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User talk:Hippietrail

Yiddish entries
Hey mate, I see you have added some Yiddish words here and there. Do you by any chance know any Yiddish speaker who knows the etymology of words? I’m not quite sure what’s the etymology of shkoyekh.
 * It's a colloquial way of saying . —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:31, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey there. Usually when I make an entry for a language that's not one of my current main ones, it's just one that caught my eye as a redlink in a translation table, and usually I don't know any more about them. Occasionally I might get them from Wikipedia's links to other languages, but I'd typically only put those in a translation table rather than an entry. — hippietrail (talk) 00:31, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

“...a note as to which form they are”

 * << inflected forms should have a note as to which form they are >>

Hi, Hippietrail,

While the verbs حسن ɧásuna and حسن ɧássana are inflected, they are actually the citation forms. Arabic, like Bulgarian and Greek, does not use infinitives (or rather, the Arabic infinitive functions only as a noun or adverb, and is a derived form). The citation form of an Arabic verb is usually the 3rd-person masculine singular perfective (which is the simplest form of any verb).

The listing for حسن (ɧ-s-n) already existed, and I just added to it. Its author had listed only the simple intransitive ɧásuna ("he/it was beautiful"), but the very same spelling (حسن) may be read with different vowel patterns for different meanings.

Classical Arabic has no verb tenses, but employs aspect instead (perfective and imperfective). The verb ɧásuna is a perfective of Stem I, and although the perfective is commonly considered the past tense, in fact it can translate to other tenses as well (such as the future perfective).

Most Arabic-English dictionaries give the English infinitive as the equivalent of these verbs, and that's what I would have done, too (to be beautiful, to be good, to improve), except that the original page used "has been beautiful" instead.

So my question is, what should be done with these Arabic verbs? Since Arabs rarely write the vowels or shaddas, the triliteral root حسن, depending on context, could be read as ɧásuna, ɧássana, ɧúsnun, ɧúsnu, ɧásan or ɧásanu (among others). I could simply list the English infinitive (حسن = ɧásuna = "to be good") as the meaning, or I could include all sorts of other information, such as:

 * 1) . حَسُنَ (ɧásuna) v.i., Stem I, 3rd masc. sg. perfective, "was beautiful, was good"
 * 2) . حَسَّنَ (ɧássana) v.t., Stem II, 3rd masc. sg. perfective, "improved"

--Stephen 10:21, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Stephen. Thanks for such an informative response! I was aware of Arabic's aspects rather than our cases and I should've been prepared for the citation form being in the perfect but this fact I didn't remember. The translations into English past forms was what threw me. I think it's best to give the gloss in the English infinitive - all glosses should be in the natural citation form for each language. I don't know if it's worth stating for every single Arabic verb that it's the perfective but just as for English I include also the 3rd person present, the past (tense and participle if they differ), and present participle/gerund; we should also include the other forms of the Arabic verbs. Though if there are many forms it may become unweildy. I've never learned the forms of Arabic verbs though since Arabic teaching materials always seem to dive straight into derivation and leave inflection till later on. Putting all the words which differ only in vowels/shaddas/etc on the same page is the right thing to do. I think we should also include sukuns though.

Thanks again. I hope you can add more! — Hippietrail 13:34, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

/* Arabic forms */
Hi Hippietrail,

The Arabic verb is quite complex, with (minimally) over 120 forms. There are the active and the passive paradigms, which include the perfect, imperfect, subjunctive, jussive, energetic and (in the case of active verbs) the imperative (not to mention the infinitives, participles, and so on). There are different forms for masculine and feminine, as well as for singular, dual and plural. This alone amounts to some 120 verb forms.

Then there are the different form classes (Stems I through XI). Add to this the transitive and intransitive vowel patterns and the different kinds of verbs (such as weak verbs, hollow verbs middle W, hollow verbs middle Y, verbs first W and Y, doubled verbs, verbs first hamza, verbs middle hamza, verbs third hamza, verbs third W, verbs third Y, and so on) and they become a nightmare.

And that's not all...Arabic verbs also take direct and indirect object pronouns as suffixes, and conjunctions, prepositions and other particles as prefixes. For instance, كَتَبَ kátaba ("he wrote," 3rd masc. sg. perfective), but لِتَكْتُبَانِّهُولْهُمَا litaktubaannihúlhumaa ("you two [females] shall write it to those two [females]," 3rd feminine dual energetic, masc. sg. direct object, fem. dual indirect object). Most of this applies to the other stems, too, such as: خَلَفَ khálafa "remain behind" (stem I); خَلَّفَ khállafa "leave behind" (stem II); خَالَفَ kháalafa "oppose" (stem III); أخْلَفَ 'akhláfa "make lag behind" (stem IV); تَخَلَّفَ takhállafa "hold back from" (stem V); تَخَالَفَ takháalafa "disagree with" (stem VI); إنْخَلَفَ 'inkhálafa "be left behind" (stem VII); إخْتَلَفَ 'ikhtálafa "differ" (stem VIII); إسْتَخْلَفَ 'istákhlafa "take in exchange" (stem X).

As for sukun, yes, we should use it where appropriate. In fact, I did use it in حُسْنٌ (ɧúsnun...technically, this is the infinitive of the verb حَسُنَ ɧásuna, but most people don't recognize it as such, since it only functions as a noun, never as a verb). In the case of the adjective حَسَن (ɧásan), however, I didn't put a sukun over the final nun because in some environments a vowel will appear there... حسن الوجه ɧásanu l-wájih (pretty face, good-looking). So there are cases where a vowel may not exist (and these need sukun), and other cases where vowels seem to come and go.

--Stephen 12:54, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi,

I've tried to disentangle US usage of youse as best I can, but I understand that Australian uses either youse, yous or both. Could you have a look and file off any septocentric rough edges? Thanks -dmh 05:54, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC) (-dmh)

Käse vs. Kas
Hello / Hallo / Grüezi, May I ask why you are so keen on keeping the Bavarian word "Kas" (cheese) in the list of translations? I hope you know that Bavarian is not a language on its own. No one in Germany claims that it'd be one, there's nothing like a standard way of writing Bavarian and you cannot find the word "Kas" in the dictionary. I therefore request the removal of the word "Kas", because it's just silly to keep it there. If it stays, we should also include the Swiss German "Kchääise", the Saxon "Gäse" and all the other subtle dialectal forms of the German language. What about other language? I bet there's an English dialect that says "Chayse" or something like that.

Kind regards, — André aka N-true 23:52, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * The onus is on you to show that Bavarian is not a language since both Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=BAR) and Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Bavarian) hold that it is a language with dialects of its own. When you convince at least one of these sites that their view is "silly" and they remove their article, you will have convinced me.

 * We certainly do support English dialects. I have added quite a few Australian words and the odd New Zealand, South African, Canadian, Indian, British, and American word as well. If the spellings you cite for other German dialects are usual I agree they should also be included. English is a written language and has standardised spelling in which "cheese" is the recognised spelling no matter how it is pronounced. Most of the world's languages do not have standardised spelling, neither do many European "dialects", that does not mean they ought not be referenced in this dictionary. Quite an array of dialect dictionaries are published in Europe and, since Wiktionary aims to included all words of all languages, we must include those words too. — Hippietrail 11:45, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Independent of whether Bavarian is to be classified as a language or a dialect, it isn't codified, ie has no standard way of rendering words in (in this case) the Latin Alphabet. Besides "Kas" you will also find the versions "Kaas" and "Käs". A solution could be writing dialect words in IPA (would certainly require some discussion). Ncik 15 Mar 2005

Derived terms, Related terms, See also
After having seen your latest edit of datum I wondered once again what kind of terms go under which of the three headings "Derived terms", "Related terms", and "See also". I never managed to comprehend the underlying classification principle from the entries themselves, and Layout_entry_explaind is not very helpful either. Ncik 05 Mar 2005

 * Hi Ncik. If you were brave enough to dig through archives Beer parlour stuff from ages ago - or possibly other places, you'd find this issue has come up a few times. I really don't like the current labels for these sections but nobody's come up with anything better. "Derived" is a bit ambiguous because it can be interpreted in an etymological sense or a morphological sense. Words such as "data" and "datum" are etymologically related. In Latin they are also morphologically related since Latin had a rule to turn "-um" singulars into "-a" plurals. English does not have this rule but merely borrowed both forms as-is from Latin.
 * The reason we have three sections ==Derived==, ==Related==, and ==See also== is for different relationships between words which are handy both for people browsing their own or a foreign language, and for the compilers of the dictionary trying to think of words which don't yet have entries.
 * We want a way to connect words which are derived by derivational morphemes. This means "drive" -> "driver", "correct" -> "correction", etc. In many print dictionaries this has been done by squeezing derived forms into the main entry, or by having them nearby due to alphabetisation and the fact that print dictionaries don't have one entry per page like we do. So for we've called this relationship ===Derived terms===
 * We want a way to connect words wich are related in other ways etymologically or historically. For instance, a derived form like "driver" should point back to "drive", "First World" and "Third World" were invented together under one principle and are hence related. Basically any way where two words or phrases share parts for some interesting reason under than plain old derivational morphology. The current name for such relationships is ===Related terms===
 * Finally, many words and phrases don't share any common parts or any etymology and may not be quite either synonyms or antonyms but still ought to be linked to each other. Examples might be "north", "south", "east", and "west"; or "rap" and "hip-hop". We're calling this relationship ===See also===
 * One other thing to think of is that usually for ===Derived=== and ===Related===, a derived term is derived from a specific sense. For example, "driver" is derived from the verb "to drive" and not the noun as in "to go for a drive". There must be much better examples though! Sometimes it's not so easy to figure out if a derived form came from a noun sense or verb sense etc. When we do know, we list the derived term under the correct sense. When we don't know, we put it in a level-3 heading below all the senses. For ===See also=== we've generally only used the level-3 heading at the bottom and things such as Wikipedia links and links to other websites go in there as well. Sometimes however it's pretty clear that a ===See also=== only related to one sense and in that case we can make a level-4 section under the given sense.

 * I hope this sheds some light and you can see some logic. The only reason I haven't written this in "Entry layout explained" is because I'm not satisfied with my writing. It tends to be a bit rambling. If you'd like to tidy up what I've said and add it to "Entry layout explained" that will surely be helpful to everybody. — Hippietrail 10:49, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

template:rfd
Hello Hippietrail,

A while back, I changed the request for deletion template, to add a link to the appropriate section of RFD. I also added a link on the period that follows it for helping create new rfd sections. When I made the change, it did not garner much discussion. But I seem to recall three or four newcomers now who were appreciative that the link took them to the correct place.

For that to work correctly though, changes like this could problably be broken on to separate lines instead?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on User: Connel MacKenzie/monobook.js which I modelled partially off your code, but mainly off the Russian Wikipedia's.

Thanks!

--Connel MacKenzie [ + ] (contribs) 23:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

IPA in US dictionaries
Hi again,

I was just reading your discussion with Primetime about IPA transcriptions and how US dictionaries do not use them. I was in a bookshop the other day and was browsing the latest version of Collins excellent French-English English-French dictionary and noticed that it now gives IPA transcriptions for both RP and US pronunciation. Recently I was at a friend's house and looked in his Webster's collegiate dictionary. In the extensive section on pronunciation, IPA equivalents of some of the symbols used by that dictionary are given.

While these are not American dictionaries, these do provide useful information, not least possible IPA equivalents of "AHD" (which I find ambiguous: sometimes IPA ɒ is equivalent to AHD's ŏ symbol and sometimes to IPA's ɑ, which would be equivalent to AHD's ä. For that reason, I tend to avoid adding US pronunciation's unless I'm quite sure they are correct or they are identical (barring accent and dialect) to the RP.

What I will do if I think of it is see whether Collins bilingual dictionary that I mentioned gives a table of RP/US equivalents in IPA, or derive these myself from a selection of pronunciations in the body of the dictionary. — Paul G 16:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Hi Paul. Sorry for not replying earlier. I too have seen several dictionaries which try to do both UK and US pronunciation. I think they are mostly made in Europe but I may be wrong. I have also seen this in Japanese electronic translators. My pocket Oxford English Spanish dictionary does it too but it's so quirky I'm almost certain it's been done by Brits without a complete understanind of American English. Hopefully some of the larger dictionaries do a better job. In one of my user subpages I started collecting the symbols used by various of my dictionaries. This was to get a better overview than just using one dictionary - but it's not fun work and much is missing. I guess my best advice is to check as thoroughly as you can to make sure it's a good quality and reliable source before using it. — Hippietrail 02:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

spanish articles requested
I've reviewed all the entries again and i've commented almost every one, without deleting as you wanted (in december), Please review it--62.175.97.149 23:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks! I'll start looking at it now but probably won't finish until I find a cheaper cybercafe. — Hippietrail 16:56, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey Hip help my enteries please asap ! thanks --130.111.98.244 21:40, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm working through the c's now but I'm in San Salvador so I can't stay here till it gets dark -- too dangerous! — Hippietrail 22:01, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

 * OK I've gone through all the comments in the Spanish requests now if there's any points you'd like to discuss. — Hippietrail 00:58, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok i'm teh same again. I've seen your corrections and i shall comment:

 * I'll just add a few comments as I've only just crossed the border from El Salvador to Honduras and have much to catch up with on the internet, also I don't have all of my material at hand to tell me where I found some of these odd words or spellings. — Hippietrail 21:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

 * abejorro is OK, abejarrón NOT correct (when I say yes is to answer your question)
 * I have to see where I got this from but I think I saw it again the other day.
 * well, i've never seen it but i'm from Spain so perhaps it's a dialectal form of abejorro
 * I just checked the RAE online. It says it is a synonym for abejorro but doesn't restrict it to any specific places.

 * achaque(s) is correct, acheque NOT
 * amañado has nothing to do with comfortable. For example, elections can be amañadas if president manipulates votes, ok?
 * My Diccionario Oxoford Pocket Edición Latinoamericana ISBN 0-19-431600-9 has: amañado adj comfortable amañador adj pleasant — how can you be sure these are "wrong" and not just extra senses used in the Americas?
 * perhaps yes
 * Online RAE's entry for amañar has sense #4 and #6 which might fit "comfortable"

 * amarillento (new) means "a bit yellow", for example paper when is old
 * apelontonado doesn't exist!
 * I don't understand "asma" question of categories
 * Wiktionary like Wikipedia uses categories for various things. A category for feminine Spanish nouns which use the masculine definite article would be a good use of them.
 * great idea!
 * did you understand bienaventuranza?
 * No I'm afraid I didn't understand it. Could it be sermon?
 * no, it's not a sermon. It's something Jesus said in the Mountain's Sermon, blessing good kind of people, he said "bienaventurados los pobres, los...." and that group of sentences are bienaventuranzas
 * Perhaps it is beatitude? Well, we have also the word beatitud and it's not the same
 * brasa is a kind of burning rock that remains afer fire and before ashes, it's red and really hot
 * I understand. I'm just not sure if the best English translation is "coal", "hot coal", "ember", or all of them.
 * Ok

 * carnoso is an adjective, comes from carne (flesh)
 * Could it then be fleshy? Yes, i think so
 * ciénaga is a place with mud, water, vegetation, dirty and foggy (where Shrek lives!)
 * I understand. I think it's marsh or swamp or bog in English, or perhaps all three.
 * I don't understand the question of cimientos
 * colmillo is fang, yes
 * But is it also tusk since in English elephants do not have fangs but dogs and vampires do.
 * OK
 * My pocket dictionary says it is also canine, a type of tooth people have besides molars and incisors. //We have also canino, it's the technical name for it, colmillo is the usual name

 * cotilleo is something you gossip about
 * Is it a synonym for chisme? yes more or less, but chisme is just what you say, cotilleo can be the thing said and the act of saying
 * curtida is OK
 * I can find this spelled in 3 or 4 ways on the Internet but this spelling seems to best match how I heard people saying it every day in El Salvador.
 * curtida is fenminim form os curtido, they are adjectives
 * I have also seen cortida and maybe even cortido. I understand that the ending can be either -a or -o when it's an adjective, but when it's a noun it is generally just one or the other.
 * empecinarse is to try really hard even it's obvious that is nosense keep trying
 * hava= i think it's a mistake
 * I think so too but it can stay there until we can check it against another edition.
 * lagaña/legaña = ypu were right, both correct but now lagaña less used
 * lona, I don't understand what you mean
 * llavero, yes a keyring (i learn, that's OK!)
 * piadoso, yes, an adjective
 * sede /sed, what do you mean?
 * I don't mean the words are related in any way at all. But if the plural of sed is sedes and the plural of sede is sedes, that is an interesting point worth keeping in mind.
 * OK!!
 * Can you confirm that sedes is the plural of both words? YES!! but people don't say sedes /thristies/ much, as in English

I hope I've been helpful. You can communicate with me here or in discussion of requested spanish! Ty for your hard work!--62.175.97.149 20:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes you have! Thanks also for your hard work! — Hippietrail 21:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * we continue in touch...

well, perhaps we should do something...create entries, project or what? any suggestions?--62.175.97.149 18:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

again me and spanish
ok, commments for your nwew words:
 * agobia is a verbal form, comes from agobiar, means to bother, to annoy, to overwhelm, it's colloquial but very used
 * with ones like this where I haven't marked the word as another part-of-speech, it would be best just to change the word to its dictionary form. I don't do it myself because you never can guess when a new unfamiliar word turns out to be irregular. would you say it's a synonyms of molestar?
 * yes, but more colloquial
 * alcaldesa is feminin for alcalde, major
 * I was surprised to see that the RAE has a separate entry rather than their usual "alcalde/-esa". (by the way, don't you mean mayor - or is there two meanings?)
 * yes, mayor, sorry (who rules a town). It has separate entries because a question of masclism: before, an alcadesa was the wife of alcalde (there weren't ellected women). Now has two meanings, the more normal is alcaldesa as politician. There are a lot of old entries like this. It's a topic: mujer pública means prostitute, hombre público politician, without comments!! RAE is changing those entries, but they reflect still the dominant male view
 * allanar is to make something plane and smooth, a verb
 * to smoothe, to plane? i think smoothe
 * almohadilla has two meanings: little almohada and the sign we use here to number definitions (altgraph +3)
 * also has different names in English. I think I read it in a discussion of words which differ between Spain and Venezuela.
 * archivo is a file
 * I know the words in Spain and parts of Latin America for "file" and "archive" differ and may even be ambiguous.
 * aseo means toilet or what you do to wash yourself in morning
 * Does it mean the room or the fixture? Which of these might be synonyms in various parts of the world: servicios, baño, etc?
 * difficult question: baño, servicio, servicios, aseo, water, reservado, excusado, all them names for places, it depends on register and places. Aseo means both room and fixture
 * azafata = hostess, in a plane she helps you serving food and so on. Old sense = in medieval ages, the woman who helped the queen, personal maid
 * handmaid? that old, in planes I thinl is stewardess or something like this, no?
 * stewardess on a plane, handmaid might be the right word for the woman who helped the queen
 * buhonero kind of old job
 * This is one of the interesting/wierd ones I mentioned. Is it related to buho, owl? yes
 * calcomanía = what children stick on their hands, they get them from sweets and represents famous pictures or cartoons, it goes out wuth water
 * words I can think of are sticker and decal but also temporary tattoo, but there might be something more specific
 * casco = helmet, also the horse's feet
 * hoof? yes
 * catedráticos = major professors of university, plural
 * this is one you could safely change to a singular. i didn't do it because for all I know it might've been like rascacielos and had the same form for singular and plural
 * no it's catedrático and catedráticos
 * in that case you should really just go ahead and change it to catedrático
 * ciñe, form of verb ceñir, irregular
 * in this case I would add the dictionary form but keep this one for two reasons: 1) it is irregular and 2) it needs a "disambig see also" added to its page and that of cine
 * cine and ciñe nothing to do!!
 * i didn't say they have anything to do with each other. at the top of pages for words which have near-homographs differing only in accents and diacritics we put a section at the top showing the other similarly spelled words to make it easier for people to find them who have difficulty typing those characters
 * déficits = when state or companies owe money they have deficit, the opposite is superávit
 * descastada, adjective, literally "out of casta" casta can mean family, social class etc. Used to talk about women who don't act as they are expected because of their education and money, very formal
 * english has the word caste but not used the way you describe
 * empeño many senses, form of empeñarse and also casa de empeño
 * I think the english words would be pawn shop, to pawn, to hock, etc
 * enfadado = angry, that's easy
 * I think i've been using engañado in my travels. are they synonyms?
 * not in normal conversation. engañar somebody means to trick, to say lies, to abuse...
 * fichero = also file
 * in the same sense as archivo? only on computers or also in an office? both
 * forro = folder
 * only on computers or also in an office? on a computer would it also cover directory? forro is just for clothes!!! perhaps folder isn't correct. forro it's the inside part of some clothes, like coats, hats. Its softer than the outside par
 * ah, it's the lining
 * francofonía = all the places where french is spoken
 * how does this differ from francohablante?
 * francohablante is the person, francofonía refers to places. For example you can say "Camerún pertenece a la francofonía"

 * frigorífico = fridge
 * i'm used to refrigidor / refrigidora / refri
 * synonims, thes more used in America, the other in Spain
 * golosina is sweet but not pastel, they are lollypops, candies, mellows...
 * so the same as dulces? RAE says "a sweet manjar". i've only seen this word used in honduras so far and i'm pretty sure those shops sell cakes and other treats but i haven't been into one yet
 * golosinas can be dulces or not. Golosinas are something special, like for kids or adults who think they deserve a good moment
 * treat might be a good translation then
 * guisado = comes from guiso, kind of way of cooking
 * is it a specific way? fried, boiled, baked, roasted, grilled, steamed, etc? yes, a specific way
 * can you describe the specific way at all?
 * habichuela = american form of judía blanca, bean
 * i think it's a green bean rather than a frijol, right?
 * Iberoamérica = american countires speaking Spanish or Portugueses, proper noun
 * Latin America? Is it a synonym for latinoamerica? i saw it in a honduran newspaper where it began with a lowercase "i"
 * well, thats politics: Iberomérica, Latinoamérica, Sudamérica, Hispanoamérica... different connotations, you can have big quarrels becsaue of this
 * for instance, would French Guiana be included since it's in South America but the people there speak French?
 * jalisciense = people from Jalisco
 * liviano = light, not heavy, like feathers, formal
 * Is ligero a synonym? yes but liviano more formal
 * llantera = act of crying a lot
 * here in honduras it seems to be a place that sells llantas. are you confusing llanto? llantera = act of llanto, yes, didn't know also place of llanta, may be just American
 * rasca = verbal form of rascar
 * récord = mark, record, same in english
 * but not a vinyl record that you used to listen to on a record player right? no, that's a disco
 * regidor = edile, political man of departamentos or towns
 * I don't know edile - is it spanish? Regidor is under alcalde or the head of a departamento, it depends on the place, edile French origin, edil in Spanish, all politic honours
 * repostería = the art of make cakes and so on
 * here in honduras it seems to be also a place that sells them, though in mexico such a place would be called a pastelería
 * pastelería also in spanish

 * trompa = 2 things, the nose of elephant and colloquially to be drunk
 * a trunk? no idea

 * It would be best if you could put such glosses or descriptions straight into the requests file, but try to leave out personal opinions that readers besides the two of us won't be able to follow (such as "never heard of it"). Thanks very much again though of course!

You mix very formal words with very common ones, perhaps we could start wuth basic words and then go ahead, what do you think? how could we work? i can explain words if you make entries--62.175.97.149 09:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I add words as I find them. When I'm in a new (Spanish-speaking) place, I'm always looking for interesting new words, especially ones that might be local. I also look for nouns ending in -ería, and words for people from particular places ending in -(t)eco and -eño. I also browse both the English and Spanish sides of my pocket dictionary for words I don't know or words I know only in English. I also read in Spanish novels and newspapers, looking for words which look old-fashioned, slang, local, or just plain weird.

 * You may also like to look at the few words I just added to the Catalan requests page. They're all from one or two pages of one book - not very inspired. — Hippietrail 17:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

well, when do we start entries? i ll look for catalan now

"see" templates
For and  I understand their frequent use means they should be kept simple. But for multiples beyond that, perhaps we should have a single additional template that uses for the parameters 4-9? --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hi Connel. I guess you a bit know more about templates than me. I'm only making the others so I can standardize any formatting/CSS stuff between them. I'll see if I have time to look at the ~if thing though. Thanks. — Hippietrail 20:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * e.g. might contain:

 * See also: , or {{{2}}, or

 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Aha I see how it works, but it would actually be too complicated to make a template that used both ~if and my fancy CSS optional serial comma )-: — Hippietrail 21:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree. Using ~if would be a step backwards, now that I've looked at what oyu've done.  Have I mentioned that I hate seeing serial commas?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Hehe. Then I was wise to make them turned off by default (-: By the way, are you aware of any people who really like working on our FAQs and such? I'd like to get some stuff on Wiktionary CSS into the FAQ but I won't do it myself. — Hippietrail 21:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I am; I think I have loads of new FAQs. I'm also considering writing a small Wiktionary-specific CSS guide. — Vildricianus 21:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Also ask User:Itay. Confer WT:BP.  I am not good at generating documentation, nor am I good at css.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice work but I think there is still a problem with the new smart code: 2-item lists have a different CSS class since the serial comma is forced into use as non-optional comma in this case. Also there seems to be extra space(s) between the final comma and final element - though this could be either a browser issue or a template compaction issue. Did you try it with all three see also list formatting options in your CSS? I'll try to do that but I'm in the middle of some other tricky things right now. Keep it up! — Hippietrail 01:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Hi. Thanks for your encouragement. I wasn't sure why this edit changed the class to "disambig-see-also-2" but see3 and others continued to use "disambig-see-also". Is it just a matter of wanting and  to be italicized or is there some other reason to use the class "disambig-see-also-2" whenever there is more than one item? Rod (A. Smith) 02:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

 * No, the commas should never be italicized IMHO but even so that would be a separate and uninteresting discussion. The thing is that the semantics are slightly different for 2-element and 3+-element lists:
 * 1, 2, 3; 1, 2 and 3; 1, 2, and 3
 * 1, 2; 1 and 2; 1 and 2
 * I stated it wrong before - you'll see that whether or not serial commas are enabled, they are never used in a 2 element list so the custom CSS for that case forces the serial comma off when in the context of a disambig-see-also-2. That was the only way I could think of to do it. I tried another way and my brain melted. If you understand the problem now see what you can come up with. — Hippietrail 02:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Ok I got around to checking and the current see template does indeed result in "See also vän, and Van" - there should be no comma there. Try putting the CSS code for this format in your css. Maybe you can tweak see to output "disambig-see-also-2" in the 2-item case, or maybe you can find some other CSS logic that doesn't require two versions of the div class. — Hippietrail 03:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Now I see what you mean. Two item lists should never have commas. I don't know why I didn't understand that before. Removed the easy way. Please let me know if I've still misunderstood you. Rod (A. Smith) 03:51, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Wait. I see I still missed a case. Reworking.... Rod (A. Smith) 03:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

 * No it's still wrong. This was the complexity. Now if you have "1, 2, 3" style you see "See also vän and Van" whereas you should see "See also vän, Van". See how tricky it is? — Hippietrail 03:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * (My "wait" post and your "no" post collided above.) I went back to your way of using the alternate css class for 2-item lists. I believe the behavior now matches the old see2 when there is a two-item list. Please let me know if I'm still mistaken. Rod (A. Smith) 04:13, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Something seems to be wrong though, I'm seeing "See also Basic, and BASIC" even though I'm set up for "1, 2" format. — Hippietrail 04:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * OK. Let me duplicate the issue you're seeing. What monobook block should I grab? Rod (A. Smith) 04:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah. The missing dash. Crossing my fingers.... Rod (A. Smith) 04:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well it's definitely working right for my case now - best test the other two though. — Hippietrail 04:30, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I was just looking at how it all works because I was thinking of doing the same for and. I noticed that you've got it set up to generate HTML with a lot of comments in it. This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Isn't there a way to set it up so that people editing the template see it all but the generated HTML is kept clean clean clean? — Hippietrail 18:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Although they look like HTML comments, they are actually interpreted by MediaWiki servers on the server side and stripped before rendering. See "A", and view the source of the page to see that none of the comments from make it to the resulting page. Rod (A. Smith) 19:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Aha! Thanks. — Hippietrail 19:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Noarticletext
So you know: I did some more work with the conditional "Did you mean?" alternate-capitalization hack, and I think I got it working as intended, so it only displays the meaningful one, so we don't need your valiant "CSS stuff to avoid asking 'did you mean' for self-links" after all. —Scs 05:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

WT:CUSTOM
All this stuff you did is magical, sure, but I'm requesting even more magic: can you think of a way to make these things more accessible? Is it possible for you or anyone else to fix something with javascript, something like Special:Preferences, or something that can be made via a small developer intervention? —Vildricianus 21:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Like, having separate skins? :-)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

 * For example. Anything that doesn't require fiddling with CSS or JS is fine, as a matter of user-friendliness. —Vildricianus 18:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Sorry, I was isolated on an island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua for a few days. Without opening a gateway between the Wiktionary hackers (Connel, myself, yourself, and others?) and the actual MediaWiki hackers, there is no way for us to add features or customize besides Javascript, CSS, templates, and connecting via those to offline sites such as Connel's site where the random code is. It's true this is not user-friendly for non-hackers but there are several things we can do:
 * We can use JS to add extra prefs pages which generate the code which can then be copied and pasted into the users's CSS and JS pages.
 * We can coordinate a group of JS/CSS/Template hackers, possibly some of us can start hacking MediaWiki on our own machines or on a public site with CVS access for us, with another group of nonhacker Wiktionarians who can use and promote our changes to the MediaWiki devs etc, thereby opening a dialog so that when we have patches we want added to just en.wiktionary.org that we won't be ignored and won't be just 2 or 3 lonely voices
 * There may be a lot more we can do with JS if the devs give us just the power to define a few cookies of our own - that would make possible adding JS/CSS customization directly from a new prefs page to the user's custom JS and CSS pages, among many other things.
 * I think we need to continue with what we're doing, provide much more documentation and encouragement for non-hacker Wiktionarians to use our work, accept it, get used to communicating with us on improving it, help them to understand how we are held back by not having developer access to our own project, and getting such users to support our efforts on the way to either some of us becoming MediaWiki devs, or sustaining a reliable open chanel with the MediaWiki devs, or getting MediaWiki to split off to a certain degree en.wiktionary.org in some way that allows some of us to be devs just on it so that we can develop it into a dictionary-specific MediaWiki with our own extensions, etc.
 * I think that's the short-term and long-term visions. By the way, this type of conversation belongs on a page where we can all talk about it and find it more easily. — Hippietrail 00:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree this should be in a "dev-zone" area of some sort. Scs, Rodasmith, Patrik Strivall, \Mike, Dangherous and others should be encouraged to participate.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

ARchar templates, etc
When I examined your templates,, , , , , I was surprised that they (partially) work. does cause OCS characters to display on my IE6, which do not display without the template. And the others do appear in a larger font. The reason that they should not work is that they contain "font-family :inherit" and "font-size :inherit". These specifications should cancel the preceding font list and font size specifications. After staring at the templates for a while, I realized that the reason they (partially) work is that in each template you inadvertently omitted the closing semicolon. This makes the last inherit specification invalid in each template.
 * When I created the first of these I knew little CSS so I copied and adapted them from the IPA and IPAchar, or possibly directly from Wikipedia's IPA template. Now my CSS knowledge is a little better but it sounds like you're an expert so it would be nice if you wanted to go ahead and fix them. — Hippietrail 17:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I recommend that you delete that you delete all inherit specifications from these templates -- or better yet move the styles to Mediawiki:Common.css, including "font-family /**/:inherit;" (with the hack) and no "font-size :inherit".
 * Since there are some issues I don't really understand fully it might be better if an expert make the changes. — Hippietrail 17:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

BTW, the names (with "char") seem peculiar to me. is named that way only because contains the text "IPA: ". Just a thought. --teb728 05:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. We originally had IPA just like on Wikipedia, then somebody added the "IPA: " stuff to it. Then somebody else created IPAchar without that stuff. I complained at the time but nobody was interested so I grudgingly went along with it. — Hippietrail 17:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

 * OK, I deleted the inherit specifications from these templates and also, , , and . I still think changes to Mediawiki:Common.css would be better, but since I am not an admin, I can't change that myself. When I get a chance, I'll add AR, BN, FA, KS, KU, RU, SD, TH, and UR classes to my proposal in the Grease pit. --teb728 06:07, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Sorry for being so lame right now, but if you can give me exact code and instructions I can cut and paste it into MediaWiki:Common.css — Hippietrail 13:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

 * OK, I put everything toward the bottom of Grease pit. If you want to allow non-admins to be able to change the font-sizes, you could omit the font-size declarations. And the changes to Mediawiki:Edittools is a separate but related issue. --teb728 00:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I tried removing the style specifications from etc, using only the new classes, but Steven objected. It appears that contrary to my assumption, IE6 is not the only browser that needs help with fonts for Arabic style script. Steven also said that my change broke, but I don't know yet in what way. I temporarily restored the style specifications in the templates for these classes (except BN and TH, which Steven found acceptable). So it looks like you should take out the  lines from classes AR, BN, FA, KS, KU, SD, UR and maybe RU and/or TH. It is important that styles be defined in CSS rather than in templates because the templates override styles that a user may put in his monobook.css. --teb728 08:40, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Commonwealth POV vandal
Looking at this, I'd say we have another UK/Commonwealth POV vandal. But in particular, could you please verify this edit? Thanks in advance. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:13, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucrat?
Since I heard the end of your journey is in sight, I figured it should be a good moment to nominate you. I've already asked Dvortygirl, but there's no reason why I shouldn't ask you as well to become a bureaucrat. It'd be much more comfortable for the community to have twice as many crats than we currently have. Because at meta, bot requests are now being refused because we are said to have two local bureaucrats.

This may then be in addition to a CheckUser nomination which is still being considered to happen somewhere in the near future. Cheers, — Vildricianus 18:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

 * I'll accept a nomination but I can't promise that I'll be around enough or even know what to do at times. But if that's acceptable, nominate away! P.S. I'm supposed to fly home tomorrow but will probably postpone it four more days. — Hippietrail 18:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

 * Mm, well, Dvortygirl answered more or less the same. The thing is, bureaucrats need to be around, even though the things they need to do don't take up much time. See for yourself at User_talk:Paul_G - the bot flags have still not been set. Whomever we elect as a third bureaucrat, he/she needs to be around to back up such situations. — Vildricianus 18:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

 * I've nominated Dvortygirl but also mentioned you, here. Please indicate whether you formally accept a re-nomination or not. — Vildricianus 11:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Hippietrail/IPA/English
You probably know this, but there's a nice big list at Pronunciation respelling for English. (Though I think I've spotted at least one error in it.) —scs 15:52, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

 * No, that's one I hadn't spotted so thanks. Sadly it falls into the same trap of expecting that there is only one IPA scheme used by all dictionaries. My list on the other hand is specifically to list the varying ways in which IPA is used by various dictionaries. — Hippietrail 04:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Disambig see also
At too, I found  See also to , which I removed, thinking it was added by a newbie. Since I found out it was you, I should ask whether this is the correct kind of disambig-see-also. I'd say no because there are no diacritics or capitals or the like involved, merely a different orthography which happens to cause homonymy as well. What do you think? Should we extend the use of the see also's to these kind of cases? — Vildricianus 17:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes it was me and your analysis is correct as far as it goes. But why not analyse this way: "what are the kinds of detectable spelling or typing mistakes that might lead a user to a wrong word?". Since the real reason to have is to help people find the right article when they're on the wrong article and the spelling is similar, this makes sense. In this light I have been adding word pairs from the same language that only differ by presence or absence of a double letter. I've added a few English and a few Spanish terms. Remember that this is not the first time 's range has been extended--in the beginning it was just for variations in capitalization of the first letter, then capitalization of any letter, then diacritics, then ligatures too, then apostrophes and hyphens, then different characters and symbols with similar appearance. — Hippietrail 01:01, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

 * Fair enough, not a bad idea. I just found necesitate. There should then be see also's exchange on this page and on necessitate I guess. Cheers, — Vildricianus 11:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

 * With the double letters thing I've restricted it to within the language. So far I've thought that makes more sense. — Hippietrail 11:41, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

weeny
Vandalism by User:203.166.99.246
 * Thanks. — Hippietrail 02:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Toolserveraccount
Hello Hippietrail, please send your prefered login-name, your realname and the public part of your ssh-key to. We will then create your account soon. --DaB.

This is my key from puttygen:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIEAqUymXzGjPO6TQn6/j+bH3+4O2ByJrWcY5YF2Nt66A8EwXxxFA2Ho7j/BFi89dJEEttwSmX5MMotRE8EYL0SDO3oK8Wh1zxiCFmnh7WnpxoMcNdIT3AMhZKqf3jb+vYZiXyXN8xofG4wrEW0zQ6ecP3zJO1k5jZSRoFpTooeDBNU=

— Hippietrail 15:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

starting entries
I don't start entries because I'm not english speaker and I don't know enough of the language. That's why my collaboration consists on comments to help native people to understand the uses of spanish words so they can make entries. Why people just add words? Why do'nt you help all those red links to become entries? That's a wiki, of course but I don't understand what's the point of collecting words, have comments ont hem and not create entries for the dicitonary. --80.224.247.234 11:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Because it's only one of several things I do. I have added a few. But even though I am a native English speaker I am not a good writer. I am better at research than at writing definitions. I am spending most of my time developing JavaScript extensions to Wiktionary to make it more usable as a dictionary since it uses software designed for an encyclopedia. For this I have to learn a lot about CSS, JavaScript, AJAX. I had to invest in a USB memory stick and set it up. I have to learn how to debug JavaScript on 3 different browsers. I have to re-learn tools I haven't used for over a year because I was travelling in Mexico and Central America collecting interesting words. I've forgotten things about Perl, about regular expressions, about Vim. Plus I have a full-time job now and had to work 50 hours last week. The requests page remains there for anybody who is good at writing definitions in English for Spanish words. I'm sorry I have so much to do. — Hippietrail 12:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

sidebar
Hi. I'm still seeing your version of the sidebar (even after Ctrl-Refresh). Is that the same for everyone? SemperBlotto 17:26, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes I'm sorry about that. I'm seeing it too even though I've reverted it and even gone into my browser options and emptied my whole cache. It was an accident due to it being the wee hours and me having the flu. I meant to edit User:Hippietrail/MediaWiki:Sidebar. I don't know why it's being so persistent )-: — Hippietrail 17:30, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

chupacabra, chupacabras
Hello, I've edited the two articles in question and I hope this clears things up a bit between the two words. I've also put some blurb on the RFV page. I'm sure you've had a look at my edits any way by now. What do you think?

I've read material on the chupacabra(s), the cryptid mentioned, in Fortean Times magazine and some books. Fortean Times has had a long running dicussion on the whole spelling of chupacabras for a while now. I'll dig out the reference from my collection at home and put into the articles to help clear up the confusion a bit.

Regards--Williamsayers79 10:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes I've been watching. Keep up the good work and have fun (-: — Hippietrail 12:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

citetab.js
I don't, but would like to, have that script. My .js page is pretty empty at the moment :( - TheDaveRoss 16:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Would you like me to edit your User:TheDaveRoss/monobook.js for you or would you prefer to try to copy it from mine? I plan to make a way to opt in via the preferences but it's still in the works. — Hippietrail 00:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

 * I stole your monobook, and the cite tab is excellent, we ought to make a grease pit subpage with all of the useful js and css hacks people use to make wikt better for themselves. IRC scripts also are useful, they could find a home there as well. - TheDaveRoss 19:50, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

 * There's a bunch of experimental and disabled stuff in my Monobook.js so you probably don't want all of it but please give me feedback on anything you discover. — Hippietrail 23:35, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

 * If there is anything in there you definately feel needs to get tossed, feel free to edit mine, otherwise it seems to be working famously for me, the css and js links at the top are welcome also. I may fool around with it more when I get home, but for now I am happy as it is.  Thanks - TheDaveRoss 01:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

CheckUser nominations
As of 31 August, 2006 the CheckUser status vote is beginning, you have been nominated and if you are so inclined please accept your nomination on the CheckUser page. Please also read the Meta Check User policy to be sure that the responsibilities are ones you would be interested in and willing to fulfill. Tentatively the end of the election will be one month from the beginning, but that is subject to change at any time, seeing as I just made that length up and a community consensus on duration will have to be established. Thank you and good luck! - TheDaveRoss 16:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

gender of Swedish words
Hi, I didn't know that one was supposed to add gender to each declination form of a given noun - but is that really necessary? Is there any noun in any language which doesn't keep its gender when declined? \Mike 09:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Sorry I didn't notice when I marked that one that it was an inflected form. I don't know whether we should or shouldn't mark gender on inflected forms but I think it's generally a good idea to mark it everywhere. I do so even in the Synonyms, Related terms, and See also sections. Gender is an essential part of a word that foreigners really need to see everywhere all the time for them to sink in. But I don't believe we have an actual policy. — Hippietrail 23:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

{nautical} et al.
The problem with those templates is that they place a page into corresponding categories regardless of the language. For example, Russian nautical terms ought to go to Category:ru:Nautical, not simply Category:Nautical. What if someone had adapted those templates for other languages? Say, {ru-nautical}, {ru-slang} and so on... --Dart evader 10:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes you make a good point and I have seen a couple of such templates. I think you should bring up the general topic in the Beer parlour. In the meantime I think it's not a bad idea for people to add the non-language-specific templates and editors more concerned with particular languages can change them to more specific templates as part of their general maintainence editing. — Hippietrail 23:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Laken
I always thought that Laken meant "lakes" - as in Interlaken the Swiss town between two lakes. Does it have that meaning as well? SemperBlotto 14:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

 * My German friend beside me says that Interlaken might be a special case because Laken means sheet or bedsheet and the German word for lake is See. — Hippietrail 00:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Expedited request
Hello,

Could you please attend to Changing username. This user is a genuine contributor from the Serbian Wiktionary and had no idea how problematic a username that was. Even stopped in on IRC.

Thanks in advance, --Connel MacKenzie 10:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

 * Done! — Hippietrail 10:17, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you, speedy! (-:  --Connel MacKenzie 10:17, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Also thanks from me, -- Laus 11:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC) (ex WOW)

 * Digging a little deeper, I see only a tiny handful of contribs for w:sr:User:WOW, and no user at sr:User:WOW. Perhaps someone was pulling my chain.  --Connel MacKenzie 15:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

grommet
Yes, I'm pretty sure I've heard this as a surfboarding term too. I've never noticed the "grummet" spelling before - is it regional? --Connel MacKenzie 23:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah this is ages old in surfing. I remember hearing it in highschool or even primary school so that's over 25 years ago. "Grom" I just saw on a surf competition poster a few days ago and I thought of researching it for here. Both Collins and Encarta online list "grummet" and I assumed it's old and definitely won't apply to boards. I also don't know if it affects spelling so I left out those sections when I created grummet. Put them all on my watchlist though - interesting! — Hippietrail 23:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup request on ai
Hello Hippietrail. I noticed you added a request for cleanup tag on ai.

I'm not sure what you mean about see-also lines based on sound rather than spelling. The only see-also lines seem to contain diacritic and capitalization variants of ai, excepting one for eye for a language where ai means eye. If the latter is what you mean, that is easily corrected.

 * Yes I mean that eye does not belong in the for ai. It belongs in the Homophones subsection of the Pronunciation section. It is my habit to find a theme and do many semiautomatic edits of a certain type and try not to get distracted by other odditties I might find along they way. In these cases I think it's a better idea to tag  or  than do nothing at all. One good thing is that it can bring certain trends under discussion. — Hippietrail 00:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding 'interleaved etymologies', do you mean the fact that etymologies for each language are in one section with disambiguation rather than grouping sections by etymology? I've found that pages are much more readable in this format. If your cleanup request is related to any past discussion or guideline about disambiguation of multiple etymologies, please point me to the page if you know it. If not, perhaps we should discuss it. :) — {admin} Pathoschild 11:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes I mean pages that have a structure such as:
 * Etym1
 * Etym2
 * Etym3
 * All definitions
 * Our official structure is:
 * Etym1
 * Defs for etym 1
 * Synonyms for etym1 defs
 * Translations for etym1 defs
 * Etym2... etc
 * We do not bunch etymologies together for the same reason we try not to bunch together translations etc. If you feel it's time to change this I suggest you present your thoughts on the.
 * Thanks for the note. — Hippietrail 00:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I'll post on the Beer parlour, then. — {admin} Pathoschild 00:57, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Recent revert of coördinator
You wrote: “ please be careful when reverting that you do not stomp on good faith changes ” — I’m really sorry about that, I must not have noticed your edit; I’ll be more careful next time. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

 * No problem. Thanks for the note. (-: — Hippietrail 14:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Good tidings to you
I didn't see anything from you on BP, TR or RfV, so I assumed you'd taken a break. But then I looked at your contribs and it appears you've been wisely just getting on with it and working on articles. So I thought I'd drop by and say "Hi".

One question, actually. I just looked at my old essay on tides. It still needs cleanup, and I was thinking of doing that. I remembered you, I think, pointing out that tide actually derives from Anglo-Saxon tīdan meaning, more or less, "happen". That ties together the existing senses nicely, I think, and I at least wanted to mention it. Does this ring any bells?

Checking dictionary.com, it appears that tide as in ocean is supposed to derive from OE tīd (to do with time, in line with my speculations in the essay), while tide as in betide is supposed to derive from tīdan. But surely these are the same word? -dmh 22:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

campi
Think you could add one of those Dictionary Notes to campi? I only have one or two applicable ones to hand (Swahili etc don't help much ;-) tx, Robert Ullmann 23:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC) I do see you used on-line sources for scenarii. Robert Ullmann 23:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Deep Thoughts from IRC
If you think you can accomplish the data-abstraction layer (to deal with each language and each sense separately) then I think I have only one major lingering concern: GIGO.

I do think that the idea of adding a [Check syntax] button (like [Check spelling],) would help tremendously. At some point in the future, perhaps such a thing could be made mandatory, before [Save page], or even as part of it.

Short list of things to be checked by such a mechanism: For NS:0 only, of course.
 * 1) No section zero stuff.
 * 2) Language headings are only from an approved list of languages.
 * 3) Third-level headings are only from an approved list.
 * 4) An approved inflection template is used for all POS headings.  (Not possible right now, as our templates do not have 100% coverage of the POS types, particularly form-of.)
 * 5) A "#" definition line exists in each POS section.
 * 6) Synonym/Antonym/Translation/etc. sections have 'proper' "disambiguation" if more than one "#" line exists.

Whether the mechanism would simply pop-up warnings, or actually prevent saving would be a matter of policy debate/voting/re-voting/re-re-voting/flame-wars. I'm inclined to think you are right though, that warnings only would probably work better.

The "filtering" concepts are enticing, but on reflection can probably be accomplished trivially at the UI level. Much more important, is a mechanism for filtering search-engine pollution (that en.wiktionary currently contributes enormously, to.)

We probably should save/post that IRC conversation from this morning, somewhere, here.

--Connel MacKenzie 19:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

AHD name change
At long last I've started a VOTE with regard to changing the name of the "AHD" pronunciation system. Since you got that ball rolling, I thought you might like to know. --EncycloPetey 05:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Good idea and long overdue! Thanks for letting me know (-: — Hippietrail 05:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Sure. Oh, and histrionics is plurale tantum; I've made that change. --EncycloPetey 05:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

wiktionarylang
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~cmackenzie/wiktionarylang.tar.bz2 is where I dropped it, but I haven't had a chance to peruse it yet. Thanks again. --Connel MacKenzie 08:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikifying names of languages
I see that you wikified some of the language names under the entry "mole" (Some of which I had just removed - no hard feelings for that, I'm just curious). Could you explain, why? Why just a few, and not all? Is there a rule, as to which languages to wikify and which not? I remember having read that wikifying language names should be avoided, because excessive internal linkages cause unnecessary strain for the computer resources. Hekaheka 12:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

 * This is an old practice that has been discussed many times. Basically we do it to promote lesser known languages so that people browsing will have a slightly higher chance of looking them up. The rule of thumb is to link it if you think the language is so exotic that most typical users wouldn't have heard of it. We tend to link constructed languages and indigenous languages and not languages whose names are similar to a country - even if the country is not so famous. This linking overrides the general guideline of conserving resources. The links which need removing are usually uninteresting and unrelated words which are still linked in many definitions.
 * Thanks for asking! — Hippietrail 12:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

 * See also EncycloPetey's WT:TOP40. --Connel MacKenzie 18:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

fruitique
41 pages on google...  zigzig20s 11:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

 * All the pages I looked at just now were propreitry business names - I didn't see one which used it as a generic word. Also frootique gets quite a few more hits and also seems to be only used in names of companies and such. — Hippietrail 11:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Votes/pl-2007-02/Trademark designations
Greetings! Since you participated in the discussion at Beer parlour, I thought you might want to cast a vote at Votes/pl-2007-02/Trademark designations. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Words from Murakami
I noticed you requested several words from Murakami Haruki's 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド; I've entered the easy transcriptions from English, but I'm not sure what ラクダ is. Could you give some context, or the chapter/page number where you saw it?

 * I'll be glad to! I'll bring the novel with me tomorrow unless I forget. I can't enter Japanese directly though so I might not be too successful. — Hippietrail 20:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, ぴかぴか and ぐるぐる are 擬態語 and not the easiest things to explain... Cynewulf 19:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I don't know. They just kind of looked fun and stood out. Jim Breen gives:
 * ぴかぴか (adj-na,adv-to,n) glitter; sparkle
 * ぐるぐる (adv,vs) turning round and round
 * — Hippietrail 20:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

 * OK in my paperback copy of the 1st part of 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド (ISBN4-10-100134-0) it is in chapter 1, page 12, line 3:
 * ラクダを三頭と中型のやしの木を一本入れることだってできるかもしれない.
 * Interestingly, this exact sentence is discussed online
 * Eagerly awaiting your analysis! — Hippietrail 18:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Oh, haha, it's "camel". Added ラクダ. Writing things in only kana always confuses me.. The discussion is comparing the attitude of the main character in the "hard-boiled wonderland" chapters, who speaks using 私, to that of the character in the "end of the world" chapters, who speaks with 僕: At the outset of the work, the elevator that appears there is too big such that "you might even be able to put in a mid-size palm tree and three camels". "私" is a rather "hard-boiled" type who uses derisive humor to distance himself from the world. On the other hand "僕" is lost in illusions, with none of the bitterness and such with which "私" keeps things at a distance. (apologies for bad translation). Cynewulf 19:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Interesting. Jim Breen's site doesn't have an entry but it has one that starts with the same kana meaning some kind of camel bug or crab. I think the link I gave was to a discussion of Jay Rubin's "Haruki Murakami and the Magic of Words" which may be translated into Japanese now. The same site had another link containing this sentence and that page was on Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Word itself. Thanks for chasing this up - it was fun! — Hippietrail 18:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

It's apparently a standard practice to write "difficult" animal names in katakana in most contexts, and all names in a scientific context. By the way, I've added a quote to メーカー which is probably where you saw that word. Cynewulf 23:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

adf
Is this meant to be a user subpage? SemperBlotto 16:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes! Thanks I just lost it because I've got too many windows open! I'll fix it (-:

Multiple requests
Hi there. I like to satisfy requests made at Wiktionary:Requested articles:English by plodding through the History changes. When a large number of requests are made to the entire page (rather than one letter at a time) it gets to be a bind having to scroll up and down a large page. So I will probably ignore your latest batch. Cheers. SemperBlotto 09:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

 * That's a shame. I love seeing you create entries for the words I find in my reading. Unfortunately since I'm travelling in the third world where internet connections and power can be unreliable and since I have to pay to use internet cafes I have no other choice than to enter my findings as quickly as I can. Less than a week ago I lost 2 hour's work when the power went off. I hope you get around to some of them sooner or later but cheers for the lowdown in any case. — Hippietrail 16:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

 * words from david malouf's "rememberig babylon") - bypassed - just too difficult with my eyesight. SemperBlotto 07:26, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

 * I don't know if you'd be more or less interested but I have per-book interesting words listed on a subpage of my user page. But whether you get to them or not I'd still like to say how impressed I am with this type of work I've seen you doing so far. — Hippietrail 17:55, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Username Change
Since you are one of the 4 users on Wiktionary with bureaucrat privileges, I may as well ask you. Can you change my name from "Wiki_bean_dude7" to "Steptrip"? Wiki bean  dude 7  00:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit comments
Hi, Hippietrail. Where should I post my edit comments? Is it enough to leave a commentary on the discussion section of each entry? Thanks in advance for your answer. By the way, was it you who deleted "Spain" from my expression Spain's Canary Islands?. If so, why? Andresalvarez 16:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Hi Andresalvarez. When you make an edit you will see below the large text editing area that there is another only one line high. That is the place you make a brief note about what you're doing in your edit. For trivial edits it's fine to leave it blank.
 * Yes it was me who removed "Spain's" from "Canary Islands" to try to keep things simple as I didn't think there were any other Canary Islands but perhaps I'm wrong since I've never been there.
 * Keep up your very interesting work! — Hippietrail 16:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

tapor
Hi mate, the theory that OE tapor comes from Latin papyrus has been floating around for ages. It was first suggested by Kluge but is also cited in the OED and the online Dictionary of Etymology. It's based on the fact that papyrus pith was used to make candle wicks and therefore the two words are the same in some languages (including late Latin). But it's just a theory: I tried to make that point in the taper entry (‘perhaps from...’), but in the OE tapor page I forgot. I've expanded the Etymology section there to try and make it clearer. Ta, Widsith 16:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for responding. It looked odd to me because it didn't look like a regular borrowing - the changes were just too great. Are you saying that it's a kind of translation borrowing or calque? — Hippietrail 16:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Latin papyrus would be expected to give OE *papur, and the theory is that this was ‘dissimilated’ into tapor (with p>t – this sometimes happened when there were two of the same consonants next to each other). The idea is hard to prove or disprove but no one has come up with anything better, so it gets repeated a lot. Widsith 16:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain this stuff to a mere mortal (-: — Hippietrail 17:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

subpages
Hi there. You can put on your user page instead of a manually managed list (if you want). SemperBlotto 21:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

focuses
Yup. There are cases where the alt spelling/alt form has to go under a POS. And when there are multiple etys, cases where it can go at L3 at the top, and cases where it has to go at L4 under one ety, or L5 under an ety and a POS ... ;-) Robert Ullmann 17:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Dictionary notes
You state: DIFF what is the significance of this statment in a definition ? In addition, you might want to archive your talk page it is getting rather long. WritersCramp 14:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi WritersCramp. Dictionary notes is for comparing Wiktionary with other dictionaries. We can check dictionaries at our disposal and note if they have entries for the word, which if any alternative spellings or capitalization variations they include, and in which order of preference. Or anything else really. Wiktionary users can read this information to gain an idea of how widely accepted or how rare or new a term is.
 * Sorry about the long talk page. I'll try to do something about it when I get home from travelling and don't have to rely on internet cafes any more. — Hippietrail 15:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello, to balance your statement, you might want to comment on which dictionaries do recognize the word. thanks WritersCramp 15:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I check the dictionaries at my disposal when I'm writing. If none of my dictionaries have an entry that's what I write and I think it's significant and interesting. Remember that you and everybody else in the world are fully encouraged to add to the Dictionary notes sections just as with all other sections on Wiktionary. People have in fact added to them in the past. Wiktionary is a work in progress don't forget. — Hippietrail 15:48, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Random (lang)
I've tweaked my "random word in xxxxx" thing to use only entries > 150 bytes now, to get rid of most of the inflection stubs. Can you please try it out and let me know if that fixed it? TIA. --Connel MacKenzie 05:40, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks Connel. There's still quit a few inflection only articles smaller than this size but the hit rate for genuine articles is much better. Sadly though, I'll now be missing out interesting small articles that are not inflections. But hey I know we can only do so much with what we have as a format )-: — Hippietrail 19:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Well, there is always Special:Shortpages that could use some lovin. From what I've seen, there aren't small entries in Spanish, that aren't form-of things.  --Connel MacKenzie 18:38, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

The random entry for English predominantly gives results beginning with the letters 'ab'. --Adam

עזאזל
I did my best; feel free to take a look and request further clarification. There's really a lot of debate about what the term means, so I'm not sure how helpful it is (especially since I'm not a Bible scholar at all, so don't have the knowledge to evaluate the prevalence of the various theories). —RuakhTALK 03:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

parábola
Er...it is a borrowing. The inherited word is palabra. Widsith 15:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Oops sorry. I came to that decision since the RAE etymology didn't say anything special. But I guess the RAE etymologies are not so special either )-: — Hippietrail 15:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Citations subpages
Hi Hippietrail. I've brought up the topic of the Citations subpages you've been creating at Information desk if you'd like to comment. ~MDD4696 01:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

A method of ordering definitions
Hi Hippietrail. I suggest a method of ordering definitions here which may be of interest to you. How similar is my idea to yours? † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 13:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Без'Ятие
It is a nonce word. The intended meaning, I believe, was something like аbsence of yats. BTW, where did you meet it? :) Dart evader 05:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

 * I read about it on my favourite blog, languagehat: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002793.php The blog links to this site which I can't read. I hope you find something to enjoy there! — Hippietrail 10:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the amusing read. :) But does the word actually merit inclusion? Even in that compilation it's been used only twice, and in the second case it was even spelled differently: безъятие (I'd say this last spelling is more correct). Dart evader 14:47, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

 * I think it’s harmless to include it (безъятие, not "Без'Ятие"). This is a popular way of forming "-lessness" or "absense of" words in Russian and I think it’s useful to have a good collection of them: безбожие, безбрачие, безверие, безвкусие, безвластие, безводье, безволье, безвременье, бездействие, безделье, безденежье, бездождье, бездорожье, бездушие, беззаконие, безземелье, беззлобие, безлесье, безличие, безлюдье, безмолвие, безначалие, безобразие, безптичье, безразличие, безрыбье, безумие, безучастие. You can make up these words almost at will. —Stephen 20:07, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Done: безъятие. Couldn't resist the temptation. :) Dart evader 05:37, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

me and spanish again
Hi again. There is a project fo spanish with many words, some of them already in requested entries, i 'll add defintions over there, please review them, thanks for your work. I hope my help is useful --62.175.87.83 10:04, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Foreign language terms
Hi there. I can't help noticing that you are adding terms in languages for which you have not got a Babel entry. I don't think this is a good idea. I can only go by the Italian ones, which are minimal and don't use the standard templates - I imagine the others are similar. I have amended spillo as an example of what they should look like. Cheers. SemperBlotto 15:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes for the past few days I've been adding terms from the Translations sections of English entries to their own pages. And no I've never learned the templates even for English or Spanish. Not so long ago they used to change and compete so often they weren't worth learning. Generally I check "What links here" to find if there is more than one English translation as well as synonyms or related terms. Usually there are not. Anyway I am entrusting my colleagues to improve upon the stub articles I boldly create. — Hippietrail 22:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian entries
Are you checking these before you ad them? Most of the existing Hungarian translations and entries were added by Drago (aka WF), who botched many of them. Also, how are you determining the POS when you add these? The POS doesn't always match between languages. For instance, the Ojibwe word for "year" is a verb rather than a noun. Hungarian has occasional surprises like that. --EncycloPetey 17:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

 * No I don't have my Hungarian dictionary handy these days. I am creating the entries purely based on what I find in Translation sections and What links here. It is inevitable that some will be wrong and all will benefit from improvement. When the POS of a translation doesn't match the POS of the defined term it should be noted in the table. But don't worry I'm focusing on languages I know at least a little about. And doing this is helping me to learn more. There is way too much basic vocabulary missing for way to many major languages so until the mood passes I'll continue to do this and rely on my colleagues to improve upon any messes I boldly create.
 * No, that sort of information should never appear in a Translations table, and I can't say I've ever seen it happen. We deliberately limit which is included in Translation tables, otherwise they grow out of hand in weird and complex ways.  Besides, it is often very difficult to communicate differences of POS succinctly. Consider the Latin word plus, which is a neuter noun when it appears in the singular, but is an adjective of all three genders when it appears in the plural. --EncycloPetey 21:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

 * By the way we should be encouraging people who specialize in certain languages to use Connel's "random page in a specific language" tool. It's great for people in the mood for spotting stuff to clean up. Loads of Hebrew pages are a mess I have found this way. Cheers! — Hippietrail 22:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not familiar with this tool. I can recommend it to people if you'll provide a link to its location. --EncycloPetey 21:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

угорь
I've tried, however convincingly, to answer your question about that word. :) --Dart evader 13:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC) P.S. Oh, when you are adding Russian words, please do not forget to supply them with proper categories, in order to make your new entries visible: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Russian_nouns.

שם
Ordinarily I'm the last person to be commenting on someone's nikud, but — at שם, are you sure you vocalized "שם משפחה" correctly? I find it really hard to believe there's supposed to be a tzeirei under the mem. (Also, grammatically there should be a sh'va nakh under the second shin, though I'm guessing its omission was intended to distinguish it from a sh'va na?) —RuakhTALK 19:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

 * I copied and pasted it from somewhere. Almost certainly a translation table. I'll check "what links here". Of course I might've messed the nikkudim up in the move. — Hippietrail 22:24, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Hmm it looks like the first one done was "שֵׁם לווַאי" in September 2004 and the others were copied from there. That may have been when I was copying stuff from a Hebrew dictionary but I could've made a mistake. Go ahead and mark them with rfv if you can't verify them. — Hippietrail 22:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

IPA "r" symbol for the r sound
It has been a while since this has come up - looks to me like someone is pushing for the upside-down and backwards "r" again. Beer parlour. (How relevant is User:Hippietrail/IPA/English?) Your comments there would be appreciated. --Connel MacKenzie 21:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Of note, is this vandalism. --Connel MacKenzie 21:24, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

 * It doesn't seem relevant for "r". I was apparently researching the vowel symbols at the time and all the dictionaries I had handy were smaller bilingual ones. I've still never seen any other symbol for English "r" either British or American or Australian in any print dictionary othat than simple basic "r" itself. The principle of romanicness dictates that you choose the symbol closest to one in the Roman alphabet. When you have multiple similar sounds then you choose a variant. The only tradition I've seen that doesn't use the basic "r" for a language with only one "r" sound is French. The people that push for the weird symbols are usually either Americans with no tradition of IPA or self-educated "linguists" who haven't learned enough to know when to use phonetic transcription and when to use phonemic transcription and tend to hypercorrection. When in doubt check a real dictionary like Oxford or Collins or Duden or Larousse. — Hippietrail 22:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Are we to adopt something like Daniel Jones's representation system, like other dictionaries you mentioned above? If so, shouldn't we do so in a consistent and explicit manner and label the transcriptions as such? For example, I'm afraid that using ɛ obeying our guideline (though not a policy) might also be controversial as I've never seen it being used in other established English dictionaries. Anyway, of course, I couldn't agree more with the point that we should use phonemic transcription and avoid hypercorrection. --Tohru 02:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree with you about "e" vs. "ɛ" but I lost that argument. I actually have seen dictionaries use it for English but from memory mostly English-French bilingual dictionaries where French already uses "ɛ". — Hippietrail 06:00, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

 * The Concise Oxford English Dictionary [11th Ed.], for example, distinguishes from  (but not, strangely enough,  from ). † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:29, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

 * It uses both symbols for English?? Is it an American Oxford? Maybe it's using them for "head" vs "hair". Can you give us the ISBN so I can try to locate a copy? — Hippietrail 22:16, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

 * It’s a CD, so it doesn’t have an ISBN; Amazon.co.uk stocks it, if you’re interested. It isn’t an “American Oxford”; it lemmatises the British spelling of a word (to quote the COED’s “About…” .pdf-file (§: Spelling and inflection; § § : Variant spellings): “The main form of each word given is the standard British spelling or form. Standard variants, e.g. standard US spellings, are indicated at the top of the entry and cross-referred if the alphabetical position is more than four entries distant from the main entry.”). Since “[p]ronunciations are not given for ordinary, everyday words such as bake, baby, beach, bewilder, boastful, or budget…”, I can’t give you their pronunciatory transcription for head; however, the COED does give bed, hair, and day (as examples for explaning IPA use) in the “Vowels” § § of its “Pronunciations” § in its “About…” .pdf-file; the three pertinent fragments for quotation are: “ bed”, “ hair”, and “ day”. However, the COED seems to have made some odd choices in choosing how to transcribe pronunciations; as I said, it represents both and  using  (despite the fact it distinguishes  from ), also, to represent the French nasal vowels, it uses, , , and  — the second of which, according to Widsith, doesn’t even exist in French!

 * On a related issue, I agree with the anonymous editor in the Beer Parlour: “as the Wiktionary spans several (ideally, all) languages, one should go as close to phonetics as practically possible, to avoid unnecessary confussion across phonemic systems” — whereas the IPA convention of choosing the most orthographically similar character to represent a language’s phone, irrespective of the actual differences in sound between them, as long as the two are not distinct phonemes, may be of use to monolingual dictionaries, to such multilingual dictionaries as Wiktionary, a better practice would be to opt for the mean standard phone of a given region when representing its pronunciation of a given word. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 15:40, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

light year
Ask Stephen. Most of the translations weren't in there until he added them. --EncycloPetey 23:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Just as with Latin, Old English is studied, spoken, and new terms are translated into it so that it may be used for modern subjects and technologies. See, for example, Lēohtgēar. It’s Neo-Old English —Stephen 03:41, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Cool! Thanks Stephen (-: — Hippietrail 04:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

WT:BP
Can you do this, on wiktionarydev? --Connel MacKenzie 03:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

élite, elite, and Elite
Hello Hippietrail -- Sorry, but I don't understand the See line which you added to elite and élite. The entry for "elite" already links to "élite" as an alternative spelling and the entry for "élite" already has a link to elite in the definition. And the entry for "Elite" (with a capital "E") is just the German term, which has no real relevance, as best I can see, to the English definitions. I've only been here a few months and don't know all the angles. Am I missing something? Respectfully -- WikiPedant 12:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes you're missing something. The "see" line is standard and independent of the other content. Those pages might be small but some pages are big and you don't want people having to read every section of every language to hunt for an alternative spelling or wikilinked word in a definition just because the got a wrong accent or capital letter. Sooner or later the "see" section will all be automatic anyway. It will always show all other pages with "similar" spelling where similar means different capitalisation or accents of hyphens or spacing or apostrophes and stuff like that. It's documented somewhere but I'm not an expert on the documentation. Have a good one! — Hippietrail 23:13, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Okay, thanks, I think I'm getting it. The "See" line in these entries seems to function a bit like a mini-version of a Wikipedia disambiguation page.  I guess I was thrown off by the term "see," which I think of as a recommendation to consult other entries for additional information relating to this entry. -- WikiPedant 05:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes that's right. I also dislike it saying "See also" but others chose it. Keep up the good work. — Hippietrail 05:51, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

WT:MV
Could you please watchlist that page? --Connel MacKenzie 23:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

s-ro
The request for verification ask if s-ro is an abbreviation or a noun. I'm at a loss to respond as it's both. It's the Esperanto abbreviation for sinjoro. I listed it as a noun so that it would automatically inflect the forms. As Mr. is inflected in English for the plural Messrs. so too would one use all the Esperanto inflections for s-ro. I'm a new Wiktionary editor, so please advise. SonPraises 05:03, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Please use Orange
For the red/blue links thing of IRC yesterday, please use a shade of orange. Having thought about it more, it is a very different thing from a genuine redlink. --Connel MacKenzie 01:08, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Klingon
Interesting ;-) AF did simplify the link from the 'pedia to our own entry (which should exist), but at the time I hadn't thought about the case of trans-language == page-title ... ;-) Robert Ullmann 12:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * No worries. I only noticed it because my "orange links" extension broke on that page, which I only got to by hitting the random page button. (-: — Hippietrail 12:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Script requests
I answered on the AF talk page; do tell me what you think? Robert Ullmann 22:55, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Classical Arabic
I noticed you reverted a couple places where I had used for Classical Arabic derivations. What would you suggest as an alternative, since there isn't a category hierarchy for Category:Classical Arabic language? From the information at About Arabic, it seems like my use of  makes sense in the absence of a more specific alternative. Mike Dillon 02:32, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Hi Mike. To me it is always wrong to make part of a language name plain text and part of it a template. I noticed that you didn't divide Hispano-Arabic in the same way. As for a solution I suppose you need to talk to the people who have built up those templates that are used in the etymology sections. I'm sure I've seen other languages that had to be handled specially also. Perhaps it was for Vulgar Latin or some other form of Latin that doesn't get its own ISO code, but perhaps it was for something else. In any case I think our Arabic experts and our etymology experts need to do some brainstorming and I'm sure a good solution will be found. — Hippietrail 19:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Welcome back!
Welcome back!

There are lots of bureaucrat-y things for you to do, when you have a chance. For one thing, some newly elected administrators need to be given shiny buttons. :-)

—Ruakh TALK 16:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Back? I'm in Hanoi, Vietnam... at least for the next few days (-: — Hippietrail 16:17, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Well, I meant "back to Wiktionary"; you seemed to be more active again, but I guess not. In that case, please continue to enjoy your travels. :-) —Ruakh TALK 17:23, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Yeah I can come and go when I'm on the road depending on where I am and who I'm with and how much money I have and how easy it is to find internet etc etc. Right now I'm on my own and the hotel has free internet but even if the connection is fast the computer is old and slow. Keep an eye on Wiktionary for me while I'm away (-; — Hippietrail 15:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Vietnamese variations of 're'
Are all of those actual Vietnamese words? Also, ré and rè may be Vietnamese, but they are not exclusively so. We have no rules in place as to how exactly these appendices should be set up in such circumstances - I would presume the thing to do would be to pipe a link to, e.g. ré, but that suggests we would do that for every language. Not that I'm oppose to that either, I just don't want to see this get out of hand. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 03:02, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

 * I've always believed the "variations of ..." pages to be poorly thought out. Whenever I think a feature is poorly thought out I try to find edge cases. At the time I was arguing against these pages I could see potential problems but did not have enough specific examples. Now that I'm in Vietnam I just happen to be finding some. I don't know what the solution is. I was very happy with the old solution of just putting everything in the ((see)) template. Others thought that wasn't a good enough solution. I think the "variations" solution is not good enough. I cannot yet suggest a fix but I'm more than happy to find exceptions or bugs with it. None of the headings or subheadings say that entries must be or must not be exclusive. This is obviously a problem.
 * As for which are specific Vietnamese words, I will check in the next few hours but I expect to find most of them since Vietnamese is at heart a monosyllabic language. Keep up the good work. Let's solve all the problems! — Hippietrail 03:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think putting everything in a "see" template is not a solution where there are so many variations of a term that a reader would not know where to start looking for something. At least a semblance of organization saves some potential time (and we could never get an agreement whether homophones should go in the "see" templates anyway). Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 03:53, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

 * As homophones are language-dependent, they belong in the language section, not in the top-line navigation link. I actually don't recall that being raised as an issue.  --Connel MacKenzie 08:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

 * On a related note, were you going to vote (yourself) at WT:VOTE? --Connel MacKenzie 08:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

knjižara vs. knjižnica
knjižnica is strictly a library - place where you can borrow books and/or read them. knjižara, on the other hand, is strictly a place where you buy books, ie. a bookshop.

That Lonely Planet Eastern Europe Phrasebook entry is wrong, trust me :) --Ivan Štambuk 11:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes I just did a little follow up myself and came to the same conclusion. It's always a good policy to make such a note in your edit comment when correcting something which is wrong. When just adding terms or fixing formatting you don't really need a comment. Keep up the good work though! — Hippietrail 11:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

 * OK, I'll make a mental note for the future :) --Ivan Štambuk 11:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Kuna entries
Did the Kuna words that you entered come from Panamanian Kuna (ISO cuk) or the rarer Colombian Kuna (kvn)? Do you remember? --EncycloPetey 04:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Well whether they are separate languages or dialects is very probably POV of the religious missionaries and bible translators who run Ethnologue. However, the words I entered came from a self-teaching guide I bought in Panama City so it's most probably ISO cuk (-: — Hippietrail 05:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I have set  to read as "Kuna" (without identifying the specific subgroup), since the kvn variety has only 750 speakers. --EncycloPetey 15:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Compounds
Compounds only go under the character (Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja).

It the term is derived from (e.g.) the noun, rather than being an unrelated use of the character, then it can go under the noun, but the head should then be Derived terms as usual.

And no, we haven't gotten all this written down in WT:AZH etc. as we should. :-( Robert Ullmann 14:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Japanese words for frog
かはづ is Historical kana usage (歴史的仮名遣) for かわず, which is just another word for "frog". They're all readings of the kanji 蛙. The literal romaji for かはづ is "kahadzu" but it feels weird to apply modern romanization to a pronunciation 1000 years out of date. We probably need to add support for this sort of thing to the header templates. I've tried to make things clear in frog and so on. (thanks for giving me an excuse to quote Basho ;)) Cynewulf 17:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Oops sorry about that. I found it in the famous haiku by Basho myself on http://languagehat.com - we should definitely support them but I'm not expert enough in the many intricacies of Japanese to know how is the best way. If it's really old it might be Old Japanese which would be another language. But if it's just an older way of writing what would still be considered modern Japanese then we need something like how we handle Shakespearian English or shinjitai vs kyujitai. Another challenge for us! — Hippietrail 02:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Gender templates
Hi, you created and  ... is there some reason why  and  are not okay? I.e. is there a reason not to have them in the canonical order m, f, n, c? Robert Ullmann 14:20, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I don't know if there's a good reason or not. I just noticed that people already had multiple genders in multiple orders and didn't want to dumb down their work if they did in fact have a good reason. I thought there was the possibility that some nouns are feminine 90% of the time and masculine 10% of the time, or maybe the feminine is used in more countries than the masculine. It's probably a good Beer parlour issue and maybe it's a good policy to always have a Usage notes section for nouns with more than one gender. — Hippietrail 07:47, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

ענן
So, what do you suggest? Should we have a separate script template for headwords — or something? —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 04:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

(I should clarify that I do agree that my approach wasn't really the right way to do it.) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 04:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

 * If you mean my removal of the inline "big" tag you can do that with CSS either just for yourself or for the whole site. Let me know if you can't figure out how by reading around the Wiki, FAQs, and Googling. — Hippietrail 13:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

 * I can, and now have for myself, but it's pretty hackish (see User:Ruakh/monobook.css), and unless you have a better idea, it seems like it requires adding Hebrew-specific CSS for no real reason; I'd rather not add that to MediaWiki:Monobook.css unless there's no better way. (Actually, I now see that MediaWiki:Common.css already has script-specific stuff in it … is that how it's supposed to be? It seems strange to me.) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 17:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes we designed the language templates especially to allow CSS for Arabic and Thai a couple of years ago because the fonts most people saw for those languages were much smaller than their Latin, Cyrillic, Greek etc fonts. It's not a hack at all. It's the best way to deal with the problem since CSS doesn't have script support (though it does have language support). Hebrew was given a script template just in the past couple of months I think. — Hippietrail 23:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionarydev
Hi there, I was browsing wiktionarydev, and the last 6 days of contributions have been anonymous linkspam - luckily they have only targeted two pages, but I don't have permission to delete them. So, next time you have a minute you might want to delete [창조] and [ü--üá-] from wiktionarydev. See you around Conrad.Irwin 15:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

geresh
You asked me a while back about geresh and gershayim, and I told you their uses. I forgot one use of geresh, and thought I should follow up with the addendum. In modern Hebrew, geresh is also used after certain letters as a diacritic, changing the sound of the letter to one foreign to Hebrew. Thus, tzadi-geresh has the sound of tʃ instead of ts; gimel-geresh has dʒ instead of g; and I think zayin-geresh has ʒ instead of z (but I'm not sure about that last). I think (but again am not sure) that those three (or two) are it. I hope that this helps.—msh210 ℠ 22:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Yeah, zayin-geresh is ʒ. There's also tav-geresh and dalet-geresh for th (thin) and th (this), though they're less common because Israelis frequently can't do those two sounds very well so don't generally bother to notate them. I've attempted to document the various uses at ׳; please help flesh it out further. :-) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 23:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Please change my name
Hello, can you please come and handle my username change request? Thank you! --Edmundkh 18:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Done. Enjoy. — Hippietrail 22:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

לערי ריינהארט
Hi Hippietrail You are a « [ bureaucrat]» at « wikt:: ». Can you please rename my account clicking [ here]. Thanks in advance! Best regards

·לערי ריינהארט·T·m:Th·T·email me· 08:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Parser Wrapper
Hi Hippietrail, just to put this in writing, we should provide an interface that allows wiktionary js parsers to get a copy of the contents of the page, and switch between the output of other parsers seemlessly, my idea atm would be to build a file that provides the following functions.

parsers_getContentNode; //gives a clone of document.getElementById('bodyContent'); parsers_registerOutput('title',output_div); //inserts the div into the dom and creates a new tab/toggle.

Would anything else need providing? Conrad.Irwin 11:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW, have you considered archiving this page??

Language codes
You were complaining on IRC that we didn't have a better parser, and can't analyse the translations tables?

Look at User:Robert Ullmann/Language templates and User:Robert Ullmann/Trans languages.

We use the ISO 639-1 code if it exists, even if it is now considered a group. Except for Chinese, we do not use zh, we use cmn, nan, yue, etc. (see WT:AC) as there is no "Chinese language". (Unlike, for example, ar/Arabic, which is a primary language, even though there are useful ISO 639-3 codes for variants.)

The "wikicodes", like zh-min-nan, are avoided whenever possible. (I have to find out who invents these things and show him how to find the correct code; "nan" existed when they made that one up.) Robert Ullmann 04:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

quo vadis?
I was born and bred in Bristol - and there, everyone says "where are you going to?". Mind you, not many Bristolians speak Hebrew!. Cheers SemperBlotto 12:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

לאן
Really? It is pretty wide-spread, certainly at least some parts of the Commonwealth, and not specifically US. Not Australia?

Theme from Mahogany ...

Still, the change is good because the grammar is more standard. :-) Robert Ullmann 12:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

001629 Section edit links showing up in wrong place
Hi Hippietrail! Edit section seems to be broken at your user talk page. Just archive old issues. Best regards

·לערי ריינהארט·T·m:Th·T·email me· 06:46, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Progress of WiktionaryLang Extension
Ran across your Extension:WiktionaryLang which would be very helpful for all sorts of analyses. How is the progress? Need any help? I code. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 04:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I haven't worked on it for about a year. But have you also seen my WiktionaryHeadings extension which tracks not just the Language heading but all headings in the database? They're really good for making small numbers of queries from a shell login but for a large wiki the joins required make it no good for putting in a Special page or other real time in-wiki uses.
 * It could be improved by using cross reference tables in the database. MediaWiki already has some of these but it lacks infrastructure for easily creating new ones. It also lacks infrastructure for tracking all kinds of article edits and actions which are needed for such extensions which analyse the content of articles. If you like I can add both to svn. I am often available on IRC #wiktionary — Hippietrail 07:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Random in category
See trunk/extensions/RandomInCategory — VasilievVV

German pre-reform spellings
Hi Hippietrail. Do you really think it is a good idea to add German pre-reform spellings in the way you did in Essstäbchen? The old spelling is officially obsolete and not used anymore by the majority of new publications. I can understand that it makes sense to add an article with the old spelling, because there are old (and a few new) publications that use that spelling, but calling it an alternative spelling in the main article or using it in the translation tables is misleading. BTW, your talk page is much too long, I had problems editing it with my browser. --Zeitlupe 16:24, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Hi Zeitlupe. This has been discussed several times and we cover all spellings. From what I have heard and read the spelling reform has received spotty acceptance at best which varies from country to country and from publisher to publisher. We do try to label variants such as Swiss spellings or pre/post spelling reform standards but I couldn't remember the labelling conventions at the time. Also, Due to how recent the spelling reform is, it is still extremely common to encounter the older spellings, and Wiktionary includes much older obsolete spellings from other languages. In fact it even includes entirely obsolete spellings.

 * I can imagine that this topic was a great flamefest at the time, but nowadays the controversy has calmed a lot. For example, if you search today in German newspapers with Google news search, there are 5 hits for Essstäbchen, all of them using the new spelling. I don't mind adding obsolete spellings, but it is important information for the users that they are obsolete. If you think that the term obsolete will upset the spelling-traditionalists, why not use the term pre-reform. It is still less misleading than calling it an alternative spelling. --Zeitlupe 18:50, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

 * The phrase "Alternative spelling" is a standard section name on the English Wiktionary. It is acknowledged to be imperfect and is under discussion semiregularly. Suggestions for renaming the section include "Spelling", "Spellings", "Other spellings". We try to avoid a plethora of section types, preferring instead to add notes on the spellings.
 * Here are some links with other information or discussion on this theme where you will see the lack of uniformity in dealing with this situation. Feel free to contribute: German spelling reform of 1996; Category:German obsolete spellings, Category:German words affected by 1996 spelling reform, Template talk:de-usage obsolete spelling; dass, daß, Erdnuß, Erdnuss, miß, Rußland, Stengel — Hippietrail 19:06, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry about the length of my talk page. I'm trying to trim it but that is also a slow painful job )-: — Hippietrail 18:34, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

NavFrames
Hi ht, just to let you know that wikiPreview isn't in the DOM for me, check (wgAction=='edit' || wgAction=='submit') instead. I don't think you should limit it to translations sections, as many other sections are using the NavFrames, so just have them left open for any sectional edit (if you can tell when that it) or any edit if you can't. Conrad.Irwin 01:07, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Open requests at Changing username
Hello, mine is one of several open requests currently at Changing username. If you have a moment please have a look. Thanks. Jerry lavoie 03:20, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Pitjantjatjara Wiktionary request! please help
I see you have been adding Pitjantjatjara words to the English Wiktionary. Please help with my request for a Pitjantjatjara Wiktionary to add the other half of the words. CarlKenner 10:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Account rename
Hello, I have had a rename request at Wiktionary:Changing username for a few months now, and I'm just waiting for someone to actually do the rename. If you could do this for me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance, —<b style="color:#1780bb">Z</b><b style="color:#10679f">ac</b><b style="color:#003366">h</b><b style="color:#0e448d">ar</b><b style="color:#2965db">y</b> talk 17:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

yen
Circle character ety only applies to the currency sense. The others have a separate ety. I'm not sure how to do what you asked me to do with respect to other ety. DCDuring 01:38, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh you already had done it. You weren't asking me to do something. Cool. End of. DCDuring 01:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Reverting Category:Spanish nouns with irregular gender
HT, what was your reason for reverting my cleanup of the category? For all words listed in the Lacking articles section, I added the Spanish entries and the category. Why keep that section, if those articles aren't lacking anymore? Thanks. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 19:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Hi Bequw. I checked two of the articles at random and one didn't have a Spanish entry added and the other hadn't been added to the category. Or maybe I picked the only two that hadn't been updated. Or maybe I made a mistake and somehow failed to notice the changes. Please give it a check and de-revert if I was too hasty. — hippietrail 06:10, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Wow you must have some luck. I just rechecked and there were 2 I didn't add to the category. plasma because I forgot to add the Spanish entry (just did, so thanks), and rapiña which already had a Spanish entry but as far as I can tell doesn't have irregular gender so I didn't add it to the category. Does it look okay now, did you see something I didn't? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 17:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Amazing! Those were the exact two articles I checked - and though I did look at the gender for rapiña it didn't register that it wasn't irregular. Thanks for your good work! — hippietrail 20:46, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

 * De-reverted. Just don't you do it again or we invoke the dreaded 3R rule:) --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Links to reconstructed terms in non-proto languages
I came across a couple of your Etymology sections that link to reconstructed Latin terms: pulga, bóveda, recado, savia, and ayo that references Gothic(which in retrospect I incorrectly fixed, but will go back to). Reconstructed terms says we should be linking to these with but currently that template always prefixes "Proto-" before all links so it doesn't work well for reconstructions in existent languages. I assume that the links should be into the Appendix ns. Should we allow to optionally remove the "Proto-" prefix, or do something else? I haven't seen any reconstructed entries for real languages, so I don't know if there's a precedent out there. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 14:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

 * The {proto} template is specifically for terms in reconstructed languages, which must be in the Appendix namespace. Reconstructed terms in existent languages should just be in NS:0, and use {term} or whatever normally. (The vote on this and the documentation changes were all about PIE et al.) Reconstructed terms might be a bit clearer. Sorry I didn't revise it further, but I was very fed up by that point! Robert Ullmann 15:00, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the clarification. I'll leave the links as *term to all non-proto languages (besides latin, I ran across, "Common Germanic", "West Germanic", "Gaulish", and "Gothic"). sorry I meant to say I'll use {term} for those with a '*' in front. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 16:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

 * And what exactly is "reconstructed term in existing language?" :) The term is either attested, or unattested; if it's unattested regardless of whether it can faithfully be reconstructed, it cannot possibly pass RfV (no usage), and shouldn't be in the main namespace. Methinks that "Vulgar Latin" forms that are generally scarcely attested and most of which can be reconstructed by comparative method on the basis of Romance languages should go to Appendix: namespace, under "Proto-Romance:" or something. Reconstructed language = set of reconstructed terms (+morphosyntax to bind them), nothing more or less. So far I've formatted a few of this I encountered as <tt> *undefined: </tt>, like all the other proto-terms that don't get their language listed in Category:Reconstructed languages --Ivan Štambuk 16:37, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Etymology of albus
If you can explain how to set up etymologies for words from PIE roots, I can add this etymology. However, I'm still not at all sure how we want PIE root entries and etymologies done. --EncycloPetey 00:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I see that BiT has added the etymology verbatim from Lewis & Short. (Shouldn't that be credited?) Is that the kind of etymology you were looking for?  Atelaes has suggested I ask Ivan about PIE formatting, so I'll try to do that it the next couple of days. --EncycloPetey 16:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I'm not an expert on PIE or the formatting of such etymologies. I've only noticed that there are already some here so I requested another. If Lewis & Short is under copyright we need to at least de-verbatim-ize it. The normal way to credit such things is to include a References section - another section of which I'm not an expert. But thanks for your interest and thanks also to BiT! — hippietrail 01:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

 * It's no longer under copyright, but it still seems lousy to take someone else's work and not credit it. --EncycloPetey 01:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

קורס
The thing is, I don't think קורס is grammatical Hebrew. We could put a dagesh in the vav and a sheva under the reish, but it would be kind of faking it. Grammatical Hebrew doesn't have final consonant clusters, I don't think (though I'm not sure how word-forms like "amart" and "dibart" are explained; perhaps msh210 could clarify). —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 03:39, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Hi Ruakh. The word came from multiple Hebrew spams I've received recently. In today's spam there was also the plural form קורסים. I haven't received any Hebrew spams with nikud though (-; — hippietrail 04:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

 * To clarify: when I say "grammatical Hebrew", I don't mean "Hebrew according to a properly formulated descriptive grammar of Modern Israeli Hebrew", but rather "Hebrew according to a traditional understanding of grammar" — an understanding that excludes words like "faláfel" (the first [f] would be a [p]) and "télefon" (the stress would be on the last syllable) and "Spráit" (initial consonant clusters are impossible — we can fudge an initial cluster of two consonants by pretending there's a shva na between them, but that won't work for three; and also, the [p] would be an [f]) and "dóda" (this is an ancient word, but the pronunciation used to be "dodá"; today "dodá" is used for what used to be "dodáh", with an audible ה at the end). I certainly wouldn't recommend trying to speak "grammatical Hebrew" by this definition; I bring it up here only because it's the Hebrew for which the niqqud were created. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 02:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I see what you're saying. I wonder what Israeli Hebrew dictionaries do (mine are all in storage at the moment). My hunch is that they put aside the traditional rules in favour of being useful as a pronunciation guide and use a sheva to indicate the lack of a vowel. But it would be nice to check (-: — hippietrail 05:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Your hunch is correct, but IMHO that's irrelevant to us, because we include transliterations. (Incidentally, Hebrew dictionaries often take other liberties with niqqud as well; for example, the one I have handy omits sh'vaim nakhim, therefore writing things like צִלצֵל. It tries, with limited success, to balance traditionalism and modernism — something we can do easily by using traditional niqqud and modern transliteration.) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 23:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Hmm I don't like to rely on transliteration on Wiktionary because there is no one standard, or there certainly appears not to be one. And I am not capable of distinguishing a "good" Hebrew transliteration here from a "bad" one. Plus it just seems right to do all we can with the native script apart from the transliterations. I had a similar debate with Stephen a couple of years ago re stress accents in Russian. I want them in the Cyrillic always and he wants them only in the transliteration. I hate having to look in two places in two scripts for the same information, especially when I can trust the former but not the latter. Also how can I be sure which Hebrew sound some transliterations map to? (a, e, o spring to mind as having two possible nikud representations each, let alone the sheva variants I still don't understand)
 * In any case it's a fascinating area (-: — hippietrail 00:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

 * But I'm not suggesting doing away with niqqud. I don't usually include them myself, because I don't usually know them, but I think your entries-needing-niqqud category is great. But in a word like קורס, I don't see the point of arbitrarily choosing certain niqqud to approximate the pronunciation. Yes, many English-letter representations correspond to multiple niqqud representations, because the niqqud were designed to reflect ancient (well, fairly ancient) vowel distinctions that don't apply to Modern Hebrew. (TBH, they didn't do a great job reflecting the ancient distinctions, either; they didn't distinguish between a schwa sound (shva na) and the total lack of a vowel (shva nakh), and they only partly reflected the phonemic vowel length system. But at least the pronunciation→niqqud mapping was unambiguous.) If you don't trust the transliterations for pronunciation information, I think it's better to add pronunciations than to add fake niqqud. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 01:23, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I think the term "fake nikud" is going too far. Something like "non traditional" might be more fair. I definitely don't think we should just make stuff up, but I do think following currect practices of Israeli Hebrew dictionaries is a good idea. Nikudot are actually used in modern Hebrew as a pronunciation aid and are more common than I was lead to believe before I started collected books in Hebrew. I don't have a single book without nikud. Even the books I've looked at by Israeli authors I can find nikud here and there. What I don't know is if there is any standard or logic when nikud are used for names or foreign terms or borrowings. Hebrew has a language academy - what do they have to say on this topic?
 * What I'd like to do is follow the Wikipedia standard of being a secondary source, which means saying what other dictionaries say. It would be very useful to have a "Dictionary notes" section for each Hebrew word with no traditional voweling where we state as much as well as adding "dictionary A does abc, dictionary B does xyz" — hippietrail 05:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Re: "Hebrew has a language academy - what do they have to say on this topic?": Wow. What an excellent point; I don't know why it never occurred to me to check. They do address this, at http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/decision3.html#milsh — it's the subsection headed "ניקודן של מילים לועזיות בלשוננו" ("loanwords' niqqud", literally "niqqud-of-them of words foreign in language-of-us"). It's not very long; I'll try to type up an English version tonight.
 * This completely changes my opinion; as I said, the niqqud weren't invented for Modern Hebrew, but if there's an Academy-sanctioned standard for how to apply them today, then I'm all up for doing that. (I mean, as with any regulated language, the Academy doesn't really control how Hebrew is actually used, but this is one of those cases where I think it makes sense to just follow the Academy unless and until we have a specific reason to doubt its validity.)
 * Thanks! :-) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 22:57, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

 * O.K., so I've read through it, and I must say, I'm disappointed; a lot of things aren't specified. However, they use קורס as one of their examples, so that's covered, at least. :-)  Here's essentially what they say:

 * Niqqud for loanwords

 * (1) /i/ is written as khiriq+yud:, , ,.

 * (2) /o/ is written as vav+overdot:, , ,.

 * (3) /u/ is written as vav+inside-dot:, , ,.

 * (4) /a/ is written as qamatz in an open syllable or in a closed, stressed syllable, and as patakh in a closed, unstressed syllable:, , ,.

 * (5) "eu" is written as tzeirei+yud:, , , , . [This sounds crazy, but for many words Israelis really do pronounce "eu" this way — which I suppose is the reason they're written with yuds to begin with. Though I really thought people said ; I'm not sure if that's the case, and due perhaps to the ongoing effect of English exposure, or if it's just me imagining Englishness where there is none, like how many Americans learning Spanish think they hear Spanish speakers pronouncing <b> and <v> as roughly [b] and [v].]

 * (6) /e/ is written as consistently-with-Hebrew-niqqud as possible. [Total punt. Not even any examples here, though some of the examples for other points do apply.]

 * (7) Dagesh khazaq is normally not used, but it's permitted to use it if there's seen to be a need. Double-letters are not used. [This is somewhat of a punt. Certainly this would include words with intervocalic /b/ and /p/ — we can see that in a few of the examples above — though "dagesh khazaq" might be the wrong word for that — but other cases are left to the imagination. I notice that the yud near the end of funktzia above has a dagesh khazaq, but I can't offer a convincing explanation.]

 * (8) Gimel, dalet, and tav are given inside-dots or not in accordance with the rules of Hebrew. [This may sound like a punt, but it isn't one; the relevant rule is straightforward, even in dealing with loanwords, given the next point down.]

 * (9) Shva is indicated in loanwords. Shva is not indicated at the end of a word, even if before it is another shva, as in, . Every shva in a loanword is a silent shva. Khatafs are not used. Vowels in loanwords are preserved in inflected forms: —  —  ,  — ,  —  —  ,  —.

 * (Note: the above isn't a strict translation — think of it as an English paraphrase of the Hebrew text. If there's any part you'd like a stricter translation for, let me know.)

 * —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 00:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Fascinating stuff - toda rabah! Would you like to write this up in About Hebrew?
 * I can see three approaches to nikud:
 * Traditional (for native words)
 * Official (academy rules)
 * Cited (found in use)
 * The first two fit in fine with the Wikipedia tenet of no original research. I think it might be nice to have a usage note for all words in the 2nd category. The third fits in with the Wiktionary tenet of basing everything on citations. For these including quotes in the articles and usage notes saying such as "the academy does not mandate which nikud is used for /e/.
 * I wonder though if there are differences between sephardi and ashkenazi use. Officially modern Israeli pronunciation isn't really supposed to have this split anymore but my last Hebrew teacher who was a 22 year old Israeli insisted that all the consonants at least had different sounds. I never asked her about the vowels. I also wonder about loans from more exotic languages with different sound systems. And I wonder about ancient borrowings, versus borrowing from hundreds of years ago, versus modern borrowings. — hippietrail 00:52, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Tz'utujil
You added these five words as Tz'utujil: us, way, ja, ma, jar. However, SIL identifies two languages: Eastern and Western Tz'utujil, so I was thinking that these words should be specified into one of those. Would that be possible? Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Hmm I don't know. They are from a grammar of Tz'utujiil that I bought from the publisher's storefront in Guatemala City. In the introduction the author states:
 * Describe detalladamente la fonología, la morfología y la sintaxis de la variante dialectal del autor San Pedro La Laguna y se tomó las variantes de San Juan La Laguna y Santiago Atitlán.
 * I'm not sure how to translate "se tomó" but let me take a guess:
 * (This book) describes in detail the phonology, the morphology and the syntax of the dialectal variant of the author, San Pedro La Laguna and (takes into account?) the variants of San Juan La Laguna and Santiago Atitlán
 * Based on this and what I can read on Ethnologue, the author does not seem to agree that there are two languages but two variants of a single language, it also seems that San Pedro La Laguna is in the area that Ethnologue claims for Western Tz'utujiil. Good luck. — hippietrail 03:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Well, I posted the same question on Ptcamn's page. He must be getting really sick of me, I've asked him half a dozen questions about esoteric languages in the past couple of days, and I have another half dozen more.  If he has no opinions, I'll switch them to Western Tz'utujil.  Thanks.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Alternate forms are not synonyms
With respect to your edits of rora and rorene, these are not synonyms but alternative ways of declining the same word. I think that distinction is significant. __meco 14:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

 * If you can think of a more appropriate section to put them in then please go ahead. They certainly need to be linked in some way. I do the same thing for English words which have more than one possible plural form. — hippietrail 14:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Usurpation
Hi, I'm Jack Merridew at en.wiki and I just created this account. It seems someone has taken my preferred user name; User:Jack Merridew. They've not edited. This is likely some vandal I've pissed-off at en; I have not configured this account much and want to usurp the name, but don't know just how that might work here. Could you contact me at talk:Jack Merridew to sort this? I will do whatever to prove that it's me. If you'd rather, I'll enable email on this account (right after I save this; assuming it works as on en). Cheers, JackMerridew TEMP 13:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

kidnap
Sorry, you are right. I had not consulted a dictionary, but relied on the overwhelming ratio of "pp" to "p" forms in news.google.com. I had doubted that it is particularly US as had been indicated. I am shocked to see that my MW3 does not show it as non-standard, only as the 2nd form. I wonder whether it appears in OED as acceptable outside US. DCDuring <i >TALK</i > 14:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I was a bit surprised too but I'd seen the single-p version in print somewhere and checked. The only British dictionaries I have handy are Collins bilinguals and I did just find in there "kidnaping" marked as US. — hippietrail 14:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * To atone and take advantage of this accidental learning, I have made alt sp entries for the participles and noun with usage notes. I'll confirm when I next look at an OED, then consider kidnapee and kidnaper. I hate to even type these forms, but facts is facts. DCDuring <i >TALK</i > 14:29, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Sometimes the truth is unappealing (-: — hippietrail 14:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Dutch gender
If you need Dutch gender an easy way to find it is the official woordenlijst. See e.g. here for wound. There are four possibilities:

 * het -> neuter
 * de -> common (m/f)
 * de [v] --> feminine only
 * de [m] --> masculine only

Jcwf 13:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I haven't seen that site before. So is common gender officially part of Dutch since 2005 everywhere it is spoken. In the past few years a few people have vigorously tried to convince me that Dutch nouns are still masculine, feminine, or neuter even if many speakers in some areas no longer distinguish masculine and feminine. — hippietrail 14:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

 * We have a serious problem, particularly with objects: the South still uses three genders in its dialects and therefore when people speak the standard language they will still refer to a clock as 'she'. In the North we can say 'he' (not: it!!) but usually resort to the demonstrative 'die'. Thus the North is basically two-gender common/neuter unless referring to people. Yet words on -ing, -te, -heid etc are still known to be feminine even in the North, which can be seen in things like ter gelegenheid'' and not ten gelegenheid. Other than that the f/m distinction is pretty irrelevant now that the case endings have finally been buried. The four possiblities 'solution' is a North/South compromise to accomodate both North and South.

I might add that this has official status in that this received the blessing of the Taalunie, hte intergouvernmental body that regulates spelling etc.

Basically the compormise is that all words that the South recognizes as feminine but do not belong to the -ing,-te,-heid etc. group may be treated as masculine (in the North) and that is still considered 'standard Dutch'.

Jcwf 14:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Username rename
I would like my username User:Cool Cat be renamed to User:White Cat. It is vital this rename happens before the SUL is put into action. Thanks. -- Cat chi? 08:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Be cool, Cool Cat ... SUL handles this just fine. You could get it renamed later and merge it in. For now, you should add the request to WT:CHU; note it says that accounts with < 250 edits won't renamed, but I imagine we have some flexibility with this. Robert Ullmann 09:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have done as you asked. Thanks. -- Cat chi? 09:55, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

t template customization
might want to look at WT:GP ;-) Robert Ullmann 09:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Dictionary notes
I was wondering if this was an ongoing thing, and if not what we ought to do about them. - 20:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

 * We should keep contributing them. They're very useful when when POV or original research starts to creep into articles or when we're testing or stretching the boundaries of the inclusion policy. This is one place where users can see the difference between what is here and what is in real dictionaries made by real lexicographers. — hippietrail 00:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Hungarian entries
Hi Hippietrail, I've noticed that you've been adding Hungarian entries - thank you. I've also read on your user page that you are interested in standardization. To keep Hungarian entries standard, please add at least the POS category next time - or ask me and I'd be glad to help - otherwise the entries will end up on the uncategorized list. Thank you in advance! --Panda10 21:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

delatar
The 'See also' section- I'm just wondering why you put it in (to betray, to inform, to impregnate, to report). The 2nd and 4th have some kind of relation, but why impregnate? Nadando 02:10, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Hi nadando. It looks like I made that edit a year ago and I can't remember now why. I can only guess I found some connection in one of my dictionaries, or that I had impregnar confused with another word. It certainly looks wrong so please go ahead and fix it. I think your Spanish may be better than mine (-: — hippietrail 15:10, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

hysteresis
Hi,

You added to Wiktionary:Requested entries:English, but we already have an entry for it. Are you looking for something specific that we're missing?

Thanks, —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 01:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

 * No I just haven't perfected my system for checking all items in my list before posting to the request page. Sorry that one slipped through! — hippietrail 17:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

User:HippieBot
Hi, I stumbled across a number of old maintenance pages, Most of them appear to have a bad title (with colon instead of slash), two are blank (for different reasons) and at least three are full of links to bad redirects (bad in terms of capitalization, which is why I found them). Most of these pages have been lying dormant for about two years. Maybe you would like to have a look at them? Thanks. -- Gauss 16:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * User:HippieBot:all_headings
 * User:HippieBot:level_one
 * User:HippieBot:level_zero
 * User:HippieBot:uneven_equals
 * User:HippieBot/top_interwikis_cats
 * User:HippieBot:roman_no_native
 * User:HippieBot:all_macros_sorted
 * User:HippieBot:all_entities
 * User:HippieBot:all_langs_sorted

 * Thanks for reminding me. I'll try to get around to deleting them soon. — hippietrail 14:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

 * I felt that renaming the erroneous subpage titles (with colons instead of slashes) should not be contentious and that it would be faster and easier to do it myself rather than pointing you at it. I hope this was fine with you and you forgive my intrusion into your user space. -- Gauss 23:34, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

User:Hippietrail/Hvis en reisende en vinternatt
Hi there! I've now tried to cover all the Norwegian words that were missing on that list :) Unfortunately I don't think lesepulf is a Norwegian word. Most likely they meant lesepuff or lesepult. --Eivind (t) 18:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks. My copy of Hvis en reisende en vinternatt is at home while I'm traveling in Mexico so I can't check it right now but I'll try to remember to do so when I get back home in a few months. — hippietrail 21:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Bluelinks
Hi, could you help remove some of the bluelinks at Wiktionary:Requested entries:Hebrew? I don't have enough expertise in the language to see if the bluelinks have been entirely fulfilled, and many of them seem to be requests that you made. I think it would do the page some good for it to be thinned out, with fulfilled requests removed to make way for more requests. Thanks and best, 24.29.228.33 23:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Kanji clusters
Hi Hippietrail, Browsing Category:Grade 1 kanji, I noticed that the Kanji appear to be clustered or grouped together according to some kind of system: Can you shed any light on that? Thanks! -- Shunpiker 11:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

 * Hi Shunpiker. The characters are grouped by radical which is a reasonable analogy to grouping by first letter in English. — hippietrail 18:52, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the reply! Is there a good list of the radicals to be found somewhere? I've searched around on Wikipedia to no avail. -- Shunpiker 14:37, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

 * Index:Chinese radical would be a good place to look. Robert Ullmann 09:03, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Grease_pit
The last time this issue was discussed you had something to say, and I wonder if you'd be willing to revisit this. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 18:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

rock
hippietrail you rock ass man --Mallerd 00:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Jepang
I have answer it, sorry for a long time reason Azmi1995 09:52, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

== <tt>Victor Frankenstein</tt> (talk • contribs • [ page moves] • block user • [ block log] • [ active blocks] ) ==

Could you please take a second to block this guy who vandalises your userpage and mine? Thanks. -- Gauss 18:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Changing username
Hi,

When you have a chance, could you take a look at [[Wiktionary:Changing username]]? None of the bureaucrats has touched it since 3 October, and bit of a backlog has developed. (I'll also mention it to SemperBlotto.)

Thanks! —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 18:32, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

saudade and hiraeth
Hey Hippietrail, I was checking out FL entries that had Translations sections in them (which they shouldn't), and came across these two entries you created. You claimed (in HTML comments) that they are the only equivalent words for each other in any language. While interesting information, is there a way you'd like to show that without using a Translation section? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 09:40, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

 * I can't think of a way. They were also examples of why the "no translations in non english entries" rule was too strict or short sighted. If I put them in each other's "See also" section I would be breaking a similar rule. The only sections that allow links to words in other languages are "Etymology", "Translations", and "Descendants, none of which are capable of containing this information.

 * Since you are interested in policing this rule perhaps you have an idea where this useful information belongs. It's not usage information but I've noticed a lack of similar hard line rules or policing of the "Usage notes" section. Would you recommend putting the information there? — hippietrail 10:32, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

 * I took a stab at putting the info in a usage note section (with a ref from wikipedia). I think that'll do. Thanks for telling me about some of my header mistakes. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 20:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Ah I see what you mean with the "Orphaned info" header. I agree that it's preferrable to not lose valuable info, so what about an idea I just thought up and put in at civet. Since the French Wikt entry has a translation table we just link to it from the Usage notes section. Does that work? That was an easy fix since it already had the Ido word listed. It's a bit difficult to move translations over to FL wikts (which we could do with saudade and hiraeth). --Bequw → ¢ • τ 21:18, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

As an aside to this discussion: I would consider (being a native speaker of Welsh) that and  are perfectly adæquate translations of. Just FYI. <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks Doremítzwr. The reason I remember these words is because they often come up on the Internet whenever there is a discussion of "our language has a word with no English translation". I'd seen this claim made for both these words plus others such as Danish hygge. But I'll take your word for it since you're a native speaker! Do a google or Wikipedia search though and read some of the comments. (-: — hippietrail 23:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

IPA
ive been adding several pronounciations already. my question is for you to check my recent changes and to see if you can give the IPA word for the pronounciation.大始王皇 01:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

wait, actualy the IPA for the dialect im adding was already listed on wikipedia. if you can give me the latin alphabet equivalents i can figure it out.

they are as follows:

.

and these are the tones in latin alphabet, i need to IPA versions ˇ,´,ˋ

i might need ¯ but im not sure

 * Well you seem to already realize that IPA will be used in various ways for various languages. That's important. This means you need somebody who knows something about the language you're interested in as well as knowing IPA. This rules me out sorry.
 * Also I don't know what you mean by "latin alphabet equivalents". Do you mean SAMPA? — hippietrail 01:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I mean their sound equivalents in the English Latin Alphabet.大始王皇 22:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid there's no such thing. English spelling has many more sounds than letters, sounds that vary quite a lot between British and American accents, and no system whatsoever for writing the sounds of other languages. You can often approximate the sound of a foreign language in English "phonetic" spelling - but you have to target a specific English dialect and many foreign sounds you can't even approximate. Having said that let me make an attempt:
 * - a sound between English eat ad it
 * AFAIK, is pronounced exactly as  in RP.
 * - a vowel not easy for English speakers
 * The “French ‘u’”, identical to the long pronunciation of the German Ü/ü (umlauted ‘u’), as in.
 * - as in English it
 * Agreed.
 * - I don't know this one
 * The labialised version of ; i.e., like the English consonant ‘y’ (as in yet: ), but with the lips rounded as with ‘w’.
 * Indeed. If it helps, . (It's the <u> in French, .) —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 14:53, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
 * - depending on English dialect as in bet, but English doesn't really distinguish between and.
 * The first vowel in the diphthong in (pronounced ); identical to the French É/é.
 * - a vowel not easy for English speakers
 * Per the Scandinavian Ø/ø and the German Ö/ö, as in Søren Kierkegaard and.
 * - depending on English dialect as in bet, but English doesn't really distinguish between and.
 * Hippietrail is right; the sound is identical to the French È/è.
 * - as in English the
 * That is somewhat ambiguous, because can be pronounced as  or . This is the sound of the wholly-unstressed forms of English’s ‘a’, ‘e’, and ‘u’ (though  is also common for an unstressed ‘u’); e.g., ,  , and.
 * - for English speakers, this would be hard to distiniguish from.
 * This is the pronunciation of the German syllabic ‘r’, as in the final ‘-er’ of, , and.
 * - for English speakers, maybe hard to distingish from.
 * In RP, the first vowel in the emboldened diphthongs of  and  . Many dialects pronounce  as ; however, it is pronounced as  in RP. IMO, the confusion can arrise between  and, but not between  and.
 * - as in English father, but for English speakers, maybe hard to distingish from.
 * Correct, but the distinction should not be difficult for speakers of English.
 * - as in English bought, for British or Australian English speakers also as in English port
 * More like ; also, in RP, the first vowel of the emboldened diphthong of.
 * - a difficult sound for English speakers
 * If you look at the <tt>Vowels</tt> chart of this page, you’ll see that the sound is somewhere between, , and.
 * - for American English speakers as in hot
 * I thought Americans pronounced as … In American English,  is the first vowel of the emboldened diphthongs of  (RP: ) and  (RP: ).
 * - as in English put, but American English speakers may pronounce this more like.
 * In RP, is indeed pronounced as . This is the sound for the English “short ‘u’” (o͝o); contrast.
 * - a shorter version of the sound in English news
 * is pronounced as in RP. Think of the o͞o sound of the word.
 * - as in English
 * 〃
 * - as in English
 * - as in English
 * - I don't know this sound.
 * Per the ‘h’ of the Czech pronunciation of the word . This is the murmured form of, kinda like the English ‘h’, but “breathier”… (Sorry to be vague!)
 * - as in English
 * - as in English
 * - as in English jump
 * Not strictly correct (the sound of the ‘j’ in is most accurately repræsented by : ); see.
 * - as in English measure
 * is, strictly speaking, pronounced as (or as, but the latter sounds very unnatural), but, nevertheless, it is the closest sound to  in English; it’s meant to be pronounced as a co-articulation of  and , but, as Hippietrail notes, that essentially renders.
 * — hippietrail 00:22, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * - as in English measure
 * is, strictly speaking, pronounced as (or as, but the latter sounds very unnatural), but, nevertheless, it is the closest sound to  in English; it’s meant to be pronounced as a co-articulation of  and , but, as Hippietrail notes, that essentially renders.
 * — hippietrail 00:22, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Help with massive vandalism?
We are being attacked by a large group of anons who are trashing miscellaneous so fast it's impossible to revert the messes. -- Pinkfud 07:09, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for all of your great work. It seems that your interests overlap with mine. The categories are important for the reason that they allow one to group like words from a given language, and allow them to be found more easily. When starting a new entry, they should always be categorized, at least with a single category (usually with a language and part of speech, such as "Category:Estonian verbs"). 24.29.228.33 23:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Polystichum acrostichoides
While I know there has been recent debate about inflection line linking of multi-part words, I do agree with you about linking them. However, there is a problem with doing this for names of species. The taxnomic names are treated as Translingual, and the generic name is as well. However the specific epithets are not Translingual; they're Latin. It doesn't seem right to cross-link between different "language" sections from the inflection line. --EncycloPetey 21:47, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Well we have done this for years and links are mostly by page rather than by language, at least it's the page that decides whether the link be red or blue. If it's blue a curious user can browse there and see what is there. Translingual is not a language anyway, it just means "cross language" so it makes sense that it link across languages. For better quality linking you can always add an Etymology section.

 * A bonus of linking them all is that common taxonomical Latin redlinks will show up on the most needed links. Anyway redlinks are not evil and linking to pages rather than sections is not evil. Fear not. — hippietrail 21:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Moving words to an appendix.
Any objection to moving the list of words lacking articles from Category:English words spelled with nonstandard characters to an appendix? Just doesn't seem to me that category space is the right space for that. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 04:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The category can be helpful. The Latin equivalent helps me find Latin entries with incorrect page names. --EncycloPetey 04:12, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm referring only to the list of words lacking entries, not the created entries properly in the category. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 04:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. Doesn't seem like it's worth an appendix either.  Perhaps put it on the category Talk page and link from the category? --EncycloPetey 04:31, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * We have plenty of appendices of words lacking entries. I don't see how it's not worth it. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 04:33, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * What other appendices of missing words are there? I've seen some where some of the words are missing, but no appendices of strictly missing words. --EncycloPetey 04:50, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, in Wiktionary project space. A project page, then. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 05:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In all the categories I'm active in maintaining I've been doing it this way with the "wanted" list of redlinks on the category page. But if there are other ways you are doing this please feel free to move my redlink list there, the same for my other categories if that is the new standard. — hippietrail 11:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no standard for doing this other than the fact that you've been doing it this way. Many users don't both to make these useful lists.  Personally, I don't mind for short lists, and have found the English eponyms list useful to have in the category page.  However, this particular case seems to be growing quite long, and feels more like one of our lists of Requested entries.  I think it would work better that way. --EncycloPetey 19:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, the page is created at Requested English words spelled with diacritics and ligatures. Please feel free to move it to a better title as desired. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 22:24, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

gẃraidd
You created this. See it and its talk page.—msh210 ℠  21:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

<tt>Alternative spellings</tt> or <tt>Alternative forms</tt>?
In re this revision: My understanding was that <tt>Alternative forms</tt> is præferred over <tt>Alternative spellings</tt> because the former covers variant forms of some terms which the latter wouldn’t technically cover. However, WT:ELE does not back me up on this one; then again, our policies are often out-of-date and come with the proviso that many parts of them will, in all likelihood, be superseded by divergent conventions of the editing community. What’s your rationale, if I may ask? <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 05:28, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Hmm unless things have changed we prefer a more specific section over a less specific section just as anything in Derived or Related terms could go under See also but would be less helpful or anything in Derived terms could go under Related terms. In this case it's just a spelling issue, the pronunciation, part of speech, script, inflection, etc are all the same. I would expect only to use Alternative forms when some issue besides spelling also differentiates them. But Alt forms is new and Wiktionary has its whims so who knows. I stand by my analysis though. — hippietrail 06:07, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

 * But spelling usually refers to the sequence of letters, which is one reason "Alternative forms" is the preferred header for CJKV languages. The differences in the example diff'd above are diacritical, punctuational, and spatial, which are not aspects of the spelling.  I would prefer "Alternative forms" in such a situation. --EncycloPetey 06:16, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

 * OTOT, there may be some ‛bot and consistency issues to consider… <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 06:23, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I think differentiating letters to put a word in a less well defined section is an unhelfpul strict interpretation of the word "spelling". Also a section's title is not its definition. If we renamed it "alternative spellings and hyphenations and terms spelled as one or two words" that would be messy and also unhelpful. I personally would ask a question like "Do you spell by-stander with a hyphen"? Our goal is to make a useful website and the idea of the alternative spellings section is to show people that some people write the same word another way without its meaning changing. — hippietrail 07:41, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Avestan
Hi,

words which mix scripts. I saw that Avestan was also in that category even though Avestan does not even use that alphabet. Why is that? I mean if it's just temporary until the Avestan alphabet is included at the "Xsvas" entry, it's better to move it to the Avestan words which need Avestan alphabet category. Mallerd 15:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I don't know anything about Avestan. I just semiautomatically searched for entries which mixed 2 or more scripts in one page title and put them in a category so that I and others could see what kind of words would end up there. Some were mistakes which have now been fixed, some are real words, and some are in a fuzzy area. In whichever case the little project proved useful. Please feel free to improve the avestan entries or add other categories but please do not remove the mixed script category. — hippietrail 15:41, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Categorization
Getting all the words on Wiktionary categorized was a fairly large project, so it would be deeply appreciated if you could at least add to your creations. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 11:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I do when I know how to use it but I often don't know how to use it sorry. And as always some information is better than no information \-: — hippietrail 11:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Input
Please see Wiktionary talk:English pronunciation key (no, not that page). There are a couple of open questions about new enPR symbols and display problems. Have a look at the last three sections, where your input would be appreciated. --EncycloPetey 02:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Scientific names
I'd seen this before, but I just figured it was a relic of some old layout scheme. :-o Is this documented somewhere? I'm not seeing it in WT:ELE. That wouldn't bother me, actually -- I'm not much for wikilawyering -- but I just can't think of a case where it makes sense to have a separate section for these. In a simple case like rimu, I think the scientific name has to be part of the definition. I mean, a "rimu" isn't any large conifer that happens to be native to New Zealand, it's specifically a Dacrydium cupressinum. A definition that left that information out would be incomplete. In more complex cases like pigweed or huckleberry, I guess I can see some potential value in such a section, but I have a hard time seeing how it would work in practice. For example, determining exactly which species of Gaylussacia and Vaccinium are actually called "huckleberries" (and by whom) would be quite a challenging task, and I'm not sure how one would go about it, given that the botanical literature itself is so messy. ... Anyway, can you perhaps give an example of an entry where a "Scientific names" section adds value? Thanks, -- Visviva 07:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC) Please pardon the verbosity. I can't seem to help myself from running on at the mouth lately. :-)
 * Re "I think the scientific name has to be part of the definition. I mean, a 'rimu' isn't any large conifer that happens to be native to New Zealand, it's specifically a Dacrydium cupressinum. A definition that left that information out would be incomplete": See User:Msh210/specificity, which deals with this issue in a more general context and advocates using "A specific..." or "A particular..." in the definition. Certainly mentioning the species by name is far better than that, but if it's unknown then my solution is, I think, worth considering.—msh210  ℠  17:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

GabOn
dear hippietrail, thank you so much for having a look at one of my very first entries -- since I'm in experienced with it, is there a template I could use for such relatively straightforward entries in Mandarin; it would also reduse the strain on my arms (I have RSI and have towork, as I physically cannot type. Anything beyond.  Just the occasional words,with a  glitch y  speech recognition program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0, have a look at thisvery entry here on your talk page and you may know what I mean, and I painstakingly tried to take out most mistakes, and right now it's working relatively well...). Thank you so much in advance!--史凡 16:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

PS. I basically know the IPa for Mandarin,but I don't know how to input the symbols, that is how to make physically appear. The more unusual s s symbols in actual dictionary entries. I'm redacting--, would you be able to give me any advice on this?

drub
For next time: Conrad.Irwin 20:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

 * Thanks Cirwin I think some of the instructions for how to use the Scriptorium might be wrong or just confusing. — hippietrail 05:58, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

fortress &c
Hi, point taken. I've done a few more like this in the past (unfortunately I don't recall what they were), but I'll treat such requests "your" way in the future, it makes sense. --Duncan 02:54, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

 * No worries. There's no rule that any missing Scots translation is the same as the English word since more often than not the Scots and many other translations just haven't been entered yet. Keep up the good work! — hippietrail 05:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Silmaríl·lion
You added this request to Wiktionary:Requested entries:Catalan. It is my belief that the request does not meet the Criteria for Inclusion, so I have deleted the request without fulfilling it. If you disagree, you may wish to solicit opinions on the word at the Tea Room. Carolina wren 01:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Scientific names section for 西洋参
Hi Hippietrail, thanks for adding the Scientific names section for 西洋参. i wasn't aware of such a section. Psoup 01:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

 * It's not a very common section but there must be several dozen places it's used by now. In any case making a separate entry on the page with a level-2 "Latin" section means that there is a Latin word with the spelling "西洋参", which is definitely not the case (-: — hippietrail 04:27, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

twelvemonth
Oh come on! "I've never heard of it" is not good enough. You only have to look at Google books to see over 6,000 hits. (and my mum still uses the term) SemperBlotto 07:40, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Hey it's just an rfv. I don't know another template to request quotes or citations. I've been an English speaker for 41 years and I've visited all the major English-speaking countries except New Zealand and honestly never heard it before. Is there another way to request citations that might be interpreted as less harsh? — hippietrail 07:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * or SemperBlotto 07:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I'll use that next time. (unless I forget [hopefully I won't]) — hippietrail 07:52, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually would you consider it to be obsoloete, archaic, dated, or rare? My hunch is archaic but I'm just guessing. — hippietrail 07:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Definitely not archaic. I've added two more quotes from the twentieth century. Maybe it's started to get a little dated though. SemperBlotto 08:43, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Actually Encarta does label it archaic - I haven't got my big print dictionaries out of storage since my India trip yet though. — hippietrail 14:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

ड़ vs. ऋ
Wiktionary talk:Hindi transliteration — participate in the war! :) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 03:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

life style
"replace altspell stub with actual article since the supposed alt gets twice as many google hits anyway". Are you sure you Googled that properly (inside quotation marks etc. to enforce the single phrase)? I tried on Books and Web, and in both cases the single word was more common. Equinox ◑ 00:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

 * No I'm not sure actually since I just used "gf" on #wiktionary IRC which uses "googlefight", either of which may be poorly programmed. Alt spelling stubs still suck though (-: — hippietrail 01:31, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Admittedly they don't look very good, and you think, "Sigh! I have to go to the main article to find out what it is." I still favour them over duplicating the entire content, because otherwise the two (or more) versions will inevitably get out of sync. But there isn't a good solution yet. Equinox ◑ 01:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

 * I have two main problems. 1) It says one is an alternative and the other is the main one and often gets it wrong or makes a choice where the real world is undecided and 2) where there is no clear standard form the stub doesn't let you link to two or more. You should at least be able to say "colorisation" is an alternative spelling of "colorization" / "colourisation".
 * It was me who invented the name of this section years ago and I now regret not just calling it "Spelling", "Spellings" or "Other spellings" )-: — hippietrail 02:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Hippiebot and language script templates
Would it be possible to add a section in hippiebot's responses to indicate which script template we should use for a language? ie, from:
 * "ps, pus: پښتو; Pushto; Pashto. It's in ISO and has its own Wiktionary. It's written in the Arab script."

to:
 * "ps, pus: پښتو; Pushto; Pashto. It's in ISO and has its own Wiktionary. It's written in the Arab script ."

Physchim62 13:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I was going to add that info but thought people might complain. Also it's complicated by the fact that there's not always a template for script used by a language. I will look into doing it properly, testing for existence of the templates and all. — hippietrail 13:45, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Metadata
Hi. Can you do these small tweaks to Editor.js? 1. Auto-show "Page Name" field for. Useful for adding macrons. 2. Force for  and leave onle the plural tick box, or, even better, hide that too. 3. Unforce for. Although Cyrillic is the official script for Tatar, I've noticed some people continue adding Latin spellings for it. 4. Repeat for all settings of. Thanks in advance! --Vahagn Petrosyan 21:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Vahagn Petrosyan.
 * 1) The metadata is my project but editor.js is cirwin's project.
 * editor.js knows about Latin macrons now so you can enter the macron version and it will automagically generate the plain version from it. It can do this also for Old English, Turkish, Lithuanian, Croatian, Russian, Arabic, and Hebrew.
 * 1) I've set Cyrillic for krc. The metadata doesn't "force" editor.js to do anything. It should tell the truth about languages. editor.js can then decide what to do with those facts. Currently it always shows the plural tickbox for languages which have plural forms (or when it doesn't know that fact about a language). If you think this belongs in the "More" GUI only you should leave a message for cirwin or on the editor.js talk page.
 * 2) Same goes for tt. metadata is merely provided it doesn't force anything. If you want cirwin to special case Tatar to ignore script metadata again leave a message for him or editor.js
 * 3) I've made Classical Armenian reflect Armenian. — hippietrail 03:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

quaddie
Hi Hippietrail. As the resident Ozzie, can you tell me what a quaddie is? Something to do with horse racing, I gather. A four-way shared bet among friends? A four-legged horse? A four-round competition? And are there other Ozzies here? Or New Zealanders? Thanks in advance, mate. --Jackofclubs 15:30, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

 * First I had no clue what you were talking about, not being a betting man, then I realized it's collquial for quadrella, which you can read about on Wikipedia under a title I have never heard of before, Parimutuel betting. — hippietrail 06:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Dictionary notes noting an absence
Sorry, but what’s the point in this; just another way of saying that it’s ? So what? It implies proscription where none is appropriate. <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:35, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

 * It doesn't even imply "rare". It may simply be that the CFI for those dictionaries did not extend to all languages of the form "Old X". --EncycloPetey 02:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

 * It's different to rare. It merely compares differences between Wiktionary and other dictionaries without second guessing why they differ, especially since most dictionaries don't publish their enclusion criteria. — hippietrail 06:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

 * OK, NVRM. FWIW, this seems like a better, less seemingly-proscriptive layout. <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 22:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

queixo
You've given an etymology from Latin capseum, but that word is unattested in Latin. How do we indicate in an etymology that the root word is unattested and merely presumed to exist based on certain descendants? --EncycloPetey 14:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I found it on the Galician Wikipedia. I know we use an asterisk for unattested forms but we probably do more besides. I don't really know the details. There must be plenty of these for Latin though. Maybe we need to find a few and see how they are treated. Or raise the topic on the Beer Parlour? — hippietrail 14:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Or ask Ivan, as he'd probably know from working with PIE. :) --EncycloPetey 14:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Argh I was just hunting around the cheese articles thinking I'd messed up the spelling but now I realize you're talking about the chin/jaw sense with another etymology (-: — hippietrail 14:57, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

A thought regarding the "random pages by languages" script
I had this idea when I noted that in most languages, a majority of entries are "form of"s (particularly for languages like Spanish, French or Italian, which have elaborate conjugation and feminization schemes). A possible way to bypass this issue might be to (optionally?) use, where available the entry lists generated by. Just an idea. As I'm no programmer, I have no idea how feasible it is, but I assume using a smaller ready-made list rather than scouring the dump with your own script would be simpler. Circeus 16:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Yes this is high on my TODO list for both random and previous/next. But I'll be writing my own filtering code rather than using cirwin's lists. I'll probably reuse some of his code to do it though. It's not simpler to use cirwin's lists for a couple of reasons. I'm scouring the dumps in quite a few ways anyhow in something of a production line to make possible searching and sorting, globally and per-language. My filtering will need to fit into this production line in a way which uses minimum CPU on the shared Toolserver. I also want to do it in a generic way that will allow multiple uses. I want to build an extensible index of properties for each entry where "form of" will be just one of many properties. Doing it right requires a lot of thought before I dive in but now that I've released "nearbypages" for previous/next links I have more thinking time. And that tool as well as random-per-language will benefit from ignoring formofs.
 * Another reason is that over the years we have seen that users and the services they provide can often disappear without much notice as has been the case recently with Connel Mackenzie and devtionary.info - all my new projects and service are hosted on Toolserver with the goal of making them available at every level to any and all interested Wiktionary hackers so if I disappear somebody else should be able to carry on. At least once I have it set up properly on Toolserver. — hippietrail 00:12, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I understand what you mean, and I have no problem with it. As I mentioned, it was just an idea that crossed my mind. Circeus 00:46, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries. Cirin has offered it himself already too. Thanks for the feedback! — hippietrail 00:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Use of
Hello Hippietrail -- Re this edit and this one, don't the existing "Alternative forms" sections already adequately point out these variant forms? Should every entry with an "Alternative forms" section also have an at the top of it? I'm having a hard time seeing what the template adds. -- WikiPedant 04:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The "also" template is generally used for words having the same letters but different meanings, thus not for alternative forms of the word presented in a given definition (see, for example, cant). <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 04:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Right, that's what I thought too. And I don't believe that is the case for the entries affected by these edits. -- WikiPedant 04:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

 * is completely independent of Alternative spellings/forms. In those cases the Alt xxx happened to be near the top but they can also be further down and they happened to contain the same content as Alt xxx. Neither of these is necessarily true. Not everything that belongs in "also" belongs in "Alternative xxx" and not everything that belongs in "Alternative xxx" belongs in "also". Specifically "also" is there for when a search took you to a page which is spelled almost the same as the search term but is not exactly what you were searching for. It might even be in a totally different language. It must always be at the top of the page before the language sections. The "Alternative xxx" section on the other hand applies to a specific etymology and a specific language, thus it can appear anywhere in the page. Alternative spellings and forms may also have completely different letters than in the page title whereas "also"s differ in minor ways such as accents, hyphens, spaces, apostrophes. The kinds of things that searches are not always good at. (But search is getting better).
 * Since the two are different it would be inconsistent to not put "also" sections on pages that have an "Alternative xxx" near the top of the page.
 * In the near future there may be a couple of features which will make this more obvious. Such as automated "also" sections and the ability to display only certain language sections a user is interested in instead of always showing every language section. — hippietrail 05:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I understand what you're saying, Hippietrail, but it still sure looks like overkill when there's only one etymology, one alt form, and one sense. -- WikiPedant 02:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

bureaucrat action needed
Would you mind promoting Caladon per Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2009-05/User:Caladon for admin? Thanks.  —msh210  ℠  00:31, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks.   —msh210  ℠  01:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * ...and EncycloPetey per Wiktionary:Votes/bc-2009-06/User:EncycloPetey for bureaucrat? —  msh210  ℠  23:59, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. —  msh210  ℠  22:40, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Miscategorisation
Hi hippietrail. Regarding this revision of yours: Your use of in the <tt>Alternative spellings</tt> miscategorised  into Category:Canadian English (where such categorisation would only be proper for the page ). To avoid such page miscategorisation in future, use (or just, as I do — they are essentially equivalent), used thus. Regards, <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Actually all I did was move it from the beginning of the line to the end of the line. It was already there and I didn't look at what it did. I usually enter such things as plain text since I can never keep up with all the templates. But thanks for fixing it. — hippietrail 11:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

 * That’s OK. My advice is just to use whenever you mean <tt> (…) </tt> — the ‘i’ is short for the old ; using the templates allows the code to be displayed differently depending upon how people set their WT:PREFS, so it’s recommended that such tags be used rather than inflexible code like <tt> (…) </tt> which could lead to display inconsistencies. <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

"Show an interwiki link under the language heading when one exists in the sidebar." at WT:PREFS
Hi Hippietrail,

The "Show an interwiki link under the language heading when one exists in the sidebar" preference at WT:PREFS no longer works for me: Firefox puts a message in the error console, reading "langcode2name is not defined". Do you think this could be related to your recent changes?

Thanks in advance, —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 00:05, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Firstly check if it works with my JavaScript extensions turned off. Then bring it up in the Beer parlour. I haven't touched this code with my work but it could be that the variable name "langcode2name" being generic could be defined twice in different ways by different pieces of JavaScript. I always advise against generic variable names in global space but usually nobody pays much heed (possibly including me in this case!) I'm on holiday now and currently behind a firewall so I can't check my code. The other possibility is that somebody has changed langcode2name or iwiki.js in a way that's broken it. Cirwin may be able to look into it while I'm firewalled for the next week. — hippietrail 01:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Well, I don't know what in your changes caused it to stop working, but I've managed to fix it by modifying MediaWiki:langcode2name.js and User:Conrad.Irwin/iwiki.js. The problem was a race condition: the function wasn't getting loaded by the time its existence was being checked for. There was an attempt at race-condition–handling code in place, but it didn't work at all. (I guess it had never really gotten tested, because the race condition hadn't been happening before.) So, never mind, don't worry about it. Your changes are sound, it was just a weird fluke. Enjoy your holiday. :-)  —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 03:03, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Ah yes. The problem is I believe that "importScript" assumes that JavaScript extension are to be executed immediately via the "onloadhook" at the bottom. But some JavaScript extensions are actually "libraries" which are not executed immeditely but rather make various code and/or data available to other JavaScript extensions.
 * The problem is that these "library JavaScript" extensions have no mechanism for letting codes that would use them know they are loaded and ready to go, and code that wants to use them doesn't have a solid way of checking that the "library code" is available. I think I've seen in some of Cirwin's code a kind of timed polling loop that checks such function references to become available.
 * This is inherently nondeterministic and a good way to introduce hard to find race conditions. Can somebody think of a solid mechanism for registering "JavaScript library code" intended to be used by other JavaScript? I can't off the top of my head right now. — hippietrail 05:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I actually think Conrad's approach at MediaWiki:langcode2name.js and User:Conrad.Irwin/iwiki.js is a good one — the relevant function in the latter checks to see if the former has loaded yet, and if not, it registers itself as a callback to be called by the former. There were some implementation bugs, but those were easy to fix, and his concept seems sound to me. Granted, it doesn't completely remove the possibility of race conditions — AFAICT JavaScript doesn't have any concepts like atomicity, synchronization, monitor-locking, etc. that could be used to reliably eliminate race conditions from an implicitly multi-threaded environment — but I think it's pretty good. The only time it doesn't work is if all of MediaWiki:langcode2name.js is processed between when User:Conrad.Irwin/iwiki.js checks whether it's been loaded, and when it registers itself as a callback. (Oh, and it could have weird effects if a race condition within  allowed two copies of MediaWiki:langcode2name.js to be imported.) This would be unacceptable in an OS, but in a web app, I think it's fine (since we can't really do better). —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 11:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

off
I have been reading your 5-year old entry for off and an ensuing exchange at Talk:off to which I have added something. I'd be interested in whether you-now agree with you-then. (I usually find my own former self most disagreeable.) More importantly, I'd value your views on what I've added, because your views seem so different from mine. DCDuring TALK 21:01, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Sydney vs. Dharuk
I've removed your recent addition of the Dharuk language at Languages without ISO codes, because Sydney and Dharuk are the same language. --Daniel. 19:01, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Ah I didn't spot it but it was 2am. Is there a note there? Because the word "Dharuk" is used in a number of our etymologies. — hippietrail 23:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

 * I found seven pages where this language is referred as Dharuk and changed them to Sydney for consistency. Most are at Category:Sydney derivations, and I believe there is no other reference to "Dharuk" language here in Wiktionary (other than in entry definitions). I also edited your note to not encourage multiple names at etymologies. --Daniel. 04:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

/ɹ/
Hi,

Please see my response on my talk page. My edits were factually correct, though whether Wiktionary wishes to be factually correct, or to merely adopt a good-enough approximation, is another question, which will probably require some discussion. kwami 06:47, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

 * When it comes to linguistics and phonetics et al things are generally not so simple as "correct" and "incorrect". There are generally multiple theories, some competing or incompatible with one another. I can assure you that most of the information you are deleting is factually correct.
 * I recommend reading through the Beer parlour archives for the many discussions we've had here on these topics over the years. You are more than welcome to introduce a fresh topic on this theme to the Beer parlour as well. — hippietrail 07:02, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Beer parlour
I was wondering if you would be willing to look at this topic, and give any thoughts you might have. We briefly discussed this some years ago (a discussion which is linked in the thread), and I just realized that you mention some normalization that the MW software does, which I don't understand. If you could elaborate on this in the BP thread, that would probably be helpful. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:30, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Just wanted to say 'thanks' for clearing that up. Your research is sincerely appreciated.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:32, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

 * No worries! — hippietrail 09:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Example Sentences
Hello Hippietrail -- Re this edit, I can sympathize with your desire to clarify things, but the write-up for "Example Sentences" at WT:ELE states explicitly that links should not be used in e.g. sentences. I bet you knew that ;-). -- WikiPedant 04:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

אח as a variation of "ah"
Concerning, note that the word is very frequently transliterated ah (even though that's not our practice), so someone looking through that page trying to find the word he wants may in fact be trying to find it. Do you object to my restoring it to the list? — msh210  ℠  12:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Well I have to say I don't really understand those pages. Particularly calling all kinds of things "variations" and also particularly putting them in the place of the which has a very clearly defined function unlike "variations". The label "other scripts" is also highly confusing. Why not "transliterations"?
 * When a "also" section is subsumed into a "variations" page I really have no idea how to use it anymore \-: Where are they documented? — hippietrail 00:46, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't recall ever seeing documentation for them. I think the intent is to be the same sort of stuff one should include in { {also}}. But in practice they have a lot more than that. —  msh210  ℠  18:14, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Abuse of adminstrator priviliges
I attempted to remove a nonsense definition by an IP user 89.242.101.100 in the nazism article. I was reverted with no explanation. I explained that the definition corresponds to an adective, that an -ism is a noun and that no definition supports such a definition item. I was reverted again by the same user (Amgine), and then blocked for "deleting content from pageS". When all I did was remove a unsupported definition item. --71.187.105.219 20:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot status for MalafayaBot.
Hi Hippietrail,

Per Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2009-08/User:MalafayaBot for bot status, could you grant the "Bot" flag to ?

Thanks in advance! —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 14:28, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

pjt in Common.css
Which browsers is this CSS necessary for? Safari/Mac and Firefox/Mac seem to display these characters just fine with the default font. If the problem is only due to MSIE's bugs, I can add some CSS to only change the font in this browser. —Michael Z. 2009-09-08 17:08 z

 * I'm using Firefox 3.5 on Windows XP, under which the underline characters were an ugly mismatch for the ASCII characters on my system. Now they look nice. — hippietrail 22:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

civilization
Good day! I saw you added an Australian pronunciation to this entry right after I had added British and American. You added it because the ones before doesn't matches with yours. I'd been considering your pronunciation giving to British because I only added it right after hearing that on telly, and wasn't sure, but I added this way because it seemed to be better according to its spelling (however I know English is not a phonetic language). If you don't think so, feel free to correct them because I'm neither British, American nor Australian, and you have better chance to hear it somewhere correctly. Cheers, Ferike333 15:39, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Heard again :p ə matches but not the stress. Ferike333 15:46, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

 * In Australian and American we have schwa where British sometimes has short i, whether spelled with an e or an i. Also dictionaries vary in how they indicate the sounds in bit, beet, and ability. Here we use ɪ, iː, and i, respectively. Thanks for the note. — hippietrail 15:50, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

mugró
While working to clear out Category:Requests for etymology (Catalan), I came across your question on Talk:mugró. Mugró → mugrons is entirely regular. Nouns and adjectives ending in stressed vowels are always masculine forms and lose the stress and gain an 'n' before adding the usual -s, -a, -es suffixes to form the other three forms. (Since mugró is only a masculine noun in form and not in purpose, there are no feminine noun forms *mugrona or *mugrones.) — Carolina wren <small style="font-family:sans-serif">discussió 03:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I often file an "rfe" when I spot a word in one Romance language for which I can't easily spot a relationship to other Romance languages. Actually not even just for Romance languages. Now that I know we have an active Catalan etymologist working I might even file more. Thanks for these contributions! — hippietrail 03:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

modern Arabic orthography and traditional Qur'anic orthography
Hi,

I moved your requested entries to ﺭ, since I have provided the Arabic script. Copying here:
 * رسم إملائي rasm 'imlaa'iy (dictational orthography) - "modern Arabic orthography"
 * رسم عثماني rasm 3uthmaaniy (after Caliph `uthmaan bin `affaan) - "traditional Qur'anic orthography" --Anatoli 13:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Thanks for that (-: — hippietrail 14:28, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

לעתים and קרובות
Where did you get these from? They look completely wrong to me, though I may of course be wrong. — msh210  ℠  16:40, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I got them from translation tables of I think often and sometimes but do a "What links here" and you'll soon find them. If they are wrong please fix the translation tables as well. Thanks. — hippietrail 16:47, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Done; thanks. —  msh210  ℠  17:05, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

很少
Hi Hippietrail. I just noticed this new entry you created. I have two concerns, if I may:
 * Weird formatting? I haven't been on wiktionary for as long as you, but it was my understanding that the "default" template, as it were, for Mandarin entries was something like this:

==Mandarin==

===Noun===

#

Not sure why you used the template you did. From what I can tell, the formatting you used won't allow for sorting by stroke order ("rs"), and a whole bunch of other stuff. Do let me know if I'm mistaken though. Cheers! Tooironic 07:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Is it a sum of parts entry? I would probably argue it is; certainly few dictionaries (most notably of all, Wenlin) list 很少 as an actual word. But I'd like to hear your views on this. A-cai and I had a similar discussion recently about 更多 (you can check it out on his talk page).

 * Hi there. I've only memorized the default template. It's too hard to memorize different templates for every language when you add words for many languages. Usually the people that take care of these languages come along and update them to whatever the latest standard templates for each language are.
 * Now I don't know Chinese but 很少 was added as a single word to a translation table and I noticed it had a red link for a fairly important function word. I don't think we've really discussed how to handle the situation when the English word is common and important but the foreign word is not then how to handle the transation table entries. Maybe we can gather a few of these as a test case. In any case it can be very difficult in compounding languages and character-based languages to draw a line between "compound" words and transparent mundane phrases. 很少 does not appear to be in my DeFrancis ABC Chinese-English but sites using CEDICT seem to vary in whether they count it as a word or not. Could be tricky! — hippietrail 11:12, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I think the biggest problem with adding words from English entry translation tables is that there is no spaces in Chinese so it is very hard for non-speakers of Chinese to make word distinctions (unless there is a space in the pinyin of course). Unfortunately, 很少 just ain't a word. Literally it means "very few". If we added it as a word we would be opening the gates for any other possible combinations of 很 - 很大 (very big), 很高 (very tall), 很短 (very short), etc. In fact, I just opened up my copy of the 現代漢語詞典 (a fairly reputable monolingual Chinese dictionary) and under the entry for 很 it does not list a single word. It is under these criteria that I will be putting up 很少 for deletion. Tooironic 09:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Please make sure that you also remove the single-word-link from the translation table. Just because Chinese, Japanese, Khmer, and Thai don't use spaces between words and that Vietnamese uses spaces between syllables, doesn't mean that translation table entries for those languages should wikify non-lexical phrases as single words. The two solutions I can think of is for such phrases to link each part and also add a comment that it is not a single word or idiom, or to invent a new template or addittion to to handle them. Otherwise many such things will become entries again.
 * Then again people may find it's more like English "Egyptian pyramid" or "fried egg" and decide to keep it despite it not being in any dictionaries, espeially on the grounds that "very few" means something totally different to "seldom" in English... — hippietrail 13:17, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

 * As far as I know, this is the "standard" template for Eng>Chi translations on wiktionary:
 * * Chinese:

 * ** Mandarin: 叩頭, 叩头

 * I'm pretty sure you can't break up the words in this template. However, I know nothing about the technical side of wiktionary so unfortunately I can't help you with this particular problem. Do let me know though if any decisions are made. Cheers. Tooironic 20:25, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

 * FYI, as a follow up to this issue, my current practice for Chinese translations which consist of more than one "word" involves either wiki-linking the individual words (see native speaker), or if I have no other option but to translate into an adjective with the 的 particle I use a little trick Anatoli taught me where you link to the lemma form whilst displaying the adj+的 form (see green). Hope that clarifies it a bit for you. Tooironic 13:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Genders
I don't see why you keep adding genders. If they were as intrinsically important as you think they ought to be, they'd be an option for. Indicating parts of speech for derived or related terms would be far more grammatically significant, yet we don't do that either. — Carolina wren <small style="font-family:sans-serif">discussió 18:09, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Hi Carolina. Actually I've been adding genders here for about five and a half years but the template only started to be commonly used in the last year with the script parameter being added lately. I've wanted to add gender and transliteration parameters too but template programming makes my head hurt even though I've been a professional programmer in normal programming languages.
 * I also made part of speech tag templates years ago but few use them. Check out, , , . I use "pos_n" for nouns in languages which don't have gender but I use , , , for languages with gender.
 * Please don't take my edits as negative criticism. I find you to be already one of our very best contributors, especially in terms of quality and attention to detail. On wikis we try to embrace the "be bold" principle, so I'm sure if you boldly take to adding genders and POSes in the under utilized Derived, Related, and See also sections, that others will follow your lead.
 * Keep up the excellent work! — hippietrail 23:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually has three undocumented parameters, gloss, tr, and sc.  The first two don't work as gracefully together as they do in  where gloss is the third unnamed parameter, but they do work. The lack of grace is probably why they haven't been added to the documentation yet. — Carolina wren <small style="font-family:sans-serif">discussió  00:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes Conrad Irwin just told me that he added the "tr" parameter in the last couple of days. I asked him if he could add a gender parameter too. Generally people who write code hate writing documenatation and people who like writing documentation can't do programming. Which results in the documentation often not being up to date. Not just in English Wiktionary but wherever programmers work without being paid. And often even when they are paid. — hippietrail 00:38, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So, so true. The absolute worst part of my job is when I have to document code I've written. It's even worse than when I have to document the code that someone else has written; at least in that case there's the interest-factor in figuring out what the person's code does. (The third-worst part is explaining to QA what the code does because they didn't bother to read the document I spent hours writing for them.) —Anonymous <i >TALK</i >

Extended queries
Hi there. Can you query across different language wiktionaries? i.e. Could you give me a list of all Italian words that are on the it.Wiktionary but are missing from en.Wiktionary ? (A problem would be that they don't normally use hard coded ==language== sections on it.Wiktionary, preferring to use nasty templates.) SemperBlotto 10:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

 * No because each language wiktionary has its own totally different format I'd have to write a parser for each one. And it's hard to write a parser for your native wiktionary, very hard indeed for a wiktionary you never use. Headings hidden in templates are harder again because the parser must know what a template does. And templates can call other templates which then create the sections too!
 * But the code is on the toolserver now so everybody is welcome to contribute. — hippietrail 11:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

p.s. Time for a talk page archive?

 * I don't know how to do that. Sometimes I randomly delete old stuff for a while until I get bored. — hippietrail 11:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Extended Search and Usability
I can help by testing. Perhaps by comparing the results of two different searches that are supposed to generate the same thing? My principal asset is Sitzfleisch. I can also offer enthusiastic encouragement.

I doubt that you need suggestions for features, but I am very interested in the characteristics of first screen-full of data that a user gets when an entry comes up. Ie, queries about how many entries need 1,2,3,... page-downs before revealing definitions in the English section for users not blessed with rhs ToC and how many for those with rhs ToC. I am interested in any queries that support usability issues and in suggestions about usability generally. DCDuring TALK 12:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

 * I have just noted a problem that your search capability could help with. See WT:TR and PLC. That translation was analogs not translations. I wonder whether there are others like this. IOW, I am interested in whether there are other English L2 header entries that have Abbreviation/Initialism/Acronym L3 headers with Translations L4 headers. That list would need to be manually checked for the analog vs translation problem. I am also not so sure that translations of abbreviations make sense at all in some cases (eg, many Proper Nouns). I don't even know a good way to confirm that the one entry isn't an example of a very rare phenomenon. Any help you could provide would be appreciated.
 * BTW, how much of a resource hog is a run like these anyway? Also, would you prefer that all requests were at the BP section where you announced this?
 * I am still working through the list you provided of inconsistent English phrase entries. I might be about half way through that long list. I hope that my efforts have made the entries more in conformity with our best practices in multiple ways. The interjections list forces me to face some conceptual problems and community consensus issues, but still yields some basic cleanup needs. Thanks again. DCDuring TALK 17:02, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll probably see requests here more quickly since I don't always look at the Beer parlour. I've made the list you want at User:HippieBot/English abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms with translations
 * The queries are not a resource hog at all. Most of them seem to work well with the schema and keys I've set. Now actually building the data for the database each time a new dump comes out is a hog but that's only once every 5 or 6 days.
 * You may have also noticed I just finished adding a list of terms that are in the Encarta dictionary online that we don't have English entries for. Not sure if such a thing interests you. Anyway have fun! — hippietrail 17:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I love lists like that. Encarta may not be authoritative, but it sometimes offers a refreshingly different take on definitions. I hope that applies to its choice of entries. From my PoV, the kinds of faults and issues I work on tend to be long-standing ones that are not greatly affected by whether the runs are weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly (though quarterly seems too infrequent), but other users may have different needs. My backlog of work is such that you can push my requests toward the back of the queue unless I give some reason for urgency that you find compelling. DCDuring TALK 19:10, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have finished all but one of the shorter lists you had provided and made serious inroads on the longer ones (interjections and phrases), but am running out of gas on them. The pronouns list is giving me heartburn.
 * I have taken a shine to adverbs, to which I have been applying subcategories from CGEL, differentiating senses consistent with the subcategories, adding morphological "etymologies", etc. Over time I would like a few types of runs, but the first would be the same type as the other PoS runs to get correspondence between header and category.
 * I would also like a list of English sections that have homophones headers, so we can templatize (more or less) homophones and get more info onto user entry landing pages.
 * Finally, if you have a chance to rerun against a new dump the ones that I have cleaned up (English prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, idioms, and proverbs, homophones) that would be nice.
 * As always, I am grateful to get these when it is least inconvenient for you. If it makes sense to wait for a fresh dump, please do. I have more work to do on the three unfinished lists mentioned above anyway.

 * Unrelatedly (conjunctive/speech act adverb), do you have anything you would recommend that I read on writing dictionary definitions. Is Landau any good? Are there semanticists who have usable theories? I'm trying to imagine ways of providing support structures for definition quality improvement that fit with the skills, interest, and available time chunks that our contributors have. The grammatical/semantic subcategories (as at adverbs) is one element. Shaping up some of the Websters 1913 entries is another. DCDuring TALK 22:52, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

SQL
Hi there - probably a stupid question. How do I make SQL queries against a wiki? (I used to program in SQL on IBM mainframes - so I understand the lingo). SemperBlotto 12:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

 * Well you need developer access to it. Which I don't have. Instead I've built my own database by parsing the XML dump files with a program I've written in perl and adding the SQL dump of the categorylinks table.
 * The perl code is available on the toolserver: https://fisheye.toolserver.org/browse/enwikt/wiktdump/wiktstruct.pl

— hippietrail 13:07, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

nascor
I have reverted this edit you made. The verb does not mean "to be born", as that meaning is only carried by the presesnt active infinitive (which often carries that meaning as if it were a noun). While centuries-old Latin dictionaries often translate verbs in terms of infinitives (continuing the tradition of the earliest Renaissance dictionaries) modern Latin dictionaries (such as Oxford's) and textbooks (like Wheelock's) do not do this because they recognize that such translations are both misleading and fundamentally incorrect. --EncycloPetey 03:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You missed the fundamentally incorrect descentants. Please be consistent. The Spanish term is derived from nāscī. — hippietrail 04:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There are more misleading and fundamentally incorrect translations you have overlooked. "I am born, begotten" is not the present active in English. These are peculiar in English and in fact nobody says them. They both refer to states rather than actions and use past forms rather than present forms. The only natural way to say it in English is "I am being born" for the present or "I was born" for the past. — hippietrail 04:55, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The lemma in Latin is the 1st principal part, and that is where Descendants should be listed, not at the present active infinitive, which is a "form of" entry. Please refer to WT:ALA. --EncycloPetey 05:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * But this contradicts your arguments about what the meaning is, that it's misleading, and that it's incorrect. If the problem is that it's against WT:ALA why not just say that?
 * Dictionaries, including my made-in-this-century Latin dictionary translate lemmas to lemmas. The same goes for all the dictionaries in my collection which deal with languages that use a form other than the infinitive as lemma. — hippietrail 05:30, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem is both. Your second statement is incorrect, since born is not a lemma form.  Neither are words like  tanslated to a lemma necessarily, since Latin has a lemma for comparatives of adjectives, but the English comparative is not a lemma entry.  We do normally translate lemmata to lemmata, but there are cases where the grammar of one language does not match up well with the translating language.  This is an inevitable consequence of dealing with different grammars.  Sometimes, even the part of speech changes between languages.  This is not a problem caused by Wiktionary; it is a problem inherent in the languages. --EncycloPetey 05:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see what contradiction you mean. The lemma stands in place for the entire verb, merely the meaning of the lemma differs between languages.  In Latin or Ancient Greek, the lemma carries a first-person singular present active indicative meaning.  In Spanish, it carries an infinitive meaning.  In Portuguese, it carries an impersonal infinitive meaning.  In English, because of the simplification of inflection, it carries many possible meanings, but is defined as if it were an infinitive. --EncycloPetey 05:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

magnetic north
FYI, I re-entered magnetic north, because a) it seems to be a more common spelling than Magnetic North, b) the definition given for the Magnetic North is imprecise (magnetic north is the direction shown by the compass, i.e. the direction of Earth's magnetic field, which is only approximately the same as the true direction to the magnetic North Pole). --Hekaheka 08:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Queries
Hi! I'd be interested if you could run your tool against the latest Wiktionary dump (from today/tomorrow, because I did a major cleanup in the last few days) finding all Serbo-Croatian entries satisfying either of the following criteria: It would be most appreciated ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 20:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) verbs lacking ====Conjugation==== section
 * 2) nouns or adjectives lacking ====Declension==== section
 * Here ya go: User talk:Ivan Štambuk/Serbo-Croatian verbs lacking conjugation and nouns or adjectives lacking declension
 * 1) entry containing  template
 * And here: User talk:Ivan Štambuk/Serbo-Croatian entries using infl template

 * I've started indexing the new dumps. It usually takes about 4 hours... — hippietrail 23:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * All done. Have fun. — hippietrail 12:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * THANKS! --Ivan Štambuk 12:31, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

TTBC
Which PoS do these go with? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 05:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know. That's what needs to be checked about them \-: They came from very small dictionaries. — hippietrail 09:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Gujarati question
Hello Hippietrail,

I'm Tvdm from the Dutch Wiktionary. I am now adding Gujarati words to the Dutch Wiktionary, but I saw that still many Gujarati words here are missing a gender. Could you please add the gender to all words in Category:Gujarati_nouns? Thanks in advance for your help!! Kind regards, Tvdm 15:38, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Sorry Tvdm I don't speak Gujarati or have a Gujarati dictionary and I don't know the genders \-: — hippietrail 20:15, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, well, I contacted you because I saw you made a change at a Gujarati word and added the gender, so I hoped you could help me. Do you know another user that could add the genders to the Gujarati words? Thanks in advance! Tvdm 10:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I probably found that one on another page. Sometimes it will be in a translation section but in the main entry, or vice versa. Also I might've found it when specifically looking for it by doing web searches to Gujarati material. I don't think we have any major Gujarati contributor at en.wiktionary sadly. — hippietrail 01:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:zh
Would you be able to add these languages into langmetadata.fcgi at some point, they don't have genders or plurals; but I don't know the specifics about language family (guessing zhx), script (guessing Hani) or region (guessing CN)? Conrad.Irwin 03:45, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Chazal
Does the entry make sense now?

Thanks, —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 23:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Umlaut, grave and kanas
As you are interested in doing extended Wiktionary queries, can you please provide me these lists? --Daniel. 16:12, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Portuguese entries containing umlaut (Ä, ä, Ë, ë, Ï, ï, Ö, ö, Ü, ü) [ex.: ensangüentar]
 * lingüística, Völuspá, cinqüenta, pingüim, seqüestro, ubiqüidade, ubiqüidades
 * 1) Portuguese entries containing grave accent (À, à, È, è, Ì, ì, Ò, ò, Ù, ù) [ex.: àquele]
 * zero à esquerda, dar à luz, à, à vontade, às vezes
 * 1) All entries containing kanas we or wi (ゑ, ゐ, ヱ, ヰ) [ex.: ゐる]
 * 用ゐる, ゐる

 * Thank you. --Daniel. 20:55, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

 * No problem. — hippietrail 21:02, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Spanish list
Similar to above, could I get a list of Spanish entries with characters not from the standard A-Z and á,é,í,ó,ú? Thanks. Nadando 05:40, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

 * This list is big so I've uploaded it to the Toolserver: http://toolserver.org/~hippietrail/es_accented.txt
 * I've only included the regular Spanish accents: á|é|í|ó|ñ|ú|ü|Á|É|Í|Ñ|Ó|Ú|Ü - there may be some with foreign accents too. — hippietrail 08:43, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In case that's not what you meant, here's the opposite list. Spanish entries with non Spanish characters or at least unusual characters:
 * d', @, ¿, 'ulama, y/o, TV3, ¡, 1º, 1ª, m'ijo, s/n, 1o, 1a, 2º, 2ª, 2o, 2a, ℆ — hippietrail 08:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Hmm, that's not what I meant. I'm not sure what the first list is- the encoding is messed up for me. I did want Spanish entries with 'non-Spanish' characters- like Barça. I'm not sure if there is anything other than cedillas. Nadando 10:02, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

 * OK I did it a different way and now I get this:
 * nº, đ, d', @, ¿, 'ulama, y/o, TV3, ¡, 1º, 1ª, çahumerio, m'ijo, s/n, Melchîsedec, Rachêl, Issachâr, 1o, 1a, Timişoara, Juº, caçar, caçador, dança, çarça, çabullir, çapato, Mª, Barça, bïez, 2º, 2ª, 2o, 2a, ℆ — hippietrail 14:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Thanks, that's great. Nadando 19:35, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Two images
It has been suggested that we move all our files to Commons. We only have ten, two of which are File:Hippietrail dictionaries.JPG and File:Thai sticker.JPG that you uploaded. What do you think? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:17, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you think of any Commons benefit of sharing these? The former is just to decorate my personal page, and the latter was a sample for translation which though it turns out to be a stock phrase may have a copyrighted design which commons would just delete anyway... — hippietrail 07:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I agree with Hippietrail. We already went through and moved most images.  The remaining ones are either duplicates of key images, in case Commons goes down while we're active, or are images of very limited utility for our personal purposes that would have no value in existing on Commons. --EncycloPetey 17:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

black-eyed Susan
This could and is most likely an alternative spelling of Black-eyed Susan, yeah? <b style="color:#000">Ra</b><b style="color:#696969">z</b><b style="color:#808080">or</b><b style="color:#696969">fl</b><b style="color:#808080">ame</b> 01:18, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Yeah I'm just sussing it (and a few others) out now. Sources that deal with plants or animals etc often capitalise all common names in their field but other dictionaries only list the "small b" spelling so I'd say that's the right one for general English use. — hippietrail 01:20, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Now that you've moved the page, wouldn't Black-eyed Susan be an alternative spelling of black-eyed Susan? <b style="color:#000">Ra</b><b style="color:#696969">z</b><b style="color:#808080">or</b><b style="color:#696969">fl</b><b style="color:#808080">ame</b> 01:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Not according to my research. As I said sources that deal with things such as flowers or dog breeds and stuff capitalise every common name of life-forms within their field, that is a style issue, not a spelling issue. Compare black-eyed pea etc. — hippietrail 01:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Ok. I assume Susan is capitalized because it is someone's name that the flower was named after? <b style="color:#000">Ra</b><b style="color:#696969">z</b><b style="color:#808080">or</b><b style="color:#696969">fl</b><b style="color:#808080">ame</b> 01:39, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup lists
There was a BP section that just got archived where you posted some cleanup lists (along with other custom generated lists). What would you think about posting some of them on WT:TODO? You probably know which ones would be good for that page. Thanks. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 00:15, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Sumo
Hi HT. You added a Sumo translation at water and the entry at was. SIL just retired that code and split it into Mayangna [yan] & Ulwa [ulw]. Would you be able to be more specific for your entry? Thanks. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Heh well that's the problem of putting ourselves at the whims of bible-translating missionaries I suppose. The dictionary I used is called Diccionario trilingüe Miskitu Sumu/Mayangna Español - so it would seem that Mayangna [yan] would be best. — hippietrail 03:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, at least we're not out-of-date missionary followers. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 13:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

knob
Do you have any sources for it being a Danish unit of measure (edit)? I couldn't find anything at da.wiki, da.wikt, or Danish units of measurement. I'd rfv it, but since there's no entry (just the cat) I thought I bring it up w/ you instead. Thanks. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 20:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I would say I got it from my Danish dictionary which is not currently with me. It didn't take much effort to find it in an online Danish dictionary though. Apparently it means "knot" in both the "tie" and "speed on water" senses and has a different gender for each: http://www.ordbogen.com/opslag.php?word=knob&dict=auto#daen — hippietrail 08:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I was cleaning up pages that had a topical categories but no corresponding language entries. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 19:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Translation link color
I added ajaxtranslinks.js as a gadget to Special:Preferences. If you change the disabling logic in custom.js would you mind doing it as well to MediaWiki:Gadget-WiktAjaxTransLinks.js? Thanks. --Bequw → τ 22:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry Bequw, I'm not familiar enough with my code currently to really offer any comment. \-: — hippietrail 13:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

importExternalScript
As importExternalScript from MediaWiki:Common.js is just a copy of importScriptURI from wikibits.js, we're thinking about deprecating it and eventually removing it. I think you're using it in a few places so I wanted to let you know. Cheers. --Bequw → τ 20:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

 * importExternalScript was not copied from anywhere. I wrote it myself by modifying the importScript function which was around at the time. Mine could well be older than the one in wikibits.js or it's just the most obvious way of acheiving the same result. For all I know importScriptURI is "just a copy" of importExternalScript. — hippietrail 07:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I in no way meant to imply plagiarism. I assumed that we had this function earlier and the wikibit's function "copied" the functionality from one of the wikis' function (maybe us). I meant to imply only that we have duplication in our JavaScript environment and that we should simplify (getting rid of ours) to minimize page loading, ease maintenance, and simplify development. --Bequw → τ 15:06, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah well of course I agree. Duplication is bad and simplification and streamlining are good. The name of the common function doesn't matter. — hippietrail 07:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've converted all my code to use the standard function. There are two places other users call it directly but both are commented out so the stub from importExternalScript to importScriptURI will be fine for a while to deprecate it then it can go completely. — hippietrail 23:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Script options
In order to get Special:Preferences Gadgets and Preferences to work together better I was wondering if we could restructure how script options work. I was thinking script options could be stored as global variables (this is how some such as w:User:Gary King/comments in local time.js already work). In custom.js, ActivateChosenPrefs could be made to set the variables based on the cookies. Scripts would then not have to use wiktGetPrefCookie and could be independent of WT:PREFS and therefore agnostic as to their loading mechanism (WT:PREFS, Gadgets). Additionally, this would allow someone to hand-load scripts and set options just from their skin.js. What do you think? --Bequw → τ 15:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry Bequw, I'm not familiar enough with the code currently to really offer any comment. \-: — hippietrail 13:11, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

 * The idea sounds good, but, like Hippietrail, I've not touched Wiktionary javascript for a long time. Thank you very much for taking it up! There is a class called CookiePreferences in WT:EDIT. It would seem that that too should be able to interact with whatever storage mechanism is available to id. (I prefer the idea of having one global with lots of properties, or one singleton with a few methods than to having a global variable per property - it eliminates some of the "urm, where did this come from" when reading code. Conrad.Irwin 01:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * NB: I'll have to do properties rather than a singleton since Gadgets get loaded before Common.js.--Bequw → τ 17:08, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Reversion
Why have you reverted these edits. Adding la-attention makes it easier to find these entries which do not contain inflection templates and the current standard for all Latin verbs is to use lemmata to lemmata in definitions and not the infinitive. Caladon 12:49, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

 * I reverted your edits because they were made with no edit comment in a controversial area. The la-attention is fine but changing dictionary forms to 1st person singular present while the topic is still open if not "hot" anymore certainly requires an edit comment as a bare minimum. There is in fact no current standard on how to define verbs for languages where the lemma is not the infinitive. If there is a de-facto standard then most of the English Wiktionary and most Latin dictionaries map "lemma to lemma" (for want of a better term). Latin within the English Wiktionary is an exception mostly due to the fact of its small number of editors holding a nonstandard view.
 * I reviewed the most recent discussion after losing track of it over the last few months and it seems no concensus or conclusions were reached and About:Latin still takes no stance.
 * But thanks for commenting now (-: — hippietrail 13:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I was trying to maintain consistency within our entries until a consensus had been reached. You could also have chosen to use an edit comment instead of using the rollback function; therefore, I feel we both made the same error, unless you did that in spite. Caladon 13:18, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes consistency has of course various values depending on scope. I'm in favour of consistency across all languages including Ancient Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Old Armenian, which have the same lemma v. infinitive mismatch. Sorry for not commenting in my rollback but I felt that if you were serious you would strike up a conversation which is a good thing. There are many drive-by edits in Wiktionary and I'm afraid we've not met here before. No spite intended. — hippietrail 14:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Old interface messages
I was cleaning out some stale MediaWiki files and say that the following interface messages are only referenced, I believe, in User:Hippietrail/MediaWiki:Sidebar: Is that personal sidebar file still used? Can one really customize their sidebar that way? The messages haven't been used globally since 2006. Can we delete the interface messages? --Bequw → τ 18:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki:Beerparlour-url, MediaWiki:Beerparlour (MediaWiki:Beerparlour/es)
 * MediaWiki:Greasepit-url, MediaWiki:Greasepit (MediaWiki:Greasepit/es)
 * Yes they are used by a custom JavaScript extension I made a few years ago called "personalsidebar". For some reason nobody else started using it but I've always used it and anybody else is welcome to give it a try too. — hippietrail 04:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, that is a nice extension. Maybe it didn't catch on because of the addPortletLink in wikibits.js. --Bequw → τ 05:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Loading custom preference code
Do you mind if we remove the portion of Common.js where it loads User:Hippietrail/custom-alpha.js for you? If you still plan on actively editing the preference code we can make a more generic method for disabling the automatic loading of the default custom.js (rather than having an exception just for you). Sound ok? --Bequw → τ 19:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem. I totally forgot it was there (-: — hippietrail 10:21, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Great. --Bequw → τ 14:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Spanish verb plus plural noun compounds
How strongly do you object to the red links being moved elsewhere? I find them distracting. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Very strongly. The entire collection of words consists of those both with and without entries. It is a list of words of a certain type, not a just list of links to words of a certain type. Which use of the list of words is the portion in red distracting you from? — hippietrail 22:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Pygmy
Hi Hippietrail,

Do you know by any chance where you got the German from in this edit? I ask because it's now at RFV (WT:RFV).

Thanks in advance, —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 23:33, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Hmm I guess probably Babelfish or Wikipedia as it was several years ago but not now. Certainly seems to be wrong though from a very quick search. — hippietrail 13:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's in Wikipedia
...and doesn't look like nonsense, just copy it! Equinox ◑ 03:13, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sometimes I do! Sometimes I don't have the time and inclination for formatting and editing a bunch of entries but do have enough to note some missing words down. — hippietrail 03:16, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

仪式 et al
Pleasey pleasey please use correct formatting. Check out How to Create a Basic Chinese Entry. Got questions? Ask me. Cheers. ---> Tooironic 13:00, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

ƞ
Cheers - and sorry about the misunderstanding. When I first went to this article the creator thought it WAS eta. In my font the confusion is undertandable as the two are identical - my impression that eta needed extra emphasis. — Saltmarsh απάντηση 05:34, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

hippie trail
Hi, are you happy with the definition of hippie trail? --Rising Sun talk? contributions 11:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

User_talk:Stephen_G._Brown
A guy asked a girl to take a walk with him..and these older ladies next to her started giggling a little. Why is that? Thanks :) 81.68.255.36 08:54, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

 * "take a walk" doesn't have any special idiomatic meaning in Australia. In fact until very recently everybody would've said "go for a walk". "take a walk" would've sounded American.
 * I would have to assume the older ladies were just reading between the lines about where a guy and a girl might walk to. — hippietrail 14:31, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Hehe, alright well thanks for your explanation ;) 81.68.255.36 20:06, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

erotic into Korean?
Hi,

Could you add a Korean translation, please? I don't quite trust the sources I currently have for Korean for this adjective. --Anatoli 12:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Votes/2010-04/Voting policy
I urge you to vote. (I don't know which way you'll vote, but I want more voices, especially English Wiktionarians' voices, heard in this vote.) If you've voted already, or stated that you won't, and I missed it, I apologize. —msh210℠ 17:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello Ht, on WOTD "You know who", I saw your 2004 spoors
. Could you please give me your opinion about the spanish equivalents I added (coming from a good dictionary & field experience). There is also "Quien-tù-sabes"~(sorry for my bad ù, kb issue...) to be checked. Thanks & T.y. Arapaima 07:17, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

eureka
FYI your Mandarin translation here is a little questionable. 尤里卡 is a transliteration of Eureka, the proper noun, but has not actually entered the lexicon as an interjection. Please note my ammendments. Cheers. ---> Tooironic 11:01, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

WT:GP
BUG!!!! Prod prod prod prod prod.... Conrad.Irwin 16:50, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Toolserver
I am suddenly having trouble with the Random command and have not been able to use it all day. It works fine for languages that use the Roman alphabet, such as Spanish and Romanian, but not for languages that use a different script such as Russian, Thai, Korean, or Armenian. I get an Internal Server Error (500) that says:
 * Request host: toolserver.org
 * Request path: GET /~hippietrail/randompage.fcgi

Any idea what is wrong? I have not changed any settings or software, and I use Firefox 3.6.3 in Windows XP Pro (if that makes any difference). —Stephen 20:44, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

 * Looks like apiproxy.fcgi is broken: https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/HIPPIETRAIL
 * However, I don’t see how that could cause the Random Page problem. —Stephen 08:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Is there any way to fix this problem with the Random page command? It’s been broken for a full month. —Stephen 21:40, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Sorry guys I can't fix it myself as I'm currently backpacking around the world on a shoestring budget. I don't expect to be back home until mid October. But it's all open source if Cirwin or somebody else wants to poke around and try to fix it they are more than welcome. Good luck! — hippietrail 09:24, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I think Cirwin said that he could not access hippietrail [at] toolserver [dot] org in order to have a look at it (I guess that’s where the code is). Enjoy your trip, we look forward to hearing from you in the fall. —Stephen 10:29, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Even though Cirwin can't access my toolserver shell account he can access the code in our shared account. Of course he would also have to change any JavaScript that specifically accesses my account. I don't think any of my code is totally hidden. I certainly don't mind if he or somebody has to fork the code to get it working again if features are missed. Cheers from Poznań! — hippietrail 09:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's mid October :). Will you be able to fix it anytime soon? --Yair rand (talk) 06:21, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi I arrived back in Australia a little over 24 hours ago but I don't currently have unlimited internet access. I hope I get it again but I won't even know for a bit longer. — hippietrail 02:32, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Nearby pages borked
Would you take a look at Grease pit when you get a sec. Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 10:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

魋
I have a question about this character. In the entry for bear, you originally listed 魋 as the word for bear. From my knowledge most of the time 熊 (Mandarin: Xiong Cantonese: Hung) is used instead. Can you tell me where you got 魋 from? Is it archaic? Thanks in advance, I am very curious. My parents and family never saw this word before, just 熊. 75.4.235.233 03:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is indeed archaic. ---> Tooironic 08:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

sub-language-header words in order
—msh210℠ (talk) 19:41, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) In the links to nearby words appearing beneath language headers, letters with diacritics (or many of them) appear as question marks instead of as they should.
 * 2) Some « of « those « lists » appear » like » this, with arrows pointing in both directions outward from the middle, while » others » appear » like » this, with arrows pointing forward only. (I know you set it up that way so it could later be determined which is better, but I really think inconsistency is worse than either alternative. Do you think you might choose one?)

Metadata for Pashto
This should be updated to reflect the presence of two genders (masc and fem) and two numbers (sg and pl). — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:17, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Usability Initiative Rollout (Vector): Sep 1
Hi Hippietrail. I wanted to get in touch with you and a few other members of the Wiktionary community about the upcoming rollout of the Usability Initiative features (Vector and enhanced editing features). I was referred to you by DCDuring who thought you might be a good person to reach out to. We’ve already rolled out the changes to approximately 100 projects and are currently planning on rolling out the new features the remaining Wikimedia projects (including Wiktionary) on September 1 and hope to have any blocking issues resolved by August 25.

As I’m sure you know, some gadgets and customizations may not be compatible with Vector. Would it be possible for you to help us identify the major incompatibilities? We’re using Bugzilla to track issues (please file under "Usability Initiative"). Also, our FAQ page has info on how to test Vector.

I look forward to your feedback! Howief 22:08, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Hi there. Normally I would be pretty helpful for such a task but at the moment I'm hitchhiking from Europe to the Caucasus and don't always have internet connectivity or time to switch my mind to "Wiktionary mode". I should be done in a couple of months though if that won't be too late. Good luck! — hippietrail 08:10, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking in. While we would love your input, the release is planned to happen on Sep 1 and it sounds like you'll be away.  Have a great time on your journey. Howief 22:24, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

nearbypages.fcgi license
Hello, the toolserver is asking if I can use your Perl code for the French Wiktionary. Do you please agree? JackPotte 18:47, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

 * Yes! I certainly agree, please use it and let me know how it goes. We might be able to move it to one single place either as codebase or as server to keep the code generic and make sure improvements affect everybody rather than forking it. — hippietrail 19:33, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that we could save some time if I could see the format of your libraries, eg:

<pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;white-space:-moz-pre-wrap;white-space:-pre-wrap;white-space:-o-pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word;overflow:auto;"> jackpotte@willow:~/public_html$ ls /home/hippietrail/buxxo/$langname.txt ls: cannot access /home/hippietrail/buxxo/.txt: No such file or directory jackpotte@willow:~/public_html$ JackPotte 22:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

 * Sorry JackPotte I've been travelling the world for five months and have forgotten how hacky this code is. It uses a hard-coded path "buxxo" which contains per-language lists of words in each language parsed from the XML dump files. This is something we should fix if the code is going to be used more widely. If you look at my toolserver projects you will find some of the tools that create these lists. Sorry I can't be of more help right now but please dig through it all and ask any questions and I'll do my best to help. I should be back home and wiki-ing in about five or six weeks and then I'll be more help. Good luck until then! — hippietrail 15:40, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks and have a nice trip. JackPotte 23:57, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

 * Hi JackPotte I'm active hacking Wiktionary again though with limited internet. I'm keen to help out with nearbypages.fcgi — hippietrail 04:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your help, I didn't do anything because I've developed an Autoformat bot for fr.wikt during this time.
 * The project would be please to share your Perl code which is hidden on the toolserver, after I may be able to replace some variables in order to propose Nearbypages.js as a gadget easy to install with all Wiktionaries, at least. Regards. JackPotte 07:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

birdishness
Hi Hippietrail,

Would you happen to know if that Australian sense is real? If so, should there be a corresponding sense at [[birdish]]?

Thanks in advance!

—Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 12:30, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

 * No I can't recall ever hearing it but it does have a slightly plausible ring to it so I won't rule it out either. I won't be near my dictionaries for at least a month though. — hippietrail 12:55, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

 * Thanks. Don't worry, I'm not planning to speedy-delete it. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 13:13, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Welcome back!
—Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 04:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

 * Good to see you back, Andrew.
 * I have a request. Could you find for me all ==Old Armenian== entries which have ===Noun===, ===Proper Noun=== and ===Adjective=== in them, but no ====Declension====? And all ===Verb===s, without ====Conjugation====? --Vahag 17:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

 * I'm around but I have very limited Internet time now. But that means more hacking time. I'll see what I can do (-: — hippietrail 05:38, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

 * Done but with just wiktgrep.pl which you should learn to use yourself (-: User talk:Vahagn Petrosyan:Missing inflections — hippietrail 01:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

 * I asked cirwin, but he hasn't responded. Could you please update this list? It's just a list of entries with an ==Armenian== header. I don't need ==Old Armenian==, only modern. --Vahag 11:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

File:Thai sticker.JPG
Hiya. Is this deletable now that เรารักในหลวง exists as an entry? —msh210℠ (talk) 22:30, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

 * If you feel it's important to delete it go right ahead (-: — hippietrail 05:01, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not important precisely, but look at it this way: If I get my fix this way, I won't feel such a need to delete sums of parts and overly fine topical categories. (Or maybe it'll just feed the need? I suppose we'll find out.) Done. Thanks. —msh210℠ (talk) 08:12, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Parsing Translations
Do you know of any ready Python scripts for parsing translations? ~ heyzeuss 14:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

 * No sorry. I'm not really a Python guy but I can tell you it's not trivial to do completely. If you want to aim at only handling translations which use a "t" template it will be much easier but less complete. Cirwin would be a better person to ask as he's done translation parsing and he's a Python guy. — hippietrail 02:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

importExternalScript
Hello! Just wanted to ask you to take a look at MediaWiki talk:Common.js. Thanks! Kaldari 18:58, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Mediawatchdog2
HI & boy am I glad I found you a fellow Aussie to discuss a situation I have atm. I am quite new to all of this wiki world so am at a bit of a loss. You see I have been trying to repeatedly edit a wiktionary page "kiki" for some time by removing false & offensive information & have been blocked by SemperBlotto for doing so. He says I am vandalising! How am I vandalising by removing false & offensive information? The meaning for the word "kiki" is being published on wiktionary as meaning "vagina" in filipino & penis in french. Neither are true, this is complete rubbish. I have researched extensively & kiki does not exist in either the filipino dictionary or the french. My family is French by the way. I have contacted this old semperblotto to which he replied "you need references" & that he is not familiar with either language.

I provided him with ample information & he refused to use it. I am at a loss here & feeling very disheartened by the "powers that be" running this show. I mean, doesn't wiktionary pride itself on the publication of current & correct information? I am completely offended that I would be labelled a vandal when I am trying to promote the truth. In addition to all of this, there are no references to back up these claims, which is what this semperblotto person told me where mandatory. The only reference listed is for a hawaiian dictionary, which I clicked on & researched, & it returned zero results, there is no such word in the hawaiian dictionary. There is absolutely no basis to this old mans claims, I honestly don't understand what he is trying to prove.

I am sorry to bother you with this but I am becoming very frustrated & can't seem to do anything as I have been unfairly blocked. Please help

Regards

User:Mediawatchdog2

Wiktionary database
...My long term dream for Wiktionary is to make it queryable like a database.

Hi! Welcome to play with the database of the machine-readable dictionary which contains data automatically extracted from Wiktionary: the project wikokit. See also SQL query examples. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky 09:05, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

 * Ooh thanks! I'll try to have a play with it but I'm travelling the world on a shoestring budget right now so not at my nerdiest (-:

Toolserver user-store
Hi,

there is lot of files on the toolserver that are downloaded in the root of /mnt/user-store (like enwiktionary-20111024-pages-articles.xml), when they should be properly stored in directories (say dumps/enwiktionary). You seem to be the one creating them, so do you think you can do something about this ? Same goes for the files such as en20110521-all.txt and en20110521-off.raw. Dakdada 09:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes way back when the user store was created I tried to get some guidance as to where they should be but didn't get any helpful/definitive response and various people were using it differently. So I put them somewhere. It could be that usage has gelled since then into a more well defined structure.

At the moment I'm hitchhiking around the world and don't always have great internet access. It should be fine to move the dumps anywhere. But the ones with the embedded dates are used by popular JavaScript extensions to Wiktionary that will require some changes to get working in a different path. It should be safe to move all the ones with older dates though and just keep the set with the most recent dates in the current directory until I get a chance to work on it.

Unless somebody else wants to help with the code, but nobody has ever wanted to contribute in the past )-: — hippietrail 12:32, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Fuko
Hi, I thought Swahili must have a word for “mole rat”. At the moment, mole gives fuko for both “mole” and “mole rat”, but according to German Wikipedia, golden moles are extremely rare in East Africa if they exist at all, and AFAIU no other moles are known to inhabit sub-Saharan Africa, so I assume fuko is chiefly used for (and originally referred to) “mole rat” rather than “mole” or “golden mole”.

However, your entry fuko currently says “mole (blemish)”. Are you sure that's correct? Does it have the same double-meaning as in English?

This dictionary says fuko (pl. mafuko; not to be confused with m(i)fuko) is animate (so “blemish” seems unlikely) and means “mole”. This dictionary does not seem helpful, nor does this.

By the way, it's not in any way important, I was just curious. --Dustsucker 00:32, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

 * Thanks for letting me know about this. If you think it's wrong it probably is. I like to populate Wiktionary with missing stuff sometimes and often get words from Wikipedia, Google Translate, or online dictionaries. But I also have a Swahili phrasebook and a small Swahili pocket dictionary. Usually when I buy such a book a enter a few words in Wiktionary. It seems odd that I would add the qualifier though. Simplistic sources often don't qualify their entries so my guess is either that I misread a simplistic source, one had a wrong entry, or I tried to add it without qualifying it but somebody came along later and tried to qualify it but guessed wrong... Do you best to clean it up please (-: — hippietrail 10:41, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

 * This shows several different but related meanings for the word. —Stephen (Talk) 11:12, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

 * Nice link, thanks. Apparently kamusi.org has three kinds of meaning for fuko or similar (ufuko/mfuko) words:
 * “coast” and “ditch”, I guess these are somehow related
 * “mole rat” and, by extension, other animals resembling mole rats
 * “bag” and similar things such as wombs
 * kamusi.org has quite a few words for “blemish” but none resembling fuko. So just based on that I'd say our fuko entry is wrong. Have a nice week and thanks for your work – Dustsucker 02:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

مفصل
This was your doing, so...could you fix it, please — <font face="Lucida console"> [Ric Laurent] — 22:46, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

 * You haven't told me what needs fixing. If the words there are wrong, they're also in the Translations section of the entry for knuckle, which is probably where I got them from. Other than that I can't see what you might be referring to. — hippietrail 06:00, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

 * OK I see the links are all messed up. Fixing it now. — hippietrail 06:08, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Iritis
The article iritis has a not at the top to see Iritis but we don't have that article. I think you added the 'see' link. Do you remember why? RJFJR 21:27, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

 * I generally do this when I find out that such a word exists, whether it already has an entry or not. Red links are not bad things. I would assume it's either a proper name or a German noun. Sometimes they are erroneous of course. I don't have a specific memory of this word though. — hippietrail 22:50, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes if you expand the translation section or follow the links to the German Wikipedia article you will see that "Iritis" is the German word for "iritis". It just doesn't have an entry yet. Red links help advertise which entries are still needed so please don't remove it. — hippietrail 22:58, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Regarding to Requested entries of Georgian l.
Well, I've decided to empty this page, but i can't make articles for all words you post there, besides most of them are declensional forms and spending time on that, I think, isn't good idea. so if you just want translations of words and not the entries to be made, please post them in my talk page, i will translate them for you. Sincerely other's(XD), Dixtosa--88.123.102.25 14:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Translation requests, Frankish
Frankish is almost entirely (or perhaps even entirely) unattested, so I'd say to avoid Frankish requests all together. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:28, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Really? I was looking for traces of a couple of related words that came into English from some version of French or other way back but all those historicolinguistic details are all fuzzy in my mind now. I think I actually had Norman English in mind. — hippietrail (talk) 12:40, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Georgian translation requests
Hi,

It's only my opinion but making so many requests is not very productive, even if Georgian is the language that could use more attention. We don't have enough Georgian speakers/learners willing to fill them soon and the requests will just hang there. If you really want to know those words, please consider buying dictionaries, textbooks, then later on you could possibly start adding those translations yourself. Or talk to Dixtosa to directly. Just a thought, don't take it personal, please. --Anatoli (обсудить) 20:31, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Don't worry I have an ever-increasing stack of Georgian dictionaries and textbooks, there's not many available though. I am in touch with Dixtosa and he's doing a great job. I'm not pressuring him at all. I'm just adding words as I come across them. Some are not in the dictionaries but many are ambiguous due to the dictionaries lacking much context and also verbs having very difficult morphology which I'm currently trying to learn. Anyway I firmly believe requests pages are the places to add such hard to enter words. Nobody should interpret them as things which are needed immediately or jobs they have to work through. They are just one way we see more obviously that Wiktionary is and probably always will be a work in progress. In fact I've always used the request pages like this since I invented them (-; — hippietrail (talk) 22:21, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I see your point. Good luck with your studies. Yeah, that's right, I forgot that you actually invented it. A good tool (trreq) but sometimes it interferes with unrelated languages when adding a translation. I have to do it manually then. --Anatoli (обсудить) 22:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Geor not Arab
Heya,

Georgian uses Geor, not Arab script (sc value in translations). --Anatoli (обсудить) 00:51, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * Yes I know. It seems somebody has messed with the templates or JavaScript involved in the "assisted" translation adding stuff. I'm not sure where to look for this damage or where to report the bug. For now I'll keep using it though and go back and fix the mess after the bug is fixed \-: — hippietrail (talk) 05:28, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * I noticed that when you add it manually once it remembers your selection for a language. Try adding manually "Geor" into "Script template" and see what happens. Actually check what you see in "Script template" I see "Geor" as expected. --Anatoli (обсудить) 06:10, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * (during edit conflict) Actually I just trawled through Recent changes in Templates: and Wiktionary: and didn't spot anything then I had a look at the translation assistant. Under a more/less button there is a field "Script template" and this was indeed showing "Arab". Not from my doing. I've made it blank and see if it stays away. If not I'll set it to Geor. If it puts itself back to Arab I'll let you know so we can find somebody who can find the bug. — hippietrail (talk) 06:14, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * You can’t just make it blank, it won’t remember it. I think you have to make it blank and immediately enter a translation using that setting. Then it remembers. —Stephen (Talk) 06:50, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks Stephen, that's what I meant actually, I was just too lazy to type the full procedure. Indeed it did work. I made it blank, added a Georgian term, and I wasn't sure if it would stay blank but it got reset to "Geor" so everything is fixed now (-: — hippietrail (talk) 07:03, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

ka:ტრაინიკი and ru:тройник
Hi,

I have attempted to answer your question about the Georgian ტრაინიკი Translation_requests. --Anatoli (обсудить) 00:59, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Apostrophes
Is there a reason to change U+0027 ( ' ) to U+2019 ( ’ ) as you did on ? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 15:37, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Both because ’ is more correct and for consistency because one of the two places in the page needing an apostrophe already had it. We decided this way the best approach quite a few years back though I'm not sure if that policy might have changed over time. I feel it's always better to use the most correct character for display even if there may be other concerns for how to store it internally. It's not much different to what we do with Hebrew geresh, gershayim, and maqaf, which some people type in ASCII instead of the most correct characters. — hippietrail (talk) 08:34, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Alright thanks. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 09:08, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver (2)
Hi! The links in Random page don't work any more. It seems your toolserver account has expired. Do you think you can do anything about it? These language-specific random pages are really nice, once they work again :-) Greetings --MaEr (talk) 07:21, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

 * I agree, this is giving me a headache, too. It’s a feature that I use all the time, and when it stops working, it clogs things up. I think that there is someone else here who knows how to fix this, but I don’t remember who it was. I think somebody else fixed it last time, about six months ago, but it had been broken for several months before he got around to doing it. Maybe User:Ruakh?? I can’t remember. —Stephen (Talk) 10:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

 * Sorry guys. I thought I already replied to this but as I'm camping on a beach on the Romanian Black Sea coast I don't have the best hacking environment or connectivity right now. Also I keep forgetting to dig out the old USB stick with my SSL keys on it that I need to access the ToolServer.
 * I do want to fix it but I'm not sure when I'll get the chance. The long-term solution is of course as always to find some more people who are interested in joining the effort to create and maintain Wiktionary support tools. The ToolServer allows a group of us to access a single account where the code repo lives and where the tools are run from. Every time a Connel or a Cirwin leaves Wiktionary, gets busy with other stuff, or is just temporarily lazing about in low-tech bliss we will have these problems.
 * I'm very happy to help mentor people that want to join our "team" and help out with this stuff. And I'll try to find my USB stick and reenable my ToolServer account. Sorry for the outage. Try to find some more Wiktionarians to help! (= — hippietrail (talk) 15:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC) (PS I think I eventually fixed it last time but I could be wrong.)

 * OK I've got a new USB stick with the SLL keys on it sorted out and I've posted a ticket on the Toolserver issue tracking system to reopen my account. Hopefully I can get this stuff working again soon. — hippietrail (talk) 08:52, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

 * The Toolserver guys seemed to be busy over the weekend but they've reenabled my account and the stuff random page per language seems to be working. I'll try to update it to the latest dump file too. Enjoy and help find some more technical types to help with this stuff please! (-: — hippietrail (talk) 09:32, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

 * I had left a message on WT:GP looking for some volunteers, and I thought for sure there would be some, but the response has been underwhelming. I’m willing to try to do this, and I have a couple of USB sticks, but I’m not really a technical type and have no idea what it might entail. —Stephen (Talk) 02:17, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

 * In fact it involved lots of technical domain knowledge, like how using *nix from the command line including some of it usual commands and tools, then the more specific environment of the ToolServer, which changes relatively frequently. And programming knowledge.

 * This time none of those things were needed, just the account being reactivated. But when stuff on the ToolServer changes the code of my Wiktionary tools often has to change. In fact much of the other stuff I've done over the years doesn't work anymore so we're lucky with the random page per language stuff. — hippietrail (talk) 13:30, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, that means Stephen and I can't do it. Hippietrail, have you considered targeting a couple active editors who are technically minded (I'm sure you know which people I mean.)? That might be more effective, asking them directly. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually I don't know who dabbles in that kind of stuff these days now that we are without Connel, Conrad, and Robert )-: — hippietrail (talk) 07:51, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow. We are screwed in a really massive way. Um, if I were you I would try asking Yair rand, Ruakh, Msh210, everybody else who contributes a lot on GP threads... --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 14:27, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems that some policy changes on the ToolServer about where and how to store dumps and other data means my scripts that generate the data for random page per language are not going to work without changes so I would have to re-learn my old code to fix it. Not easy with my unreliable Internet here. Unfortunately I found out when trying to update this stuff and in the process destroyed most of the old data. Sorry )-: — hippietrail (talk) 21:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know anything about Toolserver, but I have plenty of *nix command-line experience, and am happy to try to work on this. Where do I begin? Do I request a Toolserver account? —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 19:13, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually I'm really bad with toolserver-specific stuff too. They change it more frequently than I'm there lately too. Best read their wikis. They might have an IRC too - sorry I'm very helpful with this stuff )-: — hippietrail (talk) 05:37, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

 * I found some time and updated the code to work with all the new ways the Toolserver works. Random page per language is back. It won't update itself automatically each time a new dump is published like it used to though. For now that has to be manual but enjoy the randomness! — hippietrail (talk) 12:27, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Usurp
Could you please delete the user Chris55 so that I can usurp the id. I created it a long time back with an email address which I no longer have access to and can't remember the password and my Wiki account is in permanent transition as a result. Thanks.
 * Sorry, users can't be deleted. If you don't have the password or the email's password, there's literally nothing we can do. I also have no idea why you care, because that account has zero edits here, so it's not like you have a persona or an edit count to preserve. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 14:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * If the name is important to you, first register a temporary username, then go to Changing username and make a request to usurp User:Chris55. Since you have to create a temporary username anyway, why not just choose a different name such as User:Chris555 and not worry about User:Chris55? —Stephen (Talk) 02:53, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

shop stealer
Hey there - I see you did a bunch of work on our "shop stealer" entry.

But are you positive of the etymology? How did you establish that "shop steal" came first and then "shop stealer". To me it seems much more likely that "shop stealer" came first because it sounds natural whereas "shop steal" is probably a back-formation because it sounds unnatural. — hippietrail (talk) 09:07, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks. "Shoplifter" and "shoplifting" are apparently quite old (online etym says 1680 for the former). The verb usage seems 20C, but predates what I can see of "shop stealer" and related. I've edited the entry and think/hope it does the situation justice. — Pingkudimmi 15:39, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes I'm pretty sure "shopstealing", "shopstealer", "shopsteal" were made up in Australia as recently as the 1980s because the older words with "lift" didn't sound criminal enough. — hippietrail (talk) 22:17, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

WT:About Yiddish
Hi! I recently created this page, which is meant to have a centrally located repository of information about the standardized treatment of Yiddish on Wiktionary. I'm giving you this message because you have shown interest in Yiddish, and we need your help! The page especially needs better coverage of the many undocumented headword-line and conjugation templates, but any assistance is welcomed. Please feel free to edit the page, and to raise any issues for discussion at Wiktionary talk:About Yiddish. Thanks so much! --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:50, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Random word
You're the one that made the random word by language for Wiktionary, right? Well, its seems it's kind of broken:

English: Seemingly works fine

Japanese: sent to fa

Swahili: sent to fa

Lojban: sent to klama once and then fa

User:Umbreon126--「talk」 04:27, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

 * I found some time and updated the code to work with all the new ways the Toolserver works. Random page per language is back. It won't update itself automatically each time a new dump is published like it used to though. For now that has to be manual but enjoy the randomness! — hippietrail (talk) 12:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

DidYouMean
Hi!

Please see this comment for Brion Vibber's review of the DidYouMean extension; before it can be deployed on Wikimedia Foundation sites, it needs various improvements. Thank you! Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 22:00, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks Sharihareswara but that extension was submitted so many years ago that we all long since gave up on it and moved on. — hippietrail (talk) 00:14, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response, hippietrail. My sympathies on the frustration of the delay. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 15:36, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

under the pump
Hi Hippietrail. I've just done a bit of work on this entry, and wondered if you have an opinion. I have provided a possible etymology (not being enamoured of the construction industry theory) with some citations under "non-idiomatic usage" that partially back it up. Intriguingly, the NZ quote hints at a possible gold mining connection. Failing something like that, it's hard to see why it should be specifically Australian. — Pingkudimmi 15:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

 * In fact I can't say I've ever heard this expression at all. Sorry to be of so little help )-: — hippietrail (talk) 10:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Labs
Hello Hippietrail,

As you know the toolserver is bound to move to the [//labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikimedia Labs] in the next 1-2 years. I created a project there called [//labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nova_Resource:Wiktionary-tools wiktionary-tools] with the purpose of gathering the various tools that may have been developed by individuals for the Wiktionary projects in different languages. Although it is not quite ready yet to work there, I intend to invite every Wiktionary tools programmer in this project so that we may share our codes more easily (maintenance should also be easier). Since you developed some highly useful tools (e.g. [//toolserver.org/~enwikt/]), I thought you might be interested.

I'm still learning how the Labs work, but if you are interested I can add you to the project (this would give you admin rights, by default). Dakdada (talk) 12:03, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

 * Thanks for letting me know. I've heard of Labs but don't know much about it yet. I've just taken up node.js and the version on ToolServer is too ancient to run the same code I develop at home. Hopefully Labs will have an up-to-date node.js and I can make some more stuff! — hippietrail (talk) 06:26, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Ido
What Ido even means? Example Ido from this entry danko. Thanks!Trongphu (talk) 02:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * See Ido or Ido. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Randompage
Hippietrail, just a headsup in case you didn’t notice yet. It looks like your account HTTP server at toolserver.org - ts-admins [at] toolserver [dot] org has expired. —Stephen (Talk) 00:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah sorry I forgot that some tools would stop working as a result. I'll get my account reactivated in the next day or two. — hippietrail (talk) 03:07, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Man, it's been a week. We're getting a lot of complaints about it. Please reactivate your account, and if you're not going to, at least tell us so we can remove the link. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:54, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry my internet account ran out and then I ran out of money to buy some more. I missed the deadline for the easy way to re-start my toolserver account so I'll have to file a request on Jira... — hippietrail (talk) 13:11, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I asked for my account to be reactivated several days ago, but it seems to have been lost in the Easter holiday backlog. You can probably vote on it to get it some attention: Reactivate Toolserver account "hippietrail" / "Andrew Dunbar" — hippietrail (talk) 01:32, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Marlen/nosy" finally reactivated my account for the next three months. Random page in any language is back! — hippietrail (talk)
 * By the way, if anybody can offer an alternative place to host this tool or is interested in working on it so it doesn't depend solely on myself, please let me know. — hippietrail (talk) 02:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If your tool only requires a database and a webservice, then you can move it to the [//wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nova_Resource:Tools Tools Labs], which should be stable enough now for that. The projects are centered on tools rather than on users, so if a user goes missing, the tool remains (although there should be other maintainers to keep it up).
 * Actually I would be interested in having one single "Random Page" project shared between all Wiktionary projects (I have a similar tool for the French Wiktionary). Where can I find the code that you use to create your random page database? Dakdada (talk) 13:44, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't even require a database to run, it mostly requires disk space and RAM. Every time I've looked at Labs I start reading and end up drifting to some other page without garnering much idea how it works or what it does.
 * It relies on some "standard" tools of mine that are used for various purposes, plus some special tools that are only of use for the English Wiktionary or just for random page per language. These tools are based on parsing dump files rather than consulting any database. The tools could run on the same machine as the "data server", or could be run on some other machine and the data copied for serving. The tools are all available in the Toolserver Fisheye under either "enwikt" or "hippietrail". If they're poorly documented it's because of lack of other people wanting to use them so just ask me directly. I am currently working on newer versions on some of these tools which only exist here on my local machine. Programming languages for the older versions are C and Perl, for the newer versions I've moved from Perl to node.js — hippietrail (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Everything you need to know to create a tool should be here: Wikimedia Labs/Tool Labs/Help. Right now, I'd like to try to implement only the random word bit in a specific tool (note: projects can share files and databases). I'm more inclined to use a database than separate files, though (I suppose it can be easily converted one way or the other). Dakdada (talk) 15:14, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * From memory I decided to do it this way because databases sucked at selecting a random row. But it was years ago and I'm no database expert and I certainly had other reasons too since I was using my existing indexing tools which were all designed to be portable to places with no database. It would be pretty trivial to change it and the file-based stuff for the per-language stuff is a hack anyway. Generally I'd much prefer to port it to node.js which is a superior scripting for many things. — hippietrail (talk) 02:32, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * To give you an idea, here is how I do this with a database: I have 2 tables, one with a list of languages with their number of articles, and one for the list of articles, in which each article has a language field (language code) and a unique id generated from 1 to the number of articles in the language. The random script then makes two queries: one to retrieve the number of articles for a given language, a the second to retrieve an article name with an id chosen randomly from 1 to the number of articles. That's it. So, we could easily add any Wiktionary project to the random_page tool with just a list of articles with their language (converted in 2 tables).
 * Note that I mainly code my scripts in perl and I don't know much about node.js (I'm willing to learn if it's worth it though). Dakdada (talk) 10:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I find addressing elements of nested structures to be quite a pain in Perl, when the structures get complicated I always have to revert to trial and error. The biggest pain with node.js is now nontrivial it is to read a file one line at a time when don't want to read the entire file into memory. I also find node.js more consistent across platforms, for instance you get Unicode on the command line even under Windows and you can always use 53-bit integers. On Perl whether integers are 32-bit or 64-bit depends on build options and the most common Windows builds are still 32-bit unless you get the 64-bit version for 64-bit Windows! These things won't matter for many people but my dump indexing tools need it. Also the best thing on node.js is IO is always asynchronous by default, like using POE under Perl but it's always there. — hippietrail (talk) 03:26, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Ossetian Cyrillic ӕ and Roman æ
Hi,

Shouldn't Ossetian use Cyrillic letters? I think the main entry should use Cyrillic ӕ. A redirect from Roman æ would also be helpful. Mistakes are numerous, though. Ossetian is not common on the internet, so people copy each other's errors in wiktionaries, etc. I moved цæст to Cyrillic цӕст--Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 07:04, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

 * Hi Atitarev. Yes it should use the Cyrillic letter. I'm creating some pages by copying and pasting from translation entries so it seems somebody had added it there with the Latin character, possibly before fonts were around with the Cyrillic letter. Thanks for spotting and fixing it! — hippietrail (talk) 07:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

 * To make it easier, Roman letters are Æ, æ, Cyrillic Ӕ and ӕ. I've add a line - "os: {from: "Ææ", to: "Ӕӕ"}, /** Cyrillic to Roman **/" in User:Conrad.Irwin/editor.js so that any new translation into Ossetian with Roman letters would convert automatically but "head" would still use Roman. Some translations are mine, copied from Russian Wiktionary (they also often use Roman instead of Cyrillic). I think it's the only language with this letter. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 07:19, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Great work! — hippietrail (talk) 07:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

nds doesn't run
Hello, I have made a new Translation: plate 1. Translation: "dish from which food is served or eaten" in Low German, but it shows no (nds) after the tranlated word, so there is no link to the nds.wiktionary.org. Someone must have make a change, because in the past it runs. Perhaps you have a look on it. By the way: the nds-Wiktionary is for the languages with the codes nds, nds-nl and pdt, because nds-nl and pdt are only dialects of nds. In our wiktionary we have more dialects without speziell language-codes, the reason is, that the nds-nl used the Dutch spelling, the pdt is something like a mix of High German and Low German, because the Minoites came from many places in northern Germany and the Nederlands. I cannot speak both dialects, pdt and nds-nl, so I do not make translations by myself on the en.wiktionary, but perhaps you look, that the links pdt and nds-nl will also start the page nds.wiktionary.org. I havn't proofed that. Sorry for my English, but I havn't speak English about 20 or 30 years. For answers, please use: http://nds.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bruker_Diskuschoon:Joachim_Mos --Joachim Mos (talk) 12:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have responded there. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 13:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that you think nds-nl and pdt are only dialects of nds, but you can't speak nds-nl or pdt despite speaking nds. Anyway, Hippietrail (and anyone else who hasn't been following this issue from the start) may find my index of past discussions useful. - -sche (discuss) 18:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Template:attention
Please start using this template. It should be placed on every entry in a language you don't know so that a contributor in that language can fix it later. Otherwise, we have no efficient way of finding these entries, which are often messy and do not use the right templates. Thanks in advance —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:00, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm there probably should be a way to automate such a thing. Just being a speaker of a language doesn't mean knowledge of en.wiktionary template ecosystem so it would seem most new entries and also most new additions to translation tables would need to be checked by either or both a native speaker and a skilled en.wiktionary template expert. Only a minority of contributors would be both.
 * It would seem best to have a system where the template is applied automatically for all new entries except when a user has declared or been granted proficiency in both the language and the template ecosystem of that language on en.wiktionary
 * Which would still leave all other edits other than new entry creations with stuff that potentially needs to be checked but wouldn't have the ((attention)) template. — hippietrail (talk) 02:25, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

 * I'll be in the IRC channel if you want to trade some thoughts and ideas. — hippietrail (talk) 02:29, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Some languages don't have much infrastructure or are easy to deal with. I don't want to flood attention categories, I just know that your entries are not even corroborated with other dictionaries, so they need it. I have a different wiki-philosophy than you, but I see this as a compromise. The entry looks the same to readers, but it enables editors to improve it instead of trawling through your contribs looking for problems. PS: Embarrassingly, I don't know how to use IRC. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Almost all of these entries I'm making are corroborated with a translation somebody already added to a translation table on an English entry first. It's definitely not a good idea to check only entries but leave translations unchecked anyway. I'll try to learn all the new template changes that have come about since I was previously active here and I'll be pondering ways to automate or improve them. If you want to learn how to join the #wiktionary IRC channel on the freenode network we can meet in the middle (-: — hippietrail (talk) 02:49, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's not what corroboration means :) It implies checking with a separate source, hopefully one with a bit more info that we would require in an entry but not in a translation (pron, etym, decl, conj, -nyms, etc). I have joined #wiktionary but I'm not sure how to chat with you. What do I do? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I'm on :) But if you want to continue this conversation, maybe here is a better place to do it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Attention templates
I noticed you've added these to a few entries you created. But you haven't given any indication what needs attention, so it will just confuse people. 03:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what they need. I was told to add the templates there. I was under the impression that they're supposed to lead to somebody with specialized knowledge of the language and templates involved to check that everything's OK. I'm getting almost all of them from translations previously added to English entries. — hippietrail (talk) 03:04, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The template itself takes a parameter that lets you specify what needs attention. So you can put something like, which is a lot clearer and is less likely to puzzle other editors who see "attention" but without anything obvious that needs attention. 03:05, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip! — hippietrail (talk) 03:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Forced user renames coming soon for SUL
Hi, sorry for writing in English. I'm writing to ask you, as a bureaucrat of this wiki, to [//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-Single+User+Login+finalisation+announcement%2FPersonal+announcement&filter=&action=page translate and review the notification] that will be sent to all users, also on this wiki, who will be forced to change their user name on May 27 and will probably need your help with renames. You may also want to help with the pages Rename practices and Global rename policy. Thank you, Nemo 13:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Your edits to Template:l
What are those new parameters for? 00:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's all documented - it's to solve the long-standing problem where you can't associate several orthogonal chinese/japanese/korean variants to the same transliteration in a single entry.
 * needs this logic too but this is a much lower impact template to introduce it first and see how it goes. — hippietrail (talk) 01:10, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Please stop. I object to this use of parameters on . It needs to be discussed first because there are better ways to do this. 01:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You've had eleven years to implement one of these better ways. Whatever happened to "be bold"? It has no impact on existing stuff. Anyway I'm in our IRC channel - it's much easier to communicate there than via talk pages. — hippietrail (talk) 01:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't even been here for eleven years. "be bold" is fine as long as it doesn't introduce practices that do more harm than good, especially not with such a widely used template like . Also, what happened to bold, revert, discuss? 01:17, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I've created a discussion at Grease pit/2013/May. 01:21, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I have been here for eleven years and I've never heard of "bold, revert, discuss". Anyway I'm waiting to discuss. Please come and join. — hippietrail (talk) 01:22, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

юрт
Why did you remove the interwiki links there? They were valid as far as I can tell. 12:52, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

 * Did I? Sorry must've done it accidentally while I was doing the synonym. I'll put them back. — hippietrail (talk) 12:55, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

trreq
Hi, could you tell me what you did to add trreq to maize in your most recent edits? I'm wondering how it works. 00:30, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

 * Hi CodeCat. It's a very poorly documented feature. I think I created the original version of the template template some years ago and later Cirwin added support for it in the JavaScript translation editor when I asked him. But I guess he expected only I would ever use it so the interface is not very slick. Basically you enter the language code (or name) as usual and then instead of a translation you type in . Apparently one problem is that his code adds the trreq with a language name parameter but these days the language code is preferred.
 * Let me know whether this is clear enough. — hippietrail (talk) 03:05, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you. I've changed the script so that it adds the code instead of the name, but I'm not sure if it works right. Please test it when you can and let me know if there are any problems? 10:24, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * OK I'll refresh the browser to make sure I have the current version and give it a go. By the way if you can think of a better user interface for the feature I think it's pretty useful but not very discoverable. — hippietrail (talk) 10:29, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It adds codes for me, but it's still adding language names when you add them, apparently. Very strange. Is it possible that you are using a custom version of some sort? 10:45, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I usually edit with several tabs and once and due to a very overloaded system on a slow connection I only did a CTRL+F5 in one of them. I would expect my edits should now be coming through with codes ... — hippietrail (talk) 10:50, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * No they're still coming up with names. See your latest edit to metal. I really have no idea why this is happening, unless you are still using an outdated version. 10:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Well I did used to have a forked version of Cirwin's code but I'm sure I'm not still using it since I've seen other changes appear over the past months. In case I didn't properly refresh as I thought I've just done a CTRL-F5 again - no new trreq's yet but I'll try to throw in another one or two soon. — hippietrail (talk) 11:03, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm it still used language names when I edited mirror after a refresh so I dug around with the browser dev tools to see where the code is coming from and I got this URL: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=User:Conrad.Irwin/editor.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript - isn't that what everybody uses? — hippietrail (talk) 11:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is, and I see the changes I made in that file as well... 11:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe I have two copies and just can't see the other one. Soon I'll log out and add some trreq's then I'll log in again and add some more and see what that results in. — hippietrail (talk) 11:27, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Well I just added a few requests to book while logged out, and since I'm on a dynamic IP it's unlikely I have any custom js there. I'm using the latest Google Chrome on Windows 7 32-bit if that makes any difference. — hippietrail (talk) 11:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you tell me exactly what you are doing? I will try to retrace your steps and see if the same happens for me. 15:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

randompage
Hi, hippietrail. Using randompage evokes the message "403: User account expired" again. It doesn’t seem like it’s been six months since you last reset it. Maybe it’s an anomaly or some sort of error. —Stephen (Talk) 10:45, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed it doesn't seem like that long. But I do know my toolserver account just expired today or yesterday. There are bigger problems with the toolsver right now though. It's dying and to be replaced with a new project called "Labs". I've copied my code there from the toolserver but haven't got it to compile yet. The people maintaining the toolserver have also been losing interest since they're getting replace. I'll see what I can do but as always it's hard to motivate myself sometimes as a one-man team with changes I don't always understand. — hippietrail (talk) 15:24, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm still hoping you can fix this... —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:47, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It's unlikely now. I've quit my job to go travelling on the first of August, I don't have free Internet access, I haven't learned the differences from Toolserver to Labs, my C code to index dumps doesn't compile there for some reason, nobody has stepped up to help, my laptop is dying, the current bureaucracy here doesn't make me feel comfortable, and there seem to be plenty of users these days with technical skill enough to conjure up an alternative.
 * I'm more than willing to offer some help to anyone who takes up the challenge. All my code is available on Toolserver and free for anyone to use. — hippietrail (talk) 05:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * If someone is willing and has the time to migrate the tool, the folks at the Tool Labs are offering help for migrations (e.g. Coren), the best is to contact them by mail or IRC ([//wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:IRC Here]). Dakdada (talk) 08:49, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

kiṯi
I can't resolve the appearance of both {{taxlink|Spinifex|genus} and in this entry. They are in different subfamilies of Poaceae. Anything you can do to make sense out of it would be great. DCDuring TALK 18:34, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

 * Hmm I don't know. I have a pocket Pitjantjatjara dictionary so the parts I edited must've come from there, but it is now stored away somewhere.
 * Still it's pretty common for the same common name of a life form to be used for different related or unrelated species in all languages including English. I can only suggest Googling for some Pitjantjatjara resources and flagging it with — hippietrail (talk) 05:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

 * Aha! Wikipedia to the rescue. It's as I thought, but the ambiguity is on the English side. In Australia "spinifex" is commonly used for Triodia:
 * Triodia is a large genus of hummock-forming grass endemic to Australia; they are commonly known as spinifex, although they are not a part of the coastal genus Spinifex. There are currently 64 recognised species (Lazarides 1997). Many of the soft-leaved members of this species were formerly included in the genus Plectrachne. — hippietrail (talk) 05:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Thanks. Sorry I missed that. DCDuring TALK 08:32, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
 * No worries. Happy Wiktionizing (-: — hippietrail (talk) 08:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I've conformed [[spinifex]] to the WP story, which renders the sole citation ambiguous at taxon specificity. DCDuring TALK 08:42, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Ainu
Hi Hippietrail! I see you added some Ainu words some time back. I would like to start an Ainu project and was wondering if you're interested. --BB12 (talk) 17:55, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

 * I am passively interested. But other than a fascination for minority language isolates and Japan I don't really know much about Ainu. I haven't even been to Hokkaido. What are you up to? — hippietrail (talk) 12:48, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

 * I just got permission to use a collection of 15K Ainu words from a retired English teacher in Japan. He even sent the data to me in Excel. I want to munge it so it can be uploaded to the Japanese Wiktionary and translate the definitions to English for upload to the English Wiktionary. I also want to create a simple program to convert the Romanization to katakana so we have both forms. --BB12 (talk) 17:13, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Late reply on Translation_requests
Hi,

Please note my late reply re "bedbug". I got it from Sealang dictionary and some checks I made. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 03:09, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk:ആല്
Please revert here Talk:ആല്. Regards. --Vssun (talk) 08:29, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

zampirone
Hi there. What do you call those little devices that you plug into an electric socket. They heat up a small, rectangular pellet of insecticide and do the same job as a zampirone? SemperBlotto (talk) 11:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Good question. I don't know if there's a generic term for them. I expected they were just sold under various trademarks by different companies. But it would be a great question for http://english.stackexchange.com - or if you don't want to use that site let me know and I'll ask there. — hippietrail (talk) 11:39, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Mong and Cyrl Mongolian
You are welcome to vent your spleen here: Beer_parlour/2013/December. :) --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:51, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

real numbers
I saw your post Talk:real numbers from August 2004. Based on the post, I think you might be interested at WT:RFD. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:55, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

σαββατισμός
-σμος is a fairly standard suffix of action, used to make nouns from verbs ending in -ζω, similar to English -tion. Unfortunately, I don't really have enough info to create a suffix entry, but I thought I'd drop you a note, in case it was useful for your discussion (the link you provided doesn't work). Sorry I can't be of more help. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:48, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Thanks very much! (-: And let me check that link )-: ... — hippietrail (talk) 02:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

хот
Why? Is it a different etymology? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 06:52, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

 * It was already there. You added a duplicated from higher in the list. Maybe you meant to add something different. Or maybe I saw it wrong. But I checked it several times because I was a bit surprised. — hippietrail (talk) 07:28, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Here, look at the diff — hippietrail (talk) 07:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

IRC bot
Someone wants your IRC bot(s) back... How could they be run again? - Amgine/t·e 04:15, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

 * It needs a host to run on. I might be able to start it on the toolserver again. I think my account is active and ts hasn't been shut down yet. — hippietrail (talk) 04:18, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

The template needs fixing again
Hello Hippietrail -- Back in October, 2012 you made a nice improvement to the template, changing the text it produces from "alternative name of" to "alternative term for". This allowed the template to be appropriately used more broadly. Recent edits to the template now have it producing the nonsensical text "alternative term for of". Could you please take a look at the situation? Thanks. -- · (talk) 06:07, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I can try but the last few times I edited templates I got into trouble. \-: — hippietrail (talk) 06:17, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It looks like somebody's trying to convert it to use Lua, but something went wrong so it's temporarily held together with a hack which results in the strange wording.
 * But I don't really know much about the Lua system as it's pretty new compared to the work I did here. You should bring it up in the Beer Parlour, or better yet, in the Grease Pit. — hippietrail (talk) 06:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've undone the edit for now. The module should probably be changed so that it no longer includes "of", but that means we have to add "of" to all the templates that already use it. Would anyone like to help with that? 13:49, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah sounds like the classic data vs presentation problems we've always been plagued with due to the nature of MediaWiki not being intended for dictionary content. I'm a bit out of touch but I can certainly help with a couple of pointers for where to start. — hippietrail (talk) 12:05, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If you look at for example, you see it invokes Module:form of with "plural form" as the first parameter. If I make this change, this template and all other templates that transclude Module:form of will need to be changed so that this first parameter includes the word "of" as well. So it would then need to say "plural form of". 13:37, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * An idea, though I don't know whether it's at all possible. How about as a very temporary measure edit the module so it checks for a hard-coded "of" and outputs "of" otherwise; then modify the templates; then re-edit the module so it doesn't output "of"? —msh210℠ (talk) 15:47, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for analyzing and fixing the original template, guys. One question -- Will I break anything if I modify the code in by changing the lower-case "a" that begins "alternative" to an upper-case "A" (so that the template produces the exact text it used to produce and also for stylistic consistency with the text produced by )?  I'm not a programmer, but I know that the code in these templates can be mighty touchy. -- · (talk) 04:43, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Translingual
Hi,

Could you hold off with editing Translingual sections, please, like adding related terms, see also, etc.? Those entries are hardly lexical and the senses often differ across languages, e.g. 私 doesn't mean "I" in Chinese. Related terms belong to Japanese, Chinese words. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:28, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * If you insist on doing them, please discuss it with Chinese and Japanese editors. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * Why this reaction all of a sudden? I must've been doing this for a decade. I've rarely added Related terms in any case since that means etymologically related and isn't all that common in characters. Mostly I'm adding See also which are semantically similar meanings. I have not said that 私 means "I" in Chinese. I have said that "I" is a meaning the character has. Are you suggesting that "Translingual" has changed to mean it covers all languages, or all of the Sinosphere languages? In fact it's a Wiktionary jargon word we made up ourselves and has no outside meaning other than to serve as a placeholder for sections that don't belong to a single particular language.

Please point me to the policy stating "Related terms belong to Japanese, Chinese words". Otherwise I will hold this to be your personal opinion.

— hippietrail (talk) 02:39, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * Sorry if I sounded harsh. I don't mean to mean :) Yes, it's my personal opinion for the moment of a long-time Chinese / Japanese editor. I don't know the opinion of Japanese and Chinese editors who usually stay far away from Translingual sections. It is controversial, though. That's why I'm asking you to stop and discuss in BP or other place. The translingual sections will eventually be addressed, the merger of Sinitic forms is already happening (multi-character entries for now). When this is done. Hanzi, Kanji and translingual and all monosyllabic entries would be next. Just notifying, as I think this is important -, , , , . --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:51, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * A related discussion, which didn't lead anywhere is Beer_parlour. There is an interest but so far no consensus, that's why hardly any editing there. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:56, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * Hmm that's funny Anatoli, so far I seem to find that your the one talking sense in the thread you posted the link to.

 * Back in the day I think I sketched out some of this stuff, with non-language-specific stuff at the top above English. It didn't have a name back then. I don't remember whether the Han character stuff went in that same section or in a section titled "CJK characters" or something that probably changed pretty frequently until it settled down.

 * The point for the section that came to be known as Translingal was for things that weren't really natural vocabulary items belonging to particular languages, but things like symbols that could benefit from having definitions.

 * The point of having section for CJKV characters was to embrace the reality that they are treated as having meanings of their own by many people including the Unicode consortium, people with character tattoos, and god knows how many other random groups of people. There's plenty of times I've asked literate native speakers about a character in China, Taiwan, and Japan what a character means only to be told "it doesn't have any meaning on its own". I've even been told quite forcefully by some native speakers that "they're just like letters in English". Some people even take offence as if I'm saying their characters are not as great as our letters!
 * So getting their own section could satisfy the people that just want to know about characters, the people only interested in Chinese or only Japanese or whatever could safely ignore them. People interested in all the languages that use them might work on them.
 * The point was that the sections should be totally independent. We could encompass all views across "characters have no meaning", "characters have some essential meaning independent of how they are currently used in modern languages at this point in time", "all the characters are japanese and I don't care what the Japanese do with them", "They're not all Chinese, Japan invented their own characters", "China wasn't even a country when most of these characters were invented", and god knows how many other viewpoints!
 * 12 years later how many of them still don't have a single definition in their Chinese sections but do in their language-independent sections? A lot. So obviously the different sections are of interest to different subsets of our users and no one group should get to own them.
 * — hippietrail (talk) 03:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * (E/C)It is much safer to edit individual language sections for related terms, including characters. Han characters should only have links to various forms of the same character (variant, rare, obscure, Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese, etc.), IMO, which is often missing. I'm not saying one set of editors should own translingual but there is no related terms linked to Han characters per se. No published dictionary will provide that. Wyang has very valid points in the discussion but I think we should still keep Translingual (separate from Chinese), maybe with a different name. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:14, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * Thanks Anatoli for pinging me. Unfortunately, I can only talk non-sense and am unsuitable for commenting. Wyang (talk) 04:08, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I disagree with you! Your opinion is very important. Let's just postpone this discussion until the vote and the Chinese merger is complete. I am frustrated about many things but developed a bit of immunity. Don't lose heart so easy! --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:14, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 * Wyang you don't talk nonsense, you're obviously extremely intelligent, knowledgeable, and eloquent. You do seem to have a strong desire to mold things here with a very strong China POV and Wikipedia and and sister projects are about non-POV.

 * Ideally it would be possible for users to see just the sections they are interested in. Sections should stand on their own. There are cases for browsing a character dictionary that tries not to have a POV of any one particular language, dialect, or country.

 * I do agree that the current situation with different sections for the different Chinese languages is a bit of a mess. I'm not against merging most of them:
 * Dungan should definitely not be merged in.
 * The language-independent character stuff should not be merged in, whether it stays under the "Translingual" heading or whatever else.
 * Classical Chinese shouldn't be merged in as it is a lot more different from modern written Mandarin whereas writing in the other Chinese languages and dialects is not much different.
 * Hong Kong / Cantonese does have a degree of its own writing that is different though. And Taiwanese might also have some but even less.
 * There is a problem though that the other Chinese languages and dialects are much more different as languages, which are spoken entities, than in what gets transferred into a written orthography. This is similar to the problem of languages which are not written, or which have a writing system only used by a couple of missionaries. We don't do very well with those languages either.
 * The other problem is that the speech communities of some of the other Chinese languages and dialects may well feel the right to have some control over their language specific information here apart from a top-down Chinese umbrella. I don't know.
 * — hippietrail (talk) 04:28, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Japanese expressions
Hi,

Since you like common Japanese expressions, check out 恐れ入る - a highly polite, formal term (sense #1) - I've added usage examples. One of my Japanese teachers appreciated it very much when I used it in requests. Non-Japanese students rarely used such levels. Of course, you'll here the term in its non-lemma form "恐れ入りますが..." - "excuse me, but...". Note that お手数 has prefix お, since the burden caused to the third party. Expressions with お are more like part of learning the Japanese grammar, styles of speech, not vocabulary. You're welcome to create entries 構わない, 構いません, お大事に yourself from usage examples. I can help you/check, if you want. I just think it's more important to create more lemmas and add usage examples, if words are important in social conversations. The phrasebook is not so popular with some editors. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:41, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Hi yes I've just learned that お has a function making very polite verb requests. I don't believe that any of those would ever seem lexical from what little I know. But as a noun prefix at least some other dictionaries do seem to list at least some of them. お腹 seems to be the prototypical case of lexicalized お- where nobody ever seems to just say "naka" without it whether referring to themself or somebody else etc.
 * But for the requests pages I use them pretty much all the same. I come across terms that for whatever reason I find interesting and I put in a request for somebody who knows more than me when they're looking for inspiration. It's not like I'm issuing orders or trying to reprioritize volunteeer efforts or anything (-:
 * Anyway I'm flying out of Japan in about eight hours so I guess my interests here are going to resume being a mix of many languages rather than focussing on Japanese. — hippietrail (talk) 03:24, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Words like お腹, お茶, お金, お手洗い are always or almost always used with the prefix "お". It's often something bad, dirty that gets a prefix (to soften) or on the contrary, something belonging to the other party or done by another party (to show respect). I know you're not issuing orders but if an explanation is given, perhaps you shouldn't worry if requests are removed from the page to make new requests visible? The page should stay current - blue links removed, entries, which won't be created should also go. Do you agree? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 03:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

券 and 劵
券 and 劵 are different characters. The link to KangXi is helpful.

券(ticket)

劵(fatigue)

You commented "券 has been the simplified chinese variant of 劵 since 1995," but I doubt any such change.--111.87.37.230 05:38, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi 111.87.37.230. Just like many other pairs of characters, they are different characters and they are the same character, depending on perspective.

By all perspectives other than Simplified Chinese they are different characters. But in 1995 the Peoples Republic of China revised how the Chinese writing system is to be used when written in simplified characters. One part of this revision was to make the already extant character 券 take on an extra role as the way to write 劵.

We don't get to judge whether this is a good or bad idea, we just document it. The top section of each Han character page is for information about the character without taking into account any obsolete or modern language or orthography in which the character is used.

The following sections allow space for how the character is used in the various languages. As traditional characters used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, old texts from anywhere, and perhaps in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese these two are separate characters. As simplified characters used in the PRC and Singapore they are now officially the same character.

I'm not an expert by the way, I just hunted around the internet when I saw your change to see which view was true and why somebody added the info you removed. I found discussion around the internet including the official PRC document on the orthography reform. Let me find you a link to that ... — hippietrail (talk) 01:34, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi. Here are the links to on-line ShinHua dictionary for simplified Chinese characters.

 * 券 (quan, xuan)
 * 劵 (juan)
 * The ShinHua also make them different characters. In addition, the pronounciations are also different.
 * I will wait till you find the link.--111.87.37.230 04:48, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

OK here is the link to the document, it was harder to find than I expected: http://www.china-language.gov.cn/wenziguifan/managed/003.htm

Here is the forum thread from 2011 that led me to it: http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=133231713

I also started a new question on the topic on Stack Exchange: http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/8603/did-%e5%8a%b5-and-%e5%88%b8-become-variants-in-prc-simplified-in-1995

— hippietrail (talk) 04:57, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Hippietrail. I have understood your point.
 * Is it possible to move the "alternative form" from "translingual" section to "Mandarin" section? As a Japanese speaker, I find it very weird to see 券 and 劵 are interchangable.
 * I think your research is a great contribution, and I suggest you put the result of your research as a reference to the article, or, at least, in the discussion pages of 券 and 劵 for everyone to see to avoid any future questioning.
 * Thank you.--111.87.37.230 00:14, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

No the Chinese/Mandarin sections I believe use a more specific way to indicate simplified/traditional equivalences. The guys who run the Chinese stuff can get grumpy if others mess with it.

In any case the Translingual section is NOT for only the subset of what is common between all languages which use Han characters, it is for the superset of how all languages use it. You will be able to find very many other Han character articles with information not pertinent to how the character is or was used in Japanese. That's just how it is.

All you need to do is to NOT HAVE an alternative form within the Japanese section, which is how it already is.

What you should always do is to look first at the Japanese section and the secondly at the Translingual section. When you are editing you should probably only edit Japanese sections and leave the Translingual sections to people who take an interest in both Chinese and Japanese, etc.

By the way, you can also find many cases of the opposite. Translingual Han character entries with information pertinent to Japanese but not to Chinese. There are even a tiny number of entries where the information is only relevant to Korean or Vietnamese.

I'll go and add a copy of the alternative forms section to the Chinese section and those guys can change it if it should be done a different way. — hippietrail (talk) 08:24, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks.--111.87.37.230 04:13, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! (-: — hippietrail (talk) 05:30, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users
Dear Hippietrail,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

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Russian entries
Hi,

I don't mind you adding Russian terms, like гражданское неповиновение, as long as you add. I'm still looking after Russian entries, even if I slowed down a bit and focused on something else.--Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:05, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

 * I'll try to remember to add the "attention" template. Usually when I'm making basic entries from translation table redlinks the Russian terms already have entries and I just do the rarer languages. So I don't do that many Russian entries lately to guarantee that I get in the habit of adding "attention". Just ping me again if you notice me forgetting to do it. — hippietrail (talk) 13:17, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I happened to notice this entry but I may not be able in the future. Russian entries all have gender (nouns), stress and inflection as a minimum, without these, they need attention of an editor. We've been trying to maintain some standard for years. If it's too hard to remember and you're happy with leaving entries in a poor state, then please don't do them at all. Not trying to be difficult, thanks for understanding. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 14:54, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I've had a different opinion for the twelve years I've been here. Namely "some information is better than no information". We even have automatically generated maintenance categories for missing/incomplete gender information that can watch. We can also fix it if it's missing for Russian. In any case all it does is bring attention to already extant incomplete translation table entries. Also I can assure you that it will be as hard to remember which languages have editors that wish me not to mess with their favorite languages as it will be to remember which languages I would need to apply an "attention" template to. Not trying to be difficult here either. Sorry if my differing philosophy causes any offence or inconvenience. — hippietrail (talk) 08:52, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not about philosophies, it's about thoroughness and standards. Your language patterns are very scattered, it's OK but you perhaps need to learn to improve your own standards, if you have been here for so long. Your edits are often requests and very basic entries and using Wiktionary translations as a source. Gender (at least) is a basic thing in many European languages, it's also available in two clicks, even using Wiktionary itself. Would you make a French or Spanish noun entry without a gender info? It all seems like a game and constant learning to you, despite 12 years of experience. I know you're trying to work with many languages, I do too but I'd only do substandard edit when I have no choice (I seek advice, double-check, don't rely on one source only), like with Hindi words, where dictionaries don't supply gender, there are no editors or friends I can ask or no-one to check my edits, like with Korean, Chinese or Japanese, etc. You do have a choice, though. E.g., Norwegian Bokmål sivil ulydighet is masculine or feminine, as in no:ulydighet. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:40, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * No one should be asked to add inflection as a minimum. Editors are free to create entries that only contain definitions or translations. Gender is trivia that any bored native kid can fill in, so should not be required as well. Accuracy, not completeness of entries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This could be solved in two ways: 1) Generating tens of thousands of skeletons for the missing Russian entries containing accented lemmas, inflections, pronunciations, references and other boring stuff freely available in databases on the Internet, but lacking definitions. Then, the casual Russian contributors like Hippitrail would simply need to fill in the definition lines, which are the most sensitive and the only creative part of a Wiktionary entry, without worrying not to abide by some unwritten per-lang community standards. Unfortunately this brilliant idea has fallen on deaf ears, with several users furthermore vehemently opposing the replacement of a Human Automaton role for editors (which lets be frank most of the work here is). 2) While saving the entry (pressing the Save page button) the content could be checked in JavaScript (e.g. a missing ====Declension==== section for nouns, or the editor creating an entry not being one of the "standard Russian editors"), and appropriate attention tags (or silent fixes applied, or even disabling the Save page button in case of a non-conformant entry) could be inserted behind the scenes. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:21, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

berigora
Would you be able to determine which Australian language this specific epithet, for the brown falcon, was from? I have a copy of A Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names, James A. Jobling, OUP, 1991, that has terse etymologies, so this may not be the last such request. DCDuring TALK 19:41, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

 * See this explanation. —Stephen (Talk) 22:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Wow. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 22:59, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I took a run at the etymology section based on my understanding of the article and also based on . Please correct it. DCDuring TALK 23:08, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * All the aboriginal bird entires I recently did came from dictionaries provided onlin by [ausil.org.au/node/3717 The Australian Society for Indigenous Languages]. There are currently dictionaries for Burarra, Bilinarra, Djinang, Gurindji, Iwaidja, Kriol, Martu Wangka, Maung, Tiwi, Walmajarri, Warlpiri, and Wik Mungkan. Most of them even have a "birds" category! — hippietrail (talk) 04:57, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Many thanks. It's on one of my favorites lists now. DCDuring TALK 11:50, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Greek transliteration
Hi - Greek terms no longer require a transliteration, templates like now do this automatically. — <font color="#1e90ff">Saltmarsh <font color="#ff1493">απάντηση 05:55, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Correct templates and synchronisations of trad./simp. entries
Could you use (trad/simp|(pinyin)), rather than  or   and simp./trad. entries need to be in sync(!), if you add "see also's", etc., pls. It takes time to fix this. Also, derived terms, etc. don't need pinyin, especially if most terms don't have them. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:06, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

 * I disagree. All non-Latin links have always had transliterations whenever we've had the knowledge and time to fix them. Most terms don't have them because some information is better than no information and not everything has been added by people with full knowledge or with insufficient time to fix them. Think of the people with slow or unreliable internet who have to follow links to get the transliterations they need. It takes time to click. Don't make Chinese a second-rate language here by skimping on a feature all other non-Latin-script languages get. — hippietrail (talk) 00:21, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you agree at least on something? Can you answer to my requests before "also" - they are more important? not  and if you do it, pls do both trad. and simp, which you often forget. I'm not making Chinese a second-rate language, whatever that means. I know you have your opinion but please follow conventions and formatting, use newer and better templates. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:31, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

unflood powers
Hi there. Could you please unflood-flag me? I'm not going to do much flooding any time soon. Thanks. --Type56op9 (talk) 15:37, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Done. —Stephen (Talk) 05:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

moser, toeva, mesirah
I removed toeva & mesirah from the list as they already have pages (תועבה, מסירה) and I moved moser to its proper location on the list. --Sije (talk) 05:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

der3 sorting
Howdy, I'm not sure we've spoken before! I noticed that you disabled the sorting for (but not  or ). I don't understand your reason ("disabling flag for sorting broken for same lists"). I trust you that you did it for a good reason, but I'm curious what the reason is and whether an error should be fixed. —JohnC5 01:50, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi there. Yes there was a list where some entries were raw and some were using some template, or perhaps it was a mix of two different templates. I forget which language it was in but you might be able to figure it out from my edit history just before I changed the "der2" template. — hippietrail (talk) 05:27, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You put it on the talk page. I'm dumb. Apparently it was the Derived terms table for onion. I believe is only intended for raw input and not other templates. I will change onion over and then revert der3, if you don't mind? —JohnC5 05:49, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah yes it was "onion". Maybe a better fix in the long term is to give "der3" and its cousins a "no sort" option for use when some entries use one or more template? — hippietrail (talk) 06:03, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I shall implement that immediately. From now on, just set . —JohnC5 06:12, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Please use "cmn", not "zh"
Hi,

When you make Chinese translation requests with the assisted method, please use "cmn", not "zh", as the request doesn't go away when the translation is added and requires a manual edit. The nesting will be made automatically if you use, "cmn", "yue", etc. when using the tool. There is a problem/bug with translation requests with the translation adder for languages, which use nesting - Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Chinese, etc. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:12, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

 * Yes there are many bugs in the translation adder GUI. I had extensive interchanges with its author when he made it that it's dark magic other people can't decipher to work on. He wrote lots of docs on it that only addressed how to extend it in ways he could foresee, not on how it actually works to fix bugs he couldn't foresee and extend it in ways he couldn't foresee. He was intelligent and gifted but young. He left Wiktionary when he got a job. Several people have hacked changes into it since but nobody has ever fully worked it out, which is why it's accruing bugs.
 * I guess the illogical use of the Mandarin code as the umbrella for all Chinese varieties is due to such a bug and not due to some policy of ours?
 * Back in the day I fought hard and even got the Wikipedia devs to add a component for all of our extensions to their bug tracker. But our other Wiktionary coders didn't understand bug tracking and none of them used it. Supposedly they would keep track of the problems with their code and we could contact them via email or their talk pages. Which of course doesn't work since many of them have left over the years. The Wikipedia devs finally removed our category due to lack of use )-:
 * But hey if we have a new way to track these problems that actually works then I'd love to know about it. I would help in any way I can in fixing or deciphering the translation adder. I've been meaning to tackle it again now that I'm better at functional JavaScript but there's a lot on my plate.
 * Anyway I'll try to remember not to be consistent and logical when entering language codes until the bug gets fixed. — hippietrail (talk) 03:26, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * It's both a convention and a policy as for adding nested translations (I don't see any discrimination here, quite the opposite). The request for "Chinese" can only be filled if you add a "Chinese" (zh) translation but that means no transliteration, which can only be specific to a topolect. Mandarin is the natural first choice when adding a Chinese translation (because it's the standard Chinese form) but having one lect won't interfere with adding new translations or requests. So if you want a specific one, just add that variety. Cantonese can be added without Mandarin (translation or request). Mandarin is not an umbrella for Chinese lects. You can add translations in any order. The fact that we have more Mandarin only entries (under "Chinese" header), is just because editors are familiar with the standard form better than the other forms, there's more data and availability of resources, larger interest. The infrastructure is there for a few major topolects - Cantonese, Min Nan, Hakka, Wu + to some extent Min Dong, Old and Middle Chinese, just need more editors and data. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:38, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Request to check saw
It looks like you are knowledgeable in Zhuang (or at least have Zhuang resources) so could you please check saw? Thanks, —suzukaze (t・c) 08:13, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

 * No I'm just interested as I was in Laos a few times and now I'm in southern China. The Zhuang words came from the Wikipedia article on the language or from (aha!) an online Chinese-Zhuang dictionary somebody gave me a link to. Let me find it for you ... http://www.jiu60.com/hoiz/
 * In fact I've been looking for a Zhuang dictionary in China and even though it's the biggest minority I haven't been able to find one yet. Also I'm more interested in another Chinese Tai-Kadai language at the moment, Tai Lue, for which I can't find either a print or online dictionary so far. — hippietrail (talk) 22:36, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

 * I see. Well thanks anyway :) (Maybe the lack of dictionaries is because interest in the language is weak and the creation of one wouldn't be profitable D: It's kind of sad... Good luck in finding one.) —suzukaze (t・c) 23:37, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

 * I remember reading an article online a few years ago about large numbers of Chinese students actually studying Chinese minority languages with Zhuang being the #1 most popular. But on popular sites like Quora I keep readings comments from Chinese like "China is not a museum, we don't care about preserving that stuff, we care about what makes us successful. The west should stop treating us like a museum or a zoo.". Maybe both are true - I dunno )-: — hippietrail (talk) 01:22, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

枠 definition source
Hey Hippietrail, I was just curious where you found the "oak used for charcoal" definition for the 枠 kanji as I can't find a good source for it using a Google search. Thanks! Bumm13 (talk) 09:33, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

 * Hi Bumm! My hunch is that the definition was already there and I just wikified the two keywords. Let me check ... Nope! So my second hunch is that I got it from Unicode's CJK character glosses or some other character dictionary that I found free online at the time that has such brief gloss-style definitions. It is a ten year old edit (-: — hippietrail (talk) 10:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Here in China I don't have Google so I'm using ask.com at the moment. Here's a link which gives the same gloss for 椚. I wonder if I got it wrong or what? — hippietrail (talk) 10:19, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

KTV
Hi! I still think these phrases are fairly transparent SoPs that don't really merit entries, but just wanted to say that I appreciate you staying calm and logical in that discussion. I know I spazz sometimes. WT:REE tends to be a huge untended junkyard. Equinox ◑ 05:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

 * No worries. I didn't just pull them out my posterior. I put quite a bit of actual research effort into them. I can't remember how long you've been on the site but back in the day I was the original one to fight against SOP entries. In those days it was a losing battle. Things have turned around in recent years, which is good because I'm still against things like boiled egg and car door and item of furniture but these are more solidly in a grey area inhabited by very similar terms that host here without any problem.

 * And anyway I originally requested them exactly because I came across them and despite my best efforts I couldn't nail down exactly what they referred to and who used them. In fact on another webiste I was informed that they're used in Thailand, and I didn't think they even used "KTV" there. So I'm still searching.

 * But it's good to fight the junkyard effect so thanks for doing the dirty work even if I might see some baby getting thrown out with the bathwater now and then (-: — hippietrail (talk) 10:29, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Ordering of requested Chinese entries
Why are you changing the order? Are you changing it from alphabetical order to radical order? Wiki Winters ☯ 韦安智  02:14, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

 * Hmm it's supposed to be alphabetical. I made some JavaScript that uses the sorting order built into the browser. I wouldn't be surprised if different browsers choose different orders for Chinese. I'll stop using it for Chinese. — hippietrail (talk) 09:01, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Greek requests
I suspect that is Koine on Classical Greek - none of my dictionaries carry it and the only Google hits (3) seem to agree. ??   — <font color="#1e90ff">Saltmarsh <font color="#ff1493">συζήτηση-talk 14:22, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

 * Let me check where I got it... — hippietrail (talk)
 * I got it from Quora. Here's the context:
 * πάμμαυρος "all-black" (which is not ancient), παμμάταιος "all-vain" (which is).
 * So the person there who listed it specifically says it's not ancient and then goes on to juxtapose it with another word they say is ancient.
 * The person who typed that might have made a mistake, or it might just be an uncommon word given that it's an example of a word made using the prefix under discussion. Compare with English words made using the suffix -like, which is a giant potential set of words, few of which become common. Anyway that's just my guess. — hippietrail (talk) 23:22, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

 * thanks   — <font color="#1e90ff">Saltmarsh <font color="#ff1493">συζήτηση-talk 06:34, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

slaapzak
Maybe you should take more care with these entries... —CodeCat 21:02, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Online Hebrew dictionary
You might find it useful: http://www.morfix.co.il/en/. --WikiTiki89 23:39, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I found a lot of clickbait recycling public domain stuff in junky ways when I looked for an online Hebrew dictionary. — hippietrail (talk) 23:44, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * This is a very good one. It shows you vowels and it recognizes most alternative spellings (including plene spellings) and inflected forms, even with attached clitics, and it really includes most words you'd ever encounter (although I was surprised to find that it didn't have שינקן or שינקה). --WikiTiki89 23:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

enwiktdefns tools group
Hey Mr. Trail, do you have group access to the enwiktdefns tool on tools? Someone (MrJones) was in IRC looking for the old tool (http://toolserver.org/~enwikt/definitions/) which was something Conrad did (I think?). I am not sure if it is something which could be restarted with a simple restart of webservices, or if it is something which is now defunct. Thanks. - TheDaveRoss 13:33, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

 * Hmm I don't know. I used to do some stuff on the Tool Server years ago but never learned how to use its replacement system. I even used to forget how to use the T.S. every time I hadn't used it for a few months. My hunch is it might not be so easy to restart. I never ported any of my stuff from the T.S. to the new system because it was totally different and seemed to have quite a learning curve and nobody I knew was learning it at the same time.

Sorry if that's not very much help \-: — hippietrail (talk) 06:29, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Your last edit on User:Conrad.Irwin/editor.js
causes translation script to ask script and transliteration for ka. --Dixtosa (talk) 17:17, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

 * Hmm. Georgian has three scripts but in editor.js only one was listed, unlike other languages with multiple scripts. Oddly, ISO 15924 conflates two of the Georgian scripts into one script code, "Geok". In Georgia, Mkhedruli is the common script used for everything these days, but you also still see Asomtavruli just about every day. Nuskhuri I never saw.
 * Anyway I can remove "Geok" from the code but that's really a hacky workaround. A proper bug fix would be to set "Geor" as the default script and recognize that it has automatic transliteration and only prompt the user for transliteration if they choose "Geok". Then again, the three scripts are almost 1:1 so adding transliteration support for them should be easy.
 * I'll back out "Geok" and leave a comment at that line. — hippietrail (talk) 01:03, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It still shows the transliteration field. --Dixtosa (talk) 16:26, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm I can see I definitely backed out "Geok". I really wish I understood the editor.js code better. I fought with Conrad to explain it back when he made it. I don't remember whether it showed the transliteration field for me before my changes as I've long had bugs with that code setting the wrong scripts for many languages anyway. I can't think of any other change I made that could affect Georgian. I'll try to have a solid look at the code again but you might want to ask about it in the Grease Pit too in case somebody else knows the code better or can look at it before I get a chance? — hippietrail (talk) 21:47, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Just remove script (sc:"Geor") part for ka. Templates can detect the script automatically anyway. --Giorgi Eufshi (talk) 07:21, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

qalampir
Kyrgyz qalampir links to Kyrgyz калемпир, which links back to (orange-linked) Uzbek qalampir, so I'm guessing that the first Kyrgyz one should actually be Uzbek. --Hiztegilari (talk) 09:39, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

 * Oops! Let me take a look and fix that... — hippietrail (talk) 09:57, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

perakun-popup4cmn
v.uzfl!;)81.11.222.84 19:20, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

WT:GP
Apparently the toolserver archives have been deleted. Do you happen to have this stored somewhere? Looks like may be interested in reviving it? - Amgine/t·e 16:50, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

 * It wasn't just one script. It downloaded each new dump, parsed out the page titles and language names, then for each language sorted all the titles according to the Unicode sorting rules for that language.

 * It's probably mostly easier to reimplement these days than it was back then. As long as they use a language that will work with ICU collation. Wish them luck! — hippietrail (talk) 17:08, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

 * Yes, I suspected it used your dump processing system which imo is still the better approach since it will catch newly-created and/or poorly categorized entries. Do you happen to have that code stored somewhere? - Amgine/t·e 19:33, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

 * If I do I don't know where. I basically had a policy that any code I wrote that was also used by other people should be in a public repo so it wouldn't get lost when I lost or changed hard drives or computers. But I didn't realize ToolServer was not as durable and persistent as other more official parts of the Wikiverse.
 * I'm not aware of another way to do it anyway, you could probably try to trust index pages or lemma categories but it would be less robust. Even parsing the dump files you have to keep up with changes in the wiki format and possibly the dump format. Though the parts dealing with page titles and level 2 language headings are trivial compared to the rest of the format.
 * Now that I think of it I ported the dump parsing or some part of it into portable C a few years ago. It used to run pretty fast on Windows, Linux, and SunOS or whatever the ToolServer used. Now that I have a Mac Air I was going to port it to that but I seem to have forgotten a bit about how it works or lost an include file. PC Netbooks have become so crap these days that I can't even install the most lightweight version of VisualStudio so I don't have any system I can play with the code on. I thought of doing a js/node version but its biggest flaw is that it's terrible at reading in large text files line by line! — hippietrail (talk) 05:18, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I've already written some code to parse the dump files efficiently so it wouldn't be too much work to reimplement it. What would take some time however is to find a solution which doesn't require manual rebuilding of each new dump. Maybe a cronjob on the toolserver or something similar? – Jberkel (talk) 01:22, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes I had a bunch of hacky stuff in a cron job. I think it was a mix of shell code and Perl code. I can't remember if I used makefiles or not, I definitely considered it.
 * The best way to do it is to be ultra fault tolerant especially if you're parsing deeper, which can take a long time and is very easily interrupted. Basically you ideally want it to be able to automatically recover when that happens. I never solved that problem perfectly.
 * Also the ToolServer ran SunOS I think which had quite a few quirks in comparison to Linux and Windows. I tried to make most of my code run on all three platforms but some of the hackier stuff was specific for the ToolServer. Several other Wiktionary guys were doing their own versions of this too and probably still are. Everybody has a favourite language and wants to pull different things out while parsing so it was hard to team up and most were happy to go it alone. I think there was some stuff out in Python but I was never a Python fan. Perl was a pain but it was the only language that really really took Unicode seriously and implemented absolutely everything.
 * ToolServer is gone and its official replacement was so different and arcane and had such a learning curve and I didn't know anybody else porting their stuff over so we could help each other. So I gave up on it and basically ceased all my efforts to extract cool stuff out of Wiktionary dumps back then. Too bad really. Good luck! — hippietrail (talk) 11:18, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * ToolServer used to run on SunOS? Wow, quite hard to imagine. For efficient parsing I got the best results with a combination of Apache Spark and a Java wikitext parser called Sweble. Spark can decode and process a dump file in parallel, even if it is compressed. Hope I'll have the time to give it a go soon. – Jberkel (talk) 17:33, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Decode? You mean decompress/unarchive? I used to do that just with pipes. But I ended up using decompressed dumps with indexfiles into the XML structure for all my deeper processing since I often needed to access the same dump many times for different things. Parsing XML is no fun at all. But it is pure and unmitigated joy compared to trying to parse wiktionary structure. Unless you don't care about the amount of stuff that's wrong (-: I don't do Java, it's the devil's work — hippietrail (talk) 02:14, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Pipes work but then you process the data serially (slower). Java's not that bad, it's fast and you don't have to worry about CPU architectures (SunOS vs Linux problems you mentioned). Java8 especially has finally added a bunch of useful language features. – Jberkel (talk) 08:24, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * No that's not how pipes work. The sending and receiving processes at each end of the pipe, or more processes if you have more pipes, all run at the same time, which makes it parallel. It can't process all the entries in the dump in parallel, which is the only other way I can interpret that. That was the whole point of going to pipes because it drastically cut the processing time. The down side was if it got interrupted you had to restart at the beginning. But it was too complex to get it pipe and keep track of its progress at the same time. I can never figure out all the lines of stuff I have to type in at the command line just to get a Java tool to run. And it's so bloated I can't even install it on my netbook. Then again Visual Studio also became too bloated to install and this particular model netbook is apparently a pain to install Linux on. Oh well I plan to get the screen repaired on my MacBook Air in China but then there's the blah of learning to use XCode or install something intended for Linux or Windows that would have quirks on Mac so I don't know if I'll bother. — hippietrail (talk) 10:11, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, misunderstanding. A simple "parse < dump.xml | process" would of course process and parse in parallel, feeding more and more data to the process script. I started to work with the multistream xml dumps, these can be decoded and parsed in parallel, since the index file contains offsets into all the partial xml documents. Haven't done any benchmarking but in theory it should perform a lot better since the parsing step is usually the main work load. – Jberkel (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 * How many years did I want something like the multistream XML dumps?!! I basically implemented the same kind of thing. I indexed the whole XML file so you could have random access to it. It was a great project learning how to implement binary search that I eventually did in Perl and C and JavaScript. I did a fair bit of work on the next level which involved indexing the compressed file. It turned out that even without the multistream files this was possible to a degree but involved more work. Of course at that time it involved *even more work* to try to convince the bonehead Wikipedia guys to simply offer the dumps also in an extra format. I'm not sure if it's related but at some point a Wiktionary guy went to work at WikiMedia specifically on the database dumping and we finally also got the multistream dumps. This must have been around the time we were losing the ToolServer though. And in any case I wanted to be able to eventually have functionality that compared the same across generations of old dump files so I still needed to support the old single stream XML dumps anyway. — hippietrail (talk) 01:29, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

 * Macbook -> install Docker ->  -> world domination. - Amgine/t·e 23:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 * My MacBook is only an Air but it's still faster and has more RAM than any of the Windows netbooks I've had. Sadly it has the minimum RAM and that's soldered onto the board. I'm going to see if non Apple repair places do this upgrade anyway in China. Nobody does it in the west because it's labour intensive and the labour is expensive. In China they fix stuff we throw away because labour is cheap. But it's also fiddly and easy to mess up so you need a reputable place. I'm assuming this Docker thing works better with more memory? — hippietrail (talk) 01:29, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Ainu エツ゚
Heya, I just updated the entry there. The only meanings I can find for etu are, , , , as on pages 124-125 of Batchelor's Ainu dictionary, and extended meanings like ,. The word for appears to be  instead, likely a borrowing from or loan to Japanese. See page 354 for that entry.

Where did you find the meaning for the Ainu term? Was that perhaps a mistake of some sort?

Curious, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:12, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

 * Well I've dug around and can see I added entries for the word for "bone" in Ainu, Maltese, Hungarian, Albanian, Yiddish, and Indonesian in a batch just on nine years ago. Usually when I did that I was filling in red links in the translation table of the English word. So I also dug around the history of the "bone" page but none of those languages had a translation entry at that time, so that can't be the source. Another thing I do is get the translations from the interlanguage links on the Wikipedia page for the word. But as there's no Ainu Wikipedia that can't be it either. And Google Translate doesn't cover Ainu. So I can't think of how else I did those. I've never had an Ainu dictionary in my collection. The one I found in a used bookshop in Japan was outside my budget.
 * So thanks for fixing it! — hippietrail (talk) 14:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

RE: Tai Lue in Lanna / Tai Tham script
I am so sorry that I never replied to you. I have been busy with school work. I have recently been learning Tai Lue by myself more than I used to, and I have been adding Tai Lue entries but to Thai Wiktionary. The way the words are written in dw12.com needs to be fixed a little bit. I think the order is right but sometimes incorrect letters are used. For example (and I will have to use Thai equivalents to write here), เ is written twice to write แ. When I have time (which is not very often these days), I will update my blog. :D If you want we can chat via Skype. I can share you the methods I have used to learn Tai Lue words from dw12.com. --A.S. (talk) 20:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

 * Hey man! Great to hear from you at last. I thought you must've still been travelling actually.
 * I am travelling myself right now. I'm back in China in fact, but I'm in the north in Hebei. Although coincidentally, I was just looking at some Tai Lue words on Quora and the English Wiktionary!
 * Way back before my trip I was putting in some effort on decoding the custom font and encoding used at dw12.com but I lack enough knowledge to get very far. I noticed that the few other websites that used the script, and for different languages, each used different fonts and encodings. Even if they used Unicode they kind of did it their own way. But I don't recall the details.
 * Anyway it's good to hear that you're still interested in Tai Lue. It became my favourite minority language of China as soon as I arrived in the country for the first time by crossing the border from Laos and began to see the script on signs. I've since seen one other Tai language of China written, on a restaurant sign in Kunming. But I haven't visited any Tai Lue areas in Myanmar, Thailand, or Vietnam. Even in Jinghong I only met one Tai Lue guy on my first day but the next two days I only met Han Chinese there. I didn't meet anybody who knew either script. Anyway I'm not a real linguist, just a language enthusiast (-: — hippietrail (talk) 05:03, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

my account suspension
I am not sure if I am adding my message in a right place, but couldn't find the administrators' page. I am not new at Wikipedia ( I know the underlying principles) but this one was my first edit on Wiktionary. I added a new entry to this article and my valid entry has been reverted for several times by this user with no response on this [user talk pager (after a month)] and [my account is suspended for no valid reason now]. The only explanation that I can find is that this is a racist action and an abuse of power. I am busy in my real world and therefore will stop editing this wiki but the information I provided is accessible through the article history. 68.33.93.77 14:00, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

 * You were correctly warned not to add Persian entries in Latin script; you repeated this and rudely ignored the advice. To cry racism is pathetic. Equinox ◑ 14:03, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The level of competence of this person can be easily seen by clicking on any of the links they provided- all but one of them links to SB's talk page, and that one fails due to using a pipe in a URL. Anyone who responds to "Your entry had no headword and no proper definition" with "You obviously have no clue on what you're arguing about and wasting my valuable time here" is incapable of learning from their mistakes. They're spamming the world over a one-day block as if it were a crime against humanity- are they going to the United Nations next? Granted, I would have blocked them for disruptive edits, not for adding nonsense/gibberish, but this is ridiculous! 17:32, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi thar, hope I'm not breakin' no laws by coldpostin' here, but I did something ya shoulda done years ago: remove them goldurn pipes from them links in that dang-blasted spammer's post! 174.193.64.81 22:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Compounds bis
Hello. I've created CAT:Spanish verb–noun compounds (alongside CAT:French verb–noun compounds and CAT:Portuguese verb–noun compounds) and was going to add it on, when I noticed that CAT:Spanish verb plus plural noun compounds was already there. I don't know what to do; a solution would be to make your category a subcat of mine, but is it necessary? Is there a real need to distinguish between CAT:Spanish verb plus plural noun compounds and an hypothetical CAT:Spanish verb plus singular noun compounds?

Actually, I think this might be a useful distinction, but I'm not terribly fond of the name, as I find it rather hard to parse; couldn't we rename it CAT:Spanish verb–plural noun compounds? Or CAT:Spanish 'verb–plural noun' compounds?

What do you think? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:28, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

 * I created the category many years ago, definitely over a decade ago because these are a unique living category of word formation within the Romance family that the other languages lack. Naming categories has always been a pain.
 * I wanted to give it a specific name so that all other kinds of things wouldn't get put in the category and water down its original purpose, which was to collect all Spanish terms made this way in one single place on the internet.
 * Why not bring it up in the Beer parlour and ask everybody? — hippietrail (talk) 04:23, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, naming categories isn't an easy thing; it's difficult to trim the fat but still keep a descriptive enough name.
 * And I'm probably going to have to rename my CAT:Verb–noun compounds by language at some point, since it could theoretically cover cases which I had not foreseen and don't want there. I hate it indeed when "all other kinds of things [...] get put in the category and water down its original purpose", so I feel you. I've started putting all kinds of disclaimers in Latin suffixes categories (an example), but I'm sure I'll have to tidy them up again in a year or two...
 * I already wrote a post at the Beer Parlour, but few people took part in it.
 * P.S.: It seems English doesn't totally lack this type of compound though: CAT:English verb–noun compounds. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 15:32, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The one that usually comes up in the literature for English when this is discussed is sawbones. In fact I've never come across that word except in discussions of this kind of word formation. Anyway the point is not that it doesn't occur elsewhere but that it is alive and productive in Spanish in a way it isn't in other Romance languages or in English. I'll have a look at the Beer parlour post but I got out of Wiktionary politics years ago and that's one of the places the politics turns up even though it's one of the places to get things done here. Oh well. — hippietrail (talk) 01:28, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

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dolly (truck)
You are requesting translations for dolly, sense "small truck with a single wide roller used for moving heavy beams, columns, etc., in bridge building". In order to facilitate translation, could you possibly provide a link to a photo of this piece of equipment? --Hekaheka (talk) 14:45, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

 * Actually I think the terms "dolly" and "hand truck" and a bunch of others all overlap to varying degrees depending on where the speaker is from and possibly other factors. I was inspired to suss out the names for these pieces of equipment after Conor McGregor the UFC fighter threw one at a bus a few days ago and different news reports were using different terms. I'm not convinced our definitions really cover the full range of how the terms are used in English and might be overly specific. But I might be wrong since I never know what to call them on the rare occasions I refer to one in normal life. I think I would just go with a broader term like "trolley".

 * I do think there are some internet pages out there on the differences between the devices or between the terms. I'll see if I can find some of those for you and add them here. — hippietrail (talk) 22:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

 * There seems to be quite a lot of such pages so instead here's the Google search I used: https://www.google.com.au/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU690AU693&{google:acceptedSuggestion}oq=dolly+vs%7Cdifference+hand-truck&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=dolly+vs%7Cdifference+hand-truck — Thanks! — hippietrail (talk) 22:06, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

 * And here's one of the clearer photos of the actual device used in the incident: https://www.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2018/04/07/11/conor-mcgregor-2.png — hippietrail (talk) 22:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Not too clearcut: a woman's hand truck can be a man's dolly. --Hekaheka (talk) 22:16, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

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hacking
You added a translation table without a gloss, but there are 10 different meanings for "hacking". Could you elaborate on which one you meant for the translations? S URJECTION ·talk·contr·log· 16:42, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Good point! The one with meaning in the same realm as "hacking" and "DIY". Will fix now ... — hippietrail (talk)

Wikitrace
Wiktionary-l message from psychoslave, fyi. - Amgine/t · e 21:36, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

insert appropriate emoticon
Hey HT. Firstly, congrats on going almost a year without receiving any WT messages. Secondly, thanks for (kinda) inspiring me to go on a particular trip to a Spanish-speaking country. Also, I'd like to say hey for the first time as a fellow WTarian and to hope you use this site to learn and to teach. Keep editing, I guess... --Gibraltar Rocks (talk) 23:42, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hey that's awesome. I was just in a Korean-speaking country for a month or so and landed after midnight in a Thai-speaking country. Time to switch language focus again. — hippietrail (talk) 02:59, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
 * If you're doing Lao, how about seeing if you can clean up the remaining 2 entries in Category:Tbot entries (Lao)? --Vealhurl (talk) 10:03, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look but I'm not an expert. I've spent a few months there over the years but last time was maybe 2.5 years ago. I was just in Thailand for a month though and the languages are so similar I always try to look at both at the same time. But now I'm in Cambodia. — hippietrail (talk) 10:11, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Do you have a blog? It'd be awesome to read about your travels. Maybe make a film about it one day...--Vealhurl (talk) 10:30, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Nah it would take dedicated writing time and editing photos and videos and stuff. This trip when I'm not actually out hitchhiking long distance I'm mostly in hostels or cafes all day studying languages and programming stuff, so not too exciting (-: — hippietrail (talk) 14:58, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

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landre
Hi there! I am currently working through WT:RE:sv and I’ve added most of the requests so far, and now there are mostly quite obscure words left. One of those is landre which you added almost exactly 11 years ago! I’m struggling to come up with what this word could mean, do you have any memory of the context you encountered in? Otherwise I am thinking of removing it from the list since no one has been able to define it in 11 years. Could it be a misspelling of something? Warm regards, --Lundgren8 (t · c) 12:19, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi! I would've been in Mexico and had some Swedish friends there. I might've been trying to read a Swedish translation of Hundra år av ensamhet or Kärlek het som chili. So I could've got a Spanish word in my Swedish word list or a Swedish translation of a Spanish novel could've had a stray Spanish word in it. Either way I trust you and it must be a mistake of some kind. Nice that you're going to the trouble of cleaning up such an old list so thoroughly! — hippietrail (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * That makes sense given the Spanish word in that entry! Thanks for confirming! This means that the list is now completely cleared! --Lundgren8 (t · c) 19:45, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

block
Hey HT. I haven't been blocked for a while. I think I should get a new WT account. Please can you block me? Usual shit you know...if not I'm gonna go on a minor vandalism spree. --Vealhurl (talk) 13:13, 10 December 2019 (UTC)--Vealhurl (talk) 13:13, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, scrap that. I decided not to do any vandalism...for now anyway. --Vealhurl (talk) 11:01, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Attention lacking explanation
Can you give an explanation about what specifically needs attention, in the second parameter of the template? Without it, entries are ending up in Category:attention lacking explanation. —Rua (mew) 15:12, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

 * A couple of years ago the major contributors told me I had to add this template to any entry I created for a language I'm not a fluent speaker of so I've been doing so ever since. They're basically missing being checked by somebody who knows the language better. In many cases the templates leave behind notices about missing genders, conjugations, declinations, plurals, major forms next to the headword etc. So explanation is "I was told to". — hippietrail (talk) 15:16, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Lithuanian
Hey HT. I assume you're now in the Baltic states, doing whatever you do. Can you check out Category:Tbot entries (Lithuanian) and see if you can improve any of the entries? I still haven't finished the book about your life, BTW. WF --ReloadtheMatrix (talk) 22:36, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Indeed I am. Should be off on my way to Poland tomorrow though. Unfortunately I've been unable to find cheap dictionaries other than a one-way Latvian to English. There is a faded one-way Lithuanian to English at my hostel in Vilnius but it's hard to read without a strong light or extra magnification. I might be able to pick up a two-way pocket dictionary on my way out tomorrow if I'm lucky, not sure though. — hippietrail (talk) 22:50, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

File:Hippietrail dictionaries.JPG license
What license is the photo you uploaded at File:Hippietrail dictionaries.JPG licensed under? Thanks. GreenComputer (talk) 16:46, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I usually choose the licence closest to plain old public domain that I see. I'll have a look at it now... — hippietrail (talk) 10:32, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I see it has no licence and have no idea how to add one. It's from a decade ago and not hosted on Commons. It's not a good photo at all but if you want to use it for anything, or if you are going through images hosted here checking or fixing all the licences, you have my permission and I'm hereby stating it's in the public domain. — hippietrail (talk) 10:37, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * But do we have any reason to keep it locally rather than on Commons? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:44, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Because it's only used on my Wiktionary user page. But if there's some official policy about that, please let me know. — hippietrail (talk) 10:48, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Permission to remove "вулкацити" from requested entries (BG)?
Sometime around 2012, if I recall reading correctly, you added an entry to Requested entries (Bulgarian) under the name "вулкацити" - do you by chance remember the meaning of this term, or know how to locate it? At any rate, I would like to remove it from the list, as it appears to be a very obscure term that a Google search revealed no meaning to. I noticed various Russian-language 'translations' which provide nothing but a circular pursuit: 'vulcacite' is of no use. In fact, all other pages I could get my hands on contained only garbage info with the search term peppered in meaninglessly; multiple sources refer to chemistry and scientific papers, but with no explanation of the word. Sadly, I can't find a solution by myself. Sorry for pestering you for an ancient contribution, but I'm currently seeking to exhaust the "Requested entries" page if possible! Thank you kindly for your time,

- Kiril kovachev (talk) 22:13, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

 * Zdraveytey! Man I had to cut short my travels a few weeks ago because of this stupid virus when I was in Romania. I didn't even make it back to Bulgaria this time. So let me dig around and see if I can work out where I found the word way back when and I'll get back to you. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. — hippietrail (talk) 00:44, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * So far it looks like I requested this around September 2011 possibly around the time I was crossing the Romania/Bulgaria at Giurgiu/Ruse. It seems that the mineral vulcanite exists in this area and is mentioned in the article on the Verachim/Верахим plant on the Romanian side of the Danube whose pollution caused many people to be hospitalized on the Bulgarian side. When you say "'Vulcacite' is of no use" what do you mean? That you can't find any such English word? Could it be that the English uses -nite and the Bulgarian -cite and this made it hard to find? It looks to me to be a real word referring to a real mineral and one of the jobs of a dictionary is to illuminate obscure terms. — hippietrail (talk) 01:45, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Where in the world
...are you at the moment, Hippietrail? Last time I checked up, it was Poland. Your old bud, Wonderfool --Nueva normalidad (talk) 00:36, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Well I've been back in Australia for three months. I'd been in Romania for a month and a half and everybody was saying I should go home and almost all other travellers I knew around the world had already gone home and my friend whose country house I was staying at thought she might need to evacuate there with her kids and I thought the locals might start to blame outsiders if the virus started to appear in the area and borders were going to close.
 * But before that I was in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.
 * If there's not going to be a second wave I'll head off again as soon as things start looking normal again. And you? — hippietrail (talk) 12:22, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Good to know. Unfortunately, I keep my location secret, so nobody knows who I really am. --Nueva normalidad (talk) 13:03, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah met too. Don't tell anyone what I told you — hippietrail (talk) 23:25, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Encarta
Hey. User:HippieBot/Entries in Encarta online not in Wiktionary was an awesome page back in the day, and is still pretty useful. Would you be able to regenerate it? Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 01:34, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

 * I don't think so. I think back in the day there was an Encarta site that was trivially easy to scrape. I don't even know if there is a site for it now and most sites got a lot harder to scrape over the years. I might have a look though. — hippietrail (talk) 07:03, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Persistent disruptive editting, abuse of the blocking tool, and projection by Robbie SWE; de-sysopping required
The admin Robbie SWE has engaged in persistent reversion trolling against me in two articles, undoing my two minor corrections to punctuation. Also, in his disruptive edits, Robbie SWE uses the antagonistic line "if you think this rollback is in error, please leave a message on my talk page", thus trying to replace a simple reversion of disruptive edits with a time-wasting quagmire in which his disruptive edits are never reverted:.

If that weren't bad enough, Robbie SWE also abused his blocking power by blocking me for three days after I reverted his first set of two disruptive edits; he obviously did so for the purpose of antagonism/schadenfreud. Notably, Robbie SWE typically blocks vandals for only 1 day (perhaps he wants them to come back), yet he blocked me- a constructive edittor, for 3 days. And if all of that weren't bad enough, in his block explanation, Robbie SWE projected his own bad behavior onto his victim, by projecting his disruptive editting onto myself, in keeping with his general pattern of psychopathic antagonistic/schadenfreudic behavior:.

And I am not the only victim of Robbie SWE's abuses of sysop power; recently he abused that power by blocking a user who was undoing Robbie's disruptive editting, in which Robbie was adding political spin to articles, and Robbie similarly projected his own disruptive editting onto his block victim:. ...And that was just another recent case; I'm guessing that Robbie has abused his blocking power in this way a number of times, but I don't have the time to investigate all of his blocks for alleged "disruptive edits", nor is it necessary to do so, because I have already shown evidence that is more than sufficient for his de-sysopping.

Only bureaucrats can de-sysop, so I am reporting Robbie SWE's abuses to a bureaucrat. It is thus imperative that you de-sysop Robbie SWE.

By the way, you should archive the older parts of your talk page, because your talk page is huge.

Ttcrool (talk) 10:38, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Nahuatl: not a language
Hi. You created an entry in the Nahuatl "language" in Dec. This is the only lemma currently in existence for this "language". The reason for this is that Nahuatl is a family, not a language. Someone is trying to eliminate this as a language; please don't create more entries like this, thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 22:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Assisted translation request
Hi!

I'm trying to understand how did you make this edit. It's tagged as "Assisted". I know that adding translation using the form is tagged like that, but how do you make multiple assisted translation requests? Do you write a language code and then put  into the translation field?

Thanks! Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:15, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

 * Yes that's exactly how it works. It's been an "unknown" feature for quite a few years now and I'd be surprised if anyone but me has ever used it more than for testing it. — hippietrail (talk) 02:24, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks :)
 * A follow-up question: How did you choose the particular languages to add in that edit? You chose Arabic, Armenian, Esperanto, Georgian, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Thai Turkish, Vietnamese. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:44, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I usually just add a mix of major languages and my favourite national languages from parts of the world I've visited. I've been to Armenia and lived in Georgia and they have interesting languages we seldom hear about with their own native scripts. I've been to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam several times each and learn a bit of the language each time. Thai is my current favourite language I'm trying to learn. I'd wanted to visit Latvia and Lithuania for years and finally managed to just before COVID. They share an interesting and little known branch of European languages. Arabic and Hebrew are major world languages each with their own script. — hippietrail (talk) 23:36, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users
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Stubs
Hey, for Polish, instead of making stubs, could you put it on the Requested Entries page instead? I actually keep a close eye on it, and it will reduce the possibility of adding SOP phrases. Thanks! Vininn126 (talk) 15:17, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

 * No worries. Thanks for the feedback. FYI all my stubs are from following red links in translation tables so I was taking it on good faith that if they were in the translation table as a single link that they must be non-SOP. So check and fix those when checking my requests. Thanks again. — hippietrail (talk) 07:27, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, they are, but I think a lot of people added them not understanding how CFI and SOP works (myself included at one point). Erutuon recently made a translation search engine and I wanna go through it and clean those up at some point, so the appropriate words are redlinks and others are surrounded by brackets. It's on my eventual do to list. I suppose if there's doubt we could do a verify template. Vininn126 (talk) 07:35, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

stubs stubs stubs
Hi. I would recommend not creating stubs like you do. You don't seem to understand the various language-specific conjugation and declension templates so you make a ton of mistakes that others then have to clean up. It is better to have no entries at all than wrong ones. Benwing2 (talk) 04:02, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

 * I disagree. Back in the day it used to be that "some information was better than no information" as long as it's not wrong information. Now the type of stubs that other language Wiktionary have, that don't even have a definition, those are useless and annoying. The amount of work that "others have to" do to clean up the entries I provide basic entries for is almost exactly the same amount of others have to do to create missing entries. Can you point to an official English Wiktionary policy stating that now prefer no entries to "wrong" ones. And can you point to a policy of what qualifies as a "wrong" entry. Is it just an entry that doesn't use the correct language-specific templates of the day? — hippietrail (talk) 04:43, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

 * Actually looking at my creation edit of солнечная вспышка I can't believe my eyes that I tried to use the Russian templates! Normally I use generic heading templates for Slavic languages because even if I know the gender I don't know the animacy. I probably tried to read the template docs and copy other Russian entries. — hippietrail (talk) 05:12, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi. I agree with User:Benwing2. You are relying too much on other people with your endless requests for translations and stubs. We all have been around for many years at Wiktionary. I rely on dictionaries, study templates, research on senses, pronunciations and parts of speech and still manage to make mistakes but I do go back to my entries, and fix them, if I remember but you have been refusing to improve on the quality of your edits, even though you provide adding to Category:attention lacking explanation (thanks for that, it's better that just to make a poor entry and leave). You often rely on a single translation to make a stub entry without bothering to check if it is the only or the main sense. Some of your Khmer translations stubs are especially bad - you don't even notice when you fail to copy a character at the end, since you can't read the script. Why every other regular editor should worry about following the right template, providing stresses, pronunciations, inflections, etymologies but not you? It's not about policies but attitudes as well. No, you're not breaking any policies perhaps but your edit quality and contributions are not high, in my opinion. I don't mean to offend you. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:42, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

гражданийн тӀом
Hi - can you please be careful when adding entries such as this one? It uses a capitalised palochka for no clear reason, and should be at. I concur with the other users that it's probably best not to edit languages you have no knowledge of, as wrong information is worse than no information.

I'm also not convinced this term exists - it gives zero results on Google. Are you sure the two parts are inflected properly, or did you infer this from the two parts? Google was "helpfully" correcting my search. Theknightwho (talk) 07:09, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Request for attention in Estonian
Hi, I see you have created a lot of scarce Estonian entries with a request for attention, without explanation. I was wondering if you wanted to add an explanation as to why they requite attention, or remove them if they are no longer necessary. Is it just because the entries are very short? Cheers. Supevan (talk) 15:16, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

 * I was told a few years ago that I must always add the attention request template when creating minimal entries especially in languages I don't speak. I suppose the minimum attention they require is an actual speaker checking that they're not factually wrong, use current formatting and templating norms for the language, etc. Some editors choose to flesh out such entries more as long as they're checking but I believe that's optional. — hippietrail (talk) 04:21, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Special:diff/8963136
Hi, I saw that you requested several Korean words in Requested entries 13 years ago. And one of them, "링어빵", probably means "잉어빵". But "잉어" is not a Sino-Korean word anymore. So, I am going to remove it. Please let me know if I misunderstand. Thank you. Dubukimchi (talk) 14:43, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

title: User talk:Hippietrail