Hi. I only recently became aware that there was a problem. My first thought was to dig intoCategory:Uncountable to see just what sort of problems might be present. That was when I realised that we have a grave problem, given that we cannot really keep track of anything if the templates are not working. I think EP is right.
Step 1 is to rename the category.
Step 2.IMHO is to modify the{{uncountable}},{{pluralonly}},{{singularonly}}, templates so that only the senses are marked as uncountable, plurale t, and singulare t respectively, and the{{en-noun|-}} template option to simply not put plural forms only. That is, disable its automatic "uncountable" label and categorisation.
Step 3. I hadn't thought about "pair of" Perhaps a new template and category?
Step 4. A bot to find and list entries that need to be checked out. (Might turn out to be a huge list :-/)
We could then encourage the correct use of the templates. In any case, I see this as an urgent "to do" before it gets completely out of hand. I wish I knew how big a problem it really is! -Algrif11:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Your plan looks pretty good to me. The wording of the display for "plurale tantum" and "singulare tantum" and of the WT entries for those phrases needs work. It needs to be more accessible to ordinary users and not just technically correct.
I am appalled at the number of entries that have no templates and no categories. I spend time looking at frequency lists and filling in missing inflected forms. Probably half of the associated lemma entries are missing or significantly defective - and I don't mean missing senses, I mean missing PoSs, missing templates, obsolete headers, erroneous statements of comparability or countability, and structure problems. One hardly knows where to begin.
Are there good tools for counting entries with various characteristics and, especially, combinations of characteristics? I often wish that I could just do queries (not necessarily real-time) on the WT entries to get info on combinations of headers and templates (and parameters of templates). I guess bots marking or listing entries is as good as it gets. I am in need of getting up to speed on the capabilities of templates, bots, etc. What is a good place to start learning? My computer skills are not very up to date, but I am still capable of learning and willing to do so.DCDuring15:15, 10 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I need to think more carefully on your program. Whatever we do should be linguistically correct, consistent with good wiki-tech-practice, and sufficiently user-friendly as to help WT benefit from and handle any extra users we get from improving WT visiblity on Google.DCDuring15:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I'm quite good at suggesting, but not very good at doing. I wish I knew how to write bots, but my (modern day) programming skills are limited. I would need someone to write, or help to write, said bot. I don't even know what could be possible, although I expect it wouldn't be too hard to seek and list all entries with certain tags and bracketed words (uncountable). As for going through any generated list; like all the other listed tasks on Wikt, it could never be a one-man job, although I would see myself being heavily involved. Can we put together a brief proposal about all this for GP consideration? -Algrif10:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Is this word ever used to refer to more than one golf course? One can find usage of both "The links is ...." and "The links are ...." but every case I've looked at seems to refer to a single course. Also, an etymology is that it is a shortening of "linksland".DCDuringTALK03:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Found usage: "links" (with either is or are) can refer to a single golf course. "Links are" can also refer to multiple courses. What is that called?DCDuringTALK04:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh, yes. I've been to that page. Could someone clarify it? I'm having trouble understanding the distinction made there between invariant nouns and invariant use of non-invariant nouns. There is certainly too much "ink" spent on the second case without making it clear exactly what the difference is. I'm too simple-minded to take on that challenge myself. I also don't understand the relationship of that to plurale tantum. I'm beginning to suspect that it would be useful to have an article somewhere (Wiktionary Appendix or WP?) explaining the various non-standard plural phenomena: invariant nouns, plurale tantum, singulare tantum, uncountability, semantic singularity, invariant use of non-invariant nouns, pair-of nouns, and collective nouns with special focus on the simple usage questions of greatest potential interest to our anon and even not-so-anon users:
How does a speaker/writer use each type of noun with respect to a single referent ? and
Does it (always, sometimes, never) take a plural verb when referring to a single referent?
Consistent nomenclature and corresponding categories for the technically adept wouldn't hurt either to assist the flow of wisdom from adepts to contributors to lowest common denominator. There seem to be some bottlenecks in the flow.DCDuringTALK19:43, 21 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Regular, non-invariant nouns can be either singular or plural with different forms, e.g. "one ship", "two ships"
Invariant nouns can be either singular or plural, but have the same form for both, e.g. "one sheep", "two sheep"
Invariant use of non invariant nouns is using one form, usually the singular form, of a noun that has different forms for singular and plural as both singular and plural. e.g.elephant is a non-invariant noun ("one elephant", "two elephants"), but the singular form can be used for the plural (i.e. invariantly), e.g. "I shot three elephant today"
Pluarlia tantum can only be plural, e.g.tongs - you can say "pass me the tongs please" but not *"pass me the tong please".
Singularia tantum can only be singular, e.g.crack of dawn.
It helps because it gives real cases. I seem to try to avoid using many of these expressions as do many of the folks I listen to, so my ear doesn't seem to have been getting much practice.
OK: "One sheep is"; "Two sheep are"
Help me here: "Three elephant are approaching" ?; "Three elephants are approaching". I'm not sure this comes up much in US. You must have more elephant in the UK.
OK: "Three cannon are firing", "Three cannons are firing", "The cannon are firing".
Help me here: "The cannon is firing" How many cannons may be involved? Only one?
If only one cannon can be involved, why would we bother calling this "invariant" rather than a noun with two plural forms?
OK for pairs-of words: "These tongs have rusted" (whether referring to one pair or more than one pair).
How does this work for p.t. nouns that are not pairs-of?
Help me here: Is it simply wrong to say "The experience of cracks of dawn differs by latitude and season"?
Also:
Confirm: "The fleet is passing through the channel". (US) "The fleet are passing through the channel". (UK)
So links (golf sense) is an invariant noun, plural in form (by coincidence only), with the added quirk of being optionally used as a plural to refer to what is normally considered a single place (a golf course). Oof. Do any other words behave this way? --Visviva23:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
I started an entry forlinksland, but was struck that this term is used only in golf-related literature. On the other handlinks/lynkis is a valid Scots word for rough open ground, so linksland seems like a pleonasm, perhaps invented after "links" had begun to refer to golf courses themselves.[1] --Visviva23:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Please be careful here. For example all the hits for "more nitrogenized" seem to have "more" modifying the noun rather than the adjective.[2] This is also borne out by the 0 hits for "more nitrogenized than." In general "more X than" is a better search, but still may result in false positives. --Visviva04:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. For nitrogenized, I also looked at the superlative and found nine in gbc. I reasoned that if a sup does exist, there is no reason for a comp not to exist. Is that too racy?
I am using "more-X-than" as my search term and reading until I find real comparables (not more modifying the same noun that the X modifies, first books, then scholar, sometimes then news, rarely groups. I look for 3. I'm trying to do it right so that I can meet challenges.
Many of the other adjs are logically capable of forming comparatives, but the number of uses is too low (0-2). I think editors are fooled by their own absolutist definitions. Someone definedworldwide as meaning applicable "everywhere". Clearly not how the word is actually used.DCDuring04:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
You're certainly right that people tend to go overboard with prescriptive definitions. However, for cases like this, IMO very close attention to use is needed. Eight of the nine hits for "most nitrogenized"[3] seem to be modifying the noun rather than the adjective, as in "most nitrogenized compounds are..." The only exception is the 1881 use, and frankly I can't make head or tails of that one. --Visviva12:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
If your google yields the searches in the same order as mine 1 and 4 are the right cites. This is most marginal of all the cases. Frankly I am skeptical about many engineering-process words being non-comparable even without the cites. If you would like to challenge it, I will see if I can use print sources to located some additional cites beyond the two clear ones for the superlative. I must say that I thought that the situation would be even worse than it has turned out to be. I thought it would be as bad as with uncountability, but it isn't. The a-/an-, in-, non-, and un- adjectives are rarely comparable in practice. I had estimated 15-20% non-comparability, but find that the negative prefix adjectives reduce the ratio to closer to 10% opposable claims. If it weren't for the proscriptiveness of the "not comparable", I wouldn't care as much. Do our editors find that, given a permissive environment, free of received rules, they must use the freedom to create new rules and restrictions?
That is indeed a common reaction, though mercifully much more muted here than on the pedia. No worries, anyway; looks like you've got a notion for what you're doing. I just happened to notice the activity on RC and think "hm, that seems odd," so I went in for a closer look. Itdoes seem odd that the only two uses of "nitrogenized" in a comparable way on b.g.c. date from the 19th century; but perhaps that's just a fluke. Happy editing! --Visviva15:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I have noted the wantonness of Victorian word invention (crash of rhinoceroses) and morphology (-ical when -ic would do). I have tried editing some of the 1913 dictionary entries and 1911 Encyclopedia entries. They were developing a more Germanic language for a while. Perhaps the comparatives were part of the same syndrome. When I engage in chains of similar edits, there is a risk that I will go over the top. I think nitrogenized was the edit with the least support, though I have faith that more could be found. I have often been chastened by confronting the goggle evidence that mya priori assumptions are often wrong. I just wish that some folks would test their assumptions more often. Thanks for the chat.DCDuring16:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Hello there, I noticed that you have amended the inflection lines of many nouns so that they are countable e.g.adipic acid - in this instance the the chemical itself is not countable but only if there is more than one type ofadipic acid e.g. isomers - if that is the case then the definition may need revision to make that clear.
I'm also curious as to whatg.b.c. is? - Do you mean Google - in which case many of the changes might then reflect incorrect or at least dubious usages and should not be included in Wiktionary unless they are noted as such.--Williamsayers79
Thanks for following up. I was aware that those changes were incomplete. Since the entry remains on my watchlist, I was hoping someone would come along, make the appropriate changes, and thereby provide a good model for other entries. Yes, I have altered them based on the books.google.com (which ought to be abbreviated b.g.c. not g.b.c. (my mistake)). I certainly wouldn't rely on google web search results given the need to sift through even the supposedly edited works on b.g.c. (let alone the older scanned material). I try to look through the first few pages of a b.g.c. search to make sure that not everything is spurious. I have noticed that folks are inclined to claim that something is uncountable when it is not (not just in chemistry). It wouldn't be so bad if uncountability were marked only at the sense line. I am generally aware that structural differences are abundant in complex molecules, that atoms have isotopes, that there are many Marxisms. However, my chemistry is not so good that I trust myself to add the appropriate senses. If you would point me to a good example of an entry for a chemical with both countable and uncountable senses and let me know the approximate limits of applicability of that model, I would henceforth apply only that model in my effots and would hope to be able to call upon you for cases beyond the scope of the model.DCDuringTALK19:25, 27 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I would say thatmethane is a good example where the chemical itself (CH4) is uncountable as it has only one form, and where the word is also used to refer to other chemicals based on that compound therefore haveing a countable sense to.--Williamsayers7913:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Comparablility has similar issues. I am somewhat numerate so I am sensitive to the fact that most natural phenomena are matters of degree. Folks who engage in selling, making, or studying things usually are making comparisions of types, grades, and lots in terms of various attributes which are sometimes popularly deemed incomparable. Maybe I have been wrong about believing that we should reflect the practice of "experts" in comparing and pluralizing what the laity do not, but the opposite presumption does not seem to have been based on much more than whim or limited experience in most cases, certainly not consultation with references or b.g.c. I am open to (and enjoy) argument on this as with most Wiktionary matters.DCDuringTALK19:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I'm glad you are open for discussion in this area. We often have a bun-fight here over such things when all that is needed is good discussion and clear explanations (use of Usage notes are definitely welcomed from my view point). Regards --Williamsayers7913:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
From context I assumed thatbunfight meantdust-up, but the sense entered and defended by SB is different. Did you mean something liketempest in a teapot? I think the heat generated has to do with the missing side-channels of communication (facial expression, posture, gesture, tone of voice, clothing, tics}} - not that folks don't get into pissing matches in the real world. Internet communication is good for paranoid reactions. I've noted it in my own reactions from time to time. I'm wondering how to defuse some of the negative interactions between important contributors. Humor is a little risky without the side channels.DCDuringTALK15:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
If you're addressing the idea of what is countable (a slippery concept to be sure) Arnold Zwicky does a good job of laying out the issueshere. You might also check out Reid's 1991 bookVerb and Noun number in English.--BrettR13:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)Reply
Following is a initial dump of "issues". Perhaps it could become the start of a guideline for handling the occasional abbreviations that are not well handled by the default features of the existing system:
Apparentlyc. is considered to be the cutting edge of forward thinking about abbreviations. I has PoS info optionally at the sense line. Perhaps that is all that is required, given that probably 99% of abbreviations are of proper nouns or nouns. Also an abbreviation that gets used as a verb is often not considered an abbreviation ("RVing" is not "recreational vehicling"). The PoS info is a gloss that may eliminate the need to click through to the entry underlying the abbreviaton, if there is an underlying entry.
There would be some value in including the plural form of an abbreviation to that a user who typed in a plural for "apts." or "apts" was directed to "apt." or "apt."
Periodless abbreviations are acceptable, following European convention. It would be handy it the search engine given eihter "apt" or "apt." would yield both "apt." and "apt".
Now folded into characterization as "initialism" or "acronym". As Agvulpine pointed out, some are pronounced both ways and some are pronounced in a combination. Some are rarely spoken. Some seem unpronounceable. Some fraction of Abbreviations are not well served.DCDuringTALK19:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for actually addressing the original question. Interesting that there was so much pent-up energy about the overall interface. Until there is some more radical advance on the user-interface front, we just have to do the best we can. I don't like to make unilateral changes, especially in something like first-screen appearance, especially if there is a more general issue involved. Are there other instances likeOK that you know of?DCDuringTALK11:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I also noted that the heading in "OK" is "Alternative forms". There are certainly other instances, arguable evenrock and roll, where the content under the header is not "spellings" {u.c./l.c., hyphens, -or/-our, -ise/-ize, and/'n') but other closely related variants. Those variants don't always have a good home on the page. Do you think that we should make that the universal header in that position or an allowed alternative, either documented or undocumented?DCDuringTALK11:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I think inall cases in all entries, we should work to present entries that give the clearest information about a word in the format that is most effective and appropriate to the specifics of that entry, while obviously being subject to the limitations of the Mediawiki code and remaining loyal to our strict formatting precedents, but not obsessively so. The entries should caterfirst to the reality of that particular word, and second to some overly rigid arbitrary format. For example, if(deprecated template usage)rock-and-roll and(deprecated template usage)OK really don't have "alternate spellings", but more appropriately "alternate forms", well we should be able to make that minor distinction without much fuss. If the list of four or five alt. forms takes up too much vertical space, well then, golly gee, just put 'em side by side. Not too difficult. The formatting conventions are arbitrary, and many believe something is emphatically a necessary formatting convention when it's just some pedant with Asperger's whose brain fights for routine rather than effectiveness.
It's clear some formatting is important to the future of the project, to some preference skins and analysis tools, and to Wiktionary's ability to be understood by potential third party software. However, if a change is necessary, it should be simply made rather than fought. If "alternate forms" (or another useful heading) is currently not a valid heading in some skins, it should simply be made valid. If our software can't properly report to third parties a list of alt forms if they are horizontal with commas, well we should fix that. It's really people's personalities, not actual limitations that sometimes prevent success. --Thisis021:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
This place seems to have more justification for format rigidity than WP. I've been cautious because I'm new and because folks can be touchy about things I don't expect them to be touchy about. The alt spellings format "issue" connected with the homophones discussion a bit and with the general problem of the low useful-info content of the first screen users see for many entries. I also am disappointed by the lack of knowledge about design-relevant user behavior characteristics. We do this for love, but I personally would love to have happy end users. I am optimistic that perhaps we can allow customization of the user interface so that editors and members of the language community can have useful interfaces without jeopardizing the experience of our presumed client base. I would be willing to submit to format rigidity if it sped up the achievement of user-interface customization.DCDuringTALK21:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Again, simple solutions. Extra trivia like Homophones (and Anagrams, for f's sake) really just need to go after the definitions (like near Synonyms and See also). I'm assuming the Anagram/Homophone junkies fought so hard to be included, the momentum of their cause overshot itself and pushed right up to a prime real estate location, when they really belong down among the trivias and see-also's, if at all. --Thisis022:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Hompohones at leastmight be justified on the grounds of helping someone to pronounce something or at least to stop looking for non-existent/minimal pronunciation differences. My fear is that the phonetic alphabetic knowledge (or working software for the audio) required to benefit from most of the Pronunciation section isn't there among most (many) of our end users. Simple solutions are all that we are likely to achieve. Because WMF doesn't have vast technical resources, technical solutions at all but the most basic level will be few and far between. I hope that it isn't all duct tape at the server farm.DCDuringTALK23:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Having IPA here to encourage learning something new is cool, however, I wish we employed classic dictionary pronunciation, or better yet, simple pronunciation (pro-nunn'-see-ay'-shun). Wouldn't that be useful? I also wish we had a better way of showing syllabic hyphenation. As an arranger/editor of sheet music, that is my frequent utility of a dictionary, and sadly, Wiktionary is no help in that regard. I currently hafta take my business elsewhere. It would be a huge change, but I think it would be appropriate where the entry name repeats inbold just under the PoS headers. You know, where the en-noun templates and such are used. That's just a repeat of the entry name, why not make ituse·ful? --Thisis023:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
Anything that increases the density of useful info on the first screen without setting back a user's ability to find things on other screens is good. In particular, both of your ideas seem good.
Hyphenation at the inflection line would either give more info than is now in the entry or save a line in the pronunciation block for those entries that have it. Hyphenation skill is becoming less broadly useful as word-processing software absorbs that function so there may not be much energy for implementing it.
A pronunciation scheme that an amateur could use without a reference would be good, even if it was not as useful for linguists and not as correct. Horizontalizing it seems like a good idea, but I don't know whether it interferes with someone's grand scheme for the section.
Today someone was removing the Shorthand section (well formatted and apparently correct) of some entries and could not understand what use that could be. That seems like another skill (like Morse code) that will soon disappear.DCDuringTALK23:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
What entries? I'd like to see (shorthand sections). Regarding horizontal pronunciations, apparently it's already being done fairly effectively (and simply -- the key to greatness!). Look at(deprecated template usage)attribute. I'd just like to add simple pronunciation to the beginning of those lists. Wouldn't that be a neat way to promote learning IPA anyway, to see the equivalents side by side? --Thisis023:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
There are perhaps 40 entries with the Shorthand heading, appearing at the bottom of the page. They mostly begin "ab".abash should be one. I assume that the person entering them ran out of gas. You can search for "shorthand" and find them by the bottom of page 3 of the search results. There might be more to found by serching the same way for "Gregg" or even "Pitman". If you want to test on a user who knows no IPA, I'm your test subject for alpha testing.DCDuringTALK00:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I agree with you that we need to focus more effectively on core-entry quality. I'd been thinking of some sort of process that would focus on bringing entries for core vocabulary words (and particularly the senses and examples) up to the best achievable level. It would have to be sort of the opposite of our existing "Requests" processes, which do a reasonable job of enforcing compliance withminimum standards but aren't really equipped to go beyond that.
Specifically, I was thinking of something
slow (maybe a 30-90 day timeframe?),
fairly structured and deliberative (with a durable subpage structure, maybe including something likeAppendix:Dictionary notes),
restricted throughput (perhaps 10 words per month to start?).
Ideally, upon completing the process, entries would be raised to a high enough standard that they could be used as models of excellence. Truly model entries are something we currently lack, a fact which in turn discourages any serious work on quality, leaving us in the viciously circular place where we find ourselves.
Anyway, I was wondering if you've had any thoughts along these lines. This is another one of those things that I've been meaning to put together a more serious proposal for, but I keep distracting myself with various othershiny objects. :-) --Visviva07:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Let me start by rambling.
I certainly think that we have numerous articles that have quality issues. Some of the issues are:
insufficient modernisation of Websters 1913 imports.
missing senses
poor grouping of senses in entries with numerous senses
redundancy of senses due to hyperspecific senses, especially in fields such as sports, computing, equestrianism, perhaps some scientific fields (eg, mycology).
All of these are fixable within our existing rules. Fixing them would seem to not fit well with our wikiness in that they require the intense efforts of a very few dedicated, experienced users and benefit hardly at all from the active participation of newbies, at least given current modes of participation.
I've been reading some older (1968) essays by Sir Randolph Quirk (Longmans Grammar). He cited Murray talking about the need for his contributors to go back over many entries (closed categories like prepositions especially) and make slips out for the usages that they didnot find extraordinary. Quirk believes that non-literary-corpus-based analysis, barely feasible at the time of his essays, was the answer to the underlying problem. That would suggest that we need to have more recourse to the on-line corpera to improve those "core" entries.
To some extent our wikiness seems to give us disproportionate interest in "hard words" or "interesting" words. Though I should know better, I fritter away time on words likegriffonage, which happened to be on the "uncategorised pages" list, instead of words likeby,bill,defy, orset, just to mention words that have some degree of problem like missing definitions.
I know that lists are motivating. I don't think that the "collaboration of the week" idea worked. WotD creates some motivational pressure due to deadlines, but directs it at "interesting words" (=shiny things). Perhaps we need to have a sequence of lists aimed at intersections of maintenance categories, what-links-here, and other categories. An example might be English prepositions with Webster 1913 templates or used in 5 prepositional phrase entries. Perhaps we could have a page of lists of such lists.
And ultimately we could have featured entries and quality ratings as WP has.
I just don't know what is both motivating and truly useful. I continue to be desirous of ways of addressing the "needs" or "wants" of users, which may themselves be for "shiny objects".DCDuringTALK11:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Well, there's no denying the motivational power of shiny objects. :-) On the other hand, there are a lot of structural needs that IMO are best addressed by focusing on a fairly limited set of "boring" core and near-core words. The need that's been most painfully apparent to me lately is to avoid "lost work" on translation sections -- there are far too many cases where a sloppy original entry has attracted lots of good translations, which have then all been dumped into TTBC when the entry was cleaned up (and if the cleanup itself was flawed, this process may repeat itself several times over). But that's not all; there's also the need to inform compositionality debates -- I think my most common rejoinder on RFD has been "if this is sum of parts, we're missing a sense at [X]" --; the need to support comprehensive treatment of 'nyms and 'terms; the need to delve into those issues of sense-grouping and -splitting that we keep touching on but never really hashing out; and so forth. Poorly-constructed definition sets have all sorts of undesirable side effects.
More cleanup lists would be an excellent thing, as would some kind of central, annotated list of lists (at least, I don't think there is any such list currently maintained). I think we often underestimate the amount of potential newbie and non-newbie energy that goes unchanneled. But still, cleanup lists focus more on the floor (minimum quality) than the ceiling; that is, while reducing the number of "bad" entries is a worthy goal in itself, it won't necessarily lead to more "good" entries. This is particularly the case for the lexical core, where the difference between "adequate" and "good" is particularly noticeable. To really do justice to a GSL word likeby orone, or even an AWL word likeanalyze, requires a major collective investment of thought and effort. That's why I don't think we can do much more for these entries than we are doing now, without some genuinely new process -- perhaps something like a blend of Wikipedia's FA and Peer Review systems with their Core Topics collaboration. Maybe this process could harness the motivational power of to-do lists as well -- for example, the initial phase of review for an entry could involve outlining a list of individual, bite-sized tasks that need to be dealt with.
I think the biggest problem with the CotW approach has been that a week is too short a time to really gather even one person's energies to confront one of these words. I can say from personal experience that, when faced with an entry likedo, 40 hours is barely enough time to lay thegroundwork for an approach -- and I dare say few of us ever actually have 40 hours to spare in a single week. That's what tends to make these entries so discouraging to work on, and it's why I was thinking of a longer, flexible timeframe. Perhaps the process should be throttled with this in mind -- not 10 entries per month, as I initially suggested, but a maximum of 10 (or X) entries under consideration at one time. When consensus has been reached that the senses for a word are optimal, it could then be removed from the queue and a new word added. --Visviva12:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)I'm having a hard time keeping my thoughts to less than 3 paragraphs lately, sorry. :-)Reply
I guess I am of the opinion (and temperament) that wiktionary needs to be more checklist-oriented than WP. WP articles seem to attract fans, fanatics, learn-by-teaching types, and professionals with teaching inclinations, with narrow subject interests (though sometimes just eclectic). Wiktionary seems to attract serious effort mostly from language fans. Many of us seem to like short-attention-span work, for which checklists are very good.
The longer entries are overwheming. Perhaps the process would be to go through some high-likely-problem-ratio lists and
leave a bunch of tags (including new ones) OR
leave a tag on the talk page and an entry-specific checklist.
Perhaps the tags or checklists could be harvested for bot or template ideas that would make the process work faster. (I do not yet have a good feel for what can be done by bots or even templates, though a talk-page-checklist template that provided a formatted improvement checklist and entry-improvement log and some invisible maintenance-category membership does seem feasible though ambitious).
Maybe we need some simple focus-generating lists like "Preposition of the Month", "Determiner of the Month", "Pronoun of the Month", "Letter of the Month", "Symbol of the Month". (By the time we progress through each of these we could just start over, because there will be new issues.)
Maybe we need to mark senses that are in the opinion of someready for translation. (Perhaps we could delete trans tables for those not ready and insert them for those that are.)
Senior contributor tasks:
Sequence X-of-the-Month lists (easy ones, test ones, important ones, bad ones)
Review entry for tasks to be done
Review senses for translations
Create short help pages for structured chunks of work
Identify exemplars for each L3 and L4 Heading
Meta-tasks include some consensus- and enthusiasm-building.
Shiny objects might be a talk-page maintenance-task template, a page about determining the adequacy of a sense, a help page about how to write some class of definitions, and a proposed list of exemplars.
We can't be the only people wondering about this - perhaps we ought to set-up a project page somewhere on WT and let the Wikispecies people know about it? Maybe there will be some people on Meta interested in cross-project stuff?Thryduulf23:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)Reply
It could be, but I'm interested in the specific way that we could get some content and get some impossible stuff off our plate. I think everything really constructive tends to be bottom-up rather than top-down in Wikiworld. We can offer WSP traffic and etymology on taxonomic words. We can get a little traffic and perhaps a lot of words (many thousands?), mostly Translinguals and Latins. We'd probably get some (hundreds, thousands?) additional vernacular names. We might be able to get many entries we don't have, blue some links and not embarass ourselves with amateur handling of taxonomy. IF you can find somebody at Meta for support that would be great too. I'm thinking about working on our classicists. EPetey, and Ataeles, HarrisMorgan because the offer of ety help (if WSp even cares) would depend a bit on them.DCDuringTALK00:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
In case you're interested: the OED added this in June, and they've used your Wiktionary definition verbatim (except for removing the space in "hind quarters").Equinox◑00:45, 19 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
But I'm very far behind in adding new highly linked-to taxonomic names and in fleshing-out/cleaning-up old ones. Just try to get more of the basics into what you do add. Add links to WP, Wikispeciesm and Commons, confirm that the links exist, make sure that our content doesn't conflict with theirs. If it seems like a hard-to-resolve puzzle, add{{attention|mul|comment=taxonomy}}.DCDuring (talk)19:33, 24 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
1. Our def of "troponym" says it must be a verb (not an adjective): so is it okay? 2. Errm, that "small" HTML tagging is a horrible trick... It might look right on your screen but there's no guarantee it will match the template for anyone else in other circumstances or stylesheets, or people with visual impairments etc...Equinox◑22:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)Reply
Indeed, many manner adverbs would fit under many verbs iftroponyms were defined to allow it. I'd be fine with removing these purported synonyms entirely. If a definiend is basically neutral, then positive or negative terms are not, strictly speaking, synonyms.DCDuring (talk)22:31, 6 February 2023 (UTC)Reply
Dunno, you could ask the Lua powers-that-be to create atroponyms template (or fix thetroponym def if that word, previously unknown to me, can cover adjectives). Just mentioning.Equinox◑22:40, 6 February 2023 (UTC)Reply
I believe that it was @Algrif who was an advocate of phrasal verbs. He might be a good guy to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable phrasal verb entries. I might be excessively hostile.DCDuring (talk)11:17, 11 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Re categorisation: I was very suspicious of this (and mentioned on Discord briefly) but having reviewedEnglish phrasal verbs it seems that the prepositional ones can be considered "phrasal verbs" too, as long as they are idiomatic enough to be a bit "fossilised". So, probably not much damage.Equinox◑23:18, 11 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
If there is a problem with these, it might be at a conceptual level (eg, are certain particles, in certain meanings, utterly predictable in the way they alter the meaning of the verb) or at the level of reviewing individual entries. I suspect that the ones that have a figurative meaning in addition to a literal one are more likely to be indisputable.DCDuring (talk)00:55, 12 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
First glance: first impression: looks good. I'll run through the entries with attention to detail, but basically there is nothing to worry about here. --ALGRIF talk09:21, 15 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Arewastebasket taxon anddumping ground synonyms, hyponym/hypernym, or what? The two entries do not currently make it clear. P.S. You should "archive" (cough, delete) your talk page. Learn from the master! (LIMITED-TIME OFFER: I'll split the old stuff into old year pages if you want. It goes back to 2008! You're the same wiki-age as I am.)Equinox◑03:25, 12 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
Becausedumping ground is obviously used figuratively outside of biology I don't think of it as in that kind of semantic relationship towastebasket taxon. I'd be interested to hear what others think. I would think we'd at least need qualifiers to avoid misleading ESLers etc.DCDuring (talk)12:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
No and I never looked up any spelling in a dictionary. I have just followed the pronunciation of my parents, my mother growing up within a few kilometers ofSierck-les-bains (Siirk) and my father speaking German.DCDuring (talk)16:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 years ago19 comments4 people in discussion
Hi. We had a discussion somewhere a few weeks ago about multiple authors in quote templates. I have implemented splitting on semicolons in|author=,|editor=,|tlr=/|translator= and several other params. When they get pasted back together, it now uses commas, per another discussion. I am about to do a bot run to clean up instances where people have used commas, "and", ampersands, etc. to separate authors, and convert them to semicolons. The individual authors in each param can have a language prefix attached to them, e.g.ru:Лев Толстой (which will cause them to be appropriately language-tagged so the font turns out right, as well as getting automatic transliteration if the language supports it), and inline modifiers can be added following them, e.g.ru:Лев Толстой<t:Leo Tolstoy>. Titles work the same way with respect to language prefixes and inline modifiers, e.g.ru:Баллада о королевском бутерброде<t:Ballad of the King's Bread>. I am in the process of updating the docs appropriately. So feel free to put multiple authors together in a single param, with semicolon separators. Eventually I'd like to do away with|first=,|last=,|author2= and other split ways of specifying authors, but that comes later.Benwing2 (talk)04:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@User:Benwing2 If I continue to put multiple authors, separated by commas, as Google provides them, in the author parameter, nothing bad will happen in the short run and your ultimate scheme will handle the contents of the parameter correctly. Is that correct?
Particularly for scholarly articles, an author's name usually appear as one or two initials followed by surname. (I don't recall ever seeing an author name as surname followed by initials.) Do you intend to ignore such authors (ie, provide no authorlink) or address this with some large data table or recourse to WikiData?DCDuring (talk)13:42, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring You should change the commas to semicolons if you can. The code specifically parses semicolons and not commas, and will see a bunch of comma-separated authors as a single author. It might "happen" to work because of the way that multiple authors are currently displayed as comma-separated, but it's likely to break in the long run. I have done some bot runs to convert commas to semicolons, but this is fragile and requires significant manual intervention due to the existence of embedded commas in names such as "Sammy Davis, Jr." and "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", and I'd like to avoid having to continually do these bot runs. As for author links, this isn't done currently at all unless you provide the authorlink yourself (if the name of the author is the same as the Wikipedia entry name, just prefix the author withw:, assuming you have correctly separated multiple authors with semicolons; if the Wikipedia link and author name are different, you need to write either{{w|WIKIPEDIA LINK|AUTHOR NAME}} orw:[[WIKIPEDIA LINK|AUTHOR NAME]] or[[w:WIKIPEDIA LINK|AUTHOR NAME]]).Benwing2 (talk)13:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
But many existing quotations are so listed. You are asking for a lot of manual work. I already use author={{w}} when it leads to the right author entry at WP. Will that also cause your module code trouble and need to be corrected. I always hope that module code will reduce the need to manual labor, but am often disappointed.DCDuring (talk)13:59, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring There is no problem with using{{w}} in authors, you can continue to do that. The problem is with commas; the existence of legitimate embedded commas in names (in lots of different formats) makes it impossible to automatically parse commas in author specs. Converting commas to semicolons doesn't seem like that much work to me given the work required overall to format a quotation. I suppose an alternative is to provide a compact way of saying "to hell with it, go ahead and split on commas" if you can guarantee there are no embedded commas in names (which is risky given that even scholarly names can have embedded commas in suffixes like Jr.); typing that flag might be marginally less work than converting commas to semicolons.Benwing2 (talk)14:17, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Is the bad consequence (of leaving commas in) that humans would face an unintelligible or unsightly list of authors (I think not) or that computers would?DCDuring (talk)14:28, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring There are various issues with having commas left in like this; for example, if we want to display authors with anand before the last one, this requires the ability of the module to know where the author divisions are. Various fields already display withand separation (e.g.|editor=,|editors=,|tlr=,|translator=,|translators=, etc. under some circumstances), and this requires that semicolons are used or the display will be wrong. In addition, currently, in things like|editor=, it displays "editor" or "editors" depending on how many entities there are (one or more); if you separate them with commas, this displays wrong. What I mean by a flag is that for example I could implement something whereby if an author-like field begins with a comma, it gets split on commas and the initial comma ignored; this is a single char you need to type when pasting from Google Scholar, you can't get any simpler than this. But I really don't want a mishmash of unsplittable commas just because it "looks OK right now"; as I have tried to explain, this will cause a lot of issues in the longer run.Benwing2 (talk)14:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
But, is it so bad that we don't always/ever have "and"? Wouldn't we be better off to have 1% more quotations than have "and" displayed?DCDuring (talk)16:14, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ummm, is it really impossible to type a single character (a comma) in front of lists of people you copy? The alternative is you expect me to ultimately clean up your quotations.Benwing2 (talk)18:19, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
What about all the quotations that already exist that are retroactively deemed wrong? Every time there is this kind of change without some kind of accommodation for the past, that constitutes a technical deficit that adds to the technical debt. Do we need manual efforts to pay off the technical debt?DCDuring (talk)22:23, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
This isn't really a change; per the documentation you were always supposed to separate authors and such with semicolons. What I did is change the display to use commas when there are semicolon separators. I did do a semi-manual run that tried to correct cases where commas were used in place of semicolons, but as I mentioned above, there are lots of instances where commas legitimately occur in the middle of names, so I had to do a bunch of special-casing in my bot code to skip cases e.g. where there weren't two names between commas or where lowercase words occur. In fact I've been spending at least a month now cleaning up ill-formatted quotations from you and lots of other people. Some quotations had (and sometimes still have) 'LAST, FIRST' in place of 'FIRST LAST', some had/have names like 'Palmer E.C.' in place of 'E.C. Palmer', etc. etc. There were > 5000 uses of unrecognized params, etc. That's why I'm asking you to do the minimum of effort to use properly formatted quotations, so I don't have to spend this much effort in the future in another gargantuan cleanup task. I'm really not sure why you're resisting doing this; I've already told you I will implement a hack so all you have to do is add a comma at the beginning of comma-separated lists of names, if you can't be bothered to change the commas to semicolons.Benwing2 (talk)22:33, 30 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Why would one intentionally design a rule that made it more complicated to incorporate quotations from Google? Copy-and-paste is a tried and true technique, that economizes on contributor time. It defies belief that we would make it more complicated to do one of the more labor-intensive parts of making a good dictionary. That we are able to get people to do the work without much of any support from technology, instead having to do work to support the technology is beyond me and increasingly beyond my willingness to go along.DCDuring (talk)02:15, 31 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
You're saying you can select text, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, type the year, etc. etc. but you can't enter a single comma at the beginning of the copied text???Benwing2 (talk)02:47, 31 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Seconding Ben Wing here. It's increasingly frustrating to have DCDuring push back against every minor request to do things a little differently. It's extremely inconsiderate, because these kinds of requests aren't arbitrary.Theknightwho (talk)03:08, 31 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have implemented the initial-comma support. You can write|author=,Joe Bloggs, Richard Roe, E.F. Hutton, et al. and it will correctly split the authors on a comma and otherwise ignore the initial comma.Benwing2 (talk)04:24, 31 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
My overall problem is that your templatizing is not in response to expressed contributor needs and require significant changes in user behavior without commensurate benefits. Even the klugey way in which options are selected for the overcomplicated templates is something only programmers could love.DCDuring (talk)17:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Short for Wiktionary Frequency (not WonderFool)Rank. Downloaded file of pages visited fromthis page, but I don't remember exactly which time period I specified. It gives some idea of what users care about. It is a strange melange, some terms that are common, some that might belong on a Swadesh list, some that might be 'hard', some appendices and categories, colloquial idioms, FL terms, sexual terms, various derogatory terms, Roman numerals, letters, etc.DCDuring (talk)16:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Items are not directly comparable to the NGSL list, which has only lemmatized words. I made some crude adjustments or indications forbe,a/an, etc. but not very systematic and only within the limits of data onthe 1663-4 pages listed in the download.DCDuring (talk)16:26, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
You did what I would do. The category naming system has been improved so much that I can't use it. I usually just hard-code the category or abandon the effort and let the supposed maintainers fix things or try to delete them. You could tryUser:Benwing2.DCDuring (talk)16:53, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have hardcoded what I use for taxonomic categories. The oldest/newest entries boxes and the letter links are not particularly useful for categories with few members. The size of the old/new boxes can be adjusted.DCDuring (talk)17:15, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 years ago12 comments2 people in discussion
Remove column templates again, like at elephant, and I’ll simply give you a 24 hour block, which will double each time. You have been told why this is a problem numerous times by now.Theknightwho (talk)17:12, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring For a start, you’ve just breachedWT:CIVIL by accusing me of stalking. Patrolling edits of other users is perfectly normal, so please feel free to enjoy your block.
You have had these issues explained to you tons of times (particularly with regard to how you can view the page in an unsorted way), you refuse to engage, and you repeatedly behave in an obstructive and uncooperative manner in discussions. We both know that kind of thing is out of line.Theknightwho (talk)17:19, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
The explanation for what you allow me to do is unsatisfactory and implies that your wishes are policy, which they are not.
How I engage or choose not to engage in discussion with you is largely a result of the marked unpleasantness with which you interact with me and with some others. I accused you of bullying and stalking because it seemed clear that you were, certainly demonstrated by your subsequent behavior. There is no policy that makes your favorite templates mandatory, but the way you convert derived terms sections requires that I offload the lists, separate them from the undifferentiated mass to which you converts the lists, alphabetize to facilitate editing, and then return the edited section to the entry. And God forbid that I should make a mistake in the process. I am reasonably confident that were Wiktionary not desperate for technical skills such as you may have, your abrasiveness would have led to your not being voted an admin, to the removal of your adminship once elected, and your ultimate indefinite blocking.DCDuring (talk)20:02, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring Removing sorting makes the entry manifestly worse, when you have already been told that addingsort=0 in a preview would solve the issues you claim to have.
I'm not interested in your perpetual melodramatic comments, your inability to compromise, or your continued personal attacks, and my stance remains the same.Theknightwho (talk)20:22, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Your opinion about what should be good enough for me seems like the kind of "I-know-better" comment that requires putting coders in room far removed from users.
What I try to obstruct is wrong-headed moves prematurely implemented without adequate consideration of the full range of issues. The desire to implement universally something pretty that works in most cases leads to content destruction. A "constructive" discussion in the Grease Pit is not an indication of broad consensus.
I agree that the new column templates are wonderful in many situations, especially when the derived terms sections have no duplicates or near-duplicates and need no further editing. They only suck when the contents need to be edited. I am perfectly willing to use the new wonderful templates, despite the extra steps required to format Translingual content, but it would be much easier for me if the contents of the derived terms section arrived alphabetized, preferrably one item per line. If the damage has already been done, then a user-side gadget (JS?) that operated in the edit window and sorted selected text would be the gadget of my dreams. In the meantime I hope you realize that any time that you have reverted after I edited a derived terms section, you destroy content laboriously added. Perhaps you believe that format is more important than content. Or the kinds of tools that you develop are of no great value when it comes to content, leading you to lose sight of what is involved in creating content that reflects the messy reality in which we live. Perhaps you believe that AI will allow the elimination of folks like me at Wiktionary. Maybe so.DCDuring (talk)20:55, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
If the issue is that they automatically sort when you're trying to compare the wikitext to the display form, then a solution which turns off automatic sorting for you should be good enough for you, yes. This is precisely why I said you seem to be incapable of compromise. The reason I've become abrasive with you is that you seem to be objecting because you don't want to feel like you're being told what to do, even afte others have spent many hours trying to come up with solutions to issues that you raised. That simply isn't fair on other people, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that's had enough of it.Theknightwho (talk)21:00, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Oh, and as for the changes you added atelephant, you can see that after I reverted you I made sure to re-add any content changes you made, so please don't pretend this is because I think content is unimportant.Theknightwho (talk)21:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for that. In the heat of this unpleasantness I have been prepared to believe that work was undone whenever you reverted. Turning off automatic sorting may address my most pressing concern. Is that available now? For which specific templates that would be useful for derived terms?
And, yes, I do sometimes feel, possibly without sufficient justification, that the process is high-handed. And, yes, I am sometimes simply intimidated by the GP discussions, but feel that if I don't participate and complain that I will be railroaded.DCDuring (talk)23:52, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring It's been a feature of all the column templates for a while now, I think.
Can we please try to be more considerate of each other going forward? I don't really want to keep arguing with you over things, and I do understand why you get frustrated.Theknightwho (talk)01:47, 16 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
If I didn't think we could get along I would have asked for an interaction block. It is clearly better if we communicate normally. I'll be trying (in a good way).DCDuring (talk)01:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Theknightwho Please bear with me. Now that you are familiar with the entry, perhaps you can help with a question that sometimes arises in these tables, especially the more elephantine ones. My question is mostly about how it should appear to users, not necessarily whether templates should do all the things needed to achieve this. What are your thoughts about combining, on the same line, "E ear", "E ears", "E's ear", and "Es' ears'" items, where the referent is the same or very nearly so? I think these often have the very same referents.
I think we have some freedom of choice with respect to "E's ears" because IMO few users have strong expectations about where " ' " fits in the sort order. My inclination, for this entry, is to make all possessives subordinate to base forms spelled without " ' ". So "E's ears" would always appear on the same line as "E ear" (and "E ears" and "Es' ears"). I already try to do this with plurals, which is made easier by the current sort order already has regular plurals appear right after the singular.
I think irregular plurals are not normally a separate issue.
Determining whether the referents are actually the same, especially where some of the forms have multiple referents is hard, so having the items appear one after the other is a great default and facilitates manual combination or items.
As to whether templates should do anything different, I wonder whether possessives should always beignored subordinated in English sorting, that is, " E's " should appear immediately following " E " in these tables.
I assume that combining them on the same line would not be worth doing, at least not in the near future.
Latest comment:2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi! When it comes to boring animal entries, you're the king of the WT jungle. In fact, I wanna be like you-ooh-ooh... I noticed youchanged thistaxlink template to a normal link. Any reason?Denazz (talk)00:06, 7 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes. We have an entry for it.{{taxlink}} is intended to be a stopgap until we have entries for the taxon. Once we have the entry I remove the template. That's one reason why I don't like stub taxon entries to be too stubby. At the very least they should have links to any pedia, species, and commons pages for the taxon. If there is no entry for the taxon, then the entry for a higher taxon will do.DCDuring (talk)00:10, 7 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi, thanks for coming round to edit the taxonomic names of Welsh organisms!
Just a heads up, the heading for Welsh mutations should only be nested a level lower than an etymology (or pronunciation, it depends most on homography) when the entry it refers to has different mutations from homographs on the same page. E.g.foch andgâl.
By default the same mutations refer to all homographs, although they may be different parts of speech or have different etymologies, e.g.malwen.
Latest comment:1 year ago8 comments4 people in discussion
I am confused why youdeletedCitations:shrub, in the deletion summary you said "No usable content given", a phrase I associate with vandalism, and referencedWiktionary:Criteria for inclusion andWiktionary:Entry layout. As far as I can tell the page used to host a citation for the Kenyan English sense of the term before it was moved to the entry proper. I don't see why the page and its edit history should be deleted because it was no longer hosting quotations. I'm also not sure how the two policy pages mentioned relate to the deletion. Additional clarification would be appreciated, take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk)23:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@The Editor's Apprentice: it might help to add that the deletion tool that admins use provides a menu of standard deletion reasons, and DCD used one of those in this case (it saves time deciding how to word things and the work of typing). This particular deletion reason is mostly used in mainspace, where EL and CFI are almost always relevant and where the links help educate first-time would-be contributors on what they did wrong.Chuck Entz (talk)04:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I have no opinion on Citations pages in general. There was no problem. I was deleting a few items that showed up on a cleanup list because they had no content.
That one seems fine, though I wonder about the value of the bunched-together dates on the timeline when there are so few data points. That 'problem' exists at almost any citations page at Wiktionary.DCDuring (talk)02:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
It is such a rare pleasure when someone brings up a really niche/inside baseball question like bunching up dates on the timeline, so please let me ask a question. Do you mean that writing "2010's" like I did atCitations:Shaoyang is not the best practice? My theory was that, if (1) there were citations on Wiktionary from a previous decade (here 2000's) and in a future decade (here 2020s) and (2) there were citations from two different years in a decade (here 2010 and 2012) that (3) it made sense to just summarize the timeline by just giving the decade, because the word seems highly likely to have continuity from the beginning of the decade to the end, (4) barring some special circumstances which I can't really imagine. Additionally (5) I actually subjectively believe that the word will exist for every year in the 2010s decade. Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. I will be more conscientious about this issue, but I still plan to do this same "bunching" unless you say otherwise. --Geographyinitiative (talk)09:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's not your fault that the timeline template doesn't work very well if all the years are bunched together. The template is inflexible, only displaying one scale. I'm looking at it from the point of view of statistical display: the template doesn't add anything if all of the bold dates appear on the screen and little more if there are few more quotes. The template can squeeze one citation off the display.DCDuring (talk)13:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
When? At first, I thought it might be useful. Now, not so much. If someone wants to get to such sources, they can use wikidata, either via WP or, more directly, via our template.DCDuring (talk)16:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
It looked like you tried to fix it and then gave up. Do I have your permission, as the template's creator, to rewrite it as I see fit? I would say that the information on taxa'sprotologues is amongst the most valuable we can provide.0DF (talk)17:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
You don't need my permission, but thanks for asking. I don't have any objections. If I like it, I'll use it.
A better but more ambitious project IMHO, would be to figure out how to use wikidata to replace the list of external links. A consideration is that there is often a useful link to a higher taxon at a given source for a given taxonomic name entry. Wikidata is OK at handling recent synonyms, but not at jumping to higher taxa.
Also, some good sites require that one do a search or something before getting to the material most useful to Wiktionary. Does that require JS or something else?DCDuring (talk)17:39, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
If I wanted a simple tie-in that would be fine, but many merely duplicate each other's content or cover the same basic facts, many of which areonly of interest to taxonomists, as are other sources like BHL's.DCDuring (talk)04:46, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The definition in the entry is definitely old- especially since it assumes one will know what is meant by "tribe". More recently it's been used as a general term for a grouping of things that are genetically related. Modern taxonomy is based on genetics, so theoretically a taxon and a phylon are basically the same thing. I don't see a lot of usage outside of theoretical discussions onphylogenetics, and I've never used it myself.Chuck Entz (talk)22:57, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Indeed, it's not in my 2010 copy ofTerms Used in Bionomenclature (Hawksworth), so the taxonomic def. would need an "obsolete" tag. (It seems more than "archaic".)DCDuring (talk)23:13, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago7 comments4 people in discussion
Hey, on theblond page, you wrote "Particularly in the US, blond has been used as a gender-neutral term since the 1970s." here:[6]. I don't know how to confirm that information, and I found four high-profile media outlets in the UK, Germany, and France using "blond" for women- seeCitations:blond. Can you look atTalk:blond#"Blond"_as_Official_Spelling andCitations:blond and help me out a little bit? Here's my edit which kind of reverses what you were saying or at least makes it more universal-[7]. --Geographyinitiative (talk)00:04, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
I wager that it is even more frequent forblonde to be used with male/masculine referents. For those that don't vary the adjective by gender, I believeblonde predominates, just likenaïve predominates overnaïf amongst those who don't vary that adjective by gender.0DF (talk)00:09, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
I see the evidence does not support my supposition. Evidently, certitude is not the test of certainty.Es tut mir leid.0DF (talk)17:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
Okay, well please check my work if you're interested, because I was just going off the fact that I had the four European media outlets using "blond woman" when I removed the comment concerning gender interchangability being a mostly American phenomenon. I know nothing about your insight about the 1970s. Please revert me as needed. Thanks! --Geographyinitiative (talk)20:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Geographyinitiative You may not have noticed that "blond woman" uses the adjective, but the note is about the noun. You would have to look for things like plural forms or articles that only nouns would use: "he was a blond" "the women were blondes". I think you would have a hard time finding "blonde women".Chuck Entz (talk)21:08, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also, in responding to a discussion ofcat's eyes andcats' eyes I encountered some discrepancies that I couldn't understand in the Google N-Gram results depending on some aspect of how or when I entered my query. So, it would be wise to consult multiple sources/corpora and do multiple searches. The adjective search would provide support for noun searches if they pointed in the same direction.DCDuring (talk)21:17, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
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Latest comment:1 year ago17 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, Mr During. Do you think these two species of hymenoptera share an epithet? They certainly look like it (unlessStenodynerus rudus uses Latinrūdus [“lump, tile, débris, rubble”] as a noun in apposition), but I didn't find any other species with the epithetrudus,ruda, *rudum on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure an entry for the epithet is justified. Is there a common meaning shared by these species' epithet(s)? Are there other species that use this epithet? TIA for your expertise.0DF (talk)14:43, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I try to resolve this kind of question at Catalogue of Life advanced search.
341 accepted species haverudis as epithet, 6 haveruda, 2 haverudus, 0 haverudum. One should not assume that the names are correct as Latin. I don't seeruda orrudus in Gaffiot, exceptrudus as a variant(?) ofraudus (apparently often referring to something of copper) in Gaffiot (Cassel's has the same). Lewis and Short at Perseus seems to be down. Also, there are lots of epithets with the rootruder-, ie, that ofrudus ("lump, etc").
The impression I've gotten is that hymenoperists often follow their own rules, so perhaps one or more of them invented an epithet. Five of the six CoL species that haveruda as epithetare in Hymenoptera, named since 1970. It is conceivable that these five were named based on the assumed correctness of the ~1949 naming. (One is a virus, which is not likely to be of help.)
Apparently, not everyone agrees on the synonymy ofStenodynerus andRhynchalastor. I've created an entry for the latter, including the names of all of its hyponymous species which Wikipedia lists (Wikispecies currently has no page for the genus).0DF (talk)21:01, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm guessing it has to do withraudus because of the copper connection. The coloring description has lots of red and brown, but to me the big hint is that it is being contrasted withS. kennecottianus (Cf.Kennecott Copper). Both species are described from Arizona where theRay mine (now owned byASARCO) is and another Kennecott mine (Safford) is/was.
Ah-ha! I see! I'll track down the other species' protologues to see whether they also feature redness, brownness, and/or copperiness in their descriptions. Could you list the species that useruda, please? Also, I couldn't findRhizopogon rudus mentioned anywhere in the BHL. Any idea why that might be?0DF (talk)21:59, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The big lesson here is that this species is not even close to being worth the work. It is not an accident that there are no links from mainspace to this name. I have no idea what would motivate someone to add it or look it up at Wiktionary.DCDuring (talk)22:08, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Megachile ruda used to be calledCreightonella ruda, by which name the species was first described by Jean Jules Pasteels. Sources differ as to whether Pasteels' description was published in 1965 or in 1970 (though most say the former); however, sinceCreightonella ruda doesn't occur inhis 1970 work, I infer by process of elimination that it must occur inhis 1965 work. Unfortunately, I have been unable to get access to his 1965Révision des Megachilidae…de l’Afrique noire, so I haven't seen that species' protologue. I don't suppose you have access to it, do you?
I looked into the alleged synonymy ofStenodynerus andRhynchalastor. From what I can make out,Stenodynerus is a subgenus (or, according toits 1863 protologue, a “division”) of the genusOdynerus.Rhynchalastor andOdynerus are distinct genera. I couldn't find anypublication (not counting databases) that synonymisesStenodynerus andRhynchalastor. The one that comes nearest isthis one from 2010 (see pages 223–232 [129–138 in the PDF]):Carpenter, Gusenleitner, & Madl synonymise a number of species inOdynerus andStenodynerus with species inRhynchalastor, but the onlygeneric synonym they cite isStenodyneroides (as “Synonym:StenodyneroidesGiordani Soika 1940.new synonym” on page 223 [129]). The entry in the Zoological-Botanical Database (Vespoidea) 4.0 forRhynchalastor rudus (Bohart, 1949) cites “Gusenleitner J., November 2011” as having subjected the species to “taxonomic scrutiny”, but, try as I might, I couldn't work out or track down whatever publication it is to which that citation refers. (That citation is itself questionable, since version 4.0 of that database is supposedly fromOctober 2011.) I wouldn't be confident callingStenodynerus rudus a synonym ofRhynchalastor rudus unless I saw a publication explicitly synonymising them. I suspect thatRhynchalastor rudus is not currently attestable as a term in use outside databases.
There is another species that uses therudus epithet, namelyUnio rudus, which is notable for having been first described by that name in 1859, which makes it the earliest-described species that uses that epithet (AFAIK). Note the part of the Latin description that reads “epidermide tenebroso-fuscâ” (“[with]epidermis dark brown”): there's another match for the red/brown theme. Furthermore, mussels are pretty lump-like, sorūdus (orraudus) is apt.Unio rudus is a synonym ofDiplodon delodontus. I have a query arising from the entry for the latter and from the one for its genus,Diplodon: You may notice, amongst the synonyms for each of them, some names that specify a subgenus after a genus, in which case the subgenus is given parenthetically. I copied that style of presentation from MolluscaBase, but I was unsure about doing so, because I've never seen that style in use on Wiktionary (though that may not mean much, since I'd never seen entries for subgenera on Wiktionary until I created a few). Is that the correct way to indicate subgenera in multinominal taxonomic names on Wiktionary? If not, what is the correct way to indicate them, please? Also,reSpecial:Diff/80794282, I was under the impression that links in{{taxoninfl}} to genera that have entries should be generated with ordinary double-bracketting, and not with{{taxfmt}}; is that not the case?
Regarding motivation and the worthwhileness of work, I can only address with confidence the question of what would motivate someone to add an entry forRhizopogon rudus. If I may stand for that someone, I'll say that I added it as part of my investigation into its unusual epithet, and my investigation into that epithet was initially motivated by curiosity, and that curiosity was sparked when I noticed the existence ofMegachile ruda on Wikipedia, which I noticed when I was creating an English entry for the Ukrainian placenameRuda, which I was prompted to do because it was the only orange-linked constituent settlement ofZhvanets rural hromada, and I was prompted to createZhvanets because it was one of two red-linked terms in the definitions ofSokil, which entry I was prompted to create by the mention of the village of Sokil inOcheretyne settlement hromada,Pokrovsk Raion,Donetsk Oblast,Ukraine in a video about the current war in the Ukraine, which I quoted in the entry forSokil. That's probably not very interesting, but it should give you an idea of my motivation. (I'm also motivated to create an exemplar of a Translingual but not Latin specific epithet to use in the discussion inWiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/July#Are taxonomic names Latin or Translingual?, sinceabdimii is not one, being merely the genitive of LatinAbdimius, whichis attested, sort-of.) Perhaps the same curiosity aboutRhizopogon rudus’ epithet might motivate someone to look it up here; I've noticed that etymological resources for these enquiries are not nearly as widely available online as are taxonomic resources. Either that, orRhizopogon may be some mycologist's speciality, as it seems to have been for Alexander Hanchett Smith, Sanford Myron Zeller, and María Paz Martín, to name only three. Finally, isRhizopogon rudus worth the work? Maybe not, but to answer that properly, I need some account of what youdo consider worth the work. Since we all edit here for free, the work must be intrinsically motivating, so maybe it doesn't make sense to wonder whether any of it is worth the work, as long as we feel like doing it.
I am concerned that we do not seem to often get outside our own pursuit ofbright shiny objects to strive to add what users might care about: taxa they see, eat, plant, admire, get diseases from, etc. It's a problem not limited to taxa.DCDuring (talk)22:13, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Taxonomic definitions often lack a human-relevant definition because there isn't one. What is worse are those that could have one (importance to humans, where found, vernacular name, etc.), but don't.DCDuring (talk)22:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
To do what I can to make English Wiktionary the best online dictionary for humans ASAP: professional, more inclusive and more interesting than other dictionaries.DCDuring (talk)17:48, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Since that goal requires the collaboration of others, I think you delay and militate against the achievement of that goal whenever you are unnecessarily negative toward and dismissive of the labours of other good-faith editors of this project.0DF (talk)09:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I disagree. If you had been successful in discouraging me from pursuing my current BSO that is this epithet, how long would it have taken you to get round to creating an entry forPellicia which, being an admirable little butterfly with vernacular names, constitutes a taxon that you assume our human users might care about?0DF (talk)14:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
That may be, but my general point that your curmudgeonliness works against your own stated goals still stands, and in my case it makes me less likely to show you deference regarding taxonomic entries, which I currently consider a domain in which to respect your preferences.0DF (talk)15:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
On the substance: I was just careless: I didn't look up the declension table forspearwa, which would have shown that I didn't have my answer. Any help you can offer on that etymology would be great. I had just copied the etymology over fromsparrow and knew that, at least, a step was missing.DCDuring (talk)01:53, 8 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Hi! I am working on an entry for Latingadus, which doesn't yet exist. The page for (translingual)Gadus gives its etymology as from Latingadus, itself fromAncient Greekγάδος(gádos). It looks like it was you who added the Latin definition as "fish, probably from among theGadiformes" back in 2013. I'm wondering if you remember where you found this! I can't seem to find the word in the usual Latin places, so I thought I would ask you before I start checking the unusual Latin places.Kavindad1 (talk)21:34, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Perseus has 3 comments ongadus, as used by Pliny. Two say it is some species ofGadus, the otherDorio.
I don't think one can be specific about what species the Greeks and Romans may have been referring to. Can we assume that Linnaeus had some zoological reason to use the wordGadus for a genus name, other than just needing a name? I haven't investigated whether there is any continuity in scientific knowledge from classical times to the Linnaeus's. If there is any presumablygadus would be among fish inGadiformes that still can be found in the Mediterranean Sea. SeeList_of_fish_of_the_Mediterranean_Sea on Wikipedia.Wikipedia. I didn't find much among linguistis and lexicographics works that was convincing. For example, seeFishing from the Earliest Times (1921).
Oh excellent! That's exactly what I was looking for (place of attestation, to add to the Latin entry). Thanks very much.
I think it is indeed usually quite difficult to know exactly which species the Latin words refer to except for the cases where the names are continued into the Romance languages. In the case ofgadus, especially since it is restricted to Pliny, I suspect it was a more or less direct loan from Greek for use in literature and never really entered the spoken language.
That's also a question I have been having for a very long time: how much continuity there has been in scientific naming practices. I think in some cases, there seem to have been medieval Latin monikers for plants that were continued into common names and then subsequently used to form the binomial nomenclature. I have been investigating this forgoat's beard, which seems to have been calledbarba capri. And that seems to have influenced Linnaeus' choice ofAruncus as the genus name (from a strange hapax in Pliny seemingly parroting an even stranger hapax (ἤρυγγος in the sense 'goat's beard'), potentially a manuscript error, in Aristotle). But I don't fully know where to look for more on this phenomenon.Kavindad1 (talk)10:32, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
"Scientific Latin" is not really continuous with spoken Latin, being a Late Renaissance phenomenon. I take that as yet another indication that there is little continuity of scientific terminology, except for the relatively few well-known written documents. If we consider the imprecision of vernacular names in the present (See Fishbase.), vernacular names are not reliable indicators of the application of similar Latin and Greek names. I suppose it is remotely possible that fisherman of Atlantic waters in classical times could have provided an etymon ofγάδος(gádos)/gadus, but I haven't seen evidence of that. In any event, Linnaeus's use ofgadus for the genus name seems to fall short of being sufficient evidence to support identification ofgadus with any species ofGadus.DCDuring (talk)16:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
On second thought, I've had a look at the Perseus database, and I seem to only be able to find discussions usingw:Gadus to try to determine which fish Pliny was talking about when he wrote of theasellsus. I've checked some etymological dictionaries, the TLL, and Du Cange and cannot seem to find any evidence that a wordgadus is actually attested in Latin. Even von Wartburg's Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch derives Frenchgade directly from Greek. It is starting to seem like, rather than a loan from Greek into Latin, it was Linnaeus who tookAncient Greekγάδος(gádos) to form the new genus name.Kavindad1 (talk)14:50, 22 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Cleaning up the apparently erroneous information aboutgadus#Latin wherever it occurs would be useful. It might stimulate others to look at other databases. I'm having trouble accessing Perseus online and am no classical languages scholar.DCDuring (talk)16:45, 22 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
If it's of interest to you, I came across several taxonomic names we're missing (including some obsolete names which are apparently still moderately common in recent books) while citingwitches' butter (the cites are atwitch's butter; probably the long list of species could be moved to hyponyms or see also or something) andwitch's hair.- -sche(discuss)05:53, 23 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. In time for Halloween?
BTW, for English entries, I usually prefer derived terms to hyponyms by default. Also, I have been trying to shift English vernacular names from being defined as if they were species (with "the") to being defined as individual members of the species (with "a"). In speech and some writings, sometimes "scientific" names are used of individuals and vernacular names are used of species, but this kind of "type error" is normal for many English nouns, eg, "the railroad was revolutionary" (species) and "James Hill built two railroads to the West Coast" (individuals). I don't want to have two definitions, one for an individual and another for the species (Finnish vernacular name entries do this.), nor do I want wording that makes explicit the two uses in one definition. I believe most English monolingual dictionaries take my preferred approach. Yet another example of the advantage of a style guide?
Do you have any ideas of how to influence those who add vernacular names to follow my preferred approach. Do we need a vote? Would templates help? I don't think writing something in "About taxonomic names" would have much effect.DCDuring (talk)15:47, 23 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
The date is in the template{{hot word}} in the entry. I didn't know the exact date of publication of the source I used, just the month and year. There may be something published earlier, in scientific literature.DCDuring (talk)15:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I'm pretty new here, so I'm not clear on all the policies. I've been spending a little time adding pictures to taxonomy-related articles, and I've noticed a bunch of them have definitions like this:Any of speciesExamplus examplar, native to yadda yadda. So I changed a few toAny of the species..., orA species (Examplus examplar)... or something similar. I noticed, however, that you seen to fairly consistently favour the "of species" form, such as inthis edit orthis one. I assume there's a good reason for this (I've stopped changing them), but to me "of species" sounds very ungrammatical. Why is "of species" favoured? Thanks,Cremastra (talk)17:06, 6 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Glad you noticed and asked. What I am trying to do is define English vernacular names of organisms in terms of individual members of a taxon, rather than in terms of the taxon.
In typical usage, taxonomic names are sometimes used in English to refer to individuals and English vernacular names are sometimes used to refer to entire taxonomic groups. One-word vernacular names are less commonly used to refer to taxa than multi-word names, some of which are intended to correspond to taxa. Vernacular names are often applied to organisms from different species (oak), genera (antelope), families, classes (fish), phyla, even kingdoms (germ,microbe). Taxonomic names are intended to refer to fairly specific groups and groups of groups of organisms, for which hypernyms and hyponyms are relatively well-defined, however much they evolve over time.
Should we have two or more definitions for every vernacular name to reflect the two kinds of usage? I think it would be a waste of keystrokes and display space. Should we have two or more definitions for every taxonomic name? That would be even harder because practices might be different in different languages.
That leaves us with the problem of how to word vernacular name definitions. "Any of the species" fits my view, IMO. Does it read better in your opinion? If so, I might start using it in definitions myself. "A species" does not fit my view. Nor does defining a vernacular name simply as the species, as tempting as that might be.
I usually convert those to "A centipede of speciesX Y ..." or "Any of speciesX Y of centipedes ...". I prefer the second form for taxa above the rank of species because many such taxa have members with diverging vernacular names, say, some being called "foo doves" and other being called "bar pigeons". Also, I don't like to raise the possibility in the reader's mind that only centipedes of the species go by the vernacular name, but that there are other members of the species to which the entry name does not apply. In general, I try to avoidthe or other definite determiner (eg,all,three), preferringa,certain, or no determiner at all, etc. Even when we give a definition that specifies physical characteristics that sound like they might uniquely specify, I avoid usingthe.DCDuring (talk)19:19, 6 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also, many taxonomic name definitions imply that the vernacular name is equivalent to the taxon. We can avoid that implication by using an appropriate vernacular name without any determiner or even in any indefinite plural form.
BTW, I think I must have inferred some of this from the way dictionaries like MWOnline define vernacular names of organisms. (They seem to avoid having taxonomic names.) Also influenced by the strong emphasis that taxonomists place on the nature of taxa, as "individuals", like a Romangens. Taxonomists usually use a "scholarly" vernacular name to refer to one or more members of a taxon, eg,tyrannosaur (species member),tyrannosaurid (family member).DCDuring (talk)19:34, 6 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Since this affects so many pages, maybe it's something that should be discussed more widely. Do you object to me starting a small discussion atWT:BP? Thanks,Cremastra (talk)22:40, 10 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Sure. I didn't bring it there myself because I wanted to see whether my preferences could be implemented without awkward wording. I still don't know the answer for sure, but there are cases where substantial rewrites are required. I doubt that most people see a problem in conflating vernacular and taxonomic names.DCDuring (talk)02:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I've noticed that template:vern automatically converts ' apostrophes to curly ’ apostrophes in the links it forms on Wikipedia.E.g.devil's bit scabious leads to the nonexistent pageDevil’s bit scabious while non-curlyDevil's bit scabious does exist as a redirect on Wikipedia.
I don't know if this is due to a Wikipedia policy, but is there some way that template:vern could be agnostic about whether the Wikipedia page it connects to has a curly or non-curly apostrophe? Many thanksArafsymudwr (talk)12:09, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Template matters have become module matters, which are not in my wheelhouse. I would take it up on the talk page for{{vern}}. If that doesn't get a response by, say Jan. 3, take it to the Grease Pit.{{vern}} may not be the only template affected, so going straight to the GP might be OK.
Picea glauca does haveAbies canadensis listed as a synonym as well. It's not uncommon for the same name to be used for different species by different authors, though this one is unusual in having different sources attributing different species to the same name by the same author (seeTropicos and click on the "Accepted Names" tab).Chuck Entz (talk)16:22, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I usually try to stick to just the synonyms used in Wiktionary because so many taxonomic synonyms are not much used, at least in modern publications. On the more complete entries there is usually a link to at least one relatively definitive source (POWO/Tropicos, WoRMS, CoL, LPSN, MSW, and IRMNG come to mind, but there are others) that has taxonomic synonyms for the few Wiktionary users who might care. On the less complete, non-stub entries and even most too-short stub entries there is at least a link to WP, which now usually has links to many taxonomic databases. At some point soon we will be able to rely on WikiData via a single template to provide many such links, but even then, we may have to make sure that we have links to a hypernym rather than to the the headword for the project links, because coverage in the other projects is not complete, especially for ranks below family.DCDuring (talk)16:43, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:11 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hi DCDuring. As a linguist I am embrarassed to say I have done very little on Wiktionary. That being so, I don't want to do something that might have a knock-on effect. I was looking forrufous pigeon on the Wikipedia and the only result found was in the Wiktionary, atpigeon. It is notvisible; ca be seen only inedit mode, which is why I was hesitant to do anything. The segment in question says:
As you know more than one vernacular name can be applied to a given species and a given vernacular name can be applied to more than on species. That's is a fundamental reason to have taxonomic names and "official" vernacular names that have a one-to-one correspondence to taxonomic names. Unfortunately, there are often multiple "official" vernacular names. English Wiktionary always tries to reflect usage, so vernacular name entries need not (and usually don't) have a one-to-one relationship to taxonomic-name entries.
In this case,rufous pigeon is one of the names applied toPatagioenas cayennensis (syn.Columba cayennensis). I'd say that the problem (now corrected) was that the entry forP. cayennensis omitted the vernacular namerufous pigeon.
I appreciate your caution in making changes here, but there are lots of errors and many, many more omissions among taxonomic names and vernacular names at English Wiktionary. Wikidata is attempting to become a database to connect all of the names for currently and recently accepted taxonomic names. I haven't ventured to contribute to that effort, but look forward to its success.
Thanks for noting the problem. I hope it is adequately corrected now. I have not resolved a good way to determine and then identify for users the "best" English vernacular name for a given taxon, while also respecting Wiktionary's policy of avoiding proscription and prescription in favor of description of name usage.DCDuring (talk)14:08, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I am happy to discuss any matter of what our policy or practice should be for organism name entries at Wiktionary. We are definitely still learning and evolving.DCDuring (talk)17:32, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:10 months ago9 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I'm relatively new to Wiktionary so I dont know all the ins and outs yet. I just saw you made an edit tocivet. On the def 1 line, I personally think your rephrasing is a bit awkward. I would leave the family names on the backend of the sentence. I thought it'd be good to discuss it here first instead of doing a passive-aggressive manual revert.
Also, I think it'd be helpful to make it clear that not all species in those families are civets -- as the WP article does. But that was a problem with the existing entry before you made the changes.Cameron.coombe (talk)02:10, 6 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Glad to talk about your concerns. Not enough people take seriously the wording of the entries for taxonomic names and vernacular names of organism.
It would be reasonable to recognize that different groups use a vernacular name differently, effectively forcing us to have multiple definitions, eg, some limitcivet only to members of subfamilyViverrinae (per WP). I did not review the question of whether there is actually a group of people who usecivet to refer to all and only members of Viverridae, let alone to the other families. A shortcut that occasionally works is to see what other general dictionaries do. In this case, MWOnline definescivet as "any of various Old World carnivorous viverrid mammals with long bodies, short legs, and a usually long tail". Do they meanviverrid to refer to all members ofViverridae or to Viverrinae, or something else? In principle, we should examine usage actual usage to see what the scope of the word is. This is a counsel of perfection, because there simply is not usually enough evidence of use (ie, not mere mention in a dictionary) to draw a firm conclusion of this type.
I see that there is very little reason to include Eupleridae in the main definition as WP has only one species withcivet as part of its vernacular name. Nandiniidae consists of a single species that is called anAfrican palm civet, but, according to the cladogram atw:African palm civet is not particularly close to others calledpalm civets.
And then there is the fact that closely related organisms can have very different names. Arebinturongs,oyans/linsangs, andgenets not civets? Apalm civet is apparently not a civet to those who restrict the word to Viverrinae.
What I try to do is avoid using taxonomic names as if they were English. I treat all vernacular names as referring to a single individual of one or more species (though even that does not necessarily reflect actual referent of the name). I treat all taxonomic names as names of groups. In much writing and even more so in speech, taxonomic names are used to refer to individual organisms and some vernacular names, usually the more artificial ones, are used to refer to groups, often to specific taxa. This forces be to some awkward wording ("Any of") if both taxonomic and vernacular names are in the same sentence, unless I can put either the taxonomic name or the vernacular name in parentheses.
Thus, I can see some changes that should be made, more radical than what you propose. Those changes may make it natural to reduce the awkwardness as well.DCDuring (talk)04:05, 6 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Ah yes, so there are some other issues.
It's not difficult to find references to individual species ascivets, e.g. "the civets are now kept in cages" (Asian palm civet)[8], "The civets of SARS were captured in the Himalayas and presented as live commodities in Guangdong" (one of the species in India)[9].
I don't imagine it'd be too difficult to locate collective references, e.g.[10][11][12] -- these aren't evidence per se, but an example of where I'd start.
Fair point on taxonomic names not being regular English. I don't know if it's a major issue here though with the suggested wording, where it's incorporated with the rest of the definition. But maybe you can think of something. My main issue is the awkward phrasing of "Any from the families ... of small mammals..."Cameron.coombe (talk)05:25, 6 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't disagree about the awkwardness of the wording. Sometimes I feel it's a feature, not a bug, because it draws attention to the non-equivalence of taxonomic and vernacular names. But then I lie down until that feeling goes away. I'll look around for alternative wording that fits my avoidance of the equivalence.DCDuring (talk)14:49, 6 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have been bothered by the idea that a definition like "A civet of genus ..." raised the possibility that there were non-civets in the genus, which were to be excluded as referents. The wording "Any of genus ... of civets" gets around that. I may be the only one to be so bothered.DCDuring (talk)13:59, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the main definitions should exclude the palm civet families, covering them with an additional phrase or a separate def. An approach would be to make the main definition exclude any taxon and use three subsenses to include a sensu lato def. (Viverridae), a sensu stricto def. (Viverrinae), and a palm civet def. For most entries I don't get into these issues: I just hurrying to make some improvements to the L2 section. But many basic, one-word English vernacular names (and, I assume, similar names in other languages) need multiple definitions to reflect the variety of uses.DCDuring (talk)15:40, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, quick question. In the etymology ofSinomacrops, I put the prefix as "{{prefix|mul|-Sino}}" so I can get the category "Translingual term prefix with...", but when I hover my mouse over "Sino-", it shows the translingual entry, which doesn't exist, instead of the english entry. How would I fix this? Thanks.Inpacod2 (talk)10:30, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
The best approach to fixing the problem you are having is to add a simple Translingual L2 section forsino- and use{{af}}: {{tl|af|mul|sino-|{{l|la|macrops}}}} as the entire etymology, instead of duplicating content. The capital is not derived etymologically, but rather of the orthography of taxonomic names. We already have a Latin L2 formacrops as a specific epithet. Arguably, that entry should not be Latin, but rather Translingual, because the definition shown has it being exclusively used as a specific epithet. An alternative approach would be to use: {{tl|mul|{{l|la|sino-}}|{{l|la|macrops}}}}.
According to theCatalogue of Life there is an accepted genusMacrops, with 33 provisionally accepted species, and, in other genera, 162 fully accepted species and subspecies names that usemacrops as epithet. We lack entries for any of these, let alone the 123 other unaccepted names that CoL also has.DCDuring (talk)16:55, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
You just created this in mainspace, which is clearly a mistake. I would have moved it to the template mainspace, but{{R:ViralZone}} already exists and is different enough that I didn't know whether to just delete the mainspace one or copy it over the other on and, in effect, delete that one. The mainspace one has to go, but I leave it up to you to decide on the other details.Chuck Entz (talk)21:51, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
"That's the way the cookie crumbles" is usually for more or less random occurrences of which the one that actually occurred is adverse. "You get that" is more broadly applicable, especially for not-so-random outcomes of normal processes.
I can see it via your link, but Google Books and Google web searches didn't find it. I suppose that means we should always(?) add a url to our citations, a habit I don't have.DCDuring (talk)14:32, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
BTW, I try to avoid using poetry, especially modern, because of the ambiguity of interpretation. This one, being archaic, doesn't count as modern, I suppose.DCDuring (talk)14:34, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 months ago6 comments3 people in discussion
Hello friend. I'm enjoying a Damon Runyon story collection at present, and I thought of you. Would you like some more ancient taxonomic garbage? You're a lot older than me so I have to use you while I can. "This time it's botanical" — as Schwarzenegger may have said in a sequel trailer. I hope you're well!2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:3047:5F1F:BE0D:3B5023:55, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
To start with: what the heck is going on here? Is it a Translingual taxon, or is it English with a plural, or is it something that was dreamed up for ten minutes and then forgotten about? (Source is Daydon Jackson's 1900Glossary of Botanic Terms.) "Superflua, pl. of Superfluum, a Linnean order of Syngenesia (Compositae) containing plants with the florets of the disk hermaphrodite, and those of the ray female." @Chuck Entz Chuck is also welcome to the moider party.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:3047:5F1F:BE0D:3B5023:59, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Linnaeus's taxa above the level of genus are historically important, but don't correspond to recent taxa, let alone modern ones. We should have them. We haveSyngenesia. I would label them historic.DCDuring (talk)01:24, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
All of this is easy to find in older dictionaries and in Google Scholar and Books. You can usually find a comprehensible definition, though longish, in a 19th century textbook.DCDuring (talk)01:33, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Fortunately, I have DCD's talk page on my watchlist- the ping did't work (it would have had to have been signed in the same edit).
My take on it is that "Superflua, pl. of Superfluum" is just an explanation of the etymology (it's Latin). Back in those days there were no taxonomic codes, so people could make up their own ranks, or just refer to them vaguely as "Linnaean orders". Before there was DNA analysis, botanists would base their classifications on characteristics of flower structure. Thecomposites (in thefamilyCompositae a.k.a.Asteraceae) have "flowers" which are really made up of lots of individual flowers masquerading as flower parts. Theray flowers look like petals, but they're really individual flowers with all the anatomical components of individual flowers in other families. Thedisk flowers are the parts in the middle of the flower, which are also complete flowers, except they don't have anything that looks like a petal. The reason for this masquerade is so thatpollinators will recognize these "flowers" as flowers and visit them topollinate them while they're getting nectar (plants are shameless manipulators).
The male parts of a flower producepollen, while the female parts haveovaries that will develop intofruits withseeds (sunflower "seeds" are really complete fruits, not just the seed). Most flowers arehermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female parts. Off the top of my head, I don't remember how thesubfamilies,tribes,genera, etc. line up according to the criteria given. No guarantee that this taxon matchesanything in modern taxonomy- I would call it an obsolete taxon.Chuck Entz (talk)02:01, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
GreatELI5 from Chuck. Thanks. Daydon Jackson's old Glossary (1900) is mostly common nouns, some of which were so obscure or useless that they can't be found and I don't bother; but there are plenty of attestable ones, even if they may not be the words used today, or have been superseded by DNA understanding [also I doubt we do mushrooms under botany any more, lol]. (It's a bit like embarrassing old anthropology where they thought the shape of a Tahitian's skull showed how dumb he was.) So I can deal with the common nouns (that is: marking as old, or not bothering if it was a single paper that didn't catch on), but some of the taxonomic names are tricky. Chuck helpfully explains that this is because taxonomy wasn't formalised yet. (Ha! They still recategorise stuff every damn day. But I will assume this is because there are only so many bookable hours at the DNA machine per day, and people are just lining up with bits of deep-sea squid to analyse. AITH?) Sometimes I can dig up a modern synonym, and sometimes I can just dare to call it a "grouping" (like the artificial ones based on numbers of petals), but more often it's some awful overlap across multiple modern genera, or just a mystery. We should have a discussion group that goes through these terms. Except it would become apparent that I can't tell a stamen from ramen, or a petal from metal. NEVER STOPPED ME YET. "Well done, son," said old Grandaddy Wonderfool.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:3047:5F1F:BE0D:3B5004:16, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Just a check-in. I have been picking apart 1982 video game code. Was it worth it? -- Anyway, wanted to say (i) thanks always for your fix-ups, (ii) I know you keep pushing me towards THE STATISTICS and doing something worthwhile, but you need to understand how I approach this project (as a guy who was once quite good at Scrabble and therefore tragically sees every word as a WORD, devoid of semantics). I am of course no biologist or zoologist. I get a huge list of words A-Z and I slowly try to research them and add them. And frankly those old bloody taxons (TAXA) are a big pain. But if I can add the most basic stub that isaccurate I will do it (and you know I have slapped the wrists of people who "defined" words by guessing: I do have to find some basic truth; if we guessed it all the time thentele- + pathy would mean "contagion"). And from your perspective "oh no, these are all out of date". Anyway, hope you're fine. bye. Do you remember when I telephoned you on the telephone?2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A0F8:2445:A57C:748123:32, 20 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I remember. I haven't knowingly met a single Wiktionarian in person and yours is the only call. And now there is someone adding good entries, but still mostly rarely linked-to ones. Sigh. TT&TO has been doing runs of the top 5,000 most linked-to missing taxonomic names. The top ones (~100) are linked to 14 times from principal namespace; the least (~1,000) 4 times.
I get cranky about taxon and related entries, but also about many other entries that require work no one seems to want to do. For example many senses of the highly polysemic function words don't have nearly enough citations. The same can be said for other polysemic words, including the words in the twoKeywords books and words discussed by the more serious literary/cultural critics.
A short while ago, I spent an hour or more looking at the 400 citations Ioaxxere collected forirascible (SeeCitations:irascible) and noted that not all of them were applied directly to people. About 1% were applied to output of people (words, books, songs) and things not closely related to people (stock market prices in the month of October, etc.). Looking at large numbers of cites of a word can lead to new or revised definitions. I the case of irascible, it led me to a definition that had appeared in the Encarta Dictionary. SeeTalk:irascible. This is the kind of thing that lexicographers equipped with proper tools can do. Would that we had such tools.DCDuring (talk)00:18, 21 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
"knowingly" made me laugh. That's paranoia! Are we unknowingly meeting other Wiktionarians all the time? HORRIBLE. I think I once wrote a 'piece' about priorities (Pokémon versus transitivity) but it was probably racist and privileged. P.S. The supposed "proper lexicographers" doing real work are actually hanging around waiting to rip off our excellent entries for a Word of the Year. It started withmech ormecha or something and I have observed with increasing disbelief. I do visit Oxford a couple of times a year so I can always plant a — *looks around carefully* — Birthday Cake. Say the word.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A0F8:2445:A57C:748100:59, 21 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I also enjoy seeing the OED release embarrassing quarterly updates like "it's 2025 and we have finally added some sub-senses ofbutter, and added the wordblog". Jesus Christ. Yeah it's 2025 and I've finally solved my 1980 Rubik's Cube and I'm about to ask out the nice girl from kindergarten, because I liked the way she shaped a piece of plasticine. (You remember me don't you Jenny-Anne?)2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A0F8:2445:A57C:748101:04, 21 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
My idea of 'proper lexicographer' isPatrick Hanks of Collins (!!!) COBUILD, author ofLexical Analysis. I like the idea of there being crypto-Wiktionarians trying to hide, rather than Wiktionarians that remain hidden because no one cares.DCDuring (talk)01:18, 21 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
My mother apparently did something with or forRandolph Quirk (famed for recording "English as spoken" for the first time, i.e. the descriptive over prescriptive). Or so I was told. Unfortunately no idea what, or who told me when. All I know is that she was at Oxford and had her thing (?? PhD?) published, which was a very obscure bibliography in the '60s or so and had a section on "language learning by hypnosis", which I suppose people believed in at that time. Ya tell somebody today "the things you believe in might be proven false later" and you get mugged.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A0F8:2445:A57C:748101:22, 21 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I picked up, for the cost of shipping, the DARE office copy of its hard-copy product. I had picked up three volumes at used prices earlier, so I have spares.
Alas. Thanks for checking! BTW, your comments in the BP re quotesinspired me to overhaulabout, but left me with some questions, in particular regarding what part of speechthis kind of use is, if you (or CGEL) have any thoughts. I aim to overhaularound next, since so many of its senses are similar, but sometimes bring to the fore particular meanings that inabout can (it seems) only practically be considered to be parts of broader senses—e.g. the sense "round the outside of, in contrast to directly over, through, across, or into" is clearly its own sense ofaround, "we can't go over or through the mountains, we'll have to go around", but it seems harder to find quotes ofabout that distinguish that specific use from other parts of preposition definition 1.- -sche(discuss)20:08, 31 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I see the problem withabout. They seem adverbial to me. The "one hundred" examples seem most clear withabout as an adjective modifier. Speakers often omit a noun (driving fifty (mph)) following the number, in which cases it seems silly to say that the number is a noun. (Inabout 10 (o'clock),10 does seem to be a noun, to the extent that there is any point in parsing the grammar.) The other cases can be paraphrased with a precedingat orof, which makes a prepositional reading seem less plausible than an elision of such prepositions, which would not be omitted in formal writing. Alternatively, the following nouns (height, etc.) seems to me to be standing in for a number. It is also interesting to be that one can haveabout appear in either of two positions in some expressions:of about the same height orabout of the same height, tho I'd prefer the first. That makesabout seem adverbial whenever it is modifying some quantifiable even when no number is present. I usually dislike this kind of 'deep' analysis, rather than one that stays closer to the surface word-class assignments, so I would not really object to assigningabout ("approximately, approximating") to the preposition PoS as well as the adverb PoS. Word classes can be a pain for common function words (preposition? adverb? particle?).
I wouldn't useabout with a sense synonymous with the sense ofaround (def. 4?).About does not seem to work well in my idiolect where the idea is that the following noun is an obstacle or barrier to purposive activity. Canaround be used for both non-purposive and purposive activity, butabout only for non-purposive? I'll look atCGEL now.DCDuring (talk)21:52, 31 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I needed a break before my head exploded. CGEL refers to adverbial use ofabout with "numerals". [BTW, both cardinal and ordinal, IMHO]. You may recall that CGEL, in talking about prepositions, removes from the class of adverbs what the authors call intransitive prepositions. So they are less than helpful for our PoS issues. I didn't find much use for their mentions ofabout andaround in their 'lexical index'.
WordNet confirms "non-purposive"about with this definition: "to or among many different places orin no particular direction. (syn:around). Foraround "to a particular destination either specified or understood" (no synonym given). BTW, WordNet's definitions foraround are mostly worded strictly in locative terms. Presumably they would acknowledge metaphorical use. They may just have more faith that their users understand metaphor than we do about ours.DCDuring (talk)23:31, 31 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I don't disagree that "arbitrary break" isn't a great header (it was a habit from Wikipedia), but I do not think it is acceptable to change a discussion header without asking or warning first, because it is still altering discussion text posted by other people without consent or consensus, which is a big no-no. —Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung,mellohi! (投稿)02:49, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think it is my duty to clean up that kind of thing. And it is your duty to think about the cognitive demands your choices make on others and minimize them.DCDuring (talk)12:07, 5 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Similarly, folks hide discussions under show/hide boxes on discussion pages without asking for permission. People also change templates and category links that cause miscategorization of the discussion pages without asking for permission. Other discussion-page-presentation mistakes (Nowhere is there documentation that they are mistakes, BTW.) get corrected as well.
I needed to clean out some maintenance categories involving the Chinese data glosses module. It is not a synonym, but a misspelling, apparently common,dwindlingly, among naturalist authors.DCDuring (talk)17:13, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
DCDuring,
I think you made an error on this entry.Pipsissewa is derived from the Cree language, whereas under the etymology, you listedxanthophyllum in the text.mysteryroom (talk)22:46, 7 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
These look a lot like duplicates - shouldn't one of these be selected as "standard" with translations, link to Wikipedia etc. and the other relegated to{{altform}}? I'm also a little dubious aboutbeggartick (first time I've ever encountered this) as opposed tobeggarticks (which also seems to exist, with links to Wikipedia etc.).
Yes, they should be combined, more or less as you suggest. I wouldn't be surprised to find "a/one beggartick" to be attestable and evenbeggar tick andbeggars'/beggar's tick, but I wouldn't seek out such attestation (for the less common forms, the ones likely to be proscribed) except using Google Ngrams, which makes it relatively easy to do so. There is no reason to prioritise the creation of alt forms sections that completely cover all attestable alt forms.
Did you make sure that the referents ofbeggarticks and ofbeggars'/beggar's ticks are the same? The latter may sometimes be used literally(!?) or be artifacts of scanning. A largish sample (>20) (not a complete one) of the open-spelled forms should be enough. It is a bit tedious to do this kind of thing, but it is good entry hygiene! I encourage you to fix such things as you find them, where warranted.DCDuring (talk)19:44, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
List_of_fish_of_the_Mediterranean_Sea on Wikipedia.Wikipedia. I didn't find much among linguistis and lexicographics works that was convincing. For example, seeFishing from the Earliest Times (1921).