Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2014/May

Proposal: Simple Template for Categorization
As has been noted many times, using to categorize often leads to strange things like common names for plants being labeled with (botany) even though botanists are the ones least likely to use them.

Why don't we create a template called "cat" to make topical categories that takes two positional parameters: the language code and the category name (maybe additional parameters would be additional cat names), with maybe a named parameter for the script.

Aside from the really obvious and intuitive name, that would have the advantage of not having to type. People would be able to categorize without cluttering the definition line, and context abuse would be reduced.

Thoughts? Chuck Entz (talk) 16:39, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I like this idea, but I think the template should be named or similar. --WikiTiki89 16:47, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * We already have and .  16:51, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * But those are even longer to type. --WikiTiki89 16:52, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * We can rename them or make redirects. I was just pointing out that we have templates already, in case anyone decides they want to make something. 17:00, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * So do you think we should redirect (and perhaps also ) to ? --WikiTiki89 17:03, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I like the idea. Any short name would do, at least for a redirect, but "cat" seems very appealing. DCDuring TALK 21:29, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "cat" is too vague, it doesn't have anything apparent to do with topical categories specifically. would probably be most fitting (plural because it can take multiple names), and it's still shorter than typing the categories out manually.  22:01, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, apparently I already created that... 22:02, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That'll do fine. DCDuring TALK 22:10, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What about just ? DTLHS (talk) 22:19, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note also the existence of template:categ (which must be substed and works for all sorts of language-specific categories, not only topical categories). &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 06:06, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * …and which doesn't seem to work any longer. (?!) &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 06:10, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Categorize German compounds by components
Does anybody support adding Haushaltgerat to the categories Category:German words compounded with Haus, Category:German words compounded with halten and Category:German words compounded with Gerat? Does anybody support adding abtun to the category Category:German words compounded with tun? Or should the words "compounded with" be replaced with "derived from"? I'm aware that it would create many new categories. --kc_kennylau (talk) 04:09, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * First of all, I think you meant Haushaltsgerät. More importantly, your naming scheme is based on a misunderstanding: when you say "compounded with x", you're really saying "added to x", not "containing x": Haushaltsgerät would only be in Category:German words compounded with Haus if there were a compound such as "*Haushausaltsgerät". Chuck Entz (talk) 04:27, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought it's so it should be in Category:German words compounded with Haushalt and Category:German words compounded with Gerät? If "compounded with" isn't the phrase to be used, then can you suggest one? I'm not a native English speaker. --kc_kennylau (talk) 04:34, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * A better naming scheme would be Category:German compounds containing Haus, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea: It's so easy to form compounds in German that we should avoid even the possibility of encouraging the creation of SOP entries for the purpose of filling out categories. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Even English compounds aren't organized by the words they contain; Category:English compound words has subcats for the type of compound, but not for the terms used in compounding. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:43, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * But English doesn't have as many compounds as German. See . --kc_kennylau (talk) 16:14, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Abtun is definitely not a compound, it is a trennbares Verb. Compound (Zusammensetzung) infers syntactic comparability, whereas a trennbares Verb is built by means of a præfix. The latter case is comparable to English phrasal verbs in structure. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I oppose creation of these or similar categories. Haushaltsgerät can be placed to Derived terms section of Haushalt and Gerät. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:02, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Why do you oppose? 19:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I generally oppose creation of a huge number of rather small categories that are intended to supplant the direct content of Derived terms sections. There was a similar discussion before: Template_talk:derv. I am not sure I can articulate why I dislike having hugely many small categories; at least as a matter of taste, I just don't like it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:31, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I concur with Dan Polansky and æqually oppose the creation of numerous superfluous categories, in virtue of the applicability of the derived terms section. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Requests for moves, mergers and splits/Unresolved requests/2011
Although I was involved in this discussion, I do not see how it can objectively be read other than as expressing a consensus to merge Category:English nouns ending in "-ism" into Category:English words suffixed with -ism. Does anyone disagree with this reading of consensus? If not, I will begin to implement this merge within the next few days (or, of course, anyone else who wants to can beat me to it). bd2412 T 18:45, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hearing no objection, done. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:35, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I just realized that I used the wrong AWB edit summary for the entire run, but, oh well. bd2412 T 02:07, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Template:sense changes
Ignoring the lack of consensus exhibited in the major discussion of at WT:Beer_parlour/2013/April, CodeCat has, without bothering to try to build a consensus, simply imposed her favorite change. That change was not even the most favored one at the discussion. The change shows a lack of awareness of the nature of the problem.

The change is unsatisfactory in the numerous cases where uses a label rather than a gloss.

The template now yields results like for.

Some technical effort that went into allowing users to customize the appearance was wasted as the problem is not user preferences as much as it is variation in the nature of the content of as it is now used. Until some consensus on a good design for this is reached, could this simply be reverted? DCDuring TALK 13:26, 21 May 2014 (UTC)


 * CodeCat's change was made in good faith, but I agree with DCDuring that it yields undesirable results. The output produced by  was already entirely clear and, in addition to being unsatisfactory for use with labels, CodeCat's change adds needless verbiage to every single gloss.  Glosses should be as brief as possible.  The change should be undone. -- · (talk) 06:15, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It wasn’t entirely clear. People would often change the glosses of in antonym sections to match the meaning of the antonym. — Ungoliant (falai) 14:56, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've noticed anons doing that relatively often. Equinox ◑ 22:31, 23 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The CodeCat's change should be undone, at least since it is not supported by consensus and is actually opposed. No consensus => status quo ante. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:10, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't actually have any problem with it being undone. What gets me though is that people are undoing it for the sake of it, not giving any reason. Wikipedia explicitly forbids "I don't like it" arguments, and I think the same should apply on Wiktionary. There should be reasons, and those reasons should be scrutinised. I've seen Dan do this particularly often (just voting "oppose" with no further rationale), but it's a general tendency that others have as well. It goes against the whole process of consensus building if everyone justifies things based purely on personal preference. Consensus can only be formed if everyone understands and accepts the motivation of changes, despite personal preferences to the contrary. Remember that consensus and "liking" are very different things, Wikipedia makes this abundantly clear, and I don't see why Wiktionary needs to have its own distinct definition of what consensus is about. 19:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Re: "people are undoing it for the sake of it, not giving any reason": Except that they're starting discussions wherein they give their reasons. And that you're replying to. While claiming that they don't exist. —Ruakh TALK 22:09, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, DCDuring only came here after he undid the change without any kind of explanation about why. That screams "I just don't like it" to me. And Dan still hasn't given any motivation for preferring the original version either. 22:15, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I absolutely detest this continental pseudo-rationalism, requiring people to give reasons for their preferences in spite of the preferences being most often empirical givens, while the alegged reasons for them are quite often invented implausible falsities. But if you want to have a "reason", I dislike your change since it makes something that was nicely short needlessly long. Why is long bad? I don't know. In any case, I object to the idea that my dislike of a change not supported by consensus is not good enough if it does not come supplied with a reason. I reserve my right to oppose a change while giving no reason whatsoever; if there actually is a consensus for the change, I should easily get outvoted. That said, by cursory browsing votes, you will see how many votes come with no reasoning at all, and how often my votes--in a proper voting process that deserves that I give it some though, where my giving something a thought is my use of my scarce resource--come equipped with a summary of a reason. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:26, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. When the change was made there was no established consensus that I was aware of, in either direction. It only became apparent that there was no consensus afterwards when there was a revert followed by this discussion. So it doesn't seem fair to complain that I acted against consensus. Advance consensus isn't needed to make edits; the assumption on any wiki is that making changes in good faith is ok, and the edits or discussions that follow are what establishes consensus or lack of it. So I don't see anything being done wrong here, and I don't fault DCDuring either since he did the most reasonable thing in face of a conflict. You on the other hand are coming down on me very heavyhandedly and seem more concerned with "dealing with" me, than with the issue DCDuring presented regarding . 22:38, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * When DCDuring reverted you in, that was enough evidence of lack of consensus. You reverted him in . Why don't you just undo your change to status quo ante bellum? Please do so now, since there is no consensus for your change, and I oppose your change since (a) I don't like the change, and since (b) the change is not supported by consensus of other editors. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * On Wikipedia, from what I've seen, it's quite common for unexplained reverts or other changes to be undone. Also, in consensus building on Wikipedia, votes aren't counted, but the arguments are. I've seen votes pass despite a majority opposing, based on the strength of the arguments. Since I consider that a good way of forming and determining consensus, I followed that line here too. I motivated my change, DCDuring didn't, so based on that I considered my argument stronger and reinstated the edit. A single unexplained revert does not demonstrate a lack of consensus, it just means that one editor felt like reverting for some undetermined reason, which leaves me free to reinstate the edit for equally undetermined reasons. Consensus only follows once there is a discussion of arguments for or against the change. Reinstating may not have been the best course of action, but that's what happened and why. 22:53, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Since I oppose the change and since I even stated a reason for you (the change makes the result of the template too long), please stop the "you have given no reason" game, and revert to status quo ante. --Dan Polansky (talk) 23:01, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Re: "I've seen Dan do this particularly often": Diffs please. If I do it quote often, I figure you should have no difficulty finding 7 such diffs. Furthermore, liking is important; you cannot reduce all decisions to objective reasoning. On yet another note, it is you that perform countless illegal bot runs with no justification or reasoning at all, since many of them are run without even a notice at Beer parlour. Here is an example of your "reasoning" (although the link to those horrible liquid threads where one cannot find anything probably does not quite work): A guy asked why did you delete so many categories? And you answered "They seemed kind of pointless to me, like categorising for the sake of categorising." Your pretense that you are somehow providing objective reasoning that justifies your actions is a delusion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)


 * With respect to Dan's behavior, I know of few editors more reasonable and circumspect than Dan Polansky, and it was distinctly unhelpful for CodeCat to steer her remarks into an ad hominem attack on Dan. That's sure not how one conducts a consensus-building exercise. -- · (talk) 22:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Let's just say we differ on that point, then. 22:38, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What reason do your have for differing on that point? --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:45, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * My past experiences with you. 22:53, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you have any objective evidence to support your experience with me, such as diffs? Am I right to suppose that any past experience with me are on-wiki, and thus diff for that exists? --Dan Polansky (talk) 23:01, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The message above is just an example. The evidence doesn't need to be objective because it's subjective by nature. I just don't like how you've treated me in the past and present on Wiktionary. Especially not the personal attacks I've had to endure from you. I'm not going to give diffs, but I recall that several people were absolutely disgusted by it. I also received a private email from another well known and respected active sysop with similar complaints about you, from which I quote: "He [Dan] evidently hates you as well, and I think you've got to acknowledge him as an annoyance but not a real threat to your immense value to the community." So I can at least rest assured that my dislike of you is not a personal grudge, but a grievance shared by others as well. And I'm going to leave this discussion at that as I don't think anything I could still contribute to it would be productive in any way. 23:14, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you agree that you have provided no evidence to support your claim that I often oppose with providing no reasoning? Would you agree that talk about personal attacks is off-topic for the purpose of the claim under investigation, viz. that I often oppose without any reasoning? --Dan Polansky (talk) 23:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Per this discussion, I've now reverted. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 08:27, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that the label without "Of the sense" seems to cause contributors confusion, most conspicuously when applied under the Antonyms header. Are the benefits of avoiding the confusion worth the cost in extra verbiage in all the applications where no confusion is apparent? Is there an alternative way to reduce confusion, at least with regard to use under the Antonyms header? DCDuring TALK 13:24, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * My preference is the creation of a new template with the extra verbiage to be used only in antonym sections. But the extra verbiage in every was not so bad considering it fixed a major problem no one else was willing to fix. — Ungoliant (falai) 18:53, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The only drawback to having different wording for the Antonyms header (whether an option in, eg, ant=1, or a separate template) is the loss of consistency. I wouldn't object to implementation of such a change. If it turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt, the option could be disabled or the separate template could be redirected to . DCDuring TALK 19:59, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I oppose creating a separate template for antonyms. I acknowledge the existence of the problem of anons sometimes misunderstanding the purpose of the output of the template, but the problem is not serious enough to warrant adding extra wording. I disagree that the fix under discussion was one of a "major problem" (I quote); the problem is quite minor indeed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Breaking news from Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster has announced the addition of 150 new words - all of which Wiktionary has already had in its compendium for years. Point. Laugh. Yawn. Shuffle off to find a sandwich. bd2412 T 19:41, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It would be cool if we could trace down the actual earliest cites they mention. For example, they say that goes back to 1934; it would be great if we could actually find the 1934 cite and add it. (Also, "find a sandwich"? Just lying around in the kitchen or something? Ew. I'd make a fresh one.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Merging some of the category boilerplate templates
I managed to make a few changes to these templates and it's now technically feasible to merge many of these into a single template. It concerns the following: Merging wouldn't really change much in the way the templates are used. The main difference would be that you could no longer leave the second parameter empty for root categories. So you'd have to type "parts of speech" and "etymologies" and such explicitly. But that shouldn't be a major drawback I think. The process of merging wouldn't be too difficult, mainly a matter of moving all the current subtemplates to become subtemplates of the new merged template. It's mostly work intensive and time consuming but not really error prone. There might be some errors appearing during the move process, though?

We would need to think of a new name for the merged template. I don't really have any immediate suggestions, but I would prefer something resembling. That is, something ending in a space followed by "cat", rather than ending in "catboiler" with no space. We could adopt this name scheme for templates more widely too if there's support for it.

I have also been working on a Lua replacement for these templates, but that's a much larger task and I haven't worked it all out yet. In the meantime, I think this would be a welcome simplification for editors, as it means less template names to remember. 00:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
 * If no one has better suggestions, I think I will merge them all into for now. It's the largest and most widely used of the templates, and we already call categories named in this way (language name + category name) as "POS categories" in Module:labels/data, so it kind of fits with that, even if it's not the best name.  17:49, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Done. See WT:NFE for more information. 14:39, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

New L3 for Chinese
User:Wyang suggests to introduce a new L3 header (at least for single-character) entries - ===Definitions===. Please take a look at this version of, the Chinese section.

It does make sense in complicated cases, when a character has a variety of senses and uses and not all can be easily fit into usual notion of parts of speech. With some effort, perhaps considerable and the result may still be imperfect, it may be possible to split the current definitions into several PoS headers. However, it may be easier to allow this header, similar to the way "translingual" sections were - no PoS, just basic meanings. Thoughts? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 07:02, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I support for all languages, because WT:FEED has often shown us that newbies have trouble finding our definitions. But I don't know any reason Chinese entries should be different from others. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 05:30, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Support getting rid of all POS headings. DTLHS (talk) 06:09, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Potentially ditto, though I'd like to see a specific proposal. Simply replacing all POS headers with ===Definitions=== is not necessarily the best approach. (I note that msh210's proposal does not actually involve getting rid of POS headings; it would just nest them under ===Definitions===.) —Ruakh TALK 06:13, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I think my ideal layout would be something like User:DTLHS/export- basically group as many things as possible with their respective definitions (synonyms, translations, etc), put the part of speech information preceding the definition, make the definitions larger and first on the page. DTLHS (talk) 06:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * And obviously if there is only 1 etymology you could do away with the Homograph header, and if there are synonyms or antonyms that cannot be mapped to a specific sense they can get their own header as well. DTLHS (talk) 06:42, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. How would quotations and example sentences look? —Ruakh TALK 07:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Quite right (Ruakh, 06:13, 25 May 2014 (UTC))! I did not propose being rid of all POS headers. My "I support", above, was for the general idea of a Definitions header as implemented with "it may be possible to split the current definitions into several PoS headers" and not for the other details. Sorry for any confusion. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 08:20, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I don't think we should do away with parts of speech for all senses just because a few may be hard to classify. I think it would make entries considerably messier and harder to look over and understand. We do have at least one catch-all POS header, for things that don't fit any other part of speech: ===Particle===. Whether or not to have a Definitions header in conjunction with POS headers, as msh's page proposes, is a separate question. - -sche (discuss) 05:43, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I oppose this, at least for now. For one thing, changing the current heading structure specifically for Chinese and not for other languages has not been justified in the proposal. The proposal uses the difficulty of assigning a part of speech as a rationale, but I think that is a truly poor one; no case of such a difficulty has beeing mentioned in the proposal. The best rationale that I can think of is that it would make it easier to find all definitions at one place. However, it would be a sharp deviation from the previous dictionary pratice, at least for English dictionaries; the entry would no longer be structured by words. Yes, that is the point of the current manner structuring, to separate by headings what are different words. On an another note, 個 currently breaks WT:ELE. Ideally, you should now update the entry to align it with WT:ELE and create an example for discussion in your user space. I fear such an update is not going to happen; for the record, I find this manner of procedure fundamentally uncivil. Let me emphasize that the discussed proposal is to get rid of part of speech headings rather than only to introduce Definitions heading; when the section heading says "New L3 for Chinese", that is very misleading, to me anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:39, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

My ideal format is the one linked to by User:DTLHS. This discussion is proposing that the L3 header "Definitions" be allowed for analytic languages, in which the SoPness of a sense is given an undue amount of emphasis under the current guidelines (i.e. as L3 headers themselves!). The dictionary senses of a Chinese word in other dictionaries are not divided into the SoPs the belongs to before they get divided into senses, but directly by the senses the word has. The issue of fragmenting senses as a consequence of the SoP header constraints becomes more prominent in the case of Chinese characters, as one character may have tens or even hundreds of senses.

For example, 一 ("one") has at least tens of senses. Instead of the current format:

Numeral

 * 1) one

Noun

 * 1) one

Adjective

 * 1) first
 * 2) single

Adverb

 * 1) one by one

Determiner

 * 1) some

Verb

 * 1) to unify

Conjunction

 * 1) as soon as, once ...

, it would be more logical to show it as:

Definitions

 * 1) (num./n.) one
 * 2) (adj.) first
 * 3) (n.) piece, item, part
 * 4) (adv.) one by one
 * 5) (adj.) single
 * 6) (adj.) same, identical
 * 7) (n.) unity, alliance
 * 8) (v.) to unite, to combine
 * 9) (adv.) once
 * 10) (det.) some, several
 * 11) (det.) all, every
 * 12) (n./v.) start, beginning; to start to, to begin to
 * 1) (n.) unity, alliance
 * 2) (v.) to unite, to combine
 * 3) (adv.) once
 * 4) (det.) some, several
 * 5) (det.) all, every
 * 6) (n./v.) start, beginning; to start to, to begin to
 * 1) (det.) some, several
 * 2) (det.) all, every
 * 3) (n./v.) start, beginning; to start to, to begin to
 * 1) (n./v.) start, beginning; to start to, to begin to
 * 1) (n./v.) start, beginning; to start to, to begin to

. The headword templates (previously, "inflection-line templates") for analytic languages are unnecessary templates, as they do not add any real value to the entry. WT:Templates shows that the intended genuine rationale for the sense division by SoP in the L3 headers (and hence, the formulation of WT:ELE) is to account for differently inflected senses - a Eurocentric stance which has not taken non-inflecting languages into account at all. Wyang (talk) 09:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The format of User:DTLHS/export still structures the entry by different etymologies even if stopping to structure it by different part of speech. Is there a Chinese entry with multiple etymologies? If so, which one is it? How do you propose to format a Chinese entry that has multiple etymologies?
 * The idea that what you propose is "more logical" (I am quoting) is implausible; it has no bearing to logic AKA study of correct inference at all. What you propose gives, I admit, an interesting and quite neat presentation of information; "neat" is not "logical".
 * By "SoPness of a sense" you probably mean "PoS of a sense" AKA "part of speech of a sense".
 * You want to allow a different format for what you called analytic languages, but you would probably realize that English is often considered an analytic language (low-inflected language) as well. In Wiktionary, English does not have inflection tables. The neatness (or lack of it) of presentation in what you propose applies to English as well. For highly inflected languages, to format them on the model of what you are proposing, the headword line would no longer contain inflection information and there would be a separate section "===Inflection===" (probably after "===Definitions===", on the same level) in which inflection tables per part of speech would be given, so there really is no Chinese-specific consideration that I can see; the neatness (or lack of it) of your proposal applies to Chinese no less than to English, German and Finnish, as far as I can see.
 * Re: "The issue of fragmenting senses as a consequence of the SoP header constraints becomes more prominent in the case of Chinese characters, as one character may have tens or even hundreds of senses.": I don't follow this at all. Why does the multitude of senses make the fragmenting into PoS sections more prominent? I think the contrary: in an English entry with 4 etymology sections and only couple of senses per etymology, the separation of definitions by the section headings is often quite annoying, to me anyway. However, to solve this, the structuring by both etymology and part-of-speech would have to be removed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Words with multiple etymologies would be split by etymology first, each etymology having its own substructure (pronunciation, definitions). The issue of multiple etymologies is less of an issue for Chinese, as one character typically represents one etymology, and mono- and mulisyllabic homophones are usually represented by heterographs.
 * By logical I mean the formatting ignores the unnecessary (for analytic languages) split-by-PoS-first-then-by-sense guideline. The definition information is kept centralised and users are less likely to be distracted by PoS headers and "inflection-line" templates.
 * English is definitely not analytic (enough). For instance, reducing the level of inflection information in English headword templates to nil, by setting those templates to, would result in a loss of information, whereas doing the same for Chinese headword templates would not.
 * The fragmentation is more prominent when there is a multitude of senses, because (as said above) it discentralises the information in a way originally devised for inflecting languages, and distracts users with the SoP information by overemphasising them. My proposal (at least originally) does not cover inflecting languages like English, as the headword templates are still not of null importance and the split of senses by SoP is at least somewhat justified. Wyang (talk) 10:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I will again point to my argument above about inflected languages like German or Finnish and how they would be treated under your scheme: there would be an ===Inflection=== section showing the inflection in inflection tables; the same thing could be done for English. Therefore, I still do not see the thing that differentiates Chinese from, say, German for the purpose of the presentation that you propose; the lack of inflected forms in Chinese is not the sought differentiator, since, as I pointed out, inflection info can be separated into a dedicated section. I repeat that the split of senses by part of speech is no more justified in German than in Chinese; it come down to whether one wants to group senses by part of speech, and prominently so. Furthermore, dictionaries that split senses by part of speech often do not present any inflection information; their reason for the split is that they consider part of speech important; an example is Century 1911 (triggs.djvu.org/century-dictionary.com), which does not supply their "paper" entry with "papers", "papered" and the like. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:06, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I know what differentiates Chinese from German and English, at least believing what you posted above: if Chinese hardly ever has multiple etymologies, removing the part-of-speech structure without removing the etymology structure provides much larger benefit for Chinese, leading to definitions all being found in one place for Chinese, unseparated by headings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:13, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Instances of dictionaries splitting the senses by SoP first and not showing the inflected forms do not disprove the proposition that the fundamental rationale for such practice is to account for differently inflected forms, especially when the inflection paradigms are mostly regular as in the case of English. I agree that the headword templates for inflecting languages could potentially be made redundant through your method of localisation, but I would imagine that at least some people working with inflecting languages would object to nullification of headword templates for their languages, since the templates, as imitations of the practice in most dictionaries, typically serve to identify some key forms in the paradigm (eg. Haus). Such objection would not exist for Chinese, since the inflection-line templates are truly of no value. It makes more sense there to deemphasise the PoS information by demoting PoS from the header and inflection-line template level to the individual line level. Wyang (talk) 00:33, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I am still undecided about PoS for Chinese. I have always thought they were useful and I got used to using them when creating Chinese entries. Sometimes it's a challenge to decide, which part of speech a Chinese term belongs too or they can simultaneously belong to several PoS, like this one 裡頭 (inside) - noun, verb, adjective. The choice is almost random indeed. Some linguist will say they are all nouns, some will say they are postpositions but in fact, it doesn't really matter much, they just have this common idea of "inside" and the role is assigned depending on the context. I don't think we should get rid of PoS headers for Chinese altogether, it's probably Wyang's idea. Definitely not for other languages. However, the valid points he has provided should be given consideration. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 07:16, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Another big example of an entry without PoS headers (L4 header Definitions) is this version of . Yes, it looks neat and is simpler but it's still non-standard (at the moment). I might agree to get rid of PoS headers (for Chinese only), if you insist so. Thank you for adding the definitions. You still need to get the agreement of the rest of the community, though and other Chinese editors. It might violate some rules, e.g. is Definitions header allowed? I don't know. Will this methods be embraced by other editors? What about other languages with similar grammar. It's important to consider these things, too. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 06:59, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This policy was a mistake, apparently unsupported by consensus and shouldn't actually be used. Why not have "definition" for every word in all languages or for multicharacter entries? Because parts of speech are useful.


 * I would have understood the original programme where POS were listed in a more convenient way for Chinese, but making things lazy (by nixing the POS headers) makes people lazy. I haven't run across any Chinese entries the POS are listed as in the original example. — LlywelynII  00:31, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Media Viewer
Greetings, my apologies for writing in English.

I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.

Thank you for your time. - Keegan (WMF) 21:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!


 * You are forgiven for using this awful language. — Keφr 06:46, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Language of entries marked with Template:no entry (formerly "only in")
Currently most of the pages which use this template have no language section at all. I think this is a mistake because it's certainly possible for a word to be unattested in one language but attested in another. And even if the word is not attested in any languages, the use of language headers would still allow users (and editors) to verify which languages this applies to. For example, if an English term is marked as not having any entry, but there is no German section on the page, then that would simply mean that we haven't gotten around to adding an entry for it yet. On the other hand, if there were a German entry with a "no entry" template, then that would be a positive confirmation that it's not attested. So I think we should add language headers to all of these pages. 22:57, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. The template has a lang parameter which suggests it should be used in language sections anyway. — Ungoliant (falai) 23:06, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * There's currently a list of all cases of which lack a language parameter at Category:Language code missing/no entry. There are over 2000 of them right now. These may coincide with the entries lacking language headers, but they don't necessarily correspond exactly.  23:25, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * They may not correspond exactly, but if you ever want to add headers by bot from WhatLinksHere, they're the ones you would want to get out of the way first.Chuck Entz (talk) 00:26, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I've done most of them by bot, and some others by hand. There are 8 entries left that I don't know what to do with. I can't even click on them, for starters. Can anyone try? 22:19, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Here they are with links: ­|1, 2, ͏|3, ܏|4 ,​|5 ,‌|6 ,‍|7 ,﻿|8 DTLHS (talk) 22:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * And if you ask me they should be deleted (the control characters at least). DTLHS (talk) 22:29, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The second one is translingual (I've labelled it accordingly). - -sche (discuss) 22:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for template protect
Can I request that the template Template:User committed identity be protected with full protection. This would be because it is a high-risk template and has the potential to be vandalized to surpass the security that it creates. It has already been protected on the English Wikipedia and the next logical step would be to protect it on Wiktionary as well. I don't think the code will change soon since I just updated it to the latest code on WP. Thanks, Negative24 (talk) 14:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Not such a huge deal. Even if the template is vandalised, the hash can still be read from the user page's markup. And I think our RC patrol should catch that rather quickly. — Keφr 17:17, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * True, I just thought it might be good to do if the template would be shown on a high number of user pages. Negative24 (talk) 17:37, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Context tags for impolite terms
What should be the tag used for こいつ? --kc_kennylau (talk) 15:59, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The closest I can find is "pejorative". You can add various words in the context/label but whether it adds to categories is controlled by Module:labels/data. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 09:37, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What about "vulgar"? - -sche (discuss) 22:23, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

CJK ideographs composition indication
Should we use ⿰亻肥 as suggested in 俷 or ⿲亻月巴 as suggested in ⿲ to describe the character 俷? --kc_kennylau (talk) 07:47, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That was not a description but an alternative form. It's used, because of the limitation of the input.--Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've changed the example. --kc_kennylau (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the category of ⿰ says that it's for description. --kc_kennylau (talk) 01:00, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Pregenerating entries
What does the community think about pregenerating a huge number of entries for various languages, to eliminate all of the unnecessary typing waste? For example, for Ukrainian I have 116k nouns of the form:

Mass creation of definitionless entries
For those who have not notices, a proposal to create definitionless entries en masse is being dicussed at thread. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:35, 1 June 2014 (UTC)