Wiktionary:Information desk/2015/April

Grand Sophy
How or where do I add "Grand Sophy", "Sophy" is a title, that is also found with the "Grand" epithet/adjective? I don't think it should be a separate entry. I don't think it is a separate sense of "Sophy". Do I add "Grand Sophy" as usage note in "Sophy"? Where do place the attributions, do I add attributions in a usage note? —BoBoMisiu (talk) 21:40, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

*whatever* has an article on wikipedia ...
I strongly suggest to to remove this - bot-created? - thingy off of every page where the "article" on en-wikipedia is but a redirect. A redirect is not any help whatsoever on a word redirected to whereever else, instead just pissing off anyone who falls for that (bot-created?) link. Should not be that hard to check, is it ? thanks. 46.142.33.13 04:50, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that these links are bridges to the encyclopedic world. A link to a redirect might be relevant, but I agree that a link to the actual page would be much better. However, the major issue is that a link from e.g. a common noun to a town with the same (capitalized) name is 100% irrelevant. A bot cannot make the difference between relevant links and irrelevant links, except for entries with the same name (capitalized in both projects). Bots should not be used in other cases. Lmaltier (talk) 15:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi. I made above entry, as you can see middle of the night and probably not even sober. Ehem. Sorry.


 * I did not mean the problem with links to something else with the same name, but to redirects -> articles under a completely different "word". I mean whoever is here looking up things in wiktionary.org probably is interested in the word itself, e.g. etymology of "helium", not necessarily in all the technical and whatnot aspects of helium within the real world. In this case, the link "wikipedia has an entry on helium" is serving well, that article is under the lemma helium, and has a "history" section explaining why this name "helium". But if look up "harlot" in wiktionary, and lets say not satisfied with the etymology bit I click the link thingy "wp has an entry on harlot" -> it has NOT. It has but a redirect to "prostitute" and of course that article on "prostitute" has absolutely nothing about the word "harlot".


 * I was just hoping that it might be feasible to give that bot creating those links to wikipedia some criteria so it could decide to not enter that link thingy into wiktionary pages when the wp-target is but a redirect. dab pages would not be affected, since they are not redirects. But maybe that is not feasible ? ah, well, then … 46.142.74.247 19:55, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no such bot. The template (or whatever it redirects to) creates the link based on either the page name of the entry, or on whatever it's given as a parameter. The problem is that (as far as I know), templates can't check for redirects on other wikis. Besides, the Wikipedia links aren't there for people who want more dictionary-type information such as etymologies, they're there so people who want to know more about the concept referred to by the term can read about it in an encyclopedia article. In other words, a  template in the harlot entry should be changed to link to Prostitute directly- but that would have to be done by hand (one could program a bot to do it, but someone would have to take that on as a project, and it doesn't sound like a very good use of a bot owner's time). Chuck Entz (talk) 02:05, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Dump of English words
Hi, is there any more up-to-date dump of English words available than the one at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:English dated 2012-Apr-28? 109.145.180.118 00:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes: . Equinox ◑ 01:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the reply. The linked pages contain a lot of stuff which I don't fully understand, and I can't really find what I am looking for. Could you (or someone) possibly give me specific instructions on where I can download the list of English words? 109.145.180.118 01:26, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Anyone? 81.152.230.182 11:23, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Try here: . You can't just get the "list of all page titles" because that will include non-English words too. Perhaps get "all pages, current versions only", and then discard any page whose content does not include the string . It might require a little programming, or some kind of search-in-files tool. Equinox ◑ 11:53, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. This is much more complicated than I envisaged from your first reply. So there is no way just to get an up-to-date list of English words in simple user-readable format? I think that would be a valuable facility. 81.152.230.182 17:10, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Once upon a time Index:English was kept up to date. But, as with all other languages, this is sadly no longer the case. SemperBlotto (talk) 07:54, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. 109.153.245.85 19:21, 12 April 2015 (UTC)


 * By the way, in case anyone cares, or ever wants to run the process again, I think there may be a slight glitch somewhere in the generation of Index:English. One or two common words, e.g. "confer", "prefer", "tolerance", which I assume must have been entered at the time of the 2012-Apr-28 database dump, are inexplicably omitted. 109.157.11.62 02:01, 15 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Index:English is outdated and should probably not be used. If you want to "screen-scrape" the English word list, then you should now use Category:English_lemmas plus Category:English_non-lemma_forms. Since this involves at least as much programming as my previous suggestion regarding the data dump, I don't see why anyone would do it. Equinox ◑ 03:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Original poster, if you're desperate for the English word list (but let me warn you it will include things like aargh, bzzzt, niggerfucker and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, so it might not suit your Facebook Scrabble game): I can probably generate it for you. But right now I'm very busy with some academic commitments so it might take me a little while. Equinox ◑ 03:16, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If you do ever get the time to do this, I think it would be a very useful facility. Free, high quality word / phrase lists are always valuable. From my point of view, it would be useful to include inflections (plurals, verb inflections, comparatives, superlatives), but to exclude misspellings, such as recieve. If you ever do do it, I think it would be helpful to put a link at the top of "Index:English" saying "For more up-to-date list, go here" -- that's assuming you don't replace "Index:English" itself. Another possiblity is that I may be able to do it myself from the database dump, but the main sticking point is that I cannot read the "bz2" format, and I cannot install any software to enable me to do so. How hard would it be for someone to convert the "bz2" file to a "zip" file that I can open with standard Windows software? 86.152.163.58 17:14, 15 April 2015 (UTC)


 * It's a shame this hasn't been updated in three years. We've added a LOT of new entries since then. Is there no one out there with the relevant expertise who can publish an updated index? ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 02:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Poe's law
Can Poe, as a noun, be used as to refer to an instance of Poe's law? For example That statement is a Poe, to mean the statement is false, and has been created to discredit the purported author? LongHairedFop
 * Basically it depends on the existence of evidence. Can you see such usage in the real world - Google book search for instance. SemperBlotto (talk) 07:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * A quick Google search, with quotes, for "that is a poe" -power found a few relevant hits. Confounding the search is that Poe can refer to Power over Ethernet, Edgar Allan Poe, or directly to Poe's Law. The hits are
 * http://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=33187#p33168
 * http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/20/american-atheists-bench-in-florida-gets-vandalized-and-we-know-who-did-it/#comment-971511601
 * http://www.rationalskepticism.org/islam/the-obedient-wife-club-t22840-20.html#p875855
 * However, they are all in comments, rather than the site's author, so there may be less weight to them. I'm not sure if it is enough of a neologism to warrant inclusion, which is why I'm asking here. LongHairedFop (talk) 10:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think describing your example in terms of Poe's law, "that statement is a Poe", would not "mean the statement is false" but that it is not discernable. I don't think it distinguishes whether the statement "has been created to discredit the purported author." In that sense, I think "that statement is a Poe" is equivalent to "that statement is indiscernible." The links you gave show a different sense, that a poe is someone or something fictitious. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 18:50, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

how can you submit a new word?
How do you submit a new word to Wiktionary?

Wikidictionary Babel
How do you guys know if someone truly knows a language at a near native level? Do you test anyone?
 * No. It's entirely based on self-reporting. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:40, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

-iter - German?
Words with -iter do (or more like did) exist in German too. E.g.: "So wie aber die Tochter das Substantiv nur pronominaliter und die Mutter das Adjektiv nur adverbialiter begreift [...]" (older book); idealiter, generaliter, realiter (duden.de). Some of these words could even be pseudo-latinisms, i.e. they might be created in German and not exist in Latin. So: is -iter also German? If not: Should "German" -iter be mentioned anyway, of course with notes like "only in latinisms", "not productive"? -23:14, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Why is there no conjugation tables for the English words?
Why is this? I think that it would be very useful to have. The Swedish wiktionary has conjugations for its terms, the Icelandic wiktionary has conjugations for its terms and Dutch has conjugations for its terms etc. Why doesn't the English version of wiktionary have this?


 * What do you expect to see, exactly? We already list the inflections for English verbs (goes, going, went, gone). Equinox ◑ 20:37, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, so the grammar isn't more complicated than that? I mean, I've never really thought about it, but isn't their some sort of archaic forms? Dreysman (talk) 20:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, they're pretty repetitive: it's not like e.g. French or Finnish where you need huge conjugation tables for gender and grammatical case. The nastiest English verb is "be", where we do actually have a table. There are archaic forms (goest, goeth) but they don't exist for all verbs, and I think consensus is against including them at the lemma form. Equinox ◑ 20:52, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, that's all I needed to know, thanks! Dreysman (talk) 21:25, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Creating a new page
What are the stipulations for creating a new page for a protologism?
 * "Don't". —CodeCat 15:43, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Could you give me a better understanding of why I should not? --Netterandrew (talk) 15:56, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Because we don't allow entries for protologisms on Wiktionary. —CodeCat 16:53, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The steps for creating a new page for a protologism are as follows:
 * Create your protologism someplace other than Wiktionary.
 * Make your protologism so popular that at least three people independent of you use it in a durably archived medium (e.g. a print book, newspaper, or magazine) over the space of more than a year.
 * Add the new Wiktionary entry for your protologism, providing the citations for who has used it and where.
 * Good luck! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:20, 30 April 2015 (UTC)