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March 2025

street shitter needs protecting

2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:183C:98AD:BA8B:4A49 19:49, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

{{surf}}: the end of an era?

(See here for previous discussions.)

In light of ongoing doubts about what ‘surface analysis’ actually means, I propose replacing the template with {{af+}} with the text ‘derivable from X + Y’.

Reasons for the phrasing ‘derivable from’:

• It’s simple to understand
  • Avoids scientific jargon like ‘synchronic’ or ‘morphologically’ and Wiktionary jargon like ‘surface analysis’
• It’s unambiguous
  • To say that English boldly is derivable from English bold and -ly is to say that those elements are combinable synchronically (that is, in English) to produce boldly.
  • Meanwhile, ‘equivalent to’ is vague enough that people use it for both for synchronic combinations, such as bold + -ly, and fanciful long-range correspondences, such as ‘[month is] equivalent to moon + -th’. The latter is incorrect both synchronically (the combination would make *moonth, and -th doesn’t combine with nouns like moon anyway) and, as it happens, etymologically as well (the ending of month is not actually cognate to -th).
    • I don’t see the point of making correspondences like the latter, but if I had to, I’d use clearer phrasing like ‘[montage is an] unadapted borrowing from French montage, from monter + -age, cognate to English mount and -age’.

Thoughts? Nicodene (talk) 01:59, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

"Derivable" is as much jargon as "surface analysis", whose parts do not appear to be Wiktionary jargon at all – "surface" is a term I've encountered in various linguistics courses (and the same ones that taught me "synchronic"), and "derivable" not that I remember. "Derivable" is also just as ambiguous to me for any of the usages under the second bullet. I have less issue with the phrase "synchronically derivable" (but again more jargon). Any term we choose will link to a glossary for further information and eventually confuse some reader, and be applied in fuzzy or fanciful situations by some user, so I don't see what any of this truly achieves that can't be helped by slightly stronger documentation and fixing the small number of mistakes. (Do we really get anywhere by claiming terms are Wiktionarisms?) The status quo seems fine, no support. Hftf (talk) 02:44, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

"Derivable" is as much jargon as "surface analysis", whose parts do not appear to be Wiktionary jargon at all – "surface" is a term I've encountered in various linguistics courses (and the same ones that taught me "synchronic"), and "derivable" not that I remember.

Anyone who has finished school can understand derivable as it is intended here. Surface analysis is so opaque that there is constant confusion about what it’s supposed to mean (cf. the linked threads).

whose parts do not appear to be Wiktionary jargon at all

There is no such concept in linguistics as ‘surface analysis’. There is such a thing as word derivation.

"Derivable" is also just as ambiguous to me for any of the usages under the second bullet

No, montage is not ‘derivable’ from mount + -age (> *mountage) in any sense.

Any term we choose will link to a glossary for further information

Derivable does not need a glossary entry at all. That is actually a point in its favour that I hadn’t mentioned.

Nicodene (talk) 03:35, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Here are some entries to prove the inconsistency: singer, action, and clarity. I was expecting a "surface analysis" in the 1st and 2nd ones, but only the 2nd contains it. The 2nd and the 3rd contain "Equivalent to", tho the former is an obvious combination of sing and -er, and the latter derives from clear and -ity, despite not being *clearity, because:

• both clear and clarity come from Latin and it's common for Latinate base words to change but their related terms' stem remain the same (cf. Portuguese razão and racional);
• most English speakers know it has the same meaning as *clearity would have; and
• *clearity doesn't comply with the CFI.

Therefore, we can deem clar- an allomorph of clear- in the noun (as well as in clarify). Alternatively, if this derivation is unclear (pun intended), I suggest using "Semantically" or something like it, which is what the current etymology of clarify gives. Davi6596 (talk) 02:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Singer and action seem straightforward enough. Clarity < clar- + ity would require adding a rule for the combining form clar- like ‘only appears with latinate suffixes’ (cf. clear + -ness > clearness, not *clarness). That seems doable. Alternatively, we just could list clarify, clarity, claritude as related terms under clear, and vice-versa. Nicodene (talk) 04:54, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Derivable is even more opaque and jargony than the status quo; derivable how? What does that mean or imply? "Analyzable" is much clearer in that regard because it doesn't awkwardly skew the relationship (the lemma already exists and is analyzable in some way synchronically; nothing is derived synchronically), but at that point, why is "surface analysis" any less clear? Calling that Wiktionary jargon is quite silly, really; as Hftf commented above, this usage of "surface" or "surface form" is nothing atypical. Anyone familiar with literature would understand "surface analysis" to mean by analysis of the (synchronic) surface form. This is not to say I am not open to other viewpoints, but you happen markedly to be the only person I have seen consistently taking issue with this. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 07:32, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Derivable is even more opaque and jargony than the status quo; derivable how? What does that mean or imply?

It means boldly can be derived from bold by suffixing the latter with -ly. What’s not to understand?

Calling that Wiktionary jargon is quite silly, really; as Hftf commented above, this usage of "surface" or "surface form" is nothing atypical.

‘Surface analysis’ is, again, not a concept in linguistics.

"Analyzable" is much clearer

‘Analyzable’ has the same problem as described above for ‘equivalent to’, namely that its vagueness leads people to use it for both synchronically valid combinations and longer-range etymological connections.

because it doesn't awkwardly skew the relationship (the lemma already exists and is analyzable in some way synchronically; nothing is derived synchronically)

‘synchronically derived’: Google Scholar, Google Books

why is "surface analysis" any less clear? Anyone familiar with literature would understand "surface analysis" to mean by analysis of the (synchronic) surface form.

The fact of the matter is that people keep finding it confusing. Perhaps part of the reason is that familiarity with the literature does not translate into familiarity with a term that does not exist in the literature.

you happen markedly to be the only person I have seen consistently taking issue with this.

The previous discussions show plenty of others in favour of one alternative or another to ‘surface analysis’.

Nicodene (talk) 08:44, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind, I have managed to find actual examples of ‘surface analysis’ being used like this. I stand by the rest of my points but am no longer very inclined towards change. Nicodene (talk) 10:07, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

montage is not ‘derivable’ from mount + -age: that’s why we just call it a surface analysis or equivalent to it. Though there be absent a strict concept in linguistics, for pedagogic concern this is perfectly valid in language acquisition and language science acquisition: human memory may give structure to itself like this, and even to the resulting descriptive language—due to its linearity—, evening out the finicky detail that montage is actually > *mountage. Besides I point out that your argument withsaid itself by once insisting on linguistic usage and then eschewing its jargon; such recommendations confuse writers even more than they do readers. Fay Freak (talk) 11:39, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I’m OK with the status quo or “analysable as”. Not keen on “derived from” because we also use that phrasing in the main part of the etymology sometimes. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:25, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

My understanding is that "surface analysis" says that the claim is being made without reference, but because the division is self-evident. It serves a useful purpose in that readers and editors are made aware that it reflects the opinion of the editor, which might often be right, but is worthy of further research if there's any doubt. Proudlyuseless (talk) 21:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, there's a substantial Venn overlap: synchrony does not equal folk etymology, but folk etymology is often synchronic. The synchronic view of earthen or biology as being built from affixation is not a hypothesis that might be wrong but rather the duck instead of the rabbit (the synchronic viewpoint versus the diachronic viewpoint); neither the duck nor the rabbit is false, and neither is conjectural. But you're right that the overlap with folk etymology is a good point, though, because speakers of natural languages rely on synchrony in a crucial way. Fluency doesn't come so much from diachronic trivia knowledge as from synchronic analysis on the fly. Regarding the topic of this thread, namely, how to dumbmaxx it all (i.e., how to dumb it all down to the truly ultimate degree), there's no final One Right Answer but rather the sound of one hand clapping or a tree falling where there's no one to hear it. Wiktionary's current word choice for this aspect is as pedagogically helpful as any of its alternatives are, so it may as well remain. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

• EDIT: I'm realizing I'm in way over my head in this discussion, I haven't been editing for very long. I'll leave this to the editors who have a better understanding of both linguistics and wiktionary.

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to when you're talking about folk etymology. Folk etymology isn't a form of analysis, it's a description of a process in the evolution of language. What I was talking about is a tool that we use often in the Ukrainian corner of the dictionary, where we use the surface analysis template for words whose origin is often self-evident due to frequent use of affixes. Because those often drastically shift the meaning of a word, it is essential to put in a link to the stem in the etymology, but the transformation is so elementary that there is no point in finding a reference for the affix, if one actually exists. It could be done with a more generic combining template, but indicating that it was by surface analysis assures it's not mistaken for gospel. Proudlyuseless (talk) 03:53, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah no. I found surface analysis to be perfectly transparent and easily understandable. I really don't think "derivable" is an improvement. MedK1 (talk) 12:49, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Protectedpagetext

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis the protection level when editing a protected page, However, Wiktionary uses the default, which does not tell you what level it is (semi, auto patrol, admin) Heyaaaaalol (talk) 23:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand the problem. What would you like to be different? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:26, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

{{ro-IPA}}

Discussion moved to WT:RFDO.

Coincident verbs

(Or so Google AI Overview tells me that the specific name is for this type of irregular verb.) I'm referring those whose simple past tense and/or past participle are the same as the infinitive, such as hit, put, cost. Apparently the Wiktionary rule is that entries for such verbs are not to include an extra section defining the past-tense or past-participle use separately from the infinitive; i.e., we never put a section that looks like

Verb

1. simple past of put.

Is that indeed the rule? I can see why such a section could be considered superfluous – after all, the simple past and pp are easy to find, right there in boldface at the top of the definition list for the infinitive. But omitting it seems a little inconsistent, given that every derived form that differs from its root even by appending a single letter (e.g., puts) has its own full-fledged entry – even though these forms are also easy to find in their respective root-word entries. — HelpMyUnbelief (talk) 22:18, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

• Nobody calls them Coincident verbs. Your AI failed. Lfellet (talk) 23:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

In general we don't tend to put a "form-of" entry alongside the lemma if the forms coincide in spelling. Form-of entries are purely a navigational aid - if you've made it to the put entry, you've got to where all the info is. This, that and the other (talk) 03:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

As TTO says, such "form-of" entries are often omitted for English, though one finds exceptions, e.g. read (perhaps because the pronunciations differ and the etymologies are also distinguishable? ... but we aren't consistent, because I think I've seen entries where e.g. the plural was pronounced differently but didn't have its own section). Other languages (de facto) handle things differently, e.g. Latin entries often have such sections when the inflected forms have different macrons, even though that could just be shown via the declension table and via notes in the pronunciation section. (E.g. aquaria#Latin has "Pronunciation 1" and "Pronunciation 2"; mascula#Latin has only one pronunciation section with notes, but separate adjective sections...) - -sche (discuss) 17:01, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

what goes in a Template:place category?

I'm doing a bunch of {{place}} cleanup and we need to nail down what belongs in e.g. Category:en:States of the United States or Category:ru:Countries in Europe and what doesn't. To this end I just added a |nocat=1 param to {{place}} and {{tcl}} so you can get the description without the category. Obviously the canonical form of a polity or subpolity (state, country, etc.) belongs, but there are lots of other forms whose meaning is the same. My general thinking is that any variant in common, current use that refers to a given polity or subpolity belongs, but things that are rare, dated, archaic, obsolete, etc. don't, nor do former entities that no longer exist. More specifically:

1. Former polities and subpolities DO NOT BELONG (e.g. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, West Germany, the Soviet Union, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, etc.). We have separate categories for such things. This is important and keeps the primary categories from becoming a sloppy mess of current and former entities, esp. in places like Europe where borders and names have changed frequently.
2. Abbreviations in current use probably do belong; hence e.g. AZ and Ariz. go into Category:en:States of the United States. Same goes for clipped forms like Cal and Cali for California. An alternative is to segregate them into something like Category:en:Abbreviations of states of the United States.
3. If there is a shorter (elliptical) and longer form, both belong. Hence, Washington and Washington, D.C. both go in Category:en:National capitals.
4. Alternative forms still in use belong. Hence, Latin Carolina Australis, Carolina Meridiana and Carolina Meridionalis all appear to be valid ways of saying "South Carolina", so all three go in Category:la:States of the United States.
5. Forms in alternative scripts probably do belong, as long as the script is still in use by speakers of the language. Hence, Azerbaijani Cyrillic Австрија "Austria" goes into Category:az:Countries in Europe along with the more common Latin-script Avstriya. However, the Japanese ateji spelling 墺太利 for Austria does NOT belong in Category:ja:Countries in Europe since it's specifically indicated as obsolete; it seems Japanese speakers no longer use such forms, preferring katakana forms like オーストリア. This would logically mean that Vietnamese Han forms like 比 for Belgium should not belong in Category:vi:Countries in Europe since Vietnamese Han forms are no longer in use. Korean Hanja forms are more of a gray area; they are passing out of use but my instinct is to still include them for now. Thoughts?
6. Romanizations such as Monako in Japanese for モナコ do NOT belong because they are not commonly used by Japanese speakers themselves, only by foreigners.
7. Consistent with the above principles, terms written in superseded spelling systems do NOT belong unless the superseded spelling system is still in use because the new system hasn't been completely accepted.
   1. Examples of the former kind (superseded which don't belong): Russian pre-1917 forms (Австрія instead of Австрия "Austria"; any pre-any-reform Portuguese form that is superseded everywhere (Belgica instead of Bélgica "Belgium"; this can be tricky because some spelling reforms caused some forms to be superseded only in certain Portuguese-speaking countries); any pre-1996-reform German spelling; Indonesian pre-1945 or pre-1972 spellings like Djerman in place of Jerman "Germany".
   2. Examples of the latter kind (superseded which do belong): pre-1990 French forms, since the 1990 spelling reform has not been universally accepted (and even in Wiktionary we lemmatize at the pre-1990 forms); probably also pre-2007 Tagalog forms like Pinlandya in place of Pinlandiya "Finland"; here I don't know for sure, but 2007 seems pretty recent for a spelling reform to have been universally accepted. Similarly for any spelling reform promulgated 2010 or later.
8. Clearly dated forms probably do NOT belong, but this is a bit of a gray area. For example, Pennsylvanien is indicated as a dated-to-archaic German variant of Pennsylvania and hence doesn't belong, but for Farsi نمسا "Austria", which is merely indicated as "dated", I'm not sure. My instinct is to not include, but this may be wrong. Part of the problem here is that "dated" can mean different things for different people and languages; e.g. the Japanese ateji form 仏蘭西 "France" is given as "dated" but yet the equivalent form for Austria is given as "obsolete"; I suspect there isn't actually a significant usage difference here, more just different editors labeling things differently.
9. Things still in use in a restricted non-archaic register (such as poetic or elevated speech) probably DO belong, but I'm not sure. Example: Chinese 法蘭西 "France", listed as {{lb|zh|attributive|dated|or|poetic}} and with quotes from 2022 and 2024. Here, the "poetic" label suggests it's still in use in elevated speech (although "attributive" gives me pause, as we don't normally include adjectives meaning "French" in "Countries in Europe" categories).
10. Official names of countries still count as countries for categorization purposes, I think; hence United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland goes in Category:en:Countries in Europe. An alternative is to segregate them into a different category, such as Category:en:Official names of countries in Europe.
11. Nicknames probably do NOT belong; e.g. Big Apple for New York City, Bel Paese for Italy.
12. Derogatory terms, being nicknames, likewise probably do NOT belong. Example: English Oklahomo for Oklahoma (in truth I've never ever heard this term, but it's in Wiktionary ...) or Chiraq for Chicago (the name of a Spike Lee film).
13. Misspellings generally do NOT belong. Example: Dutch Belgie, misspelling of België "Belgium".
14. Inflected forms do NOT belong, only the base form. This comes up especially with Albanian and Aromanian, where the definite forms often use {{place}}. Example: Bosnja dhe Hercegovina, definite form of Bosnjë dhe Hercegovinë.

I'm sure there's something I've forgotten.

Pinging some random users who have participated in previous similar discussions on-wiki and in Discord: @-sche, @Chuck Entz, @Theknightwho, @LunaEatsTuna, @AG202, @CitationsFreak. Hopefully this is less controversial than my previous post Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2025/January#what_counts_as_a_"country"? because there is less of a political element here. Benwing2 (talk) 03:49, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Support on all points, except maybe 11, but there's little way to have 11 without having 12, so I'm fine with both being excluded. AG202 (talk) 02:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Support on all points except 11. It seems to me there is a very fine line separating 11 from 2, 3, and 4. Is the "City" a nickname for or an elliptical form of the City of London? 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 23:54, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, there are cases where it may be hard to distinguish abbreviations or elliptical forms from nicknames, but it feels like these are more edge cases than the norm. "the City" in particular can be used to refer to quite a number of major cities in the right context, and feels like something that doesn't belong for this reason. Benwing2 (talk) 00:18, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Nicknames listed as synonyms

I'm new to Wiktionary, so it's possible I'm beating a dead horse or posting in the wrong location. However I'm curious about how we reconcile listing (often derogatory) nicknames as synonyms for names. For example, Trump has Cheetolini listed as a synonym among a dozen or so other nicknames. Meanwhile Zelenskyy has green goblin listed as a slang synonym. I do not see this for Obama, although Obummer is listed as a "derived term". Are listing these as synonyms, especially with no indication of them being nicknames or slang (in some cases), not a violation of WT:NPOV? Alxeedo (talk) 03:21, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, they are synonyms. They should ideally be marked with qualifiers, though. I don't see how NPOV plays into this, as this kind of thing happens all the time for regular words, too. Just because we have arse as a synonym of buttocks doesn't mean we have a biased point of view against butts. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 23:58, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

This issue has come up before with e.g. педераст (pederast) and содомит (sodomit) and such listed as synonyms of гей (gej) (originally without qualifiers). It's extremely important any time slang, derogatory or obsolete synonyms are listed (or more generally, any terms whose register is not the same as that of the lemma) that appropriate qualifiers or labels are supplied to make clear the register distinction, but this doesn't always happen. Some non-core editors are just itching to add synonyms. We had one guy, for example, who would list 25 unqualified synonyms of each Latin verb, based on obscure, rare usages of the purportedly synonymous verbs, sometimes even listed under incorrect senses. Same goes for the definitions themselves; Sanskrit lemmas, for example, are dumping grounds of meanings from different registers and time periods, without proper qualifiers or labels. I would personally rather have no synonyms than non-neutral-register synonyms given without proper qualifiers. (And conversely: slang terms should not have neutral-register synonyms given without appropriate labels, but this is less of a ticking time bomb.) In the Latin examples, I just delete many of the synonym lists because untangling them will take way more time than I have, and the editor who added them has not been willing to add the proper qualifiers despite numerous requests. Benwing2 (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, when there are a very large number of derogatory, obsolete, etc "synonyms" of a non-derogatory, non-obsolete word, they can be offloaded to Thesaurus pages. I did this with the "synonyms" of Jew, inspired by someone else having done it at Muslim. Trump has enough synonyms that he could have a thesaurus page, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 07:47, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct annual review: proposed changes are available for comment

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Etymons

@Surjection @Vininn126 i feel like the current discord discussion about etymons should probably be moved on-wiki for transparency's sake, right? Froglegseternal (talk) 22:16, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed.

Based on Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/July#Moratorium on editing other languages' etymology sections for the purpose of English etymology trees and Wiktionary:Votes/2024-04/Allowing etymology trees on entries, I feel that the application of {{etymon}} as at least an ID template and at most more is probably fine. I'm not sure what harm there is adding ID's to things. Vininn126 (talk) 22:18, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

(For context, this conversation is about whether it's okay to add etymon IDs to any language this is not about trees or generated text)

Anyways, I agree with Vinn. I'm not sure how we would even be able to add etymons if we weren't allowed to add ID's to other languages. Like at қибтӣ, I only turned on the tree for languages that I know allow it, but if I couldn't add an ID to every language then I probably wouldn't be able to make a tree at all (at least not to the same extent). I don't think there's anything harmful about adding an invisible ID to other languages to fetch its etymology, that's kind've the point of etymon imo. — BABR・talk 22:29, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Vin Vininn126 (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

show me the wiktionary policy that says I can't spell it Vinn /j — BABR・talk 23:42, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

User:Vininn126#Vininn126, which is cannon. Vininn126 (talk) 23:44, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

canon—but I digress. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 23:47, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

The curse of two n's Vininn126 (talk) 12:53, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Basically what happened (for context for anyone not in the discord) is that yesterday, I made an edit to *karhu[[1]] in an attempt to fix the fact that the to address the fact that on the karu#Votic entry, the category "Votic entries referencing etymons with invalid IDs" was occurring. This was soonafter reverted by User:Surjection, after which I made a comment on their talk page, asking what I had done wrong. In the short time before they responded (rather quickly, I must add, thank you for the quick response!) I asked in the discord what was wrong with what I had done. This.... proceeded to start an argument between Surjection and User:Vininn126 about where and when it's appropriate to add the Template:etymon to an entry, with Surjection arguing against widespread adoption and Vininn saying there was nothing wrong with the actions I had taken in adding them. This quickly devolved into accusations of bad-faith, and for full transparency, I am making this thread.

I just want to add that I am a relatively new editor who was just trying to fix maintenance issues, not take pre-emptive on something which (apparently) has not yet reached consensus, not start an argument between two admins. As such, I will try to refrain from commenting any further on this matter, though I unfortunately don't have the best self-control at times so please don't try and say I "went against my word" if I do end up making another comment. Froglegseternal (talk) 22:25, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't like mass-addition of etymology trees, and I particularly don't like the addition of these in short chains of etymologies or instead of etymologies. For instance, Ingrian etymologies, especially for inherited terms, are short by design. Thadh (talk) 22:53, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, the dispute was not about trees. Vininn126 (talk) Vininn126 (talk) 22:55, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, while I do want to add that if one looks at my edit history they will see that trees have been expanded due to my actions, again I am a new editor who was not aware this was contentious. Froglegseternal (talk) 22:59, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Also I added a singular new one, by accident, which I quickly removed. I was not trying to make any visual changes, just trying to make it so that IDs weren't linking to nonexistent IDs. Froglegseternal (talk) 23:00, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

What other ultimate use do we have for etymon? Trees and descendant trees. If the etymology chain is short, you don't need either. Thadh (talk) 00:30, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

@Thadh, in this case we are talking about if it's okay to add an ID (no tree or generated text) to another language so you can use etymon. Like, if I'm editing English, is it okay for me to add an id to a Latin entry, without generating a tree or text, so that I can generate a tree for English?

It doesn't seem like something that needs a discussion imo, but it came up because Surjection reverted someone for adding ID's and a minor dispute started in the discord about whether it was the right thing to do. I honestly didn't fully understand Surjections view of why it wouldn't be okay, so I think it's better he explain it himself (if he wants to). — BABR・talk 01:34, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Except in this case there was no language that would need to generate a tree based on the etymology. There are no trees that use the Ingrian or Votic etymon ID. I think adding IDs just in case it could potentially be needed in the future is not a good idea. Thadh (talk) 01:40, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I added an ID because a descendant called an invalid parameter. that's it. i had no knowledge of anything linguistic, i was approaching this from a coding perspective. there was an error, i saw a way to solve the error, i acted. that's it, that's all, no more than that. so, no, i didn't add it because it was 'potentially' needed. i added it because it was causing a (minor) error. Froglegseternal (talk) 01:42, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

You can use {{etymid}} to add etymology IDs. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:47, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

{{etymon}} also adds dercats at the moment. Vininn126 (talk) 09:49, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

It is confusing for me to understand the technical aspects of this. It seems this involves the "text" feature of etymon, currently described as "[EXPERIMENTAL]" in its documentation page? I have reservations about cases where etymon is used completely invisibly, as some kind of segregated supplement to the etymology presented visibly on a page. It's harder in such cases to make sure the etymology information is properly vetted and any mistakes are fixed: you don't get as many eyes on such hidden etymologies, and if they do eventually become visible to readers on trees in downstream entries, readers of those entries may not find it obvious how to edit mistakes to fix them. But if I understand correctly, etymon was formerly being used at karu as a way of visibly displaying the etymology, just in text form (not as a tree). And it sounds like the template at karu was causing an error because there was no etymon template at *karhu, which Froglegseternal noticed and then fixed by means of adding an etymon template to the latter entry. Then Surjection reverted that edit and also removed etymon from karu because of some objection to etymon's use. Surjection would you be able to explain the reason for that here? What exactly is the reason to prefer using "inh" rather than "etymon"?--Urszag (talk) 02:05, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

To repeat the comment from my talk page: "There is no consensus to mass-adopt etymon (there is in fact somewhat of a consensus against mass-adopting it), despite what some editors think." Some editors have apparently gotten the impression that they should start using and adding {{etymon}} to all entries, when the practice has always been to discuss it with tha appropriate language community. Discussions like this clearly show that the community is not OK with this kind of nondiscriminate behavior. My impression of {{etymon}} in general is that it is fundamentally experimental and incomplete in some ways, and that it is likely that it will be redesigned at least once in the near future. But when it comes to the text feature, which is even clearly marked as experimental, I cannot understand why an editor would look at it and think it is a good idea to start adding it to entries in basically every language they can think of. Any mass-adoption needs consensus, and there is none. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

As an ID to allow other words pointing to it as necessary. Vininn126 (talk) 09:19, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

@Froglegseternal: The text of Wiktionary:Votes/2024-04/Allowing etymology trees on entries *explicitly* allows the edit you were trying to make so I am somewhat baffled at @Surjection's actions in this case. Adding IDs has no visible effect on the entry whatsoever.

@Urszag as for the discussion about |text=, which I think is unrelated to this case, I describe the functionality as "experimental" as I had implemented the functionality somewhat extemporaneously last year, and I think in some cases the output is not very good (although it works pretty well for simple linear etymologies). But I intentionally took a hard line against it in the vote on etymology trees so that we could save it for a separate discussion or vote which I don't think ever actually happened. Ioaxxere (talk) 02:39, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: "Therefore, they may be used site-wide whenever necessary." allows that they are added when necessary. In this case, they are not. Thadh (talk) 13:01, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Ah, from reading the discussion more closely it looks like Surjection was objecting to the template being used on karu *as well as* *karhu, which is more reasonable. In that case I apologize for jumping to conclusions. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:42, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I think the use of |text= here is relevant because if the use of that parameter is not allowed in mainspace (which the 2024-04 vote seems to establish) then the edits by JnpoJuwan that originally added the etymon template to karu violated the current policy about its use. Even though the vote does allow "silent" use of the etymon template, as I mentioned, I see that as more of an anti-feature than a feature, and if etymon IDs have no effect on any visible content in any entry (which I think is currently equivalent to "are not needed for a tree"?), I think they shouldn't be included in entries. In this case, there seems to be no tree, so I think I agree with Surjection's decision to remove the template rather than convert it to a "silent" version.--Urszag (talk) 13:11, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@Urszag thanks for pinging me in this discussion (if anyone else could ping me in etymon discussions, I would appreciate it). my reasoning for using etymons is as follows: this is a powerful tool that has the capability of helping editors with the redundancy of language derivation tasks, as copying the longest etymology to every other language is hard manual work (this is especially true with internationalisms, what I deal with a lot, but also for inherentances and borrowings, mostly as they tend to be linear). it also automatically categorises words with all points of that etymology, which is convinient. the Portuguese-language community (and Tupi, I suppose, from the work of @Trooper57) has been using etymons for those reasons, even its experimental features like the |text= parameter. I understand that the programmers may see that the code is not great, but for my work, the quality of the tool provided has been good.

for these small, linear etymologies, there is no harm in adding etymons with the |text= parameter in my opinion. past me added the etymon to Votic (and other IE and Uralic entries) due to the automatic work that etymon pulls up (categorisation and etymology detail beyond Estonian) and the text is comparable in quality, with only slight pushback due to my oversights, to which I have apologised and do apologise for.

in the case of adding etymons in other languages "silently", in other to add data (tree, text, etc) to one descendant that does allow it, I don't see what the problem with that is from reading this discussion. while editing, I have tried to add them where the additional information would be useful as I have stated above. Juwan (talk) 18:24, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

yeah Trooper57 (talk) 20:47, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Ukrainian - authoritative reference for perfective verbs

Recently someone corrected a mistake I made in citing a more common perfective verb as the counterpart to an imperfective, rather than a verb that is considered the standard perfective. The user referenced SUM-20 as their source, but I don't understand what this is. Can someone explain so I can refer to this in the future? Proudlyuseless (talk) 21:03, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

@Proudlyuseless: Editors, in their contribution summaries, sometimes refer to references by their abbreviations in the template namespace, you need to select or prefix to your search in Special:Search to find, but here I link the template for you: {{R:uk:SUM-20}}. Fay Freak (talk) 13:23, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Template:-verb form of

How can I add an example to the first meaning only with this type of template? JMGN (talk) 13:37, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I don’t think it’s possible, but adding usage examples to non-lemma forms is, in my eyes, a poor practice and a mark of crusty old entries anyway. Add them to the main entry if you need to. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 14:09, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Then those templates should be automatically changed by a different type that dies allow it. JMGN (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with @Ktom that you shouldn't be adding usexes to non-lemma forms except in very limited circumstances (maybe possibly with suppletive forms, but not with something like huelga). If you really had to do that, there are ways of invoking {{es-verb form of}} and telling it to only output the definition for a single form, so you could use this to put the separate definitions on separate lines using separate {{es-verb form of}} calls and put the usex in between, but I'd strongly advise against that. Benwing2 (talk) 07:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2: huelga decir

This belongs under a "Derived terms" header. I put it under one at huelga (it was already present at holgar). This, that and the other (talk) 06:40, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

FL entries: glosses without useful hypernyms

In a few Slavic language entries I found the following "definition": "man on horseback, yellow knight (Tricholoma equestre)". Though I've run across each term and therefore recalled that a mushroom was the referent, it struck me that not too many others would. But should we require a user to search for the relevant definition by serially examining the links in each definition in the PoS section?

In an English entry the norm is to have a hypernym as a major part of each of a noun's definitions. In FL entries we require only a gloss, so generally no hypernym is present. Moreover, usually no topical label is to be found either. Also, in the desire to find a single-word definition, many FL entries seem to use rather obscure English words that would mystify most English readers and auditors.

Isn't this a glaring shortcoming for our FL entries, making them not so useful for normal users' needs, whatever its adequacy for translators? DCDuring (talk) 16:36, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

should we require a user to search for the relevant definition by serially examining the links? Yes, otherwise this duplicates and over time desynchronizes content. This weighs more than the interest of users unlike you in such entries: either people are above-average likely to recall organism names, or at least interested in them enough to click them while not recalling them, or they have little real-life incentives to seek out these entries in the first place. The imbalance can also be mitigated by a template fetching or at least highlighting certain definitions from English, or even Wikidata, {{transclude}}, though I have never used these mechanisms, mostly seeing them in Hebrew entries like גֶּרֶב (“sock”) for whatever reason: editors also need to spare their working memory when creating definitions, I think you yourself warned against overtemplatization making the creation and editing of entries feasible only for techies. There is nothing to be depressed about here. Fay Freak (talk) 18:55, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

You don't address my main concern, which I may have buried under too much other text.

Could you explain how the definition I provided, which is duplicated in 4-5 entries, doesn't waste people's time by failing to provide either a hypernym in the gloss/definition or a topical label (BTW, which I dislike for other reasons)? DCDuring (talk) 19:22, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Your concern is that the gloss doesn't make it clear that this is a type of fungus, then? I think that's a fair point. In exceptional cases such as this where the common names does not at all make clear what type of organism it is, could you write "(the fungus Tricholoma equestre)" instead of simply "(Tricholoma equestre)"? This, that and the other (talk) 00:03, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Well I do that, too, for example voskovka, and DCDuring is right in general to raise awareness about this issue, which I have worked out below. I fear there is something obsessive-compulsive about the formatting in Polish entries particularly, though, preventing people from doing this right thing. Fay Freak (talk) 00:09, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

They should add an image so we know what it is about? It involves visiting another website, just as thinking about the appropriate hypernym does since it involves comparison. I see why you liked high-effort entries from my side of that style, like оман (at which age by which share are American or English youngsters aware what elecampane is?). There are no completely satisfying alternatives. It appears like an exaggeration to speak of a waste of time then, but I see that you indeed deem it somehow inappropriate to force people to click through to even understand an entry, but again I deem it a theoretical concern due to the selection bias of people who even visit such entries, being luxurious in their use of leisure time, and sufficiently interested. Fay Freak (talk) 00:05, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

How do we establish norms for the basic Wiktionary function of defining terms? At which and how many levels should they operate? Should any be strictly enforced? How do we communicate them?

I don't think we even have agreement on the overall goals of definition. At the very least, we seem to accept truly poor definitions, such as the example given, which suggest that we are our FL entries are only for translators and people who like clicking links (Let's call them "browsers".). If someone other than a translator or browser comes to a polysemic entry, especially FL, should that user have to click to another entry (or entries!!!) to find out that the definition is NOT one that fits the use we is deciphering? If we could agree that we should use simple means to avoid such situations, then we could perhaps somewhere enshrine that goal and direct contributors to it. We could go further and prescribe a defining vocabulary, at least for stem-lemmas, ie those not trivially derived morphologically from other lemmas.

Without some agreement on principles of this kind, I find it difficult to imagine norms other than formatting goals for definitions and the feel-good counsel of perfection: "all words in all languages using definitions and descriptions in English", which provides no guidance for contributors, only license. DCDuring (talk) 18:12, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

My personal take is that all FL definitions should eventually include both a translation (what I believe you are calling a gloss) and a longer gloss, encased in {{gloss}}. Often, these are only provided to differentiate ambiguities, but I prefer them to include at least a semi-complete definition, for the following reasons:

1. It avoids ambiguities arising in the future if new definitions are added at the target entry;
2. It makes better sense of long lists of synonyms in some entries, encapsulating the general meaning in a single definition;
3. It provides a way of noting shades of meaning that would otherwise be lost (for instance, rivière would be missing important information if it was simply glossed as "river");
4. It saves users from needing to click onto the English entry if they don't understand the translation any better than the word they are looking up.

Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:33, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Policy clarification regarding the placement of usexes

The policy on usexes says that {{ux}} templates should "be placed immediately after the applicable numbered definition". However, the policy on synonyms (and other semantic relation templates) conflictingly says that {{syn}} templates should also be placed immediately after the definition line.

In practice, the vast majority of semantic relation templates are placed before the usexes, so here is my proposal to amend the usex policy:

Example sentences should: [...]

• be placed after the applicable numbered definition; before any quotations associated with that specific definition, but after any associated semantic relation templates (like {{syn}}).

What do you think?

Tc14Hd (aka Marc) (talk) 18:36, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, something like that. This is already practice and probably rule. The votes introducing {{syn}} postcede the sentence about usexes you quote, hence lex posterior rule resolves it, which is of course intransparent to not-long-term users. Fay Freak (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

So we don't need an extra vote to change the policy? Just one admin that changes it for us? Tc14Hd (aka Marc) (talk) 19:36, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Yep, the practice is that nyms come before usexes. I thought that was the rule. I'm not sure that this needs a formal vote – after all, it's a glaring and unintentional inconsistency in the policy. Let's see if anyone objects to a change before making it. This, that and the other (talk) 00:05, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I support this theme too (i.e., to fix the documentation to codify that which is already the norm/standard). Quercus solaris (talk) 20:44, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done This, that and the other (talk) 01:55, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@This, that and the other Thanks! Tc14Hd (aka Marc) (talk) 02:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

the limits of Limited Documentation Languages

Yes, LDL's accept terms with only one cite. But do hapax locations that can't be precisely identified count? I ask because of this:

1. Occitan Le Tousquirat defined as an "Unidentified location near Massat in Ariège, France." and there's a citation on the Citations page. At least the approximate location is specified, but I question whether this passes CFI except on a rather liberal reading.
2. Some of the stuff in Category:twf:Place names. I'd like to entirely get rid of Category:Place names and its only subcat Category:twf:Place names, but we have entries like:
   1. wę̀puopʼôto defined as "Pine-Near-Water (place name)", no citation;
   2. kònkʼə́obo defined as "placename for a place where a buffalo turned into stone in ancient times about 0.5 miles east of Taos";
   3. tə̂obo defined as "to the village, toward the village, Taos pueblo";
   4. tə̂otho defined as "in the village, at the village, Taos pueblo";
   5. kwę́ʼogą defined as "among the Mexicans (i.e. Taos city, Taos village)".

At least these last three, maybe all of them, appear to be just SOP descriptions that only contextually refer to specific locations. It seems similar to telling a story where I said "I went back into town" where "into town" happens to refer to say Kalamazoo, Michigan in the context, but could be anywhere. OTOH maybe given the centrality of Taos Pueblo to Taos language speakers, it's a bit similar to "the City" referring to New York, London or various other core cities in large metro areas, for which we do have definitions (defns #1, #3, #4 under City); but all three of these are locative particles, not nouns, so they can't really qualify as placenames. @-sche? Sorry to ping you once again but from the edit history of these pages (FWIW created by User:Ishwar), you seem to know something about Taos. Benwing2 (talk) 07:07, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with including unlocatable placenames per se. Even in WDLs there are words for places that can't be precisely located, e.g. Gomorrah and the names (in various languages) of a lot of these places; we also have entries for non-placename words that can't be (precisely, or at all) defined, e.g. あしひきの, בדולח, ᚆᚉᚉᚃᚃᚓᚃᚃ, 𒇷 and various pages that use Template:def-uncertain. There is usually more information of lexicographic interest available about placenames than solely "where is it?", after all, like etymology (showing a given root survived into the language, for example).
Of course, if the placename has no citations, it should be RFVed. And if the definition needs to be fixed, like someone defined rūrī as "Italy" or "in Italy" when it should be "locative of rus ("country")" or the like, that should be fixed. (I will see what I can find out about the Taos terms.) And if the categorization needs to be changed, e.g. to put things into the placename equivalent of Category:Terms with uncertain meaning by language or dump them into Category:en:Places (along with things like James Shoal) or something else, absolutely, let's improve the categorization. - -sche (discuss) 08:55, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, this makes sense. Any help you can give with the Taos terms would be greatly appreciated; I'm doing a big cleanup/revamp of the {{place}} architecture and I'm trying to get rid of leftover categories like Category:Place names. BTW probably nothing (or at least no specific toponym) should go directly in Category:Places; maybe the only thing I could think of going there is fictional locations with no specific referent like East Bumfuck (hmm, we have East Bumfuck, Kansas) or Cockaigne, but even then we have Category:Fictional locations as well as Category:Mythological locations (IMO they should probably be merged into Category:Mythological and fictional locations as the distinction between the two is often fuzzy). Benwing2 (talk) 09:06, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I've moved the Taos entries from CAT:Place_names over to (subcategories of) CAT:Places. Most of them look like (proper) nouns; AFAICT the non-noun-y parts of the definition (which had led the creator to reclassify them as particles) are etymological (literal morpheme-by-morpheme translations of the name). In a few cases I was unsure whether the term was really a placename/noun or was truly a particle, so I left it as a particle with an {{attn}} tag. - -sche (discuss) 22:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I want to echo this. Even though I'm not big on adding proper nouns (a view not shared by the vast, vast majority of editors), I know this is going to end up being an issue when I (eventually?) get around to adding Old Polish place names. Vininn126 (talk) 09:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

categorizing demonyms

How should we best categorize demonyms? Mostly they're just dumped into e.g. Category:en:Demonyms (with 1,438 members) but we have some subcategories like Category:en:British demonyms, Category:en:Belarusian demonyms, Category:en:Demonyms for Americans and Category:en:Demonyms for Australians that are manually added and not yet properly handled by {{auto cat}}. I ask because I renamed some {{place}} categories (e.g. Category:fr:Normandy -> Category:fr:Normandy, France), which has flushed out a bunch of manually-categorized demonyms in the old category. If we want to subcategorize demonyms, we should probably try to leverage the existing {{place}} mechanisms, but that would mean the names would have to be e.g. Category:en:Demonyms for people from Australia or Category:fr:Demonyms for people from Normandy, France, since {{place}} does't know about terms like "British" and "Australian" (and I'd have to modify {{demonym-noun}} and {{demonym-adj}} to somehow hook into Module:place). Do these names sound OK or are there better ones? If we have demonym subcategories, how far down the place hierarchy should we go? {{place}} knows about Category:Hubei, China and Category:Oriental, Morocco and lots of other first-level subdivisions (and sometimes even second-level subdivisions, in the case of e.g. counties of England such as Category:Herefordshire, England). Should there be a Category:Demonyms for people from Herefordshire, England or should we have some limits, e.g. only countries (or maybe also country-like divisions like England and Greenland)? Or should we follow the practice of the Norman demonyms and just dump them all into the bare category like Category:Normandy, France or Category:Herefordshire, England? It could be argued that it's sufficient to double-categorize something like French cherbourgeois (“from Cherbourg”) into e.g. Category:fr:Demonyms and Category:fr:Normandy, France, because an intersection search can easily pull up the terms in both categories to get the demonyms for Normans; this was the argument used to eliminate categories like Category:Female scientists in favor of Category:Female people and Category:Scientists. Benwing2 (talk) 20:51, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

OK tentatively I have decided to go with the double-categorization approach as described at the end; French cherbourgeois will go in Category:Demonyms and Category:Normandy, France. This will happen through an expanded syntax for {{demonym-adj}} or {{demonym-noun}}, looking something like this:

# {{demonym-adj|fr|[[Cherbourg]], a <<town>> in <<dept/Manche>>, <<r/Normandy>>, <<c/France>>|g=m}}

The only thing different here from a regular {{demonym-adj}} call is the use of <<..>>, which is borrowed from {{place}}. Essentially, any use of <<..>> will cause the whole expression to be parsed and displayed like a new-style {{place}} definition, and it will categorize according to the lowest-level recognized division, in a bare category. Here, this is Category:Normandy, France, but if I end up teaching {{place}} about the 101 French departments and having categories for them, it will automatically be re-categorized into Category:Manche, France (or maybe Category:Manche, Normandy, France depending on the naming scheme chosen). The beauty of this is that we can change our minds later on about how we categorize demonyms without having to manually (or by bot) change a zillion individual entries. Tentatively I'm thinking it will only categorize in Category:Normandy, France and not also Category:France to avoid spamming the latter category, consistent with the idea that you shouldn't usually double-categorize at different depths along the same branch. But maybe if we create department-level categories it might end up making sense to categorize demonyms both at the department and regional level, depending on how many there are. The other thing to note is that, unlike for {{place}}, you can leave out the entry placetype (the <<town>> in the above example) if it makes sense to do so. So for example, French Ariégeois might use

# {{demonym-noun|fr|the <<dept:pref/Ariège>>, <<r/Occitania>>, <<c/France>>|g=m}}

which would display something like "native or inhabitant of the department of Ariège, Occitania, France (masculine or unspecified gender)" and would categorize into Category:Demonyms and Category:Occitania, France.

Benwing2 (talk) 06:15, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

OK, I have implemented this as described above. Benwing2 (talk) 07:28, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

"a language is a dialect with an army and a navy"

Let's please merge Category:Languages and Category:Dialects into maybe Category:Languages and dialects (or Category:Languages and language varieties or just Category:Lects?). As we all know, the distinction is nebulous, and the current system clearly isn't working as we have 3,280 members of Category:en:Languages and only 169 of Category:en:Dialects; evidently editors are loath to categorize language varieties as "dialects". Ultimately, we should also split the resulting category, maybe along continental region lines (i.e. pretty much the same regions used for "Countries in X" categories: North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia with the addition of Australia and New Guinea); but such a split is a non-trivial task. Benwing2 (talk) 23:12, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

And while we're at it, let's create a language is a dialect with an army and a navy as an entry. Purplebackpack89 01:01, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Let's not and say we did. Benwing2 (talk) 01:05, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Support. Category:Languages and language varieties; I can foresee Category:Lects being deemed jargony. Fay Freak (talk) 01:23, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Although there is indeed no clear, objective line between language and dialect, I’m not sure it follows that removing the category difference is a good idea. I think that, no matter what theoretical models we subscribe to, we can agree on the logic of having, say, American English and British English under a grouping that does not include Swahili.

Whichever way we go with this, I support dropping the usage of dialect (with its undesirable connotations) in favour of variety. Nicodene (talk) 03:18, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah I agree, it'd feel weird to have those in the same category. AG202 (talk) 03:25, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Definitely I prefer "language varieties" over "dialects" but there are so many gray areas that keeping both categories is going to be a real headache IMO. What motivated this was trying to clean up French demonyms, and in the process I discovered things like French champenois defined as # Champenois (Romance language or dialect) Similarly English Bourguignon: # The Romance Burgundian language or dialect. Making such a distinction forces us into a sometimes arbitrary choice of language vs. dialect, which may be obvious for things like Swahili vs. British English but rapidly gets nebulous as hell when you're dealing with less familiar language varieties. Note also that categories like Category:Languages of the United States already group languages and "dialects", as can be seen by looking under A in this category. Benwing2 (talk) 07:36, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Given that we treat Champenois as a language, we might as well categorize it as such for consistency. I wonder whether some form of automatization is possible. Nicodene (talk) 09:21, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. After a quick look through the dialect category, I don't think those are the same kinds of things we want in the language category. I'm fine with renaming the former, but I think the lower number of dialects probably comes down to the fact that people are more interested in languages, not dialects, and dialects are less likely to have their own distinct names (even looking at what's already in the English subcategory, I see things like "European Portuguese," which is linguistically less interesting than "Portuguese" itself). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:04, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose "the current system clearly isn't working as we have 3,280 members of Category:en:Languages and only 169 of Category:en:Dialects [...] evidently editors are loath to categorize language varieties as "dialects" " – I don't think that's the right conclusion: at this moment there are exactly 0 dialects for Dutch, this doesn't mean there are no Dutch dialects, or that editors would classify 'Antwerps', 'Leuvens', etc. as languages. People simply haven't bothered (and at Antwerps, the category hasn't been added). Exarchus (talk) 12:55, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Correction: there are 3 dialects at Category:nl:Dialects (I was looking at the 'n' in the list). Though 'tussentaal' is not what is properly called a dialect, so a change to 'language variety' is an idea.

And now I noticed that you counted Category:en:Dialects and not Category:Dialects. Well, obviously people are not likely to start adding English translations of Markizaats, Kempenlands, Getelands, Aalsters, Utrechts-Alblasserwaards, Kennemerlands, and so on and so forth.

Btw, I changed Brabantian from 'language' to 'dialect' (though 'dialect group' might be more accurate, so yeah, a change to 'language variety' sounds fine), as I don't think it is seriously considered a language by anyone. Exarchus (talk) 13:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• I wonder what normal people care about and how they interpret "language", "lect", "dialect", and "language variety". Anybody have any data or conjectures? Does anybody here care? DCDuring (talk) 13:44, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

My educated conjectures include that I agree with an earlier comment that the word "dialect" has a certain mild cultural baggage, slight but not nothing, whereby to some laypersons it connotes themes such as "niche", "ethnic", "slang", "nonstandard", and "less than" (regardless of whether it ought to), and thus saying "language variety" is better, because (I like to hope) they will have a hard time managing to trample that one with the treadmill. Not that such trampling can't be done, but it's a steeper climb that will give more of a workout. (Ask your doctor before starting an exercise regimen. Ask your doctor whether once-daily DumbDownMaxx is right for you.) Quercus solaris (talk) 03:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree that language variety is probably sufficiently transparent for most normal users, but only if we have hovertext and a Wiktionary:Appendix entry (and WP link?) for language variety that refers to the word dialect for those users looking for some kind of explanation. DCDuring (talk) 12:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Great point — I heartily agree. I volunteer to add "variety" to the glossary (with cross-ref link to "dialect") if anyone will take so much pity as to bestow autopatroller status on me, which is (since recently) needed to edit that page. (The first forty-seven thousand good-faith edits with a 99.8% retention rate are the hardest when it comes to hard-earning one's autopatroller status.) Quercus solaris (talk) 14:21, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Fenakhay why was the Glossary protection increased? I'm strongly minded to lower it back to the previous level. This, that and the other (talk) 01:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I agree and I put it back to autoconfirmed. I think Fenakhay may have raised it based on someone using something related to Nazis as an example, but that seemed to be only one case. We can raise it again if it becomes a vandalism or controversy target. Benwing2 (talk) 02:00, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. And in any event, the Glossary is on the watchlist of more than 50 active users, so any sporadic mischief will not go unnnoticed for long. This, that and the other (talk) 02:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I have to object to the "navy" part. Please understand that mountain races don't care for the sea or sailing. Doesn't mean we don't speak languages. Vahag (talk) 15:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Some mountain folk have a navy and encompass multiple official languages. Can navyless mountain folk make that claim? DCDuring (talk) 12:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Do all those yachts not count? Los Angeles has a coastline. Nicodene (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Armenia has its own Sailing Sport Federation, not to mention Bolivian Navy. On the other hand, some countries have no army. Tollef Salemann (talk) 08:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, but are any countries without an army the (or a) primary homeland of one and only one language? DCDuring (talk) 18:17, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@DCDuring: “Iceland maintains no standing army …” – Icelandish men desirous to practice military service have to work with Norway. Fay Freak (talk) 18:26, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for indulging my idle curiosity. DCDuring (talk) 01:05, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Majorca/Minorca or Mallorca/Menorca? Is there a general policy?

I'm sure there are other similar pairs (for example, we switched from Kiev to Kyiv a couple of years ago but still use Odessa rather than Odesa). Mallorca and Menorca are the spellings used in Catalan and Spanish, and are what Wikipedia uses, but Majorca and Minorca are what we currently use and are closer to the original Latin forms. Google Ngrams shows Mallorca overtaking Majorca in the 1990's in English but indicates that Minorca is still twice as popular as Menorca. In general, how do we balance the following competing desires?

1. Use the autochthonous form (i.e. the form used in the language(s) spoken there);
2. Use the most common form per Google Ngrams or some other corpus-based source;
3. Follow the style guides of major newspapers;
4. Do whatever Wikipedia does, since they've typically already hashed out these issues (although in general they lean towards the autochthonous form even when it's not the most common one).

Benwing2 (talk) 01:11, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, I moved the canonical page from Majorca to Mallorca per Ngrams but left Minorca for now. Benwing2 (talk) 02:19, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say follow what NGrams and the newspapers use, with preference to the newspapers. Doing this reflects how the words are used in real life, especially in terms of what is now used. CitationsFreak (talk) 17:09, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

In English we are lucky in having Google Ngrams available. I would think that a form's greater frequency over the past 20 years makes for a rebuttable presumption that such form ought be the main one. The other data mostly seems useful to attempt to rebut the presumption, along with crude counts of hits at Google News and Google Search and the practice of other dictionaries, as can be conveniently looked at via OneLook (compare “Minorca”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. and “Menorca”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., checking the links indivdually, suggesting the Minorca is preferred by OneLook references.). WP principles are too prescriptivist for a descriptive dictionary like us. DCDuring (talk) 17:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Largely in agreement with CitationsFreak and DCDuring, I'd prefer to lemmatize whichever form is most common, particularly in more recent texts (and when it comes to changed names, in texts from after the change: are they following or ignoring it?). I would judge commonness by as many reliable metrics as people are able to bring to bear. If, for some obscure term, someone points out that form X is more common per Ngrams than Y, and no-one cares to go looking for other evidence, then it seems reasonable to rename it on that basis (after all, if the situation changes we can always rename it again), but if for these islands someone wants to look into not just the Ngrams numbers but e.g. Google Scholar numbers (supposedly 22,900 for Minorca and 101,000 for Menorca, but this seems to include many irrelevant non-English results, since there's only 6,470 for "of Minorca" vs 4,290 for "of Menorca", and 3,340 for "in Minorca" vs 3,980 for "in Menorca"), newspaper data, etc, then it seems reasonable to consider the totality of available evidence. (In this case, the Google Scholar data seems inconclusive.) If two forms are about equally common, or if (as DCDuring notes) some languages lack easy ways of ascertaining commonness, then we have to make decisions based on other factors. - -sche (discuss) 19:08, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll leave Minorca as-is for now. I suppose we could argue that since we've renamed Majorca to Mallorca and Minorca~Menorca are about equally common, we should prefer Menorca for consistency, but I dunno if I really buy that. For example, Pennsylvanien is archaic in German but Kalifornien is still standard. Benwing2 (talk) 07:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

As an FYI, what I'd consider the gold standard for common English usage is "What do EasyJet and Ryanair call them"? (For the non-Europeans, these are the low-cost airlines stereotypically associated with tourist flights to the Balearics.) EasyJet goes for Majorca, while Ryanair plumps for Mallorca, but both picked Menorca. So in conclusion, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Lua error in Panama when trying to save it

Error message: "Lua error in Module:transclude at line 326: Couldn't find the template {{senseid|en|Q804} within entry Panama." Panda10 (talk) 19:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

This happens if you preview a partial page. The error goes away when it's actually saved. Benwing2 (talk) 19:56, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

But after publishing the changes, the error disappears. Panda10 (talk) 19:53, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah it's because it's trying to look for the English text on the same page, and if you preview just a part of the page not including the English text, you'll get that error. @Theknightwho is there a way of being smarter about this? Benwing2 (talk) 19:57, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I'll have a look, but it might be tricky. Theknightwho (talk) 20:06, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

One idea: just add something to the effect of "If you see this error when previewing only one section of a page, check whether it still shows up when you preview or save the whole page" (ideally worded better, more concisely) to the end of the error message. - -sche (discuss) 06:06, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I have implemented this. If you're in preview mode and the {{tcl}} call references the same page and an error occurs, you get this:

Lua error in Module:transclude at line 295: Couldn't find the template {{senseid|en|Q804}} within entry Panama. NOTE: You are in preview mode. If you're previewing only part of the page, try previewing the full page, as the error may go away. Benwing2 (talk) 07:23, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Redirects from deprecated text encodings

after falling in a small rabbit hole, I wish to update Wiktionary pages with this. some pages seem to contain deprecated or non-preferred spellings, so I wish to update these to and redirect them to the preferred ones. these can be found in this page which gratiously compiled all chart sources from Unicode. it would affect the following entries, some of which I have already started updating and some of which, I don't have the rights to overwrite.

• ឣ
• ឤ
• Ѹ
• ѹ
• ٵ
• ٶ
• ٷ
• ٸ
• ૱
• ཱི
• ཱུ
• ཱྀ
• ឨ
• ៘

Juwan (talk) 18:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Should affix categories be added transitively?

For context, see Module_talk:etymon#Bad_categorization.

Let's say there's a word XY that's derived from X- + -Y. We would categorize that word under the X- and the -Y categories. But if there's a word XYZ, formed from XY + Z, it would not be added to those categories.

To give a concrete example, both cleanliness and preattentively are not currently categorized under Category:English terms suffixed with -ly. It's not clear to me whether this is due to the limitations of our templates, or because the community has specifically decided to exclude them.

According to @Svartava, this is the status quo and most editors would oppose categorizing the words I listed above. But if that's the case, maybe we should document that somewhere, since it's a pretty far-reaching decision that affects nearly every language we have. Ioaxxere (talk) 05:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

NOTE: the categorization of preattentively by -ly suffix is not the case I had in mind and is not something I object to or find much problematic as it is also analyzable as preattentive + -ly. The cases like cleanliness by -ly, effortlessly by -less, evildoer by -er (assuming "evildo" isn't an attested verb) etc. are the ones I find problematic. Svārtava (tɕ) 05:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: what does “transitively” mean in this context? I’m guessing that preattentively is from pre- + attentively, so if an editor had indicated this as {{affix|en|pre-|attentively}} the entry wouldn’t be automatically put in “Category:English terms suffixed with -ly”. We’d have to add “({{affix|en|attentive|-ly}}) to effect this. Personally I don’t mind this. I’ve also wondered whether it’s correct to add a prefix or suffix category to an entry when the affixation didn’t occur in modern English. I’ve sometimes done so when it seems clear that an English-form affix was added to an earlier etymon, for example, when an English word is derived from a Greek word ending in -izein but appears in English suffixed with -ize. (I didn’t know that cleanliness has a -ly in it!) — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

“transitively” here would be referring to the math/set theory sense. Svārtava (tɕ) 05:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I’ve also wondered whether it’s correct to add a prefix or suffix category to an entry when the affixation didn’t occur in modern English.

Regarding this point, I just want to point out that {{surf}} does add cats. I've personally taken that to mean that yes, words not derived in the language also take affix/compound cats if they are synchronically analyzable as such, which would mean that "cleanliness" should not have the "-ly" cat but "preattentively" should have the "pre-" cat. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 19:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I think only the affix forming the word should categorize the word. Previous affixes used to make the word should not be categorized. Vininn126 (talk) 05:28, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm against putting words like "cleanliness" in categories for terms suffixed with -ly. The suffix was added during the formation of "cleanly"; including all words derived from "cleanly" is unnecessary and bloats the category. I also agree that the status quo is not to include these kinds of further derived words.--Urszag (talk) 15:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Here is a tip that people here probably already know anyway, but here goes. One can slap a nocat parameter on things like {{surf|en|pancreatico-|duoden-|-ectomy|nocat=1}} to yank all the cat inclusions away and then add back just the initial and terminal ones via "[[Category:English terms prefixed with pancreatico-]]" and "[[Category:English terms suffixed with -ectomy]]". I have sometimes failed to cross all my t's on that aspect, but any misses can be fixed as we reencounter them. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:54, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Vininn126 and Urszag. Ultimateria (talk) 01:30, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

So far I have taken ‘terms suffixed with X’ to mean ‘words created via suffixation with X’. By that interpretation, cleanliness is suffixed with -ness (cleanly + -ness > cleanliness) but not with -ly (cleanness + -ly > *cleannessly, not **clean-ly-ness). It seems you have taken it to mean ‘words containing X, which is a suffix’.

I have no particular intuition on the matter of which might make for a more useful category.

Incidentally, preattentively has to be preattentive + -ly, since the sense is ‘in a preattentive way’ and not *‘before attentively’ (pre- + attentively). Also worth noting that pre- does not seem to attach to adverbs (**pre-now, **pre-soon). I wonder whether there exists any case in English where two different orders of affixation are equally likely. Nicodene (talk) 07:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nicodene: By far the most interesting example of what you mentioned is at unseatable, where the different orders of affixation result in completely different senses (plus a bonus third sense!). Ioaxxere (talk) 13:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

True. I suppose I should have specified ‘for a given sense’. This entry is split by etymology and sense the way I’d expect it to be. Nicodene (talk) 16:35, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd agree. It's technically two etymologies. Vininn126 (talk) 16:50, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Audio pronunciations for historical languages

• For a relevant previous discussion, see User talk:Nicodene/2024#Special:Diff/78171703.

AFAICT, between 21:28 and 22:03 (UTC) on the 15th of February 2025 (but starting at least as early as the 12th), Theknightwho cleared out Category:Ancient Greek terms with audio pronunciation, Category:Latin terms with audio pronunciation, and Category:Old English terms with audio pronunciation by culling the audio pronunciations from their then-members' entries. Does the invoked justification, “No audios from non-native speakers.”, reflect stated policy and/or community consensus? And does that principle still apply even in the case of languages which have no native speakers and/or in the case of historical languages which, by dint of being historical, logically can't have native speakers? 0DF (talk) 15:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@0DF: Were recordings of Ecclesiastical Latin, which is still actively spoken, removed as well? But in the case of ancient languages, I agree with removing pronunciations in cases where editors have nothing to go off of besides academic reconstructions, because then the audio contains no more information than the IPA on its own (admittedly, it is more accessible to casual readers, but I would say that it's not Wiktionary's place to make IPA more "fun"). I don't think we should remove audios from conlangs like Toki Pona, because the pronunciation used by active speakers is the canonical pronunciation, even though they're not native. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: Of those Latin audios removed by Theknightwho during 21:28–22:03, 15 February 2025 (UTC), those marked as Ecclesiastical were abecedarium, absens, Achaicus, audio, crypton, Cupido, cupido, delphinus, diabolus, Euboea, Kyrie eleison, and neon. 0DF (talk) 18:18, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@0DF I am open to the idea of having Ecclesiastical Latin audios, by virtue of the fact it has never had native speakers, but I completely agree with @Nicodene's previous assessment that audios of historical languages that were spoken natively are essentially just conlanging. Theknightwho (talk) 19:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Second this. Vininn126 (talk) 20:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

For an extinct language such as Latin, as long as a given recording is clearly labelled as showing a modern convention of pronunciation - and actually follows that convention - I am fairly neutral about it. Nicodene (talk) 20:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

"synecdoche" vs "metonym"

We have both Category:English synecdoches and Category:English metonyms, and at the moment there doesn't seem to be any clear distinction between them on Wiktionary. As I understand it, a metonym refers to something by a name closely related to it, and a synecdoche is a specific type of metonym that refers to something by the name of part of it, but the distinction isn't very clear - Wikipedia says that "The White House" meaning the US government is synecdoche, when I'd consider it just a metonym (since the White House building is not literally part of the US government), for example. Certainly, the metonyms category is packed with terms I'd consider synecdoches (butt like "get your butt over here", face like "the familiar faces", safe pair of hands), and a couple in the synecdoche category seem more like general metonyms (desktop meaning computer wallpaper, tribe meaning tribal nation). No matter what, these categories need some clean up (not least to remove things that are metaphors, not metonyms), but my more general question is: is there any value to maintaining this poorly-defined distinction, or should we treat synecdoche as a subset or synonym of metonym?

If we do keep them, can we define some kind of border between them? For example, are metonyms related to clothing or tools (boots on the ground, suit, hired gun, virtuoso violin) synecdoches? Are the many government seats like White House, 10 Downing Street, Élysée synecdoches?

I notice that at tongue we have both a metonymic sense (a language) and a synecdochical sense (a speaker of a language), but apart from that, there's nowhere AFAICT where we use both metonym and synecdoche, so a merger of the terms would be minimally disruptive to the current organisation. Smurrayinchester (talk) 17:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I find often hard mental work to remember and maintain the distinction. (This is problem with other "rhetorical" terms, too.) Nevertheless, I think we should try. Lanham's A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (1991) has:

1. four types of metonymy: cause for effect, effect for cause; proper name for an associated quality, a quality for an associated proper name
2. four types of synecdoche: substitution of part for whole, of whole for part, genus (hypernym?) for species (really hyponym?), species for genus.

I note that White House doesn't exactly fit into any of the eight types that Lanham has.

I further note that Lanham does not think these are synonyms or that one is a kind of the other.

Lanham has 'see also's for these referring to each other and to other terms (like metaphor). DCDuring (talk) 20:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Lanham's synecdoche definition feels pretty good, but the metonymy one seems rather different to in regular usage. As you say, White House doesn't seem to fit there, but a lot of common terms would be metonyms - growth as in "a benign growth" or "new growth", for instance (using the cause to name the effect). Basically every sense where our definition starts "The result of..." or "An instance of..." Smurrayinchester (talk) 06:13, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Both MWCD and AHD show a theme where their def for synecdoche invokes the specific themes (e.g., "the part for the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it") whereas their def for metonymy is shorter and invokes the theme of "closely associated". To my reading, this means that the two words overlap substantially in denotation but that metonymy has an additional get-out-of-jail-free card that synecdoche doesn't have: the added category of "and the rest", that is, "closely associated [in some other way not strictly meronymous, holonymous, hypernymous, or hyponymous]", which is to say, misc, &c, or handwave etc. Lol. I readily admit that it would be hard to get the rest of the world (outside of MWCD and AHD) to uphold this nuance of differentiation. As for whether Wiktionary should [do], one option could be to suffer the labels to say "metonymy" for any of these relations (the strict ones or the loosey-goosey one) and then explain at the glossary (for when the user clicks on the label) that these two words largely overlap in denotation and that when you see "metonymy" in a Wiktionary label you can be sure that "synecdoche" probably applies as well. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:14, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

We have to follow usage in our definitions in principal namespace, but not in Wiktionary:Glossary and how we use the words. Even though we have some freedom, we should not do violence to common usage and we should remind users of the overlap and/or confusion. DCDuring (talk) 04:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Oh yes, "the material for the thing made from it". That's another type of synecdoche/metonym that as far as I can tell isn't included in either Wiktionary category currently. Would putting a (synecdochically) label on, say, the golf club senses at wood and iron or the food container senses at tin be too pedantic and confusing for readers? Smurrayinchester (talk) 06:20, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

That's an excellent question. I suppose it prompts me to ask myself: are metonymy and synecdoche so pervasive in natural language that such a {{label}} would feel too repetitive if one were to express it everywhere that it truly applies? Hmm. I'll have to ponder that one. My first reaction is "no, it's fine," but is it though? How many such cases have I never even thought to label but they truly could have that label? Quercus solaris (talk) 06:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm skeptical about the value of displayed labels for synecdoche and metonymy. If the meaning confuses some of us, the terms probably shouldn't be used in principal namespace, except in etymology and usage notes. Metaphor, synecdoche, and metonymy do seem to account for a very large share of polysemy. The use of figuratively seems more than sufficient, often unnecessary. 13:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Standardizing Ulch lemmas to Cyrillic

Unlike e.g. Oroqen, which is spoken in China and thus has not been blessed with a pleasant writing tradition, Ulch is spoken in Russia and has an official Cyrillic script, much like the neighboring Nanai. However, currently, many entries are lemmatized under bespoke romanizations from scholarly works. These entries should be moved to Cyrillic titles; I have plans to create a translit module soon, which should help smooth the transition. A good first step in the meantime would be to populate Ulch terms by script, which I have gone ahead and created but is currently empty. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 07:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Lunabunn: I agree with lemmatising at Cyrillic titles, but it's probably a good idea to retain Romanisation entries for the terms à la Gothic and Japanese. 0DF (talk) 12:57, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@0DF I'm not fundamentally opposed to romanised redirects, but in this instance I find the premise falls short. I don't think the current romanised pages should be kept, because they use a bespoke romanisation system(s); but if we were to use the "standard" romanisation system from pre-Cyrillic, a la what MOD:gld-translit currently uses, we find that it uses characters like ŋ, ə, and ʒ that make it pretty useless for search anyways. So in this case, especially considering the shortage of Tungusic editors able to perform cleanup, what benefit would these redirects bring? 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 20:42, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Lunabunn: IMO all those Latin-script forms should be moved to the Cyrillic. We don't have Latin Russian either, even though it is very frequent in historical linguistic works. Thadh (talk) 21:17, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Yup, agreed. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 21:35, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Amharic Entries requiring word separator <፡>

Wiktionary:Amharic entry guidelines puts forward a requirement to use word separators (i.e. ፡) between words. The usage is outdated, and seldom used in modern written Amharic. As an example, even the Ethiopian Government's own website does not make use of word separators, and just uses whitespace.

Barring objection of other editors, I'd like to propose to making the word separator optional; it can be used if the editor desires, but not requiring it as currently put forward by the existing guidelines. CatchingCots (talk) 15:51, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I think what we definitely should not do is allow editors to chose one or the other on their own accord - this will only bring inconsistency.

My interpretation of the separators, based on my very small exposure to Amharic in the wild, was that its omission on the internet or in spontaneous writing is more an 'informal' thing, much like writing <е> for <ё> in Russian. Which is why I thought it best to include it. If that is not the case, and speakers conciously choose not to write it and consider writing it outdated or even wrong, then we should definitely change it, but in that case we should go all in. Thadh (talk) 16:39, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Not opposed to striking out word separators all together, if there's no opposition I can go through the old entries and take out any that I might find in there.

To answer your question about its omission, it's actually not limited to just informal communications & spontaneous writings; in essentially all spheres of written Amharic, it hasn't been used virtually at all since the advent of computer typesetting. Most published books & newspapers these days do not use them, and reputable news organizations like BBC do not make use of them either. Of the 2 options, I'd definitely lean towards not using the word separators at all. CatchingCots (talk) 17:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, I find Amharic word boundaries are more immediately apparent when they're marked with ⟨፡⟩ rather than just whitespace. For that reason of immediate visual apprehensibility, I would favour retaining the guideline favouring the use of ⟨፡⟩. 0DF (talk) 14:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

dew-Jew merger

In some English entries we give pronounciations for mergers e.g. the "pour-poor merger" in poor or tour

Can we introduce the "dew-Jew merger" for words like dew, due, tune or educate? 46.112.116.223 19:29, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Wiktionary only invokes the ones that have establishment in linguistics literature (e.g., cot–caught merger, Mary–marry–merry merger). So it wouldn't introduce a novel one. Regarding yod-coalescence and yod-dropping, those terms would be the ones that it would use. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Request for AWB Whitelist

May I request to be added to the AWB Whitelist, mainly to perform various template cleanup and migration tasks? Thanks. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 19:20, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

@Lunabunn You have been added. Let me know if you have any issues. Benwing2 (talk) 07:39, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Have confirmed access to JWB. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 08:11, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Thoughts about how to categorize Chinese districts, prefecture-level cities and the like

@Geographyinitiative Can you help me figure out the best way to categorize Chinese prefecture-level cities and districts and such? Normally, a "district" of a "city" is a neighborhood, and so that's how Module:place categorizes them. However, this appears to make zero sense whatsoever in China, where for example the Pudong District of Shanghai covers 467.3 sq miles (1,210.4 sq km) and houses 5.7 million people. I need help trying to make sense of the best way to categorize things like "prefecture-level cities", "county-level cities", "subprovincial cities" "subprefectural cities", "districts", "subdistricts", etc. Are subdistricts small enough to count as neighborhoods or should we just categorize them as "subdistricts"? I get that a prefecture-level city is something like a prefecture with a central city, all rolled up in one, but the system of cities within cities is thoroughly confusing. w:Prefecture-level_divisions_of_China seems to indicate that there are 339 prefecture-level divisions in China, most of which are "cities" but some are autonomous prefectures. I guess we could treat prefecture-level cities and autonomous prefectures the same for categorization; it would be a bit awkward to list all 339 of the in Module:place/shared-data and categorize e.g. Category:en:Districts in Ma'anshan, Anhui, China, but maybe we could pick the 50 or 100 or so biggest ones (by population or whatever) and categorize districts and such under them, while categorizing the remainder of the districts at the province level. This is similar to how we categorize neighborhoods of major cities under the city e.g. Category:en:Neighborhoods of San Diego, but neighborhoods of smaller cities go into e.g. Category:Neighborhoods in California, USA. It depends on how many districts and subdistricts we have entered into Wiktionary; I suppose there are a lot. Thoughts? Benwing2 (talk) 06:54, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

(1) Yes, I endorse making categories for the top 50 to 100 (or fewer?) biggest prefecture-level divisions and leaving the rest in province-level categories. One example might be: Category:en:Districts in Wuhan, Hubei, China, all the English language names of the districts have entries on Wiktionary; some are somewhat cited.

(2) "Are subdistricts small enough to count as neighborhoods or should we just categorize them as "subdistricts"?" No, even subdistricts are likely not small enough in the cases I know of. I understand that a 街道 (subdistrict) can have a hundred thousand people or multiple hundreds with numerous residential communities- see Guanshan Subdistrict, Luonan Subdistrict and Shizishan Subdistrict, Wuhan. See also: Category:Subdistricts of the People's Republic of China. An urban "neighborhood" equivalent would be either a 社区 (residential community), like the rural 村 (cūn) (village), which is on the fifth level of administrative divisions, or areas smaller than residential communities. Here is an example of a somewhat cited entry for a residential community called 'Jianqiao Chuntian' or literally 'Cambridge Spring' (there are universities in this area): Talk:劍橋春天. See also Talk:陽光. But see also Tiantongyuan, a huge 'community'.

(3) As for "subprovincial cities" and "subprefectural cities", I understand that subprovincial cities are always also prefecture-level cities simultaneously, however, I have not fully explored the issue. As for 'cities within cities', the key is: is the administrative division on the 2nd level, 3rd level, 4th level or 5th level of administrative divisions? If you can imagine that a prefecture can include a city, then can you imagine that a prefecture-level city (2nd level) can include a county-level city (3rd level)? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:58, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

• Each province has on average around 100-ish county-level divisions, including districts, county-level cities and counties and other miscellaneous divisions. I agree that with GI that there should only be additional categories for the larger prefecture-level divisions, but that way the provincial-level categories for counties might still be too large. (and perhaps districts, e.g. Guangdong has 65 districts, even after removing the 11 in Guangzhou, 9 in Shenzhen, 6 in Shantou, 5 in Foshan, you'll still get 34 districts in one category)
• Note that "districts" can also be on the sub-county level historically (there is still a few such "districts" currently – see for example sense 3 of 南山); we might need additional categories for them as well.
• "Subdistricts" (街道) are on the same level as "towns" (鎮) or "townships" (鄉); "neighbourhoods" (社區) and "villages" (村) is what GI has said. I don't think there will be that many such entries for the time being, so maybe we can categorise these as "subdistricts", "towns", "townships", "neighbourhoods", "villages" etc. under provinces or selected prefecture-level cities.
• "Subprovincial cities" are basically prefecture-level cities with special status. We can just ignore them for categorisation purposes. There are no official "subprefectural cities".

– wpi (talk) 10:03, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

pinyin entries link to hanzi which don't acknowledge them

I keep coming across pinyin entries that say they are the Hanyu Pinyin reading of some hanzi which, however, doesn't acknowledge that pinyin at all and only admits having some other pronunciation and pinyin instead. For example, hǎ says it's a "Hanyu Pinyin reading of 奛", but 奛 gives its Hanyu Pinyin as huǎng instead and makes no mention of hǎ. Were our entries/modules updated to give different pinyin for those hanzi sometime after the initial pinyin entries were created (all the way back in 2006, in this case)? Or are the hanzi entries incomplete, can 奛 in fact be hǎ and the entry is just incomplete? Or what? Does someone need to run a bot to "refresh" our pinyin entries, like has been done periodically for anagrams? - -sche (discuss) 22:32, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@-sche: My understanding is that the earlier entries were often created automatically based on Unihan data, which used to contain many errors; a lot of these were corrected on the database, but our entries were never updated accordingly. Indeed this appears to the case for 奛, where it previously had three readings hǎ, tǎi, xiǎng according to zi.tools.

There might be a need for a bot to update the pinyin entries according to the Unihan database, but the implementation probably needs some proper thought in order to avoid removing useful material that have been added over the past years. – wpi (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Wpi: Thanks for the explanation! What about asking someone with a bot to update the pinyin entries based not on Unihan data, but on Wiktionary's own hanzi entries (so we're only saying "X is a pinyin reading of 丫" in situations where our entry on 丫 acknowledges X)? Or are there still lots of correct pinyin readings in Unihan which are lacking from Wiktionary entries? In that case, does anyone track those somewhere? Maybe someone could compare

1. "cases where a certain hanzi entry on Wiktionary gives a certain Hanyu pinyin reading",
2. "cases where a certain hanzi is given a certain Hanyu pinyin reading by Unihan", and
3. "cases where a certain Hanyu pinyin entry on Wiktionary says it's a reading of a certain hanzi",

and then make lists of the disconnects, i.e.

1. "cases where a certain Hanyu pinyin entry on Wiktionary says it's a reading of a certain hanzi, but neither Wiktionary's hanzi entry nor Unihan acknowledges that pinyin as a reading of that hanzi" and we probably need to update our pinyin entry;
2. "cases where Unihan gives a certain pinyin reading but Wiktionary doesn't" and someone knowledgeable needs to evaluate whether Unihan is wrong or Wiktionary is missing something;
3. "cases where Wiktionary's hanzi gives a certain pinyin reading but Unihan doesn't" and, if our hanzi entry is correct, we might amicably let Unihan know they're missing something;

etc.

? - -sche (discuss) 18:48, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Template editor request for User:Saph

Having template editor would make it much easier for me to go through Special:WhatLinksHere/Wiktionary:Tracking/debug/track/invalid key and clean it up, since I currently can't edit (and thus can't even preview changes with) most of the modules of origin. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 04:15, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Nominated at WT:WL. Svārtava (tɕ) 04:43, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Purplebackpack89

The following discussion has been moved from the page Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2025/March.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

I am going to propose indefinite or long-term block for Purplebackpack89 (talk • contribs). They have been here since a long time and have repeatedly been found having bad conduct and civility issues.

• They also have a tendency to create drama about things and overall lead to a toxic atmosphere being developed on the site. The essay Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing#Failure_or_refusal_to_"get_the_point" seems to apply well to them as they do not acknowledge their own faults and errors.
• I will link the previous discussions Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2024/June#User:Purplebackpack89, Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2024/July#Block_of_User:Purplebackpack89_by_User:Theknightwho (where finally a consensus to block them emerged but the time span was unspecified) and also mention that they have repeatedly been blocked on here, English Wikipedia and Simple Wikipedia (where they were finally given a permablock and their appeals were rejected).
• In the past, they also have had potential role in driving away productive contributors such as Mglovesfun and Equinox from the site which is extremely obstructive towards the goal of dictionary-building.

They were last blocked for 3 months and the block ended on 30 October 2024 but it is apparent that the issues are still relevant and they have not learned anything from the block. User_talk:BD2412#Need_an_edit_hidden.

• Very recently, at User_talk:BD2412#Interaction_ban?, they start making the ridiculous claim that they thought there was an "interaction ban" in place between them and Theknightwho despite there clearly being no consensus on the application of "interaction ban" in the above linked BP discussions.
• They start attacking Theknighwho, mindlessly claiming that TKW labelled them a "vandal" in this deletion summary, while in reality the word "vandal" appeared due to it being a part of the page's content before it's deletion. This is consistent with their usual tendency to cause drama.
• They also seem to like indulging in Wikipedia-style wikilawyering, e.g. saying As an admin, you need to follow all policies and guidelines. That means assuming good faith in me whether you want to or not which doesn't strike me as a very good comment as "assume good faith" is not (and can never be) a policy and there is no compulsion (contrary to there comment) to assume good faith if there are sufficient details that suggest otherwise.
• After Benwing deleted some categories they had created, they write a dramatic, bureaucracy-inclined and bad-faith-assuming message at User_talk:Benwing2#Pasadena_categories: FYI, I consider your depopulation, deletion and creation-protection inappropriate and POINTY and have started an RFDO to have the categories restored (they later tone down inappropriate and POINTY to in error) instead of asking / clarifying the reason for deletion from the deleting admin, which is generally a more collaborative and good-faith way of doing things.
• They then start making claims of "OUTing" and make a (now rejected) request of hiding that edit, which is another example of overdramatizing things along with unnecessarily pinging admins there instead of trying to be cooperative. This shows that they themselves do not "assume good faith" even from very well-established and respected editors.

This, in all, showcases the recurring pattern of toxic behaviour and unacceptable conduct, and this is not the first time either. Svārtava (tɕ) 09:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I do not particularly trust this user and all interactions I have had with them have been confrontational and seem to assume bad faith on everyone else's part. Vininn126 (talk) 11:29, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Note: I have since reconsidered and accepted the revdel request. It is best to proceed with caution in addressing personal privacy matters. bd2412 T 19:43, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

For the record, I wouldn't consider the request accepted as only the edit summary of the edit was hidden, and the edit summary contained nothing more than the name of the heading of the discussion in which the comment was posted. Svārtava (tɕ) 19:48, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

The request was to delete the edit summary. I pointed out the discrepancy with the text still existing myself, but I can see the argument for the words on the talk page (which will presumably eventually be archived somewhere) being more ephemeral than an edit summary in the page history. bd2412 T 02:35, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm still completely unsure what that hiding achieved - if anything it would only attract more attention.

I'll also bring forward some points by Equinox (addressed to PBP) that are relevant and stand out:

• Special:Diff/84378714/84378733: If your issue was really with your privacy, you'd have long ago asked Wikipedia to delete other details (what college you attend etc.) from your Wikipedia user page hsitory. But we know it's not about that. It's petty revenge as usual on whoever disagrees with you.
• Special:Diff/84383328/84386060: you linked your full name YouTube channel from your old user page on Wikipedia, but apparently it's OUTING when anybody sneezes near you.

Also, PBP89 seemingly has concerns regarding privacy but they can apparently baselessly request checkuser investigation - a real and unwarranted privacy intrusion without any evidence of abuse (the claims about "harassing" are just nonsense, and even then completely unrelated to checkuser investigation). Svārtava (tɕ) 21:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Or, instead of treating Equinox's words as gospel, you could interpret them as exaggerated histrionics, in which case it is EQUINOX who needs to tone it down. Purplebackpack89 17:32, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

• Suggest speedy close This is a joke, right? I can't think of more flimsy evidence for a block. Among other things, asking admins to assume good faith is unacceptable now? It's unacceptable to start an RFDO after a category has been speedy deleted? But it IS acceptable for an admin to shout out where he thinks you're from even though you've NEVER associated yourself with that city publicly? Purplebackpack89 11:24, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

  Assuming good faith is only applicable if assumptions need to be made, such as when we don’t know whether an editor is acting in good or bad faith. We’ve known you for a long time now, so assumptions are no longer necessary. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 00:40, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it is fine for you to declare "speedy close" in bold; I am striking that part. As for the evidence for a block, I can say that you are repeating those things you were blocked for among the things I listed above. It doesn't seem that you have correctly argued against my points. Svārtava (tɕ) 12:29, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

That wasn't a close, that was a vote. I've reworded it. Please don't refactor other people's comments Purplebackpack89 12:32, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I won't examine the question of PBP89's conduct here. I tend to think he unnecessarily personalizes disputes. On the other hand I strongly object to Svārtava's selective framing of Equinox's history. While undoubtedly a skilled, productive editor, Equinox was also a habitual bully and provocateur. His conduct fostered a hostile atmosphere that drove away productive editors like me. I don't know why he chose to hang his hat after nearly two decades of contributing. But I found it curious that his farewell came just minutes after I called him out for a misogynistic comment he made about me on the Discord. The general temperature on Wiktionary has gone down noticeably since his departure. Sometimes a single problematic actor can have an outsize influence within a community. Remove the gravitational pull toward hostility and many will float back to gentler orbits. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 05:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Sometimes a single problematic actor can have an outsize influence within a community.

Yes! The "single problematic actor" in this case is PBP, and he's had a 10+ year history in inciting unnecessary, highly antagonizing fights. I would suggest we go forward with an indef ban. -- 𝘗𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘺𝘪^{(𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬)} 06:05, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

From what I've seen, Purplebackpack89 has been aggressive with many other editors, so I don't think this can be described as a situation where there was only a single problematic actor. (I agree that Equinox also had problematic behavior.) It seems like a lot of Purplebackpack89's energy is put into these kinds of fights relative to more productive editing. A block seems like a good idea to me.--Urszag (talk) 06:32, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Equinox was a problem admin who pulled other contributors into his orbit. The systemic tolerance of his actions enabled similar conduct in others, I think. With his influence in decline, though, I think others may have levelled off. Indef bans weren't considered as a first-line remedy for Equinox or any other problem admin. I think PBP89 deserves the same grace: a chance to turn off battle mode. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:52, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

He has already been given lots of chances, just see his block log. Svārtava (tɕ) 07:20, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

If Equinox is going to return for the purpose of harassing me, then he, too, needs to be indeffed. His absence is the only thing that's allowed me to sporadically contribute over the last few months. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 10:55, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. If anything, there's a good-hand, bad-hand thing at play here. Equinox being the good-hand and 2a00 being the bad hand. Wordy is correct that both Equinox as Equinox and Equinox as 2a00 had problems getting along with people. I agree with Wordy that the "temperature" would go down if 2a00 was either indeffed, or forced to return to editing as Equinox. And that's ANOTHER problem on this page is how sockpuppetry by WonderFool, Equinox and others is given a free pass, but Wordy and I questioning THE GODS is not Purplebackpack89 17:30, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Calling those two comments harassing is extreme histrionic exaggeration. Simply editing by IP instead of his account is not sockpuppetry, but it would naturally be great if he returned to editing with his account. Svārtava (tɕ) 18:18, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

It's really cool being labelled "histrionic" yet again as one of the few openly female editors because I refuse to quietly absorb misogynistic language Equinox used in reference to me (on top of reaching a point at which I refused to turn a blind eye to his constant anti-LGBT axe-grinding and bullying of other editors).

I didn't characterize Equinox editing via IPs as "sockpuppetry." That was PBP89's opinion. Equinox doesn't appear to be using the IPs for block evasion or another deceitful purpose. Therefore, his actions wouldn't constitute sockpuppetry, IMO. My issue is that he seems to have returned for the primary purpose of antagonizing other editors. This strongly suggests he isn't interested in turning over a new leaf. I firmly believe his past user conduct was deleterious enough to warrant a permanent block. His negative impact on the project ended when he departed last year. That choice also left open the possibility of him returning and putting his mistakes behind him. Alas, the tiger doesn't seem keen on changing his stripes.

PBP89's views sometimes miss the mark. But he's absolutely right that favoured editors get a "free pass." Wonderfool's prolific sockpuppetry and Equinox's chronic hostility would've resulted in blocks on any other Wikimedia project. Instead WF got a special policy carveout and Equinox is warmly embraced by many in the community (at one time I respected him, too, if that isn't clear). At worst, PBP89 is opinionated, pugnacious, and sometimes creates questionably inclusion-worthy entries. WF has a long and storied history of inflicting outright nonsense on mainspace. Equinox has a history of being unnecessarily hostile and personalizing disputes far beyond reason. PBP89's trespass isn't being a problematic editor. It's being a problematic editor who annoys the wrong people and refuses to kiss the right rings. Favoured editors have the community's leave to be as rotten as they please and drive away productive editors. God help anyone who has the temerity to call them out for it.

I'll be changing my password to keyboard smash. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 08:13, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the infamous "abused wife" comment of Equinox was misogynistic language, even if little ungraceful. Seeing the context, it could easily have been applied to a male editor as well. It is unlikely that Equinox wanted to "bully" you, seeing that he offered you adminship just a few days after it. Also, he returned last August, and antagonizing other editors is completely false - see yourself. Svārtava (tɕ) 12:03, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

It has nothing with "kissing rings" (or anything else). The people who get a pass are those who have contributed a great deal of good content to the dictionary. On average, Equinox has contributed more to the dictionary in a month than PBP89 has- total. WF, even allowing for a certain percent of garbage, has also made monumental contributions. The simple fact is that PBP89 has contributed only a modest amount of content, but a massively disproportionate amount of drama. What's more, there are major contributors who have gotten frustrated and left because of PBP89. Yes, there are people who want to get rid of PBP89 because they don't like them, but most of the support votes are because PBP89's contributions aren't worth the disruption they cause. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

You know what's absolutely gutting? That "contributing a great deal of good content" seemingly exonerates Equinox and WF from facing any consequences for their policy-violating conduct, but my 15 years of service to this project aren't seen as a reason to perhaps hear me out that this isn't a wise or fair trade-off. That "major contributors" becoming "frustrated and [leaving]" is a factor worth considering in relation to PBP89, but when it comes to Equinox, I am not a major contributor, and it's moot how his conduct impacts my willingness to contribute. Unlike PBP89 you can't argue that I don't have a solid record of mainspace work. In the end nothing I've done here matters because contributors like me aren't viewed as important or worth retaining. This is a boys' club and no amount of service can make up for being a cootie-infested shop talk-ruiner. That much is clear from how the only responses here have been gaslighting. I held off scrambling my password last night in case maybe someone actually listened. But that's clearly not going to happen. I'm scrambling my password for real this time. My time is better wasted elsewhere. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:55, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Unlike PBP89 you can't argue that I don't have a solid record of mainspace work. That’s why we listen and enjoy to read what you have, however we deny the accuracy of your assessments. I specifically listened and pointed out claims of policy-violation fallacious, you can’t argue I have not; and I restricted it to myself only because I remember myself best and have not re-viewed interactions, others by all likelihoods have listened. Contrary to your insinuation, men in general and these ones actually listen to women regularly, and might even take them more serious than themselves, which is perhaps the reason why they talked to you, in contrast to your theory of shop talk, harassment etc., somehow shamelessly open for everyone to read. Even if it includes adressing you such that they doubt their own memory, perceptions of reality, or sanity, as gaslighting is defined, it isn’t gaslighting because it is not malevolent, as it is defined, and hardly even manipulating, as the argument about the perceptions is comprehensive, concerned and balanced, and the contributing a great deal of content, and being able to evaluate contributions, and on the next ToM level being able to evaluate these evaluations, is indicative of it—but this is still just an alternative consideration in so far as the alleged violations are not considered confirmed or ill-boding in the first place, but by the framework here described false allegations; nobody is able to see that the evaluations should be swapped or bent somehow because of gender, so neither are you a ruiner, you are just wont to consider yourself one, and I tried to point this self-devaluation pattern in consequence of lacking object constancy out as well. Stop it and be more positive. (Found currently impossible for PBP89 due to the data.) Fay Freak (talk) 21:43, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

This is exactly what Wordy means. CitationsFreak (talk) 22:09, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

With "support" like that, who needs criticism... Chuck Entz (talk) 22:23, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Tolerating someone's behavior isn't the same as agreeing with them. For the record, I think you would find that we have a lot in common as far as opinions on politics and gender issues. Working on a uncensored, descriptive dictionary means tolerating language that I would never use, myself, in a million years. If you think I've been gaslighting you, you're mistaken. I don't do gaslighting. My comments were strictly in the context of why PBP89 is being treated differently- not about you, at all. I can't speak to what's going through other people's minds, but your comments about this being a "boy's club" and your being seen as "cootie-infested" don't describe my attitudes at all. I wouldn't be spending this much time replying to you if I didn't care what you think. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:19, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Scrambled my password but I'm still logged in on a different device. So I've got access to my account but no way to change my password now. Once I log out, it's game over.

The "gaslighting" statement wasn't specifically directed at you, Chuck. It was in reference to Svartava's assertion that it wasn't misogynistic for Equinox to refer to me as an "abused wife." One shouldn't make light of domestic violence. It's poor taste in any circumstance but especially in what is functionally a professional setting. It's immaterial to me whether Equinox's remark was intended to be misogynistic. It's immaterial whether he or any other Wiktionarian shares my "opinions on politics and gender issues." One needn't be a feminist to recognize the inherent insensitivity of joking about domestic violence. Unconsciously expressed biases ("microaggressions") are consciously experienced by the target. The damage is the same whether it's intentional cruelty or an oblivious person's edgy "joke."

The "abused wife" remark isn't an isolated incident either. It's the one I consider most emblematic of Equinox's problematic conduct because it's the one that cuts the deepest for me personally. I'd even say that Equinox was one of my closest colleagues in my earliest days on Wiktionary (the other being Metaknowledge). Something shifted circa 2020 or 2021. I became a lot less inclined toward mincing words and dancing around explicit condemnation of sexism and other biases. Equinox concurrently became much more inclined toward using the wiki as a platform for his anti-LGBT views. This – if there is a singular "this" – didn't start with the "abused wife" remark. That was simply the moment in which the working relationship we'd had before then fractured irreparably.

The "cootie-infested shop talk-ruiner" comment was the shortest rebuttal of Fay Freak I could manage. This isn't the first time he's directed such nonsense at me. Last year, when I raised systemic issues re: gender on Wiktionary, FF treated me to this extremely discomfitting sermon on how men are simply too horny to work with women. He's posted several long replies to me in this thread after I specifically requested an interaction ban with him just last week. I agree with Benwing2 (and Equinox!) that ignoring FF is the optimal response. But it's hard to overlook multi-paragraph sermons.

I didn't single out your comment for reply because it was the worst, Chuck. I chose it because it was the most reasonable of the three I initially received. But you're still engaging in a subtle kind of dismissal. Your reply to me centres yourself and your thoughts/feelings. You started by assuming I'd accused you of "gaslighting" and spent most of the post refuting that assumption. You did this last year when you responded to me calling out your use of "histrionic" (a word with precisely the same connotations as shrill) by stating you've been "surrounded all [your] life by highly intelligent, rational and competent women."

I don't know how to say this gently but this isn't what listening looks like. "Listening," in this particular context, means stepping back, not taking systemic criticisms personally, and recognizing that one can perpetuate bias without intending to do so. I became conscious of my reflexive reliance on the "Wiktionary is not censored" argument after a Black editor explained that our profusion of n-word-derived terms contributes to making Wiktionary a less-than-welcoming environment for them.

It's easy to declare "grow a thicker skin" or "let it go" in such situations. But it's a different matter having to weather a lifetime of negative experiences tied to one's gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. One cannot fully comprehend how much gets internalized, pushed down, pushed aside, or rationalized away unless they have lived experience, or make a conscious effort to correct their own blind spots. Women don't just encounter gender bias on Wikimedia projects. It follows us everywhere. It's in our schools, our jobs, our hobbies. I know this probably seems disconnected from Wiktionary's policies and politics. But joining this project isn't like awakening on the "severed" floor at Lumon. We all carry the weight of previous experiences. How do you armour yourself with a "thicker skin" when life has already dealt you a thousand cuts? I've been fortunate in contrast to many women I know. (The "abused wife" remark hit a nerve because I watched a friend struggle to get out of an abusive relationship.) I'm not the loudest voice calling out gender bias on Wiktionary because I'm "oversensitive," "histrionic," "fragile" or any other aspersion one might wish to cast at me. I was one of the few female editors who stubbornly endured toxicity to help build a dictionary when saner souls cut bait. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:20, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your heartfelt thoughts. I do understand how a lifetime of microaggressions can cause serious damage. My wife (as a Black woman) tells me that, in her experience, being a woman in tech is even harder than being a Black person in tech, which is saying something. The closest I've come to experiencing this is hostility directed at my religious and ethnic background, which I've occasionally dealt with and which is no fun at all. But I have the privilege of being able to hide that if I so choose, which is impossible for women and people of color.

Unfortunately there is only so much an admin or bureaucrat can do to stop this. You can call it out (which may or may not work) or you can issue blocks or bans, which are very blunt instruments and so typically reserved for clear problems rather than subtle transgressions. You can't reasonably issue blocks or bans for all instances of asshole-ish or microaggressive behavior because then you'd end up scaring or forcing away the majority of contributors, and your project would fail. There's a subtle balancing act (which I can't say I've mastered) between allowing people to be productive and ensuring a non-toxic environment. Ideally they would go hand-in-hand but sometimes you have productive yet problematic contributors. Benwing2 (talk) 07:46, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Scrambled my password but I'm still logged in on a different device.

This seems like made-up dramatization to me, because changing your password logs you out from other devices, and for a good reason: when retrieving a hacked account, you wouldn't want the hacker to remain logged in on any other device. Svārtava (tɕ) 16:50, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Purplebackpack89 and WordyAndNerdy put on shows of lacking whole object relations. Favoured, disfavoured, good hand, bad hand, once respected, soon not, hateful to women against one’s nature or only around to annoy certain people—that’s not how people or the world works, but mere disregulated and disruptive emotion, so therein lies the offence and irreconciliable contradiction of charging everyone with having to tone it down. We have to emphasize again that we do not and intend not to act against users, or their actions, by reason of annoyance, though this feeling certainly motivate investigation. We have not started by characterizing PBP89 as opinionated, pugnacious, etc., but he systematically executes objectionable plans, and we are in the right to take action designed to keep ourselves sensible, which by definition is not exhausted in tallying ticking off people. Offending by calling someone a bugger did not cut it, but disrupting by mendacious standards defying us repeatedly to dissect, over and over the same dull approach, oh yeah!

This was why Dan Polansky was banned, but this was perfectly fine for you and not alarming because he was not sneaky enough on your wokeometer; it was fine to have the worst features if only, on surface and in idea, compliant with your worldview, though the worldview is actually secondary to how humans act.

They are quite scattered and pick a whateverism like a football club, which engages people to march with them for specious reasons, because socializing is important to the neurotypical mind you try to imitate, by its archaic default. You should train to stop simplifying human relations that much. Equinox, Wonderfool or me are certainly less dangerous people—either when known via internet contact or presumably in the meatspace, we probably have publicized ourselves enough—than Purplebackpack89, as additionally evinced by telling you things that you didn’t like to hear, showing how imparting knowledge to the world is genuinely pressing. Fay Freak (talk) 16:37, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy I feel it needs to be said that being a major contributor does not give someone license to harass or be an asshole. However, practically speaking, in a volunteer project where donating time in the form of contributions is the major currency, people *are* more likely to tolerate this sort of behavior in a major contributor. It is much like how people will tolerate (to a point) the obnoxious behavior of a major donor. It may not be perfect or even good to do this, but it is what it is, and I don't think it's likely to change, as it is human nature. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I don't think either Chuck or Svartava is trying to gaslight you; they are genuinely trying to engage you, but just disagree to varying extents with some of the things you have said. (FF may be a different story, please ignore everything he says.) I will also say that if Equinox were causing the sort of global disruption that PBP89 is causing (or Dan Polansky caused in his time), I would vote to permaban him too, regardless of his contributions, and I would issue increasing temporary blocks for gender-based, sexual-orientation-based, etc. harassment or racism (that was why I permablocked Dan Polansky in the end). I took a look at the two messages that you cited in your 10:55am UTC Mar 26 reply, and they don't strike me as harassment, more as simple sarcasm. I would bet that Equinox doesn't like you and isn't afraid to poke at you a bit, but there is a difference between that sort of response and anything like gender-based or other harassment. The perhaps unfortunate reality of contributing to a wiki is you need a bit of a thick skin sometimes; not everyone gets along and people are typically more willing to express negative views of others than they would face-to-face. You need to ignore some of the negative shit and not get drawn into a shouting match or "flame war". I do hope you are able to find a way to continue contributing, as I value your contributions. Benwing2 (talk) 00:02, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

I am in the midst of a family emergency so I can't make a super lengthy post. But in my opinion, rollback and autopatrol rights only belong in the hands of trusted users (rollback rights because they allow you to quickly undo lots of changes and autopatrol rights because many sensitive modules and templates are protected at the autopatroller level), and I don't trust PBP89. Fundamentally:

1. PBP89 per statements they've made doesn't believe in Wiktionary's CFI, and what's worse, they act on their beliefs by unilaterally creating clearly non-CFI-worthy entries and then getting upset and bureaucratic when those entries are speedily deleted.
2. PBP89 also doesn't believe in the category tree/{{auto cat}} system for handling categories but believes all categories should be manually curated (an impossible task given Wiktionary organization), and again, they act on it by creating manual categories that either don't belong at all or should be created in the category tree system. This happened recently with the Pasadena-related categories (see my talk page); I deleted the categories, PBP re-created them, I deleted them again and create-protected them so they wouldn't be re-created again, and PBP's response was to immediately go bureaucratic (a much better response would have been to have a discussion with me *first* about whether these pages belong and why I deleted them, and only go to WT:RFDO if a satisfactory outcome could not be achieved that way).
3. PBP89 demands that admins and bureaucrats "assume good faith" on their part but clearly does not assume good faith on the part of admins and bureaucrats; this is obvious from their repeated assertions that there is a "cabal" and "old guard" that is secretly out to get PBP89.
4. In general PBP89 personalizes all disagreements and turns them into claims that they are being unfairly targeted and persecuted regardless of the merits or lack thereof or their point of view.
5. I have seen no improvement in this behavior since PBP's 3-month block expired, so they obviously didn't learn anything from the block.
6. In general, dealing with anything that PBP89 has touched is exhausting and distracts from the main goal of building a better Wiktionary because of their tendencies to (a) personalize all disputes through bad-faith allegations of persecution; (b) Wikilawyer before having a more informal discussion (something that is highly discouraged at Wiktionary). More than one user has expressed to me privately that they've avoided RFV'ing, RFD'ing or speedy-deleted a bad PBP89-created entry due to the inevitable drama that will ensue. This both diminishes the quality of the dictionary and leads to a highly toxic environment.
7. As for removal of rollback and autopatrol rights due to a Discord discussion among admins, although I strongly agree with the removal of these rights, I also agree with others that the optics of this are quite bad and there should have been a BP post prior to removal of the rights.
8. I would support an indefinite ban at this point for the reasons I enumerated above: PBP has shown no improvement in their behavior after the 3-month ban, is creating a toxic environment by their continued bad faith allegations and excessive Wikilawyering, and continues to not respect the basic tenets of the dictionary, meaning their edits are overall leading to an average worsening of the quality of the dictionary, and correcting the problematic edits on the part of admins is sucking time away from other pressing issues.

NOTE: I may not be able to respond to any responses to this post for 12-24 hours due to the ongoing RL issues. Benwing2 (talk) 06:25, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Benny, those are ridiculous reasons for wanting to block somebody. Indeffing me for the reasons you've outlined are tantamount to saying:

1. BOLD doesn't exist
2. Only a tiny cadre of people who code are allowed to create categories
3. No difference of opinion on CFI is permissible at all
4. If Benny deletes something, that's final and it can't be discussed at all
5. Any discussion is WikiLawyering, we should just give Benny his way
6. You and Svārtava are allowed to make unsubstantiated assertions about private conversations about me
7. People like you and Knight can harass me without repercussions, and if I clap back, I get indeffed

Lunacy. Utter lunacy. Purplebackpack89 11:52, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

All of this is not really part of the argument and an exaggeration of what's happening. And a good demonstration earlier of what I said when much of what you argue does not assume good faith. Vininn126 (talk) 11:54, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Most of this response written by PBP, apart from being rude, is quite low-effort and typical of their "I didn't hear that" behaviour. Svārtava (tɕ) 20:46, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support.

Edit: a permablock, to be clear. Nicodene (talk) 07:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support What I see plainly here is there are two sorts of parties, one that invariably deflects to other irrelevant (and/or ancient) drama and "I didn't hear that", and the rest who are beyond tired of that shtick. The Simple Wikipedia talk page going 15 years back is eye-opening and gives little confidence in reforming of seriously problematic ways. Hftf (talk) 17:21, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support a block. PUC – 17:29, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support blocking. Purplebackpack89 seems to be a run-of-the-mill jerk rather than anything more serious, the fact this has gone on for 11 years is reason for more than a slap on the wrist. If the user started editing as a teenager, it surprises me that they still get into this amount of trouble as an adult — it seems more than a third of their edits is in discussion pages, so we're not losing a big contributor. Also, the amount of question marks in their messages astounds me. Polomo47 (talk) 18:30, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how "it seems more than a third of their edits is in discussion pages" means that someone isn't "a big contributor". Talk page discussions are very useful for collaborating and if someone made a billion edits total and a third of them were in discussion pages, that would still be a "big contributor" as far as I'm concerned. This seems like a distraction to me. Someone should be blocked not based on volume of edits but quality and if that person is actively harming the project. Someone who edits a few times a year and provides genuine value is welcomed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:34, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I brought up that statistic because it made it clearer to me how this user really is prone to conflict. Having more edits in discussion pages is odd, but not inherently an issue. Looking through a few pages of their contributions to the Wiktionary: mainspace, however, more than half of these are in topics about themselves or topics of their creation criticizing other users.

I do not want to welcome an editor with such a large part of their contributions consisting of drama. Polomo47 (talk) 18:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It's not damning in and of itself, but it can certainly be indicative. Especially when those talkpage edits are filled with conflict, i.e. a large portion of this user's edits are not dedicated to the betterment of the project, but to conflict. Vininn126 (talk) 19:00, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support indef block. Mainspace edits seem good, but too prone to unproductive conflict with seemingly no will or ability to de-escalate. JeffDoozan (talk) 20:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support, though not indef. I expected one could just ignore him and continue to delete his contributions for previously stated reasons, and was concerned with removing his access to the Wikipedia library, though his contributions evince little scholarly depth and the reason fall away if he is blocked anyhow.

The observations of other editors are convincing; I wasn’t previously aware of the “I don’t hear you profile”, which he engrossed to the point of lying when declaring, on the present page, something he knows to have taken place unsubstantiated assertions, and similarly that I STILL haven't provided a single diff of a bad edit […] on User_talk:BD2412#Interaction_ban?, when I mentioned a specific instance of me calling him out he needs remembers, now archived on the talk page of Sticks Nix Hick Pix, a page he created in response to the treatment of DONT TREAD ON ME.

And the shares of his edits to various namespaces have been summarized again, with the striking remark about the amount of question marks, which are unfit to express “difference of opinion”, because if you have an opinion you naturally use assertive sentences to an extent others do.

We attach value on not banning someone for difference of opinion, or expression of it; there I have and others have outlined patterns that are designed to lead to oneself being banned, rather than promoting any opinion; a site where Purplebackpack89 were to reign would be a site whereof he would be the sole reader. Fay Freak (talk) 21:53, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose - 1. This is not a fair or proportionate response to PBP's missteps. It's not based on the severity of PBP's conduct, but on the severity of sentiment against him. The collective decision to ignore Equinox's prolonged harassment of me (including in this very thread) makes that abundantly clear. Wiktionary thinks it can pick and choose whom is subject to policy enforcement. The whipping boy gets the stick while the favoured few receive infinite carrots and free rein be as toxic and combative as they please. 2. PBP was recently subject to a systematic failure of due process. His rollback rights were stripped out of process as a result of seemingly grudge-driven backchannel collusion. Let anyone with grievances (however valid or invalid) air them publicly and in a fully transparent manner. Until then I feel like PBP's recent reactivity is a natural human response to the provocation of having his rollback rights stripped out of process. Wiktionary has forgiven worse trespasses from its esteemed elite – up to and including nuking the main page in a tantrum. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 22:30, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support an indefinite block. In all honesty, I don't want to say this, but I've watched this cycle continue for years now and it just appears as though we're stuck in a loop. Purplebackpack89 has been allowed more freedom than most, yet things never truly change. It's always the same routine: causing strife, blaming others, and never once taking the time to reflect upon how they're contributing to the toxicity. It's draining. People are here to develop a dictionary, not to have to continually deal with drama. Somewhere we need to ask whether or not having someone present is helping or hurting the project, and in this case I think the response's pretty clear. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 23:21, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Support an indefinite block. Vininn126 (talk) 08:38, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

For the record: I find Purplebackpack89 extremely annoying, as do many of the people here. The problem with annoyance is that it leads sensible people to do stupid things. We need to be very careful to ensure that this isn't one of those. There have already been too many things done out of process.

That said, a case can be made that the project would be better off without them:

1. Double standards:
   1. Accusing others of personal attacks, while referring to someone as a "bugger" and using dismissive nicknames like "Knight" and "Bennie"
   2. Exhorting others to assume good faith, but routinely assuming bad faith in everyone who disagrees with them.
2. Not thinking things through: Reacting to someone making an obvious guess about where they live based on their preoccupation with a single place name category by accusing them of outing them. The smart response would have been to say something general like "it's none of your business where I live". Instead, their response confirmed for all to see that the guess was correct. Originally the edit saying where they were from didn't need to be hidden, because it was just an assertion with no indication that it was based on any inside knowledge. After that, the combination of the original statement and the confirmation by the one person known to have inside knowledge made hiding necessary. In effect, the outing was self-inflicted.

Dealing with them is like dealing with someone who has a severe injury that they refuse to admit: if you even touch them, they scream in pain. The pain is no doubt real, but it prevents normal interaction. The fact that they will always blame others for their own over-sensitivity just makes it worse. Not that they're always wrong, but a long, long history of crying wolf has made it hard to take them seriously.

As a result, I Support a permanent ban. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:32, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Support —Fish bowl (talk) 21:08, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose Use of the word "bugger" is utterly harmless. The wise adage of yesteryear, scorned and mocked in these dark and wicked times, bears repeating, and I proclaim it now from the mountain tops in eternal dissent against the vile speech controls and self-censorship requirements of our time: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Let the light of that adage burn your conscience. The year 2025 is utterly backward and hopeless because of the inability to tolerate others; one way to start healing that is to begin to tolerate others for minor annoyances. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:41, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Using the word isn't the problem, it's the double standard of complaining loudly and often about alleged personal attacks while doing so. They're the loudest advocate of not tolerating others. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

"Hypocrisy is annoying but not evil. Someone who says one thing and does another has doubled their chances of being half right." -Penn Jillette Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:52, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

It's not so much hypocrisy but consistently assuming bad faith in others that is the real problem. This is causing major disruptions and it has nothing to do with "free speech". Slander has never been considered free speech, nor has falsely shouting fire in a crowded room. You are free to complain about speech codes and self-censorship but IMO you're essentially tilting at windmills, because that is not the issue here. Benwing2 (talk) 01:33, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Oppose as per Wordy. CitationsFreak (talk) 18:43, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

---

•  Done; per the consensus obtained above after the week-lasting discussion, I have indefinitely blocked Purplebackpack89. Thank you all for your inputs. Svārtava (tɕ) 05:10, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Template:sign prod

Currently a lot of sign language production templates are just for ASL, and because of this 𝡝𝪟𝤫𝪤 has had template redlinks for the past 4 years where they're definitely necessary; so I put together {{sign prod}} (which uses Module:sign prod) and it should work for every sign language once I've collected the text of all the production templates. (cc @JnpoJuwan, MedK1; I'm not sure of anyone else who has shown interest in sign languages) - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 10:48, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Saph thank you for pinging me, love the work you started! I haven't noticed that, because I don't edit sign language entries as I don't speak any. Juwan (talk) 12:17, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm in the same boat unfortunately. Thanks a lot for the ping; great initiative fr. Here's praying you can find someone who actually knows any sign languages to help you out! MedK1 (talk) 12:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rhanese - pinging since you seem to be knowledgeable on sign languages. Do you have any feedback on the template? - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 13:52, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. Because the characteristics of signing are very different in some sign languages (from my experience), and if there is a template for any language, new users can contribute efficiently to sign language. RhAnese^[discuss] 01:08, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I support the idea, certainly, of making infrastructure that works for all sign languages. I'm not sure offhand how to judge whether this particular implementation is lacking anything (I don't edit sign languages much on here, though I have limited familiarity with a few), but if no information is being lost then it seems like this could only be an improvement...? - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

This should be all ready. @Benwing2: would you be interested in doing the bot job to roll this out? I can clarify what changes need to be made on Discord if needed. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 17:53, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Saph All looks good to me and I can help out, but one thing is the choice of > as the separator; is this standard or just something you chose? Because if it's just something you chose, it might be better to use a different separator (like / or ; e.g.) to make it easier to support per-component inline modifiers if we end up feeling like this is necessary. (It's not impossible to support inline modifiers using > as the separator because we can assume all unmatched occurrences of > are separators, but it makes the syntax less forgiving of typos involving mismatched < or > signs.) Benwing2 (talk) 20:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

It's just something I chose; I've changed it to ;. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 21:10, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Restoration of Purplebackpack89's rollback rights

Since we're on the topic of me, yesterday Svartava took away, claiming he had consensus to do so but not demonstrating a public discussion on the matter. I believe that that was unnecessary and would like them restored. Purplebackpack89 11:24, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Rollback rights are granted through at the discretion of admins (usually through WT:WL - but I can't even find the nomination in your case), and can be revoked be as easily too. You don't have any activity related to patrolling and a lack of trust. Svārtava (tɕ) 12:29, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Your edit summary did mention some discussion with other admins. Where was this discussion? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:38, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

This was at WT:Discord. Svārtava (tɕ) 14:11, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I have no stake in this, but I should say the Discord is not an off-wiki decision-making body. IMO you should have brought this up on-wiki first. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 14:50, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Rights can be taken away as easily as they are granted. Taking away rights does not necessarily require a formal discussion (unless it is contested by some other admin, for example). Consensus between a few admins is sufficient to take action. Svārtava (tɕ) 14:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Svārtava: Yes, but even so, the expression of that consensus, however informal, should be accessible on-wiki, so I agree with Saph on this issue. 0DF (talk) 15:02, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

the expression of that consensus, however informal, should be accessible on-wiki I don't think that is a hard requirement. There have been revocations performed in the past without that. In this case the rollback was given even without WT:WL nomination and approval by 1 admin each, i.e. out of process. Svārtava (tɕ) 15:09, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Svārtava: IMO, it should be a hard requirement, even if it isn't one already. But since, as you write, the rollback was given even without WT:WL nomination and approval by 1 admin each, i.e. out of process, you would have been well within your rights to revoke Purplebackpack89's rollback rights, citing the justification that they were granted without due process in the first place. I and, AFAICT, Saph are just making procedural points. 0DF (talk) 16:20, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, I had held rollback so long (longer than Svārtava has been editing, FWIW), that the procedures have likely changed since it was awarded to me. Saying that rollback wasn't awarded by 2025 procedures when it was awarded years ago is NOT a reason for revocation. Purplebackpack89 16:43, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

The process for granting rights through WT:Whitelist is well-established from long; you can see nominations for rollbackership like [2], [3]. I wouldn't really care about having "held" rollback so long when the total number of rollbacks is just around 10. Svārtava (tɕ) 17:52, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Did you discuss this with the awarding admin before removing, @Svartava? Purplebackpack89 18:23, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

The awarding admins (Stephen for rollback and Metaknowledge for autopatrol) are not active currently. From how much I knew Metaknowledge, I do not think he would be siding with you in this matter as admins more lenient than him have also expressed concerns with you possessing these rights. Svārtava (tɕ) 18:50, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

If such "lenient admins" really wanted my rights taken away, they'd either have done it themselves or expressed why publicly. They've done neither. Purplebackpack89 19:08, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay, but "any topics for which a decision may have wider consequences, such as to active Wiktionary editors outside this server or to all Wiktionary users, are strongly encouraged to be discussed on-wiki with the wider community before making any decisions. The purpose of the Discord server is to facilitate communication, not to act as an off-wiki decision-making body." If you are appealing to a Discord discussion, then it seems like you are directly contradicting the spirit and letter of the law, which is that it's an informal chat site that can sometimes make it easy to discuss things which can then be proposed to the community or which may help individuals with their editing, not a bypass to having an actual on-wiki discussion. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:11, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I'll reply to this with what I said above and below: minor rights (such as the ones granted by WT:WL) do not need explicit discussion for removal and can be revoked by the admin's discretion. In this case, it was brought up that PBP had autopatrol and rollback rights along with the concern that they potentially lack the trust to have them - a few others seconded it and I decided to act on it. Svārtava (tɕ) 19:36, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

You're not listening to Justin...even if that was true, those admins should have done that PUBLICLY, not in the shadows of a private Discord chat. Purplebackpack89 19:38, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Why have you consistently employed the passive voice throughout this thread? "Consensus between a few admins is sufficient to take action." Which admins? How many? Where? "It was brought up that PBP had autopatrol and rollback rights." Words don't materialize out of nowhere. Who said this, and where? "The autopatroller right was removed as it was opined that PBP's edits need checking." Again, what specific concerns did these conspicuously unnamed, pronounless parties express, and where? And why did you accept their assertion that PBP89 having rollback rights is a matter of concern, when, as you yourself have pointed out, PBP89 seldom uses this tool and thus cannot be said to be actively misusing it?

Surely, if multiple admins have (perhaps entirely valid) concerns about PBP89's wiki-conduct, it shouldn't be an issue for them to voice them openly, with their usernames – and the corresponding weight of authority – attached? Otherwise, this looks less like a straw-poll consensus on how to handle a problematic editor, and more like backroom collusion between a handful of people with an axe to grind. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:31, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Enjoying inventing any scenario where "how many admins" actually matters. Oh it was seven, not six! 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:FD1C:68CD:8DB8:EAC0 10:25, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Policy decisions need to be accessible to all Wiktionarians in the interest of transparency and due process. Consensus is only consensus if every user can review the process by which it emerged. This thread basically confirms personal suspicions I've had about the Discord for at least two years. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 01:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Back to IRC then! (At least it's not proprietary.) 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:FD1C:68CD:8DB8:EAC0 10:26, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement with the proposition that, absent crazy circumstances such as threats of imminent violence, user rights should never be diminished without a transparent open onsite discussion. bd2412 T 21:46, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Although the question is now moot, I think grounds for a block are neccessarily grounds to revoke autopatrol or rollback rights. Revocation of these rights is a lesser restriction than blocking. Admins here routinely block without prior transparent onsite discussions. The discussions mostly come later. This is an unusual situation (nothing like it in the last year of the user rights log) and Wiktionary doesn't need a formal proces. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:30, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Restoration of Purplebackpack89's autopatrol rights

I also request that my autopatrol right be restored. Reasons are the same as above; they were not removed transparently. Svartava hasn't provided any diffs of why it was necessary. Purplebackpack89 18:23, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm disinclined to unilaterally add or remove user rights and I believe Svartava that there was some discussion, but having discussion on Discord about anything meaningful is obviously a bad idea. I only think that user rights should be removed if someone abuses that right in particular or as part of some kind of larger issue like the user dying or otherwise explicitly retiring. Since it's not obvious that PB89 has actually abused rollback or autopatrol somehow, I think they should be restored and if there's consensus to do so here, I would be willing to add them back. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

The autopatroller right was removed as it was opined that PBP's edits need checking and they cannot be blanketly trusted enough to have each edit marked as patrolled automatically. In any case, autopatroller status provides the owner very little extra rights anyways and is mostly designed to help administrators in patrolling-related tasks. Svārtava (tɕ) 18:53, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that PBP89 should not have it removed in principle: it may well be the case that said user's edits should be reviewed. I'm just suggesting that either unilateral removal or discussion somewhere off-wiki with whomever is not optimal. I will generally defer to other admins and I generally trust your judgement, but this is not how things should be done, which should be an obvious and uncontroversial statement. Would you support me taking away user rights from someone who did not abuse them because I exchanged some emails with someone? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:03, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

"Opined"? Where? Who? Publicly?

Diffs, diffs! If there really was an abuse issue, you'd be able to provide diffs but you haven't. And since you haven't, it's hard to take this removal seriously. Purplebackpack89 19:10, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

OK, I personally would trust the judgement of the revoking administrator in case of rights, even if they did it by themselves without (off-wiki or on-wiki) discussion, especially for rights like autopatroller which do not impact the user as much as they impact the patrolling admin. There were concerns about their edits, and I would see why, e.g. some of the categories they created (see Special:DeletedContributions/Purplebackpack89) had module error. Svārtava (tɕ) 19:25, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

This should have been done through the whitelist so there would be an on-wiki record. Doing things based on offwiki discussions looks bad, regardless of the actual motivation. As for the removal of the right: if it hasn't been used for years, it's quite reasonable to remove it. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:25, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I will surely keep that in mind and I realize that it could have helped save some drama.

Now that some admins have commented in the above section, it should hopefully address some of the concerns people had here. Svārtava (tɕ) 20:34, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, we should make it a rule that all promotions/demotions should be discusión on-Wikt, and not in Discord/IRC/Signal/whatever. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:44, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I am very suspicious of this sort of request. Being an autopatroller makes little difference to what you can do here. There are a few page protections and filters so it's not completely useless. As for rollback, I don't have rollback rights and I can still revert changes. The log message is different depending on rollbacker status. So I ask myself, is this request merely seeking to collect privileges as an ego boost or is it a plan to evade oversight by admins? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:14, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: I think that an editor who has a right, and then has that right removed for reasons the editor believes to be incorrect or inappropriate would have reason to feel that the removal of the right paints them as being under a cloud of distrust, and that restoration of that right can clear that cloud. bd2412 T 03:44, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Is Wonderfool trusted to close discussions?

I just blocked his latest identified sockpuppet from Wiktionary project space after a slate of RfD and RfV closes, on the understanding that sockpuppets should not be closing discussions at all, as this requires an editor trusted by the community. I am bemused here. Where does the community stand with respect to this? bd2412 T 22:41, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Undisclosed alternate accounts shouldn't exist, let alone be participating in votes and similar community conversations. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

We have, on numerous occasions, crossed out (as to invalidate) WF's votes. Don't see why we shouldn't do the same for vote closes or any other administrative action. 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 22:49, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I don’t have particular objections against multiple accounts as long as they aren't used abusively, since WF alts are easily identifiable and are do not seem to be attempts to hide. However, some of his closures are sometimes problematic. Svārtava (tɕ) 06:27, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

How can you possibly know which accounts are sockpuppets of Wonderfool or not? By definition, the ones that are particularly sneaky are ones that you don't identify... The fact that several hundred have been more-or-less trivially identified in no way means that hundreds of others weren't. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:17, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I meant that WF's accounts that participate in community discussions are usually easily identified and I don't commonly encounter suspicious user accounts appearing in or closing RFs. Svārtava (tɕ) 17:37, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but the point I am making is that you can only easily identify the ones that are easily identifiable by definition. You don't know the ones that aren't because they aren't. It is common to assume "Oh, I know which editors are just Wonderfool sockpuppets" but that is not obvious and we should have a clear policy to at least explicitly state that you should not use undisclosed alternate accounts. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:47, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I haven’t been bothered myself. Wrong closures don’t appear to be any more frequently made by Mr. ’Fool rather than by anyone else; and if they are, they can always be contested. I think it’s great that Wonderfool has gone back to close older discussions, because they were otherwise forgotten. Polomo47 (talk) 15:38, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Related to this: he also inappropriately tagged Army of Northern Virginia as having failed RfD when it's never even been to RfD. I was under the impression that sockpuppetry was a fairly bright line that usually got you indeffed, and WF trolls on top on it. Honestly, just three days was too leniant... Purplebackpack89 00:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Using an alternate account once you are blocked is one of the examples of behavior that is explicitly listed for a subsequent block (if not, no block would serve any purpose at all). The main Wonderfool account was unblocked per a vote and then request to the stewards a couple of years back. We have no local policy about multiple accounts, but a standard assumption is that users will use one account. There has been no consensus to codify in any way what is acceptable or unacceptable use of multiple accounts locally. In a reasonable world, it would be expected that someone would edit from a single account and then only use explicitly identified alternates with some cause (e.g. traveling, using a proxy for some politically sensitive reason, having a secondary account for bots or bot-like actions that still require human discrimination). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:52, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I would prefer for the alternate-account hopping to stop. The recent slightly trollish closures have lowered my trust from acceptable previously to not really trustable at this point in time. That said, WF's work appears to improve the dictionary, and I don't know that a block for this is completely necessary. Hftf (talk) 01:03, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

We do not need to have a sitewide rule in place on this to institute a community restriction with respect to a specific editor. However, we probably should have a sitewide rule restricting discussion closes to main accounts, even where secondary accounts are not strictly prohibited from editing. bd2412 T 21:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

gay agenda discussion

Gay agenda is a semi-recent WF close that I strongly feel bears re-examination. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:22, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy: I took a look at the discussion to which you linked. I read seven votes to delete the entry (PUC, LunaEatsTuna, Sgconlaw, ScribeYearling, Mihia, Fay Freak, Polomo47), one vote to keep it (you), one comment that could reasonably be interpreted as a vote to keep the entry (-sche: “I'm on the fence, leaning towards keep.”), and one comment that could be inferred as being in favour of the entry's deletion (Ultimateria: “I will also delete transgender agenda with the reasonable expectation that it would have failed alongside gay agenda and its synonyms.”), but which probably shouldn't be counted as a vote at all. That's seven votes to delete and one or two votes to keep; in percentage terms, that's either 87.5% or 77.7% of votes being in favour of the entry's deletion. Whilst you might reasonably maintain that your argument that “entirely notional concept[s require] clear, accurate definition[s]” was insufficiently-well addressed, it is not reasonable to assert that Wonderfool (p.p. Father of minus 2) was incorrect in his judgment that the entry failed that RFD. 0DF (talk) 09:39, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Forming a consensus doesn't mean simply tallying votes. It involves weighing the relative merit of arguments presented. If 80% of the votes argue "SOP, delete", but 20% point out that WT:COALMINE applies, or the term has an idiomatic/regional/dated/etc. secondary sense, or there are nuances not covered by an inadequate primary definition, then the minority opinion is the correct one. I'd hoped to codify the "Wikipedia test" during the gay agenda discussion but had to prematurely disengage for reasons outlined on BD2412's talk page. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 10:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy: I am highly sympathetic to that view (i.e. that it is the best argument that should prevail, not the most popular). I encourage you to codify the Wikipedia test in a Beer-parlour discussion. It may thereby become a principle guiding inclusion, à la WT:COALMINE. 0DF (talk) 12:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Moving away from whether a specific user should or should not be closing discussions relating to deletion, verification, etc., I think the general rule should be that only users who have the appropriate user rights, and make the effort, to do all the consequential cleanup work upon closing a discussion should do so. For example, it will just cause confusion if a user who is unable to delete an entry which has failed RFD or RFV closes a discussion because the entry will remain in existence, and may then be overlooked by other editors who think the closing user has already done what is necessary to remove the entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Others can do it with |fail=1, which makes entries liable to speedy deletion, and then if an admin deletes it we even had four-eyes about the consensus, since as WordyAndNerdy pointed out it is about the community attitudes towards the entry based on variously weighted factors, so indeed I assume that in general one has to be a regular editor to convincingly close; it probably is not outrageous but a shared belief that IPs can’t close deletion or verification motions on the same grounds, which itself would be irking, though due to COALMINE or perfectly durable cites they can. Fay Freak (talk) 16:41, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Old Korean revamp and cleanup

@Saranamd @Ydaraishy @Solarkoid @Chom.kwoy I am thinking of doing significant cleanup and revamping of Old Korean entries, with probably a complete rewrite of WT:About Old Korean at some point to separate it from AKO. I am working on something similar for Middle Korean.

That being said, one change I want to make is to start creating reconstruction entries (Reconstruction:Old Korean:...) for forms that currently do not meet CFI, most importantly terms attested only in the Jīlín leìshì. These will be standardized under Yale romanization spellings. Toward this end, I would also like to create a data module and module to create automatic tables containing reconstructions of JLLS entries by various sources. I'd probably then create nonlemma entries in mainspace with the JLLS spelling as a soft redirect to the reconstructed form.

I'm creating this thread now to hopefully serve as some spitballing before I implement anything. I don't expect much since I don't think there are actually any active editors for OKO at the moment, but FWIW. Please let me know if you would prefer not to be pinged in the future for OKO-related things (especially Saranamd, I understand you are busier lately with Persian and other things). 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 22:58, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Label inconsistency

(This discussion was moved from Wiktionary:Tea room/2025/March)

Can Module:labels/data be modified so that the youth slang label applied to a language's term automatically puts that term in page called Category:«Language» youth slang, a child of Category:«Language» slang, similar to how the prison slang, internet slang, military slang etc. labels work? If so, anyone with appropriate permission to edit that page, please modify it. ZapciulSlovelor (talk) 11:27, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I see no reason not to, we have subcategories far more specific than that. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 20:34, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

By the way, you should have posted this to WT:Beer parlour. ―⁠K_(ə)tom (talk) 20:36, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

"Youth slang" seems like an inherently ephemeral label: the people who were using youth slang when Wiktionary started 23 years ago are correspondingly older now, and if they're still using the same words, then those words are no longer "youth slang", are they? And today's youth have some new slang, but if they keep using it, they'll grow out of being youth, too. But I suppose that's no reason not to categorize, as long as we have the label; I suppose a category indeed makes it easier for people to go through the entries periodically and check if they're still youth slang. And I suppose in the long term we already have to check labels to see if they need to be updated, anyway (e.g. to see if things have become dated, or if, over nearly a quarter century since Wiktionary began, some dated things have become archaic, or archaic things have become obsolete). OK, I can change how the label categorizes soon, if no-one objects or wants to beat me to it; ping me in a week if I forget. - -sche (discuss) 21:28, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:-sche See WT:Tea room#withcall for a discussion of why dated, archaic, and obsolete may not be a simple grade, notwithstanding what Appendix:Glossary says. DCDuring (talk) 22:15, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

In my experience if a youth slang term has permeated various milieus the users will grow out of it due to its supposed markedness that could stigmatize the speaker as belonging to a certain age group, and it will be a dated term fashionable once in the youth and then more broadly because of natural “how do you do, fellow kids?” tendencies in man and then no more, while other terms either just die out as belonging to an era – dated or archaic youth slang – or they stay low-key because they still mark the milieu, though then one will always ask whether it is youth slang or some other slang. But for the diachronic perspective it is not excluded that something is correctly labelled youth slang. Fay Freak (talk) 22:27, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think "youth slang" is a good label at all. As has been pointed out by -sche, terminology which is used by today's youths may, in 20 years, still be used by them and no longer correctly called "youth slang" but regarded as dated. If necessary to categorize terms in this way, it is better to at least refer to the slang by generation, e.g., "Generation X slang", "Generation Z slang", or something along those lines. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:31, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Ahah, youth slang is just slang used by some youths at some point in time, not a slang to which youth is ascribed. Fay Freak (talk) 18:27, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, this is true enough — like something can be e.g. {{lb|en|informal|obsolete}} and thus not really informal anymore, just a thing which was informal at some point, as you say — but for anything which is not current youth slang, it does seem wise to indicate when the thing was youth slang, so as to provide an indication that it is not youth slang anymore (or that it will not be youth slang, in time), like the indication {{lb|en|obsolete}} provides in {{lb|en|informal|obsolete}}. No? So I find Sgconlaw's suggestion to replace this label with more specific labels appealing: if not generation labels ("Gen Z slang"), perhaps date ranges ("1990s youth slang" etc)? Can anyone think of problems that would cause? (Beyond that "generations" are weird concepts with fuzzy boundaries since people are born every day rather than being born in discrete spaced-out batches...) - -sche (discuss) 19:45, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@-sche: Date ranges qualifying youth slang sound most feasible. I'm inclined to think that the various “Gens. blah” are mere figments without discernible bases in reality. 0DF (talk) 20:06, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:English indeclinable nouns probably needs a new name

This category is frankly confusing. The name is bit opaque, since English declension is so basic that the term is rarely used. What it actually seems to contain is words like fish and Apache where the plural is spelled the same as the singular. a) arguably this is still a declension, just a null declension (the plural form still exists!) but b) these words are both still declinable! We have entries for fishes and Apaches. The category should either be renamed, or at the very least, {{en-noun}} should be modified so it doesn't categorise declinable nouns here. Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:49, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

This seems completely worthless in English. I think we only have it because of the uniformitarianism permitted and even encouraged by our category structure and templates. What our users might need for English noun are inflection-line displays (or labels) and/or grammatical appendixes and categories that show the number agreement of the verb with the forms of nouns. It is a little hard because of uncountability and multiple allowed plural forms ("A fish is swimming there.", "Fish is good to eat.", "Fish/Fishes are not the only animals that swim.") and word like scissors ("Where is/are the scissors?"). Instead of helping with number agreement, we have labels like "plural only" which are often unhelpful, misleading, or wrong. DCDuring (talk) 14:00, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

@Smurrayinchester: Category:English nouns with invariant plurals or Category:English nouns with homographic plurals? 0DF (talk) 14:35, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

What do these do for a user? It seems to me that they just make us feel we've addressed the question when we actually haven't. DCDuring (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

@DCDuring: Such a category collects together all English nouns that have a plural the same as the singular. Useful for language learners and those simply curious. 0DF (talk) 15:46, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

It may be good for the curious, but doesn't make necessary distinctions and introduces irrelevancies for learners. I don't care as much about the categories as I do about communicating noun-verb agreement in the inflection line or elsewhere in the body of the entry. When we suggest words like indeclinable, homograph, and invariant (let alone pluralia tantum), we are signaling to large numbers of learners that we will not be as good as their textbooks and their reading for learning the finer points of English. DCDuring (talk) 19:53, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

@DCDuring: I prefer to restrict the specificity of my comments to the name of this category. 0DF (talk) 21:37, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

@0DF: The category had a similar name (Category:English invariant nouns) before being renamed. J3133 (talk) 05:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@J3133: Neither that not the current name is ideal, IMO, since many (most? all?) of these nouns also have non-invariant plurals: fish has fishes, and even sheep has sheeps (currently labelled “nonstandard, humorous or childish”), yet we wouldn't want to exclude such archetypical examples from such a category. BTW, why do you routinely blank your edit summaries? I almost missed you comment here because of that. 0DF (talk) 09:06, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I did not blank anything; there was no edit summary. J3133 (talk) 09:14, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@J3133: Editing a section autogenerates a link to that section in the edit summary; in this case, its form is /* Category:English indeclinable nouns probably needs a new name */. Do you not edit sections or something? 0DF (talk) 09:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I usually press the “Edit” button at the top instead of going to the section. J3133 (talk) 09:22, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@J3133: Ah, OK. That'll be the reason, then. I would've thought the load times for doing that on such a large page as this one would have been prohibitive. Perhaps not. 0DF (talk) 14:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@0DF We already have a whole bunch of categories under Category:English irregular plurals such as Category:English plurals in -n and Category:English plurals in -ces with singular in -x. Maybe we should rename this category Category:English nouns with plural same as singular or something? That avoids using terminology like "invariant" or "homographic" that the average user might not be familiar with. Benwing2 (talk) 20:56, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

BTW in terms of the issue you brought up about words like fish that have two plurals only one of which is invariant, it's not an issue IMO if they go in Category:English nouns with plural same as singular because the headword will make clear that they have two plurals. Benwing2 (talk) 20:57, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

April 2025

Plural uncountable nouns

I've just noticed many plural nouns such as cattle or arms ('warfare') are never labeled as uncountable (in the sense of numbers/numerals) as different from police or staff (compare: three (members of the) crew are... vs an item of clothing/*clothes).

Is there any particular reason for that? JMGN (talk) 10:57, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I just left a comment at Appendix_talk:Glossary to this effect, but you can find more than a handful of examples of cattle used directly after a numeral, which makes it inaccurate to call it "uncountable" without giving further qualifications to that label.--Urszag (talk) 11:24, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you mean by "plural uncountable nouns"? Arms might well be in that category, taking a plural verb and usable with much, but clothing takes a singular verb.

To try to answer your question: I think the reason is that different contributors focus on different aspects of the grammar of English nouns. Some focus on countablily/uncountability, some on number agreement with a verb, some on the form(s) of the plural, and others on the semantics of number. It is not obvious to me how one can consistently present the relevant information in an English noun entry. Further complication of already complicated {{en-noun}} may be necessary.

To start, almost any usually countable noun can be used uncountably with a predicable meaning relative to the countable use. Similarly, uncountable nouns can by used countably. A test for uncountability is use of the noun with a determiner like much ("much arms" can be found) (vs. many with a plural form for countability). Whether an English noun is (un)countable does not transparently answer the question of number agreement with a verb. DCDuring (talk) 14:49, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

"Cattle" is a countable word. You say "some cattle are", not "some cattle is". 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F5D8:C7C2:FAB5:4BC6 15:55, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Cattle is an uncountable singulare tantum as a mass noun. You say “some cattle are” because notional agreement is mandatory in English. Fay Freak (talk) 19:20, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, DCDuring: According to the CGEL,

Uninflected pl-only: [37] i) cattle livestock police poultry1 vermin ii) folk people1 [38] {These cattle belong - *This cattle belongs} to my uncle.

[37i] cannot be used with low numerals, but are found with high round numerals (‘quasi-count’). Their denotation is thought of en masse, with none of the individuation into atomic entities that a low numeral implies. Genuine count nouns (usually of more specific meaning) must be substituted in order for this individuation to take place:

[39] a thousand cattle vs *seven cows/*cattle

ii two hundred police vs four policemen / *police / police officers.

An alternative, in cattle, is to use a quantificational noun: seven head of cattle. JMGN (talk) 19:27, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

They are non sequitur: their denotation is thought of en masse means it is a mass noun thought in one number only and thus not being counted. The agreement is no evidence for it being plural, for the said empirically observed English agreement behaviour. Plural or singular is a morphological category, which is not marked in cattle, grammatical number is a feature […] that expresses count distinctions, while agreement of number within the subject and the predicate is not required, but a syntactic rule hinging on various environment factors including (most commonly) semantics and word order, e.g. in Arabic PSO sentences always have the predicate in the singular when the same sentence in SPO requires agreement, while in turn English has a more loose requirement of subject and predicate numbers agreeing (because agreement in sense trumps the ideal of sentence constituents). Fay Freak (talk) 19:43, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Take into account etymologies (dia- vs synchronic):

< Medieval Latin capitāle, 'holdings, funds' < from neuter of Latin capitālis

https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=cattle JMGN (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@JMGN: Yeah, the Latin is singular. Translations of course do not even need to be the same POS, let alone number.

See also people your CGEL mentions. Wiktionary labels it as uncountable, e contrario from not labelling any sense but one as countable – which gained abstraction to substitute nation, in the same fashion as United States has gone used with singular predicates due to no certain plurality of individual persons (as states have been personhoods, by analogy to clubs consisting of natural persons) being felt or conceptualized, ousting notional agreement, but United States always stayed a plural. It would not work and be confusing not to. The sense of people called by Wiktionary “plural of person” is lexical suppletion to express plural senses of person by means of a singular. Fay Freak (talk) 20:08, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

en.wikt transl locations for jabonera and sabonera

Consider: a soap factory in the soap industry

una fábrica jabonera

Am I right in perceiving that there is currently a gap in en.wikt because there ought to be some Translations section where jabonera (adj) and sabonera (adj) can go? There is not yet any provision made for them for the noun adjunct use of 'soap' at soap#Noun → Translations, and they obviously don't belong at soapy#Adjective → Translations. It seems to me that there needs to be a noun adjunct sense/use listed at soap#Noun → Translations, and it simply hasn't been added yet. But I have never had occasion to ponder this particular pattern before, and there must be thousands of instances, so I may be missing something. Thus asking here. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:32, 1 April 2025 (UTC)