Wiktionary:Grease pit/2011/March

= March 2011 =

subst:ing Template:alphagram
I've been trying to come up with a way of subst:ing in case Conrad.Irwin doesn't need it anymore. I've got as far as this version. It seems to me that it has to complete is  before it does the rest. I'll work on it; it may be beyond my means, or at least without doing it in two stages. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:22, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * NB doesn't necessarily mean I'm gonna do it, as that requires approval from Conrad.Irwin, but it's an interesting exercise; also says what it does, but not how to use it. Mglovesfun (talk) 00:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's probably not worth it — but if you want to clean up the anagrams formatting while you're at it, go ahead. I've failed muchly at that. Conrad.Irwin 08:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I've come up with some regex - not too hard actually (thanks to msh210, as I've adapted it from a line he added to my vector.js). I shall try and work out how to do regex in AWB and then I can do the lot, hopefully with no problems at all. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:54, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Can we mark this as deprecated? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Template:pagename
There seems to be a weird problem with this template. Whatlinkshere does not work at all for some odd reason, so you cannot orphan this template because you have no idea where it is used. Anyone know how to deal with this? -- Prince Kassad 18:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it's because it's only used with . Mglovesfun (talk) 18:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What is that template even for? If I understand the description right, it does the same thing as ... —CodeCat 18:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * See WT:RFDO. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Grep a dump. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 19:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As of the last dump (February 7th), the templates using it were, , , , , , , , , , , , and . Additionally, the entries [[វាល]], [[ព្រៃ]], [[កណ្ដាល]], [[bảy]], and [[tám]] were calling it directly. —Ruakh TALK 22:41, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I've cleaned up the entries. DCDuring TALK 23:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The listed templates have been cleaned up also, most of them by PK. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 06:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Server lag
Anyone else getting significant server lag? Every time I create an entry, it takes me back to the "Wiktionary does not yet have an entry for " page. I have to go to the recent changes to then click on the entry I've just created to make sure it's actually there. Ditto for deletions, I have to refresh the RC to check it has been deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:14, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What you described has been happening to me too today, although not "every time", just "very often". --Daniel. 13:36, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have the same problems as well. Sometimes I make an edit and when I go to the page, the edit isn't there. —CodeCat 13:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * What you described is related to the new version 1.17 of the MediaWiki software. See for example bug 27891, describing the same phenomenon on the Chinese Wikipedia. --LA2 13:51, 7 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It also affects bots dreadfully - "pausing nn seconds due to database server lag." - where nn gets longer and longer. SemperBlotto 10:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Bots actually read the server lag (from the API) and gently pause. This is not related to bug 27891, however. --LA2 22:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Translations box
What is up with this collapsing translations box? It used to always show. Now I have to look for the miniscule [show] button. At first I thought I had to click the [+] button. Then, I discovered you can set your account to always show....except it resets when you log out. Why was this change implemented? It should be removed.--Metallurgist 03:55, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Double accented characters
It is possible to type a "iota with diaeresis and acute" ( ΐ ) on a Greek keyboard - I need to type the Latin equivalent ( ḯ ) (U+1E2F or decimal 7727) as the roman transcription and currently have to copy an existing one from somewhere like καΐκι. Can I do it from my keyboard in Windows? Alt+7727 doesnt work. thanks —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 18:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know the answer to your question, but: Rather than copying the character from one entry to another, why not add it to MediaWiki:Edittools? In Hebrew transliterations we use acute accents to indicate stress, so msh210 added  Translit.: á é í ó ú  to the Hebrew section of the edit-tools; you can do something similar for Greek. —Ruakh TALK 18:12, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


 * done - cheers! —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 06:29, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Issue with patrolling changes
Hi all, not sure if this is a widespread problem, but lately I have not been able to patrol any changes. I have the option to click on the '(mark)' link (in either expert mode or normal mode), but when I click on 'refresh' to refresh the page, the red exclamation is back again. I originally thought it might have been some sort of caching issue, but the same red exclamation showed on my iPad which runs off a different network. Of course the same issue occurs when I try to patrol the changes on my iPad. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 01:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Others describe a possibly related problem above. - -sche 02:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Essentially the same problem, in fact. Connel's script needs to be updated for the new version of MW we're now running. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 08:00, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Alphabetizing in categories
Surely I'm not the only person who's noticed that the new version of MediaWiki no longer sorts entries with an initial lowercase letter under lowercase, but rather uppercase? For example aa in Category:English nouns is now under 'A' not 'a'. Thoughts? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:22, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I think this is an improvement, it's what I think most people would expect. For some reason, 'A minor' still sorts before 'A-major' because whitespace goes before dash. Normal LC_COLLATE=sv_SE.utf8 (which is case insensitive) would ignore that difference and sort major before minor. --LA2 01:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It would be really nice if we could specify custom collation orders for each category. That way, we can sort each language the way it's supposed to be sorted, and we don't need sort= parameters on templates anymore. —CodeCat 09:52, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I too think it's an improvement, paper dictionaries do not put capital letters before all the lowercase ones. --Mglovesfun (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

crh-latin-noun in Turkish entries
Why do we have these? Are Turkish and Crimean Tatar declension so similar that one template can be used for both languages? If s, we could copy the content from to. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Personal request
I seem to have somehow screwed up my keyboard layout, meaning that I can no longer type certain characters like é which is bloody inconvenient for a French language editor. Does anyone know how to default back to a standard QWERTY layout? Reply here or Special:EmailUser, as you like. Oh and I can't type tildes either! --Mglovesfun (talk) 13:22, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Is this of any help? At least that is how I can (finally) type French. Jcwf 18:57, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Edittools
Perhaps we should remove the #REDIRECT + syntax from MediaWiki:Edittools, since by Wiktionary's redirection guidelines they should be discouraged from creation in the mainspace. TeleComNasSprVen 07:46, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Fine by me (and I'm writing as one who actually does create ns:0 redirections). Any objection? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 06:16, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ditto. —Ruakh TALK 10:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

done -- Prince Kassad 10:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

nb=no
Could an admin please add nb=no to the #switch: in the three templates, and  and perhaps also in , where a similar #switch appears. Thank you. Background: As a result of WT:BP, we are going to see more entries with ==Norwegian Bokmål== (lang=nb) and fewer with ==Norwegian== (lang=no). This includes translations, but even though the entries here going to be nb, the external site is still no.wiktionary. --LA2 00:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:56, 18 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, you changed wikimedia language, but not t, t+ and t-. Under most, the (nb) parenthesis for Norwegian Bokmål still goes to the non-existing nb.wiktionary. --LA2 11:01, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Should I also change nn=no as Nynorsk seems to be covered by no.wiktionary? Matthias Buchmeier 14:38, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * nn should direct users to nn:, as it does. Njardarlogar 07:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I am afraid the requested edit did not solve the problem; now it substitutes  with  ! That was not the pupose! This is what should be done:
 * should yield either no or  nb (not sure which one is the best), whereas what you get now is simply  which yields  no, linking incorrectly to   headings. Njardarlogar 07:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Nevermind what I wrote. The problem does not lie here. Njardarlogar 13:53, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

[ This admin(!) edit] on protected template caused its malfunction (missing  after  ). --Milda 07:36, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well spotted, fixed. Thanks Conrad.Irwin 07:48, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Number of template uses
Does anyone have an idea how to quickly determine the number of pages that use a template? Thanks for any input. (I can determine it manually by using the what-links-here function and then clicking "next 500", but that is a rather laborious thing to do.) --Dan Polansky 14:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, AutoWikiBrowser's 'What transcludes page' and 'What transcludes page (all NS)' will tell you up to 25 000 transclusions. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Does exactly what I want, thanks! --Dan Polansky 15:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Bot request for EO verbs
Hello! I was wondering if it would be possible for someone to configure a bot to create forms of Esperanto verbs (mainly the various tenses). I'm afraid I have little knowledge of how bots work, but this is possible, right? Many Esperanto verbs currently have only the infinitive, which doesn't make the entry fully complete, so it would be very useful to have this feature. Please let me know what is necessary for setup. Tempodivalse [talk]  16:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like to try making this. :) Could you tell me which templates the bot would need to understand? —CodeCat 16:46, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * is the main template that includes the tenses. Is there anything that needs to be added to that? Esperanto is a very regular language with practically no exceptions to speak of, so there shouldn't be a problem there. Tempodivalse [talk]  16:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Nothing has to be added, I can write the bot to mimic how the template works. That does mean if the template ever changes, the bot will have to be changed too. —CodeCat 17:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It was suggested over IRC that is better because it contains more forms, not just tenses. Maybe we could use that instead, if it isn't too much trouble? Tempodivalse  [talk]  17:54, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you show me an example entry that already has all the forms? I need to know what the form-of entries should look like, too, because the bot will generate them. —CodeCat 19:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Try this one, all the forms are blue-linked. Tempodivalse [talk]  19:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There is only one template for all of them? It just decides based on the suffix what the form is? —CodeCat 19:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I noticed the entries have pronunciation as well. I hope the bot doesn't have to generate that too because it could be difficult. —CodeCat 19:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, there's only one template for verbs. Esperanto is a very very regular language, so we can be confident that the template will conjugate things correctly. Pronunciation could be omitted, it's not really necessary. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  19:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm finished now! You can add Esperanto verbs to User:MewBot/feedme, and the forms will be created when the bot runs next. :) —CodeCat 14:28, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That's great, thank you for your efforts. Grandan dankon. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  14:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

In this language we should be able to add all the pronunciations by bot. JackPotte 18:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's possible, but it will needlessly complicate the bot. It should be easy to translate Esperanto letters into IPA, but especially syllable breaking and stress placement is harder. —CodeCat 18:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Stress placement in Esperanto is almost exclusively on the next-to-last syllable, that shouldn't be hard. I don't think pronunciation is essential, however. If you know a few very simple rules you can pronounce almost any Esperanto word correctly and effortlessly. (Of course, if a bot could be programmed to do pros, I wouldn't complain.) <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  22:47, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * But to do that, a bot would need to be programmed with a full understanding of Esperanto phonology. It would have to know where one syllable ends and the next one starts, and that's not easy because the rules aren't as simple as you might think... —CodeCat 23:47, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Updating WT:Book sources
I discovered that Wiktionary's "Book sources" list is (for the most part) a copy of Wikipedia's list from over three years ago. Perhaps it should be updated (put a new version at WT:Book sources/new for now), as it's possible that some of the links are now broken. The new page, however, is somewhat larger, as it includes a longer list of libraries. Would that be a problem? PleaseStand (talk) 04:58, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Diff link: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Book_sources/new&diff=12576421&oldid=6683666 PleaseStand (talk) 04:58, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd support an update. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:46, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Please read these
For the technical minded, what do people think of ? See WT:RFDO.

And another link: WT:RFM way too important not to have more links. Same could be said of (slightly further up the same page). Thanks, Mglovesfun (talk) 21:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Resource costs of categories
What are the resource costs of having a category? What are the resource costs of having an additional 1000 characters in an entry? What are the resource lists of having a dynamic category list on a page. By resource costs I would like to include any incremental delay or chance of a delay experienced by a user looking at an entry and the simultaneous burden on servers. Also any periodic cost.

And specifically, is a dynamic category list executed at download of the page in which it is included or when it is "opened". I am thinking of the dynamic category list used sometimes to display upto 200 members of a category such as Category:English words suffixed with -ness.

I understand that there are costs from the perspective of editor maintenance of the categories, hopefully to be kept under control by the use of templates and standardization of naming. DCDuring TALK 17:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

List of code, scripts, and snippets
Do we have one somewhere? ~ heyzeuss 12:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You're going to need to be more specific- what kind of code? Nadando 16:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think all JavaScript and Python code that we have on the wiki and that is of general interest should be categorized in category:Wiktionary scripts (currently redlinked and empty). &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 17:41, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Currently we're trying to gather all our scripts into Meta:Category:JavaScript in order to facilitate their deployments all over the world. JackPotte 18:23, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The scope I had in mind was wiki oriented, especially Wiktionary, and not limited to Python and JavaScript. For my own purposes, I've been using some parsing scripts in order to get Finnish-English-Finnish translations. However, that's just me. Of course, we have a list of bots, but I would like to compile a list of other items that authors feel are complete and functional enough to include in such a list. I agree on Category:Wiktionary scripts, or possibly, Under the hood. So far, I have:
 * Meta:Category:JavaScript
 * Bots/Current bot accounts
 * User:Matthias Buchmeier/trans-en-es.awk
 * User:Visviva/Python/wiktiparse.py
 * Wikitext style/Code snippets
 * On second thought, the word "script" has a specific meaning here at Wiktionary that prevents easy searching. For example, Scripts has little to do with computer code. ~ heyzeuss 09:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Redundancy in Spanish verb form entries
See e.g., , and , where the word's use with ustedes is mentioned twice, whereas only mentions it once. It's not horribly bothersome but consistency would be nice, even if it's consistent redundancy. I assume it has something to do with the templates (a realm with which I am not familiar at all). Is there something I'm missing here or can the template(s) be changed? — lexicógrafa &#124; háblame — 17:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

an edit to Common.js
Kaldari (not a regular editor here) has just edited [[mediawiki:Common.js]]. justified the edit in the edit summary, but I have no idea whether such justification is accurate. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 18:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * See also [[m:User talk:Kaldari]]. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 18:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Reverted — Our importScript does more than the inbuilt one. Conrad.Irwin 20:03, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. Replied at MediaWiki talk:Common.js. Kaldari 21:15, 31 March 2011 (UTC)