User talk:DCDuring/2011 QI

Garfield
Can you please explain this reversion? --Daniel. 03:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You were adding back a thinly disguised sense that had failed, without troubling to add attestation or to ask for whatever help you might need in doing so. DCDuring TALK 03:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My addition was not disguised, thinly or otherwise; I used an edit summary that was informative enough. Your reversion broke the categorization (including Category:Individuals, per the mention of James Garfield), but it's no big deal. I'm going to readd the categories and restore the more detailed sense of the fictional cat. I'm not going to restore the RFV-failed sense per your complaint, until gathering some quotes or deciding to formally mention that it is clearly widespread use. --Daniel. 19:55, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Mickey Mantle
Beautiful page. If an anon had created it, even so beautifully, I'd have speedily deleted it as out-of-scope. Since it was you, well, you can delete it yourself. Oughtn't you? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 20:57, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It is no more out of scope than, say, A Christmas Carol or 1 Kings. We have a long tradition of ignoring "scope" for essentially whimsical or tendentious reasons. I have cited it by the method advocated by DAVilla. I would be perfectly happy if ALL proper name entries and senses were deleted unless they had a clear meaning distinct from the proper-named referent. Feel free to RfD it. I wouldn't take it in the least personally. If someone else had done it, I probably would have RfDed it. DCDuring TALK 22:27, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 18:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Homer Simpsonian
I have a doubt concerning your opinions related to the subject of controversial proper nouns. I don't remember whether or not you answered it, so let me ask: Do you oppose the existence of the current entry Homer Simpsonian? It has some characteristics of some of those proper nouns, such as a short description of a fictional character, including his notable characteristics. On the other hand, I believe a mere "Of or pertaining to Homer Simpson." would not be informative enough. --Daniel. 03:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have never objected to attestable true adjectives derived from proper names (ie, of singular entities). It is proper names referring to singular entities, real or fictional, that give us philosophically and practically intractable problems of definition and attestation. Even if someone could cut the Gordian knot in some way, as by proposing acceptable restraint on such definitions, no one here has done so, seems to be attempting to do so, or shows any signs of understanding the depth of the problem. Furthermore, a wiki doesn't seem to readily respect restraints that are the slightest bit subtle (as would necessarily be), no matter how well founded the restraint. The demise of the attributive-use standard is the case in point.
 * The morphology of terms derived from proper names by affixation to me is sufficient evidence IMHO to show that they are true adjectives. That a person could be "a Homer Simpsonian" does not necessarily make it worthwhile to have a noun PoS section, as most adjectives can be used as substantives with no essential semantic change.
 * Entries for eponymous words that are not themselves proper names require an etymological reference to the proper noun, which I believe is best achieve by linking to WP. I would even argue that the existence of an adjective is prima facie evidence of "notability", which counts for inclusion in WP. DCDuring TALK 10:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As to the definition, if contributors took the trouble to start with citations, they would not overreach with excessively attribute-laden definitions. It seems a characteristic of many newbie and casual-contributor definitions that they emerge full-blown from their fevered imaginations or their idiolects instead of reflecting the attestable shared understanding of the population at large, any subgrouping, or any identifiable context. DCDuring TALK 10:31, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * When one starts with a bare unattested definition, the definition is supported only by one data point, one's own idiolect. The quality of one's own idiolect in turn depends on the richness of one's interaction with speakers and authors of the language of the term in question. If one starts with definitions from non-lexicographers, it's a bit better. If one starts with a monolingual lexicographer's definition, the presumption is that they have taken the trouble to examine usage. Old lexicographer's definitions (Century, Webster 1913) have obvious problems of missing current usage. Terms or senses not defined in other dictionaries require a lot more support than one idiolect, no matter what the quality of that idiolect. Such support can only reliably come from the evidence of actual usage. DCDuring TALK 10:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

disbelieve
You've added that this is from 🇨🇬 descomforter. I suspect this is a copy and paste error. Isn't the believe bit from Old English, so it was actually formed in Middle English part Romance, part Germanic? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I certainly looks like my error. When it's that obvious, just change it. My mistakes of all kinds are numerous. DCDuring TALK 18:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

fit and proper
Is fit and proper a doublet too? I gives off a certain idiomatic shine, at least off the candle in my head. --Downunder 21:21, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like one, but I'm not 100% sure about idiomaticity.
 * I was thinking of adding an appendix for a all of the ones I find mentioned anywhere. I don't know if all of them are idioms and entryworthy, but an appendix may help clarify what the arguments for and against might be. We had a discussion of these once and it seems there are different types: synonyms ("dribs and drabs"), antonyms ("day and night"), complements/coordinates ("an arm and a leg"), sequences ("dead and buried"). Most are nouns linked by "and", but there are other parts of speech and some linked by "or". And there are triplets ("hook line and sinker"). There are some similar expressions of the form [all NP1 and no NP2] ("all hat and no cattle"). DCDuring TALK 23:49, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Feck(!)
I'm familiar with its usage within Ireland, but it's hard to find references for unfortunately. Have added a link to an Irish Times columnist. Will try to find more! Anotherdave 19:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * An Irish-American friend of mine is familiar with this, from his mother. So I am quite ready to believe that it is not as rude as "fuck". An etymology showing that the interjection use is not from fuck would make that clear.
 * Sometimes a search on Google books "subject:fiction" or in Google news "location:Ireland" can help narrow the search for Irish English. DCDuring TALK 20:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

the company
Shouldn't this be the Company? And is the definition wrong - doesn't it only refer to the CIA? SemperBlotto 16:27, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm certainly not familiar with it referring to any other intelligence service. I think it is normally capitalized in that sense. Maybe the neatest approach would be to add a proper entry at Company and RfV this entry in case someone could actually document such usage. DCDuring TALK 16:48, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

wifebeater
(No, not an accusation) I'd have left the citations for wife beater. Just because something appears on a cleanup list doesn't automatically make it wrong. In the same ways that could appear in a citation on. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:43, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm just strict on the placement of citations in Modern English. No matter how I discovered it I would move such citations to the entry with the exact spelling. DCDuring TALK 23:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's why I said "I [would] have " it's really a matter of personal preference. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:54, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown
Hi DCDuring,

Are you sure this is a good idea? Citations probably aren't copyrightable, and therefore not really subject to CC-BY-SA, but still, it seems bad to codify a precedent of moving content from one page to another and then deleting the former (thereby destroying the edit history).

—Ruakh TALK 01:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No. I'm not sure. I take it you think not. I don't see the point of having the duplication in many cases, but, then again, why not? DCDuring TALK 02:43, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not in favor of duplication, but I think it's better to merge the page histories, so that all contributors to both pages are still credited. —Ruakh TALK 03:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How does that kind of merge work? Is it "Delete entry page"; "move citations to entry"; "restore deletions"; "move quotes to appropriate location"? If so, I'll not be bothering; I'll leave it to those with higher-speed connections than I have. DCDuring TALK 03:28, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

OperaJoeGreen
Thanks DCDuring for your assistance with my Usage notes for in/on behalf of. I have visited COCA/COHA and it is a formidable tool. It's easy to see how you could use it to obtain the historical frequency comparisons between in/on. If you'd like to see how I made use of it, please visit the definition of masterful. I had previously added definition 3 (authoritative, domineering) to this article, with quotations. I have added Usage notes based on COCA/COHA. In this case the job was, I think, necessarily more tedious than for the behalf research. The differences between the meanings of masterful are defined by the full context of each citation and are not really accessible to any reasonable collocates filter. I basically had to read all the citations and tally the results. OperaJoeGreen 06:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. Using either on BYU's COCA/COHA/BNC site and on Google, one has to read a great number of usages, preferably inserting some of the best into the entry to illustrate. My workspace is littered with such tallies. I didn't read very many of the citations for in/on behalf of, reasoning that the general pattern of usage could not have been so different as to completely invalidate the conclusion I had drawn that fashion accounted for the change in usage and that the semantic distinction is not really warranted by common usage.
 * BTW, for rhetorical reasons, I didn't bother to mention that MW Dictionary of English Usage (1989) in its article asserts that the OED's sainted Murray apparently misread Shakespeare's free use of "in" and "on" in the same construction at different places.
 * It requires a great deal of immersion into an aspect a PoS or Etymology section of an entry to derive meaning from actual usage. That is why there is so much imitation of other dictionaries and copying of Webster's 1913 and its contemporary the Century Dictionary. Even updating the language of these entries requires some confrontation with modern usage. The level of time and effort required to ensure coverage of all common usage of highly polysemous words (eg, common prepositions, "head"). I aspire to once in a while marshalling my energies to tackle one of these.
 * In masterful the citations of sense 3 are suggestive of the meaning shown, but could be read as saying that masterly skill caused deferential behavior. Do you have any citations that support "domineering" and not "authoritative"? That said, the entry now shows an important distinction, one that I might not have noticed when reading the works cited. DCDuring TALK 12:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Shift and shift
I disagree with the idea of splitting between Citations:Shift and Citations:shift when the spelling differs but the meaning is the same. It just makes more complicated to view all the citations for a given sense. You even had to unbold some instances of this word, which makes the overall effect a little misleading, by not pointing out (that is, emphasizing) all the instances where the word appears. Similarly, plurals and other inflections are also supposed to stay with the lemma form, and not on separate citation pages.

The template is prepared to link to various pages at once; and it looks better this way. Compare with Citations:middle earth and Citations:rule of three. --Daniel. 23:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree. Each form stands on its own. DCDuring TALK 23:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Can you please elaborate "Each form stands on its own."? --Daniel. 23:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Each form stands on its own for RFV purposes, but it's useful to see them on one citations: page for usage purposes (seeing what preposition follows a given verb, for example). The other citations: page can then redirect to the one with the citations. Just my opinion fwiw. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 23:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with msh210. "Each form stands on its own for RFV purposes, but it's useful to see them on one citations: page for usage purposes" is a good and succinct way of expressing my own opinion as well. --Daniel. 23:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I certainly agree that it is useful to compare groups of citations, but I would like to compare the citations of sense 1 of word A and the citations of sense 7 of word B over time where they might be synonyms or antonyms or coderivatives or cognates in different languages. This type of comparison is far beyond our capabilities. We don't even have an adequate set of citations that are actually matched to individual senses of words. The arbitrariness of our selection of citations alone makes such comparisons meaningless. I would be happy if we actually did some basic things well.
 * The basic thing would be to establish the links between a sense and its citations and between a form and its citations. Adequacy in this endeavour seems necessarily prior. In my experience we often have an undifferentiated mass of citations on a page that merely creates an illusion of documentation. Such a presentation is often has the effect of concealing a lack of attestation for specific senses and forms. DCDuring TALK 11:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * We have a system of separating between senses of words in pages of citations; see Citations:be. As far as I see, Citations:Shift does not present any of the issues that you mentioned, and might be succesfully merged again with Citations:shift as they share the same sense; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. --Daniel. 11:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like a forking of content. DCDuring TALK 17:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * For an interesting read, see [[Citations:Imma]]. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 15:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

A dog barking
I've tried using another template for the sound of a dog barking at bark. Notably, it displays a "play" button, which I believe is an improvement. --Daniel. 22:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Would you please elaborate what was "hideous" in that new template? --Daniel. 11:58, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Since you disagreed with me and reverted my action, I would at least expect a response to my simple question. By the way, from your edit summary, I can infer that you have seen the box within this revision on the left-hand side, while it should be on the right-hand side if you cleared your cache. --Daniel. 00:59, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

liver
Hi DCDuring. As the expert on things adjectival versus attributive, I thought you might have advice on how to redo the entry liver. At the moment, the entry has an English adjective section which admits that it is the "noun as a modifier". It distinguishes however "made of liver" from "intended for the liver" and simply "concerning the liver". I am not sure if or how to move that information into the noun section. - -sche 19:14, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for asking. I'd forgotten what I used to do with this kind of thing. So I went to the entry, which reminded me. I don't think a sense line is particularly helpful. A usage note is a bit less misleading. Most helpful IMHO are usage examples (not necessarily citations) showing attributive use. I took a stab at it. DCDuring TALK 19:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the help. I added the true adjective (colour), I will now check again to be sure the other senses are not used as true adjectives and then begin to (re)move them. - -sche 22:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've always wondered whether most colors were really adjectives. We treat them as if they inherently were but most color words (but not any of the most common ones) there is not much evidence of usage that would meet the tests set forth in English adjectives (taken from CGEL). I just didn't want to get folks riled up about it. DCDuring TALK 22:26, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Vote on formatting of etymologies
There is the vote Votes/pl-2011-02/Deprecating less-than symbol in etymologies, which would benefit from your participation, even if only in the role of an abstainer. Right now, the results of the vote do not quite mirror the results of the poll that has preceded the vote. There is a chance that the vote will not pass. The vote, which I thought would be a mere formality, has turned out to be a real issue. You have taken part on the poll that preceded the vote, which is why I have sent you this notification. --Dan Polansky 08:24, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Somebody said that is against Wiktionary's practice, is it true? Ddpy 21:37, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It was an experiment. It was not rejected where I used it in English, but it was not taken up with enthusiasm. It was not intended to be used in any other language, except by consent of those interested in the language in question. Although we have some practices that are uniform across all languages, some languages have rather distinct approaches. The CJKV cluster seems to have its own set of needs which has made the format for those very distinct.
 * I suppose that I should put up a warning about the experimental nature of its use. DCDuring TALK 22:50, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply.  is very useful.  It is easier to use for Mandarin entries because Mandarin roots of word are regular.  Please see this example for your information.  Ddpy 23:53, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It is interesting that you find it useful for Mandarin, but the Mandarin community seems to be rejecting it. If you can discuss the matter with them, you may be able to understand their reasoning and they yours. DCDuring TALK 03:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

banned?
Is banned by Wiktionary's policies? Derv 12:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I am not aware of any policy against it. But ask Dan Polansky, who deleted all the instances he could find. DCDuring TALK 12:41, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Tooironic said that it is against Wiktionary's policy, please see here. But  is beneficial to users.  Derv 13:02, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Each language could in principle set its own policy, subject to veto by an overall vote. In any event each language has its own consensus. TooIronic might well be able to express that consensus. I don't know.
 * was part of an experiment that some folks really disliked. I never intended for the experiment to be carried out against the wishes of any language's group of contributors. DCDuring TALK 15:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

en-phrase
Please explain this edit. --Daniel. 04:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Phrasebook and phrase are not the same thing. is the tool for indicating phrasebook membership. That you are not sensitive to such matters ought to give you pause before you make changes. That it doesn't scares me. DCDuring TALK  19:14, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, phrasebook and phrase are not the same thing, and is the tool for indicating phrasebook membership.  is the tool for indicating that a sense is a phrase, but it is categorizing entries within the umbrella of "phrasebook", apparently due to your edit. Please see the headword-line and the categories of who are you and what have you done with someone. --Daniel. 19:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Consistency
I have found this: "Preference 4: Deprecation of topical categories. If you believe that topical categories should be deprecated at this time, with no further topical categories to be created after 20:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC). Symbol support vote.svg Support DCDuring TALK 20:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)."

I do not believe you are being consistent. It does not seem that you want to let editors freely decide for themselves what they want to do. Ditto for geographic names: editors have freely decided in the mainspace what they want, yet you come top-down with unvoted-on CFI. Ditto for names of specific entities in general. If this is not imposition of rules, unvoted-on ones and unsupported by preferences of the community, I have never seen one.

Disclaimer: If you do not want me to talk to you on your talk page, please say so. If you want to block me, please say "stop talking to me or I will block you". --Dan Polansky 06:03, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Your disclaimer is in the nature of an invitation to violate a rule or principle, eg, "If you don't like what I am saying, you can always beat my head in." Very provocative language. Mere hectoring doesn't rise to being blockable, no matter how annoying. I think that proper nouns are largely a waste of time if we want to have a good English dictionary. I believe votes on trivial matters are largely a waste of time if we want to have a good English dictionary. DCDuring TALK 12:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I owe you an explanation. I was blocked by MG for "disruptive edits" which consisted solely in my having posted on his talk page in a way that he did not like. Hence this disclaimer, which really does not have anything to do with you, but with the fear that MG and SB have succeeded in waking in me. MG's action was preceded by a threat by the supreme oligarch of this Wiktionary, with whom I do not really dare to fight.
 * The vote is not a trivial matter; to the contrary, it is likely to fail. If the vote fails, the time that I, above all, have spent on thinking about its wording and how to convince the opposers with sound arguments, will indeed have been at least in part wasted.
 * The disclaimer still applies, above all for MG and SB. --Dan Polansky 14:18, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, you have admitted that the vote is not a trivial matter when you have said that you do not know whether people should feel free to replace ", from" with "<" in the main namespace. --Dan Polansky 14:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You should have accepted the invitations to adminship when you had the chance.
 * I was unwilling to make recommendations to others, but I was willing to act on my own. I have many degrees of support for various edits, mass edits, bot edits, policies, language-specific practices, experiments, remnants of clearly failed experiments, arbitrary creation of pages. In this I follow the practice of Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson who, whenever asked to sign a petition or an open letter (as he often was) would say that he was willing to the the Nth member of the MIT Economics Dept to sign, where the higher the N the lower his degree of support and the more corroboration from others he needed before being willing to support a given proposal. DCDuring TALK 17:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Re: "You should have accepted the invitations to adminship when you had the chance": You know, I was thinking about it after I got blocked; I recalled your repeated offers. Be assured that I appreciate your offers, and that they have increased my confidence in a way that may have sometimes ironically turned against you. So thanks again. Yet I have arrived at the tentative conclusion that my being a non-admin has some positive repercussions. It has disclosed to me how unjust certain admins are; this would never be so clear if I were an admin. Because their threats of blocking me would have no power, they would be much likely to make no threats. MG's covert threat that "he thinks" that I should be blocked for "abusing multiple accounts" after I have used an IP address for the sole purpose of asking for unblocking shows that the person has impaired judgment and should not have the blocking tools. Another thing is, power corrupts, and I am not sure I am among the most incorruptible. I could soon find myself running around and blocking people for "harrassment", "stupidity" or whatever lame excuses there are on the list.
 * I have tried to think about the Samuelson sentence, but my parsing it has failed. I have made this rephrasing, but it still does not make perfect sense: "Paul Samuelson, whenever asked to sign a petition or an open letter (as he often was), would say this: I am willing to the the Nth member of the MIT Economics Dept to sign, where the higher the N the lower his degree of support and the more corroboration from others he needed before being willing to support a given proposal." I above all do not understand this: "I am willing to the the Nth member of the MIT Economics Dept to sign". Anyway. --Dan Polansky 08:44, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry. Close the quotes before the where clause. DCDuring TALK 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There is another consideration: from what I can tell, there is something wrong in the way you determine support for what you are pushing. You have been pushing attributive-use rule far beyond the support that you have actually obtained. It was a formal vote that finally disclosed how little support there really was for the rule. Whatever gauging process you are using for determining support for your actions, the process seems to need some improvements.
 * Re: "I was unwilling to make recommendations to others, but I was willing to act on my own": I for one do not really see how this is a good thing. It is an approach that contains nothing that leads to unification, while it directly serves diversification of practices and formatting. If the intent is to create an open ecology of formatting and practices, in which the environment for the blooming species, subspecies, and varieties is really mild and non-eliminative, then you probably succeed, but I cannot confirm this is a desirable thing. There should be both variation and elimination, not only variation. In brainstorming, you want to have a free phase and a critical phrase, not only free phrase. --Dan Polansky 12:22, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I still think that the change that you got through is taking us in the wrong direction. Daniel.'s silly additions are just the tip of the iceberg. You never took the trouble of thinking through the fundamental differences between encyclopedic and dictionary entries, not even the basic conceptual questions about multiple holders of the same name. DCDuring TALK 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I weigh my strength of feeling and the nature of other views, especially the source and reasoning. Why is this so hard to understand. You seem to be looking for an algorithm for my personal decision-making. It is naturalistic human decision making. It may be inconsistent to an outsider and may be inconsistent diachronically. So what? I mostly look for algorithms where they can save some time, as in WT:CFI (RfD), attestation (RfV), and cleanup (todo lists). There is no reason to hasten the evolutionary process. Consider what accelerated evolution did for such dog breeds as American German Shepherds, bulldogs, pugs, Wheaton terriers, etc. Genetic bottlenecks, peculiar breeding objectives governed by short-term fashion, and other phenomena have lead to significant health problems for many breeds. DCDuring TALK 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You seem to have changed the subject to one that we may well want to discuss but that is distinct: "Is it good for a dictionary to contain names of specific entities?" The subject I was discussing was "Does DCDuring use methods of gauging support of other people that match what the cummunity really thinks?" and "are informal methods reliable in gauging the true community consensus"? You seem to act under the assumption that your judgment of what is good and what is not good for the Wiktionary is more important than the judgment of other people. From what I have seen in RFD and RFV, you are trying to act like a monarch to the extent to which the processes allow that and even beyond, rather than asking whether your actions are supported by the consensus of a larger editor community. You are imposing your views on the community, yet are opposing votes in the name of arbitrary editing freedom, that arbitrary editing freedom that you deny to Wiktionary editors in RFD. This is the contradiction that I wanted to highlight in this thread. Your proposals to deletion in RFD are blocked only by those editors who monitor RFD. Hence my monitoring RFD, of which I am really tired now. --Dan Polansky 10:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Tell me a little more about your own thoughts and feelings, attitudes and beliefs. DCDuring TALK 14:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You seem to be using some sort of idiom or indirect communication that is easy to understand for natives, but not so for me. Would you perhaps refer me to a web site that explains what you are trying to say? In the absence of such an explanation, I would tend to interpret this response tentatively as "I've had enough of this conversation, so could we please end this". --Dan Polansky 16:50, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You are so perceptive. I was wondering why you are pumping me so hard for answers on the details of my decision-making while offering so little about yourself. This is the kind of thing best learned in the real world, AFAIAK, so I am loathe to mislead you by trying to find a website for you. DCDuring TALK 16:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Discussion re wikilinking in quoted text
I recently contributed to a discussion to which you were party five months ago (at Wiktionary talk:Quotations). I notify you in case you wish to respond. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 15:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

My removal of derv
My mass removal of (template created and deployed by you) from some 450 entries was driven by the following principle, which looks perfectly sound to me:


 * If (a) a person deploys in the mainspace a radical deviation from the current formatting practice and ELE without consensus, and if (b) he also meets significant opposition, and if (c) the deployment has still not been removed several months later, and if (d) several months later, the person still has not tried to gauge consensus for his new radical deviation from common practice either via a poll or via a vote, and if (e) the person laughs in the face of consensus on his talk page, then (f) I should feel free to remove the said deployment without a formal mandate to do so. For the purpose of this principle, a post to a discussion in Beer parlour such that the discussion was not dedicated to the radical deviation does not count as evidence of consensus, even if the post was left without comment by other editors.

The discussion that allegedly was left without comment and thus allegedly shows that you were seeking consensus is this: Beer parlour archive/2010/September, September 2010.

Signs of disagreement can be found here:, October 2010. This thread on your talk page contains such gems as "I learned how much freedom one has to act without building consensus from that vote. DCDuring TALK 17:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)"

--Dan Polansky 13:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I see that your creative mischaracterizations seem to extend to your own motives and self-justification as well of others' actions. I'd be happy to see "principled" rationalizations, but instead I see a jumble of sublimated personal hostility toward me and the oligarchy you imagine. I already know that the hostility is being serially applied to the oligarchs, except to those whom you are actually afraid of. You seem to be outraged that I would find the behavior of Daniel. and others to be instructive about the value of bold action. You mischaracterize this as "laughing in the face of consensus on my talk page." Being bold is on of the maxims of wikiworld. But deciding when to be bold requires a judgment. I thought that et al might require boldness because of the creation of categories, but couldn't really tell because of the low level of participation in the discussion.

I will discuss your "principles" in turn:
 * (a) "a person deploys in the mainspace a radical deviation from the current formatting practice and ELE"
 * What is "radical" and what is a "deviation" from ELE? The appearance of etymology sections did not change except in a small number of cases (1, 2, 5? hard to say because the experiment has been destroyed), where I had both a diachronic and a synchronic etymology. The templates by which we achieve the appearance specified by WT:ELE are not specified as they are often language specific etc. and change from time to time. The use of categories rather than hard-wired lists is not specified in ELE.
 * (b) "he also meets significant opposition"
 * I met surprise (Widsith, Ghost of Wikipedant) and opposition to the notion of "synchronic" etymologies (Ivan Stambuk), but relatively little to the idea of creating a large number of categories, which was an express concern in the BP discussion. The question of minimum category size seemed to find a lack of consensus except at extremes (austenite). The deletion discussion surfaced the "ifexist" solution to your stated objections, which you ignored.
 * (c) "the deployment has still not been removed several months later"
 * This begs the question as to whether it should be removed. As to the longevity of failed experiments I draw your attention to the header for "Shorthand", which has survived for some years. DCDuring TALK 16:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * (d) "the person still has not tried to gauge consensus for his new radical deviation from common practice either via a poll or via a vote"
 * This begs the question as well. During the five or six months two users stated that they thought it would be awesome to have complete derived-terms type listings. But they were mere users, whom we by consensus ignore.
 * (e) "the person laughs in the face of consensus on his talk page"
 * If you have been hacking my computer's camera to catch me laughing, 1., please stop and, 2., please provide the footage showing that it was in the face of consensus that I was laughing. On reflection, I don't really mind such transparent mischaracterization. Indeed, I welcome it.
 * (f) "[then] I should feel free to remove the said deployment without a formal mandate to do so"
 * This is moot as you have done so while RFDO discussions were ongoing. As the result of your mass-reversion is only to destroy evidence potentially useful in those discussions, you violated our normal practice of waiting until such matters have been resolved. I assume you were attempting to undermine the ability of anyone to point to the actual experimental implementation in totality rather than the cases you selected for non-deletion.

Re only one point at this time, the boldfaced one: "you have done so while RFDO discussions were ongoing": This is not true. MG has sent derv to RFDO in this, from 12:57, 17 March 2011. I have completed my removal in 13:01, 16 March 2011. I have merely tagged derv as disputed without wishing to hurry it up via the deletion process, but MG removed my tag and replaced it with a RFD tag, after which I have put back my tag and a short revert war ensued, as can be seen in the revision history of Template:derv/doc. I admit that the content of the removed categories could serve as some evidence of the usefulness of the scheme. I have archived most or all of the content of the deleted categories, so I can post it somewhere, like to User:DCDuring/Derv categories, Template:derv/Sample categories or any other page that you specify. --Dan Polansky 17:26, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That does not address the full issue as the experiment also included the appearance of the categories as deployed as derived terms and/or related terms. DCDuring TALK 18:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Point taken. However, there is still Category:English words derived from: load (noun) with 12 members and Category:English words derived from: load (verb) with 4 members. Can you deploy the categories in "load" in the planned way of deployment, so people can get an impression of what you were up to? Or are the categories insufficient for the demonstration purposes? (I can still place the content of the deleted categories to any page that you name.) --Dan Polansky 18:26, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and a question: is there any statement that you have made that you want to rectract? --Dan Polansky 08:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you have anything in particular in mind? DCDuring TALK 17:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think either of you are wrong; editors are free to use derv, or to remove it when they deem it preferable. Derv isn't outlawed until/if it fails RFDO, but it's but 'obligatory' either. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Given the vast amount of work to be done, why remove valid etymologies instead of adding the missing ones? Why remove evidence of an experiment? Why not talk/ask first? The plausible reasons are not flattering to the remover. DCDuring TALK 23:35, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have several particular statements in mind that seem worthy of retraction. If you feel like answering my question, is there a recent statement of yours that you want to retract and declare to be an error or otherwise worthy of retraction?
 * Do you feel you would like to adjust "load" to show the technique that you are proposing, or are the categories that I have mentioned above insufficient for the demonstration purposes? --Dan Polansky 13:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC) . I have modified "load" entry to have collapsible sections for derived terms from categories. --Dan Polansky 14:19, 28 March 2011 (UTC)