Wiktionary:Grease pit/2011/December

= December 2011 =

A little problem with the one-line Perl dumper
As some of you may know, I have earlier created a free ePub/mobi (Kindle) English - English dictionary based on Wiktionary and CIDE (i.e. Webster's 1913 Unabridged with some additions). There's also now a Wiktionary only edition. Links to these are on my web page http://personal.inet.fi/koti/korhoj/.

I think there's a little problem in the Perl script that creates the dump file http://toolserver.org/~enwikt/definitions/enwikt-defs-latest-en.tsv.gz. Namely there are some entries that have spanning HTML comments and these aren't recognized. As a result, the dump has some dangling comment end tags. Such as in end of "Chelsea	Proper noun	# A type of porcelain once manufactured there." The comment continues in the next line like this: "A football club based there.  Football clubs don't belong in Wiktionary" (click Edit to see it).

I couldn't think of an easy way to fix this and am not good in Perl anyway. Currently I just remove those entries which I can't convert to well-formed XHTML.

Korhoj 08:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Tagalog and Indonesian
I am doing a comparative study of the vocabulary of Indonesian and Tagalog, two closely related languages. If I look up the Indonesian word pulih, the Wiktionary entry will say "Compare Tagalog puti" and if I look up the word bawang there will be entries for both Indonesian and Tagalog. Is there any way I can pull out all the Wiktionary entries which gives comparisons for both languages and entries for both languages, please?

 category=Tagalog nouns category=Indonesian nouns namespace=0 count=100 mode=none order=ascending 
 * The following code shows words that are both Tagalog and Indonesian nouns. You could modify it to find other parts of speech. SemperBlotto 08:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

 category=Tagalog nouns category=Indonesian nouns namespace=0 count=100 mode=none order=ascending 

Protect against users without autopatrolling permission
The current protection options for pages aren't really sufficient in some areas. Sysop protection seems too much in many cases and prevents many users from making useful contributions and fixes, but autoconfirm protection takes away our ability to keep a check on who is trustworthy enough to be allowed to make edits. It would be nice if there were an additional block option which allows editing as soon as the user is an autopatroller. Could this be added? —CodeCat 21:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If I understand correctly, the software only supports two protection levels, "semi-protected" (editable by users with the autoconfirmed access right) and "protected" (editable by users with the protect access right, which also confers access to protect/unprotect/modify-protection-of a page). So I don't think we can add a new protection level in between. However, I think it is possible to change things so that members of the "Autoconfirmed users" group don't actually have the autoconfirmed access right; we'd have to file a Bugzilla ticket to make the request. —Ruakh TALK 21:55, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Purely out of curiosity, has there been a spate of vandalism by people who are auto-confirmed? I will also make the requisite statement concerning our desire to have as much of the project editable by as many people as possible yada yada yada. -  21:03, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:fro-decl-adj
The box doesn't need to be full width. I've looked into making it less, say 50%, but I can't work out how. Is it possible to just have it fit the width of the content of the table? Thank you, Mglovesfun (talk) 17:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I used the CSS display:inline-block; but it doesn't work in IE7 (surprise). &mdash;Internoob 04:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've rolled this out into a few other templates. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

WOTD RSS feed
When there is more than one definition in the WOTD, as there commonly is, the RSS feed shows only the first one, and when it has a term with a link inside it, it doesn't display anything. &mdash;Internoob 04:32, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Is that true whether the link uses msh210℠ (talk) 18:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've not tried but  breaks it too. &mdash;Internoob 00:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll get back to you on that on December 19. &mdash;Internoob 02:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * also breaks it. Anything with a link. &mdash;Internoob 20:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * So I guess delinking and putting the most interesting definition first work unless/until this can be fixed. Whose RSS feed is that, anyway? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 18:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's Connel's. Here's the Toolserver page. &mdash;Internoob 19:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But Conrad (I assume Irwin) is listed on that page as author. I've posted a note to his talkpage here. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 00:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The WOTD RSS feed appears to be stuck on February 17: ultracrepidarian. Is anyone else seeing this? Apologies if this is not the correct method/place to comment on this.

Some PREFS not working
In Wiktionary:Per-browser preferences, I have "Replace text in deletion log comment" checked - but it is not working. Is this related to the nasty look of the current site? SemperBlotto 08:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. It was a bug in TabbedLanguages from the Mediawiki 1.18 upgrade. It's fixed now. --Yair rand 09:10, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Having preloadable templates?
I am a very occasional user at Wiktionary, though do contribute widely through WMF. I find it difficult to quickly add simple entries, or to add citations due to not having ready ability to quickly insert data in the right format. In the end, it is easier to add nothing rather than try to struggle through when I come across old words from my efforts at Wikisource. I wonder whether your community had considered the use of Editnotice to preload templates/text. Here I am thinking of an example like how Commons uses their Creator template into their Creator namespace. If something could be preloaded into the right format for Citations, or for new words, so it is all preset I know that I would find it really useful. Even it was all within html comments, and I unblock the needed bits. — billinghurst  sDrewth  03:08, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Yair rand/newentrywiz.js is linked to whenever you search for a term which doesn't exist. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:24, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That may be the case, it often isn't how I am arriving when I am building at Wikisource to link through archaic words. I probably go straight for the entry though a trial &#91;&#91;wikt:|]] style link.  Would there be a means to get that javascript to be built into the editnotice component? Alternatively, could some of that be gadgetised as an alternative?  Also for when trying to link from the word back to the presented word in the work at WS, it would be useful to have an easier citation schema. (&hellip; yes, I know that it is my laziness in a time-scarce world) — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You could add the following to your Special:MyPage/common.js:


 * To display whatever you want for copy and paste just below the terms of service summary when you edit a page. What you have here is the code for but you can just change it. &mdash;Internoob 03:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Lost the alpha-bar
I seem to have lost the "alpha-bar" (can't remember what it's really called &mdash; the JavaScript thing that loads after the main entry and shows you the previous and next few entries, like "Abba - abbey - abbeys - abduct - abducted"). I think this happened when the new visual layout appeared (the aforementioned Godawful boxes). Are the two things incompatible? Equinox ◑ 22:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I dunno what happened in December, but the alpha-bar is back. Hurrah! Equinox ◑ 22:58, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

gracility
The 'hide quote' function isn't working. Have tried clearing my caché, which suggests it is server side, not my computer. I use Firefox and have disabled the current admin-only trial. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Works on my side. -- Liliana • 17:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah it's working now, weird! Mglovesfun (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * That's probably because cite-book has been replaced by quote-book. SemperBlotto 17:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I seem to think with cite-book you have to use prefix=#*. Don't ask me why this is, it seems to be a clever feature to make the template more difficult to use. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The whole prefix= thing was an attempt, on the part of various editors, to make quotation templates work both on entry pages (where citations are nested under a definition) and on citations pages (where they are not). There's a much simpler and better way to do that, which I've implemented at various templates as I've come across them, and I've now fixed to use said better way, but plenty of templates still use the <tt>prefix=</tt> approach. (Better yet, IMO, would be to get rid of these templates altogether — they're more trouble than they're worth — but I suppose that some editors must feel differently, or else they wouldn't keep using them.) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 19:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * is preferable in a number of respects. It recognizes more parameters (including "editor", "location" and "publisher"). Also, if you don't end your parameters with a page number,  will print the citation line so that it ends with a comma instead of a colon. But, I agree with Ruakh -- best of all is the old fashioned way of just typing the citations without using templates. -- · 21:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

a
That page beats even water in inefficiency; it uses 1 MB of the 2 MB limit! Anyone able to figure out what causes it? -- Liliana • 20:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * addendum: I think I found it, the template is the culprit. Can't we just get rid of this obvious duplication of topical categories? -- Liliana • 20:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Update Mediawiki:sp-contributions-footer
Would an admin be so kind to update the file Mediawiki:sp-contributions-footer, one to update ~vvv's script to be quentin's scrip, and two make the toolserver urls protocol relative. I have done that at s:Mediawiki:sp-contributions-footer if you need to peek. — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:Wikipedia
See Template_talk:wikipedia. Does anyone else experience this bug? —Michael Z. 2011-12-15 16:20 z 


 * I do. As I recall, we also used to have the same problem with the "visibility" section; but I don't remember who fixed that, or how. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 20:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * In MediaWiki:common.js there is the section

// Add a new global toggle to the side bar addGlobalToggle: function(category) {...
 * I don't know the exact code problem, but it would seem that the icons to use for open, show close, and vice versa. It will need a sysop to get in and edit. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * (Actually, the relevant section is <tt>function Projectlinks {</tt> ...) --Yair rand 06:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed. --Yair rand 06:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Non-English categories and tabbed languages
Is there any way of making the links on pages in the Category namespace go straight to the appropriate language section when using tabbed languages? &mdash;Internoob 20:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)


 * That may be worthwhile even without Tabbed Languages . . . yes, it's possible, using JavaScript to modify the links on the category-pages to include hashes. I won't volunteer, though, yet, because there's another programming task on this page that I volunteered for a while back and still haven't done. :-/  —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 17:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about, which was my request, then, if my 2c have any weight with you, I think the current request is more important. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 18:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm, if we're going to be fiddling with category member HTML, we might as well also fix it so that the scripts display right, and the lang parameter is set... --Yair rand 00:09, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Here we go: User:Yair rand/catfix (template to be added to category templates, first parameter is the language code), and User:Yair rand/catfix.js. --Yair rand 21:11, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Brilliant! Very smoothly done, in every detail, except that I believe the template should have a <tt>sc=</tt> parameter for categories of words not in their default script (e.g. Serbo-Croatian in Latin script), and perhaps it should just use rather than jumping directly to (e.g.) . Aside from that, my only concern is that, if I'm not mistaken, it would fail ungracefully if (e.g.)  or  didn't exist, or if  started with something other than an HTML element. (I admit, I'm not aware of any script templates with the latter property, but SFAIK nothing currently forbids it. In the past we've discussed the possibility of  wrapping its contents in bidi characters to prevent internal RTL directionality from "leaking out" in the case of interstitial punctuation and/or subsequent digits, especially the latter.) Similarly, it could behave rather oddly if  did start with an HTML element, but that element wasn't intended to directly hold the templated text (say, if  used two layers deep of HTML elements for some reason). It might be safer to use some sort of placeholder text, such as <tt>%PLACEHOLDER_TEXT%</tt>, and resort to the less-fancy approach of manipulating <tt>innerHTML</tt>.   Oh, and by the way, <tt>p</tt> should totally be named <tt>li</tt>. :-P   —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 22:29, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added the <tt>sc=</tt> parameter, changed the variable name, and fixed the bug with script templates not beginning with HTML element, and with those without an HTML element at all (ex., which should really be fixed, if just to pass the lang parameter). If there is no script template at all, quite a lot of templates would break, so I think it's okay to assume that one exists. --Yair rand 01:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks!  Re: "If there is no script template at all, quite a lot of templates would break": Are you sure? I thought that most script-using templates used, which copes with a nonexistent  by falling back on  (though it does not, I admit, cope with a nonexistent <tt>  </tt>). —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 02:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A quick check of a bunch of the most-used templates: doesn't use Xyzy,, , , , and  do use Xyzy. So, yeah, most templates can handle it. --Yair rand 02:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Implemented for part of speech categories. Hopefully nothing broke as a result. --Yair rand 05:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just a suggestion: is it possible to alter the line height somehow? Category:Tibetan nouns looks pretty bad because some words run into each other vertically. -- Liliana • 21:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing any vertical overlap, but if on some users' computers Tibetan script has an issue with that, then the <tt>line-height</tt> CSS for should be modified so that it can be fixed for all situations, not just the category pages. --Yair rand 23:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

^ above numbers
Is there a character that looks like a ^ that can be placed above numbers in normal text and in page headers? Celloplayer115 18:53, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You mean like the scale degrees 1̂, 2̂, 3̂, 4̂, 5̂, 6̂, 7̂? You can use U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT (<tt>&amp;#770;</tt>). —Angr 21:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. Thanks. Celloplayer115 03:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Getting collapsible tables to fit their contents
I recently got a widescreen monitor, and since we use collapsible tables a lot on Wiktionary, I noticed that a lot of the time, the tables are stretched to the entire width of the screen, leaving a lot of empty space in between. Is it possible somehow to make the table only as wide as its contents, so that it becomes wider or narrower as the words in the table are longer or shorter? —CodeCat 15:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This is what I asked at . Mglovesfun (talk) 15:19, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Frequency lists
There's been some recent activity here. Can we get one for French, as our current French one sucks? --Simplus2 14:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The most used word isn't something we should change every month. Please tell us if you see some examples of list we should copy or go toward. JackPotte 22:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Antiblue
Hi all. Can someone tell me how to quickly unlink to pages with a specific language section. I'm thinking of stripping all entries on User:Simplus2/more French crap which already have a French section. --Simplus2 20:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This tool is free if you download AWB on a Windows PC. JackPotte 22:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)