Wiktionary:Simple talk/Archive 6

Do seahorse exist?

I think the last surviving seahorse lives 100 years ago.

Yes. At the moment the article hasn't been translated to "simple english" but you can find stuff about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_horse RTG 16:21, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Migrate templates

From {http://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/User_talk:71.63.182.214#Wrong_wiki here] I see that templates for vandalism are not enabled here. RTG 16:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, sorry, I had the right wiki. XD I was taking care of some vandalism that appeared on the IRC recent changes feed. I'm making a number of templates now. Best, PeterSymonds 16:21, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That guy had the wrong wiki as he was making articels of sorts. Cheers RTG 01:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The templates you're looking for exist as {{test}}, {{test1}}, {{test2}}, {{test3}}, {{test4}}, {{test5}}.--Brett 11:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bot policy

To facilitate steward granting of bot access, I suggest implementing the standard bot policy on this wiki. In particular, this policy allows stewards to automatically flag known interlanguage linking bots (if this page says that is acceptable), which form the vast majority of such requests. The policy also enables global bots on this wiki (if this page says that is acceptable), which are trusted bots that will be given bot access on every wiki that allows global bots.

This policy makes bot access requesting much easier for local users, operators, and stewards. To implement it we only need to create a redirect to this page from Project:Bot policy, and add a line at the top noting that it is used here. Please read the text at m:Bot policy before commenting. If you object, please say so; I hope to implement in one week if there is no objection, since it is particularly written to streamline bot requests on wikis with little or no community interested in bot access requests. Brett 23:54, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since there are no objections, I have requested implementation of standard bot policy.--Brett 13:16, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Transitive verb

what is a transitive verb?--unsigned question by 202.93.37.88

A transitive verb is one that takes an object. In I at my lunch, my lunch is the object of ate, which is a transitive verb. In I have eaten, there is no object, so the verb is not transitive. It is intransitive. Some verbs are always transitive, some never transitive, and some are sometimes transitive.--Brett 17:35, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Closure Request

This project has been requested for closure. See m:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English (2) Wiktionary. Thanks. ѕwirlвoy ₪ 16:32, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Admin votes

Hello folks! I just wanted to let people know that there are two active votes for adminship over at Wiktionary:Administrators which people might be interested in, let's see some community involvement. :) --Neskaya 09:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedic entries

The recent addition of many place names and other terms that are linked to them has caused some consternation. At times, these have clearly become encyclopedic, running to a number of paragraphs (at which point I've shortened them). At other times, they have been simple statements no different from those you would find in en.wikt (e.g., zionist, Palestine, Tehran, etc.).

I was uncomfortable with a number of the pages, but this was somewhat beyond my ken, so I asked for an opinion on en.wikt. I'm glad that people seem to be interested in helping, but I was somewhat surprised to see user:Wpedzich‎, who I assume must be a steward, simply come in and wipe it all out without any discussion whatsoever.

Perhaps people might provide their thoughts on what constitutes an encyclopedic entry.--Brett 11:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Naturally, "opinions may vary", but I'd start off from en:Wiktionary:What Wiktionary is not. Of course, please don't throw stones at me just because that page comes from English (and not Simple English) Wiktionary. The document reads: "Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia, a genealogy database, or an atlas", therefore it doesn't present factual information. I believe everybody has their own definition of a dictionary, although I'd say the die-hard, never-to-be-omitted points would be (apart from the lack of factual information): the etymology, meanings (not definitions or descriptions) and the usage of the word (examples), plus its translations. The definitions that I've removed today lacked all these points except the definition, therefore making them short encyclopedic (if not merely descriptive) entries.

I understand that some of my actions may seem objectionable, however I felt that even with the limitations of Simple English as the chosen language, the pages did not constitute full dictionary entries that could be satisfactorily kept. If the general opinion is different, I'm committed to restoring the entries of the satisfactory quality personally. Wpedzich 12:10, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm interested to understand the distinction you're drawing between meanings and definitions. As a side note, the policy on Simple English Wiktionary is NOT to include etymologies and translations. The reasoning is that those are already available on en.wikt.--Brett 12:25, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surprising, although naturally I will not battle the consensus. I would support the idea that each project should be self-contained enough to include all the relevant dictionary material without the need of being supplemented by English Wiktionary... anyway - I'll get down to restoring those entries that satisfy the basic definition - I'm just wondering about the usefulness of maps, national emblems and photos in a dictionary entry. Suggestion? Wpedzich 12:42, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for picking through each of the deleted entries, though that wasn't my main intent. I just wanted to get a better idea of what people considered encyclopedic. My personal feeling is that a map is useful, but that national emblems and such are generally superfluous. I'm still curious about the difference between a meaning and a definition.--Brett 13:13, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the maps are fine, but flags and emblems are useless and detracts from dictionary definitions. Those are better at simplewiki. DavidWS 13:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(I'll make this indent a bit smaller). The choice of words can be quite unfortunate for a lexicographer ;) The way I understand the difference here is that an encyclopedic entry, especially after the prolonged experience with WIkipedia I've had speaks in whole sentences, while a dictionary entry rarely does. "Warsaw: capital city of Poland" suits the purpose of a dictionary much better than "Warsaw is the capital city of Poland", even though the difference is in only one word. Wpedzich 14:05, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Again, local policy is to use full sentences. The reason is that for people who are learning English, these are often easier to understand. They also help to illustrate how a word is used. Clearly, the examples also do that, but where some people are likely to overlook context labels and may not go so far as to read an example, an entry like criminal can help to illustrates that one sense of the adjective typically is attributive while the other doesn't have this limitation. Similarly, if you look at the entry for concentrate, you see how verb sense number 3 indicates that a goal complement (i.e., somewhere) is usually included. These principles are discussed in the work of John Sinclair who is one of the fathers of modern corpus-based learner-focused lexicography.--Brett 14:34, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POV Issues

Another note on this subject. I'm a bit concerned with the POV that some of these entries are showing. I do not think that we should be keeping redirects for National Flowers, Birds, or what of the like, although the entries that the redirects point to are fine. I simply don't think that all the POV-pushing is going to do us any good, and have re-tagged some of the redirects for deletion on this principle. I'm also trying to remove as much POV-pushing as I can see. --Neskaya 08:55, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Plant names

I'm not entirely clear on when plant names should be capitalized and when they should be lower case. Can somebody help out?--Brett 12:25, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. If you give examples, I can do some web searches to try to find out how they're usually done. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 00:18, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New goal

I'm planning to work on the BE1500. There are now 648 red links, by my count. Maybe others would like to help. I don't know whether anyone is already working on it. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 00:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for helping with this goal, Empire3131!

Are we supposed to put a {{BE1500}} template at the top of BE1500 words, like the one for BE850 words? I guess not, since there is no such template. (I think I asked this before but I don't quite remember.) ☺Coppertwig(talk) 01:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your welcome, Coppertwig. Empire3131 01:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Double Redirects

All Double Redirects, but the Mediawiki one (Which can't be fixed), are fixed! Empire3131 20:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

thank you.--Brett 01:52, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Apology

I want to apologize for my recent attempt to shutdown the Simple English Dictionary. I love the concepts of simple wikis and I am even an admin on Simple Wikiquote. Lately, I have began to realize that even though this wiki may be small, that doesn't mean we should close it. It has a helpful purpose, and it should remain as is. The purpose of Simple English isn't to disband, it's just like all the other wikimedia projects. It's here to keep knowledge free.I hope you accept my apology, and I hope to see you as I begin editing. We don't shut down because it's small, we help it stand up! ѕwirlвoy ₪ 22:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good. Empire3131 00:37, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's a remarkable change of heart. Perhaps you could go back and move to close the vote where you opened it.--Brett 01:46, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I can't close it now as there is actually some opposes. ѕwirlвoy ₪ 03:32, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English question

im kinda a confused about this phrase...im not good in english so please assist me... i asked a person ones... how are you? he replied: im never been good... (is that means hes all good? or he was not good-never?)

how we will get the vocabularies from wikipedia

I'm afraid that I'm never been good is not grammatical English. Perhaps what you heard is I've never been better. This means that the person is very good. I hope that helps.--Brett 13:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, Brett. I didn't think of that. Or, maybe it could have been "I've never been so good." That also means the person is feeling very good. ☺Coppertwig(talk) 01:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pages telling people how to write pages here

Are there pages telling people how to write pages here?

Do we write a different page for every form of a verb? For example, "resided". ☺Coppertwig(talk) 01:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's O.K. It's better the the asteroids and romanian rivers over at wp:simple Empire3131 01:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing wrong with each form of a word to having a page. Personally, I don't see it as a priority.--Brett 12:04, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

visibility a long major is restriced

what deos this mean

It doesn't mean anything. You must have misheard. I expect that the original was, visibility along major roads is restricted. This means that if you are driving on a major road, like a highway, you cannot see far ahead of you, probably because of weather such as rain, snow, or fog.--Brett 12:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bot

Hi, does anyone have any objections to me trying out my interwiki bot? (a test run). It would be User:MaximillionBot. It would add and fix interwiki links. Maximillion Pegasus 16:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No objection. Try it out, but don't just set it free until we see what it does. If it works out, I'll give it a bot flag.--Brett 10:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'll try it out here a little bit later on today. Maximillion Pegasus 15:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I tested it out here. Seems to work good. Let me know if you see any problems. Also, would anyone have an objection to me also using the bot to do automatic archival of this talk page? (It would have a setup like Misza's bot) Anything older than 10 days maybe? Maximillion Pegasus 16:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll flag it. As for archiving, that's fine, but discussions are sparse around here. Ten days seems far too short a time. How about three months?--Brett 17:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If a bot automatically archives after three months, it's easier just to do it manually. Maxim | talk 23:52, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tips for new users

It seems like we've picked up a number of high-quality productive users recently. Thank you for all your additions. I'd just like to point out a few minor things:

With nouns, please indicate whether each sense is countable or not if you can.
Similarly, with verbs, please indicate transitive or intransitive for each sense if you can.
Please give full-sentence definitions
Bold every instance of the headword
Where possible, provide examples that exemplify, rather than those that simply use a word.

Thanks again for your efforts.--Brett 13:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For examples, you mean that the examples must provide an example of a common way the word is used (like "The apple was eaten for lunch" or "She picked an apple from the tree")? Maxim | talk 23:59, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't that they must show how the word is used, but it is more useful for our target audience.

When you exemplify a word, you use it in the way that it is naturally used. An word like bear in the sense of to give birth is usually used in the passive, so it should be exemplified that way. The colour blond is usually used to talk about hair, so an example about a blond car would not be the best. A word like domicile is a formal word, so a casual example like I think I'll head back to my domicile provides a distorted picture of the word.--Brett 12:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects

I've noticed that redirects are discouraged at Wiktionary, and I've checked the amount of redirects there is, and there's a bunch. A lot of MediaWiki: ones, created as a result of the creation of the template namespace, as well as a fair bunch in the mainspace. What should done with them? Maxim | talk 22:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I don't know.--Brett 12:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Heading levels

Hi there all. I've noticed that we have been using Level 2 headings for the headings of the kind of word that a word is (for example, noun or verb) and Level 3 headings for the headings of the Pronounciation. I would like to propose to the community that we standardize the level of headings that we use here. For example, we either bring the level of heading for the Pronounciation up from a Level 3 heading to a level 2 heading, or we bring down the headings for the kind of word it is from Level 2 heading to Level 3 heading. What do you guys think of this proposal? Thanks, Razor flame 23:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is standardized. As you said, the standard is level 3 for pronunciation and level 2 for categories.--Brett 00:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. Just thought that I would bring this up. Cheers, Razor flame 00:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]