User talk:Sgconlaw

Template:en-conj-simple
I thought it was agreed not to add English conjugation templates to verbs except to highlight archaic forms. Yet I see you added en-conj-simple to verbs like retract without any archaic forms. Do you mind if I remove them all? Benwing2 (talk) 06:16, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * : Note that and  exist. J3133 (talk) 07:10, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Fine, but those forms need to be added and cited in such a case. You can't just slap a useless conjugation table on every verb and expect someone else to add the archaic forms. IMO they can all be removed, and readded later as needed. Benwing2 (talk) 07:14, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I actually think even with such archaic forms, we should usually not have conjugation tables, particularly if they are predictable (as they are in this case). Benwing2 (talk) 07:16, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * this was back in September 2021; I cannot recall what happened then. Usually I check if archaic forms exist at Google Books, the Internet Archive, etc., exist before adding a conjugation table. It is possible that I checked, but did not have time to add quotations to the entry which has sometimes been the case. I don't agree about the predictability point, though. If we have entries for the archaic forms, then using a conjugation table seems like the best way to link them to the lemma since we don't put them in . — Sgconlaw (talk) 08:45, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I am willing to keep the tables as long as they are used to include archaic forms, but otherwise IMO they should be removed. Benwing2 (talk) 09:06, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * don’t forget that (now ) was updated so that the default behaviour changed from always displaying archaic forms (which is what I only use the table for), to only displaying archaic forms if 1 is added. Following this change, I actually requested on your user talk page that you do a bot run on entries to add 1 to conjugation tables in entries that have archaic forms, but there was a discussion (at the Grease Pit?) about the operation of  so no bot run has been done yet. I don’t know if there was a conclusive outcome to the discussion. Let me try to dig it up. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:05, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * the discussions were at:
 * Template talk:en-conj.
 * User talk:Benwing2.
 * User talk:Benwing2.
 * Grease pit/2022/October.
 * — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:56, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Template:RQ:Gilbert and Sullivan Mikado
Hi. I tried to add act=2 to the quote at girlish, but that info doesn't show up. Most annoying. Can you fiddle with the template to allow this? Van Man Fan (talk) 09:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

What are your rules for using the ' and ’ characters?
Sometimes you switch between them in the same quotation or even in the same sentence. It doesn’t seem to correlate with the original quote either. I would have assumed that ‘ ’ is for ‘quotations’ and ' is an apostrophe. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:07, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * There was a discussion about this but no consensus to use one or the other exclusively. In general I use the non-curly apostrophe or single quotation mark (') and double quotation mark (") in quoted text because it is difficult for some editors to produce the curly marks. I only use the curly versions (‘’ and “”) where, for Wikitext reasons, using non-curly marks would create issues (for example, I would use curly marks in this situation: ‘apostrophe’ ). For consistency, I then use curly marks throughout that particular quoted text. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems reasonable, but did you have different rules at one point? For example (in ):
 * It seems arbitrary here. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * oh, you mean in the imprint information rather than the quotation? I think this is because curly quotation marks are hard-coded into our quotation and reference templates, so it makes sense to follow that usage in chapters and titles. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:42, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * oh, you mean in the imprint information rather than the quotation? I think this is because curly quotation marks are hard-coded into our quotation and reference templates, so it makes sense to follow that usage in chapters and titles. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:42, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

How do you find quotations?
I notice that you often add a lot of Early Modern English quotations. Is there a way to quickly search through all of the RQ works to quickly collect quotations? On the Internet Archive and Google Books, using date filtering produces a lot of garbage for the most part. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:28, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm interested too! I just do refined searches on Google, Internet Archive, and similar. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:13, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I have a subscription to OED Online so I have a look at the quotations listed in the entries there. As these are generally quotations from old works, they can also be seen in the first edition of the OED (known as the New English Dictionary): see the links at . — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:37, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I do also conduct searches using Google Books and the HathiTrust Digital Library using date filtering (for example, 1500–1799 and 1800–1899). However, as you have probably found, the dating of the works on these websites is sometimes inaccurate. Also, as the OCR is sometimes inaccurate, you sometimes have to try replacing long esses (ſ) with f to see if anything pops up, like this: " ". It's harder to do a date-filtered search using the Internet Archive, but sometimes I will rearrange the search results by date of publication and then look through the earliest dates. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:43, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Template:col3 and relatives
These templates make orange links of any term that is not in the language indicated by parameter 1. Many of the derived terms sections I work on have both Translingual and English terms in them. All the terms in one or the other, but usually in Translingual (outside ), will necessarily show up as orange, instead of blue, indicating that there is no L2 section in the language required, ie, usually Translingual. The "orange" preference is set by a gadget that provides as follows: "Colors links with a language name as anchor if there is no entry for that language on the page linked to." (I can't actually make sense of these words.) DCDuring (talk) 19:20, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You should be able to get round that by using a manual link template for those terms within the column template. Perhaps we should update it so that it’s a bit more straightforward to do it, though, as this issue has come up elsewhere. Theknightwho (talk) 19:27, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I see. This is rather inconvenient for any editor who does not use (or indeed did not know of the existence) of this gadget; from what I could see, all the blue links stayed blue and all the red links stayed red. Seems like we need a better solution for column templates, then. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:31, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Sgconlaw @DCDuring It’s possible to specify other things in the column template with syntax like this: . We could have  . This would be a good solution for Chinese entries with non-Mandarin derived terms, too. Pinging @Wpi31 @Justinrleung @Benwing2 @Erutuon. Theknightwho (talk) 19:36, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Could I do that now or are coding changes needed? DCDuring (talk) 19:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @DCDuring At the moment, you’d need to put . This becomes more relevant when dealing with large numbers of terms, as it’s a lot less efficient to process a bunch of link templates inside the column one. Angle brackets don’t have that problem. Theknightwho (talk) 19:49, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Then why don't we not use that family of template when there are translingual entries in the table, until there is a better solution. It is the large tables where the editing becomes a PITA. It should be easy to tell which tables as they should be within parentheses. In any event they are mostly terms involving organisms. DCDuring (talk) 23:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * AFAIT, the big "advantage" of the "col" family of templates is alphabetization of unalphabetized input. This makes apparent duplicates, a good thing. Unfortunately, it make tedious the task of weeding them out. The other advantage is a smaller number of keystrokes, mostly by eliminating typing of connected with or . But this forces Translingual entries to show orange. For tables in English and Translingual L2 sections simply using straight wikitext is simpler with no bad consequences for viewers or editors. DCDuring (talk) 19:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I can add the  syntax. I was also planning on adding   to make converting zh-der easier, and the code that processes these modifiers is straightforward and easy to extend in any case. Benwing2 (talk) 20:30, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Benwing2 Thanks. I think it would make sense to add the language name as a label before the term, except in the case of . That would be very handy for the Chinese lists.
 * In terms of sorting, I guess it should keep using the primary language. Theknightwho (talk) 20:36, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * As to sorting, yes, the primary language, which should be the language of the L2 section, at least in the cases I am familiar with.
 * Where could I see the proposed syntax in operation in some existing use? DCDuring (talk) 21:14, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

By the way, do our column templates treat terms with no markup and terms marked up with, , or  the same for alphabetization purposes? Seems like they should. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * @Sgconlaw Yes. Theknightwho (talk) 22:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * ah, excellent! — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

DNA
Tbh I find it really untidy that so many sections have columns and then one doesn't just because it "doesn't have enough terms". Also, the thing is with col-auto is it's also based on the screen size, so it's better for readers. Vininn126 (talk) 22:14, 31 March 2023 (UTC)


 * if only there was a way to have the best of both worlds. I still think it’s awkward to have different numbers of columns in adjacent tables. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:31, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So maybe we set the columns for that related terms sections. The sudden random list is an eyesore Vininn126 (talk) 22:36, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, then. Maybe make then all three-column tables since there are so few terms in the last table. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

T:R:Century 1911
The new version had way too much clutter and required too much effort to find the link to the actual word as opposed to the name of dictionary editor etc. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

RQ templates for newspapers
Asking you because you create a lot of RQ templates—do you think it would be useful to create RQ templates for major newspapers? As a test, I've created and a few others to gather people's opinions. You would be able to do  which saves quite a few characters by automatically filling in several fields. We could even make it more sophisticated by have it fill in the  field based on the article's date. Ultimately, the goal is to standardize all of our quotation formats to allow for a more consistent and polished feel to the website and to make it easier to create nice quotations. What do you think? Ioaxxere (talk) 02:48, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I guess it should be OK. I didn’t create such templates previously because editors have to specify pretty much all the information including the URL (unlike books, where this can be built into the template and editors can just provide the page number), so it’s only a slight benefit over just using directly. But there are benefits like providing a newspaper’s ISSN and editors, so why not? — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:28, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I removed the "online" bit from the names. Concisenes...
 * yes, that makes sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:51, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That wasn't me. I'm still not sure that an online resource and a physical newspaper should be quoted the same (for example, in the case of an article or blog post only published online). Ioaxxere (talk) 13:56, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh. Basically I have not been distinguishing between them, because a lot of what is on the website also appears in print, and that is the case for other newspapers like The Guardian. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:00, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

edition edition
Hi. Between Benwing, you, and I (did two already), we can probably clean up these instances of edition edition Ñobody Elz (talk) 07:42, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

page page
As above, these ones Ñobody Elz (talk) 07:44, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I suggest you make a request on Benwing2's talk page for a bot run. Sounds easy enough. — Sgconlaw (talk) 08:18, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Ñobody Elz (talk) 08:19, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Images in WOTD
I don't remember ever seeing an image (except for a color swatch) in a WOTD. Is that policy, preference, accident? DCDuring (talk) 23:39, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * do you mean in the actual WOTD on the Main Page? I recall someone suggested it in the past but there wasn’t much enthusiasm for it. I personally don’t mind. Maybe bring it up at the Beer Parlour? — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:45, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There are some amusing vernacular names of organisms, made more amusing by the appearance of the organisms. I'll try BP. DCDuring (talk) 13:45, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * go for it! You have my support. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:11, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Greyish Worm unwanted redirects
I found the following RQ: templates created by Wonderfool under the name Greyish Worm. Most of them should be deleted; let me know which ones and I'll run my rename script.

(change visibility) 16:08, November 23, 2022 diff hist +53‎  N Template:RQ:Orwell 1984 ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation November 13, 2022 (change visibility) 04:19, November 13, 2022 diff hist +45‎  N Template:RQ:Robertson Charles V ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Robertson Charles 5 current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation November 9, 2022 (change visibility) 19:23, November 9, 2022 diff hist +71‎  N Template:RQ:Brimson Art of Fart ‎ Created page with "" thank Tag: no-documentation November 1, 2022 (change visibility) 20:17, November 1, 2022 diff hist +41‎  N Template:RQ:Scott Fair Maid of Perth ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Scott Fair Maid thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation October 25, 2022 (change visibility) 04:27, October 25, 2022 diff hist +156‎  N Template:RQ:Williams Velveteen Rabbit ‎ Created page with "  " thank October 19, 2022 (change visibility) 15:58, October 19, 2022 diff hist +54‎  N Template:RQ:Irving Tales from the Alhambra ‎ GreyishWorm moved page Template:RQ:Irving Tales from the Alhambra to Template:RQ:Irving Tales of the Alhambra current thank Tag: New redirect October 12, 2022 (change visibility) 09:46, October 12, 2022 diff hist +439‎  N Template:RQ:Fry Liar ‎ Created page with "  " thank October 8, 2022 (change visibility) 14:40, October 8, 2022 diff hist +43‎  N Template:RQ:Lewis Babbitt Main Street ‎ This'll eventually get cleared up current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation October 4, 2022 (change visibility) 05:28, October 4, 2022 diff hist +158‎  N Template:RQ:King Mist ‎ Created page with "" thank Tag: no-documentation September 28, 2022 (change visibility) 03:18, September 28, 2022 diff hist +43‎  N Template:RQ:Twain Life on the Mississippi ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Twain Mississippi current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation (change visibility) 03:18, September 28, 2022 diff hist +46‎  N Template:RQ:Tennyson In Memoriam A.H.H ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Tennyson In Memoriam current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation (change visibility) 03:16, September 28, 2022 diff hist +58‎  N Template:RQ:Hardy Far From the Madding Crowd ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation (change visibility) 03:14, September 28, 2022 diff hist +45‎  N Template:RQ:Byron Childe Harolde ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Byron Childe Harold current thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation (change visibility) 03:14, September 28, 2022 diff hist +29‎  N Template:RQ:Darwin The Descent of Man ‎ Created page with "" thank Tag: no-documentation (change visibility) 03:10, September 28, 2022 diff hist +44‎  N Template:RQ:Spenser Mother Hubberd's Tale ‎ Redirected page to Template:RQ:Spenser Complaints thank Tags: New redirect no-documentation>

Benwing2 (talk) 10:45, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, . I went through the above list, and I think the following redirects can be replaced:
 * can be retained as a shortcut. I manually replaced and deleted some of the redirects that only had a few uses. The rest of the templates seem OK; I'll tidy them up. — Sgconlaw (talk) 02:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * can be retained as a shortcut. I manually replaced and deleted some of the redirects that only had a few uses. The rest of the templates seem OK; I'll tidy them up. — Sgconlaw (talk) 02:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * can be retained as a shortcut. I manually replaced and deleted some of the redirects that only had a few uses. The rest of the templates seem OK; I'll tidy them up. — Sgconlaw (talk) 02:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

quote-* changes
I made a bunch of changes to the Module:quote and hence to the quote-* templates: For #4, we need to be more careful in the use and propagation of pageref; you'll see several places where I fixed issues that were leading to both page and pages being specified. I would actually like to talk to you about eliminating pageref in most cases; it's a simple matter to extract the first page number from a range like 238–239 and use it in place of manually specifying it. How often does it occur that the page in pageref is not and cannot be specified as the first page of the range? Benwing2 (talk) 07:31, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) All params that can take foreign text (including less obvious ones like page/volume/line/etc.) can be prefixed by a language code and followed by inline modifiers to specify a translation, transliteration, transcription and script code. You can see some examples in User:Benwing2/test-quote. When a language code is specified, script detection and tagging is done per the allowed scripts of that language, to ensure that text in a foreign script is correctly displayed. Even without a language code, script detection and tagging is still done unless the text contains HTML (which may indicate it was already processed using lang) or is ASCII-only; this uses   in Module:scripts, which has listings of character ranges and associated scripts and looks up the text in these ranges.
 * 2) Numeric param handling is harmonized. All of pages, columns, lines, issues and volumes now work the same way. E.g. for pages, page and pages are synonyms and whether to say   or   is autodetected based on whether there's a hyphen, en-dash, em-dash or similar page number separator. This should fix a lot of issues: people routinely put single page numbers in pages and ranges in page. There's also page_plain, which is analogous to volume_plain and can be used if the autodetection is wrong. Finally, there's pageurl for a URL. Issues, lines, etc. work the same, e.g. issue and issues are synonyms and there's also issue_plain and issueurl.
 * 3) Arbitrary numbers of authors are supported, not just 5. BTW I am going to implement author splitting so you can put all the authors in the author param, separated by semicolons (ideally) or commas. See the existing BP discussion about this involving User:DCDuring (there's also a discussion about this on User talk:JeffDoozan).
 * 4) The code is stricter in checking for things that shouldn't happen, e.g. specifying both page and pages or both editor and editors. This will necessitate fixing a bunch of existing issues. Eventually I hope to implement full parameter checking so that misspelled parameters lead to an error. (There are over 2,000 current cases of quote-* templates with misspelled or unrecognized params.)


 * thanks. Regarding pageref, I would imagine that it is quite frequent that the webpage to be linked to is not the first page of the range, so I don't think the parameter can be eliminated entirely. (Though perhaps it can be made to default to the first page? I don't know if this is a good idea.) Essentially it needs to be used when a quotation spans two pages to indicate which page the highlighted term appears on, and this could either be the first or second page of the range. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:55, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I see, this makes sense, thanks. Benwing2 (talk) 18:21, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

PMID vs. PMCID
Hi. I am trying to clean up unrecognized params and several journal articles have a pmcid param. I looked this up and it seems all PubMed articles have a PMID number, and some in addition have a PMCID number (which is different). You can always look up an article by PMID, so the PMCID is superfluous. Do you mind me removing it wherever it occurs? I'd like to avoid having unrecognized params so eventually we can implement param checking. Benwing2 (talk) 08:09, 5 August 2023 (UTC)


 * sure, that seems fine to me. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:02, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Template:RQ:Dekker Dramatic Works
Hello. As you are the main contributor to Template:RQ:Dekker Dramatic Works, I'd like to tell you about a problem with the template that I wasn't able to fix. Showing up on murrain, the years aren't in bold, while first performance; published is in bold. Pious Eterino (talk) 17:32, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * This is because I made a change in the handling of years, so if there's already boldface, it doesn't boldface the year. In this template you're using boldface in a strange way. You could fix this by simply boldfacing the years rather than trying to work around the no-longer-happening boldface, if that makes sense. Benwing2 (talk) 19:28, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry Ben, not sure if your message was aimed at Sgconlaw or at me. I must admit the message doesn't make sense to me, but I've never ventured into templates before! Pious Eterino (talk) 20:26, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * ah. A number of quotation templates use wikitext in the year field to modify the boldface based on how it used to work before your changed it. For example, in, the year is coded as " " to produce the output "1599 (first performance; published 1600)​". I don't know how the boldface coding now works in the version of "Module:quote" you have updated, but I suppose all such quotation templates will now need to be updated. ( for your information.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:38, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll check all the English quotation templates and fix them as needed. Basically, it just checks for  in the year and doesn't add boldface around the year in that case. I think this is cleaner than always adding it and requiring template coders to do hacks like what RQ:Dekker Dramatic Works does. Benwing2 (talk) 01:41, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
 * BTW I have added support for,   and   to all year and date params (e.g. origyear, year_published). Benwing2 (talk) 02:39, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, I have converted all the English quotation templates appropriately; it took a few hours. In general all the use of Unicode zero-width spaces went away. Let me know if there are any non-English ones to beware of, or if you see any remaining issues with boldfacing in dates in quotation templates. Benwing2 (talk) 05:06, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks! — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

ISBN10 vs. ISBN13
Hi, what's the difference between the two, and if both are present, which one is preferred? Several quotes have both an isbn (13-digit) and an isbn10 (10-digit), or sometimes both an isbn (10-digit) and an isbn13 (13 digit). Benwing2 (talk) 02:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
 * ISBNs were originally ten digits long, then from 2007 they converted them to 13-digit ones. I believe the standard is now to use 13-digit ISBNs. A ten-digit ISBN can be converted to a 13-digit one beginning with "978", and vice versa. I usually use https://www.loc.gov/programs/preassigned-control-number/isbn-converter/. As the "978" numbers have started to run out, ISBNs beginning with "979" have started to be issued. These cannot be converted to ten-digit ISBNs. — Sgconlaw (talk) 03:23, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

year_translated
While cleaning up unrecognized quote params, I've encountered various uses of year_translated. How should this be handled? For example:

which gives

I know about specifying the translator as the author and using original and by, but that doesn't allow you to include the original text, and it seems a lot of rewriting just to include the year translated. Should we add support for this? Benwing2 (talk) 01:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose the need to specify both the year of publication of a work and of its translation would arise only in non-English entries. I think in situations like this the second set of parameters should be used, like this:
 * In that case, year_translated should be renamed year2. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:30, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * In that case, year_translated should be renamed year2. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:30, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

running column in a newspaper
Another question concerns this:

Here we have a regular op-ed column called The Conscience of a Liberal. How do we fit this in? Benwing2 (talk) 03:11, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * BTW I have found at least three other such instances, all using the site param. Benwing2 (talk) 03:12, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I usually just add the name of the column to the title of the article, like this: The conscience of a liberal: The monetary debate: Enter Chewbacca. — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:44, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. I wonder if we could support this more formally somehow using a separate param (in general, think of the quote-* templates as expressing the semantics of the bibliographic info; so it's better to have a way of expressing things like this using separate params, than jamming everything together). Only issue is what to call the column or series: both column and series are already in use for different things. Maybe article_series, on the theory that series really expresses the series that the journal itself is part of? Benwing2 (talk) 07:06, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess I have no objections. Yes, I suppose article_series is a suitable name, though this will need to be explained in the documentation. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:43, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I implemented this. The parameter in Module:quote is called chapter_series and has a corresponding chapter_seriesvolume param. These are renamed to title_series and title_seriesvolume in quote-journal, since it generally uses title to refer to an article and maps it to the underlying chapter param. An example:
 * which generates
 * At first I put the title_series value in parens after the chapter, preceded by in, something like this:
 * But maybe it looks better the current way. What do you think? Benwing2 (talk) 06:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * At first I put the title_series value in parens after the chapter, preceded by in, something like this:
 * But maybe it looks better the current way. What do you think? Benwing2 (talk) 06:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * But maybe it looks better the current way. What do you think? Benwing2 (talk) 06:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

newspaper agency/source
I have found several quote templates with an agency or source param trying to indicate the syndicate (e.g. AP, UPI, Reuters, AFP, Catholic News Agency, Dow Jones Newswires) that produced the newspaper article, e.g.

and

Note in this one also the use of via to indicate the website where the article is archived. I deleted Google Books wherever it occurred on the theory that this info isn't terribly relevant and is available in the URL; maybe I should do the same here.

How should this be handled? Do we need an extra param to quote-journal for this? Benwing2 (talk) 06:34, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * hmmm. I'd suggest as follows:
 * If the article is directly from the news agency's website, then use and specify the news agency as the website name.
 * If the article is reproduced on another website (for example, one published by a newspaper) and does not have a named author, the news agency can be stated as the author. If the article does have a named author, perhaps then indicate ,.
 * — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:50, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Here also maybe we should support an agency or news_source param, so we can format it correctly. Benwing2 (talk) 07:08, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * sure. Perhaps agency is clearer than news_source. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:43, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

stanza #
How should we handle stanza numbers? E.g.

In the following, I use issue_plain (which is now supported) for this; maybe there's a better way:

which displays like this:

Thoughts?

Benwing2 (talk) 06:38, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I have been using stanza 22 for this. — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:42, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I see, the output looks like this which is the same:


 * Thanks again. Benwing2 (talk) 06:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks again. Benwing2 (talk) 06:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

one more ... how to handle comments in a website?
Sorry to keep bothering you with these questions. One more question concerns comments on a website. Here is an example:

The sentiment expressed here is pretty repugnant but it does illustrate the word in question. It comes from this URL https://www.firstshowing.net/2008/another-new-trailer-for-taken-with-liam-neeson/, from comment 32 by author "anti-zionist". How should this be reformatted to express this? Maybe using format? Benwing2 (talk) 06:50, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * or maybe comments section? — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that I just added support for chapter_number and chapter_plain (plus section_number and section_plain), which can be specified in conjunction with chapter and section, so you could write comments section along with comment 32 and it will display something like "comments section (comment 32)". I use this functionality now in quote-song to support track, time and at displayed in parens directly after the song title (which is stored into the underlying chapter argument, so the track/time/at values are stored into chapter_plain). Benwing2 (talk) 07:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. I hope I remember all this! — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:43, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I will document it. I'm planning on writing some code to make it easier to avoid duplication in the documentation for quote-*. Benwing2 (talk) 18:30, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

platform= or aggregator=
Hi, one more thing I'm thinking of supporting is an aggregator or platform param for things like YouTube, Issuu, Newspapers.com, Magzter and the like, as in the following, where it's specified using the via param:

This is similar to the network param of quote-av. I was originally thinking of using the name aggregator. However, Wikipedia refers to Issuu as an "electronic publishing platform", YouTube as a "social media platform" and Magzter as a "digital newsstand" (which in turn is defined as a "digital distribution platform"), so maybe platform is better, although it seems potentially more ambiguous than "aggregator". In particular, quote-video game already uses platform for a different purpose (a "computing platform"), although since quote-video game is barely used, we could easily rename this param to something else. What do you think? Benwing2 (talk) 21:49, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * yeah, platform is probably better. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:42, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I will rename platform in quote-video game to system (other possibilities are architecture or compute_platform, but both are long). Benwing2 (talk) 01:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I have implemented source generically for the source of content (which is called newsagency in quote-journal) and platform for the platform that content is published via. Example using both:

which produces

I'm not completely sure about the wording ("sourced from" and "via"). Note that if you specify both year_published/date_published and platform, it omits the comma between them, e.g.:

which produces

Thoughts? Benwing2 (talk) 03:00, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

quoted_in=, by=/original= vs. newversion=
Can quotes using quoted_in always be replaced by newversion and the second set of params? If so should they in general? Likewise with by and original. It is confusing to have multiple ways of doing something, and should be documented better. For example, I am trying to clean up the following:

Here, there is an article "Mosul in 1909" in Middle Eastern Studies, 1971, volume 7 number 2, which contains an introduction by Elie Khadouri[e], quoting a dispatch (despatch No. 4, January 28, 1909, "Notes on the City of Mosul", by H. E. Wilkie Young, in F.O. 195/2308), containing the text in question. Complex cases like this are often confused; in this case for example I have no idea what the Narratives of Identity: The Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of England is doing, maybe it's bad copypasta from some other template. An additional issue here is that the original text is a dispatch (maybe using quote-book?) but it's quoted in a journal article. How should this be fixed? Benwing2 (talk) 06:01, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * BTW I came up with this:
 * which produces
 * which produces


 * I don't know whether this is the best possible way. Benwing2 (talk) 06:08, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Note, this uses chapter_plain, which is the "plain" equivalent of chapter_number (cf. volume vs. volume_plain), which is used to add a chapter number to a named chapter. Benwing2 (talk) 06:14, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

documentation
I wrote a module to generate documentation for quote-* templates, to avoid having to copy changes to the doc pages for all 12 of them. You can see the output so far in the quote-book documentation. Let me know what you think. In particular, I split the parameters into groups; maybe it would make more sense to merge all the groups into a single table, with gray headers at the top of each group, so that the columns are all the same width. 06:24, 15 August 2023 (UTC) Benwing2 (talk) 06:24, 15 August 2023 (UTC)


 * New output now used for quote-journal. Benwing2 (talk) 07:48, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English
There are a lot of interesting terms from Singlish documented on your website that are missing from Wiktionary. Would you be interested in releasing it under a free license? Ioaxxere (talk) 19:35, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Updating quotations
Don't forget to update the appropriate Wiktionary:Quotations/Templates sub-pages when you do ( hint, hint ). Chuck Entz (talk) 20:10, 7 October 2023 (UTC)


 * oh yeah, not sure why I keep forgetting! — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:11, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Template:RQ:Walliams Ratburger
Can you recreate this? Denazz (talk) 09:16, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Template:RQ:London Lost Face
Needs SG attention Fond of sanddunes (talk) 22:37, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

wampum and template and italics
Hello! You reverted my edit here:. That's fine, and I understand it, but it suggests that there is a problem with the template, and perhaps we should get the wiki programmers onto it, to fix it. My edit should have been fine, and your reverted version (while it looks visually better) lacks in semantics. If you want to be the perfect gentleman, you could raise it at WT:GP. Equinox ◑ 22:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Ugh, looking at your three edits since, I can't tell whether you fixed it or buried it. Like the 1990s Web designer trying to comprehend the shadow DOM. Re: RFD: yes, I am a bad attitude, and yes, sometimes I should step back (even if I'm right). Doing so. Cheers. Once my best friend was a Singaporean but she died. Equinox ◑ 05:19, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll raise the template issue at the Grease Pit, or just drop a message on the template talk page for our in-house experts. Sorry to hear about your friend. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:27, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

urls added following RQ templates
There are many instances of urls being added following various RQ templates, which causes a link to the url appear on a separate line (ie, templates have a newline). It looks particularly grotesque when it follows the antiquarian bibliographic details. Is it due to there being no appropriate parameter in the templates, to users giving up on finding such a parameter, to users being unaware of the newline and not looking at what they've done or looking and thinking it's someone else's job to put the url they found into its right home, or to some other cause? It might be possible to devise a filter to prevent new instances, but that filter would also make editing other aspects of entries with the defect more annoying.

How can these defects be cleaned up, you might ask? I suppose you would need to add a url parameter to each template and document it. I am reasonably sure that one could find entries with the defect fairly easily using regex searches, from the search box for quantifying the problem and via dump-processing if the problem is as common as I think it might be. DCDuring (talk) 16:18, 27 December 2023 (UTC)


 * could you provide an example of the issue you are highlighting? I haven't come across this. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:29, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I noticed it twice on walk (defs. 15 and 17). DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

RFM
Re, did one of the archivings not go through (I did find out that it's still not possible to archive multiple discussions to the same talk page in one edit...) , or did you think one of the discussions should be continued and not closed? Or did you just misclick? I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me, where I almost click "rollback" while trying to click one of the other links that's right next to it... :o - -sche (discuss) 08:55, 28 December 2023 (UTC)


 * hmmm, that must have been a slip of the finger. I certainly didn’t look at this discussion at all. — Sgconlaw (talk) 08:58, 28 December 2023 (UTC)


 * It happens to the best of us! - -sche (discuss) 09:00, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry from Word
@Word0000 has just made an edit on the exact same entry @Word0151 was edit warring on while he is blocked. 178.120.53.119 15:06, 29 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, what entry or entries are those? — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:15, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * दर्ज 178.120.53.119 15:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * is there sufficient evidence of sockpuppetry by Word0151? On the other hand, 178.120.53.119, I don't speak Hindi and am not able to assess the correctness of the edits made. Perhaps can help as they have recently edited this entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:22, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I do think so. The second account was created when he got blocked, he's editing the same entries, he doesn't even take 10 minutes to revert me on both accounts, so same editing patterns, both accounts have the same name, only the digits change. Even if we assume he's right, he shouldn't game the system. 178.120.53.119 15:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/User_talk:178.120.71.47 I don't think Surjection can help, he is biased against me as you can see on the link above. Plus his Babel only has Finnish and English, not Hindi. 178.120.53.119 15:34, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * All right, I have permanently blocked Word0000. If the sockpuppetry is confirmed, I will also mass-delete all contributions. If not, the user can be unblocked. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:10, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Sgconlaw Could I perhaps suggest an increased ban length, instead of mass deletion? It's quite extreme, and (at least on Discord) they seem sorry for it. Theknightwho (talk) 16:39, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. I will take advice from on this, as he needs to confirm the sockpuppetry anyway. Mass deletion is certainly a deterrent, but if administrators feel the edits are not problematic (I can't tell as I don't know Hindi), I am not averse to allowing them to stand. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:44, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There are two issues: one is sockpuppetry, which is pretty clear. I'm not going to run a check on the account to confirm the obvious. The other issue is a content dispute and edit war. The unasked question is why an IP in Belarus is edit-warring with a native speaker of Hindi over their own native language. They made a point about Surjection's Babel, but they have no Babel at all, and if they did, the numbers would probably be inflated. This IP is also known for similar behavior in Chinese entries (ask ), and they edit a number of other languages in various other parts of the world. Yes, they've obviously studied the dictionaries and the grammars, but when it comes to usage in languages other than one's own, book knowledge isn't enough. In one of the disputes, they actually justified removal of content by saying they checked two dictionaries and didn't see it in either one- but Hindi is a multifaceted modern language with a wealth of usage that doesn't always make it into the dictionaries. Surjection is aware of this, so it probably played a part in their blocking the IP first (the IP's argument about adhering to 3RR is inapplicable- that's a Wikipedia policy). I'm not going to weigh in on the merits of the content dispute- I hope Hindi editors will, instead. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for confirming the sockpuppetry point. I guess we'll leave the Hindi entries issue to be resolved by editors active in that language. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Chuck Entz My bad, I thought the policy applied here too since I couldn't find a Wiktionary-specific policy. What is the policy here then, only two reverts allowed? I don't like breaking rules without knowing. 178.120.53.119 20:22, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Chuck Entz How many reverts until it's considered edit warring? 178.120.53.119 22:42, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Labels
How is this different from any of the other labels? I wish you'd given me a heads up before making this change so that dozens of pages weren't abruptly ripped out of their categories. Now I'm going to have to find them all again. Vergencescattered (talk) 00:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)


 * the relevant guideline is "Context labels". These labels are intended to show that particular terms are used in specific contexts. For example, a term that is used by ornithologists would be labelled . (Note also that it isn't appropriate to put names of birds under this label. The label is for terms used in ornithology, not for any term related to birds in some way). In general, labels are not used to simply group related terms together. Thus, we do not have labels like "bird" or "insect". Instead, if it is thought appropriate to add a term to a category, this is done by specifying the category at the end of the entry, like this: "Category:en:Columbids" or "". Where lifeforms are concerned, we try to place them into specific categories (like "Columbids") rather than dropping them into the parent category (like "Birds").
 * That being said, there appears to be some consensus that it is appropriate to have certain set-type labels. For example, will display "(music)" and place terms relating to musical instruments into "Category:en:Musical instruments". However, it is good practice to start a discussion at the Beer Parlour before creating more labels of this type. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:21, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Star Wars and terms derived from Star Wars
What is the rationale for your changes? I don't agree with. PUC – 19:41, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Word of the day/Archive/3001/January
I'm proud of you. Denazz (talk) 00:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Emblem-cool.svg — Sgconlaw (talk) 03:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)