Wiktionary:Simple talk/Archive 2

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Workshop[change]

The following was posted by Adam Kilgarriff on the Corpora mailing list 


                       LEXICOM-ASIA 2006
      A Workshop in Lexicography and Lexical Computing

Venue: Kowloon, Hong Kong Hosts: Language Centre, Hong Kong Univ of Science and Technology Dates: December 11th-15th, 2006


Led by Adam Kilgarriff and Michael Rundell of the Lexicography MasterClass, Lexicom is an intensive one-week workshop, with seminars on theoretical issues alternating with practical sessions at the computer. There will be some parallel 'lexicographic' and 'computational' sessions. Topics to be covered include:

  • corpus creation
  • corpus analysis:
    o        software and corpus querying
    o        discovering word senses, recording contextual information *

writing dictionary entries

  • dictionary databases and writing systems
  • using web data

Applications are invited from people with interests and experience in any of these areas.

Over the last six years Lexicom has attracted 200 participants from 28 countries including lexicographers, computational linguists, professors, research students, translators, terminologists, and editors, managers and technical support staff from dictionary publishers and information management companies.

The venue, HKUST, is beautifully situated on Clearwater Bay in Kowloon, only 30 minutes from central Hong Kong.

To register for Lexicom, go to: http://lc.ust.hk/~centre/lexi2006/ Early registration is advised (the Workshop has been oversubscribed in previous years), and registrations received before 7th October 2006 carry a discounted fee.

Further details, including reports of past events can be found at: http://www.lexmasterclass.com.

Michael Rundell & Adam Kilgarriff The Lexicography MasterClass --Brett 13:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Logo discussion[change]

Greetings,

I apologise for writing in English. There is a discussion about the logo for Wiktionary at meta:Wiktionary/logo. Please go there and help us decide. Please also put this message on your community page.

Thank you. -Dbmag9 (copied here from talk:Main Page by Cromwellt|talk|contribs 20:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Most linked article[change]

Is there a way to find the article with the most links? In particular, I'm interested in finding the most-linked-to article that doesn't yet exist.--Brett 21:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Milestones![change]

I think now was the 700th. --Brett 01:51, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, everyone! Great work. Let's keep it up. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 09:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A virtual beer to the user who adds the 1000th word!--Brett 20:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
brush! Hooray! PullToOpen 03:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Make it two beers! Well done, PTO!--Brett 01:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes!!!! It now says 2003 words, suggesting that development is word 2003 and that I was right that dependent by Isis was word 2000. Congratulations to Isis and to everyone who helped!! Thanks to Isis, RaNdOm26, Rimshot, Huji, Ionas68224, everyone else who contributed any of the 2000 words, and of course Brett. --Coppertwig 15:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
... or did we? User:Cromwellt just deleted a lot of pages that were Cyrillic letters. Do we still have 2000 words? Do we have to work hard today to get back to 2000? Most important, do we get to keep the virtual beer?  :-) --Coppertwig 22:55, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See my comments under the next heading. I think we're fine, though I do like the number 2000. It is a pleasantly round one. And the virtual beers should be virtually drunk (not the virtual-beer drinkers, of course). --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 00:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations, everyone! Let's not let our momentum die! Now we have the BNC1000 headwords list to work on, and all the BE850 entries to check. I propose we try for 2400 entries by at least September 15. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 18:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We would need to do 9 words a day. Right now, we're doing more than that! --Coppertwig 16:55, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm deleting Cyrillic characters right now (as agreed on in the "translation" discussion on this page or in its archives). Don't freak, anyone, if we drop below 2000 entries again. We still made it, it's just that some things we don't want were there also, similar to the way vandalism gets counted as articles. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 22:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A different idea[change]

I recently had an idea for a sort of word rating system. This would show the SE user how difficult/complicated the word is considered by native speakers, and perhaps even include an easier and/or more challenging (for the basic words) alternative. I'm thinking of a kind of thermometer look, maybe up in the right-hand corner. It would have something like four or five degrees, including: basic or easy (from the BE850, words like do, cold, and woman), fairly basic or fairly easy (BE1500 or so, words like sink, math, and trust), medium or intermediate (about regular conversation level, somewhat less common than BE1500, words like complete, freezing, and feminine), fairly advanced or fairly hard (more complex or difficult a concept or term, words like nondescript, anthropology, and uncharacteristic), and advanced or hard (for jargon and other much less common words such as sodium benzoate, sesquipedalian, and indefatigable). We can tweak these levels or add new ones if/when we feel they are warranted. What do you all think? --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 10:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a good idea, but I think basing it on BE is a bad idea, no matter how much you like BE. BE was not intended to choose the most simple or frequent words, but to bring together a list of words that would be sufficient to communicate any idea. Instead, I think we should base it on frequency counts, in the same way that the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English does. I think that using Paul Nation's word counts would be a great place to start. He counts 'word families', so that run, running, runner, etc. are all counted together. His counts are broken into 1000-word bands and are available for free.--Brett 16:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Though different organizations have different frequency counts, I think the idea is a sound one, and I think that there are many other word lists which would do a better job than BE. The only reason I've stuck with BE this long is because it was already there, and fairly convenient, not to mention a good place to start creating words. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 02:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I asked Paul Nation, and he wrote, "The lists are freely available for whoever wants to use them." Have a look.--Brett 01:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
After looking at the BNC spoken frequency lists, I think you're right. I much prefer the way that these lists are set up, and it is nice to see not only the word but all its variations. I think it is much better. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 01:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Move to Wiktionary talk:Simple talk?[change]

I just want to throw up the idea of moving this page to the Wiktionary talk namespace. The advantage is that when editing a talk page MediaWiki:Talkpagetext is shown to the user. It would also leave this page open for FaQ's or something. Just an idea. Gerard Foley 14:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your input, Gerard. Nice to know you're still around every once in a while. You have a valid point about the talk page text being shown at the top of the page. It might be worth it to move it. However, I don't really care for the FAQ idea personally. It is supposed to be a simple *talk* page, so it should be something related to talk, even if it just redirects to its own talk page or explains how simple talk works. Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 00:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Survivors?[change]

I decided to come here and help out the project, after I saw the request for deletion at Meta. Personally, I would hate to see a project with this much potential die.

So, my question. How many regularly editing people are left? I noticed that a bureaucrat and two administrators haven't edited in a fairly long time, with the only admin exception seeming to be Cromwellt. Just give a shout here, I suppose. Thanks! PullToOpen 21:49, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very few it seems, although I don't think left is the right word. There don't ever appear to have been many contributing memebers. Welcome though. Could I suggest you try to avoid difficult words in your definitions? For example, for approval, you wrote "Formal permission or sanction." both words are less common than the word you're defining, and sanction is significantly less common. Just a suggestion. The participation is appreciated, though.--Brett 01:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion. I used the word "left" because I had spent a while reading talk archives. This place seemed to be a lot more active back in Febuary. PullToOpen 01:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Word of the Day[change]

It seems the WotD has effectively died. Should we destroy the category/template for the word of the day as well? PullToOpen 23:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. --Brett 01:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't checked if you deleted the cat/template for WotD, but I think it will probably be revived eventually (hopefully), so maybe deleting it was unnecessary. Then again, we can always recreate those I guess. No biggie. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 19:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Now that we have enough entries for about six years of WotD entries (give or take a few), we could start it back up again. Of course, we'll need at least one person willing to keep it going. I volunteer to try to support that person, adding good entries when I have the time. Of course, if we don't yet see the need or we don't yet have enough active users, we can always leave it for later. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 18:48, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the effort could be employed with much more useful results elsewhere. --Brett 20:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vote to delete[change]

I ended to vote to close this project on Meta. It has gone on long enough and is going nowhere fast. Gerard Foley 17:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

thank you!--Brett 18:14, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, finally. Its about time they closed that one up. PullToOpen 00:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Great news :) - Tangotango 10:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators[change]

Are there any active administrators/bureaucrats here anymore? PullToOpen 16:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really ;) User:h2g2bob, our friendly bureaucrat, expressed a desire to resume contributing, but beyond that, the admins have been largely inactive. - Tangotango 16:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for not being active for a few months. I'm still around, I've just been busy with classes, etc. A teacher's life is a busy one. To make things worse, I haven't had internet access for about a month or more. I'll see if I can make time to contribute more regularly again.  :) Oh, and my "email this user" works, so if there's something that needs admin intervention (like MediaWiki stuff), you can still get ahold of me, even if it may be a little while before I get it taken care of. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 19:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Amazing how those "few months" stretched. I have only been editing as an anonymous user for the past several months because I had issues I did not understand with my transparent proxy, which would not allow me to login. That started very close to the day that I wrote the note above. Now I've found the solution, and I promise to be at least somewhat active here some of the time.  :) And of course, Brett is an active admin, too. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki link[change]

How do you link to Simple Witionary from another wiki project?--Brett 12:38, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Either [[:simple:wikt:definition]] or [[:wikt:simple:definition]]; if you're on a Simple English project, use [[:wikt:definition]] or, if you're on a Wiktionary, use [[:simple:definition]]. Cheers, Tangotango 12:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Common.css[change]

Hi, can we import some styles (specifically the messagebox class, and maybe some of its subclasses as well) from w:MediaWiki:Common.css into MediaWiki:Common.css? This is purely for cosmetic reasons, but some of the templates that we have (including Template:Delete) use the messagebox class, which is not defined here. (P.S. This requires an admin) Cheers, Tangotango 16:40, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone ahead and asked for a temporary +sysop on meta, and have imported all CSS classes from the Simple English Wikipedia (with the exception of CommonsTicker-related styles). Cheers, Tangotango 10:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that, Tangotango. I didn't know how to do that. I'm sure there are lots of things here you could help with if you came back. What do the CommonsTicker styles do and why shouldn't we want them here? Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Example sentences[change]

In a dictionary such as this, I think it's important that the example sentences actually exemplify the use of a defined word rather than simply include it. Consider the following examples:

  1. There was a book on the table.
  2. He finished reading, closed the book, and put it down.

In the first sentence, book could be almost anything, animate or inanimate, of a size suitable for being on tables. The second sentence, in contrast, shows that book is related to reading and that it can be held and closed. This second sentence exemplifies book, while the first simply uses it.

We should also try to exemplify the syntactic properties of defined words. Notwithstanding, for instance, is an unusual preposition in that it can appear after the noun. Thus, examples showing both pre- and post-noun usage would be useful. Similarly, nouns that have both countable and uncountable senses should have example sentences showing these. And so on.

Finally, it would also be good to try to identify and show strong collocations. Some good tools for this are Just the Word and Mark Davies's VIEW interface to the BNC. These can also provide authentic example sentences. --Brett 00:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very good point. Thanks for bringing it up, Brett. I know I'm going to try to be more careful with my examples in the future. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 19:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question[change]

Who is father of Education —This unsigned comment was added by 164.100.216.2 (talk • contribs) 07:48, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, this is a forum for discussing topics related to the Simple English Wiktionary. Perhaps you could try looking for information on the Simple English Wikipedia, or the English Wikipedia. Cheers, Tangotango 15:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a native English speaker and I don't know the answer to your question. Put your question on Wiktionary:Requested definitions. Also say on that page where you saw those words being used. --Coppertwig 18:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Coppertwig, remember, this is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. While father and education need entries, we should never have an entry for "father of education," though SEWP likely should. Besides, this sounds very much like a "do my homework for me" question. That's not our business here. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 19:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit buttons gone[change]

What happened to our edit buttons? --Brett 14:30, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit buttons? - Tangotango 14:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what to call them. When you were editing something, there was a row of buttons at the top of the edit window: bold, italics, math, signatures, etc. They're not there anymore. --Brett 02:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Check your preferences. Check on the 'Editing' tab that the box is ticked to show the toolbar. Archer7 11:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's checked. The tool bar was there on Friday and gone on Saturday. I haven't changed anything. I take it, then, that others still have their tool bar? --Brett 12:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I turned them off in my preferences and turned them back on and now they're back again. Something a programmer might have a look at. --Brett 19:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures[change]

My idea: all nouns need pictures in the definitions. Writers need ideas about copyright and about finding pictures. --Coppertwig 19:55, 25 November 2006 (UTC) I did it! I put a picture in! See wire. I think all definitions need pictures. Is that good? Did I do it right? I found the picture in Wikimedia Commons. --Coppertwig 20:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well done! Many nouns already have pictures with them. Many other nouns, however, are too abstract for a picture. Put one in where it makes sense. --Brett 02:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm having some problems formatting the pages with the pictures. I want the pictures near the top so people will see them immediately. On the page wave the picture covered some of the words. I put many "nbsp" so that it doesn't cover the words. But I think that will not work well for all browser windows. There must be a good way to do it. --Coppertwig 04:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The walk page now has a moving picture! --Coppertwig 05:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! --Brett 12:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly I don't like moving pictures. It's hard to read when there is a moving picture on the page. But if I put it there, I like it.  :-) Some people may not be able to see the moving picture. Some people may not be able to see any pictures. --Coppertwig 13:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, now I know how to put the pictures on the page in a good way. Put the picture. (Do not put "300px" if not needed.) Then put words that will be beside the picture. Then put <br style="clear:both"/> . Then put words that need to be under the picture. See angry. See also en:wikipedia:Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. --Coppertwig 13:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the words under the pictures are too small. Some people who are reading Simple English Wikipedia may be people who are learning to read. People who are learning to read need big letters. In trade, I wrote <big> to make the letters bigger. Is that a good idea for all pictures? --Coppertwig 01:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why just the pictures? Actually, it's really easy for individual readers to change the font display size on their browsers. I'd leave it alone. --Brett 02:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's easy to change font size. On my browzer I see something to change font size, but I don't see something to change font size of letters under pictures and leave other font size the way it is. Do you know how to do that? Do many people who know Simple English but not English know how to do that? When I display the pictures without "big" the words under the pictures are littler than the other words on the page. --Coppertwig 04:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, I meant change them all at once. On my browser, the fonts under the pictures are the same size as the other fonts. I don't know why they would be different for you, but different browsers will vary. At any rate, I still see no point in it. --Brett 11:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Change this part"[change]

I like where it says "change this page". That's Simple English. It seems friendly to me. But when a page has parts, it says "edit". It needs to say "Change this part." --Coppertwig 05:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, Coppertwig. I'm glad to see some new users active here. I'll try to get this fixed this week or so, though I don't have time at this precise moment.  :) I'm sure it is on MediaWiki somewhere under MediaWiki:Allmessages. If you can find it, that will speed up my job. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 19:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm way behind you. I've found MediaWiki. I've found MediaWiki localisation. I haven't found "MediaWiki:Allmessages" or "Allmessages" anywhere. Maybe if you tell me where to find that, then I can look through it for the edit message.  :-) --Coppertwig 13:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, found it! "editsection" in Special:Allmessages. (that was talked about in meta:Help:MediaWiki namespace). Maybe it should be "change this part". Maybe it should be simply "change". Maybe other messages need to be translated, too. Later. --Coppertwig 03:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for finding this, Coppertwig. Unfortunately, I can't change it, because I have a login error that I can't figure out how to fix. You will have to ask another administrator to fix it or wait until I figure out how to login again. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 20:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As you can see, Coppertwig, I finally was able to change it as you suggested.  :) Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 20:56, 12 June 2007
Yes, I saw that. I like it! I'm a native English speaker, but when I'm on the Simple English project I feel that Simple English messages like "change" are friendly. --Coppertwig 17:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, I just made that change on Simple English Wikiquote, too: now it says "change" to change part of a page. It's easy. You edit the page Mediawiki:Editsection and make it say "change". Now I'll ask admins on Simple English Wikipedia to do that, too. —This unsigned comment was added by Coppertwig (talk • contribs) 22:34, 3 August 2007.
At Simple English Wikiquote, I also changed Mediawiki:Talk to say "talk" not "discussion". I changed Mediawiki:Minoredit to say "This is a small change", not "This is a minor edit". I changed Mediawiki:Contributions to say "User's changes", not "User contributions". At Simple English Wikipedia it also says "User's changes". Maybe it's a good idea to make the same changes here. --Coppertwig 01:38, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I made the changes to Mediawiki:Minoredit and Mediawiki:Talk. I like it. I would like it if we had a help page for small changes (among many others), so that we could add a link there from the edit box, but that page would need to be a simplified version of the meta page and/or the English Wiktionary page, it seems to me. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 16:32, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Babel boxes[change]

Babel boxes on user pages don't work in Simple English Wiktionary? Does anyone know how to fix that? --Coppertwig 13:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I may have found a way to do it, sort-of. I now have one userbox on my user page. I've put in a question at en:Wikipedia:Help desk asking what is the best way to implement Babel boxes. --Coppertwig 14:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I got Babel boxes working! I just copied Template:Babel from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia. It looks like just words, but really it has computer words to make the Babel boxes work. We need to copy many pages like "Template:User de-2" from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia to make all Babel boxes work. --Coppertwig 01:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad we have started Babel boxes here. Let's keep working on them until they are really useful. We don't have to have all of the ones that EWP has, but we can have at least the most important/common ones. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 23:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone who wants to add/change/tweak/fix Babel boxes should look at Wiktionary:Babel to get started. Plenty of tweaking and adding to be done, not to mention cat/subcat organization. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 18:57, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Definitions[change]

My ideas: Simple English needs to have only one definition for one word. I think the first definition for each word is the Simple English definition, and writers need to try to use only the first definition. But when there is a noun definition and a verb definition and they are very near, then those 2 definitions can be used.

The first definition needs to be the most important one.

A definition in Simple English can cover more things than the English definition. In English someone may say "bowl". "Bowl" is not BE850. In Simple English someone may say "basin" or "little basin" when talking about the same thing. The definition of "basin" in Simple English may be a little different from the English definition.

Frequently two definitions for the same word in English can be one definition in Simple English. "Black" does not need one definition for a colour and another definition for an adjective saying that a thing has that colour. It is the same idea. The adjective is most frequent and most important. If someone uses it as a noun, people will understand. OK, maybe it needs two definitions because one is a noun and one is an adjective. But many other words can have one definition in Simple English for two definitions in English, because the Simple English definitions are simpler and cover more things. Little things that are different between two definitions in English are not important in Simple English. If someone writing a Wikipedia page needs to say an important difference between two things, the person needs to use a sentence to say the difference.

Those are my ideas. --Coppertwig 14:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Example: apparatus has 3 definitions. I think they are all the same idea. (see picture.) I think they need to be 1 definition here. Maybe in English Wiktionary they need to be 3 definitions. --Coppertwig 14:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree, but wouldn't take things quite this far. I think:
  1. Each word class should be represented and defined. For example, there should not be one definition that covers both adjective and noun, though the same definition could possibly be repeated with only minor changes.
  2. Rather than trying to tease apart individual senses of the word, I think we should aim for broad definitions that deal with the underlying similarity of the various senses. For example, Paul Nation gives the example of head, which he defines as "the top or most important part, for example, head of your body, head of a match, head of an organisation." (Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, p. 92)
  3. Where there are multiple definitions, they should be sorted from most to least common. Similarly, the more common word class should be listed first.
  4. The BE850 is problematic because it has never been widely adopted and the word choices are often anachronistic. A better choice of words would be the BNC2000.
--Brett 17:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing, Ogden, the sneaky guy, often specifically chose highly polysemous words to get more coverage from fewer words.--Brett 18:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Simple English" is not defined. Maybe we need to make a decision. Maybe we need to mark the first (or sometimes two) definitions on a page "Simple English" and mark the other ones "English". But maybe we would use too much time talking and not agreeing. Maybe it's good to just put the most frequent definition first. I would leave out very rare uses.
Someone had the idea of asking the Wikimedia developers to make the Preview button show BE850 and BE1500 words in different colours. I think different underlining (underlining and striking out) is more useful because the colours show a link or no link. Hmm. It can be complex. Each user can choose in "my preferences" which list (BE850, BNC2000, etc.) marks the "Preview" when that user is changing a page. So we don't have to agree before we do that. (Forms of words, "make", "makes", "making" need to be used too.) --Coppertwig 03:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Currently only red and blue are used. Other colours could be employed in different ways. I think it might be more useful to use a star system, or simply a line at the top, similar to the current BE850 or AWL ones.--Brett 12:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We would need nine colours. Three possibilities (no link, good link, red link) times three possibilities (BE850, BE1500, not BE1500). I think it would be hard to remember what nine colours mean. I think underlining or something else is better. I don't understand what you mean by "star system", "line at the top", or "AWL". --Coppertwig 04:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By a "star system", I meant something like the movies, where the most common words would get 3 or 4 stars, less frequent words would fewer, and rare words would get none. As for the AWL, that's the Academic Word List, see theory for an example.--Brett 12:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe BNC2000 or BNC1000 is more useful than BE850. (BE850 doesn't have "big" or "small". It has "attempt" but not "try". It has "carriage" but not "car".) But the BE850 has a good page on this Wiktionary. The page is easy to use. I can look and see if a word is in BE850. The BNC1000 needs a page like that. The BNC1000 page is too long. I need a short page with the BNC1000 words starting at the top of the page, and only one form for each word, and many words on one line, like the BE850 page. I think I can make a page like that. Is that a good idea? --Coppertwig 03:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Different people have different purposes. If you feel such a list would be useful, go ahead and make it.--Brett 12:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that both the BE850 and the BNC1000 are useful, but for different things. The BE850 includes animal words and other things that are valuable, while the BNC1000 has the highest frequency words. Overall, though, the BNC1000 is more valuable, but I agree with Coppertwig that the list was very long and difficult to use. That is why I took Coppertwig's advice and created a headwords-only list that was compressed like the BE850 is (and the long version). I also made a comparison list of all the words that appear in both. That way we can write definitions for the most basic, most frequent words first. It is important to remember, however, that the BNC1000 (and, in fact, the BE850 also) is taken from British English. Americanisms (a valuable part of the language) are only included where they have become common among Brits. Obviously there is huge overlap, but the fact that they are from British English means that both are limited lists and we should take more words (such as Americanisms) into account when editing. There is probably a similar list for American English out there. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 21:15, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Making the computer make many pages easily[change]

I want to make the computer make many pages. It is hard to make a big number of pages one at a time. I want to copy all language templates like "User de-3" from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia. Maybe an administrator or sysop can do that easily. I also want to make many redirects. healthier-->health, summers-->summer for example. I want to write a list of words that need redirects and make the computer make them easily. Maybe I will ask at the English Wikipedia Help Desk. Is this a good idea? --Coppertwig 15:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Working together to make a list of words[change]

Maybe I will make a page with a list of the 1000 most frequent words in English with marks to say which ones are BE850 or BE1500. Maybe I will make two pages like that. One will stay the same. The other page people can change, and it will be the list of Simple English words that we will use. People can move one word out of Simple English into "Not Simple English" and move another word at the same time into Simple English. Is that a good idea?

Maybe in 3 parts. Simple English Part 1 (300 words); Simple English Part 2 (700 more words = 1000 words) and Simple English Part 3 (1000 more words = 2000 words).

Words like "long" and "flat" I use many times when writing definitions. Those are important words. Words like "yes" and "please" I do not use much when writing definitions but they are still important words. Maybe some words are less important. I think we need "big" and "think" and "want". We don't need two words "big" and "large", only one of them.

What are other people's ideas about this? --Coppertwig 22:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I see the purpose. I would suggest you read Learning Vocabulary in Another Language by Paul Nation. I think you'll find quite a bit there that will interest you. --Brett 02:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is the purpose: We can make the Simple English projects into a useful thing that anyone can use by learning about 700 or 1000 words. Now it is not like that. Now, some pages use BE850, other pages use E-prime maybe, other pages use the most frequent English words maybe. So if someone wants to read many Simple English pages, they need to learn much more than 1000 words. Later I hope we will all use the same words. We can use the page to talk about which 1000 words we will use. (Or another number of words.) Then after we make a decision, we can write Simple English using those words. Then it will be easier for people to learn Simple English. --Coppertwig 14:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see now what you mean. The thing is there's little value in learning BE because there's little published in it. It's a good idea if you are working in a very limited setting, for example where you need to understand English weather reports and the meteorological agency publishes them using only BE (though none do, as far as I know.) But generally, people want to use English for a broad range of tasks. In such a situation, BE is really just a stepping stone, and not the best one, either, do to the problems I've pointed out before. It makes much more sense to use the most common words in English.
That said, feel free to make the lists.--Brett 14:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One of the things Coppertwig mentions would be a defining vocabulary, listing all the words we use in definitions (though there will be exceptions, which will require links, obviously). We started out with the BE850 as our defining vocabulary (or at least a guide to one), but it could be valuable to create an actual one that we try to stick to consistently/semi-rigidly. I'm not sure that would work for other SE projects, though, which is part of the reason that this project even exists! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 17:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Simple English Wikiquote[change]

I just took a look at Simple English Wikiquote. I had misunderstood it! It is a worthwhile project! It is not about collecting quotes in Simple English. It is about collecting quotes in English (or maybe other languages?) and explaining them in Simple English. This is a worthwhile project! But there is a proposal to close it down at meta:Proposals for closing projects!

The reason Simple English Wikiquote is worthwhile is that many people may not understand some famous quotes in English and can benefit from Simple English explanations. Some people voting to close it down say that there's no use collecting quotes in Simple English. They just don't even understand that the project is not about collecting quotes in Simple English!

Others say that if someone doesn't understand a quote in English, they should read a translation of it in their own language. They fail to understand two things: first, that there are many people who can read Simple English but can't read any other language (or not well enough to understand translations of those quotes). This includes some children, some adults who can understand ordinary English but are baffled by expressions like "come what come may" or archaic terms in some famous quotes, many deaf people who have difficulty learning to read because their own language has no written form and they can't hear the sounds that make alphabets meaningful; and other people. Also: if someone is learning English, an explanation in Simple English of a famous quote would help them understand the quote without switching back to their own language; switching back can interfere with learning a new language. --Coppertwig 03:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uses of Internet[change]

What are the advantages of internet?

Requests for deletion[change]

Is there a requests for deletion page here?--Tdxiang 10:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Wiktionary:Requests for deletion.--Jusjih 15:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects needed[change]

I think we need many redirect pages. Example: when you type "translated" you find the page "translate" which has "translated" on it. People who want to help can write many redirect pages. Just create a page and write in it something like this: #REDIRECT [[translate]] with the name of the page you want it to go to inside the brackets. Every word that has different forms (example: big, bigger, biggest; talk, talks, talked, talking; book, books) needs redirects from the different forms to the page about the word. --Coppertwig 13:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't get too carried away with it. For example, I think thanks deserves its own entry, while thanked should probably redirect to thank.--Brett 19:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with Coppertwig here. Many entries will be looked up under their conjugated/inflected form, and it may not be obvious that it is related to the infinitive (taking verbs as an example), especially considering that our audience does not know English well. In cases where it is obvious, I can deal with it, but where it is less-than-obvious, we should at least have a one-liner, not a redirect. For example, at bought, we should at least have something like "the past form and past participle form of buy" (simplified, probably). --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 17:19, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a newbie, IMHO I agree with Cromwellt. I have added defs for several irregular verbs and added such one-liners. I know when I was recently learning Spanish using a paper dictionary, I welcomed such one-liners.Grapeguy 20:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gastrique[change]

It's about an article I read on Vancouver Sun about DINE-OUT-VANCOUVER

(a wait stuff at one participating restaurant complained about dealing with customers who don't know the ins & outs of three-course dinner and being have to explain what a "gastrique" is)


I happen to be one of those who don't know what a "gastrique" is and I am willing to learn

RW 3:40 pm 19 Jan 2007

Page archives[change]

Hi all. This page is long. I really think we should move the archive at the top of the page to "Archive1", and then archive all the old stuff with no comments since October 2006 in a new archive, "Archive2". I would do it myself, but I can't stay logged in for some reason. It really frustrates me. --Cromwellt, 22 January 2007

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