to tell sysops when rangeblocks are ignored because they are above the maximum number of days. No word yet, on when/if that can be increased for en.wikt.  For now, just use one day blocks; when they fix it we can do a sweep of the ranges affected.  --Connel MacKenzie 15:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: Wiktionary talk:Main Page#Croatian (Hrvatski) Wiktionary
Well, Www.wiktionary.org portal is the page that I update, but it's protected. Since I'm the one who usually ends up updating the portal and I tend to be super-busy this time of year, the easiest way to get my attention is posting a blurb at Wikimedia News that a particular wiki has reached a particular milestone. If that milestone happened a long time ago and the admins at Meta aren't likely to notice it, then posting a message to my talk page should work.

I understand the frustration of the portal pages not getting updated often: I got admin status at Meta by nagging the admins to update Www.wikipedia.org template so often. So I hope that, if we can get the word out about the portal updating "process", we can get the portal updated when it needs to be.

– Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 11:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Weekly Podcast - interview?
Hi there!

I'm Witty lama at the english wikipedia, and I'm one of the pannellists on the Wikipedia Weekly Podcast and we're interested in interviewing you for an upcoming edition.

Along with news and recent events that affect the foundation/wikipedia/wikis in general, we also try and feature some of the people and projects that go on, often unnoticed, within wikipedia et. al. In previous interviews we have talked to prominent users in Indian/Bangladesh, the featured picture process and the scandianvian collaboration Scan-wiki.

I'd like to talk to you about some of the specific things you're involved in, what motivates you in the wiki-world, in and about wikitionary in general (to educate the mainly wikipedian audience about wiktionary). The interview itself would probably last 10 minutes.

If you're interested, please leave me a message at my talk page in wikipedia and we can arrange a time that is good for you. We record using Skype, so you would need that programme, a microphone and a broadband connection.

You can listen to previous episodes at our off-site page wikipediaweekly.com

Hope to hear from you soon! Witty lama12:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but too many external things have cropped up recently. --Connel MacKenzie 16:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Slapping people
I was trying to expand both of those entries ... I find their use in everyday speech to be alarming. I would disagree that they are antonyms, as they are both physical blws that intended for women. Could you help me fix the pronounciation?

Oh, and I appreciate you not blocking me - especially since I hadn't been warned. --Evrik 15:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * en.wiktionary does not have the thousand+ sysops that make Wikipedia's warning system viable. --Connel MacKenzie 15:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * One more thing. The edits I made to pimp slap were proper. Why did you revert them? --Evrik 15:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I seriously disagee. A "bitch slap" is (never?) very rarely used to describe a blow to a woman.  It is idiomatic when pointdexter bitch slaps a bully.  Perhaps.  But the use you seem to be trying to describe cannot be used outside of an astronomically small segment; even then, that definition would be "sum of parts."  Again, that is the opposite of the common colloquial use of the phrase.  --Connel MacKenzie 15:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You are wrong there. Look at this definition. The origin of the word connotes a violent act toward a woman, as does a pimp slap. --Evrik 16:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Do not remove discussion links! A week, to a month, to several months later, the discussion is moved to the talk page; in the meantime, do not remove the tags that link the entry to the central discussion.
 * The link was six months old, and there was no discussion on the discussion page. I was in the process of expanding the definition and didn't think it was going to matter. It was rather stale. I apologize if I offended, you reverted me beofre I got a chance to update the discussion page.--Evrik 16:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Not so much "offended", but being pedantic about procedure. Lots of links exist that are unresolved; simply removing the link does nothing to remedy the inconsistency.  In general, if there is any discussion, you are better off leaving the link intact.  When the centralized discussion is archived and copied to the respective talk page, the tag can be removed (if there is consensus that it has been dealt with!)  --Connel MacKenzie 16:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The pronunciation section given is in no way different from the component words. If you are going to provide pronunciation, give the pronunciation for the composite phrase.  Don't split it up by word; the individual words already (should) have their pronunciation sections.
 * --Connel MacKenzie 16:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Would you please help me with that? I am not sure how to format it. --Evrik 16:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the problem is that the normal way to format it, is to remove it, leaving the pronunciation sections only at the component words. OTOH, you have an interesting point, that there is no reason not to have it, so sure, I'll try to rejoin those components in that section and open a tea room discussion on it.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Chinese stroke order
Please see immediately this page Yug 18:48, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've replied there. --Connel MacKenzie 21:12, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

CopyToWiktionaryBot: subst: summaries
don't work:. Jeandré
 * Whoops. I should correct that summary message.  (On Wiktionary, that same template takes those parameters, but not on Wikipedia.)  Thank you!  --Connel MacKenzie 16:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikifying text
Do you have a fancy method of wikifying arbitrary pieces of text? What I do is copy/paste into a word processor, change all/most punctuation to spaces, change all double spaces to single ones, then change all spaces to "]] [[" and tidy up. There has got to be a way of automating that (without using software that I haven't got, and preferable in a standard Windoze environment). SemperBlotto 12:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I started a bookmarklet only recently, but it isn't perfect yet.

<tt> javascript:Wi=document.getSelection; Wi=prompt(Wi) ; if (Wi) { var l=Wi.split(%22 %22); var Wo=%22%22; for (var i=0; (i<l.length) ; i++) { Wo+=%22%22+l[i]+%22 %22;} void(pr=prompt(%22%22, Wo));} </tt>


 * Because it works well enough for me, I haven't put it into an edit toolbar button yet. --Connel MacKenzie 16:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I have gone through the process (it didn't seem very well explained to me - the person who wrote it probably thought it was all obvious) and have a bookmark (favorites) in the "Links" section of the toolbar containing your Javascript. I edited the sandbox (for safety), typed in some words, then clicked on Links => the bookmarklet - and nothing happened. Any ideas? SemperBlotto 16:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC) p.s. See the sandbox (if you are quick)


 * I did one version for Firefox, that probably shouldn't work in IE. Perhaps the Wikipedia bookmarklets page has it (somewhere) already.  In fact, w:WP:TOOLS probably has a webpage where you can cut-n-paste stuff, now that I think of it.  (TIMTOWTDI)  --Connel MacKenzie 16:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you select the text? Robert Ullmann 16:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Even worse: my version 1.0 wants you to select rendered text, not edit-box text. --Connel MacKenzie 16:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd appreciate someone rewriting (from scratch?) my WT:BOOK and Vild's Help:Tips and tricks/Bookmarklets. Both those pages assume the reader knows what we're talking about from the get-go.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You will be overjoyed to learn that I have moved sideways and created an MS-Word macro to do the job (my first one). Only took me three attempts! SemperBlotto 17:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Overjoyed? Actually, yes!  --Connel MacKenzie 17:17, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Also figured out how to edit it (to remove more punctuation). Now to wikify some big Italian documents to get a feel for what proportion of the language we have. It will probably be pretty low because of all the verb formats etc. Thanks for cleaning the sandbox.SemperBlotto 17:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, it still works for me - see your sandbit thing, to see what I did. (Replaced all \[ with blank, all \] with blank, two spaces --> one space (recursive), then wikified all terms left.)  --Connel MacKenzie 03:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I shall improve my macro over time. (I might even have to read a book) SemperBlotto 07:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

β/test
I'd be happy to. Where do you think it would be most appropriate to move it to? Atelaes 17:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Nevermind, I found a place for it. Atelaes 17:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)