Wiktionary talk:Main Page/Archive 2

Summary
The following is a summary of all of the significant discussions from this archive. - ElAmericano 04:22, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Note: S. = Suggestion R. = Response


 * S. Wiktionary should allow instant word lookup, ie, "impromptu.wiktionary.org." R. This was rejected, but in Firefox, you can type "def impromptu" to the the desired effect.
 * S. Wiktionary should be a fixed source, backed by a database and not a wiki. R. This was said to be possible, but only with large amounts of time and coding. (Volunteers should contact Polyglot.
 * S. ". . . do something similar to Wikipedia and put the use of the word in parentheses and link to all uses with the plain word article." - EmperorBMAI
 * S. Arvindn would like help implementing the Dictionary InterChange Format for Wiktionary.
 * S. Change Wiktionary's logo to /wIkS@nErɪ/. R. The current pronuncation, /wIkS@nrɪ/, is the tendency of British English.
 * S. Change the last phoneme in Wiktionary's logo from (ɪ) to i.
 * S. Change Wiktionary's logo to a simple image, not something that "pauses to convey too much." - Anonymous
 * S. Update Wiktionary's look. R. Give the developer's time to change all of Wikimedia's software, etc.
 * S. Change Wiktionary's fonts, etc. R. Change the Skin under Preferences.
 * S. Change Wiktionary's software so that it automatically links every word in a definition to its corresponding article. R. This is not possible, especially because of multi-word phrases and the amount of time it would take to check the system for accuracy, redirect, etc.
 * S. Have a word of the day on Wiktionary. R. This would be fine if those that wanted the word of the day were willing to implement it.
 * S. Automatically cross-reference words between languages. For example/, if word 1 in language 1 is manually linked to word 2 in language 2, automatically direct word 2 in language 2 to word 1 in language 1. R. The correspondence is not always one-to-one, so this is impossible.

Quick word lookup
The website dict.die.net uses the dictionary at www.dict.org. However, it has an advantage. One may type [word].dict.die.net and instantly search for that word. This is extremely useful.

[word].wiktionary.org would be NICE!


 * You can type www.wiktionary.org/wiki/[word] and go directly to that word. This is a bit longer to type and maybe less intuitive, but putting it in front isn't possible here because the www can be replaced by an ISO abbreviation for the language, as in fr.wiktionary.org. Polyglot 07:47, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Have you tried typing wiktionary.org/muffin ?
 * This no longer works. Superm401 22:44, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

A number of browsers (Firefox, MSIE, ELinks, and others) now allow you to set a prefix for a URL template, so that you can type "def muffin" and it will be expanded to "http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/muffin". In Firefox, for example, bookmark any definition, then edit the bookmark: replace the word by "%s" and enter your chosen prefix. There's also a web service called Yubnub that does this.

Mediawiki plate texts
I assume that the MediaWiki Namespace is on, because it would be extremely useful for standardizing these:
 * ===Noun===
 * === Verb===

...and other texts that are repeated throughout the Wiktionary.

Anyway, what I am asking is: Is it in the works? -- Emperorbma 08:52, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Too much liberty
The wikiwiki system is nice (I particularly like wikipedia) but a dictionary is a lot more 'fixed' than an encyclopedia. I think wiktionary should be a 'regular' database instead of a free-form wiki. soepy76@hotmail.com.


 * I have a database schema that could work for setting up a dictionary. I don't think you will find anybody to implement it on a server though. It's a lot of work to write an interface for it and the wikipedia developers already have their hands full. So it's out of the question to even ask them. If I ever do write that interface, I don't know whether they would be interested to host it. But that is at least 5 years away from now, so it doesn't make sense to ask them yet.
 * We will have to make do with what we have here and create our dictionary on the software that was meant for Wikipedia. We are doing a good job, if you ask me. Of course, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. But it only makes sense to criticize/complain/suggest a change if you are willing to help implement it.
 * In the mean time we will weed out the improper entries and try to get the others to comply to/conform with a minimal standard. (This will facilitate the job of migrating/forking if a real database structure will ever be set up).Polyglot 09:58, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Other scripts" part of Quick Links section
Will someone convert this to HTML entities or something? In my browser it comes up as E (box) (box) ... (spade) (D with a line thru it). -- Merphant 06:49, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Cologne Blue Skin
It looks like the Style Sheet for the Wiktionary has a little problem...

...on the Cologne Blue style underneath the logo pic, it still says "The Free Encyclopedia", instead of the (i think proper) "The Free Dictionary"

btw, this problem is the same with the other wikimedia pages as well --Mobius 08:41, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The main page's other scripts for the Arabic script should be آ
The "Words beginning with letters in other scripts" line on the main page is inaccurate for the Arabic alphabet: The letter shown here is the second letter, not the first (which is 'Alif Madda'). As an example, click on the Hebrew Aleph, and there are a few Arabic words (after the Hebrew section) starting with Alif Madda that do not show up if you click on the main page's regular Alif. In other words, the letter on the main page for the Arabic script should be آ. --safari

After making a new account it tells me to change my wikipedia preferences. It should say wiktionary.

Could we have an example page of characters and jpegs of the characters so we know our browser is interpretting correctly.

Romanian Wiktionary
Hi, this is Ronline from the Romanian Wikipedia and the Romanian Wikitravel. How would it possible to start up a new version of Wiktionary in Romanian at ro.wiktionary.org, just like the French and Polish versions of the dictionary. I would really like to focus on the Wiktionary project in Romanian since it has huge potential! Ronline 01:17, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * A lot of other language can be added as well, cf. the list at http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page


 * Dude, please sign your posts on talk pages.
 * The English Wiktionary lists other Wiktionaries that have over a hundred articles at the bottom, others that have over 1,000 articles in a larger font above them, and Wiktionaries with over 10,000 entires as interwiki links from Main Page.
 * And since no one asked, I'll just say that de:Main Page is my second favorite Wiki front page, right behind fr:Main Page. Wiktionnaire has the best Wiktionary front page.  --Connel MacKenzie 01:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Declensions
Would someone who has edit privileges on the front page add Wiktionary Appendix:Declensions to the Appendices section, so other people can find and add to it? ?&#8364;&#8221;Muke Tever 19:35, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Done. Ortonmc 20:39, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Esperanto
Because the main page is protected, I ask a sysop to add after :

==Other Language Wiktionaries== esperanto (ReVo) français - polski which will result : Other Language Wiktionaries : esperanto (ReVo) - français - polski

because ReVo is a multilingual project like Wiktionary started 7 years ago, at which one can easyly link from any Wikimedia project (with the radik code. See ReVo. ArnoLagrange 13:07, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * This addition would imply that ReVo is a Wiktionary project, which it isn't. But I added the link to Other Dictionaries on the Web. Eric119 00:10, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Time to combine with WikiPedia
I think going around WikiPedia it is increasingly obvious it is bunged up with stubs and definitions and should really be a joint project with this one BozMo(talk)


 * Not if it means taking on their problems! Eclecticology 20:03, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * That's just too obscure for me. Is there something about WikiPedia which this obviously alludes to? BozMo(talk)


 * There is a fair amount of material in Wikipedia that properly belongs here (e.g., lists of idioms, dysphemisms etc, not to mention dictionary definitions of headwords). People occasionaly contribute encyclopedic material to Wiktionary, but that's not such a big deal (we generally gun it, or if it looks worthwile and we're feeling generous, try to fold it into Wikipedia). -dmh 05:48, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Interlanguage
Please add the new interlanguage links, as new versions of wiktionary were launched.


 * BTW what happened to the hanzi/kanji/hanja lists... not to mention the Chinese characters as entered in on those pages? -- Emperorbma 18:27, 2 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Actually for that matter, all the extended Unicode characters are borked!!! -- Emperorbma 18:31, 2 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Yeah... Apparently when they moved us to en.wiktionary.org they forgot to set it to UTF-8, so all pages are in Latin-1. You're lucky if you can even get to gibberish... I type in a link to Ch& and it chops it off at Ch&#8212;the page can't even be reached at all :\   &#8212;Muke Tever 18:42, 2 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Has this been reported? This is a serious problem. A developer should take care of it ASAP. Polyglot 19:22, 2 May 2004 (UTC)


 * If they are planning to move wikibooks too, we should mention this to the devs there too... -- EmperorBMA|&#35441;&#12377; 22:16, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Seems to work now... all except the links on the front page (but those can be fixed). -- EmperorBMA|&#35441;&#12377; 08:58, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Article styles
Since we are internationalizing, we may have to redesign the articles to accomodate interwiki. I suggest that we do something similar to wikipedia and put the use of the word in parentheses and link to all uses with the plain word article. This way we can link individual meanings to their international equivalents. (This is just an idea, but I think we should work on hammering it out) -- EmperorBMA|&#35441;&#12377; 23:09, 3 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Query, why does interwiki go to the foreign WIKIPEDIA? -- EmperorBMA|&#35441;&#12377; 23:29, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Chinese index pages
I see a bunch of Chinese index pages have been added to the list of Appendices. Shouldn't these go under Wiktionary:Index_of_language_indexes, instead? Ortonmc 04:03, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Problem with the links
The following links have a problem:

א أ अ ო あ む 亍 偣 恣 灣 나 &#9824; அ Đ ก

when clicked (in my browser, Moz 1.6, at least) they prefix each of the Unicodes with 25...


 * The following: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allpages&from=%E5%81%A3
 * Produces: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Allpages&from=%25E5%2581%25A3

It kind of ruins the purpose of the links... :P -- EmperorBMA|&#35441;&#12377; 02:16, 10 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I got it figured out and it should be fixed. The links were pointing to wiktionary.org instead of en.wiktionary.org and apparently whatever redirect moves links from w.o to en.w.o isn't smart enough to retain the character set, so I changed the links to en.wiktionary.org and it should work now.  —Muke Tever 02:28, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Dict format
Is the wiktionary available in the Dictionary InterChange Format? If not, I would like to give it a try. Anyone want to join me? Arvindn 10:45, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

A-E ligature in "encyclopaedia"
Why does "encyclopaedia" have an a-e ligature in it on the main page? This is rather old-fashioned. Moreover, the spelling "encyclopedia", without an a before thet e, is now fairly widespread in British English as well as the standard in US English, so why not use that spelling instead? &mdash; Paul G 09:45, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I totally agree and I am both a pedant and a supporter of traditional spellings. But this spelling is an archaism in my opinion. &mdash; Hippietrail 01:46, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Why do auditoriums sometimes spell thier u's with v's (avditorivm)? With a little research one finds that this was never the convention. They spell it that way because it seems more cultured somehow. And I say, why the heck not? Encyclopaedia is much classier-looking than encyclopedia. The former also gives us a clear view of its etimology.


 * The ancient Roman letter V was both a consonant (modern V) and a vowel (modern U). So, in Roman times, "avditorivm" was the convention, which, with a little research, you would have found out.  But we've moved on since then.  "Encyclopedia" is the more common spelling now in the UK, while "encyclopaedia" is still used. &mdash; Paul G 11:42, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Need something more image-y in the logo for wiktionary.
The motif works well, but the logo needs something more fluid in it. It pauses to convey too much, and winds up conveying less for the effort.

Unclear text on front page

 * ''This is the English Wiktionary: it aims to describe all words of all languages, with definitions and descriptions in English only. For example, see frei (a German word). In order to find a German definition of that word, you would visit the equivalent page in the German Wiktionary (http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/frei).

I think this is unclear - it makes it sound like we only provide definitions and descriptions to English words only, rather than in the English language only. Could an admin sort it out? --OldakQuill 21:07, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Would it be clearer if we wrote
 * ... In order to find a definition in German of that word, you would visit...?
 * \Mike 15:38, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * "This is the Wiktionary for English speakers: it aims to give English definitions for all words of all languages. For example, it gives a definition in English of the German word frei. (To see its definition in German, visit the corresponding page in the German Wiktionary.)"

MediaWiki Update
The Wiktionary should get the same new layout like the Wikipedia. I meant it was an update of the MediaWiki. The current old doesn't look well beside the new of Wikipedia. -- 195.186.133.227 17:03, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Do be patient. Give our developers time to work out the bugs as they change each project. Eclecticology 21:08, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

More like Wikipedia
I love Wikipedia. This site should be more like Wikipedia:
 * -Awesome use of "WikiPower", as I call it,
 * -New-Looking frames, pages, and variables
 * -Web-Deserved page
 * -Not the old "Times New (old) Roman", but all lowercase arial.
 * -Great-Looking Backgrounds

and I can't really explain this...
 * Apple User Friendly Mac OS X or 10
 * Windows XP kind of user friendly

-Extensive Database
 * -Great use of MySQL

Until Later,

--I am 12 I love Wikipedia 21:50, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * It seems that your criticism is based on the appearance of different skins. You can edit preferences to have your Wikitionary look the same way as your Wikipedia.


 * Others have complained about the size and readability of the new arial. For many of us with aging eyes Times New Roman is much easier to read. Eclecticology 16:04, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You can change the skins? Yes, I like the old times new roman but I thought Arial would give Wiki a new look. They would make it very usable and user-freindly and make this a good site (with the skins for Wiki of course) but times new roman would be ok, just smaller fonts look better, not 12point. 12point is not very good for the new sites like this and like the old wikipedia and wikdictionary. --I am 12 I love Wikipedia 11:29, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I mean, I like this faded Courier New I type with, and the slightly faded Times New Roman, but I would like solid Arial better.

--I am 12 I love Wikipedia 11:31, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You can change the skins? Yes, I like the old times new roman but I thought Arial would give Wiki a new look. They would make it very usable and user-freindly and make this a good site (with the skins for Wiki of course) but times new roman would be ok, just smaller fonts look better, not 12point. 12point is not very good for the new sites like this and like the old wikipedia and wikdictionary.

--I am 12 I love Wikipedia 11:27, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, choose the tiny "preferences" link in the far upper right corner of the page, then look at "skins". Did that help? (Also, see if your web browser will let you set your favorite font.)

Words beginning with letters in other scripts
Were the letters/characters here chosen by any system? I can't see one so if nobody objects I'll change the Japanese and Chinese ones to something a bit more representative soon.

The heading could be improved too: Some of those scripts do not have "letters". In some scripts, one character more usually represents a whole word rather than a letter, and even if words can be made from multiple characters our indices are not set up that way (yet) for such scripts. &mdash; Hippietrail 05:23, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * They seem to be in some kind of Unicode order. That's fine but it should be made more clear, and the grouping could be more logical. The first should be the first of the accented Latin characters "À" (U+00C0); Greek would start with &#902; at U+0386.  The first Cyrillic entry is at &#1024; (U+0400). It carries on from there. For both Greek and Cyrillic the first character is an extended character which may not appear to begin any words which we already have.  That should not be a problem.  The entry for words beginning at &#1024; can be piped to appear as "Cyrillic".  These ranges can always be broken up if the quantity of entries in them gets too big. Eclecticology 17:27, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Software Recommendations
I have two recommendations:

1 Add a "Create a new entry" button to the search results screen when no entry exists.  I find that there is no easy way (one or two clicks) to add a new entry if I find that one does not exist.

2 Make all words in a definition clickable by default. Pro: Con:
 * 1) Users will be able to look up any word they do not understand instantly
 * 2) Editors will not need to concider whether a word "needs" to be linked
 * 3) Editing a page will be easier because no brackets will be present
 * 4) Editors will be prompted to add more "easy" words for a more complete dictionary
 * 1) May require a software modification (I don't know)
 * 2) Definitions of phrases must be handled diferently than definitions of single words


 * 1. Sounds like a good idea.


 * 2. While this sounds like a good idea (and indeed one that has been proposed before), I think it is not. As you say, phrases will not be linked correctly, and this will often mean more work for editors to undo the incorrect linkage, rather than less.  Another reason that this does not happen automatically is that the more links a page has, the longer it takes to load.  The server looks up every linked word in the database to see whether it is to be displayed as existing or not, and the more words that are linked, the longer this takes.  There was a move some time back to dewikify (unlink) words in headings and the names of languages in translations for just this reason.


 * To answer some of your other points: the "easy" (common? short?) words will be added in due course; users will not be able to look up words they do not understand until they have been written (they still have to be entered after all, even if they are linked to); and it would require a software modification.

Need Semicolons!
I couldn't figure out how to edit the list of languages down at the bottom of the main page, but, the link for the Corsu language needs semicolons to conform to HTML entity requirements and to display correctly in my browser. I will fix it if someone will say how that is done. thanks - Lethe@en.wikipedia.org 66.188.128.19 20:21, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Fixed, I think. The Corsican link seemed OK.  The problem was with the Czech link that followed it. Eclecticology 21:30, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Um... I'm still seeing the link like this: "Corsu  – &#268esky".  And when i try to edit it, i just get some strange template.
 * It comes out ok to me: "Corsu – Česky" Does this &#268; look correct as a capital C with a hachek or inverted circumflex accent? Eclecticology 06:50, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * everything here in this Talk page works. but the link in the wiktionary main page still looks fucked up.


 * For the record, the browser in question (which can't render) is Safari on OSX. If you don't have the semicolon, Safari won't render it.  Firefox/Mozilla will (so the page looks fine in Firefox).  But the semicolon is a requirement of HTML, so....


 * I've checked again and the semi-colon is there! Check for yourself at Template:Wiktionarylang. Eclecticology 05:31, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Yep, it's all good now. -Lethe@en.wp 66.188.128.19 02:06, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Congratulations
The message
 * To user:82.32.36.152 whose Toki Pona word Luka just became entry number 40,000 in Wiktionary.

is being moved to Milestones where it is hoped that a record will be made at each 1,000the word. Eclecticology 16:25, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Community portal
We should use Community Portal, now that there is a link to it :) I guess some of the stuff that's on this page can be moved there. Guaka 18:27, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * I moved some stuff there, I also made the main page more accesible to new users. Krik 14:48, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)