text:
User talk:Connel MacKenzie/archive-2006-04

 * If you are here at the top of the page, you are lost. Go here instead.

April 1st
Can we get rid of the "new messages" joke? SemperBlotto 07:21, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
 * A little birdy did it, not I. --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I eventually fixed it. By the way, I have blocked Wonderfool for a week for vandalizing the Main Page (just another April 1st joke). SemperBlotto 14:23, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Oh? OK, I trust you on that, even though I probably would've chosen a shorter duration.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

welcomeip
Hi Connel. If we want to subst: the, we need to take out the bug that causes the ~  to not be "nowiki" at all and be replaced by the poster's signature. See User talk:83.220.193.141. — Vildricianus 21:40, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Sorry, I have a migraine headache right now and cannot comprehend what you are saying. Perhaps it would be better to change the comments in "welcomeip" and not bother subst:ing this template ever.  What course do you recommend?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:37, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Devanagari for the edit box
Hi Connel! Can you add the Devanāgarī script (which can be used for Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and other languages that use it) into the edit box?

Here are the characters that need to be entered: ँ, ं, ः, अ, आ, इ, ई, उ, ऊ, ऋ, ऌ, ऍ, ऎ, ए, ऐ, ऑ, ऒ, ओ, औ, क, क़, ख, ख़, ग, ग़, घ, ङ, च, छ, ज, ज़, झ, ञ, ट, ठ, ड, ड़, द, ढ, ढ़, ण, त, थ, ध, न, ऩ, प, फ, फ़, ब, भ, म, य, य़, र, ऱ, ल, ळ, ऴ, व, श, ष, स, ह, ़, ऽ, ा, ि, ॊ, ो, ौ, ्, ी, ु, ू, ृ, ॄ, ॅ, ॆ, े, ै, ॉ, ॐ, ॑, ॒, ॓, ॔, ॠ, ॡ, ॢ, ॣ, ।, ॥, ॰.

Please remember to remove the comma after each character and the period after the last one. Thank you! --Dijan 01:39, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Sure. Let me paste this into MediaWiki talk:Edittools and have you confirm it there first though, OK?  Then when you and I are sure I am cutting and pasting properly, I'll move it into MediaWiki:Edittools and link it in MediaWiki:Monobook.js.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 04:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks Connel! I've checked and made sure that all the characters are correct.  I've also tried to add it myself to the edit box, and it's working fine.  Thanks for the tips.  I'm glad that finally I know how to do this on my own.  :)  There seems to be a lot of repetition in there.  Someday, hopefully, I can get around to fixing some of that stuff and merging some of the sections.  While adding Devanagari, I have also merged Serbian into the Cyrillic section (since the Serbian one was mostly repetition of the Cyrillic one, except maybe 4 characters).  Everything seems to be working just fine.  Thanks again.  --Dijan 08:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Your welcome! --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

 * There may have been a reason to have them separate, listed twice. I dunno, you are probably right to remove the redunancy though.  If people ask for updates in the future, can I send them to you?  :-)  Maybe there should be a section of WT:DW for this?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:12, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Sure. No problem! :)  (It was listed twice because I asked a while ago to list Serbian characters in there, but didn't notice that there was already a Cyrillic section there.)  --Dijan 07:57, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * OK, remind me to send User:Dcljr your way to get his thing incorporated somehow. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll take it
You agreed with me on that delete. I forgot that deleting an article page doesn't delete the talk. Who are you on IRC anyways, I made a note on the channel and you deleted a little while after I did :) -- Tawker 00:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Heh. Just coincidence - I went back to RecentChanges and saw it.  On IRC I'm "Connel" but I'm not on right now.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Locked page message
I was just adding comments to Requests for verification when I noticed the message at the top of the edit page: "Note: This page has been locked so that only registered users can edit it." When I looked further into this I found that you had only blocked it from being moved, which is fine. Is there a way of preventing that message from appearing when a page has only been blocked from being moved? A related message, however, should probably appear on the move page. Eclecticology 07:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * The page was "semi-protected" after a round of vandalism. If you click on the [unprotect] link you'll see that it is no longer "Sysops only" or "(default)" but instead now there is a third option between them "Block unregistered users."  If you log out, indeed you cannot edit that page.

 * A "Registered user" is one who has an account here for several days. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Actually, it looks like I semi-protected that one in error. Even if the vandalism that day was that bad, it should have been lifted the next day.  I'll unprotect it now.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew
Hi Connel. I just wanted to ask you about our transliteration policy. I've looked at Transliteration and what I got out of it is that we do not include transliterations of languages that use other scripts unless that word has been absorbed by the English language, in which case, that word should be listed under the English heading (with Etymology). Am I correct? There is a user, to whom I have told this twice so far and he still keeps adding Hebrew transliterated entries. What do you suggest we do? That user's talk page is User talk:Drago. I just noticed that he has been informed about this earlier by User:SemperBlotto as well. --Dijan 08:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I am at a loss. I do not agree with our current transliteration policy, as it is very inconsistent (particularly the sweeping exceptions made for Japanese and Chinese.)  I do not think our policy is wrong for ja: and zh:, but rather that it probably is wrong for all others (such as Hebrew.)  Since I don't speak any of the languages in question, it is probably inappropriate to push my opinion about them.

 * As for User:Drago, he/she is pushing an agenda, blatantly ignoring much of what he/she is told about our current policies. On that basis, I think he/she should be blocked in increasing increments with each violation.  HOWEVER, he/she seems to be our only Hungarian contributor to date, and has a handle (or at least links to other on-line translating dictionaries) on several others.  Oddly, User:Drago poses quite a problem all around.  I do not know what is appropriate at this point in time.

 * On a note of redemption for User:Drago, he/she has at least started formatting entries better. (Still not optimal.)  From that dramatic change, I am encouraged into believing that there may be hope for him/her.  But only a little.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Indeed, I agree with you about the transliteration policy. It does need a lot of work.  I wasn't sure if I should block him because of his Hungarian and some Turkish contributions (which are very welcome).  I'm only having problems with the Hebrew entries that he has created.  Despite the warnings given by User:Dvortygirl, User:SemperBlotto, and myself, he has continuously ingnored the rules of formating.  He has been temporarily blocked by User:SemperBlotto.  I hope that in the future he can become a more productive member of our community.  --Dijan 18:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Perhaps of greater concern is his rate of contribution - right on par with that of User:Primetime. (Therefore probably copyvios, all.)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

 * The reason that Chinese and Japanese and Korean are OK for transliterated entries is because they all have well understood, documented, and widely used transliteration systems with names we can use to label them. Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Thai, and other languages have multiple systems without names, or no system at all but several different choices for some letters. Some may have well documented systems that are not widely used. I'm in favour of finding good systems for all non-Roman languages, pointing to documentation for them, and labeling them when we use them as for pinyin and romaji. Another thing to think about is the very complex systems of diacritics used for some of these, especially in the case of Hebrew. Yet another concern is the division between historical and current languages in the case of Hebrew and Greek, and to some extent Russian, which has undergone several large orthographic reforms. — Hippietrail 18:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Thank you for explaining this, Hippietrail. I'm not sure I agree, but it is good to know what went into the decision (most of which was long before my time here.)  So, someone looking up an old tranliterated Russian text will be left largely in the dark, here?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

It's only temporary. This user keeps redirecting his User page to create it as an entry. He says it's better for searching. I reverted the page yesterday, but he did it again. Like I said, it's only temporary (maybe a day or two) until he stops redirecting his User page. :) --Dijan 03:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Do you have any better suggestions? --Dijan 03:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Nope. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:55, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * OK. :)  --Dijan 03:56, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

CheatBot
What are you planning to do against the many redirects from plural to singular that are in place? I've deleted some of them, but it seems there are quite a number of them. — Vildricianus 15:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
 * . Would your bots be able to override redirects? If not, I have a way to easily identify them. — Vildricianus 18:49, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Um, I created this page User talk:Connel MacKenzie/redirects a long time ago. I made it through the plurals redirecting to singular; perhaps some have been reenetered since?
 * I didn't make it through the other sections, as I was going to manually replace those plural entries I'd deleted first. (Actually, I'm not sure where I left off.)
 * The 'bot specifically does not override any existing entry, not even a redirect.
 * What is this new magic you've discovered/invented?
 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hehe, I dropped .allpagesredirect { text-decoration: line-through } in my monobook.css which strikes out redirects in Allpages. — Vildricianus 07:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hrm. I reloaded, my .css after doing that, but it no workie.  I need your magic!  --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:53, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Tested with only what's in your monobook.css, it does work actually. Beware, only in Special:Allpages! — Vildricianus 07:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hrumph! I need better magic.  Or sleep.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

More talk for you
Can I proceed with merging and ? I'd make the former a redirect to the latter; normally this doesn't break parameters. I'll also include some of its features in. — Vildricianus 11:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Absolutely. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

PS: I've also deleted this WS:CMK shortcut Wonderfool had made.

 * Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

bouncebackability
from WT:RFV
 * I've spent far too much time countering Connel. see bouncebackability/citations for lots more citations. I'm getting kind of annoyed at this ridiculous attitude. We can all agree it's a crap word, but it is out there. Probably not in the USA though. Maybe that is the real problem :-) --Richardb 14:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Replies elsewhere. No, not US vs. UK (although the term's absence on this side of the pond may have contributed in a minor way.)  My anti-spam/promotional crap sentiment was driving this.  Seeing ".biz" anywhere in an entry is usually a dead-givaway.  :-)  Cheers!  --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

bouncebackability
Sorry to have a mild go at you, Connel. You do some great work, but we disagree on a few things. You might have worked out that I'm a leftie liberal by now. Basically means as long as people do no damage, what's wrong with an entry like bouncebackability. And I hate "prejudice". I still think you were picking on "bouncebackability" because it is such an ugly word, of such dubiously commercial origins. But it still deserves a fair go. It really already had more citations than many other dubious words, words which seem to get accepted because some ancient dead poet used them in one of his more obscure poems. Yet here is a word being used by thousands, and even the BBC and ABC. I think you were being "elitist". We have enough problem with EC being elitist. Please don't join him in picking on dubious words.--Richardb 11:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Probably too late - I've been accused of being elitist before. :-)  Again, the entry didn't have any citations on it, I'd never heard it, and the rfv tag looked like it was removed improperly.  Please, do ask Hippietrail how much of a leftie liberal he considers me to be, as it is!  (Hrm, an American "leftist" is considered a moderate conservative in Europe, right?)

 * Richard, I think you do good work here too. My feathers get ruffled when you apply what you know of Wiktionary policy from a year ago, to current areas that have changed gradually during your absense.  (e.g. the RFV process.)  On the other hand, some of the things you've done in the last month, have ruffled feathers in precisely the correct manner!  So I don't know.  I hope you and TheDaveRoss work out something much better than the current WikiSaurus.  Right now, I'd consider 'saurus to be Wiktionary's weakest spot.  (But that's my "elitist" side showing itself again.  :-)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

pg^wiki
Tell me more about pg^wiki? Looks like a useful tool to have for cleaning up some of the WikiSaurus pages.--Richardb 12:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I am *very slowly* (because it is my first sf.net project) getting http://sourceforge.net/projects/mumps4en-wikt (CURRENTLY BLANK!) set up with the tools I've devised over time. My initial intent was to get code review of all this code, but sadly, as I look at each routine, I'm realizing how sloppy my style is.  My shameful code is getting commented and reworked before getting posted there.

 * I used pg^wiki to do a first-order of magnitude column balancing on the "Names" apendixes. I've reused it a few other times (e.g. Requested entries) and am now trying to put together usage instructions and CSPs to allow someone else to be able to cut-n-paste.  (CSPs have licensing issues preventing more than two users from using them though.)  Until TheDaveRoss rewrites it in php, (or Celestianpower rewrites it in Javascript) I'm afraid we'll have to attack these in a piecemeal fashion.  (Hrm, maybe we could use a  + Category:Request for column balancing??)

 * The column balancing it does is quite poor. I started approximating the kerning widths, then abandoned it when I realized I'd have to parse  this   first.  The four column balancing is pretty messed up for less than 16 items in a given section, too.  Good for a first take, I think.  But very far from perfect.

 * I program in MUMPS for two reasons. 1) It is what I know best.  2) Nothing quickly handles huge amounts of data better (not Oracle, not MySQL.)  While this makes adding things like User talk:Connel MacKenzie/checktrans trivial, (<18 seconds to run it interpreted on the XML dump) the relatively few people who know "M" is a drawback.

 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Special:BrokenRedirects
What should we do about this? Isn't there a way to run a bot against this? Or shall we leave them in place until your inflection bots make them work again? — Vildricianus 15:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, this page is one of the main reasons for doing the 'bots. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

skitter
I didnt quite understand your last edit on this one 18:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Unsigned comment by User:TheSimpleFool

 * I appologize - that was a case of mistaken identity. We has some problems at that time with a similar username; I mistook that edit as one of those silly edits.

 * By the way, I've never heard that usage before; is it particular to a specific region? The defintion looks like that of a noun, and the way it is worded could be mistaken as a personal attack on someone named (or nicknamed) "Skitter."  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Massive Attack
Sorry. I've run out of time. Hippietrial's not helping though. SemperBlotto 19:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry guys. I'm paying 15 lempira an hour, it's over 30 degrees, and I've got a lot of notes to get through. I blocked a few but there's only so much I can do. — Hippietrail 20:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've reverted several and will continue. (It would be a little easier if I had a rollback button, but I know I haven't been here long enough for that.) Rodasmith 20:52, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I *think* I got the IPs back to the most recent 2,000 changes. I think some of the earlier ones slipped through though.  Someone should sweep the block log and look for more reverts.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * It looks like they're all reverted, since does not show any comments of "(e)" or "( e)". (P.S. Please disregard my e-mail message questioning the protection of your talk page, sinse it's obviously no longer protected.) Rodasmith 21:37, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Well done everyone. I believe it was the work of the old Exi---nt vandal - User:213.140.56.243 for instance has had a hand in both. I can't find any more to rollback. SemperBlotto 21:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't think so. I think we need to get Tawker to complete his block of all open proxies.  (Unless, of course, that is what we just did!)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:52, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Has anyone checked the Meta: Recent changes list yet, to see which was struck next? --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Very strange. It looks like it was en: only.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikipedians tell me that that was the infamous "Squi" + "dward". He's been doing exactly that style vandalism on WP since January, but Tawker's bot auto reverts him there, so he is moving on...  --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:44, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And the blasphemy: he hasn't returned the code (to perform full page replacements) back to sf.net. I could really use that code, for the project Gutenberg stuff, as well as reordering sections (e.g. ===Alternative spellings===, ===Etymology===, alphabetized POS headers, etc.)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Categories
Good day. Some comments on your use of the AWB. It moved some categories to the bottom of a page, whilst they belonged at the end of the section, e.g. at far. Usually, we have them ordered in their appropriate language section here. Also, what kind of Unicode fixes are those? Beware that we sometimes use different apostrophes than the normal ASCII ones. Cheers. — Vildricianus 14:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Vild, that isn't quite right, according to this (nor according to the previous discussions I recall on the topic.) A category applies to an entire page, not a section, so to make them easier to find/correct, they are supposed to be at the end (right before interwikis.)
 * The only reason we haven't pursued these corrections in the past, is because we did not have a tool available that would do it. I am delighted that I can scratch this off my "monobook.js" todo list, now that a better solution exists.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:33, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

 * That's something we might want to change then. Suppose an entry with multiple language sections: now I want to edit the Dutch part, so I section-edit. However, I don't want to re-edit the entire page or the last section to track down the Dutch POS category; I'd rather have it in the Dutch section. Reasonable, not? — Vildricianus 16:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Reasonable yes, but Eclecticology wanted them at the bottom only.  At the time, he may have been more concerned about categories within templates, but I think those concerns have been overcome by events.  (Note: even though categories within templates is still a thorny issue; their popularity and ease of use has outweighed the initial arguments against them.)   --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Means that I should put it forward on WT:ELE or WT:BP or not? — Vildricianus 17:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

 * You can certainly make the suggestion on WT:BP. I don't see a big problem with having them correctly at the bottom, especially now that there is a tool (and a willing volunteer) to help standardize the entries in this manner.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Mirrors
I understand that Wiktionary mirrors and forks and such are listed at Wikipedia? Should we keep a list ourselves? . — Vildricianus 19:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I thought meta: had the list of known mirrors. I have no desire to maintain such a list, at this time.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:12, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Template:IPA
I changed the links again. Probably I've messed up something. — Vildricianus 09:44, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Redirect?
Huh? What's up with Apsis? — Vildricianus 15:15, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * That's how it was linked. Some of the earlier (incorrect) deletions do not seem to appear in the various entry history.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:17, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Erm, not quite. It was never deleted.  But it was linked without the lowercase pipe syntax (and the linking I encountered was old.)  We never should have decapitalized - it is still causing problems today.  And as more are entered, I think those problems will continue to increase.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Most recent todo4
I think you should narrow your search (or broaden the exceptions). Many bullet-listed misspellings and citations pop up. Also very well-formatted entries do, like bescherming. Now, I'll first run through all the Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:en before you update. — Vildricianus 20:08, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I added a bunch more exceptions last night. I think for future runs though, I'll ignore anything that isn't a heading level line.  That should work better than trying to maintain a list of exceptions.  On the other hand, I did find things that incorrectly has or as a result of doing this "wrong."  So I dunno.  Is a separate "correct" list in order?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, some of the results had nothing to do with headers but still deserved some cleanup. Any list with cleanupable entries is fine ;-) — Vildricianus 20:15, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Heh. With over 3,000 entries, all I'll say is: knock yourself out!  All help on those lists is appreciated.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

More clutter to your popular talk page, as per usual by me
Do you think a link-correcting bot would be feasible: correcting links to uppercase pages where it should be to the lowercase? You know what I mean, installing pipelinks and such. Lazy --> Lazy. Just a random thought of mine. — Vildricianus 21:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Have you downloaded the Wikipedia bot framework yet? In conjunction with the latest XML dump, you can run replace.py for each of these you find.  I suppose I could generate a list of words currently linked with first characters uppercase, redlinked, where the lower case entry exists.  Unfortunately, I don't know python well enough to have it figure that out.  It would have to run through the whole XML dump once for each term?  There must be a better way.  Then again, it is a small enough concern right now.  This one should remain shelved for a while.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:16, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, of course, but I was thinking what further cleanup could be arranged when the main tasks are done, say, in about ten years from now, right? :-) Yes, my todo list is large enough right now. And no, I know nought about bots or python or what have you, unfortunately. Cheers! — Vildricianus 21:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Random thanks
Glad to see that you've created an account on, hope you like the standard welcome message, and thanks for supporting PiBot =D  Good luck to you and your bot army (hopefully not too difficult to manage)! Bye now! --Shibo77 00:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the welcome message.  does help!  I'm very impressed by your edit box.  How do you determine if an apostrophe is wikisyntax or an actual apostrophe?  I'll have to investigate your monobook at great length!  --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Nevermind - I get it. It is just the different font that makes it appear as the other apostrophe, even though is still is the regular character.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks
I'll get on cleaning that as soon as I have a free moment. - TheDaveRoss 00:40, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Templates
I'm glad I'm not the only one around here that needs to experiment. If you see anything I explained wrong in please correct it, or let me know. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:40, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the pointer to . I didn't know we had such a template here. That invalidates the need for me to continue with User:Rodasmith/qif. Do we already have an empty template ala ? Rodasmith 19:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't think so. I'm enjoying watching your experiments, FWIW.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome
I do expect to enjoy being here when I can, but unfortunately I'm busy at work at present, so it won't be as often as I would like. Many things I'd like to do, but most will have to wait.

I shall add the parts of speech to the alternative spellings now (BTW I couldn't find any guidance on that, so had looked at a few existing entries).

I've must have misread the History on Bastard. Seems obvious now. I couldn't understand how a bot could have done it; hence why I was tentative! Enginear 17:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

 * All cleanup is appreciated. Being able to see the full history is a very nice feature here.  Note too, that if you edit one of the earlier versions, it becomes the newest version...at least, that is the easy way to revert page blankings and whatnot.  Enjoy learning your way around!  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Moved "Flame War" to Draft Policy and elsewhere.
copied from Beer Parlour

First quarter 2006 US vs. UK flamewar Draft Policy I've been brave enough / arrogant enough / stupid enough to propose a DRAFT POLICY. Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy I have moved the discussion to the Wiktionary talk:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy. --Richardb 08:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I've also set up a Project - Keeping Translations Common and Synchronised Across Different Spellings to carry on the work specific to that area. I'm going to move the relevant discussion to that page and associated discussion page(s).--Richardb 09:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

'''Moved a large chunk of discussion to Wiktionary talk:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy/BP April 2006

Moved a large chunk of discussion to Wiktionary talk:Project - Keeping Translations Common and Synchronised Across Different Spellings/BP April2006 --Richardb 09:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to cut across what you are doing, but equally well I'm committed to trying to get some policies organised, and to get you lot thinking a bit more organised, before Beer Parlour becomes completely unmanageable.--Richardb 09:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, I like what you are trying with color/colour, with a common "template" for each translation table. Looks like it might be a winning idea.--Richardb 14:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Richard, I'd like to propose a policy, that you never do that! Every time you remove stuff, you compromise the integrity of the archive.  At the very least, copy it to the archive first, then retain the link.  If all of our archived conversations are corrupted in the manner you performed above, it makes it harder to find relevant prior discussion.

 * Every time Ncik or Ec ask me for a link, I search. (Denial of the existence of previous conversations seems to be both of their MOs.)  Their pretending things have not been discussed before is very frustrating, but it is greatly compounded by only the most relevant content being stripped away, lost forever!

 * What you've done to the Beer Parlour is vandalism. Don't ever do that!  You didn't even leave a link!  I mean, holy shit, you didn't even leave a link!  If you compromise the integrity of a simple archive, then you compromise the integrity of all of Wiktionary.

 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:29, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hehe, I knew your reply was going to be like this. I had told Richard to make sure it got archived correctly, but I got a weird, seemingly irrelevant reply. Don't worry, it'll get in there exactly as it was before today's removal. (I'm dishwashing BP archiving). — Vildricianus 19:47, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Glad to see someone is keeping an eye on me, to keep me in check. Restoring those archives is greatly appreciated.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I thought the solution I proposed was a viable solution too. Instead of garnering useful comments though, the concept seems to have been ignored. The last time I saw the conversation, Hippietrail had a counter-proposal to use a similar template trick, to fully reinstate the POV schism. So I don't know...maybe Wiktionarians will continue to insist on keeping it AFU.

Then again, maybe Hippietrail was mired in the technical details of the template, and wasn't considering the NPOV vs. POV issue at all. Hard to guess. I'm pretty discouraged with the whole situation right now.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 19:29, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * No problem either, the issue is left cold for hardly a week now. Give it some time, it's a quite radical change (or perhaps not, whatever), and it'll need some time to settle. When I'm done with the webster pages, I'm going to tackle some of the (currently) low-profile entries like rancour/rancor, rigour/rigor and so forth, with your system, then move up towards some more complex stuff. — Vildricianus 19:47, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Wow. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

 * FWIW, the relevant Wikipedia pages are useful on this topic now. A year ago was about the last time I checked, and they seemed useless then...I guess these pages have undergone tremendous reworking in that time.  We used to have a policy specifically prohibiting traversing such lists to assert one POV spelling over the other, but it seems Ncik and others have gone ahead with the UKisms despite that policy.  It seems that the main page American and British English differences was traversed, filling entries in here, in order of appearance on that page.  It certainly looks to me like a certain amount of UKism impropriety.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 09:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks, added to list of things to consider. Please note further things you find on my talk page, as the following months, I won't have the time to check all pages. Cheers. —Vildricianus 18:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Connel. Came looking for how you were progressing with Project - Keeping Translations Common and Synchronised Across Different Spellings, but found nothing, so came looking here. As V says, sounds a good idea to me, so I'd like to see you make progress with it.  (No idea where Hippietrail's stuff is even)  --Richardb 09:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC) added emphasis --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:05, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

But, as to stripping archives etc. I try to do the best I can in taking the pages and pages of stuff out of BP to put into some sensible spot, so that when someone new to the discussion can find out what has gone before relatively easily. Sorry if I stuffed up a bit. But, boy, can I ask you to try setting up project and discussion pages earlier for this in-depth stuff. Point is, people should not have to look everywhere for the past discussion, or keep their own index. It should not be splattered all over Beer Parlour archives. It should be in one logical place, where any one can find it easily. I'll promise to be more careful. But, can you try to be a bit more organised in this one respect. Please.--Richardb 09:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And it will be easier to counter any denial of previous conversation. It is all too easy for someone to subtly delete a little bit of inconvenient stuff out of Beer PArlour (which is so fast changing, and few people check the history of) without anyone noticing (which I feel sure has happened occasionally). Harder in a specific project page, where the history is probably more closely checked.--Richardb 09:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Um, I check the Beer parlour only by its history, to see what has been posted since my last checking. — Vildricianus 09:49, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I assert that the Beer Parlour is the most central place for people to keep an eye on. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:05, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Redlinks from the Shakespeare wordlist
Greetings! SemperBlotto has suggested I ask you, is there a cheap and easy way to make a separate list of only the redlinks from the Shakespeare wordlist? Cheers! bd2412 T 00:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Cheap? Easy?  Well no, but I'll add it to my list of things to do anyhow.  I'll reuse the import I had from my old Wikipedia Words project from over a year ago, and compare it against the current XML dump.  Perhaps right after getting SB's request out of the way.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:08, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Much appreciated - I'd do it myself, but my way would take days! bd2412 T 04:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

escape
I copied the quote by K&R from talk to artcile, under the 2nd adjective sense. I hope that is where you wanted it. Is it OK to use a quote like this in the entry? It is fully cited. RJFJR 14:29, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Looks fine to me, although some are pickier than I am about quotation formatting. Thank you very much.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

JS button
Coolness, my latest button produces the following, with cursor focus on "Part of speech":

Part of speech
  This can be expanded to fully cover all preload templates, or more. — Vildricianus 16:31, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I am against this in principle. The templates:new_en_* should bear the brunt of the Ncik formatting wars.  Obfuscating my activities to be exactly in the format *I* prefer would probably be viewed negatively.  (Note that for 'bot activities, I don't have the same flexibility, as the subst: iterations are not possible; all the inflection transformations must be done beforehand.)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok then, whatever. This will be for personal use then. — Vildricianus 19:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Pennsylvania
re: "...otherwise it looks like a British POV denial of the very existence of Pennsylvania!" But every true Englishman knows about the two horse town of Pennsylvania [] in Gloucestershire. (However, since there are no woods in the area, nor any obvious direct connection with William Penn, and it is two miles south of a manor house built for an "English colonial administrator" I will, in the spirit of Philadelphia, concede that the hamlet was probably named rather grandiosely after what is now the American state.) ;-) Enginear 19:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hehe. Thanks, that is cute.  I needed a laugh today.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Bot changes
Hi. Could you please use one of your bot accounts (DblRedirBot, for example) to do these changes? Thanks. — Vildricianus 18:44, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Sounds perfectly reasonable. This one-time run is a sort of redirect, so that makes sense.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:46, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

More fancy features
I've been too busy again — do you think what I've done at foam is useful? IIRC, you've been experimenting with the hide/show thingy as well, right? Anyway, it's useful in the first two BP sections. Cheers. — Vildricianus 20:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, I helped Shibo copy his experiment here from zh:. The response on WT:BP was, as you can expect, stunningly inconclusive.

 * When I first loaded foam just now, the translations/verb's [show] and [edit] marks on the right were on top of each other. Now they aren't, but I didn't think I changed anything related to that section.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:53, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I modified MediaWiki:Monobook.css for that, so if you didn't reload your cache, the links overlapped. — Vildricianus 07:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hmmm. On WT:BP the show/hide makes the total d/l speed slower (since all monobook.js and .css get loaded with every page.)  Wasn't one theory about the BP's current state of affairs that the load time should be reduced?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, but it has nothing to do with the BP revamping actually. Evaluative test only. — Vildricianus 07:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Request for programming (yet another)

 * Hi there. Can you detect redirects that have extra, invisible text after the redirect pagename? See ipomoea as an example. SemperBlotto 16:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * One-timer run done at User talk:Connel MacKenzie/badredirects. --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, (low priority) instances of / in other sections than the translations. — Vildricianus 16:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * More to do: find Talk pages that have no corresponding articles, which are therefore usually crap. —Vildricianus 21:26, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * User talk:Connel MacKenzie/orphaned talk pages. --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * You might want to start with Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:rfvResult as these dudes should be deleted - the "archive" of the RFV conversation is now kept in WT:RFVA instead, unless it was merely a failed sense. --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:46, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikitionary
I just noticed you accidentally misspelled the URL of this site in the "letters" reproduced at Blocking policy ("wikitionary.org" instead of "wiktionary.org"). Thought I'd give you a heads-up in case you decide to cut-and-paste it in the future to send out more such letters. (I haven't corrected the page.) - dcljr 22:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Thank you. I think in the interests of cut-n-paste, I'll go correct it now.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:53, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

WOTD
Could you give some feedback on today's moving and changing of mine? I've split out the WOTD pages into archives and recyclable pages (to be protected). I guess the majority of links and tricks are fixed, but there'll probably be something I've overlooked. There's also a host of redirects but I've waited to delete these. Do you have an idea to keep an overview on these "recycled pages"? — Vildricianus 15:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I can't stop bugging you about it :-) How the heck do I automatically pull up a link to the templates themselves on Word of the day/Recycled pages/May, like I manually did in the first two headers? Right now has  [ edit] </tt>, but that doesn't work of course. PAGENAME doesn't either. —Vildricianus 10:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, the welcoming flood
I operate under the theory that potential vandals will shy away from disruptive activity if they are contacted early on - gives them the sense that someone is watching. Potential good contributors, on the other hand, get handy links to useful policy and practice pages. Aren't all new users supposed to be welcomed? I do this quite frequently at the 'Pedia. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 19:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I shy away from bots. I see your point about the server load - I'll keep it to folks who have made an actual edit. Thanks. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 19:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Please!
Will you please please please please PLEASE go here. The Owner is fealling really sad that there are no users. 69.205.178.150 00:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Funny, I got the exact same message, but at Wikiquote. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 18:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, I "feal" [sic] that this is spam. So far, I have not clicked this link, so I don't know if it is safe or not.  To my knowledge, I've never visited a .info site.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I looked - looks like Wikipedia, but with nothing in it. Purports to request that people post their games, tunes, things like that. Weirdness. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 00:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Random page
Is the <tt>rnd-wikt.html</tt> thingy from the toolserver now safe to use? Or still experimental? — Vildricianus 11:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, it it routing through my server, so that is not a Good Thing for several reasons. My internet connection is not nearly as stable as wikimedia foundation's.  It should be on a license-free DB server.  And it really should be on toolserver, just for decorum reasons.

 * That said, it is holding up quite nicely so far. I just don't like the idea of putting it into MediaWiki:Monobook.js.  Maybe after two or three weeks of people pounding on it...  Hard to guess.  Right now it needs 2-10 people testing it.

 * Also: <tt>rnd-en-wikt.html</tt> is the English one - the one you mentioned needs some cookie-Javascript added still, instead of resetting to Spanish everytime. I don't remember cookie handling, and haven't looked up examples yet.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Connel, do you think you could add Russian to the list of languages your random link supports? I'd really like to give my modified navigation bar to Stephen to test - I think he'd be the perfect beta tester for it. — Hippietrail 23:44, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Certainly. Give me a few minutes.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Done. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much! I'm just waiting for Stephen's respone now. In the meantime I'll play with the new languages (-: — Hippietrail 00:27, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Preamble and discussion
Hi again Connel.

I wanted to start a non-Beer-parlour thread on the subject of normalizing articles. I used to do it, stopped for a while, started again, and am now trying to stop again. I think you and Stephen also do this so for now I just wanted to discuss it amongst us before taking it to everybody on the Beer parlour. Please invite other contributors you know who normalize though.

 * I think this needs to be opened up to anyone that wishes to comment, now, before going to WT:BP. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:36, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * We can bring it to the BP by just this page there. But you may first want to move it out of your user talk page space. —Vildricianus | t | 09:33, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * No way, no how. This is gigantic.  My initial brain-storming list was a start, but about a quarter of them (or more?) have been contested.  What I wish to present to WT:BP is the concise list of non-controversial terms only.  As people see the positive effects each of these changes gradually has, we can add the contested or controversial topics to WT:BP separately, one per week.  The ones I've struck out must not go any further at this time.  But as this working-list settles down, I think we'll have a dozen items to present to the community, with explanation.  That is probably too much for most people to grok all at once.  Right now, we're still getting new, fresh viewpoints on things that seemed absolutely sound.  Let's try to keep it small for a few more hours, then present only a tiny list of the things that we know are OK with everyone.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 11:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I should have struck out my comment; I went through all of it afterwards and saw how big it had become. Jeez! —Vildricianus | t | 11:09, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

By normalization I mean making minor changes to formatting which usually make no or little difference to how a user sees the page, but does make them conform more to what each of us thinks of as best when editing a page.

Issues such as where to put blank lines and how many, whether to put spaces inside the == ==, or after asterisks in lists.

A few months ago I modified some of the stuff I had been doing for ages to bring it more into line with what I saw you were doing, but I seem to notice now some other things that Stephen and I might be doing differently, which has made me think we should check with each other about what such changes we've been making and agree with each other, then take what we come up with to the Beer parlour, altering the instructional pages on formatting if need be.

Do you think this is a good idea? Where should we start? — Hippietrail 00:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, I started with a list of twelve names, then realized I'd forgotten about another two dozen people. Rather than have anyone feel left out, I'll skip naming names.  I'm sure all are welcome to chime in, and some probably will, here.

 * Because these activities always turn out to be more controversial than imagined, it might be considered improper to have a back room meeting. OTOH, this is not exactly behind closed doors.  Furthermore, practically discussing these things in a small group first may wheddle out some of the more bone-headed things.

 * Where to start is also difficult. I'm not as consistent as I probably should be.  Some of it is from semi-automatic changes from my monobook, others are specific requests (over time.)

 * I also consider the 3rd level headings consolidation efforts to be part of normalization. Those consolidation efforts (that Polyglot started) give en.wikt: a consistent look and feel, that significantly adds to usability.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Hi Connel. Would it be a good idea, for each proposal, to link to a pair of example words showing the yes/no usages. Just so we are certain that we understand what we are talking about? SemperBlotto 08:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

1. No whitespace before first language heading
1. I agree. I've always done this. But note that disambiguation see also goes before here, and many times the wikipedia link - but the latter suffers from much variance. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Right - I always remove blank lines between and the first language heading.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 1. No whitespace before first language heading.
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. The 'pedia link should not go before the language header, as it may not apply to all languages on the page.  Widsith 10:36, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree, but only in cases where there is a "SEE" tag or line ahead of the first language header --EncycloPetey 14:00, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Why? To offset the first heading (vertically) incorrectly?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * For section editing purposes, this functions as a separate section before the first section edit possibility. --EncycloPetey 17:38, 7 May 2006 (UTC) (POV on your part. Note that just because something is called "incorrect" doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. In the Netherlands, coffee with cream is termed "koffie verkeerd", which literally translates as "coffee wrong", but that doesn't stop me.)

2. No whitespace after a header heading start, nor before a header end (i.e. between the
and the actual text.)==== 2. Do you mean between the == and the actual heading name? (I prefer "heading" to "header" by the way though I sometimes use the latter term due to programming habits) — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, I do. E.g. ==English==, but never == English ==.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 2. No whitespace after a header heading start, nor before a header end (i.e. between the == and the actual text.)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree - these spaces are seen in many entries (mainly older ones, I think), but it is entirely superfluous. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. -- EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Realize that this one is actually, in part, determined by software. When you use the "+" tab to add a new section to a talk page, it prompts you for the heading, and when it constructs the == line for you, it does use those spaces.  So, strictly speaking, for maximum consistency, we should either declare the spaces to be correct, or change the software to match our recommendation.  (But I'm tossing this out as food for thought, not as a serious suggestion that the software needs to be changed.) –scs 14:07, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

3. No spaces or tabs after a header
3. Agree. I remove these often. Note that spaces at the end are usually due to copying and pasting from some other software. This is a very minor point for me. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Not minor at all, as it throws off section editing - resulting in the wrong section being edited. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 3. No spaces or tabs after a header
 * I don't know what this one means. Do you mean word spaces before == or line spaces before the following text?—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Neither. This is about junk coming after "==English==" on the same line.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:38, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree we have to work around this bug: However, it is our duty to report it. I was looking to see if it's already reported earlier but that machine crashed. If anybody else can do that better than me, please do. — Hippietrail 21:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Is it a "bug" or a "known feature"? (Note the lack of smiley.)  Really, the "bug" I see is that the MW software doesn't enforce this.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No comment on this until it has been clarified/fixed. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

4. No comments after header, on the same line as the header (breaks section editing!)
4. Is there a better place for such comments? I have done this from time to time when I've thought it appropriate. My lost parser could handle this. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Again, as Vild points out below (and I expounded on above) this breaks section editing numbering...so clicking on the [Edit] link on the right side of the page edits the subsequent section instead. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * On #4: it seems to be quite important that there is nothing on the same line as the heading since this confuses the numbering of sections (you end up editing different sections than those which you intended to if there are comments after any header). —Vildricianus 18:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 4. No comments after header, on the same line as the header (breaks section editing!)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree as with #3. #3, #4 and #5 should be merged. — Hippietrail 21:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you mean for the "final" list (whatever that is) or that I should abandon the numbering concept within this page?  I separated them originally for no reason whatsoever, but on reflection, they each have different reasons for being problematic.  {Shrug}.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:42, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree - comments should go on the following line. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree -EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

5. No templates after header, on the same line as the header (breaks section editing!)
5. I've also done this. My reasoning was that I wasn't sure that putting a category or a comment (as above) on its own line may introduce an extra blank line on some browsers. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Again, it breaks section editing numbering. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 5. No templates after header, on the same line as the header (breaks section editing!)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree as with #3. #3, #4 and #5 should be merged. — Hippietrail 21:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, as for #4. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, and dislike seeing anything on the same line as a header. --EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

6. No blank line after any header except for all level two language headings
6. I used to remove such blank lines but it is one of the changes I made after seeing that you were adding them. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * So it was you removing them? Ah ha!  :-)   .  Well, I think that having the language heading stand out in the edit section is pretty important.  (Gah, did I just say "heading" and not "header"?  I'm messing up my own conventions now.)  Also, AFAIK, this was the convention used by a clear majority of users, when I was learning Wikt: layout style.

 * 6. No blank line after any header except for all level two language headings
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Not sure. I can't think of any cases where I would disagree outright, but I have to think about this one. --EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

7. Templates generally prohibited in headings and translation sections (notable exceptions:, , .)
7. what about ((Acronym)) and ((Initialism))? Are these exceptions or should we stop this practice. Personally I've been doing this since it seemed standard but I never liked it. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I've waffled a few times about this - I think I started this practice way back when. User:Dmh was doing is category/template experiments at the time; I took these to this "extreme" but I've never seen a viable alternative.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Even if the categories are "solved" (e.g. the 4th parent category becomes a separate super-category, but no longer a parent relationship to the other three categories) the template(s) would still need to add two (or more) categories to each entry. Using AWB, it is conceivable to subst: the template and zap the category to the bottom of the page.  But AWB is not permitted to do that on en.wikt: just yet.  Is it Vild?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * So you advoicate removing the templates like, , , , , etc from all the translation sections? I would agree with that. --EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No. What?  Item #7 is talking only about characters that appear between == and == (or === and ===, or ==== and ====.)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * For clarity: leave out the  and translation sections  part. At first, I didn't get that either, actually, until I realized this was about the templates (,  etc). It was, right? Perhaps that deserves a separate section, although most of the work restricted to a dozen more templates to be subst:ed. —Vildricianus | t | 19:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

7. Templates generally prohibited in headings and translation sections (notable exceptions:, , .)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, and personally I'd go farther and get rid of, , , too. –scs 14:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

8. Wikification of non-"top 40" languages (as per HT's/SGB's final lists - I could care less.)
8. Stephen and I, and perhaps others have been discussing a more common sense approach than "top 40". The reasoning is that exotic languages remain exotic to the majority of users (readers) even if a fan of such language adds thousands of entries, and a well-known language with few articles still doesn't need to be looked up often. A sub-point is that I always wikify exotic language names also in the level-2 heading for the exact same reason. I know others don't do this and it may be that some undo this. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * As Vild comments below, I think you guys have a decent handle on these. I am mostly ambivalent about the final list.  (I have my own POV, of course, but for this I can mostly ignore it.)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * On # 8: I once tried to bring this to the public but few people (except the two of you) replied there. See Translations/Wikification. I'd also reason that "exotic" languages are wikified both in translation sections as in level-2 headers. —Vildricianus 18:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 8. Wikification of non-"top 40" languages (as per HT's/SGB's final lists - I could care less.)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Should merge #8 and #9. — Hippietrail 21:20, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, but the language list for the top 40 should be made easier to find. --EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I really don't like the disparity. I understand it's nice to have a handy link to the entry describing a language you've never heard of; I understand such a link is distracting and unnecessary for a language everybody's heard of, but still, it seems odd to me to have wikilinks in headers at all, and just wrong to have this split scheme where sometimes the language header is a link and sometimes it isn't.  I wish there were some completely different way to provide the convenience link to the language name, one that didn't have this disparity problem at all. –scs 14:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Please see WT:BP and comment there. — Vildricianus 15:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

9. De-wikification of all "top-40" languages (as defined in previous number)
9. Goes with #8 — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * As Vild says below, yes, this list is identical to #8.

 * 9. De-wikification of all "top-40" languages (as defined in previous number)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Should merge #8 and #9. — Hippietrail 21:20, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree; this goes with #8. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --EncycloPetey 14:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

10. One blank line before all subsequent headers
10. I feel strong agreement here and have always done it. I have a pet peeve against "compressed" articles - those which use few or no blank lines. I find them unreadable. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * On #10: complete agreement. —Vildricianus 18:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 10. One blank line before all subsequent headers
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree - like Hippietrail says, entries with no blank lines between sections are difficult to read and edit. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree. I've tended to compress the initial sections (language, etymology, pronunciation) together, except when these sections are more than a line or two. I also disagree for a variety of foreign language situations. We have a current discussion (I forget where, at the moment) concerning the best place to put categorization tags for foreign languages. One favored suggestion is to place them immediately following the language header, which is the one I favor. I see no reason to have an additional blank line after that, though this is a special case. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * This formatting guideline/recommendation has nothing to do with where the categories go. I said in the category-relevant sections that my opinion about category placement is just too controversial for this conversation.  So, it is my opinion that in the case where those categories are "in the relevant section" that there would still be a blank line.  e.g.

Noun
@#$$%SDSAa (romanized term)

 * 1) def #1
 * The blank lines here are what are being discussed, not whether to shuffle the categories to the bottom of the page. For foreign language entries, the white space is perhaps more important, as English-only editors have such great difficulty understanding what is there.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Note: finding "compressed" entries is a good way of identifying contributions from new Wiktionarians, that may need some gentle guidance. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Good point, although these might be hard to find without writing a special bot to track them down. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, I haven't written a custom search for these yet, but I plan to. :-)  --Connel MacKenzie T C 09:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

11. One blank line after "inflection line" (originally for Polyglot, now this has grown on me.)
11. I always used to do this but grudginly gave it up and practised the opposite when I saw that was what you were doing. I would vote strongly in favour of keeping the headword/inflection/romanization line attached to the heading above it and with a blank line below it. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Perhaps I worded #6 unclearly. I agree 100% with what you say here.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 11. One blank line after "inflection line" (originally for Polyglot, now this has grown on me.)
 * I don't know what this means.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * E.g. "===Noun===" / "" / < > . --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:38, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Just to make this clearer: "No space between POS line and headword/inflection line, but always a space after" — Hippietrail 21:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree (with Hippietrail's clarification). — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

12. One blank line before a translation section gloss (except first gloss)
12. I have no opinion. Whatever others decide is fine with me. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 12. One blank line before a translation section gloss (except first gloss)
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree - the blank line is unnecessary and makes no difference to the rendered page. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree for the reasons Paul G. gives. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

13. One blank line before
13. Agreed. I've always done this. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 13. One blank line before
 * I strongly disagree on this one. It results in compression, and the visual impact of this would be completely unacceptable in print, and I think it's unacceptable in a webpage as well. As a general rule, pages benefit visually from a little whitespace artfully applied to margins, between paragraphs, and before headers. Putting just a single blank line before has the same effect as putting no blank line. I feel strongly that there should be two blank lines before each . —Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I've never heard an explanation for this before, so I always thought it was a mistake. Now that I understand it is not a mistake, I'll try to look a few more before forming an opinion on it.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:38, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Solved this quite conveniently by adapting monobook.css. Perhaps this is a good candidate for adoption in MediaWiki:Monobook.css:

<tt>.ns-0 #bodyContent hr { margin-top: 2.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em }</tt>
 * (or adapt as you please). —Vildricianus 17:26, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * This is important. Everybody needs in edit mode. Non-monobook users need it always. Am I right in saying most monobook users would prefer it hidden in view mode? If so we can move a version of this code into the standard monobook CSS. But can anybody think of a way to hide the actual line, but still add extra space? This aspect of this topic is beyond normalization and should probably be taken to the Beer parlour. — Hippietrail 21:29, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've boldly gone ahead with this - see the Beer parlour. — Hippietrail 22:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I wish I had seen this comment sooner. :-(  I've applied your fix to my personal monobook.css, so I'm content with this.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've only ever put a blank line before the . If it makes a difference (and I didn't know that it did) I'll put one before as well. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

14. One blank line after
14. Agreed. I've always done this. Though I think Stephen is adding two lines here. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * On #14: I find that the Wiki layout renders too little space before and after horizontal dividing lines, which two blank lines may solve. But customizing the top and bottom margin in CSS might be a better solution. —Vildricianus 18:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 14. One blank line after
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

15. One blank line before categories
15. Agreed. Didn't used to like it but I've been converted. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * But what about the cases where categories are not placed at the end of the page? This is an on-going discussion, but the issue is that people editing only a single language on pages with multiple language headers need access to the categories for editing. One proposed solution (which I favor) is that for non-English categories, the category tags would be placed immediately following the language header. In this case, I would not favor including a blank line before the categories. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Gah. Excellent point.  This was written with the assumption that categories were moving to the bottom of the page.  So this needs to be clarified to refer only to categories (or groups of categories) appearing at the end of 1) A language section 2) the entire entry.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * 15. One blank line before categories
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree in cases where the categories appear at the end of the page. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

16. One blank line before interwiki links
16. Agreed. Between cats and interwikis. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 16. One blank line before interwiki links
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, although I don't think I've ever used interwiki links. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

17. controversial: One blank space after "[[Category:"
17. I don't like this one at all. I also don't like the space after * lists but do like the space after # lists (definitions). These are personal feelings which of course don't matter. My feeling is mainly based on my belief that without a space is much more common already in the first 2 cases, in the last case my choice is based on readability. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, I can see that. If there is any (consistency?) reason at all for prohibiting the space after "[[Category:" then we should prohibit it, or else I'll keep doing it (inconsistently.)  I like the spaces to make word-wrapping more natural and browser-controlled.  --[[User:Connel MacKenzie|Connel MacKenzie]] T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * On #17: No. I've so far only seen it being used by Connel, and I don't really like it. —Vildricianus 18:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 17. controversial: One blank space after "[[Category:"
 * I don't suppose it matters, but I never do this, and I remove them when I find them.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Connel's argument makes sense so I will go with the popular opinion on this point. — Hippietrail 21:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Some more random thoughts: for the syntax Category: ... on a talk page or referenced elsewhere, this may make sense. But in entries, for the  syntax, I can see the need for consistency.  There is no good reason for me to break with tradition on this one.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't think that the blank space is necessary. Coming from a programming background, I see this as being just like the C++ scope resolution operator :: for namespaces. The convention there is not to insert any spaces either side of the operator: namespace::class::subclass::method, for example. I think this is sufficiently readable as the colon takes up much less space than a letter and so can easily be skipped by the eye, IMO. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * OK, this one gets stricken. Not controversial: rather, this is not liked by anyone (except me.)  I have stopped doing this (in the main namespace) but I'll continue to use it as needed, when discussing long category names in WT:BP or other non-main-namespace places.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

18. Definition lines should be sentences, starting capitalized, ending with a period "."
18. I thought our policy was that if they are sentences they must be capitalized and end with a full stop, if they are simple glosses they should be all lower case with no full stop. This I agree with. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Um, you are correct. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 18. Definition lines should be sentences, starting capitalized, ending with a period "."
 * I strongly disagree with this point. First, very few of the definitions found here are complete sentences. For example, for Armenian, the definition is "1. Of, from, or pertaining to Armenia, the Armenian people or the Armenian language". I believe rewriting the definition as a complete sentence would not be beneficial.
 * Second, almost no dictionary capitalizes definitions, and in the case of some definitions, capitalization actually causes confusion. If a definition starts with a noun, for example, capitalization sometimes suggests that the word is actually a proper noun.
 * Third, some words have translations instead of definitions. For instance, the Russian word солнце is "defined" as sun. The capitalized Sun is the wrong meaning. Even if we decide to keep capitalizing definitions, we certainly should not capitalize translations. In my opinion, neither should be capitalized, but parenthetic categorizations such as (Law) or (Slang) should be. —Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, there seem to be two types of definitions that could benefit from sentence-style vs. non-sentence-style differentiation.
 * The common type of definition is one of equivalence. "foo ==Noun== # a type of bar" says that "foo" means "a type of bar".
 * The lesser common type of definition is used where such equivalence is impossible, unclear, or difficult. "the ==Definite article== # The is the definite grammatical article that...." describes "the" but does not provide its equivalence.
 * It would be great to see the two types of definitions differentiated in some way. Why not format the common type in the simple manner (i.e. no forced initial capital and no period) and format the rare type in sentence style (i.e. forced initial capital and ending in a period)? Hmm, I suppose this belongs on BP instead of Connel's talk page, so feel free to dismiss this post for its location or to ridicule its naïve hope for consensus. Rodasmith 18:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If the above "[...] sentences [...] must be capitalized and end with a full stop [but] simple glosses [...] should be all lower case with no full stop" is current policy, it completely agrees with my above recommendation, so I hereby withdraw the above post. Rodasmith 19:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If this turns out to be controversial, I would no longer regard it as normalization but as a formatting standard that needs to be voted on. I am completely open to thoughtful opinions on this. — Hippietrail 21:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If you mean that the definition of cow, say, should be "A cow is an animal with four legs, one at each corner." rather than "an animal with four legs, one at each corner" - then I disagree. I prefer the second version. SemperBlotto 22:02, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure whom you were addressing, SemperBlotto, but if you were addressing me, then don't worry, I do not mean that definitions of such words should be complete sentence. Most words are best defined with "simple glosses" instead and hence have no need for an initial capital, a full stop, or anything else normally imposed by English grammar on sentences. As Hippie says, though, further discussion would be beyond the scope of normalization. Rodasmith 22:33, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I think we are soliciting general comments: I don't think SB's comment was directed at anyone. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Perhaps I misjudged how controversial this is. I can see this as a topic worthy being voted on.  But to my understanding, it was.  This was a minor skirmish on Wiktionary talk:Entry layout explained, that I though had been resolved.

 * SemperBlotto, please explain why you think your second format is better. I don't see it at all.  To me, the second format you gave is just inconsistent.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * This one is a little bit contentious. As far as I am aware, very few, if any, definitions in Wiktionary are sentences. There is a linguistic principle that a definition should be substitutable for the word it defines, so that in a sentence, the word can be replaced by the definition and leave the meaning of the sentence unchanged. Hence you can replace "I saw a cow" with "I saw an animal with four legs, one at each corner" and the sentence has the same sense (provided cows are the only quadrupeds with a leg at each corner). It is not possible to do this with full sentences: *"I saw a cow is an animal with four legs, one at each corner" is incorrectly formed. Children's dictionaries sometimes use this format to make their definitions easier to understand to youngsters, but it is not appropriate for Wiktionary. Newbies and one-off contributors sometimes post "full-sentence" definitions, and when I see them, I change them to "substitutable" definitions.

 * Having said that, I think the issue here has been incorrectly worded: I see it as being whether definitions should be all in lower-case or should begin with a capital letter and end in a full stop/period. That is not the same as their being full sentences, because, simply put, they are not. (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to look up the rules for what is required for a string of words to be a sentence.)

 * I have no strong views either way, but agree with the points made about possible confusion between the capitalised and lower-case initial letter of the first word. I probably come down in favour of the lower-case form, for several reasons:

 * Avoidance of the confusion mentioned above.
 * Most other dictionaries do this (although it should be noted that the OED does not). This could be to save ink or space, which, given that the current OED runs to 20 large volumes, is clearly less of an an issue for them.
 * Initial capitals and final full stops suggest sentences, when the definitions are not (although see how I am formatting this list :) ).
 * Consistency with non-English entries, where only translations or glosses are given and these are in lower-case with no final full stop.
 * It makes it clearer that the definition can be substituted for the word.
 * It looks silly when the definition is a single word.
 * Wikification of the initial word is straightforward ( word rather than Word).
 * Less effort is required.

 * So I think that probably puts me firmly against this policy. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Wow. Well, spot checking a few Webster's 1913 entries, they do all seem to be in sentence form, not replacement form.  Perhaps it is a pondian issue, after all?  As far as I knew, the replacement form is only used in smaller dictionaries, to save space.

 * To be honest, I never understood the replacement form until I read your explanation above, Paul. Thank you for the clarity.

 * For your reason #4, I was suggesting this rule apply to those as well.
 * For your reason #6, I am pretty sure all English words can be a sentence by themselves. Subject/noun/verb is of course the correct requirement, but two of the three are and often can be implied.  Run.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  Fire!  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  I.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  No.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  Yes.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  Spaghetti.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  Leeds.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)  Fishing.  (Yup, that's a sentence.)
 * For your reason #7, that is a very good point. For nouns, I usually precede the term with "A " to avoid that issue; for verbs I use "To ".
 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I also forgot to mention: the cow example wansn't quite right. Substituting the Wiktionary definition, you'd get "I saw An animal with four legs, one at each corner.." which if you read without regard for capitalization or punctuation, would be coherent, even in your scenario.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:55, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I actually don't think this is really part of the normalization process, but something of a different nature. After all, it does make a difference for the reader, doesn't it? So perhaps this has to wait for a second round of discussion, if all this is brought to the BP. But on topic: I'm with Connel here (I think so), and I don't think it's a Pondian issue. I prefer "An animal with four legs, one at each corner." On the other hand, I understand that many definitions are still lacking, and it would be a waste of time to make lacking or embryonic definitions into sentences, as they still need to be expanded. —Vildricianus | t | 09:55, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I think this has to be taken on an entry-by-entry basis. I feel, with Paul and Stephen, that having to make every definition a full sentence may sometimes be a constraint.  However note that with some complicated terms, eg theological terms or abstract concerpts, a ‘replacement form’ is not always possible, and full-sentence (ie natural English) explanation is desirable there.  Widsith 10:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I can't see any rationale to support one form over another. The only comment I'd make is that all the definitions for a single word should be formatted in a single form, rather than mixed (which looks bad, as if someone wasn't paying attention to wehat they were doing). --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I guess my rationale for thinking it was a non-controversial "normalization issue" (which it is not) was that if we are striving for consistency, then all definitions in Wiktionary should appear as sentences. I'd never heard Paul's eloquent rational for the "replacement style" before, and while that does affect my POV, I'm not entirely sold by any means.  I still think that to be consistent, Wiktionary should choose a single style...which would force it to be "sentence style."  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Wow. Lots of good arguments here, which I haven'd digested all of.  Me, I'm strongly in favor of the "replacement style", for precisely the reason Paul described.  I'm somewhat in favor of formatting most definitions (even though they be fragments) with initial caps and final periods, if for no other reason than that I think they look better that way.  But there are exceptions.  Sometimes, for a complicated definition, "replacement style" is unwieldy, and the reader is better served by a full, grammatical sentence.  When a definition needs a second (or third) clarifying sentence, those are full sentences even if the first is a fragment.  Finally, when a definition is a translation I agree that it's best left unadorned, with neither initial-cap nor final-stop.  So I'm guessing -- at least based on my own proclivities -- that the "policy" here would end up involving several decision points and judgement calls, and would not, after all, end up imposing any kind of absolute uniformity, neither decreeing always or never full sentences, nor always or never caps and periods. –scs 14:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

19. Never allowing multiple blank lines
19. Agreed. But see #14. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * 19. Never allowing multiple blank lines
 * I agree except before as I described above in point 13.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I (somewhat controversially) altered the default monobook CSS to hide the but increase blank space in its place. I think it ought to be default so I've started a topic on the Beer parlour. I think this is more cross-platform that Stephen's solution which in my experience gives different results in different browsers. Please comment. — Hippietrail 20:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Is this resolved by .css now? Can we say "Never allow multiple blank lines" without exception now?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:01, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * If this has been sorted out, I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree in cases where we have inflection lines and images and wikipedia links and... I'm not sure how this should be handled, but multiple blank lines is the only slution I've found for certain cases where all the included items end up overlapping each other. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * That's considered as bad layout I guess. There should be other solutions such as adjusting margins. —Vildricianus | t | 15:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * No Vild, it's not bad layout. EncycloPetey, what I do in those cases is migrate the float=right items around.  So, one before the ==English==, one after ===Etymology===, two after ===Noun=== (before the inflection line, with no blank lines) and any others below.  Could you please provide an example term or two, so we can all clearly see what you mean?  I am pretty sure I still disagree with multiple blank lines even in this circumstance.  The worst I've had to do so far, to date, is use  to help things align...but not multiple blank lines.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Hmm? I think it is (and this is regarding this section's topic, namely two blank lines). What do you think about another point that widely varies between editors: placement of the link? In most instances it is placed under the POS header, but if Ncik's boxy templates are in place, there's overlap between them. BTW, I didn't even know of 's existence. Nice thingy. —Vildricianus | t | 19:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

20. controversial: Categories to bottom of entire page, not language section

 * 20. controversial: Categories to bottom of entire page, not language section
 * I have no opinion on this.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * A related issue is categories between headings where a blank line would otherwise go. I've been leaving these untouched so far. I tend to agree that this one is controversial and that takes it beyond the scope of normalization for now. It would need discussion and perhaps voting on the Beer parlour first. — Hippietrail 22:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * See WT:BP. —Vildricianus 17:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

 * So this should be removed from "The List" and added to "deferred topics"? --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I disagree - it is often useful to put categories alongside what they apply to. For example, I routintely put in the pronunciation section, which makes it clear that this has been considered. Putting it at the bottom can make it look like it has been overlooked.

 * Another reason for putting categories in the place where there apply is if, for any reason, that content is deleted (perhaps because the content is wrong), it is clear that the category should be deleted as well. If the category is at the bottom, it is very easy to overlook it.

 * Furthermore, as categories do not add any formatting to the final page (except for being listed at the end), there is no harm in putting categories close to the content they apply to. (Or maybe they do add whitespace - see #26 below.)

 * Of course, categories embedded in templates cannot be moved. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * So, you are saying this should be discussed in the "controversial issues" section instead then, right?
 * Note that many entries already do have all categories moved to the bottom. If you wish to remove a section now, you currently have to check both places; where the category might be relevant, and at the bottom of the entry.  And perhaps the end of that language seciton as well.  If we decide at some point that categories belong where they are most relevant, who will go back and change the last 71,000 English entries, to comply?  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:33, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Disagree for non-English. Users editing a single language need to be able to find all categories listed with that language's section. Otherwise, what's the point of being able to edit long pages by section? I don't want to have to hunt for categories that might be at the bottom of the page or might be carried in an included template or might have been dropped somewhere else. I favor placing all categories for non-English languages immediately after the language header. For English, the bottom of the page makes the most sense. --EncycloPetey 14:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Again: you have to "hunt" for them currently anyway. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:55, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

21. All HTML auto-converted to UTF-8. &amp; -- > &

 * 21. All HTML auto-converted to UTF-8. &amp; --> &
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --EncycloPetey 14:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Personally I'd like to agree, because I'm using a fully UTF-8 capable browser now, but that's a pretty recent thing for me. For people who aren't able to (or don't know how to) edit Unicode, HTML entities are preferable.  Are we ready to lock such people out?

 * (Side notes on what I just said: (1) Yes, since most of our entries do use UTF-8 unapologetically, someone who can't handle it is in big trouble already. But I worry -- even though it's a pretty small possibility -- about someone who makes a new entry using HTML character entities, comes back tomorrow to work on it some more, and can't, because the entities have been autoconverted to UTF-8 behind his back. (2) Even for the majority of editors who do have UTF-8 capable browsers, I'm not sure they're all suitably aware of all of the new distinctions which can and sometimes must be made.  If you're used to working just in ASCII, or just in 8859-1/Latin1, you've got some surprises in store when you start using Unicode.  There are three kinds of double quotes " “ ” and four kinds of apostrophes/single quotes ' ʼ ‘ ’.  This ASCII hyphen - is not the same as this en dash – which is not the same as this minus sign − which is not the same as this em dash —.  This turned letter ǝ is not the same as this schwa ə (a distinction which I only learned of after observing the difficulties Hippietrail and Paul G had with the rhymes:English:-eɪʃǝn page).  And so on.  And if you're not aware of these and several other equally subtle distinctions, you can goober things up, as witness the redirect of aren’t to aren't (or, for that matter, from it's to it’s -- everybody caught the inconsistency there, right?).  And even if you are aware of the distinctions and your browser does support UTF-8, you may not know how to enter all those strange characters that aren't on your keyboard...) –scs 15:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, we already do, by policy. The choice could have gone either way - towards HTML coded for editing or towards UTF-8 for editing.  It went towards UTF-8.  The recommendation to avoid HTML coding at all costs, is so that Searching works.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Are you talking ahout everywhere, or just in entry names? —scs 16:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

22. All HTML tables converted to wikitables

 * 22. All HTML tables converted to wikitables
 * I don't really understand what this means.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * In the main namespace especially, we should never see <table>, but instead the <tt> {| </tt> syntax for specifying tables. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, but we need a good and easy to find resource available explaining the ins-and-outs of tables, including how all our own templates are set up. Most of what I've needed, I've had to pull from existing examples I've come across here and on Wikipedia. --EncycloPetey 14:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Try m:Help:Table and m:Help:Template. —Vildricianus | t | 14:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I've never seen such HTML tables, only in templates. Perhaps it's a better thing to say that in the main namespace, all wikitables should be hidden in templates, notably the top/mid/bottom ones, and preferably, also inflection templates. —Vildricianus | t | 09:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

23. All POS (or equivalent sections) must have at least one line starting with "#" before the next heading

 * 23. All POS (or equivalent sections) must have at least one line starting with "#" before the next heading
 * I agree.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I have a CSS / Javascript idea for those who don't want to see sense numbers for single-sense articles that should overcome any difficulty here. — Hippietrail 22:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. There should not be intrusive headers between any POS header and the content for that header. --EncycloPetey 14:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Confer entry at I love you. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree, subject to what Connel says - a few pages exist purely for the purpose of providing translations (see also day after tomorrow). Perhaps #23 can be reworded to take this into consideration. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think day after tomorrow deserves a definition. Agreed, it's a bit weird for English, but taking into account that in other languages it's often a single word, I'd say we can just as well define the concept. —Vildricianus | t | 10:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't see how this wording doesn't already take that into account. I think my pet peeve I was trying to address when I wrote this was this style:

Alternative spellings

 * alt1, alt2

 * 1) Noun definition #1.
 * 2) Second noun definition.
 * 3) Noun definition #3.
 * In that, I think the intevening "alt spells" is absolutely unacceptable, for several reasons.
 * I have yet to see where an alternate spelling applies to only a single part of speech.
 * (Oh, I bet there is one! I think I had an example once, but I forget. —scs 15:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC))
 * There already is a less intrusive place for alternate spellings (before etymology.)
 * Interleaving them makes parsing harder, as any program must assume the definitions "belong" to the alternate spellings heading, instead of the noun heading.
 * Even in the case where it is possible for alternate spellings to exist for a single part of speech, the sub-heading (as all other sub headings) needs to follow the definitions, not precede them.
 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Absolutely agree (despite the I love you and day after tomorrow examples.) —scs 15:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

24. POS headings (ongoing individual consolidation discussions - sometimes surprisingly controversial.)

 * 24. POS headings (ongoing individual consolidation discussions - sometimes surprisingly controversial.)
 * I don't understand what this means.—Stephen 09:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Reducing the number of third level headings in en.wikt:, by combining things like "===Pluralish noun===" or "===Noun phrase===" into 'standard headings' like "===Noun===". --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:38, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I am in favour of this but again I feel it's too controversial for this discussion. I would love to see it fully fought out and decided elsewhere though. — Hippietrail 22:51, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Broadly in favour, although trimming everything to "Noun", "Verb", etc, may be too extreme. For example, the OED uses "vbl. sb." (verbal substantive [noun]) and "ppl. a." ("participial adjective") for words like "freezing" in "it's freezing cold" and "this food is suitable for freezing" to show that these derive from the verb "to freeze". I think it is useful to retain parts of speech like "verbal noun" and "participial adjective". On the other hand, "noun phrase" (which should probably be "substantive phrase" anyway) can be trimmed to plain "noun" without loss of useful information - a noun is a noun, and you can tell it is a phrase by seeing that it contains more than one word. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I think this should be deferred to the "too controversial" list, for now. All print dictionaries that I know of list parts of speech as abbreviations.  Spelling out the meaning of the abbreviation is very confusing to the average reader (who just wants a frikkin definition!)  My pet peeve is Transitive vs. Intransitive being split into sepatate headings, instead of a single Verb heading.  That however, is spectacularly controversial.  Because of the embyonic state of Wiktionary today, the focus most often leans towards assisting entry of translations.  As Wiktionary matures, the focus will shift towards making entries readable especially to the average reader.  If we want to retain this, on this list, we'll have to specifically exclude my controversial Tr/Intr issue, I think.

 * I find that "Noun phrase" is utterly useless; I completely agree with Paul that "phrase" should be omitted in that case. OTOH, the "Phrase" heading alone/itself is particularly useful for phrasebook entries.  The "Idiom" heading is astoundingly useful; even when a particular form of an idiom can be pigeon-holed into a particular part of speech, other similar forms (that redirect to it) often are not the same part of speech/function!  I feel strongly that idioms should be listed under the "Idiom" heading, while any part of speech should be listed at the start of a definition line.  That, of course, mimics what print dictionaries do.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree with HT. Too controversial for this topic, and it has recently been "discussed" again in the BP. Even though personally, I'd love to see, at last, an exhaustive and final list of POS headings compiled, each with considerable archived arguments for future subdual of contestation. But that'll be for the next round. —Vildricianus | t | 10:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * This deserves it's own discussion, but it is worth pursuing to see what POS headers are desired, needed, and used. I thought I had a good handle on these until I started creating Latin entries. --EncycloPetey 14:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I strongly agree this must go to the "controversial" list. Part of the actual resolution will have to be devising a list of headers (confer: /todo2) for discussion.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Even though there are aspects which are controversial, I think we could and should do some consolidation now, as part of this normalization. If you look at Patrik Stridvall's header list at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~stridvall/headers.php under English, you see wild variation.  We may not have decided (and may never decide) whether to have "Transitive verb" and "Intransitive verb" or just "Verb", but let's get rid of "Transitive Verb" and "Verb, transitive" and all the other inconsequential variations.

25. Gender templates

 * Replace all f, m, c, n and pl with, , , and  respectively.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Agreed - although, to be clear, I think Connel means typing, not  ; is that right?

 * Correct. I meant  .  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Although this makes no difference to the output, it is possible that some time in the future we might (although I wouldn't like to see it) change to expand to masculine rather than m. Having used the template for this everywhere would make this very simple and quick to change. We have already seen this happen with  which has changed from pl to plural (there is a separate discussion of this elsewhere and so it would be off-topic to discussion here whether this is right or not).

 * I think that conversation is welcome here. As another side note, I think Hippietrail is doing some experimental magic/css with these particular templates as well.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Yes, HT made it possible to choose whether they have a period or not: m vs. m.
 * No; is still
 * Also, their output is not the same: has text displaying on hover, which doesn't happen with m
 * On topic: can't this be done by a bot? —Vildricianus | t | 10:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * NO, IT CANNOT BE DONE BY 'BOT! I had this particular change in my monobook.js for a long time; it worked correctly about 70% of the time - but there are a gazillion cases where it did false-positive replacements that I had to undo by hand.  (This was why I started considering the "edit row buttons", so that I'd be able to skip certain types of edits manually.)  To fully automate this would be a dreadful mistake.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Why the shouting? I can read lowercase. —Vildricianus | t | 19:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Disagree, because this contradicts what was said above above removing templates from translation tables. I would like to see these gender/number templates used everywhere except in the translation tables.--EncycloPetey 14:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Um, translation tables happen to be the place where they were made for and where they're most used. In most other instances, the unabbreviated word should be mentioned. —Vildricianus | t | 15:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * EncycloPetey, unfortunately I think you misunderstood the guideline/recommendation in the section above. This change would not be limited to translation sections, nor would it be limited to non-translation sections.  This is about replacing the text f with  wherever it occurs.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * (Well, everywhere f is being used as a grammatical gender marker, that is. —scs 15:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC))

 * Absolutely agree. —scs 15:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

26. Categories on one line
Monstrously controversial: At the bottom of a page, since numerous categories add blank lines to the bottom of a page, all categories should be listed on a single line. Note that this is a distinct fork from current practices. Effecting this massive change can only be done with semi-automatic (e.g. WP:AWB) or automatic (pywikipediabot.py) assistance. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Hm, I'm not sure what you are saying, Connel - do you mean they should be typed on one line, or rendered by the software on one line? I was under the impression that categories do not add blank lines to a page (see #20 above). If they do, perhaps the software should be modified so that they do not. Or do you mean all on one line when they are rendered? Probably not, because that is how they appear. I don't like this proposal, in any case. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm saying that if each category is on a separate line at the bottom of the entry, the MediaWiki software make that line invisible/blank for the next pass of rendering. If there is one blank line, it is not problematic.  If there are 20 categories, the intermediate processor will render 20 blank lines, resulting in a screen-full of nothing at the end of the page.  Actually, I have not sufficiently tested this, so I'll do so now, on this page.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, I guess I was wrong. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:58, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Each instance of and all its blank spaces it produces is ignored by the software for page layout. —Vildricianus | t | 10:22, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

27. One space after "#"
Definitions shouldn't start immediately after the "#", but after "# " instead. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree. —Vildricianus | t | 20:02, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, but what about following lines with examples which start "#:" - should there be a space after the colon? — Hippietrail 20:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * That would be #28. :-)  Please, you make a recommendation as to what's best in that case - I am fairly inconsistent with them.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I usually put a space after <tt>#, #:, #*, *:</tt> etc, except after a single asterisk. —Vildricianus | t | 22:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, but also, one space after a template after a # e.g. "# definition" SemperBlotto 20:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, but I usually also put a space between # and . —Vildricianus | t | 22:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Perhaps this could be better restated. "One space after line-start wikisyntax."  Or: "One space between wikisyntax and visible content."  The reason I am inconsistent is that <tt> "*:" </tt> is something I confuse with <tt> "*: " </tt>.  Um, I mean without the double-quotes.
 * Argh. OK, said a different way: line start wiki-syntax characters that can have a space after them, before the content starts, should.  Doing so helps newcomers understand which characters are wiki-formatting and which are content-formatting.  This "guideline" could apply to stackable ("*", ":", "#") and non-stackable ("{|", "||", "|}") wiki-syntax.
 * --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:19, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

 * So is that also one space after <tt> * </tt>? If so the perfect format is imperfect. Jonathan Webley 08:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I never do that. — Vildricianus 09:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Topics deferred
Thornier issues exist, like definition line "tags." For a while, we've waffled between (tag1), (tag2), (tag3,), (tag4, tag5): tag6: and many others. Recently, I was scolded for ending a list of tags with a colon, as there was already parenthesis there. But it is also improper to have a list of parenthetical items. I think the parenthesis are astronomically stupid looking now. I'd like to see that issue on the BP and voted on. Maybe parenthsis abuse is a British thing, I dunno. But we probably shouldn't have any parenthesis on any definition lines, ever.

This whole topic could also be restarted for each namespace, as each seems to have its own rules: Templates (doc on page, or in talk?,) Categories (crazy pipe partial-sorting thing,) Appendix (pseudo-namespace, Wikipedia=style heading rules), Wiktionary (1/2 Help: format, half blog format) etc.

Right now, I need sleep. More thoughts tomorrow. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Let me comment on your points. Please do not change their order or remove any since I'll refer to them by number:

 * comments moved into corresponding sections above

Definition tags are a problem. However I've been thinking a lot about lists lately and I think we can achive a lot by making them use simple # for editing them, and CSS to format them, probably with some kind of ((list)) and ((end)) templates to contain the CSS classes and id's. Our current systems cannot handle placing multiple tag templates within one set of parentheses and muliple parentheses are ugly. Another simpler idea is to just forgo the parentheses as many print dictionaries do. Italics alone should suffice. My pet peeves are: 1) mixing italicized and non-italicized parentheses. 2) italicized parentheses altogether. 3) use of colons together with parentheses.

 * The definition tags need perhaps a whole separate conversation. Whatever we end up with has to adhere to the KISS principle.  Multiple parenthesis are more than ugly; they are incorrect.  More and more, I think we should not have parenthesis at all.  Your point #3 is exactly what people complained about me doing.  I think multiple parenthesis are far worse, but that is my POV.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * As an interim compromise, I would propose that we do recommend using templates for definition tags, always. Rendering (whether italic or not, parenthesized or not, abbreviated or not, etc.) can be handled by the template expansion and by Hippietrail's CSS magic.  The only hard problem is how to deal with multiple tags (e.g. UK-specific vulgar computer slang), but I'm willing to defer that, and to live with redundant, uncollapsed parentheses today. —scs 15:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

On other namespaces, I think it would be too distracting to worry about them at this stage. I think more can be accomplished by concentrating on the main area first. The rest can be addressed when we see our progress. — Hippietrail 16:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree. But I'll be thinking of them as we go along.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Speaking of "topics deferred", do we ever want to address the formatting of pronunciations, the handling of the several different schemes, etc.? —scs 18:05, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

 * WARNING: I plan to put this mess onto subpages. Each of the twenty plus points need separate conversations, apparently.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * As a fervent normalizer (12k edits that rely heavily on this business), I'd like to add some things. I understand from the above points that this is more or less the desired output:

Noun

 * 1) After a space, a definition with first-letter uppercase and full stop.

Related terms

 * related
 * term

Translations
gloss

 * Dutch: translation

other gloss

 * Dutch: second translation

Noun
headword

 * 1) word

interwiki

Comments

 * This is not entirely the way I've been doing it but I understand that it's largely what Connel's points involve. Right? Never mind the placement of categories now.

 * Individual comments moved to appropriate section above.

 * On tags: I've been thinking and looking to what print dictionaries do, and have found the SOED, which uses italics and small caps, to have a nice format. Thanks to the templates we use for them, we can change this overnight, although we'll need to instate commas where necessary. To give you an idea, it looks like this:
 * AERONAUTICS Definitions.
 * NAUTICAL, CHEMISTRY Two tags here.
 * It's of course also possible to "solve" the tag issue by adding the parentheses manually and leaving them out of the templates, like . —Vildricianus 18:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely. — Paul G 07:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Note: I added the blank line after the inflection line in your example above, but I left the "incorrect" category placement as that is so touchy. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * NOTE: (as I said above) I plan to move all of this to subpages here. Each numbered list item above will become a heading and I'll rearrange some of the related ones after adding yours and HT's comments into each section.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Hrumph. Maybe I'll make them sub-pages tomorrow.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yup, fine. I'd concentrate for this round on the 20ish points, leaving discussion about tags and category placement for later (the latter is "ongoing" at BP). —Vildricianus 07:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm finding it difficult to relate the comments to the points, but in general I agree with the sample layout that Vildricianus layed out above. There are just a few points that I would disagree on or don't understand:

 * Individual comments moved to the appropriate section above.

 * Oops, I forgot to comment on this first time round. I prefer to put the tag between the POS and the inflections. Not only does this put the Wikipedia link along side the word to which it refers, it also usually avoids adding any blank space to the rendered page. Putting it at the top or elsewhere can often do this, making the page look inelegant. — Paul G 07:27, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * My convention is dependent on the number of headings in an entry. If there are more than three headings, an automatic TOC will be generated.  When a TOC is present, it makes sense to have the  link above the first heading so that it appears in the white-space to the right of the TOC.  But if there are less than four headings, I do exactly as Paul says: between the POS heading and the inflection line.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding terminology: "heading" vs. "header". I understand the confusion that exists with the overlapping of terms with regard to C/C++ ".h" files. However, we are in a Wiktionary context, not a C or C++ context. I use "heading" to refer to a rendered == == section heading and "header" to refer to the wikitext that denotes it. I'd prefer to not change my informal convention, as the distinction is perhaps helpful, sometimes. --Connel MacKenzie T C 13:46, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually there are other senses I was think of such as in binary file formats. Encarta does however give a sense for "header" that is pretty much a synonym for "heading". Collins doesn't but hey this is all just trivia. Back to the topic (-: — Hippietrail 22:55, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this thread is a valuable resource regarding Wiktionary terminology (things like "inflection line", "POS headings" etc.) Anyone feels like expanding Glossary? Or shall I put it on my Todo? Having a comprehensive reference list of these is beneficial for mutual understanding on all this matter. —Vildricianus | t | 10:29, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

In practice
Please check this edit to see that it conforms to the "perfect entry" and all rules, as above. I suggest this be the format for "phrasbook" entries. Perhaps for the definition line? --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:12, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Specifically rule #23. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:06, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Wrap up time?
I think we are nearing the wrap up time for this, as Vild pointed out in the top-most section. I would like to thank everyone who has participated. I also request that each continue to participate.

Vild, HT or I will take this list, glean the least controversial dozen or so items and build a small list to post on the BP in the next day or two. Some rewording of HT's preamble may be in order. My initial list had some pretty bone-headed stuff, that I think you've all helped clear away.

I have enjoyed (perhaps the most) Paul's linguistics lessons, even if I do still disagree. I did not expect this to be so educational, but I am glad it was.

Thank you all again. Let's see where we take this next, eh?

--Connel MacKenzie T C 18:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 * As an aside, I just had a good laugh reviewing Talk:Main Page. I'll note that only one item in this list matches any of my complaints on Talk:Main Page.  --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

How about wrapping up? I could make a summary of this, put it in the Beer parlour and expect a couple of people to laugh at us. Most of the above described format rules are exercised by my javascript, though, so given enough time, all entries will move towards this standard (especially the blank lines stuff, which is largely at odds with what most entries have and most contributors do). — Vildricianus 11:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Several unrelated goals here
You guys may be ready to "wrap this us", but remember, some of us just got here. :-) Me, besides the comments I just sprinkled above, I've got one biggie: some of this stuff matters much more (or at least, differently) than others.

There are several quite different goals someone might have in pursuing this normalization:
 * (A) Make pages look consistent to readers.
 * (B) Make page source look consistent to editors.
 * (C) Enable automatic processing, today, e.g. by using templates for gender and definition tags.
 * (D) Enable machine parsing of wiktionary entries (for other purposes).
 * (E) Turn Wiktionary into the more-structured database some of us wish it were.

Of these, to me, (B) is the least important, although about half of the entries on the normalization list have to do only with this. A reader doesn't care about blank lines before or after headers, or extra spaces between the <TT>== ==</TT> and the heading text. And a (reasonable) parser doesn't care, either. Obsessive editors might care (and I don't mean to be critical when I say "obsessive" here, as there are plenty of these things that I'm obsessive about, too), but to me, if an entry is complicated and hard to edit I'll add a few blank lines here and there without thinking about it too much, and if an entry is too sparse I'll delete some blank lines without thinking about it too much, and I really don't worry about "standardizing" this sort of thing. A guideline for the preferred formatting at this level would certainly be useful, but it doesn't have the same kind of urgency as the other four goals I've listed.

Of these, to me, (D) and (E) are quite important, although I know that there are lots of editors for whom they're not important at all, who are just as uninterested in machine parsing as I am in normalizing newlines. And there's nothing wrong with that, either; there are legitimately multiple goals here (only partly overlapping, or sometimes wholly distinct). (So what I'm saying here is that it doesn't bother me if someone is uninterested in machine parsing, or interested in blank lines, as long as they're not bothered by the fact that I'm not.)

But I bring this up because I think the larger audience is going to be equally struck by what they'll see as the same kind of differential importance of these issues. So I think we need to at the very least split them up, and perhaps even address them as somewhat separate subprojects. Here's my take:

 * issues that matter for proper functioning of existing software : 3, 4, 5
 * issues that are visible to readers : 7, 8, 18, 23, 24
 * issues that enable wiktionary-specific processing, visible to readers : 25, (definition tags templateized)
 * issues that are visible only to editors (cosmetic): 1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 27
 * issues that are visible only to editors (possibly more significant) : 20, 21, 22
 * issues that matter for machine parsing : 7, 8, 20, 23, 24, 25, (definition tags templateized)
 * not sure (including stricken) : 9, 17, 26

There's some overlap there; in particular, everything I've listed as "issues that matter for machine parsing" is also in some other category (usually, interestingly enough, "issues that are visible to readers").

I have included "definition tags templateized" (which was in Connel's "Topics deferred" section), because I think it's as least as interesting as some of the other issues listed here, but not as controversial as some. Call it #28?

—scs 16:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[P.S. What's the difference between (D) and (E)? Maybe nothing significant, but I was thinking there's a difference between wanting to leave the door open to building a structured database later by trying to keep Wiktionary entries somewhat machine parseable now, versus actually trying to build and have a structured database now. At any rate, and despite the fact that I'd really like to have something more structured, it's important to realize that there's actually a pretty huge confluct here. MediaWiki is not structured, so an attempt to impose a lot of formal structure, formal enough to allow machine processing, but to impose it merely via ad hoc editing conventions which everyone is expected to remember and follow, is a recipe for a lot of friction and disappointment. —scs]

 * 1/ I have a gut feeling that there are more editors than readers. 2/ This list was initially intended for the hardcore normalizers like Connel, Hippietrail and a few others.  Other options got stuffed in afterwards and it turned out to become a more general discussion.  So (B) was really the first purpose of this thread.  Having the blank lines appearing correctly is not very important, but fun for those who care and easy for a javascript to add.  It also allows for quickly spotting "bad" entries, i.e. those with everything compressed, which is usually done by the less experienced here, and which are therefore possibly "bad".  3/ The other options you presented are also worked on, for instance with the inflection templates.  I'm not sure though how urgent they are.  Machine-parsing Wiktionary has only been done by the few (Connel, Patrik,...) who wanted to put up todo lists or stats.  There's much more work on the actual content before we should consider any other fancy option.  That doesn't defer normalizing for machine parsing, though.  But it's not "urgent".  It's work in progress just as much as the other jobs are.  Compare the format of two years ago with the current.  Also keep in mind that it changes constantly.  4/ I'm really bothered by the fact that you don't like the blank lines :-(.  5/ Thanks for commenting on it.  I guess it's a topic that will pop up from time to time in order to get one another's confirmation of existing practice (which is what I think Hippietrail intended to do). — Vildricianus 17:47, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

 * Agreed that machine parsing is a longer term work-in-progress -- but note that it applies even though (nay, because) the format "changes constantly": if/when we do a big format change, the more we can automate it, the happier we'll be. (Now, as for those cotton-picken blank lines, I don't just "not like" them, I can't stand them, I fly into a blind rage when I see them, I delete them on sight, I'm really bothered that you could consider sneaking your slovenly blanklineist POV into this vital emerging policy...) —scs 18:27, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

 * I wish to say that I support any coherent, logical subdivision of this monster (that I thought at first was so short and sweet) subpage. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:20, 5 June 2006 (UTC)