User talk:Dan Polansky/2014

Attested Acanthasitta
I am not sure why you think you can single me out, but if you spent less time attacking me and more time searching for words and their usage you would find things like this. http://newzealandecology.org/nzje/free_issues/NZJEcol34_1_28.pdf or this http://www.boprc.govt.nz/media/33700/Wildland-091118-TaurangaEcolDistPhase1.pdf or this http://www.sahs.uk.net/BoTNHAS%20Trans%20Vol%20V,%20Part%20II.pdf on Page 186. Please before you attack me in the future, do your research with the same dedication that you use to, well, attack me. Sincerely Speednat (talk) 18:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Speednat, don't take it personal. Dan can be a bit assertive, but he has done it to others, including me before. Pass a Method (talk) 21:27, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

On copyrights and public domain
By the way, just out of curiosity why did you suddenly feel the need to note the change to my userpage on my talkpage? Was there some specific event/page/something which prompted you to do so? Or perhaps general curiosity about my history here, and elsewhere at Wikimedia? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:51, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * My attention is my private concern. It so happened that I noticed your placing of a statement on your user page that could threaten the integrity of Wiktionary: 'I always thought copyrighting a dictionary is pretty silly given that definitions of words contain no original thought.' --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:42, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, there are lots of worse things out there that "could threaten the integrity of Wiktionary", I assure you I am not one of them. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:26, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

German compounds
German closed compounds are traditionally included. For a discussion, see Talk:Zirkusschule (mentioning also "Tanzschule"), Talk:Sportlerherz, Talk:Plastikschwanz, Talk:neuntausendneunhundertneunundneunzig. Tanzschule. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:53, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you talking to yourself? I think you probably meant to post this somewhere else. --WikiTiki89 20:00, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I am making public notes, which appear like me talking to myself. I can search my talk pages and find the notes later using the search terms of my choice. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:07, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Much later: See also:
 * Beer parlour/2011/February
 * Beer parlour/2012/May
 * Beer parlour/2017/July
 * Comparison to Chinese: "German is different from Chinese: German is written with spaces between its words [...]", by -sche.
 * Significance of spaces and hyphens: "[...] someone might misinterpret coalmine as co- + *almine rather than coal + mine [...]", by Equinox.
 * Dictionaries: Duden has "Himbeergeschmack", "Himbeerlimonade", "Himbeermarmelade", "kälteempfindlich" and "kokainsüchtig".
 * --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:54, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Talkback
--kc_kennylau (talk) 07:02, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Response
Since I've had a good look-through your history and interpersonal communications with other editors, I'm going to leave this here for future reference. I know you mean well and I do not want to disparage you or anything, but my advice for avoiding further trouble would be to approach other editors in a less confrontational or direct manner about pointing out their mistakes or aberrations. We are all volunteers here, and we have to keep that in mind. Take for example, Haplology's message on my talkpage (permalink), which was well-mannered enough and sufficient enough to convey the information to me that what I did was wrong, and I responded accordingly with the appropriate measures. Your posts to my talkpage appear to convey a less than friendly tone, and I recognize that that can be difficult sometimes for people whose native language is not English, and so I've grown used to adjusting my level of WT:AGF accordingly (i.e. I have a thick skin, but that only lasts so long). I've taken notes of your messages and rest assured I've tried my best to listen as well as respond to them in the way I thought most appropriate, even if perhaps you might think I have not. For the sake of risking further appearance of antagonization from either of us, and because you've posted to my talkpage for three threads in such a short timespan (which I found slightly disturbing) I am asking you to please refrain from further posting at my talkpage, and instead to respond at the appropriate venues at RFD and RFV. Or if you have a direct issue with my behavior on broad subjects or what I put on my userpage, as you've noted at the "Copyright" section of my talkpage, to bring it up to the Beer Parlour where it would warrant further attention.

Final note: I've also noticed you once used the excuse that there had been no prior warning of "blockable" behavior on your talkpage, so that the administrators who blocked your account were considered unjustified. I am thus leaving this here as a... recommendation that you refrain from posting on my talkpage. You can still respond here as appropriately if you have any questions or concerns with this recommendation to you, and I will respond accordingly as I have this page watched. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:40, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It is true that I do a lot of talking of criticism that many admins don't do. For instance, in User talk:Pass a Method, I have asked him to stop certain behaviors again and again, to not much avail. Some admins (I am not an admin) have a different approach: they block the guy for a month without even bothering to leave a note on his talk page. All the blocks made against me were in violation of WT:BLOCK, supplied with excuses so lame that I cannot think it possible that the blocking admins believed them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:52, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No, see, you're missing the point. This is not about your past blocks, and I'm sure the other admins have their reasons for choosing to block or not block. This is about your approach to criticism. Criticism is best received when it is dealt with in a constructive manner. Cf Haplology's response to me on my talkpage. That is the example I would like you to follow when dealing with me as well as other people. I have bolded my central point and what I believe to be worthy of you keeping as your 'public notes' to be looked at in the archives. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:01, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * In the post above, you have started to prepare ground for my blocking, by making a reference to blockable behavior just before you make a "recommendation that you refrain from posting on my talkpage". You remove inconvenient criticism from your talk page as you see fit . I find your general pattern of editing in English Wiktionary such that you should ideally depart as soon as possible, to prevent harm to English Wiktionary and avoid waste of other editor resources. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:07, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

German adjectives lacking inflection table using AWB
The following guide was posted by User:Kc kennylau, while an original hint of the method is due to User:CodeCat:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 16:54, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Start AWB
 * 2) Tools -> List comparer
 * 3) List 1: Category, German adjectives
 * 4) List 2: What transcludes page, Template:de-decl-adj-table
 * 5) Unique in List 1
 * 6) There you go


 * Wow, I discovered that you can tag people by linking to other people's user name, for example User:Dan Polansky should give you a notice. --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:56, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

English entries lacking etymology using Python
Finding English entries lacking etymology using Python, applied to a Wiktionary dump (http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/latest/enwiktionary-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2): I wish I knew how to do this using AWB alone. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Updated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:00, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Category intersection
The method described at leads to a method of determining the intersection of two categories, that is, the list of items present in both categories. Ditto for set difference applied to categories. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:34, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Slovak nouns not linking to dictionaries
The method described at leads to a method of determining which Slovak nouns are not using  to link to great online Slovak dictionaries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:41, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * List 1: Category Slovak nouns
 * List 2: What transcludes page, Template:R:SDK
 * Result: Unique in List 1

English entries lacking pronunciation using Python
The method described at applies, just that "===Etymology" is replaced with "===Pronunciation". --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:03, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Declension of 08/15
I would like to have the declension of 08/15. --kc_kennylau (talk) 11:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No idea, really. I'd guess it would be uninflected, but I am not a native German speaker; User:Longtrend is a native speaker, and he is even a student of linguistics. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:17, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Inflection of for Czech inflected noun forms
I have run an AWB batch that placed to definition lines of Czech inflected noun forms. I used Latin entries as a model. Czech inflected noun form entries mostly used before this was changed by a run of User:MewBot from 9 January 2014‎; an example edit:. I used User:DPMaid to do the job.

I have changed WT:About Czech to indicate the use of in.

The AWB specification: --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:09, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Work list: entries in Category:Czech noun forms
 * Example edit:
 * Number of replacements: 107 (plus 2 under User:Dan Polansky)
 * Replacements used in AWB:

Czech traffic statistics
What follows is the entry access statistics or entry traffic statistics of Czech-only entries in English Wiktionary for the October of 2013, obtained using data available at http://stats.grok.se/. Russian and Latin are shown for comparison, again only for entries that only have one language section. Only the lemma entries were considered, which was especially needed for Latin with its huge number of inflected-form entries; for Czech and Russian, non-lemmas not marked using "{{inflection of" and "{{conjugation of" were included in the analysis, but the two languages have only a small number of inflected-form entries anyway; see also the Python script below. * - The numbers for Czech and Russian actually include some non-lemma entries, since Czech and Russian inflected-form entries do not exclusively use "{{inflection of" and "{{conjugation of", but these non-lemma entries are relatively few.

Filtering the Czech entries with multiple language sections out of the statistics was essential. Otherwise, the result would be completely skewed, as an experiment showed. As one source of skewing, the access statistics would include high access numbers for the significant number of Czech entries that also have an English language section.

The data was obtained using the following script applied to the relational quasi-dump available from http://toolserver.org/~enwikt/definitions, in particular enwikt-defs-20140206-all.tsv. The script uses the relational quasi-dump to determine the term work list, and then uses the term work list to access http://stats.grok.se/. The fact that the date of the relational quasi-dump list lies ahead of the month for which the statistics is collected does not harm. The script output was redirected to a file; the standard error output showed the progress of the script. Running the script for Czech took more than an hour to finish.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 17:12, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikisaurus statistics
Some Wikisaurus statistics for October 2013 follow, based on stats.grok.se, such as "http://stats.grok.se/en.d/201310/Wikisaurus:fatty_acid".

For previous Wikisaurus statistics, see User_talk:Dan_Polansky/2012.


 * The number of Wikisaurus pages: 1309
 * The total number of page hits in Wikisaurus in October 2013: 40,600
 * The total number of page hits in Wikisaurus in October 2013, without top 100 pages: 20,357
 * Median page hits per Wikisaurus page in October 2013: 15
 * Average page hits per Wikisaurus page in October 2013: 31

Top 100 Wikisaurus pages in October 2013, with page hits in the month:

Method: --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:18, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * 1. Create a text file with the list of members of Category:Wikisaurus, one per line.
 * 2. Run the following script on the text file.


 * Interesting to see what kind of words people want synonyms for. --WikiTiki89 19:22, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

English -ing form and gerund
The treatment of English -ing forms that act as nouns, sometimes correctly or incorrectly called "gerund", is an unresolved problem. See also Appendix:English -ing forms and Talk:fucking, Talk:perusing, Talk:ploughing, Talk:dating. And also User:Dan_Polansky/Notes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:06, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Re linking in reference templates
Hello Dan Polansky. Re our recent discussion-via-edit-summaries of, my contention is that reference templates should at least link to the relevant cited authority's Wikipedia article (where it exists); that way, an explanation for why the source is being cited as an authority is readily available for the sceptical reader on the other side of the link. Besides that principle, if you want a precedent, already links to Wikipedia; admittedly, I added that link, but Atelaes has since edited that template without removing the link, so he must, at least, not think that its inclusion is a bad idea. Before I do any more editing pursuant to this issue, I'd like to know: Why do you oppose this linking, other than out of a desire for consistency across referencing templates? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 13:23, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * To be explicit, I do think that the current linking on is a good idea, for the above-stated reasons, that readers can find out about our source for themselves.  However, I also think that the initial round of linking on  was a bit excessive.  Linking to the Wikipedia article on New York seems utterly superfluous in that situation.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:13, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Less relevant links are distracting, IMHO. A reader can copy the name of the reference work and paste it to Wikipedia article box thereby finding the relevant article, so the presence of the wikilinks in the source name is inessential. Wikipedia's article does not give any authority to a source anyway. Your original edit in looked like a bad joke; I have absolutely no idea why anyone might find it a good idea. I like the minimalist linking practice used in so many reference templates; if it is to be changed, there needs to be a consensus to do so. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:18, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * FWIW, reconsidering it, I agree that "the initial round of linking on was a bit excessive". Re "copy[ing] the name of the reference work and past[ing] it to [the search] box", doesn't the same go for everything? What's the point of linking at all in that case? And re "giv[ing] authority to a source", I didn't mean that just having an article on Wikipedia automatically gives a source authority; however, reading statements like "A Latin Dictionary…is a popular English-language lexicographical work of the Latin language" and "Lewis and Short remains a standard reference work for medievalists, renaissance specialists, and early modernists, as the dictionary covers Late and Medieval Latin, if somewhat inconsistently" indicates the (fairly) high regard in which the source is held. Anyway, in the hope of obtaining consensus for this sort of linking, I have started a policy discussion at Beer parlour/2014/March; please feel free to pass comment on it there. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 19:49, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Formal voting and change of voter stance
(My notes on voting are at User:Dan Polansky/Voting.)

Voting via a formal process may make some people change the confidence with which they take their stance. In Beer_parlour/2014/March, Angr, Pengo and Teodor voted boldfaced support and Eiríkr Útlendi voted weak support; in Votes/pl-2014-03/Unified Norwegian, they all voted "Abstain".

The vote counting in the Beer parlour discussion yields 8.5 for support and 2 for oppose; it yields an overwhelimg consensus by any standard ever used in a Wiktionary vote. The vote counting in the vote currently yields 5 for support, 5 for oppose and 5 for abstain. This is a sharp contrast between Beer parlour and the vote. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:21, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Latin and first person in lemma and definition of verb
Latin verbs are currently defined in first person ("I swim" rather than "To swim"). There was a Wiktionary discussion on that, especially in Wiktionary:Tea_room:nāscor, linked to below; since the discussion was not properly archived, I could only find it by finding the vote that the discussion spawned.

First person in lemma:
 * Wiktionary_talk:About_Latin/Archive_1, November 2006, 1801 words
 * Beer_parlour/2012/May, May 2012, 1082 words

First person in definition:
 * Wiktionary:Tea_room:nāscor, in archive, November 2009, 6198 words
 * Tea_room/2009/November (I was wrong, here it is.)
 * Votes/pl-2009-12/Definition layout, a vote spawned by that discussion
 * Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2009-12/Definition layout, 3467 words

--Dan Polansky (talk) 08:00, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Later: What makes the current scheme workable is that English does not mostly distinugish first-person verb forms from infinitive verb forms. As a consequence, a link going to a first-person form automatically goes to the lemma form ("move" is the same in "I move" and "to move"). This is not so for Czech and many other highly inflected languages. If the same approach were used in a dictionary using Czech as the meta-language (the main language, the one used in the definitions), then moveo would be defined as "já hýbu" or "hýbu" rather than "hýbat", and the actual wiki markup would have to be hýbu to direct the reader to the Czech lemma entry. In a printed dictionary, this would be rather inconvenient, since the only linking there is is the one made implicitly via visibly presented word forms, which would be "hýbu". In an electronic dictionary, the likes of hýbu are viable, but still feel odd, to me anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:42, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * For whatever it's worth, I've ceased defining Ancient Greek verbs using the English first person. I now define them using the English infinitive, while keeping the lemma entries at the PAI1S.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:07, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Adjectives used as nouns
There is a discussion at WT:RFD (later at Talk:wicked) about deleting the noun section, serving to represent "the wicked" used as a noun. This would apply to the unknown, the blind, the dead, the English, the French, as pointed out there.

One one note, it is not obvious to a Czech speaker that "the French" can refer to French people. While cs:chudí (plural of cs:chudý -- adjective meaning poor) works like en:the poor, *cs:francouzští (plural of francouzský) does not work, while Francouzi (singular Francouz) does.

On another note, cs:vrchní (noun, waiter) is derived from cs:vrchní (adjective, upper), but has to be included as a noun, since the meaning is idiomatic and cannot be derived from the existence of the adjective.

Questions: How readily can English adjectives be used as nouns? Are there some adjectives that are very often so used?

What dictionaries do for "poor":
 * MWO has no noun section
 * But MWO has a noun section for "the dead"
 * AHD has a noun section
 * Collins has no noun section
 * Macmillan has no noun section
 * But Macmillan has a noun section for the sick
 * Oxford Dictionaries (do not confuse with OED) has a subsection "as noun the poor" without a definition but with an example sentence in its adjective section
 * Webster 1913 has no noun section for "the poor"
 * Totals: Only one consulted dictionary has a noun section with a sense for "the poor" as a noun.

What dictionaries do for "French":
 * MWO has a noun section for "the French people"
 * AHD has a noun section for "The people of France"
 * Collins has a noun section with a sense directing to "the French", where it has a sense for the French people
 * Macmillan a noun section for the people of France
 * Oxford Dictionaries (do not confuse with OED) has a noun section for "the people of France collectively"
 * Webster 1913 has a noun section for "Collectively, the people of France"
 * Totals: Every single consulted dictionary has a sense for "the French" as a noun.

Other links:
 * http://www.learnersdictionary.com/qa/adjectives-used-as-nouns - by Merriam-Webster

--Dan Polansky (talk) 18:43, 25 April 2014 (UTC)


 * This is very detailed. Maybe you should include it in the talk. --kc_kennylau (talk) 18:45, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't want to flood common pages. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Wiktionary links: --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Talk:Irish
 * Tea room/2009/June

Czech combining forms
There is now a discussion at WT:RFD (later at Talk:jedno-) on whether to include what I refer to as combining forms. By combining form I mean a form derived from a word that makes the word ready for compounding. Czech compounds can be found at Category:Czech compound words.

Czech combining forms include the following ones:

Combining forms and compounds of Polish, Russian, German, Danish and English: The English combining forms are something of an oddity; they seem to be Latin combining forms in disguise.

Keeping Czech combining forms as entries would lead to a large set of rather predictable entries. OTOH, we already do keep predictable entries like plurals of English nouns.

Part of speech: If they are to be included, then with what part of speech? Should "Combining form" be a part of speech? Or should the part of speech be the same as that of the base word, on the model of inflected forms? Or should even "Prefix" be considered?

Derived terms: Should the derived terms be present on the page of the combining form or on the page of the base word?

Prefix vs. combining form: Can a distinction between a prefix and a combining form be upheld? I think so, but I do not have clear criteria. In Czech, combining forms seem morphologically distinct by the use of "-o-" to create them. Links: What is the difference between a “prefix” and a “combining form”?, english.stackexchange.com, Combining Forms, Prefixes & Suffixes, merriam-webster.com.

Prevalence of the term "combining form": Webster 1913 uses the term in its definition of phyto-. The term is further used in Collins:phyto- for the part of speech; Merriam-Webster:phyt- uses "combining form" as part of speech as well; Oxford Dictionaries (not OED):phyto- uses the part of speech "combining form" equally well.. For more see.

Swamping argument: A: Keeping these combining forms as prefixes would swamp the prefix category with them. B: Right, but that can be fixed by keeping them as combining forms, in a distinct category.

See also User:Dan Polansky/Notes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I know this is a note to yourself, but I think this may be relevant anyway. In the Germanic languages, there are different ways of modifying a word when it's added to a compound, but none of them can strictly be called "combining forms". In the examples you gave above, the -s- in German is a genitive singular suffix, and can also appear on the noun outside compounds. So the compound should be read as a genitive phrase: "index of contents". In Czech terms, it would be like forming compounds with nového. The -e- in the Danish word is also a genitive, specifically the genitive plural (which does not actually survive as a case in Danish). So this is similarly "car of children". All Germanic languages can form genitive compounds in that way, although in most languages the cases themselves are no longer productive. Even English does it, although the genitival aspect is much more recognisable then: "children's car" or "child's play". In addition to this method, the Germanic languages also form compounds by just putting the (endingless) basic stems together, like the English "coal mine" or "coalmine". Any noun can form compounds by all of these methods, and I'm not sure if there are strict rules for when to use which. From my own experience in speaking Dutch (which likewise allows all three of these types), often one or the other just sounds better. For example, (from the plural) sounds better than  (which would seem like a "cabbage mine"), and  is even worse. I can't really point out why.  22:13, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this. Is it then that each would-be combinging form of Danish can be found stand-alone as an inflected form or genitive form? On another note, I now recalled "natřít na modro", "do zlatova vypečené", "venku je jasno", "vejce na tvrdo" (as if "vejce na tvrdý způsob"), and wonder what "modro" and "jasno" are in these sentences and whether the combinging forms modro- a jasno- can be related to them.--Dan Polansky (talk) 22:19, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The genitive singular would, but the genitive plural is no longer used as a case in Danish, nor in Norwegian or Swedish which also use this suffix. But the cases are still alive and well in Icelandic, which uses the same formations for compounds (they all come from Old Norse). Dutch doesn't use the cases at all anymore, and the genitive ending is now more or less restricted to personal possession, only attached to names. We have an entry  for the use as a compound former though, classing it as an interfix.
 * looks like the original neuter form of the adjective, which is still preserved in some other Slavic languages like Slovene (see ). It's not technically related to the compounding form, although the old neuter and the compounding form did normally have the same appearance in Proto-Slavic, by coincidence.
 * If you go further back to Proto-Indo-European, the neuter ending is -om or (for some nouns) -os, and the compounding form had -o-. In PIE the rule was simple: remove the nominative singular ending. Back then, the -o- wasn't yet part of the endings, so it still made sense to consider it part of the nouns stem, and compounds were then formed just by attaching stems to each other, and adding endings only to the last stem. The Slavic languages still preserve this more or less, except that because the endings have somewhat eroded, it's no longer obvious that this -o- is part of the noun stem. In Proto-Germanic (and in Gothic), the stem vowel -a- (descended from the PIE -o-) was still present in compounds, but in the later languages it mostly disappeared, so modern Germanic languages don't have any stem vowels in most compounds anymore.
 * Not all Proto-Indo-European noun stems ended in -o-, there were many other formations as well. Those in -o- are called "thematic" because the -o- was the so-called "theme vowel", and all the others "athematic", including those ending in -i- or -u-. These other formations were also preserved in early Slavic, but modern Slavic languages generally have only remnants of these, they've usually been converted to thematic stems (there are still plenty of irregular leftovers though). There is still one example of a noun which preserves the original stem vowel -u-, albeit in a rather hidden way: . This noun consists of the stem *medu- "honey" and the stem *ēdi- "eater", which are an u- and an i-stem respectively (so both athematic). Put together, you get the Pre-Slavic form *medwēdis, where u becomes w before a vowel because of an automatic rule that existed then. So the -v- in the modern Czech form is a hidden reminder of the original u-stem vowel. 23:01, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry for butting in. I think we should allow combining forms as entries still, even as soft redirects to the base forms. As for German combining forms, they can have -s, -es, -en, -n and "0": Staats-, Rates-, Menschen-, Jungen-, Stadt-. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:14, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call those combining forms, because they correspond to the case forms, , , and . I think it goes beyond Wiktionary entries to explain the intricacies of German compound formation and which case forms are used when; that belongs in a grammar.  23:20, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

economic blockade
This will probably be +tagged for deletion again, so you might want to participate in the upcoming discussions. WritersCramp (talk) 10:41, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Counts of RFV nominations
Using revision history of WT:RFV, and filtering on "new section", I obtained the following top 20 counts of new RFV nominations:

101    -sche 78     Mr. Granger 57     Dan Polansky 56     SemperBlotto 45     Equinox 42     Metaknowledge 38     DCDuring 29     Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 24     Chuck Entz 17     Mglovesfun 17     Atitarev 15     Wikitiki89 14     CodeCat 13     I'm so meta even this acronym 13     Bumm13 11     Kephir 11     Hekaheka 10     Liliana-60 9      Haplology 7      TeleComNasSprVen

Used link:
 * https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification&offset=&limit=5000&action=history

Date range seen in the link:
 * Earliest date: 20 May 2013‎
 * Latest date: 10 May 2014‎

Windows command line using GNUWin32: --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:43, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Navigate to https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification&offset=&limit=5000&action=history
 * 2) Copy the browser window content to t.txt, by selecting all, copying to clipboard, opening Notepad, pasting into Notepad, and saving in ANSI encoding (which is the default).
 * 3) grep new.section t.txt | sed "s/(Talk.*//;s/.*201.. //" | sort | uniq -c | sed "s/^ *//;s/ /\t/" | gsort -r -n | head -20
 * Dear diary. Dan Polansky is talking to himself again. This is becoming really creepy. What do I do? — Keφr 09:10, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * (but really, why not put it on a user subpage? they seem more fitting here. and this is coming from the person who lectures me on overcrowded tables of contents.)
 * Are you saying that my posts to my talk page overcrowd the following report?
 * https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&namespace=3
 * --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:28, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

By filtering my contributions on tag removal-of-deletion-or-rfv-template, I can see I made 73 RFV template removals between 30 June 2013 and 28 June 2014. That should cover these 57 RFV additions by me mentioned above. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:06, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyright and copyvio of definitions
My understanding of copyright law is that definitions and example sentences used in dictionaries are protected by copyright as original expressions. A quick glance at dictionaries shows substantial variation in the specific wording of definitions used by different dictionaries, so merger doctrine (Merger_doctrine_(copyright_law), now at Idea–expression divide) usually does not apply: a definition is not the sole obvious statement of a fact. With example sentences, merger doctrine does not apply at all: a dictionary maker has a limitless supply of example sentences to choose from.

Some argue that we quote from copyrighted sources to obtain attesting quotations, and that this is similar to copying definitions. That is not so. Above all, the quotations serving to attest definitions come from a huge variety of sources, where we take one or few sentences from each source (few when we use one source to attest several definitions); that comes under fair use rationale. By this fair use, we do not diminish the merchantability of the quoted sources.

Referencing the source of the word-for-word transferred definition does not solve the copyright issue at all. It is more honest than transferring content from a source without acknowledging to do so, but it is still a breach, albeit acknowledged one. Referencing alone without the invocation of de minimis or fair use does not solve anything at all; I cannot just write a bot to transfer, say, Merriam-Webster to Wiktionary and say "from Merriam-Webster online" in the edit summary. Nor can I write a bot that uses six copyrighted sources, and for each entry rolls a die to choose one of the six copyrighted sources to be used in a similar fashion. Nor can a distributed group of humans, without the power of automation, do a similar thing, albeit in sluggish speed.

For a discussion on this, see Talk:blood supply after WT:RFD gets archived.

A Beer parlour discussion: Beer parlour/2011/July

--Dan Polansky (talk) 09:51, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

RFV or attestation vs. RFD or sum of parts
Of the two processes RFV and RFD, I much prefer RFV for what it does. Above all, RFV leads to removal of information that is wrong AKA incorrect, as far as we know. By contrast, RFD leads to removal of information that is or appears redundant. Lack of redundancy appeals to a variety of purists, but is nothing very critical IMHO. Insistence on absolute elimination of redundancy generally leads to poor user experience, IMHO. For instance, it would lead to drastic reduction of etymology chains; indeed, each entry could derive itself from another item and leave the rest to that item. There has to be some reduction of redundancy in etymologies, so not the full length of chains is supported, but the utter reduction of redundancy in etymology is practiced neither by Wiktionary nor by Merriam-Webster nor by other online dictionaries. Having established (for myself anyway) that uncompromising elimination of redundancy at the cost of user experience is a bad thing, I proceed to claim that uncompromising elimination of redundancy by removing all terms that are or appear to be semantic sum of parts is a bad thing. We have to perform considerable reduction of redundancy as far as sum of parts is concerned, but we do not have to pursue perfection in that area. Being a sum of parts is a sign that an entry should be scrutinized for redeeming qualities and if none are found, it should be deleted. But redeeming qualities should be considered, IMHO. The general redeeming quality is this: the entry hosts some content that cannot be meaningfully hosted in the component entries, or whose hosting in component entries is inconvenient. One case of this is when an entry is a translation target, for which a tentative criterion I came up with is this: The term has to be useful for translation into at least three languages and the three translated terms (i) must be single-word ones and (ii) they must not be closed compounds (also at User:Dan Polansky/Translation targets). --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:21, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Sanskrit romanization AKA transliteration in Latin script and IAST
For discussions, see WT:RFD (later Talk:mahā) and Beer_parlour/2013/August. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:28, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Are our readers idiots?
You've always been in favour of including sum of parts entries because some people won't understand them even by looking up the individual parts. Is that because you think our readers are idiots. If so, at least have the guts to admit it. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not support indiscriminate inclusion of any and all attested sum of part entries; such a position is untenable. My position on sum of parts entries is fairly well summarized at above. A sum of part entry should be deleted unless it has a redeeming quality AKA characteristic. Sum of parts entries do not present any serious problem--they are redundant at best--while multiple of them are the best location to host worthwhile lexicographical information. For instance, television show is a great place for hosting translations into multiple languages including Russian телешоу, while teleshow is a ridiculously poor place for the purpose. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:24, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with you 100% on television show being brought back. I also do have the guts to say that when you use Wiktionary, you don't know what a particular word means, and are ignorant in that one respect.  Is a user who looks up a particular word an idiot overall?  Who knows. Pur ple back pack 89   15:37, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Babel
Thank, mulțumesc pentru (for) Babel la wiki-Portugaliaǃ BAICAN XXX.

Help
I feel like Ungoliant and DCDuring are out for blood. Their desire to take away my rollback and autopatrol seems punitive rather than preventive. I also feel like what they and Kephir said in the thread is heavily exaggerated. What's a guy supposed to do? Purplebackpack89 (Notes Taken) (Locker) 22:31, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think Ruakh misinterpreted your "feeding comment" as an admonishment of me rather than what I think you were going for: an admonishment of people making sarcastic comments and low-level digs at me. As such, I've started a sub-thread to get people to stop making sarcastic comments and low-level digs against me  Purplebackpack89  (Notes Taken) (Locker) 16:19, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Beer_parlour/2014/June suggests your rollback and autopatrol flags are fairly safe. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:29, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but if the discussion ended today, I'm going to get blocked for a whole month, and because Liliana unfairly removed my thread about sarcastic remarks, nothing is going to be done to stop other editor's problematic behavior. How are we going to get people to stop making sarcastic remarks and low-level digs at me?  Purplebackpack89  (Notes Taken) (Locker) 18:50, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I have reverted the removal by Liliana, but this will not help you. Your behavior in past months has already made up people's minds; those who did not know you yet will be deterred by your current drama posts to Beer parlour. The best thing you can do is immediately stop posting to Beer parlour, and keep it so for 3 to 7 days. If admins who already know your amount of mainspace contribution and the amount of drama you produce have made their minds, you cannot do anything about it; more posting by you is likely to make things worse for you. I am by no means on your side. I think you show a lot of behavior that is better avoided; I just do not think a block is warranted. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:56, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * That's not who I am though. I find the fact that a ONE MONTH block was put on the table unconscionable and I'm not afraid to say so.  Why should I be?  The problem now is that a lot of people don't like me and are using any excuse to pillory me.  That is completely unfair and I should be entitled to say so with no penalty whatsoever.  Purplebackpack89  (Notes Taken) (Locker) 19:08, 24 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Haven’t you ever done dramatic things, too, Dan? I’m not saying that someone’s misbehaviour excuses another, but sometimes I get the feeling that you think that you are perfect. --Æ&#38;Œ (talk) 23:47, 25 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I took that three-day break. The new signature is here. Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   19:51, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The signature is actually better now, thanks. The yellowish or gold is nearly illegible, but at least it is only two characters wide. Signatures tell about users: are they here to build a dictionary or are they here merely to express what they think is their unique personality? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:00, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

pedopsychologie and pedopsychology
Hello, Dan Polansky. Per your invitation, could you explain the relationship of to, please? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 22:54, 30 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Since you added "pedopsychology" as a Czech alternative form of cs:"pedopsychologie", and since you presumably know no Czech and have no idea of Czech inflection, can you explain on what basis have you added "pedopsychology" as a Czech lemma? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:08, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * As for you question: shows e.g. "byl dávno oceněn všemi pedopsychology", in which "pedopsychology" is a plural of "pedopsycholog", which would be en:"pedopsychologist", or, in less obscurantist terms, child psychologist. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:11, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Google Translate gives the English output "psychology" for both of the Czech inputs psychologie and psychology. From the little bit of reading I've done, I'm guessing that is the accusative plural form and the instrumental plural form of ; is this correct? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 19:16, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Google Translate goofed; "psychology" is not a Czech lemma, not even a rare one. The form pedopsychology is indeed the accusative plural and the instrumental plural of pedopsycholog. You can see the inflection of "psycholog" (the pedo- form is directly analogous) e.g. at http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?slovo=psycholog. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:01, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the correction, confirmation, and link. I've applied that information, according to the best of my understanding, to make these changes; do they look OK to you? (Re the declension table, I tried using instead, but for some reason that didn't generate anything visible; hence the rather verbose code.) — I.S.M.E.T.A. 11:12, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Your two edits look good. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Great. Thanks. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 11:56, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
An old edition of the OED aka the Oxford English Dictionary is available at archive.org, linked from Public_domain_sources. Multiple volumes are found using the search for works by James A. H. Murray, but not all of them.

A list of archive.org volumes yielding a complete collection of the old edition of the OED, all browsable online page by page:
 * Volume 1: Letters A, B
 * Volume 2: Letter C
 * Volume 3: Letters D, E
 * Volume 4: Letters F, G
 * Volume 5, part 1: Letter H
 * Volume 5, part 2: Letters I, J, K
 * Volume 6, part 1: Letter L
 * Volume 6, part 2: Letters M, N
 * Volume 7: Letters O, P
 * Volume 8, part 1: Letters Q, R
 * Volume 8, part 2: Range S-Sh
 * Volume 9, part 1: Range Si-St
 * Volume 9, part 2: Range Su-Th
 * Volume 10, part 1: Range Ti-U
 * Volume 10, part 2: Range V-Z

Archive.org also has a collection of all ten volumes.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 10:06, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Company names
The only vote about company names that I know of is Votes/pl-2012-02/CFI and company names.

A poll: Beer_parlour/2011/April

WT:COMPANY entered into WT:CFI in multiple steps:
 * - 22 May 2005
 * - 21 November 2007 - Here, the current wording arrived, without a preceding discussion AFAICS: "Being a company name does not guarantee inclusion. To be included, the use of the company name other than its use as a trademark (i.e., a use as a common word or family name) has to be attested."

Company names currently included in the mainspace, with month of creation:
 * ABC (American Broadcasting Company etc.) - October 2003‎
 * AEC - July 2005‎
 * Adidas - February 2007
 * ALCO - June 2011
 * Apple - July 2005‎
 * AT&T - August 2004
 * ATA - December 2010
 * CBC - November 2003
 * CRC (Chemical Rubber Company) - May 2010‎
 * CTC (Children's Theater Company) - May 2007
 * Disney - March 2007‎
 * Duesenberg - October 2006‎
 * BMW - April 2005‎
 * FedEx - August 2005
 * Fender - December 2006‎
 * Ferrari - August 2007
 * GE - July 2005
 * Gibson - November 2005
 * Google - July 2005
 * Harley-Davidson - August 2006
 * Honda - March 2008
 * HP - May 2005
 * Hyundai - September 2012‎
 * IBM - January 2005
 * Intel - August 2007
 * IPC - January 2008
 * IRT - March 2006
 * Kawasaki - May 2005
 * KDDI - January 2008‎
 * Lamborghini - November 2006
 * Mazda - August 2007
 * Mitsubishi - April 2013‎
 * Mobil - September 2005
 * Motorola - August 2012
 * MTC - December 2009
 * NBC - November 2003
 * Nokia - June 2005
 * Norton - October 2006
 * PBR - July 2005
 * Peugeot - February 2005
 * Pixar - April 2005‎
 * Porsche - August 2007
 * Raleigh - October 2005
 * Renault - September 2013‎
 * Samsung - August 2012
 * SABC - November 2003
 * SAS - December 2005‎
 * SKG - August 2005‎
 * TI (Texas Instruments etc.) - August 2005
 * TOC - August 2007‎
 * Sega - March 2006
 * Sony - September 2004‎
 * Subaru - November 2010‎
 * Sukhoi - July 2010
 * Toshiba - March 2013‎
 * Toyota - February 2005
 * Volvo - November 2005‎
 * Wonderbra - December 2006
 * Zeppelin - June 2008

Company names that were included in the mainspace before the edit to CFI that introduced the first mention of company names, that is, before 22 May 2005:
 * BMW - April 2005‎
 * IBM - January 2005
 * Peugeot - February 2005
 * Pixar - April 2005‎
 * Sony - September 2004‎
 * Toyota - February 2005

Company names deleted (probably quite incomplete): --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:14, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Atari - the definition line for the company was deleted in September 2013
 * Exxon - deleted in June 2007
 * Microsoft - the definition line for the company was deleted via RFD: Talk:Microsoft
 * Verizon - April 2009 - no process aparent; looks like an out-of-process deletion
 * Years later: Initialism company names that currently have entries include ABC, AEC, ALCO, ATA, BBC, CBC, CRC, CTC, BMW, GE, ITV, HP, IBM, MTC, NBC, PBR, SABC, SAS, SKG, TI, and TOC. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:01, 4 August 2019 (UTC) (updated later)


 * We have BBC and ITV but are missing Tesco and Aldi amongst many others. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:07, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, updated above. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:19, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Čechy (Bohemia), Česko (Czechia)
However simetimes used in wider meaning in Czech, it is simply incorrect usage. Čechy = Bohemia, Česko = Czechia. At the same time, it does not mean this usage in Czech is automatically transported into English. Česko = Čechy + Morava + Slezsko, thus Czechia = Bohemia + Moravia + Silesia. Ignorants can mixed up astronomy and agronomy, but the meaning remains the same and has not been changed by incorrect usage. Wiktionary documents nothing, they are a lot of mistakes, errors and bad explantions in Wikipedia, because it is created and administrated by amateurs.Blanicky (talk) 12:41, 23 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I suppose you refer to your, which was reverted by Mglovesfun. The diff should have been reverted, since it was erroneous on multiple counts: it replaced the language heading "Czech" with "Bohemia", and it broke interwiki.
 * From what I understood, you seem to want to remove the definition line "Czechia" as incorrect. Since English Wiktionary is a descriptivist dictionary rather than a prescriptivist one, it documents this "Czechia" usage as actually existing and fairly widespread. Furthermore, whether it is incorrect is disputable; it is true that "Čechy" originally referred to Bohemia only, but terms can have their scope extended as time passes. Someone might even argue that "Česko" is incorrect, and that it should be *"Českomoravsko" or even *"Českomoravskoslezko". As a descriptivist dictionary maker, I do not plan to remove the "Czechia" sense, nor would such a removal be supported by the English Wiktionary at large. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:27, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Let me be explicit: the part of the entry reading "==Czech==" is not the translation; it is the language of the entry. Similarly, Czechia has "==English==" as the language of the entry, and Tschechien has "==German==". --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:23, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

television show
Pursuant to the RfD discussion, I have restored television show. As you supported this restoration, please improve this entry through the addition of citations supporting the definitions provided and any other materials that would demonstrate its value to the corpus. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 15:44, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Czech infinitives in -ti
I came across this and I am confused why the infinitives end in -ti rather than -t. Is this dialectal? historical? --WikiTiki89 21:10, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * -ti is historical, no longer used, but having been used fairly recently. For instance, one has to use a -ti form to search in and ; search for "-t" (vonět) finds no results. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:20, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you think it might be worth including in Czech conjugation tables as an archaic/dated infinitive? --WikiTiki89 22:03, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Probably. I am not going to do it myself, though. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Czech rhymes and -li and -ly duplicates
In Czech rhyme pages, I have decided to keep only one item from each -li and -ly pair of verb inflected forms. Thus, instead of listing both "dělali" and "dělaly", I only list "dělali". The main advantage of this is that it more quickly gives an idea of the content of the rhyme page, and speeds up visual skimming. A disadvantage is that searching for "dělaly" in the rhymes namespace does not find anything. This a tentative decision. A page that was really large without this measure was Rhymes:Czech/alɪ; it had more than 10,000 items before the measure. Other pages in which I took this measure are Rhymes:Czech/ɛlɪ, Rhymes:Czech/ɪklɪ, Rhymes:Czech/ɛːklɪ, Rhymes:Czech/ɛklɪ, Rhymes:Czech/ɛːtlɪ Rhymes:Czech/ɛtlɪ, Rhymes:Czech/ɛːdlɪ, Rhymes:Czech/ɛdlɪ, and Rhymes:Czech/adlɪ. I did not take the measure in Rhymes:Czech/ɪlɪ, and Rhymes:Czech/ulɪ, but I no longer know why. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:27, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Years later: I now changed the above: I replaced the second colon with a slash (/) and dropped the dash, to make the links work. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:32, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Inappropriate comment
Perhaps things are different in the culture you grew up in, but for me and probably for most of us here it is highly inappropriate to ask people questions about their toilet habits, especially when that issue has no relevance for the topic at hand. The more general questions and innuendos about CodeCat's gender are also inappropriate, because she has already set her gender to female in her preferences (as can be verified by typing  and seeing that it returns "", and anything above and beyond that fact is none of your business (or mine, or anyone else's here). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Asking people about their toilet habits is completely normal in our Warsaw Pact countries. Please do not impose your imperialist-bourgeois values upon our culture. --Vahag (talk) 15:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you agree that the allegged offense I made many months ago was brought to the discussion by CodeCat rather than by me, althought that was entirely unnecessary?
 * Do you agree that they referred to "personal attacks" that I made in plural without clarifying what they are?
 * Do you agree that any reference in a discussion "what is consensus" to personal attacks I made in the past, if any, is the logical fallacy of irrelevance known as "ad hominem"?
 * Finally, do you agree with the following: When I meet someone for the first time, I have no way of knowing whether to refer to them as "he" or "she" until they kindly disclose to me what they really are? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that it was unnecessary of her to bring up your previous remark, but you escalated it by repeating it today so that everyone reading today's thread would be reminded of it. You escalated it even further by asking directly, "Do you visit male toilets?" When you meet someone in person, there is no piece of software telling you what their preferred pronoun is, so either you have to guess based on outward appearances (and of course 99% of the time you guess correctly), or you have to ask. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you.
 * Do you agree that CodeCat created an impression that I repeatedly made personal attacks of unspecified kind which allegedly prevented them from a civil discussion of the subject at hand?
 * Do you further agree that CodeCat claimed in Beer parlour that these allegged past personal attacks alone presented a sufficient reason for their ignoring the substantive arguments that I made, as if I did not make any arguments at all?
 * Do you agree what whether someone is a "he" or "she" is not a matter of fact, but a matter of arbitrary choice, just like dress to wear on a particular day?
 * Finally, do you agree that the community of the users of language has no say whatsoever whom they want to refer to as "she" or "he"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * "Repeatedly"? No. CodeCat created the impression that you participated in unspecified "abuse" at some point in the past, but nothing in what she said implied it happened more than once. She didn't allege that it prevented her from a civil discussion of the subject at hand, but she did imply that your accusation of abuse on her part is hypocritical because of it. Whether someone prefers to be referred to as "he" or "she" is not an arbitrary choice, it's a personal choice based on a person's gender identity, and it's not too much to ask for other people to respect that. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It's kind of hard to respect someone who is single-handedly destroying the core principles of Wiktionary. And that's coming from someone who's one of the most open-minded people out there. (I have to be, for certain... reasons.) -- Liliana • 16:53, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't really care whether you respect her personally or not, but I do care when people engage in cyberbullying of another editor simply because they disagree with her approach. I don't always agree with her methods either, but nothing excuses the kind of comments Dan made in the Beer Parlour today. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:03, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Let us temporarily accept your hypothesis that CodeCat intended to refer to a single personal attack. In, they say the following: "I've mostly learned to disregard your opinions and prefer to listen to more civil and trustworthy editors." Am I wrong to read the statement as follows: the allegged single past personal attack (singular) alone presents a sufficient reason for CodeCat's ignoring the substantive arguments that I made, as if I did not make any arguments at all? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Not at all. She could have reached that conclusion on the basis of any number of things, not just a single personal attack. But absolutely nothing she said warranted the "male toilet" comment. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:45, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * They insinuate that I am somehow not trustworthy. But I do not even need to be. I present an argument, not a witness. They ought to judge the quality of the argument regardless of who is speaking. But they have discovered a neat strategy, already used before by them: instead of answering the argument I am making, they claim that I made personal attacks, am untrustworthy, and, in the past, they even cited a previously unpublished email by another editor suggesting the editor hates me. In a proper consensus-building exercise and civil discussion, none of that should happen. They should not recall some incidents from months ago, and then conveniently ignore the substance of arguments. But why should they bother? It would only undermine the unjust power that they currently enjoy, power that, as far as I know, you did nothing to undermine or limit. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Couple things

 * 1) Kephir didn't collapse the thread against himself.  I collapsed it.
 * 2) I see you've requested the end of MewBot, but I'm not sure why. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   13:39, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * See Wiktionary talk:Votes/2014-08/Debotting MewBot for a rationale. If the rationale is not clear, let me know. I think I'll try to collect a list of incidents in the coming days. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:39, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * In the coming days, will the yellow box be gone? <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  19:19, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The orange box saying "This vote has not yet started ..." will be gone when the vote starts. The vote is scheduled to start in a week. Have you understood the rationale? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:21, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think I see what you're doing here. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  19:26, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Dated
When we use dated in the context or label templates, how do we go about dated from when? <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  02:54, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * "dated" is defined at WT:Glossary as "still in use, but generally only by older people, and considered unfashionable or superseded, particularly by younger people." If you want to indicate the time at which the term was not yet dated, I don't think you can. --Dan Polansky (talk) 05:44, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I was afraid of that <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  14:32, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think we should add a way to specify this, such as "(dated since 1960s)". --WikiTiki89 23:23, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Czecho-Slovakia
Dear Dan,
 * Česko-Slovensko (Czecho-Slovakia) was official name in Czech language in 1918-1920 and in 1938-1939.
 * Česko-Slovensko (Czecho-Slovakia) was official name in Slovak language in 1918-1920, 1938-1939 and in 1990-1992.
 * From 1990 use the new Slovak orthography the term Česko-Slovensko (Czecho-Slovakia) for all 1918-1992 period.

As for my, I made Czecho-Slovakia into a mere alternative form entry, since "Czechoslovakia" is much more common in the actual English corpus per. If you have any other concern, let me know. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:45, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

leave the uncustomary semicolons in place
I think they're pretty customary. Renard Migrant (talk) 19:19, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * In Czech entries, they are entirely uncustomary. They are customary in English entries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:20, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I see, would you consider changing to semi-colons as a standard format for Czech entries? Renard Migrant (talk) 19:28, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I would not. The format is <list-of-target-translations> abbreviated definition, and a list can be comma-separated, a fairly usual format for lists of items. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think there are multiple other languages doing it like that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:33, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think lists of synonyms (or near synonyms) should be separate with semi-colons. Commas are used for non-synonyms like "a tall, thin woman". I'm not certain, I'd need input from others on the subject. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:13, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

FYI
. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:55, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Pilcrow AKA User:Æ&Œ again. I don't hope they will ever be blocked for their personal attacks on multiple editors, including Equinox and SemperBlotto. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:58, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I’m actually hoping that eventually the administration will block you for your excessive hostility and aggression, which haven’t really changed in years and still show no signs of going away. Your work per se isn’t terrible, but your behaviour is very tiresome. I’m willing to bet that many of the editors here would agree with me, but they’re too nice to say that upfront. I am not. --Æ&#38;Œ (talk) 22:16, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't hate you or whatever but I do still wish you would express your issues with people to their faces, personally, rather than sniping behind backs like a high-school gossip. I mean, sandbox, really?! Or you could buy a punch-bag for your basement and stick faces on it. Equinox ◑ 22:23, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Nope. I’ve argued with people before, and I’ve learnt my lesson: it’s a waste of time to argue with people. You would probably just call me stubborn for being interrogative any way. --Æ&#38;Œ (talk) 22:32, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Template:cs-conj-imperfective
Special:Diff/29011687

What was wrong with that version exactly? (Other than not being discussed, which is an unspeakable crime against humanity.) — Keφr 07:08, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * One thing wrong with the version is mentioned in my edit summary: "especially avoid using f, m, n to indicate gender". In any case, it is you who has to explain what was wrong with the previous version, which you did thus : "originally I just wanted to restyle it, but this table is so monstrous I rewrote it from scratch. modeled on Template:pl-conj-ai. I hope I did not forget anything." So your explanation of what was wrong is reduced to the claim that it was "monstrous", an incomprehensible claim.
 * If you want to have a civil discussion, you should avoid inflammatory remarks such as "Other than not being discussed, which is an unspeakable crime against humanity". --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:47, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I want to have a pointful, meritious discussion, of which civility would be a quite desirable side effect. But pointfulness comes first. The attitude of "every tiniest change needs to be discussed" often gets in the way of it.
 * If you only cared about genders being abbreviated, you would have just edited the template to spell them out in full. But you reverted all of my changes, so apparently you had other concerns too (as your edit summary implies), and probably thought the idea was unsalvageably bad to begin with. I prefer to learn about all of them instead of participating in a rhetorical ping-pong of you coming up with yet another petty excuse for opposing my changes each time I respond to your objections.
 * My reasons for changing that template are as follows:
 * The old version is significantly different from other inflection templates, say ; headers are not bolded and redlinks not black because the  class is not applied. This makes it harder to distinguish table content from headers, and to focus on the former.
 * The old layout is really messy and barely readable. (Partly due to above too.) The gender/number and mood headers are all over the place, mixed with the actual verb forms, and it is hard to see which header applies to which form. I changed it to something more readable.
 * I have a plan to unify the stylingy of inflection templates across languages, getting rid of inline styles and deprecated HTML attributes on the way. I added appropriate CSS classes for that purpose.
 * The last one may be a bit controversial, I agree, but the other two I thought would be obvious to anyone with the slightest ſenſe of æsþetics, so I did not bother writing it out. Why do you even care about that template anyway? I have never seen you adding it to entries. — Keφr 11:33, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not have the attitude of "every tiniest change needs to be discussed". If you have ignored my response below, please read it now to avoid making further misrepresentations. In sum, the harder the undoing, the stricter the change process.
 * I am okay with applying inflection-table and getting rid of inline styles. But I oppose the layout changes; the layout is not "really messy and barely readable". --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * And please, when you change the template again, provide a meaningful edit summary, stating what changes you are enacting; your last edit summary was unhelpful in that regard. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:47, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * As for the need to discuss changes: the more difficult it is to revert a change, the larger the need to discuss the change or even vote on the change. Since your edit to the template does not seem to change the calling interface of the template, and since it is easily undone, discussing the template edit beforehand would have been a courtesy but not a necessity. Again, the harder the undoing, the stricter the change process. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * For the record, I have changed the unhelpful thread title. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:12, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Patrolling or patrolled edits
Patrolling is marking edits as patrolled, undoing or correcting them if necessary.

Patrolling semantics:
 * 'I think claims of correctness are far beyond the remit of "patrolled."' --Connel MacKenzie
 * 'This sort of a patrol should be an initial "sniff test"; it shouldn't be a complete review or "approval".' —scs
 * "Patrolled means it's not obvious junk, as Dvorty says." --DAVilla

Tools:
 * Lupin's popups

Patrolling statistics:
 * Most recent patrol actions, 5000 items -- badly swamped by autopatrol edits
 * Copying the contents of the page to t.txt and running the following from Windows command line enhanced by GNUWin32 yields stats per editor:
 * grep ") marked" t.txt | sed "s/.*2014 //;s/ (Talk.*//" | sort | uniq -c | sed "s/^ *//;s/ /\t/" | gsort -r -n | head -20
 * Most recent manual patrol actions, 2000 items - can be set to 5000 but takes much longer

Discussion and vote links:
 * Votes/Patrolled_edits_again (2006)
 * Originally at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#Straw_poll:_patrolled_edits_again.
 * Grease_pit_archive/2006/November -- discusses what marking an edit as patrolled means
 * Votes/pl-2008-09/Whitelisted_users_autopatrol

Miscellaneous links: --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:08, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Help:Patrolled edits
 * Most recent 5000 unpatrolled edits in last 30 days
 * Most recent patrol actions -- swamped by autopatrol edits
 * Bugzilla ticket that turned patrolling on in Wiktionary
 * Added link to manual patrol actions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:30, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

User:Renard Migrant
I don't understand why you think I'm the one more at fault here. Renard Migrant's comment was ridiculous, it was inaccurate, it was overly personal, and there was no reason to say it. He, and the related account Mglovesfun, have been making low-level digs at me for years. They need to stop, and you need to intercede with him to get him to stop. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  22:00, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Regardless of whether he was wrong (which in my opinion he wasn't, but regardless), disagreeing with you does not constitute a personal attack, especially if his point was relevant to the discussion. --WikiTiki89 22:13, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * , You think it's appropriate to make broad generalizations about what I believe, then stand by them when I say that's not what I believe? If he'd just said that the entry in question is no more appropriate than have an orange, it'd be inaccurate, but not inappropriate.  Bringing my supposed thoughts into it was inappropriate.  Maybe not a personal attack, but still inappropriate. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   22:18, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Which "supposed thoughts"? --WikiTiki89 22:59, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The part where he said "For Purplebackpack89, both 'have' and 'orange' are ambiguous". I don't believe that to be true in the sense of "have an orange", and it's mighty presumptuous of him to put words in my mouth, even if I did think that. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   23:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * You seem to use "personal attack" as a sort of universal whiny shield when anyone disagrees with you on anything. If you have a strong point, and the opposing argument is wrong, then argue with it, according to logic. Don't just hide behind "YOU SAID A MEAN THING" and then go running to teacher's talk page. You seem so proud that you will never quit or give up, but you know what, if you are actually wrong, that's not going to help anyone. Equinox ◑ 00:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstood what Renard was saying. By "For Purplebackpack89", he meant he was addressing you, not that he thinks you have that opinion. --WikiTiki89 01:13, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * , being right doesn't give you an excuse to be mean (though in this case Renard isn't even right). You and the other admins need to work on fostering a culture of civility on this project. , I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   01:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure it is, because otherwise his overall point wouldn't make sense. But you can ask him yourself. --WikiTiki89 01:39, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * If a "culture of civility" means we are forced to accept any random, wrong bullshit by any random, delusional maniac, then I'm very glad we don't have one. Love, Equinox ◑ 03:47, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Is this why Pass a Method is still allowed to edit? — Keφr 11:22, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Czech Republic
Dobrý den, z tohoto pokusu jsem pochopil Vaši logiku. Navrhuju úplně jiný postup.
 * 1) v heslu Czech Republic (politický název od Czechia) překládat "Czech Republic"
 * 2) v heslu Czechia (geografický název od Czech Republic) překládat "Czechia"
 * 3) míchat "Czech Republic" s "Czechia" je nesmysl.


 * First, please use "--~" to sign your post.
 * Second, please use English as far as you can.
 * Third, to the subject matter. I object to removal of short forms such as Tjeckien from the translation table at Czech Republic. Since the English term Czechia is rare, it is advisable to allow mapping both, say, German short forms and long forms to "Czech Republic" and allow mapping "Czech Republic" back to both long and short form. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:05, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Fourth, a search in Google Scholar for "Czechia" mostly finds articles in English, albeit by Czech authors. It seems that the Czech authors either do not realize the term "Czechia" is rare, or use it despite its rarity to promulgate its use. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:14, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Jo a ještě nezapomeňte na Czech Republike : http://zpravy.ihned.cz/c1-56333710-z-ceska-je-czech-republike-podivejte-se-na-logo-ktere-nas-ma-propagovat-v-cizine, z toho mají prdel i Rusáci: http://vkurse.ua/society/chekhiya-smenila-turisticheskiy-logotip.html A po tichém opuštění paskvilu Republike se začlo používat CzechRepublic, to je aktuální hit, tentokrát psáno dohromady: http://www.czechtourism.com

antiCapitals
Huh! I have to admit I'm really surprised that some of these (which I created a while ago) don't seem to exist. Serves me right for not checking my hyphens at the time; I think I'm better about that now, as I'm now aware of Google Books and its hyphen problems. Anyway thanks for checking them out. I don't usually approve of ex-A, anti-Y, post-Z type entries because when the hyphen is there you can usually work it out from its components; but we already have a ton, so maybe the best thing to do will be (if RFV fails) to move them to the hyphenated forms. Equinox ◑ 23:50, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * No problem. I assumed that you created these as part of the great volume work typical for you, and that an error slipped in. I support moving them to "anti-whatever", with hyphen. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:11, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Avoiding ad hominem
As a reminder to myself, here is a nice Graham hierarchy:



The levels:
 * Refuting the central point
 * Refutation
 * Counterargument
 * Contradiction
 * Responding to tone
 * Ad hominem
 * Name calling

Keywords: argument pyramid, substantive argument, attack the argument, not the person.

Links: --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:42, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
 * Paul Graham (computer programmer)

Behavior
But he kind of does have a point. It's generally considered rude to bring up ancient misdeeds. We need to foster collaborative atmosphere and give everyone a second (or third or whatever) chance because the number of editors is so low. In general remarks such as this one that discuss a person and not their edits is considered a personal attack. Thread's title is unnecessarily provocative and it escalated pretty quickly. If Zeggazo starts creating too many junk entries it should be brought up on some discussion board, and not posted on their talk page like that, because that doesn't solve the problem at all. Neither will they alter their behavior judging from the tone of their reply, nor will their behavior be subject to a wider scrutiny. Please desist from such arguments. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:18, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Response: I'll admit this: I stand by this: Further relevant observations: --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:06, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
 * My post entitled "Blockable behavior" on Zeggazo talk page was of questionable utility.
 * My response to "Polansky, for the love of God, please shut up" post made in was of questionable utility.
 * My post on the talk page of the previous user of Zeggazo about inappropriate insertion of Islam-related references to definitions and example sentences was more effective in limiting that behavior than his block for the same. Its efficacy may have depended in part on other editors chiming in, as they did.
 * The editor behind Zeggazo user was given plenty of opportunity to adjust; he should change his behavior first, and user name second. Just before he switched to Zeggazo user, his old user addend silly hypernyms, behavior which he was asked before to avoid.
 * Posting civil reservations to user pages is effective in limiting harmful behavior, as borne out by actual experience in English Wiktionary.
 * Posting civil reservations to user pages gives people chance to adapt, and to understand what someone thinks is wrong. It often proceeds without subsequent block, an unfriendly but often necessary measure.
 * We do not need to keep editors at all cost, especially those with audacious Islam-pushing edits to definitions and example sentences.
 * We should uphold the principle of personal responsibility.
 * Zeggazo's request for renaming his user posted to User talk:SemperBlotto from 28 September 2014 was rude, and was politely ignored.
 * I have been repeatedly trolled by the poster to whom I responded in, as have other editors; because of this, I may have an all-too-human tendency to respond in a sharp way when he makes a rude comment toward me, even when such a manner of response is of little utility.
 * Could you provide evidence for inappropriate insertion of Islam-related references to definitions and example sentences ? AFAICS most of their Islam-related entries are pejoratives and citations with a derogatory undertone are expected. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:36, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Evidence:, , , , . --Dan Polansky (talk) 05:52, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything wrong in those edits. You're being paranoid. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:12, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not sure your failure to see anything wrong with the edits is the sort of self-disclosure you wanted to make. Your choice. Either way, my claim that talk page posts are effective stays; these edits stopped, whether you see them as problematic or not.--Dan Polansky (talk) 08:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

An expression is idiomatic if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components
WT:CFI says "An expression is idiomatic if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components."

It's occurred to me this only applies to expressions. For example, is come in and expression? I would say no. My point about reenter being sum of parts it also wrong because it's definitely not an expression. You're quite interested in loopholes in CFI and other policy pages, what do you think of this one? Renard Migrant (talk) 12:14, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I think keep. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  17:31, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

This does not consider cases such as Atlantic salmon: its full meaning can be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components. Nonetheless, even if not idiomatic, it is included, because, very clearly, this term belongs to the English vocabulary (zoologic vocabulary). Lmaltier (talk) 17:37, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Response later: "come in" is an expression for the purpose of CFI. Changing "expression" to "term" in WT:CFI could bring better clarity, but is not urgent. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:09, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Well CFI doesn't define expression and our definition of is kind of circular (for this purpose; not in general) because it says '[a] colloquialism or idiom.' So I think I or anyone else is perfectly entitled to argue that some multi-word terms are not expressions and therefore this passage of CFI does not apply to them. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:05, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Bit of a late reply, but changing to 'term' would make things like prime deletion targets. Something like 'multi-word terms' would be so much better. I would avoid defining 'multi-word' because I think that should be open to interpretation, like some consider  a single word because of the hyphen (though I don't). Renard Migrant (talk) 11:54, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Changing to "term" would make no difference to "reenter", since the components of "reenter" are considered to be not separate enough, so my understanding anyway. I understand the word "expression" to intend to cover both single words and multi-word terms. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:05, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Search constrained to a category
Mediawiki search affords restriction of the search to a particular category. For instance, type
 * incategory:"Czech lemmas" rascal

into the search box and find this. It's not perfect, since once an entry is in a category, all its sections are subject to search, including sections for the languages you wanted to exclude from your search. But it is useful anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:43, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

What on earth
were you thinking? You were dismissing everyone's ideas in a discussion I made, calling them "rubbish". I did not mean for this to be an argument to see who wins. All I wanted was to bring up an idea and see what people had to discuss about it, but you were being very rude to not just me, but also other users participating in this discussion. No one seems to have brought this up with you yet, so I decided to do so. Please try to be more polite. Rædi Stædi Yæti {- skriv til mig -} 15:35, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * People may be wrong about things. But proposing to add a pronunciation section with a template to every lemma entry that lacks a pronunciation is the sort of idea that I only expect to come from trolls, and I think it only proper to call it "rubbish" rather than "not really a great idea". You have added rfp to non-lemma in ; you are a troll or a semi-troll. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Blocked
User:Kephir permablocked you but I lowered it to 3 months since you were indeed correct regarding the formatting of synonyms at kebule, so I can understand where you're coming from. But regardless, communication such as this is not welcome, especially after a pattern of such abusive behavior that was recently exhibited. The proper way to engage is to use entry's discussion page or an appropriate public board raising your arguments and not ad hominems. Also eliminate the usage of pejoratives describing other people's work and ideas. E.g. "I don't like it because..." not "It's crap". Otherwise you come across as an angry wiki-Grinch and nobody likes their Christmas stolen. I hope that the block gives you a time to reflect on your actions and that upon rearrival we see a much happier D.P. Cheers! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:14, 25 October 2014 (UTC) In fact, it seems like Kephir is nothing else than CodeCat's left hand who reads every wish from CodeCat's lips. It makes me ashamed of ever voting in favor of him. -- Liliana • 20:10, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * This is all very nice. User:CodeCat make an unjust edit wat at kebule. As their last comment in, they write the inflammatory "I can do this all day, Dan. Being contrary for the sake of it is not going to get Wiktionary anywhere". In the edit war, they make not a single substantive argument, just show naked power; check my edit summaries in that edit war. I get worked out about this, especially because of the previous pattern of dictatorial behavior on the part of CodeCat, and ask them on their talk page to leave Wiktionary for their dictatorial behavior in Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Just leave; no swearing, no name calling. The complete text of what I post is plain: "Please do me a favor. Leave the English Wiktionary. Forever. Your substantive contribution is not all that impressive and your rude dictatorial behavior is well over the top." Then editor Kephir, who openly declared that he is not going to abide by consensus, permablocks me. Then, Ivan Štambuk reduces the block to three months, but blocks me from posting to my talk page (an unintentional error?), check the block log. The lack of justice in this must be obvious to anyone. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:44, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * One curious part of it is that, just recently, editor Romanophile wished me death on this very talk page (later reverted by Ivan Štambuk), for which he was blocked by the very same Ivan Štambuk for one month. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Then the troll User:Ready Steady Yeti AKA User:LalalalaSta adds salt to wound by asking my user page to be deleted at Requests for deletion/Others. Then in, the troll writes 'Dan Polansky seems fishy to me. Are you guys sure that he's not a sockpuppet of another user? I mean his behavior seems somewhat familiar, I don't know why.' Incredible. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:03, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Your substantive contribution is not all that impressive - that's demeaning other people's work. Don't make content conflicts personal, and don't describe other's people's edits as more or less important. Also don't call them trolls, and don't tell them they should be blocked.
 * Just think about it - if you raised the issue of formatting synonyms at on some discussion board, others would realize you were right and CodeCat was wrong, which would make them look like a petty abuser. Instead, the focus is now on your reply to them on their user talk page.
 * As for Romanophile's post - it was a one-off fit of anger that you provoked in your unnecessarily inflammatory reply to him, where you also demeaned his work and called him a troll. It was essentially for therapeutic purposes. It's better that he writes it on some talk page than buys a gun and kills someone. BTW, if you want we can hide it from page's history.
 * Look, we can have the block lifted immediately if you promise to alter your behavior. Nobody benefits by preventing you from make valuable edits. But, if the block is lifted, and you persevere in the objected behavior, I'm afraid that the next block will be a bit longer than 3 months.
 * Ready Steady Yeti's RfD of your userpage as well as the sockpuppet comment was also an unnecessary provocation and he was warned. I'll keep an eye on them. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:14, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * For the record, I oppose lifting the block immediately. — Keφr 11:47, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I admit that "Your substantive contribution is not all that impressive" was unnecessary, probably uncivil and actually inaccurate. It was an expression of anger, resulting from powerlessness against the maniocracy.
 * You complain that I post to user talk pages about blocking, that they should be given a chance, and then block me for three months. If you intended to given me a chance, you would block me for a day; that alone would be a slap in the face. All those users to whom I have posted were given a chance, and in fact, except for Romanophile, can still edit. Romanophile is blocked for wishing me death, not because of my posting to his talk page. So this is very clear. My posting to user talk pages gives them plenty of chance. It is essentially friendly despite appearances. It does not to resort to raw power, and is open to argument (as opposed to blocking someone together with their access to their own talk page). Facts are very clear to anyone who cares to inspect. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:10, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Kephir is one whose nomination to adminship I opposed on the grounds that he openly disregards the principle of consensus. In Signatures, he revert warred to get an undiscussed putative policy in. He should not be an admin. His blocking me indefinitely while not even posting a revert warring complaint to CodeCat is a further indication that he is unfit for the role of an admin. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Due to his recent edits on his talk page, it seems like he hasn't learned anything yet. Dan Polansky, you're flaming users, and are still doing so on your own talk page. This is what you were blocked for, you do realize this right? Rædi Stædi Yæti  {- skriv til mig -} 13:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * : any apology? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:23, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Ready Steady Yeti: well, I think you owe DP one here. (Or to put in another way: give him a shining example to follow.) — Keφr 15:36, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Why should I apologize to him when he never apologized for offending me and Eirikr in that discussion? Okay, I apologize for that, but it's not like I hate you or anything DP. I look forward to seeing you after your block expiration. I said, I'm done. I'm no longer a part of this discussion. Seriously, leave me alone about it. Please mention my name no longer. This is my very last but not least reply to this discussion. Rædi Stædi Yæti  {- skriv til mig -} 16:24, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You need to 1) stop diverting blame on others and their former (mis)deeds 2) recognize where the issue lies in your communication and try to rectify it. What is "essentially friendly" to you is not necessarily so for others. I'm thick-skinned and don't care, but not everyone is. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:38, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * There may be a slight issue with my communication but there are substantive issues with editing of those to whom my less-than-hyperpolite communication is directed. CodeCat, of course, is a prime example of an editor whose actual bad deeds far exceed any possible issue with my communication. I actually consider their actions to be a form of theft, since I have to create and drive votes like Votes/2014-09/Renaming rhyme pages to return to civilized methods of government as a consequence of their non-consensual mass editing. You might like to stop picking on my communication and start looking at the substantive wrongs of the targets of that communication; substance, not style. Moreover, most of my posts to these user talk pages are reasonably polite; you would be hard pressed to find 10 diffs of really impolite communication from me, I believe. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:52, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That's it. I'm seriously staying out of this now. I don't want to get blocked myself. This discussion does not involve me any longer.
 * I tried to undo that edit before, but unfortunately, it was brought back by a user. Rædi Stædi Yæti  {- skriv til mig -} 14:50, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If you think my actions in violation of general consensus make me unfit for the admin post, then set up a vote to desysop me when your block expires. I mean it. — Keφr 15:36, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Your indef block of me is a gross violation of WT:BLOCK. If the general consensus is that I should be blocked for three months, then Mglovesfun was right when he wrote than the moon people have taken over the refuge place. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:00, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It's certainly not general consensus. A three month block totally seems out of the line to me. That one post on CodeCat's talk page certainly doesn't warrant three months, even if I were to judge objectively (which I can't because, you know, CodeCat).
 * I agree that infinite block by Kephir was excessive and uncalled for. Regarding the three-month block - it's not just because of the post at CC's talk page - it's justified by the pattern of such behavior in several other instances (see edit history and above). If you think ill of someone, namely their edits and work here you let them know it in a bit more subtle manner. I do it all the time! . You need to walk the fine line of plausible deniability with grace. At any case, the appearance of civility should be maintained. This is an international project and it's understandable that people coming from varying cultural background have different yardsticks of acceptable behavior. What is for e.g. some Dutch guy "honest and direct", for somebody else it could be perceived as rude and arrogant. But everyone can learn and adapt.
 * Blocks have a single purpose: to prevent damage to the project. They should not be seen as a form of "punishment", along the "the bigger the crime, the greater the punishment" logic. Block lengths should not be compared for similar infractions because they're all independent decisions with different contexts. That being sad, D.P. block has plenty of opportunity to be reduced if they acknowledge the issues involved and promise to make an effort to change. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:27, 26 October 2014 (UTC)


 * There needs to be a discussion at the beer parlour of this block. I'm generally in the camp that it was inappropriate considering that equally or perhaps greater attacks have been ignored.  I think Dan should be unblocked within the week, and I think we have to look into the wisdom of what he said, and probably block CodeCat for at least a week for edit-warring and start a discussion on removal of CodeCat's admin rights. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   15:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Let us investigate the hypothesis that the driving motive behind and accurate justification of the blocks made by Kephir and Mr. Štambuk was my incivility. This hypothesis is implausible: English Wiktionary is an extremely gross place, where incivility usually goes without any punishment, restriction or even a plain verbal expression of objection. A striking example of incivility is : "CodeCat's career is similar to that of Hitler before 1939. They make sweeping changes without consensus-building, have driven away Wiktionary's User:Ruakh|main Jew, but they also deliver results. I choose to continue appeasing Führer CodeCat as long as they improve Wiktionary on balance and do not invade Poland (you can dismember Polansky's Czechoslovakia, no one cares)." No disciplinary action ensued, not even a symbolic one. The quoted text is probably the grossest thing I have ever seen in English Wiktionary. It is part of repeated harassment targetted at user Ruakh by a single admin, another example of which is.

If I was not blocked for incivility, then what for?

As for Kephir, I took multiple steps to limit his autocratic behavior. I opposed his adminship nomination and enbotting of his bot for his dismissal of consensus principle, and I opposed his imposition of undiscussed policy. If Kephir were in the habit of blocking people for incivility, there would have to be other blocks for incivility he made, but these are nowhere easy to find. In fact, user Kephir has called another editor "lying illiterate troll", a nominally uncivil behavior hardly ever seen in English Wiktionary. Therefore, it is much more plausible that Kephir is blocking for reasons other than incivility.

As for Mr. Štambuk, his blatant misrepresentation was recently pointed out by me in Beer parlour/2014/October. Furthermore, I strenuously opposed Mr. Štambuk's non-consensual mass creation of definitionless entries discussed in Beer_parlour/2014/May, which he started despite failing to achieve consensus by a wide margin. The danger is very real since, in Serbo-Croatian Wiktionary, Mr. Štambuk has already created more than 100,000 definitionless entries in sh:Kategorija:Riječi_bez_definicije, and since Category:Russian entries needing definition now has over 2000 entries and was populated by Mr. Štambuk's User:StubCreationBot just recently on 19 October 2014‎. User:StubCreationBot is running without an enbotting vote, and is a gross violation of WT:BOT, performing edits that are very far from being supported by consensus. (Admittedly, WT:BOT is now probably dead and to be ignored, after the failure of Votes/2014-08/Debotting MewBot, whose research posted to Wiktionary talk:Votes/2014-08/Debotting MewBot took me many hours. The requirement that bot operators specify in advance in a vote what they will use their bot for now appears to be rather farcical given how many bot operators use their bots for entirely unrelated purposes.) Moreover, in 2009, I asked that Mr. Štambuk's incivil behavior was limited in Beer_parlour/2009/July; no limitation resulted, and he went on to call people "imbecile" there (the exact quote is "Either an imbecile or simply lying (which is more probable)"). Since Mr. Štambuk generally turns a blind eye to incivility more often than not and is himself noted for uncivil communication, other, more plausible alternative hypothesis for his reasons for blocking me must be considered.

As per above, both blocking admins stand to benefit from silencing their staunch opponent for an extended period of time. That may or may not be their reason for blocking, but it needs to be seriously considered as one plausible explanation for their blocking behavior, one that is much more plausible than the alternative offered by them.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 07:14, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Expanded a little bit. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:38, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Expanded a little bit. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:29, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Dan, Category:Russian entries needing definition were generated by Ivan by my request and they are looked after (that's important) by me and other editors. I'm thankful for this work, it makes it much easier and more enjoyable to make quality entries without worrying about lots of formatting, besides, the category is already reduced by hundreds. In fact, I'd recommend such methods (provided there are dedicated editors!) for other languages as well. I just don't have enough time and sometimes energy to fix them faster. We have other numerous definitionless entries in other languages. It doesn't matter if there people looking after those entries. Entries with any kind of problem are properly categorised and formatted. It's work in progress. Please stop discouraging people from doing great work. You've been very negative and it works against you. Hope you'll come back more positive. Cheers. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:08, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, a three-month block is too long. One month would be sufficient and would conform to other blocks I have seen for similar reasons. Also, I think Code Cat should have rollback privileges revoked, but I am not sure whether it is possible to revoke the rollback privileges of a admin without desysoping. --WikiTiki89 07:21, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but after his latest stream of consciousness I think it's just fine. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:48, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * In anything he said in this discussion, he was merely being slightly rude in trying to express his disagreement with your actions and with those of a few others. He has the right to voice his opinion, and he clearly feels strongly about this. But this does not come anywhere near a "personal attack". --WikiTiki89 08:05, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. On a slightly unrelated note, User:DPMaid, which was blocked indefinitely by Kephir, should be unblocked. The AWB semi-auto user operated by me did not engage in any communication behavior in user talk or Beer parlour, and the removal of its editing capacity grossly violates WT:BLOCK. If, for instance, I would decide to use the user to add more external links to nice Polish dictionaries, that would in no way harm Wiktionary, and unless I would use the user for actual communication with people on user talk pages or in Beer parlour, there is no risk that the user's editing would lead to the communication that is nominally objected by Mr. Štambuk and Kephir. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:40, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems we don't have any specific policy about what happens to bots when their owner is blocked. However, I do recall precedent of bots continuing to run in these cases. I will unblock User:DPMaid, but I suggest that you follow the WT:BOT policy closely and refrain from any potentially controversial edits. --WikiTiki89 08:50, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. After your unblocking, DPMaid cannot edit due to something like an IP block associated with my Dan Polansky user. Not sure if and how this can be prevented. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have removed the IP block. I think you should be able to edit with DPMaid now. --WikiTiki89 09:10, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your kind actions of justice, above all undoing two Mr. Štambuk's removals of my capacity to post to this talk page. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:38, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That issue might have been simply overlooked back then. I will argue that this is one of the cases where the precedent is mistaken. When a user is blocked, they should be blocked from using any account. Otherwise the block is not serving its purpose. I am reinstating the DPMaid block, set to expire simultaneously with Polansky's main account. — Keφr 10:55, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The nominal purpose of blocks is to prevent harm, not to punish. Since user Kephir originally issued an indef against my user Dan Polansky, the reader can judge for himself as to where user Kephir is standing on this. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:10, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

"But this does not come anywhere near a personal attack." - Yes it does, he's spreading BS about other people (which are incidentally completely unrelated to his block) and I don't need to waste my time defending my actions here. StubCreationBot's activity here and on Serbo-Croatian Wiktionary was requested by other people, and thanks to it we now have ~50 new Russian entries per day. Who literally gives a shit if some policy is followed to the letter or not. Policies are altered to follow the constantly changing common practice and not to be the ultimate laws to obey at the penalty of a block. He's just projecting that block issuing admins have personal grudges against him (I don't, so that's why he's digging up dirt on me back from 2009) in an attempt to discredit the severity of his offenses. I'm trying to help him and he just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper. I mean, we could start a vote on community blocking him if that's what you want. But after that there is no coming back. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:16, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, please start a vote on community blocking me for one month. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:20, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Community blocks are usually for infinity I'm afraid. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:23, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * As per what evidence? (For the reader, see also, and . --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * As for the above "spreading BS" which obviously means "spreading bullshit": was not my use of the words "rubbish" and "crap" part of the nominal justification of my block? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:31, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it was not the usage of those innocuous lexemes, but rather the context where you poo-pooed well-intentioned ideas of other editors just for the sake of it. You seem to keep a log of what everyone did at any point in their edit history, and use their actions as a precedent to justify your own transgressions, regardless of how irrelevant to your case they are. All of the abuse you receive in return is just the result of it. Cause and effect Polansky. And you're the cause. If you are removed from the equation, then everyone on average is a happier editor, which means more productivity and less these useless discussions. If you want to continue playing devil's advocate you need to become a more civilized contrarian by altering the emotional severity of your remarks to fit the prevailing social norms of interaction. Community is a self-correcting dynamical system, and if you're plugged out of interaction with it either willingly or unwillingly (by being blocked/ignored/shunned - fama volat), it will all be for nothing.(http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/4/9.html). It's your call. Not that I'm particularly optimistic about it after your last wall of text. Think about it. PS: I still think of many people as imbeciles, I just don't (need to) tell them anymore. They know. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:12, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * "Vote" is not the term here. What we need is a beer parlour discussion about this. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   01:57, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Re: "Community blocks are usually for infinity I'm afraid": per what evidence?
 * I request that you create a vote that will confirm my one month block. Alternatively, I ask that you create a one-day block reprimand vote like the one that Connel Mackenzie had. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:11, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see that Mr. Štambuk already answered in an edit summary of : "there is no point in starting such vote now when you're already blocked, perhaps after its expiration". I find it very likely that the current one month block is not supported by consensus. I would actually wagger real money that there is not even consensus for one day block. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:32, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If someone objected strong enough the block would've already been lifted. Connel thing was back in 2008, things have changed. Connel was also instrumental back then in maintaining lots of template/JavaScript infrastructure and bots. It would've been equivalent if you were e.g. writing Lua code like a drunken sailor, so any blocks would imperil ordinary maintenance. People need to perceive your value as high enough to gloss over behavioral abuse. Forget reciprocity and justice, those things don't exist in the real world. Your perceived worth determines tolerance threshold of others. Those are the social norms and I didn't write them. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:05, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

< I'd like to add that this user has harassed me in the past, and that I am not surprised that this user continues to do so. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 12:56, 29 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I second Razorflame's message and I would be dissapointed if the block was lifted. Zeggazo (talk) 20:05, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * , I'm disappointed that you're not blocked. Your edits bespeak sockpuppetry; they bear a similar pattern to LuciferWildCat and his socks.  They are also of low quality.  At the very least, you should probably start editing in a broader area of entries other than genitalia. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   04:59, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

User conduct discussions

 * Title was: User conduct is only hardly ever discussed in public forums; user talk pages are usually enough for that.

While you were out, Kephir harassed me. He removed comments I made on another editor's talk page. When I called him out on that on his talk page; he deleted my comment as vandalism. When I pointed out that my comment wasn't vandalism. Since that, he has made a number of tendentious edits that I took issue with; each time I called it out, he deleted my talk page comments. Now what in the blazes am I supposed to do when somebody does something like that if I can't use BP or some other community noticeboard? <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  02:00, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I guess you are writing this in reference to my post in Beer parlour. To discuss user conduct, one should be able to use Beer parlour if nothing else helps, IMHO; other editors may differ. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:07, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the idea of Courthouse was to get those kind of discussions off BP and into a different forum... <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  14:07, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

RFDO discussion: October 2014
Shouldn't we delete this page as a user page of an indefinitely blocked user? Or am I just mistaken? Rædi Stædi Yæti {- skriv til mig -} 15:43, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep: Let's see if the indef block holds first. I am of the opinion that Kephir's unilateral indef block was hideously unnecessary and should be immediately undone. <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89   15:54, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep, the block has been reduced to 3 months. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:22, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

The block was lowered by User:Ivan Štambuk to three months, to which I think I can agree. Since the reason for this nomination is no longer valid, I declare this discussion moot. (I will note though, that we have not been very strict about this rule anyway; some of the latest Wonderfool sockpuppets' pages have stayed, for one.) — Keφr 16:25, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Combinations of Latin clitics
Keywords: Latin clitics, fasque, satisne, -que, -ne. Should be keep or delete, include or exclude, combinations of Latin clitics with word forms? For a discussion, see Talk:fasque and Talk:satisne (now WT:RFV). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:34, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Kephir
FWIW, Kephir collapsed the discussion after you re-opened it. That's many different kinds of inappropriate, ranging from the fact that he collapsed a discussion about himself, to the fact that he edit-warred with you and I, to the fact that "drama-mongering" isn't an appropriate summary. Just thought I'd let you know I'm collecting diffs for his removal as a sysop at User:Purplebackpack89/Wiktionary:Votes/2014-12/De-sysoping Kephir. It's blatantly clear that Kephir's desire to get me off this project is getting in the way of him being an appropriate admin and a civil contributor. I can't talk to him about it, because he deletes everything I post on his page (another improper use of the mop, IMO). <font face="Verdana"><font color="#3A003A">Pur <font color="#800080">ple <font color="#991C99">back <font color="#CC33CC">pack <font color="FFBB00">89  23:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)