Wiktionary:Grease pit/2011/October

= October 2011=

Spam mails are coming from whittiermen@wiktionary.org
Please check as spam mails are originating from "whittiermen@wiktionary.org".
 * Anyone can send emails coming from anyone, it's easy to fake the sender address in emails. I doubt these emails are coming from Wiktionary. —CodeCat 21:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikt calls Google search in a faulty way
Type a term (eg "qwez") in the search bar and search for all pages containing it. On the search page that comes up, check the bubble for "Google", rather than the default, "MediaWiki search". Press "search". It searches for "qwez site:ktionary.org", rather than "qwez site:en.wiktionary.org". Bing and Yahoo call the correct complete URL. Is this a local issue we can fix ourselves, or an issue that needs to be submitted to Bugzilla? - -sche (discuss) 01:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Good catch, thanks! (You may have to do a hard refresh, though.) It was our own code, at [[MediaWiki:SpecialSearch.js]]. It happened because we were using  to compute the domain to search within, and wgServer recently changed from http://en.wiktionary.org to //en.wiktionary.org. (This is part of a family of changes that have broken a lot of stuff, actually. You never realize that you're depending on an explicit scheme until suddenly it's not there!) —Ruakh TALK 02:29, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks! - -sche (discuss) 15:11, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Edit request
Hi, I don't know how many people actually watch MediaWiki talk:Edittools, so I'm asking here: would an admin please be so kind as to add Ḟ ḟ and Ṡ ṡ to the "letters with dot above" section of MediaWiki:Edittools? It would make adding Old Irish entries much easier. Thanks! —Angr 13:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅ by . —Ruakh TALK 14:20, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! —Angr 15:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Changing form-of templates to use
Sorry if this has been discussed already, but isn't it a good idea to change and others to use  internally, so that we don't need to reinvent the wheel for each template? A handful of templates already do this. &mdash;Internoob 23:27, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There's also, which I personally like quite a lot. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Adding sort key to French words
A new script that adds sort keys to French words is here. Please, have a look, any comment would be great. I might also need some help with headword templates that do not support the sort parameter very well, if any. --flyax 20:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Sort key in French verbs
There is a conflict between the categorizing statements of and  which embeds  and is "inherited" by  and others. An example: ânonner. I think that conjugation templates should only add lemmas to "French 1st/2nd/3rd group verbs" categories, not to the general "French verbs" category. What is your opinion? --flyax 15:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I've always assumed it was a 'hack' to avoid having to add to hundreds of verbs which lacked it but used a conjugation-table template. I did a sweep about a month ago, perhaps six weeks, and after I'd finished every French verb had, and it would be very easy to locate any which do not. So no, categorizing via  isn't needed.  also isn't needed, you could subst: it into  which is eventually what I did with  and  with no ill effects whatsoever. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Uncategorised Babel Categories
The Mediawiki function or unauthorised bot User:Babel AutoCreate flooded Special:UncategorizedCategories. Could some one write a bot to go through its contributions and add to each Category:User XX-#, and add  to each Category:User XX? — Beobach 07:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Babel AutoCreate is not a real user, it's part of the Babel extension. (Apparently it can be renamed by editing MediaWiki:Babel-autocreate-user.) There's no need for a bot, I think. According to the documentation, the category text is set from MediaWiki:babel-autocreate-text-levels. --Yair rand 08:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm, actually, I'm not sure that would actually modify the existing categories, it might only change the text of categories autocreated in the future. --Yair rand 08:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

One minor issue
We can no longer mark edits as minor when creating a page, such as accelerated plurals, alternative forms (wherever we deem fit, basically). It's not a problem, but in the same place is the 'watch this page' button, meaning I've ended up watching a load of irregular French verbs forms I created last night. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC) Oddly, this change doesn't seem to be mentioned in the released notes linked-to from [[mw:MediaWiki 1.18]]. —Ruakh TALK 03:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There's no checkbox. But can the edits not be marked minor at all? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 02:43, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I just added some code to my common.js that adds the minor-edit checkbox when creating a page, and I checked that checkbox when creating [[ההיסטוריוגרפיה]]; but it didn't work. (I didn't get any sort of error message, but the edit doesn't seem to have been marked as minor.) But obviously the failure of one attempted hack doesn't necessarily mean that there's no way. It might be worth trying the API.
 * New-section-creation edits also lack the checkbox. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 16:56, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I was about to say that. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Code for Tarantino (dialect)
Category:Tarantino language says that the code for Tarantino is "roa-tar". However, linking to the Tarantino Wikipedia with this code doesn't work (see tarandine:). The Tarantino Wikipedia is at "roa-tara.wikipedia.org". How can we fix this? SemperBlotto 17:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * fixed -- Liliana • 17:17, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * isn't it? --Mglovesfun (talk) 10:12, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Category:Pages with broken file links
I suppose this useful category was added in the recent upgrade. It automatically catches all pages with broken file links, be they audio or pictoral. We should create it and put it in Category:Wiktionary:Maintenance, right? - -sche (discuss) 20:27, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅, thanks! —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 21:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Namespaces listing on search page
The listing of namespaces in the search-results page takes up so much space that, on my screen at least, no search result appears without my paging down. This makes it more likely that users will fail to find what they want even when the search engine has found it. We will never have all the hard redirects that would be required to ensure that users would be automagically directed to the appropriate entry. The listing of namespaces will certainly not get any shorter than what we have now, so the problem will not go away and may worsen.

Could the listing of namespaces be hidden until needed? DCDuring TALK 12:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The set of namespaces to search in defaults to {Main}. If someone has fiddled with that at [[special:preferences]], then perhaps he should see the list of namespaces before his search results (i.e., if the  variable is set to something other than  ). Also, if someone has chosen, for any given search, what namespaces to search in, then the list can also appear (i.e., if the URL of the search results page contains   or  ). Otherwise, we should hide it (which is probably best accomplished by appending   to the search-results-page URL). This seems like an easy bit of JS. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 15:11, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess, though someone who knows JS better than I definitely should check that. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 17:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * When you say "hide", I hope you mean that it defaults as hidden with an option to display, no matter what one's default choices in special preferences, which is what I meant.
 * OTOH, the problem I am trying to solve is not mine, but that of unregistered users (and inexperienced registered users whose first exposure to a failed search may not show the entry most likely entry to meet their needs on the screen without a pagedown. IOW, I am interested in the default situation, not in what we can customize.
 * If it has to be done in JS, so be it, but any users without JS would not be well served. Worldwide, how many of them are left? DCDuring TALK 18:36, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I mean what you hope I mean. I wasn't trying to solve your own problem: the above can be added to sitewide JS (assuming it's good JS. As I said before, someone else should check it). I agree a non-JS way would be better: I can't think of one. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 00:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It makes sense. Just eyeballing the code, the only problem I see is the use of <tt>=</tt> for <tt>==</tt> in one place. There are some other things I might do a bit differently — for example, I think we're supposed to use (e.g.) <tt>mw.config.get('wgCanonicalNamespace')</tt> now, rather than just <tt>wgCanonicalNamespace</tt> (the latter being deprecated as of MediaWiki 1.17, from what I understand) — but none are actual problems. (But I haven't tested it at all, and anyway I'm not much of a JS-ican.) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 01:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Accelerated Mandarin pinyin entries
It occurred to me that if Mandarin pinyin entries are merely 'soft redirects' to the Tradtional and Simplified forms, can't they use WT:ACCEL? Note I've been using, which works a lot like. Thoughts? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Protocol-relative links
Now that we have native  and protocol relative support, we should change our explicit local & wikimedia project URLs to remove the   part (e.g.   →  ). I've corrected links in Template:, but we should think about which of the other namespace we should cleanup. Obviously (main); probably: Appendix, Category, Concordance, Help, Index, Wikisauru; Not: Talk* and User. What about Citations? One thing to note is that a bare URL with protocol automatically links while a protocol-relative one does: So http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple but //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple (is this a feature?). --Bequw → τ 13:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

English entries without pronunciation
How difficult would it be to generate a list of all English non-form-of entries which lack a ===Pronunciation=== section? A lot of the complaints at WT:FEED are that the entries lack pronunciation and it would be nice to have a list to work on it from. — lexicógrafa &#124; háblame — 23:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not too difficult, I imagine. But it would be enormous. Would you include form-of entries as well? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that would make it horrendously big. — lexicógrafa &#124; háblame — 13:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Until such is generated, you can work from [[:Category:Requests for pronunciation (English)]]. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 02:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I am making a list now...it will be ridiculously huge. Until that is done I put the first 1719 of them here.  -  10:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Whew! I guess I've got my work cut out for me here. ^_^ Thanks. — lexicógrafa &#124; háblame — 13:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * So the whole list without form-of entries is about 240,000. Let me know when you finish with those 1700 and I can give you plenty more! -  20:07, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Would you be able to import it into subpages of this, as /A1, /A2 etc? — lexicógrafa &#124; háblame — 20:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that can be done, I want to clean it up a bit more first, I think there are some which can be weeded out, and I think there may be a way to make some one click magic happen for things like multi-word terms and initialisms. - 01:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, as soon as you can get that up here, that would be fantastic. — lexicógrafa &#124; háblame — 15:51, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The Greek headwordline template has two apparently identical statements (the second is nested) for optional feminine forms. o/p can be seen in χωρικός. Can anyone tell me why - on my screen at least - the second feminine form has smaller characters to the first? <tt> </tt> thanks —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 05:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The second form on χωρικός looks smaller on my screen, but when I take a screenshot and count pixels, it's the same height (in Firefox and Opera). Optical illusion? If it's actually smaller, I don't know why. - -sche (discuss) 05:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I changed my browser's (Firefox) sans font to Arial and the problem disappeared - but experimenting showed the following changes for the second (nested-f2) form: Tahoma-bolder, Lucida sans-thinner, Verdana-bolder, Trebuchet-shape (ie with Tahoma the nested if produces a bolder output). —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 06:53, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It appears to be a Firefox 6.0 problem - the same experiment with Chrome does not show the same effect. —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 07:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Do we have a list of recommended fonts? —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 07:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See MediaWiki:Common.css, use control f on your keyboard to find 'Grek'. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:41, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot task requests
Per WT:RFM, that task I'm requesting to do is change as an example Category:zh-cn:Plants to Category:cmn:Plants in simplified script. This is a pretty easy bot task, and as A-Cai said, to do it by hand could take literally years.

So to sum up, to change zh-cn and zh-tw to cmn and add in (simplified|traditional) script. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:32, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Mglovesfun (talk) 14:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll start with a test run to make sure my regular expression syntax is ok. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:02, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, please do this by bot; it would be impossible to do by hand. :) - -sche (discuss) 19:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you have a list of all the categories you have moved entries into? Many (or all) have not been created yet, and it's frustrating one of our Chinese editors. - -sche (discuss) 03:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:surname
Surnames sorted into a subcategory are needlessly also listed in the main category. For example Abbott is listed in both Category:English surnames and Category:English surnames from Middle English. It happens in all languages. Given name categories are O.K. --Makaokalani 09:42, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not needless at all; anything in Category:English uncountable nouns should be in Category:English nouns too. I fixed this a few weeks ago as a lot of English surnames weren't categorized properly. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What I think you actually mean is that is broken, since anything in Category:English male given names from Latin should also be in Category:English male given names. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:38, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Can we have some more opinions here? solves the issues I've raised above (that is, if you consider them to be issues as opposed to 'advantages'). Mglovesfun (talk) 09:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Words can and must belong to etymology and grammatical and topic related categories. That's not an issue. The new template looks OK to me. --flyax 11:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have always used the name lists outside subcategories to clean up and sort entries. You are making my work difficult. Who will bother adding subcategories if you have to click on a thousand entries to find out which ones are needed? Also, Hawaiian and Greenlandic given names outside subcategories all derive from Hawaiian/Greenlandic. Creating "Category:Hawaiian male given names from Hawaiian" seemed pointless since that's the norm. The same probably applies to Persian names - I remember Kaixinguo asking about it in the Beer parlour- and possibly other languages too. The surname or given name template has never combined all names in a single list, and editors work with the tools they are given. You should not change the tools without discussion. Personal names are something between PoS and topics; you cannot blindly copy what applies to nouns. Subcategories of surnames and given names are often topic related (from given names, from occupations). The etymology section will place the name in an etymology category.
 * If you want to list all the surnames and given names together, I think you should first restore the information you'll destroy: 1. Create subcategories like "English surnames outside subcategories",or something similar, and make the template list all the names without a from= parameter there. (Not needed for categories that have no subcategories yet.) 2. Create a bot that adds from=Hawaiian/Greenlandic/?Persian etc(should check) to all given names in those languages that lack the from= parameter.--Makaokalani 12:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You've got it totally the wrong way round; the new version will add new categories, not 'destroy' them as you put it. The template won't add Category:Hawaiian males given names from Hawaiian unless someone specifies <tt>from=Hawaiian</tt> in the template. In fact that won't change. The only thing the new version would change is it would add all relevant categories rather than just the most specific. This aligns it with well, every part of speech template I can think of! For example adds Category:English nouns with unattested plurals but in the process doesn't remove the Category:English nouns. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You did not understand me. I'll try to give concrete examples. Template:given name/new will add all the entries in the subcategories, for example, Category:Hawaiian male given names from English and Category:Hawaiian male given names from the Bible, to Category:Hawaiian male given names. So, Kahale, Kakalia, and Kale will be listed in "Hawaiian male given names". Earlier, all names in "Hawaiian male given names" derived from Hawaiian. Now there is no way to tell that Kahale derives from Hawaiian and Kakalia and Kale don't, except by looking at each entry individually. So Category:Hawaiian male given names from Hawaiian must be created, and either I'll have to add from=Hawaiian manually to all the relevant names, or someone will create a bot (not a template) that does it. And I'll have no way to separate unclassified entries in for example Category:German surnames. How can I know that Albrecht is in a subcategory but Abendroth isn't? Information (not categories) is destroyed by carelessly mixing names to old categories. I'm not opposed to combining these categories if it makes you happy, but please try to think of my problems in editing too. I seem to be the only one here who regularly checks given name and surname entries. --Makaokalani 15:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it is important to have all Hawaiian given names in one category, the same way we have all Hawaiian nouns, all Hawaiian insects etc. I think that this is what readers would desire from a dictionary. If I had to look at three different categories to find for example all given names starting from "H" I'd be frustrated. You ask how to find unclassified entries in a given category. That's not so difficult at all. A unix comm command can find it in seconds. If you don't know how to do it, just ask. --flyax 21:23, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree with Makaokalani (and hence agree with flyax). What does it matter that 'native' Hawaiian given names and ones of 'non-native' origins will be in the same category? It's a bit like says word and parole shouldn't both be in Category:English nouns because one's Germanic and one isn't. Category:Hawaiian male given names from Hawaiian. You might personally choose to create it, but don't make it sound like someone has put a gun to your head. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, flyax, for finally offering technical advice. Please do explain in words of one syllable how I can make visible for example the English surnames without a from= parameter. This is what I ask from the Grease pit: technical help so we can both have our way. Repeat: I'm not against listing all Hawaiian names in one category, as long as I also have access to the old unclassified categories.--Makaokalani 15:03, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Suppose you have all members of Category:English surnames in a file named list-1-all and a second file list-2 with all members of the Categories English surnames from Arabic, Korean etc etc. In a unix/linux system the command comm -23 list-1-all list-2 > list-3 will create a third file with all words that belong to the first file but they don't belong to subcategories. Thus you'll be able to add the from=English parameter to those entries and create a new category "English surnames from English", if you think this is important. --flyax 15:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't understand. How do I create the list-1 and list-2 in the first place? What's unix/linux? What's a command? I work from public computers, one-hour sessions at a time. I've no education at all in computers, it's all by trial and error. I began by moving the mouse in the air.--Makaokalani 16:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OK. I can do it for you. Just tell me what you want. --flyax 16:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A list of all English surnames without a from= parameter. The category could be called "English surnames without a from= parameter" (not "from English; there already is Category:English surnames from Middle English.) You can store it in my user space (create any new title) if it's not allowed in the main namespace. Unlike the Hawaiian example, this is a clean-up category. The entries keep changing, it should be updated once a month at least.Is that possible? Similar lists are needed for every language with subcategories, e.g. German, Swedish, Finnish. There is a Category:es-proper noun usage without gender that is automatically updated. Is something similar possible for surnames?--193.111.93.47 16:40, 24 October 2011 (UTC) Sorry, that was me.--Makaokalani 16:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Since you want something that can be automatically updated, the use of external tools I proposed is not the best option I guess. A slight modification of the given names template could create such clean-up categories. See . --flyax 19:12, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This new template works like magic, and it would solve all my problems in editing. However, it seems needless and even confusing in languages that have no subcategories yet. All the 5040 Japanese male given names would just be repeated in Category:Japanese male given names without from= parameter. Also, maybe it should be hidden, or newbies might imagine that the from= parameter must be used, and end up creating very strange subcategories. Is it possible somehow to exclude the languages without subcategories? Or, specifically include every language whenever subcategories are created? Would a similar scheme work with the surname template? Thank you very much for your trouble.--Makaokalani 11:30, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I just noticed that diminutives are listed as not having a from= parameter. That's not necessary, because "Diminutives" is actually a subcategory. I wonder how native speakers of Russian etc. would feel about diminutive and formal given name categories combined? Would it make more sense to keep pet forms out of the main alphabetical list? There isn't such a big difference in English of course.--Makaokalani 11:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * has been modified to exclude diminutives from the clean-up category. I suppose you are right about hiding this category, I don't know how to do it, though. --flyax 16:22, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Technical help needed with "Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms"
I have acquired a 1996 CD from the U.S. Bureau of Mines containing a Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms. The work is a product of the U.S. government and is in the public domain, and contains tens of thousands of definitions. The problem is that it is in a program called TextWare Lite for DOS, and I have no idea how to extract it (I can see the entire thing in one huge DOS file, but can't copy/paste). Any suggestions? <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 16:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you have a link to the file? - 19:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not online. I'd be glad to upload it somewhere, but it's 43MB. The CD actually contains two folders with various documents in them. I suspect that all the definitions are in a file named MINING.TWC, which is about 20MB. The USBM itself was shut down and folded into other agencies in 1996, so there is no online source that I can find. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 20:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oops, unless I happen to be an idiot, that is. Here is the entire thing being hosted on someone's website. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 20:41, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "Someone" being the National Archives and Records Administration. :-)  —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 20:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about that, as nara isn't in the url. Looks like a U.S. government site. I guess all that's needed now is copying it over here to be worked through, since USBM didn't include parts of speech and such. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 20:51, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That site looks like it would be an incredible pain to crawl for the definitions. If you can 7zip the file you have into 3 or 4 pieces and email it, or one piece and put it in a drop box that would be awesome. -  10:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I can send it in two pieces. Send me an email, I'll send the files in reply. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 12:48, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * By the way, there are 22,647 terms, most having a single definition. I copied just the list over to Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms, but it is a very large page - about 396k - so it will likely need to be broken up some. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 13:32, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * So I was able to parse it into term-definition sets, how would you like it back? Just a big text file or some sort of XML or what? -  23:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! A big text file would be great. My plan is to post it all here in project space in manageable chunks, to be sorted out into individual definitions as warranted. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 02:37, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have them now, thanks again! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 16:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * All of the definitions are now posted to subpages of Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms, if anyone is interested. Some of them are likely SOP or encyclopedic, but I think we can accommodate those in a glossary while putting the CFI-worthy terms into our lexicon. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T

always show conjugation tables
Is there something in user preferences where I can make conjugation tables always appear by default, instead of having to click the "show" button every time --Rockpilot 10:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Show the translation sections expanded, instead of having them collapsed., perhaps? It should work for all boxes. -- Liliana • 12:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I use the 'Vector' skin and the "visibilty" menu on the left has a "hide/view" declension/conjugation/inflection control which stays in position between sessions. It's there for example when viewing amo. But I don't know what triggers it, but it seems to appear with most pull-down tables. —Saltmarshtalk-συζήτηση 15:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Lils x --Rockpilot 22:29, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Can someone fix the extensions for the french wiktionary site?
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29596

so that the dynamic pages work for the function incategory?
 * This question has been posted several times, including in fr:Wiktionnaire:Demandes_aux_administrateurs/octobre_2011. JackPotte 18:02, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Verbs without conjugation
Can someone rustle up a list of pages without a conjugation, similar to User:Rockpilot/Portuguese verbs needing conjugation but for German verbs? And also for French, Catalan and Spanish verbs? If so, I'd request they appear at User:Rockpilot/German verbs needing conjugation, User:Rockpilot/German verbs needing conjugation and User:Rockpilot/Catalan verbs needing conjugation and User:Rockpilot/Spanish verbs needing conjugation--Rockpilot 13:00, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a little program written up in Python for the German verbs: I think I'll have a list of German verbs (missing conjugation tables) done by today. &mdash;AugPi 15:04, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Interwikis for language templates
Is it desirable to have interwikis for language templates, now we have /doc subpages? For example Template:en could have a lot of interwikis. A bot would have to do it of course, because of the enormity of the task. But is there any value in it to start with? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:46, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I doubt it, personally. -- Liliana • 12:57, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Anonymous feedback
Hello,

Where can I read the results of the anonymous feedback on a given page ? Theo F 11:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you mean the little poll or WT:Feedback? - 12:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Is it possible to know how many people have voted "good" or "bad" or "messy" or "mistake in definition", etc. for a given article? Theo F 16:15, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It is possible, it looks like there hasn't been a lot of feedback recently, it is possible that there is a problem with the databasing. |Here is the feedback archive. -  17:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the link. Is this link mentioned somewhere on a help page ? So it is not possible to know which article was mentioned as "Entry has inaccurate information" or "incomplete" and try to remove the inaccurate information, or add whatever seems to be missing ? Theo F 21:14, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Wiktionary Android educational game
The game magnetowordik uses semantic relations extracted from the English Wiktionary. While you are playing in this game you can find (and repair) incorrect synonyms, or antonyms, etc. in Wiktionary entries (so this game may be usefull for Wiktionary itself, I hope). Your feedback about game is welcome!

P.S. The first run of the game requires 10-20 sec for the database copying. Please, wait. In next version I will add something like Progress Bar :) -- Andrew Krizhanovsky 08:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Change template
I've posted this in a couple of places and got a response from one person who 1) disagrees and 2) disavows any decision-making power (although he locked the current templates). I was trying to tag a definition as figurative, and posted the respective template. However, the current state of figurative is that it redirects to figuratively, which, to me, sounds like a bad joke. Usage tags are almost universally adjectives, with a few nouns (usually attributive) sprinkled in. Not adverbs. So we have expressions that are regional, rare, obsolete, not "regionally" or "rarely". "Figurative" should be treated the same way. Alex.deWitte 21:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * And how do you feel about "literal" vs. "literally"? —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 21:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a different issue, as it occurs in entirely different places in the text. The "fig." tag applies to definitions, used either in the beginning, tagging the entire lemma, or at the end, as "also fig.". The "lit." tag is more appropriate in etymology or usage notes and is not appropriate in the definition. We are not working on a narrative text, where these two might have been set up as antonyms--we're working on a dictionary, with its own structures and terminology. For example, I wanted to create a lemma--with multiple subentries--for the word "soup". The common interpretation is for "soup" being a kind of "liquid sustenance". But the figurative meaning could identify almost any substance that has the appearance or consistency of "soup", e.g., mud, fog, chemical solution, primordial goo from which life supposedly came, etc. It's impossible to claim that any of these are literal uses of "soup". Nor is it necessary to claim that ordinary meaning of soup as food are somehow "literal"--they are not. Nor would it be proper to say that the extra uses are metaphorical--really "figurative" is the only possible tag here. "Figuratively" is utterly inappropriate. In contrast, I may give a "lit." tag when writing etymology of a borrowed word or phrase that is not used in its original meaning. Thus, the tag would be a part of the etymological description and mean "literally"--i.e., the word literally means something but it is used to describe something else. As you can see, these two are not opposed to each other and do not occur in parallel constructions. Alex.deWitte 07:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, I think <tt>(figuratively) Any mixture or substance suggestive of soup consistency.</tt> sounds entirely grammatical, as does the half-as-common parallel construction <tt>(literally) The feces of a bull.</tt> Perhaps only because I'm used to them, I prefer the adverbs to adjectives: *<tt>(figurative) Any mixture...</tt> and *<tt>(literal) The feces...</tt> sound odd.
 * At the end of a definition, you can't write by itself; to produce (also figurative) with, you'd have to write  , which is a nonstandard use of context, let alone of  — it would be clearer to write  or  , which don't call/use  or  at all. Those phrases seem slightly clearer than "also figurative", anyway — the brevity of the latter saves space in paper dictionaries, but Wiktionary is not paper. - -sche (discuss) 08:16, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

A few Catalan templates
Am I ok to replace by bot with, ditto for  and. There is an extra parameter to add a Valencian form in these three templates; however the replacement above would not modify entries that use the parameter. Therefore, this would orphan the templates if and only if the {$$} parameter is not used in any entries. has already failed RFDO. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:39, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is a problem with replacing them. —CodeCat 11:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, these should be deleted and merged into, though works perfectly well unless I'm missing something. IMO alternative forms should be under the alternative forms header, rather than in the definition line. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I see; they're for things like which is spelt  in Valencian Catalan. Still, I propose to make  do more, then these individual templates won't be needed. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:29, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * ca-form of now has some 'shortcuts' for things like for . Mglovesfun (talk) 12:19, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:langcatboiler
contains code designed to add orphan languages — those with no family information provided at Template:CODE/family — to Category:Languages needing family, but this code doesn't work (look at Category:Aghu language). Could someone repair it? - -sche (discuss) 06:01, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:quote-news
I think the above template is broken. Looking at long-range, see the quote, and all the wrong bits are bolded. --Rockpilot 14:19, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's broken. (Actually, all the reference/quote/cite templates are broken: the underlying concept is broken. But the specific problem that you're seeing was introduced quite recently, by, and is readily fixable, so I'll focus on that.) The problem is in : it determines if a work has been specified by checking if <tt> </tt> is non-blank, but it actually displays the work using <tt> ' </tt>. This means that if (for example) <tt>journal=</tt> is specified to be blank, and <tt>magazine=</tt> is specified to be <tt>Time</tt>, then  will produce <tt> ' </tt>: <tt>magazine=</tt> is non-blank, so the template will try to display the work, but <tt>journal=</tt> supersedes <tt>magazine=</tt>, so the work that's actually displayed is blank. Since  uses  internally, and passes in all parameters, this problem affects hundreds of pages, not just [[long-range]].
 * Since is used on hundreds of pages, it should have been protected. I don't mean to excuse Robin Lionheart's carelessness, but (s)he shouldn't have been able to break the template to begin with.
 * —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 14:59, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh dear, I'm sorry. I'll go fix that right away. ~ Robin 15:31, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you! For what it's worth, you're not the first person I've seen led astray by this. The software distinguishes between unspecified parameters and parameters that are specified to be blank. The <tt> </tt> notation only falls back to <tt>bar</tt> if <tt>foo=</tt> is unspecified, not if <tt>foo=</tt> is specified to be blank. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 15:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * By the way, I found a similar problem in where <tt>author=|</tt> clobbers <tt>last</tt> and <tt>first</tt>. I created another version with a fix for this in  and ran it on testcases in Template:reference-book/testcases. ~ 15:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, that is awesome. I'm a big supporter of that sort of testing. Thanks! —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 15:52, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:quote-film
I reckon Template:quote-film could be a nice thing to exist. Anyone wanna make it? --Rockpilot 18:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that falls under now, but it would be useful to have specialized TV episode and film input templates, even if they ultimately just end up mapping fields for . I'll look into it. ~ Robin 19:00, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

straighty
I made this by clicking on something. It included the dumb "References" section. This is probably a bad thing. --Rockpilot 01:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, why do our preload templates preload reference sections? We'd prefer citations. - -sche (discuss) 19:41, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Template tutorials
Where can I find guides on making templates? --KoreanQuoter 14:40, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Please have a look on MW:Help:Templates. It works on all the Mediawiki (Wikipedia, here...). JackPotte 18:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Any particular sort of template you're considering making? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 19:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Templates for verb conjugations and for noun declensions. --KoreanQuoter 01:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You could be inspired by, but to my mind the best would be to import the intelligent template which displays automatically the plural pronunciations from the singular ones (and maybe soon from the singular orthographies). JackPotte 19:14, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I assume you mean things like ? I'd copy an existing one. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 16:39, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I know that I'm not skilled enough to make better templates. But anyways. All I want to say is "thank you very much". --KoreanQuoter 15:29, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I do think that it would be useful to have a kind of guide for 'common best practices' in templates on Wiktionary. —CodeCat 16:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I forgot to say that I will ONLY edit templates in the Korean Wikitionary, a Wikitionary that lacks sufficient templates. --KoreanQuoter 14:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Plural of nivel de agua
I tried to make the plural be niveles de agua but it showed up as nivel de aguas and I do not know how to fix it.


 * Fixed. Like most templates, is documented at its own page: Template:es-noun. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 21:40, 30 October 2011 (UTC)