Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/June: difference between revisions

Thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast[.] — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Throughout the lifetime of this online dictionary, there have been plenty of conflicts between users. Some of this is unlikely to end any time soon, such as the fight between admins and vandals. This fight has a clear "good guy" and "bad guy", unlike some of the other fights we have had over the years. These morally-conflicting fights often turn into virtual bloodbaths, with people hurling vicious insults at each other, at each other throats over who's harassing who or if some person should be banned. While these are important conversations to have, too often is the main point ignored in favor of calling people "idiots". This problem has been pointed out before [cf Beer Parlour July 2023 § "please reduce the heat"], but nothing seems to be done on the topic, and we seem to keep going in circles, never reaching the point where we can have civilized discussions.

I intend to change that. Please, leave your thoughts as to how we can avoid any future conflicts for good. CitationsFreak (talk) 04:13, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In principle, there is no way to stop all conflict, of course, but a really good start would be an expectation of civility and admins enforcing that. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would that just be the way to end all heated conflicts? CitationsFreak (talk) 14:48, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly not all of us have the same standards for civility and for the need for civility in all interactions with others. Further, some don't seem to care much about feedback from others about their behavior. In some cases, people seem to get very annoyed that others might be potentially causing them to waste their precious time, taking them away from their sacred mission to improve Wiktionary, by their lights. I'm pretty sure that the folks whose behavior I most object to are supremely confident that they are right and that civility is for others who are not on the sacred mission they have defined. DCDuring (talk) 15:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pobody's nerfect and no system is perfect, but it's a start. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:09, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Conflicts are not always bad if people are arguing about somethin they both care about. I guess that the biggest problem is when people are call each other bad words when arguing about some stupid stuff like a definition of a sand broom, without caring about anyone’s input. It feels that they are either too much drunk or too little. However, luckily, it’s not happening so often. Tollef Salemann (talk) 15:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think @Theknightwho should try to make an effort to participate in drama less. I think we can be reasonable and agree that nothing good came out of engaging with Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/May#Stalking/harassment by User:Theknightwho which was a pretty obvious (yet successful) attempt to fan up drama. Ioaxxere (talk) 18:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ioaxxere Sure, but there needs to be a way to resolve issues that doesn't just amount to ignoring them. Theknightwho (talk) 18:57, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Help:Dispute resolution doesn't offer much guidance except, hilariously, relax and do something more important and assume that they [the other user you're disputing about] are eccentric and will thus never be able to see eye to eye with you. Hardly worthy of a Nobel peace prize. P. Sovjunk (talk) 19:11, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's rather pithy... but I also sometimes feel this way looking at drama from the outside in. Vininn126 (talk) 19:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy: Do you have feedback here? I'd value it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:10, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't feasible to "avoid any future conflicts for good." Such an approach will only worsen conflicts that inevitably emerge. Ignoring problems doesn't resolve them. It's like putting a lid on a pot and expecting it not to make a huge mess when it boils over. If TKW had been given guidance at an early stage, this issue may not have grown to this extent. Now there's at least five productive contributors (me, Huhu9001, LlywelynII, Mahāgaja, Purplebackback89) who find his admin conduct to be a recurrent issue. Wiktionary desperately needs both formal dispute resolution processes and the willingness to enact them. This isn't about "fan[ning] up drama." Seeing it characterised as such with no pushback (except from TKW, to his credit) does little to reassure me that Wiktionary is interested in having difficult conversations as a community and making necessary systemic changes. I have noted that TKW hasn't been as combative as in past incidents. That gives me hope that there's room for course correction. But my continued participation here is contingent on resolving the current policy vacuum. We cannot have a repeat of an admin (Equinox) functionally being given carte blanche to be as hostile and combative as he pleases for years because he also makes valuable contributions. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 21:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Huhu and Purple have both been criticized for not being productive. Mahāgaja's complaint has been addressed as their behavior was problematic. Please don't ignore these aspects in your diagnosis. Vininn126 (talk) 22:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also LlywelynII has been heavily criticized for being sloppy. The term "productive" is being used too loosely here. Vininn126 (talk) 22:01, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Huhu9001 seems to do solid work in the Japanese language area and in template-space. My understanding is that the dispute between TKW and Huhu9001 arose over changes that TKW made to modules that ended up unintentionally breaking things. So, if LlywelynII can be faulted for "being sloppy," so can TKW. Purple has been around as long as I have. Wiktionary has shown habitually sloppy editors (Luciferwildcat) the door before. I wouldn't necessarily number Purple among them. In any case, the common denominator in these disputes is TKW, not anything any editor did to get on his radar. It also needs to be underscored that all of these disputes were unrelated. TKW has found himself at the centre of multiple heated disputes with unconnected editors working in different areas of this project. That isn't a coincidence. It's a sign of a pattern of escalating and personalising conflicts. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 22:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This only half-addresses the issues I raised with hand-waiving. A user frequently (I admit, too frequently) addressing sloppiness in others' edits does not make their edits not sloppy. From Purple I have seen 10x more drama and the issue "is a hot-dog a sandwich", which I'd hardly call productive. Huhu has been criticized by others, as well, and is known to be abrasive in conversations. So no, it's not just knight there, it's also an uncooperative personality. I find your reply to be lacking. Vininn126 (talk) 22:23, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this thread now devolving into precisely the kind of escalation that it was designed to stop? Theknightwho (talk) 22:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees situation at best. Whether a rank-and-file contributor is insisting hot dogs qualify as sandwiches (if subs are sandwiches, so are hot dogs, FWIW) is perpendicular to the issue of problematic admins. Huhu9001 having been "abrasive" at some point doesn't justify an admin becoming hostile in kind. It absolutely did not justify TKW implementing a blatantly retaliatory block against Huhu last year. Admins have more power than rank-and-file editors. They need to be held to a higher standard of conduct accordingly. They absolutely shouldn't take administrative action in disputes in which they are personally involved. Admins aren't frontier sheriffs. They shouldn't be making and enforcing policy at their own own discretion. Power necessitates accountability and a certain level of restraint. What has been core policy on every other WMF project for decades shouldn't be weirdly controversial here. We shouldn't have a culture in which everyone nods along as an editor (not TKW, to be clear) with a history of inserting Daily Stormer quotes votes against an anti-harassment proposal with inane blather about "wokery" and the suggestion that PB89 seek "treatment for paranoia." This is discussion is doing nothing to relieve my sense that Wiktionary loves being a boys' club. It really does seem that some users will be forgiven any trespass, however severe, while others, no matter how much good work they do, will be summarily dismissed and denigrated and blamed for inviting the hostility to which they've been subjected. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 02:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1) An admin doing their job by addressing sloppy edits is a good thing.

2) Fayfreak’s point about “wokery” seems à propos given your throwing out questionable accusations of misogyny and now, apparently, Nazism. Apparently pointing out that a user is being a bit high maintenance means one must hate women. And pulling a random collection of usage examples from Google that happens to include some kind of far-right tabloid rubbish means you might as well be merrily goose-stepping and Heil Hitlering your way to the Reichstag. Nicodene (talk) 04:43, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, User:Nicodene, you are not doing yourself any favors with this post, and you are aptly illustrating User:WordyAndNerdy's point about Wiktionary being a boy's club. Benwing2 (talk) 04:53, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, IMO Fay Freak is in a class of their own with their weird views (and contorted syntax). They know a ton about obscure languages but tend to go off on bizarre rants/tangents that are best ignored; I would not hold them up as an example to be emulated. Benwing2 (talk) 05:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Benwing2 Given that neither I nor WAN are happy about this, it seems fairly clear that the underlying issue is not that this is an old boys' club, but that there is no adequate way to resolve conflicts, because consequences are essentially arbitrary, and there is a culture of admins allowing things to peter out instead of actively drawing things to a close. WAN has concluded it's because of nepotism because she's only considering me (and now, apparently Fay Freak), but doesn't seem to realise that she's got away with quite a lot of disruptive behaviour herself, and it's not like people haven't noticed ([1]). Theknightwho (talk) 05:15, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Name one example of "disruptive behaviour" on my part. Since I'm allegedly guilty of so many you ought to be able to name one. Our clashes at shitgibbon and cupsona don't count. Neither of us behaved with the decorum we ought to in both instances. I've never deleted the main page. I don't habitually insert nonsense into entries. I don't add translations for languages I don't know. I think the most dust I've ever kicked up is over a user having a Patreon in 2015 and the weird resistance to accepting online cites in 2020-2022. And in both cases I just voiced my opinions and left for a time. Rather the opposite of "disruption," I'd say. Unless you're insinuating that not contributing is itself a form of disruption. In any case, you're deflecting again. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 05:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Theknightwho I agree with all your points about the problems with Wiktionary (and I think Nicodene's comments were inappropriate). I do not think User:WordyAndNerdy's attempt to get you desysopped soon after Huhu9001's attempt was called for, and I said that at the time; but at the same time it's hard not to notice how multiple times, WAN has made a statement about something problematic in Wiktionary, and expressed a fear of getting subjected to denigration and hostility for expressing this, and someone then proceeded to come out and do exactly that.

As for a more systematic way of resolving conflicts, we definitely need that; but at the same time I don't think there's any appetite for a Wikipedia-style legalistic approach. IMO it has to be more mediation-based than arbitration-based, with arbitration-style "let's lay down the law" as a last resort. I think a good start would be maybe something like this: (1) a more clearly expressed code of conduct that clearly prohibits bigoted remarks, and gives examples of reasonable punishments for transgressions that admins (or bureaucrats if an admin is the transgressor) can make; (2) some sort of "appeal" process if one or the two sides (transgressor or transgressee) feels they're not getting fair treatment or their concerns aren't being heard or addressed. My hope is to avoid long, drawn out processes in the vast majority of cases, because IMO people here don't have the time or energy for this. Benwing2 (talk) 05:43, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am in full support of your plan. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Benwing2 I'd like to avoid long, drawn out processes as well, but I'd prefer them over long, drawn out threads where everyone gets angry and nothing gets done. Theknightwho (talk) 06:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support this as well. AG202 (talk) 21:06, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Benwing2 I think that "bigoted remarks", problematic though they are, are not the source of all the bad behavior that policy needs to address. More common are uses of derogatory labeling of people as, eg, idiots, morons, drama queens, even when cleverly or humorously worded. The emphasis in establishing a behavioral norm like "No personal attacks" has to be on personal. We may need a total ban on personal attacks (including accusations of Naziism, geneder bias, etc). Enforcement of such a ban couldn't be on a hair-trigger, but it would point in the right direction. A single personal attack should require an apology or temporary block; multiple personal attacks, say, over the course of 12 months would earn longer blocks, etc. I'm not sure about how to enforce better behavior by admins and veteran users (and their bots, templates, and modules). DCDuring (talk) 19:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Calling out someone for using racist/misogynistic/etc. language or linking to a neo-Nazi site in an entry isn't a "personal attack." Usually such call-outs are backed up by diffs demonstrating said behaviour. As a community we need to be able to discuss inappropriate conduct in order to effectively mitigate it. You nailed your colours to the mast long ago.[2][3][4] WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:29, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did I say it was? Whatever evil we attribute to such behavior would not justify attacking the person as a Nazi or an advocate of Nazism. We should be calling out the behavior, not the person, no matter what. I am proud to advocate freedom of expression, toleration, and universal coverage of English expressions in Wiktionary based on uniform standards of attestation and idiomaticity, regardless of the source or meaning. DCDuring (talk) 02:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're off-the-mark on this front, I think, but I do respect you haven't been combative about it, and I do get the sense your take is born of principle. It's why I don't consider you a problem admin even if I regard your thinking as totemic of Wiktionary's systemic issues. Some of my reaction here may be that your initial comment was posted in "mostly unproductive." There's agreement that Nicodene's comments toward me in there crossed a line and -sche putting a lid on that is the main reason I've felt comfortable returning to this discussion.

Protecting individual freedom of expression shouldn't be a pressing concern on a crowd-sourced dictionary project. (Government censorship regimes OTOH can make our mission more difficult). No one's legal rights are infringed by a website setting standards on the type of speech permitted on the site itself. People still have a legal right to express their views on other platforms and in other contexts. Wiktionary is functionally a professional setting. Many employers maintain some type of code of conduct. Letting employees freely spout off their opinions will very likely create a hostile work environment. Our unvarnished thoughts aren't always helpful. I'm sure no one here wants to read my random thoughts on tax reform, ongoing military conflicts, etc. But sometimes uncomfortable conversations are necessary for change to occur or for problems to be rectified. We can't discuss individual user conduct issues if we can't name the specific problems some users present. It isn't a personal attack to characterise someone's speech as "racist" etc. If we treat it as such, all we'll be doing is ensuring that marginalised voices go unheard, as the majority is often resistant to putting its own biases under a microscope.

I also haven't advocated disallowing the inclusion of offensive terms. A lot of Category:English 4chan slang and Category:English incel slang is my work. I do think there are middle-ground interpretations of "Wiktionary is not censored." There is a lot of distance between having [slur] as an entry and including a quote featuring [slur] in some random entry like umbrella. The former is objectively documenting language as it exists. The latter is an unnecessary and inflammatory editorial choice. The Daily Stormer quote shoehorned into smash wasn't for a specifically neo-Nazi/white supremacist sense. It was for a sense that was a synonym of hottie (“attractive person”). This is why I long ago concluded that Fay is an edgelord. Edgelords don't necessarily personally endorse the views they express. For many it's about stirring up trouble for the lulz. But -sche seems to think think Fay may be the real deal, and I do trust his expertise in this area. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:42, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Expertise indeed, didn’t he graduate with a PhD in identifying Nazi lexicographers?

Frankly it looks like you’re bullying a person who may not be entirely neurotypical, wielding “they’re an X-ist!” as a cudgel to smash someone you dislike into submission. Nicodene (talk) 11:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Nicodene: She also underrates that I am not a native speaker and was triangulating new definitions, that I wouldn’t know how specifically saucy or redpilled it is or not. Lacking intercultural competence in an international dictionary. Where would I have looked, amongst all bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, to find all bymeanings and implications, huh, WordyAndNerdy? All was gained inductively, the gold-standard of documenting language for a dictionary. For these movement-kind of words multiple people had to guess around because they were previously uncovered, cf. slam later written in Feb 2022 by me.

And then rather than trying to be edgy I wasn’t too happy to quote that guy so that’s why I hedged and balanced it with other quotes and Wikipedia links for author and publication where you already read “far-right, conspiracy theorist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial”; that was all I could, save not including it, which wasn’t compelling, since dictionaries nowadays are notoriously not SFW unless defined otherwise, but the quote read so easy and illustrative! And since I had not studied psychology consciously to guesstimate the tribalization programs hinging on references, it was barely possible to be concerned; I say concerned but not bothered because I have only an cognitive simulation of what happens in others, which I note is a bit extreme in WordyAndNerdy.

This day I read p. 63:

> Carter and her colleagues (2012) were interested in investigating the ability of children with ASD to make judgments about pictured social interactions. The pictured scenarios did not require the use of language and both the children with ASD and those with typical development accurately identified the situations that depicted inappropriate social interactions. However, the children with typical development had robust activation in their language processing network when performing the task; they appeared to be spontaneously verbally encoding the information from the scenes that they were viewing. In contrast, the children with ASD had activation in a network associated with the processing of social information but no significant use of neural resources in the language network. This result suggested that the children with ASD were not spontaneously encoding the information into a verbal form.

Well, when I read this social interaction by political content creators, nothing happens and I don’t connect scenes and don’t encode the author’s or my or my publishing platform’s eventual position. Seems like others do but the automated categorization is still likely to be toned down or correlated with better possibilities by reason, and some wokeness courses do away with this capability again, such that people graduate to see intersectional discrimination structures and victimizations everywhere, trouble as a business sector, for which people privately readapt whole personal identities, as it is defined to operate by means of identification. Fay Freak (talk) 13:48, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I won't dignify this with a response except to note that I have decades of first-hand personal experience of ASD and somehow manage not use it as an excuse for questionable behaviour. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 21:05, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is your excuse, then? For things like making a personal attack on the same page where you’d voted to ban personal attacks. Nicodene (talk) 23:14, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's not a "personal attack" by any reasonable standard. It's a thing that actually happened, as is demonstrated by the diff. You need to stop dogging every comment I make. You've already been told that your previous comments toward me in this thread have been out of line. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 01:50, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The very first sentence of "No personal attacks" reads "Comment on content, not on the contributor." The exact opposite of what you did.

In the list of examples of what constitutes a personal attack, we specifically find:

• "Using someone's political affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views."

I should like to add that in this case it's a matter of "imagined political affiliations", since FayFreak has never once that I have ever seen actually expressed the slightest whiff of believing in racial superiority or exterminating undesirables.

I'm curious by what standard you consider anything I have written "out of line" which would not apply just as well to what you have been writing yourself. Nicodene (talk) 02:04, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please, it's not worth your time or effort. AG202 (talk) 02:08, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It’s you who is dogged. The same point stands, whether framed with this concept or not. You can also consider yourself as one of extreme, insane, unhealthy, not to forget wrong. Hyperfocus on the same fiddlestick for five years. Someone with the same neural preconditions as me I would know to tell to stop being autistic; it appears the same “revisiting past points” happens if you answer trauma. Like to reinstate the DMN they rub themselves off on railway tracks, though it be obviously disadvisable.

Other candidates with ASD seclude themselves, keep their interactions brief, out of concerns or actual anxiety of being blamed or missing to react on social information appropiately, depending on their verbal abilities. Looking at the stats, instead of your first-hand anecdotes we can’t revisit (unlike my story which I retell you as far as I remember), with the must-criteria for this diagnosis of impaired social cognition + repetitive and restricted behaviours, most fall just short of schizoid or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, so they (and me) need to make an actual effort to sidestep avoidant reaction to social input arising from its restricted interpretation. It is artificial though, rather than people-pleasing, and I had to practice it years to see things differently, which includes discussing and defending controversial viewpoints favourable for certain outcomes even if I don’t feel strongly or anyhow at all about them. I am supposed to be controversial. It is sure there would be issues incomprehensible to you, with your inflexible paradigms, if they engaged in politics, which I now have to do as a daily business since graduating law school, which is an exceptional case which you probably haven’t experienced even from hearsay, and you can’t imagine how edgelordy it had to be, for my life. Stats say hubris is greatest among jurists in Germany as compared to all academics (you take your standards from other fields?), again you miss the language and culture barrier on top of the double empathy problem, by which a lot more questionable things appear anyhow if one speaks across continents, and I couldn’t expect to reap a stalker from reciting the Daily Stormer once: kidding of course, don’t get it twisted, it is what AG202 said, not worth your time or effort, though we interpret the result differently. I know you aren’t trying to stalk or concern-troll, I tried to interpret and put into different perspective, again, and enable you. Extreme viewpoints which one contradicts are super necessary to set benchmarks, very different they appear in me from how you currently deal with them. Fay Freak (talk) 03:02, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy: I wasn't planning to respond but I noticed you quoted me here. The reasons why I characterized User:Purplebackpack89's posts as an attempt to fan up drama:

• Hyperbolic language ("stalking/harassment") which is frankly disrespectful to actual victims of stalking.
• Referencing TKW's desysop vote, which has little to do with the current situation (and which also seems to argue against your premise that no action is taken against problematic editors — recall that Dan got indeffed mid-vote) and quoting random comments.
• Inflammatory language, viz. "his edit was so bad", "it's likely he's following me around BECAUSE it bothers me.", etc., apparently intended to provoke TKW.

Ioaxxere (talk) 05:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikistalking" is old-school wiki-jargon. "Wikihounding" or simply "hounding" has seemingly replaced it. But it needs to be remembered that PB89 has been around since 2010. It's not unexpected for a veteran editor to sometimes use older jargon. Wikistalking/hounding has never been regarded as a one-for-one equivalent of real-life stalking or even cyberstalking. It's exactly as PB89 has expressed it: combing through someone's edit history, systematically undoing their edits, inserting yourself into unrelated disputes, etc. It might not be intended as antagonistic, but it understandably comes across as such. TKW should ideally seek to moderate his tone and conduct if he wishes to avoid finding himself at the centre of conflicts (he has improved since last year). And mentioning the desysop votes was absolutely relevant. This is not an isolated incident. It's a pattern of conduct. Ignoring past incidents won't do us any favours. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 05:44, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy PB89 made an absolutely unfounded accusation of harassment towards me for a single RfD of one of his terms combined with a single comment I made about him in another RfD (which is located directly above the RfD I added), in response to a comment of his. This is not the first time he has made unfounded accusations of harassment (and not towards TKW; I reserve judgment on this matter as I haven't looked at it in detail to see what the circumstances were). PB89 seems to think he can shut down criticism of his (IMO often sloppy or ill-considered) edits with such accusations. I should also add, from statements made on his user page, he rejects some core Wiktionary principles such as SOP, and seems to have difficulty understanding why Wiktionary isn't just Wikipedia-lite; so it's not surprising to me that several users feel his edits deserve extra scrutiny. Benwing2 (talk) 05:57, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to quote myself from ten years ago (June 2014) because I found this while digging up the roadworn diff and it seems just as relevant today:

Expressing minority viewpoints or being the lone dissenter in an RfD discussion does not constitute disruption. The fact that we have a formal discussion process at all means that the deletion of entries isn't an open-and-shut policy-enforcement matter completely up to the discretion of administrators. It means that RfD is an open forum where people may put forward serious arguments for or against the inclusion of terms and have these arguments weighed on their merits. Sometimes arguments put forward will not align with majority opinion. Sometimes they'll challenge the soundness of our policies. That's good! We need more of that, not less. The exchange of ideas is what discussion is all about. On the issue of "drama," as an outsider who's watched these incidents transpire from the sidelines, I'm not going to disagree that PBP's behaviour has been problematic, or that it needs to change. But the passive tolerance of incivility on Wiktionary is the proverbial elephant in the room here. We don't have formal dispute resolution or mediation processes like Wikipedia, and when incivility occurs and someone gets upset, the general response, in my own experience, is getting told that occasional rudeness and hostility is par for the course and one should learn to deal with it. This is unacceptable. So if PBP has developed a flair for the dramatic, perhaps it's because Wiktionary, lacking any means for addressing civility concerns in a reasonable and orderly fashion, has left PBP no recourse but dramatics. PBP isn't the problem; PBP is a symptom of the problem. Is it really fair to punish someone for a problem that Wiktionary as a whole has helped to create?

WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:07, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@User:WordyandNerdy How would you categorize the types of incivility that are not personal attacks? Or are all types of incivility personal attacks, possibly veiled. I am wondering how to give shape to a civility policy beyond the most obvious. Attacking people's unstated (and possibly imagined) values, attitudes, beliefs, or motives is an example of problematic behavior, IMO. On occasion I have resorted to this, but I believe it to be undesirable in a wiki, as well as in many other environments. DCDuring (talk) 12:40, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DCDuring Two examples of this are rudeness and passive aggression. We all engage in them sometimes, but they can easily have a chilling effect on productive discourse. I'm not saying we should ban them (which would probably have a much bigger chilling effect), but I do think any civility policy needs to be more nuanced than simply banning overt personal attacks and leaving it at that. Theknightwho (talk) 13:57, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am looking for categories of items that are relatively easy to characterize and which have a high likelihood of triggering escalation. Such categories can form the core of undesirable behavior which can be controlled. There are lots of types of uncivility that are undesirable, but are hard to police. I think 'rudeness' and 'passive-aggression' are hard to define operationally. We can't start with them or let their existence prevent action on what might be relatively easy to control. My hope is that the basic lessons of the psychology of interpersonal relations can be productively applied here. DCDuring (talk) 14:07, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Targeting a large number of edits by the same editor all at once is likely to make that editor feel targeted. You talk of basic psychology...basic psychology would suggest that, if a large number of edits (made in some cases over a period of years) are all targeted at once, that I would feel targeted! Anyone probably would! What's the solution here? Spread it out! Instead of targeting all my edits in a period of a few days, maybe take a couple months. Purplebackpack89 14:40, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that this discussion should not be a forum for airing personal grievances and settling scores. User talk pages are better for those purposes. When they fail, a mediator's assistance might be warranted. We could at least try to generalize to the matter of how, in an environment of volunteers, a patroller should select entries and edits for revision and how the patroller and 'targeted' patrollee should interact. DCDuring (talk) 15:03, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"When it rains, it pours." I'd say the airing of personal grievances here was inevitable. When there's been no remedy for problematic user conduct – and when discussions on the subject have fizzled out – the result is feeling unseen, unheard, and unvalued. Such an experience can naturally leave one with a sense of injustice. But I hope that everyone's gotten things out of their system now and we can focus on finding solutions.

I'd say that the question of how to categorise "types of incivility that are not personal attacks" depends on tone, context, and several other factors. If someone is generally in the right but is unnecessarily hasty or severe about it, I'd characterise that as "rude," "short," or "brusque." An example might be someone reverting a poorly-formatted but well-meaning edit by a newbie with "learn correct mark-up!" If they're unnecessarily harsh ("f***king learn mark-up!), I'd describe that as "abrasive," "hostile," etc. If they assert their own superiority ("learning mark-up isn't hard!"), I'd call that "snide," "condescending," etc.

None of these present major issues in isolation. We're all human and we all err from time to time. It becomes a community problem when it's a pattern of behaviour. That said I don't think it will be necessary for any user conduct policy we create to classify types of incivility with this level of granularity. All of this could be covered by a general advisement to "please try to keep a cool head and remain respectful in discussions".

Where I think we would need to get into specifics is with statements that express antipathy toward characteristics typically covered by human-rights legislation. There's no reason for invective statements to target someone's race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc. Of course there'll be disagreement on what crosses the line. Calling someone a "dumb American" would be taking an unambiguous potshot at their nationality. But "'British people don't say 'elevator.' Why are so many Americans ignorant?" is arguably just an unhelpfully cranky statement of the fact English varies between countries. More nuanced incidents will warrant consideration on a case-by-case basis. But a blanket rule against what is generally deemed hate speech is necessary for a communal project like Wiktionary to function (and thrive!). WordyAndNerdy (talk) 22:41, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Vininn126 it is irrelevant whether a particular editor is perceived to be "productive" or "sloppy". That shouldn't be an excuse to be combative with them, or escalate things Purplebackpack89 15:51, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've had limited but productive interaction with both TKW with WAN. I respect them both as editors and hope they can both find a way to continue editing. Contributing to Wiktionary is a particularly thankless endeavor and I imagine that, like many editors, each has received much less praise than they deserve for their efforts while being on the receiving end of a disproportionate amount of criticism. They, and other editors, have good reason to feel aggrieved and I think that we, as a community, could do a better job of shutting down bad behavior earlier and providing a forum to air grievances where the involved parties could get some perspective from uninvolved editors instead of feeling like they have to personally defend themselves against attacks. I would hope such a forum could provide actionable support for legitimate grievances, perspective for editors who feel slighted by innocuous remarks or edits, and a quick boot for anyone using it in bad faith. JeffDoozan (talk) 00:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be honest. I think too many people here have stopped actually building a dictionary. I don't like that. So I'll be absolutely clear as to my position once, and I sincerely hope that at least some of the people here that are trying to figure out how to emit as much aggression as possible onto unknowns on the internet will find a better hobby.

1. I didn't become an admin to enforce any rules on "civility" or the like. I simply don't care. I should probably start helping out with closing RFDs and RFVs more often (I have been pretty busy with real-life things, but right now I have a bit more time), but other than that I am a volunteer as much as anyone else on this website, and I don't come here to do busywork I wouldn't even do if I were paid.
   • So, basically: If you need a nanny, this isn't a website for you.
   • If you get called an idiot, or stupid: Tough luck, you making a BP post on that only proves this statement.
   • Actual slurs are a different matter, and we shouldn't tolerate those in any shape or form. Use your head.
2. We aim to be a full dictionary. We are also a politically neutral dictionary.
   • Yes, that means we have entries for slurs, Neonazi slang, communistic formation and whatnot.
   • We shouldn't use politically loaded quotes unless necessary, but sometimes they are: 99% of literature written on the territory of modern Russia in languages other than Russian will be loaded with communistic messages, that doesn't mean we shouldn't quote them.
   • If anything, quoting anything that shows a capitalistic or religious view (including the Bible even!) should be as problematic as neonazism or communism.
   • If you can't handle us hosting such quotes when they are necessary, maybe lexicography isn't your thing.
   • If you find something you think wasn't necessary, remember: assume good faith. That's like page one of our whole dictionary. I feel this rule that should be plastered all over the website is forgotten too easily in the last few years. The person adding a neonazistic quote isn't necessarily a neonazi themselves, they may just be lazy and have found this quote before any others. That's why I add communistic quotes for Ingrian, because that's most of the literature, and it's easier for me to just take a book and add quotes word for word than look through the entire corpus hoping to find a sentence where the word "religion" isn't followed by "is complete bollocks".
3. The recent amount of technical "fixes" has grown out of control.
   • Entries go first, templates go second, and markup goes last.
   • Going out to change any technical feature of a language you aren't personally in the process of adding entries for should be done only at the request/agreement of the ones that do edit it. In the best case, you will have to re-do these changes later on when an active editor appears, and in the worst case you will lose every single editor that is invested in working on this dictionary at all.
4. In the end, seriously, I would rather have an editor do constructive work and be a little rude than an editor doing nothing and be the nicest person in the world.
   • I'd say 99% (yes, I like that number) of the languages in our dictionary are grossly underrepresented. To give an example: Just today Ingrian (which has an estimated 20 native speakers) surpassed the closely-related Estonian (which has an estimated 1.2 million native speakers) in terms of number of lemmas, and the situation in Africa and Southeast Asia is even worse.
   • If an admin is monitoring your edits, it's because you apparently did something wrong. Doesn't mean you're a bad editor, just means you have room to grow. See what was changed and try applying that in the future.
   • Now, if you continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, then you'll at some point get the message "Please stop, and if you don't you'll get a block", and at that point you should really stop. We cannot keep fixing your mistakes for you.
   • To the admins monitoring: If you tell the people why you're going to monitor their edits, that will probably be more effective than just acting like you're not doing that, or only explaining it after they have completely freaked out.

Maybe let's stop trying to figure out who's right and wrong and start actually working on the dictionary? Does that sound like a plan? In that case, we don't need any conflict resolution, because nobody will offend anyone and nobody will get offended. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Because seriously, what in the world is keeping you from editing so much that you absolutely need me and a few dozen other editors to write this type of enormous text just to solve it? Thadh (talk) 15:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to strongly agree with a lot here. Maybe not everything, but a lot. I'd like to emphasize that it seems to be the people who stir up the most mud also seem to do the least editing. Vininn126 (talk) 16:01, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my 2c, most of which has been said by me or others elsewhere.

1. Wiktionary tends to be dominated by a relatively small group of "guardians", such as Knightwho, Equinox and Fay
2. Some of those guardians (again, Knightwho, Equinox and Fay) have problems getting along with non-guardians
3. The guardians aren't that interested in holding each other accountable
4. Some of the guardians are OK with driving non-guardians from the project. At least one of them (rather foolishly) stated that publicly.
5. This is in conflict with one of the base principles of all Wikimedia projects: that anyone can edit them
6. With great power comes great responsibilities. In exchange for being awarded the blocking tool, admins should be expected to be held to a higher standard than non-admins
7. There is no deadline. Except for obvious vandalism, there's no need for minor tweaks to be done immediately, nor is there any need for them to be done by any one editor in particular
8. It's been pointed out quite a few times, by several different editors, that Knightwho has a problem with conflict and escalation (one example being that, when I felt harassed, he just went further and further back into my edits, rather than stepping away)
9. Remedies have been offered to KnightWho on how to avoid conflict, and he's ignored them

What does this mean in real terms?

1. De-escalation is a good and necessary thing
2. If the parties are unwilling to de-escalate, remedies like two-way interaction bans need to be available.

Purplebackpack89 15:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to be perfectly frank. Someone shouldn't be an admin if they aren't willing to enforce user conduct standards. Civility is one of the five pillars on Wikipedia. There is no reason for a load-bearing policy to be entirely absent on Wiktionary except to preserve and enable a toxic culture. Any rank-and-file editor could theoretically do menial maintenance tasks such as closing RfVs. I had a short stint running Word of the Day back in 2012 and I was (and remain) a non-admin. The necessity of admins is not in doing maintenance tasks but in keeping the peace. With the ability to block disruptive users, they might be thought of as a wiki's police. Ideally, blocking shouldn't be the first line of defence. Problem users can be dealt with through guidance, de-escalation, interaction bans, mediation (if such a process existed here). When one of the few woman editors sticks her head above the parapet to speak on her negative experiences, she shouldn't receive gaslighting, condescension, and a stunningly weird and deeply discomfitting jeremiad about how men are too horny to work with women in response. It's impossible to have a serious conversation when this type of rank nonsense is tacitly allowed. Was this thread started to have a discussion about how Wiktionary can create dispute resolution processes? Or is it an exercise in hand-waving and navel-gazing ("Why can't everyone just get along?") without any actual commitment to examining Wiktionary's systemic issues and implementing badly-needed changes? The fact that a civility policy seems slated to be rejected by a landslide beggars belief. I honestly don't think anything is going to change without WMF intervention. The rot has spread too deep for Wiktionary to keep its own house. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 17:17, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did hope that it would lead to the former, myself. (In fact, I hoped that we would make a dispute resolution process.) CitationsFreak (talk) 18:08, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It won't. I went into this discussion skeptical, and it's affirmed every misgiving I had. Even the level heads in the room seem to be taking a hands-off approach. No one wants to the one to button down and call for change. Tall poppies are smacked down; squeaky wheels are dismantled. Doesn't matter if they've got 14 years of solid work behind them. Preserving a cootie-free space for the boys' club is apparently more important than building a dictionary. Heaven forbid anyone be required to exercise personal restraint in what is functionally a professional setting. That's woke pinko free-speech suppression or something. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 18:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy I made a (bare-bones) proposal above, do you have any thoughts about that? User:CitationsFreak and User:Theknightwho are the only ones who made any comments about it so far. I am trying to find something that will both have some substance in it and work in practice (two aims that aren't easy to reconcile). Benwing2 (talk) 18:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean this? I'd considered the possibility of a semi-formal mediation process myself. But such a scheme would be just as easy to game as a more legalistic one. Too often subjective judgments inform individual perceptions of a situation. The scale will always be weighted in favour of those with power and the right connections. People are more willing to assume good faith of people they admire and/or consider friends. Which is why I believe an intermediate stage in the dispute-resolution process would be necessary. Problem users (including admins) could be restricted to 1RR and required to bring concerns to the BP to ensure uninvolved eyes assess the situation. We'd need to be comfortable with enforcement being applied asymmetrically in some cases. Sometimes both "sides" in a conflict aren't equally guilty of bad behaviour. An admin who is habitually hostile/antagonising isn't the same as a rank-and-file editor who reacts poorly in an isolated instance. That's a level of nuance more legalistic approaches are generally better at handling. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 19:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy Thank you for your response. I think in general, edit wars should quickly be brought to the Beer parlour; if you get to the point that you've done 3 reverts (or even two), you should stop and bring the discussion to the BP. At least, this is what I've done and I have seen others do the same. We are generally less tolerant of edit warring than Wikipedia is. Maybe something like this can be put into a formal policy. I do agree that sometimes one person will be right and other wrong, although it's not always apparent to outside admins. As an example, there was a dispute a few years ago between User:Saranamd (aka Tibidibi/Karaeng Matoaya) and B2V22BHARAT. Both users asserted the other was wrong and was edit warring; eventually it was clear that the latter user was in the wrong and was blocked for a week (causing them to leave), but it took awhile to sort this out, esp. since there was no admin dedicated to the dispute. I agree in general that any process can be gamed, but having the process is better than not having one at all, and I think maybe a mediation process with a single uninvolved admin could be an intermediate step required before a full legalistic panel. I have read through such panels in Wikipedia, and they're exhausting just to read (much less to participate in, I'm sure). Such panels may be necessary in Wikipedia because they are often caused by underlying real-world political disputes (abortion and other US political issues; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; a whole host of Eastern European conflicts; etc.). But in my experience these disputes are thankfully less relevant in Wiktionary, where the disputes instead are more on the personal level. I invite others to contribute suggestions regarding what should be considered actionable, what the steps are in the process, etc. Benwing2 (talk) 21:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct that people are often unaware of points of contention outside their own personal experience and knowledge base. That's why it seems integral for project Wiktionary to strive to both invite and sustain a diverse editor base in order to help counteract systemic bias. While I'd personally prefer a more structured ("legalistic") approach, any dispute-resolution process would be a vast improvement on none. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 22:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am cautiously more hopeful; I read support on the vote page, even from oppose voters, for having a thought-out civility policy; the thing which the vote looks set to defeat is one editor's attempt to win a personal dispute by pushing through a page from 2006 seemingly without even reading/comprehending it enough to notice it still said one of the processes involved notifying Jimbo. I'd like to hope a guideline that doesn't posit "Head Boy of the boy's club should be notified", a modern civility policy written in 2024, is attainable. (I also think ensuring the policy / community has mechanisms for dealing with gaming is a valid and serious concern; on Wikipedia, my anecdotal count is that it seems like about half the trans editors who've dared edit trans topics there have gotten baited/gamed and censured/censored/banned; I think we do need to think about how to write a civility policy that doesn't empower the one or two people taking the stance that someone calling out / disliking Nazism is the one in the wrong.) - -sche (discuss) 18:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also not aware of any openly trans or non-binary Wiktionarians. I'm sure there's a couple but how many want to hang around with all the trans-antagonistic soapboxing that goes on here? Our collection of trans-related terms has seemingly been built primarily by cis people. Imagine if all entries for a language were created exclusively by non-native speakers. How would that shape Wiktionary's coverage of that language in subtle ways? I mean, the general lack of AFAB editors on here is of genuine lexicographical concern. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:52, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While not the same issue, I feel the same way about racial issues. I've been called epithets by users/IPs and had to go on resource dives for showing that the most basic terms are actually offensive, see the history of all lives matter, specifically this edit, for an example. However, one thing I do think I've learned here, for better or worse, is that it's not worth it to get into spats even if you're in the right. It just bogs you down and puts a negative light on you. For myself, I just keep mental track of folks I've interacted with and act accordingly, such as with Equinox. Not worth it to argue anymore. That obviously doesn't work for everyone, and it's not easy, but it keeps me sane on this project, especially after 2022 with the discussions leading up to the creation of WT:DEROGATORY. I just hope that one day this project will be welcoming enough to where we can get actual coverage done for the languages that really need it. AG202 (talk) 21:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Same here. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:12, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if I'd personally label all lives matter as "offensive." That phrase seems to be employed more as a silencing tactic than a provocation. One might argue it's the racial analogue of not all men. That kind of complexity can be difficult to condense into a context label. I might've offloaded it onto usage note as happened at TERF. But I'm willing to accept that I've got a large blind spot here. It's definitely good to have a diverse editor pool for this reason. Not everyone is going to catch errors that result from their own limited experience and/or biases. As for continuing to edit despite it all, I'm not sure that's feasible for me, given it's clear I'm unwelcome here. There was a time when it took me more than a year to point out that an editor (not Equinox, to be clear) was habitually inserting inflammatory quotes from manosphere blogs into random entries. I don't have the patience for tying myself in knots trying to explain why that's a bad thing without referencing systemic oppression and prejudice anymore. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 21:54, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy I'd like to clarify that you are definitely not generally unwelcome. Yes, some contributors have essentially told you to fuck off, but I for one appreciate your contributions. E.g. you have added a lot of info about fandom ships, something I know next to nothing about; from reviewing your contributions, I also see stuff related to non-binary and other gender-non-conforming communities (if that is the right term), social-media memes and trends, and other stuff that's important for keeping Wiktionary up-to-date and representative of all (sub)cultures, not just the dominant one. Benwing2 (talk) 05:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the kind words. One of the most gratifying things was randomly seeing "WIKTIONARY HAS SHIP NAMES???" in a tweet. Knowing my work is being referenced by people outside the fandom sphere is cool. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can think of at least two who have openly identified themselves; I'm sure -sche knows of more. I'm not sure however if either of the people I'm thinking of have contributed to trans-related entries. One used to be one of the most active contributors, esp. for bot-related work, but left for reasons (I think) are at least partly unrelated to their trans status. The other is still active but has stayed away from this discussion. Benwing2 (talk) 21:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nor are they required engage in this discussion in a "any marginalised individual in a group is required to serve as a spokesperson" kind of way. I just think it would just be nice to have more LGBT editors onboard to help counteract systemic bias. As rewarding as it has been documenting trans-related coinages on Wiktionary, it can feel like talking over actual trans people or treating them as anthropological curiosities at times. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 22:14, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If Wiktionary really is a "boys' club", may I suggest you take the first step to improve this state of affairs by de-sysopping yourself, having been one of the boys in charge for years now? "Walk the walk", as they say.

For the record I don't buy it. A perennially catty user (Equinox) being catty to yet another person is not because they're a woman, it's because they're just another person. FayFreak is not a Nazi whatsoever, he's a "free speech" champion. You disagree with him, I disagree with him as well – the difference is you see burning malice where I see a kind of optimistic naïveté. Nicodene (talk) 22:15, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What part of "I was (and remain) a non-admin" do you not understand? Would be really nice if you actually followed this discussion instead of shadowboxing against things that no one said. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 23:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What part of my replying to -sche, not you, do you not understand? Nicodene (talk) 23:19, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then use @ to make it clear who to whom you're speaking because this thread is playing fast and loose with indentation. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 23:23, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your hostile remarks toward -sche are also completely unwarranted. Maybe sit this one out if you're just gonna throw peanuts from the gallery. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 23:26, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Basic reading comprehension on your part is not my responsibility. How "[you've been] one of the boys in charge for years now" could possibly be construed as being about you is beyond me.

I don't think what I've said (and I stand by it) comes anywhere near frivolously accusing someone of Nazism. If you'd like to apply your own apparent standards for hostility to yourself and "sit this one out", I'll be happy to follow suit. Nicodene (talk) 23:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please de-escalate here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to start a de-sysop vote for me, but something tells me your idea of what an admin should or shouldn't want or have to do is not the community consensus. Thadh (talk) 18:36, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• If we subtracted all of the statements in this discussion that themselves were about individual persons' values, attitudes, and beliefs, including defensive reactions, we would have a very short discussion indeed. I don't see that most of the discussion here is contributing to the topic-creator's concerns or even to an improvement of that statement of concerns. DCDuring (talk) 12:40, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I completely agree with you. Theknightwho (talk) 13:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am cleaning up the captions of audio snippets, and I've come across an issue that needs discussion. Sometimes if the audio file refers to the location where the language in question is a minority language, the file identifies the location using the minority language's preferred name instead of the common English name (which is usually based on the majority language). Examples:

• There are 1,179 snippets for Palestinian Arabic as spoken in Lod, Israel, which identify it using the Arabic name al-Lidd.
• The audio for the Northern Kurdish term emerîkî comes from Van in Turkey but originally identified it using the Kurdish name Wan. (In this case I changed it to Van before the wider issue became apparent.)
• There are 5-6 Northern Kurdish terms from Diyarbakır that identify the location as Diyarbakir (note the two i's in the spelling), using the Kurdish form of the same name, and one that identifies it as Amed, using the normal Kurdish name. (Note, in this case, the form Diyarbakır is a Turkified name adopted in 1937; the older form in Turkish was Diyarbekir, from Arabic.)

I'm sure there are others, but these are the most politically fraught ones I've come across. The questions are:

1. Should we use the common name, as Wikipedia does (the above cities are found under Lod, Diyarbakır and Van, Turkey) or defer to the minority language's name?
2. If we defer to the minority language's name, do we do this only in certain cases (e.g. ones that are politically fraught)? (I bring this up because e.g. Navajo names of places tend to be radically different from the corresponding English ones, cf. Window Rock, Arizona vs. Navajo Tségháhoodzání and I think it would be confusing to use the Navajo names.)
3. What about accent marks not typically found in the common English name? E.g. there are hundreds of Vietnamese audio snippets that currently use the spellings Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City, which I've changed to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in accordance with the common English names.

Benwing2 (talk) 04:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is the sort of thing that AI should be good at doing. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:29, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf I don't get what you're saying at all. Maybe you're misunderstanding my questions? Benwing2 (talk) 04:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can be ignored here. Sorry. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For Navajo and other Native languages, my gut reaction is: if the entries currently use Navajo names, then either just continue to use the Native name, or list both ("Tségháhoodzání / Window Rock" or vice versa). Perhaps not in that specific case, but in the case of some other Native placenames, the nearest semi-applicable English name may have different scope/boundaries (or it may be unclear where the Native placename was, although this is probably not going to be a problem with audio files), so retaining the Native name seems useful. Slashing both would be a lot to type, but this might be mitigated if the template/module drew on T:a-et-al and so e.g. "Tségháhoodzání", "Window Rock", and optionally some even shorter name like ~"nv-TG", could all be aliases...? Pinging User:Eirikr for your thoughts.
For Palestinian Arabic, renaming cities to Israeli names indeed feels way too loaded, and for my part I would not support it. (If we have audio samples from "Bakhmut, Ukraine", does there come a point at which it's been occupied long enough that we change them to "Artyomovsk, Russia"? Ehhh...) For diacritic differences like the Vietnamese examples, I'd be inclined to use the common English form; that seems like another place where it could be useful if the template/module could know Hà Nội was an alias of Hanoi and display "Hanoi" when given the input "Hà Nội". - -sche (discuss) 06:06, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche The template does use {{a}} for this purpose so a lot could be done with aliases, although I'm not sure it would make sense to have slashed names in most circumstances. (The Navajo example I brought up is theoretical in any case; AFAICT none of the Navajo audio files identify any place name at all, although many say "Audio (NV)", which I am tempted to delete because it seems to convey no useful info. Similar issues occur with "Audio (AF)" for Afrikaans, "Audio (CS)" for Czech, "Audio (KN)" for Khiamniungan Naga [KN is the country code for St. Kitts and Nevis, which is nowhere near India :) ...], and "Audio (BCL)" for Bikol Central = lang code bcl.) The issue with Lod, as with all Israeli/Palestinian issues, is very complex and fraught; the reason I brought up this example in particular is that Lod is not internationally considered occupied and AFAICT the term "Lod" does not have the sort of political baggage associated e.g. with terms like Judea and Samaria, so it may not be parallel with the case of Bakhmut or with cities in Gaza and the West Bank, which unquestionably should use Arabic language names. Maybe a more parallel example is Lviv, formerly a Polish city known as Lvov; if we somehow had Polish audio from this city, it might make sense to use a slashed form Lviv/Lvov, and similarly here maybe Lod/al-Lidd? Same thing might apply to Jerusalem/al-Quds? (The status of this city is even more convoluted and intractable but since the common name in English is "Jerusalem" and most readers won't be familiar with "al-Quds", I think it would be confusing to only say "al-Quds".) For that matter, maybe this approach is tenable also for the Northern Kurdish terms I mention above. Benwing2 (talk) 06:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I seem to have reversed myself from what I said at top. Benwing2 (talk) 06:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lvov is the Russian name. The Polish name is Lwów. There is surely some English dialectological study of Palestinian Arabic, where the Jerusalem dialect has some name. If it is called Al-Quds, i will rather go for using Al-Quds, because it is how this dialect is known in the English books about the Palestinian dialects. But nobodys gonna refer to Moscow dialect of Russian as "Moskva", cause the English books on Russian dialectology are surely using "Moscow" as the name of this dialect. On Diyarbakir, we should see some English books on Kurdish dialects how they call this dialect. Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tollef Salemann Thanks, my mistake. If you know of any books dedicated to Palestinian or Kurdish dialects, feel free to list them. I would guess that the more well-known a place is, the more likely the common name will be used (as you note with Moscow vs. Moskva, etc.). Benwing2 (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We should use whatever the literature does, which will probably be the language's own name. Thadh (talk) 07:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Thadh I actually suspect it will vary greatly depending on the individual author. It's hard for me to believe there will be any discernible standard here. But I may be wrong. Benwing2 (talk) 08:28, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it will vary, but there will probably be an overal tendency to prefer native words over local words or the other way around. Thadh (talk) 08:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Thadh. Now we need to find all the English books about Palestinian and Kurdish dialects. Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In a bid to end the discord concerning the addition of quotes that disseminate objectional political etc. views, I would like to draw everyone’s attention to a recent discussion in which User:Geographyinitiative said he favors adding controversial quotations in the Citations namespace, which he deems a safe haven for such quotes which may not be suitable for adding in the dictionary entry. I, on the other hand, held the opinion that we could consider adding a note of disclaimer stating that Wiktionary does not endorse any of the views expressed in any quotes and they are for educational purposes alone (in this case however there’s the problem of cluttering up the dictionary page, so the note probably could be put in the mainpage?) Alternatively as a marriage of the twain ideas, we could as well resort to adding every controversial or inappropriate quote soever in the Citations namespace along with the said note of disclaimer put at the top of the Citations page using a template.

I think any of these ideas will be an attractive option if some people get so triggered by quotes bearing controversial POVs. Just my tuppence, thank you. Inqilābī 22:05, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I thank Inqilābī for the above comment, and I will say that I do not anticipate there is any negative outcome from this discussion from my view. I am fine with any note of disclaimer as proposed. Even if every Citations page I have worked on were deleted, I'm still okay. However, one among many uses for the Citations page seems to be to catalogue "fringe" material in a way that people can see it without it being right on the entry. There are other reasons for a Citations page. But I consider it one of uses. For instance, the users here like to analyze some wild racist words from dangerous evil blogs. That material seems so vile and repulsive to me that no note of disclaimer could fix it. But there should be some venue for the material given the "descriptivist" stance of the dictionary, so Witkionary "throws it in the hole" (the Citations page) so you can consult that if needed. There are numerous other uses for Citations pages including: a place for inter-sense citations or citations of uncertain sense (the 1966 and 1975 citations for Citations:transgender), a place for re-organizing senses or analyzing contexts, a place for cites of little importance or value for the entry proper, a place for words with only two acceptable cites so far (Citations:intercessionate), a staging area for a potential future entry if conditions permit (Citations:Pinghai), etc etc. The Citations page doesn't have to meet the standards of the entry proper, and stuff is less likely to be deleted there. But I tell you, some of the soul-scarring shit I've seen on the Citations page could NOT be solved by any note of disclaimer. It would HAVE to be deleted from the entry proper, regardless of anything, IMO. The Citations pages create distance from some of the most evil authors's evilest sentences I've ever seen and Wiktionary's entries, while simultaneously remaining true to the purist descriptivist mission. Wiktionary will not be allowed to exist if it puts those sentences on the entry proper. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the elaborate reply Geographyinitiative. Just for the record, the main reason I wrote this post is due to disputes involving other editors, and not because of my RFD nomination that day. I would also like to maintain that I do not advocate deleting every Citation page, I understand your reasoning. Now if other editors overwhelmingly agree that such quotes can be thrown and kept secure in the Citations bin, then my suggestion of a disclaimer can be ignored. Inqilābī 22:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The "citations page containment zone" idea was floated back in 2022 and was not well-received for all its merits. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 23:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, quotes espousing controversial or bigoted viewpoints should be limited to terms that are themselves associated with such viewpoints. If we stick to this, it shouldn't be necessary to have a cordon sanitaire like putting them in the Citations page, because the terms themselves will normally have (or certainly should have) labels indicating that they are controversial, offensive, etc., which clues the reader into the fact that the quotes (which are hidden by default) may express such viewpoints. Benwing2 (talk) 23:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does this include things like using a quote from a racist speech on a word that is related to racism? CitationsFreak (talk) 23:53, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would think so in general. What is the example you're thinking of? What to me isn't appropriate is e.g. User:WordyAndNerdy's example of an incel-type quote added to the word roadworn, since there's nothing about this term that relates specifically to the incel community or any other controversial viewpoints. Benwing2 (talk) 23:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do not have a good grasp of policy. I'm just trying to 1) protect Wiktionary while 2) allowing the purist descriptivist mission to flourish. So my view does create a cowardly "semi-censored" and "self-censored" aspect to the project. It's not a good solution. But we exist in a society, and I guarantee Wiktionary could be snapped like a twig if it crossed the wrong lines. One device we can use to assuage people is say "hey it's not on the entry". Basically this applies to "fringe" content, so you just have to judge it for yourself. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:14, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fundamentally, it boils down to "don't use a controversial quote unless you absolutely have to"

1. Don't use controversial quotes to talk about editors or about real people
2. If a word has three non-controversial quotes, use those three

Purplebackpack89 01:00, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, it doesn’t. We do things that we don’t have to because it comes out optimized or more illustrative, rather than absolutely necessary. Don’t do things I “need to”, for example I don’t need creatine monohydrate but probably still benefit from it. And you wipe off the issue how controversiality is inferred and portrayed; in isolation, the Daily Stormer quote wasn’t the same as the site in general, but someone pushes a stance about the whole resource. Fay Freak (talk) 01:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Like the lock in {{R:OED Online}} “paid subscription required” (which I wanted elsewhere, for legal databases I quoted from) we could have a symbol and tooltip warning about “low factuality”. As on Ground News but less regularly. Nothing too regular since we generally shan’t consider any sources controversial inasmuch they are used for their language (which in rare cases itself is trolling), we already have a contradiction here and a lot of cognitive capacity is wasted for evaluating sources. “Incel-type quotes”? Am I supposed to waste my energy to say anything about these people?

Yet still Geographyinitiative does not recognize content generated via AI by the Chinese propaganda department snuck in as quotes, about which in some cases I have insider knowledge. Academic databases are littered with automated language, and in the former cases “publishing” takes places via PEMT. I invite everyone to search "gullible Bayes".

At least for random Neo-Nazis we know they are real people putting in the effort, and back then I also reasoned that this human language has durability, since Mr. Anglin has still not been downed from the internet despite all the efforts. AI imitates Mr. Average, and avoids controversial statements, think about it. Fay Freak (talk) 01:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak: The AI as a technology is perfectly capable of generating hate speech and Nazi propaganda [5][6]. It's just that the big players in the AI industry are making efforts to suppress this in their own products. But the technology can't be stopped and it is available to anyone. There may be already a lot of AI generated Neo-Nazi content in the net. So I wouldn't just blindly assume that every Neo-Nazi content is human generated and thus has some kind of linguistic relevance. --Ssvb (talk) 16:04, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ssvb: I don’t blindly assume it, but there are a number of reasons against the existence of formally plausible versions of it, apart from the circumstance that I have not stumbled upon it despite searches of the most heterodox things and following the upcoming trends in politics, which are warily tracked by hostile journalism more than anything if coming from this end. AI-generated article images of white families or the like appear, but we mean the texts. Currently everyone suppresses it, the hard cores of Neo-Nazis are too dumb or ideologically averse for targetted computer-generated content, and manual labour is too cheap and worth it for them: Like Kremlebots are real people sitting at a known address in Saint Petersburg. And it does not work: As the neuronal networks are trained on some old averages, even if it be biased content, and then have so-called model decay, they don’t hit humans where it hurts, they would have to have intricate understanding of current connotations of ideological concepts in order to reframe personal identities of people. You don’t change people’s worldviews with AI, though you can promote specific assumptions.

It’s a general problem in education, too. AI programs very much but teaches programming very little and human teachers will always exist and be preferred by totalitarian systems as well, and our dictionary be human-made because we explain politics, philosophy, psychology etc. Fay Freak (talk) 16:45, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak: "the hard cores of Neo-Nazis are too dumb" - this is a very questionable claim and I wouldn't count on that. Additionally, dumb people tend to make grammar and spelling mistakes, so this reduces the value of their content for Wiktionary. And some of them are even not native speakers. For example, I wouldn't consider the Anders Breivik's Manifesto to be a valuable example of written English. --Ssvb (talk) 19:07, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My approach, as I said in the 2022 discussion linked above, is: "we can (and do) already move un-illustrative, including unnecessarily offensive, quotes to Citations: pages if they're needed for WT:ATTEST. (If they're not, like someone is adding racist screeds as cites of and, just replace them with normal cites and block the user if needed.) This does lack a reader-facing warning [...] but eh, that probably reduces the amount of bad-faith or even good-faith debates over whether a quote is "really offensive" that a content warning would attract." We already see trolling about "they're not white supremacists, they're white racialists / race realists" etc etc: any "this quote is offensive"/"we don't agree with this quote" notice would just be a magnet for endless disputes. And do we apply "this quote doesn't represent our views" to quotes that express e.g. old or modern flat-earth or geocentric views, i.e. views that aren't really offensive but which nonetheless aren't Wiktionary's views? It's a morass we needn't create. Indeed, I'm not sure there's actually a problem here in the first place? AFAICT what I outline is what is broadly already done; is anyone actually going around and adding citations of Mein Kampf to und and der (and not immediately being reverted), is there an actual issue happening...? - -sche (discuss) 01:26, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the age of a quotation also plays a big role? Being old gives it at least a historical value. So that the ancient "flat-earth" theories are okay, but modern "flat-earth" theories - not so much. The former are likely to be honest mistakes, while the latter are likely to be the work of nutcases. Also if the readers see that a quotation is older than maybe 1950, then they can figure out themselves that it's unlikely to present a relevant up to date scientific information even without any extra disclaimers. For example, I added this quotation recently, which is stating something that is possibly not true nowadays (and possibly even debatable back in 1916). But does anyone really care? --Ssvb (talk) 18:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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I now religiously (well, most times) use the "ux" template for usage examples, since it is what I see others have done, but since this is no easier (in fact actually more to type) than not using it, I wonder whether anyone could explain what the actual advantage is, if any? Mihia (talk) 17:41, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As opposed to plain wikitext? Category. Same with {{co}}. Vininn126 (talk) 17:46, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By "category", do you mean that it puts the article in the category "English terms with usage examples"? Not that I am really complaining about typing a couple more characters to use "ux", it's not a big deal, but out of curiosity I wonder what use to anyone or anything is such a category? (A category for articles without usage examples I could understand.*) Mihia (talk) 17:57, 3 June 2024 (UTC) -- (* or, actually, a category for definitions without usage examples would be more useful, since an entry could have ten definitions, only one of which had a usage example, yet still, as far as I gather, show up in "terms with usage examples")[reply]

A big underappreciated advantage is that the "ux" and "quote-book" templates are machine readable. This allows easily doing various kind of automatic processing. Yes, it's possible to find terms with missing usage examples if you are interested in that. --Ssvb (talk) 18:06, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I use it quite often to see what entries still need a usex in the languages I edit. I think others do, too. It's similar to the "English terms with quotations". Thadh (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you use category "terms with usage examples" to find entries that don't have usage examples? Mihia (talk) 18:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I compare it to the other category. Thadh (talk) 20:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For non-English languages, {{ux}} is required for the text to be tagged in the correct language for e.g. screen readers or other automated software. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:15, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention script and font. Thadh (talk) 20:56, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I mentioned these points at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:ux/documentation. Anyone wants to amend or add to this, please go ahead. Mihia (talk) 21:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't quite aware of the intended scope of this. Apparently it's to be an all-in-one etymology template, subsuming the functions of {{affix}}, {{inherited}}, {{etymid}}, etc.

Its current syntax strikes me as more than a bit unintuitive, and I'd like to propose a somewhat more user-friendly way of going about it:

• cleverly: {{ety|en:ID|clever:en:ID|-ly:en:ID}} "From clever + -ly".
  • Note that the first ID is for cleverly, the second for clever, and the third for -ly.

• charity: {{ety|en:ID|charitee:enm:ID}}"From Middle English charitee."

• furlough: {{ety|en:ID|verlof:de:ID}} "From Dutch verlof".

• монтировать (montirovatʹ): {{ety|ru:ID|montieren:de:ID|-овать:ru:ID}} "From German montieren + Russian -овать (-ovatʹ)".

For categorization purposes, the default assumptions would be as follows.

• If all the language codes match (i.e. it's a language-internal formation): compounding, suffixation, prefixation, or confixation. That can be automatically determined by hyphens: yass + -ify is suffixation, neuro- + -genic is confixation, etc. Other types of derivation can be specified with an additional parameter like |blend=1 or |deverbal=1.

• If the language codes do not all match: "English terms derived from Dutch", etc. For mixed cases like the aforementioned монтировать, nonsensical categories like "Russian terms derived from Russian" would of course be disabled. More specific types of relation can be expressed with an additional parameter like |bor=1, |inh=1, |calque=1, |conflation=1, and so on.

This strikes me as a reasonaby straightforward way to handle things.

Thoughts, objections, or alternative suggestions?

Paging @Ioaxxere as the person who made the template and @Vininn126, @Rex Aurorum, @Qwertygiy, @Akaibu, @Biolongvistul, @Protegmatic as people who have used it. Nicodene (talk) 21:48, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Condensing the language and the ID parameters is very agreeable. As for the reshuffling in the etymon slots, it disrupts the ascending hierarchy of specificity and would not prove any easier to internalise to me.

The semantic austerity of the af keyword is, I dare to assure, a temporary solution. We don’t even have categorisation implemented yet. ―⁠Biolongvistul (talk) 22:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could you explain what you mean by ‘ascending hierarchy of specificity’? Nicodene (talk) 23:25, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Broadest first, most specific last, as in taxonomy for species. I believe it's mostly a happy coincidence that it's implied with the current syntax using the "greater than" symbol. Language > term > sense.

The rest of the proposition I don't believe I quite understand. Syntax like "bor|fr>unité>to unite|af|en>-ed>past participle" for "Borrowed from French unité (“to unite”) and suffixed with -ed (“past participle”)" feels intuitive enough to me. Qwertygiy (talk) 23:41, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ioaxxere I have been meaning to respond to another thread about adding manual transliteration into {{etymon}}. The obvious way to do that is through inline modifiers; in that respect, the choice of > as a separator is singularly unfortunate as it prevents use of inline modifiers with the normal <...> syntax. I would recommend changing this to something else; for example, the {{given name}} template uses < to indicate inheritance, but requires that spaces be put around the < sign, which allows concurrent use with inline modifiers. You could also use ^, @, etc. Benwing2 (talk) 00:11, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BTW if you need help changing this, I can do this easily by bot. Benwing2 (talk) 00:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Benwing2 I don't think it does prevent the use of < >, as it's not actually ambiguous, but I could see it being confusing (though no more than template syntax). Theknightwho (talk) 00:37, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose you may be right, I need to think if there are any edge cases that will be problematic, although without spaces it will be very hard to read, e.g. фоо<tr:foo>>бар<tr:bar>>баз<tr:baz> is well-nigh unreadable. Benwing2 (talk) 00:43, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Benwing2 It's not great, I agree. My suggstion is foo:bar<id:baz>, which probably maximises consistency with other templates. Theknightwho (talk) 00:46, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Theknightwho I agree with this. Benwing2 (talk) 00:49, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I tried it that way to have the same adjacent order of language and ID, as in {{ety|en:ID|charitee:enm:ID}} "From Middle English charitee". But I don't have any issue with {{ety|en:ID|enm:charitee:ID}}.

As for the use of ">", in addition to the issue that Benwing mentions, I found it unintuitive. The code on state for example currently contains "enm>stat>condition". Reading this according to the standard meaning of ">" in linguistics results in "condition is from stat, which is from enm".

As for united, as it happens I don't agree with the given etymology, since French unité is a noun meaning "'unity", not a past participle comparable to united. The latter is just unite + -ed. But if I were to agree with the given etymology, my proposal would result in {{ety|en:ID|fr:unité:ID|en:-ed:ID}} "From French unité + English -ed." Which seems a good deal simpler. Nicodene (talk) 00:50, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are a lot of suggestions in here so I'll just dump a few opinions:

• Neutral on changing the etymon parameter format. However, I oppose any scheme where > is used both as a separator and for inline modifiers for the reasons pointed out by Benwing. Out of the options discussed here I would take foo:bar<id:baz> (I assume foo is the language code).
• Weak oppose having |1 be in the format lang:ID as I find this very unintuitive, although it does admittedly save keystrokes.
• Oppose changing anything about the keyword parameters for now until the requirements are more established. I feel like @Nicodene is putting the cart before the horse in discussing categorization when it's not even clear how this should work. In particular, I'd like to eventually deprecate the existing "X terms derived from Y" system in favour of something more fine-grained (although this will be tough to implement in the short term).

Ioaxxere (talk) 04:15, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In something like foo:bar, foo should definitely be the lang code, otherwise it will be too confusing. In foo:bar:baz:bat, I would assume foo is a lang code and the others are terms. If the lang code is optional, we'll need a different separator for the terms. Benwing2 (talk) 04:28, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Benwing2: Currently, with the > separator, the lang code is optional. Hence you can do something like {{etymon|ine-pro|id=father|af|unc|*peh₂->protect|*-tḗr>agent noun}} (the ine-pro> part is implied). Part of the reason I like the current system is that it's optimized for keystrokes, e.g. *peh₂->protect has 14 characters, whereas ine-pro:*peh₂-<id:protect> has 26 characters. But I think that it should be possible in the new system to omit the lang code in the same manner as long as : characters are escaped everywhere else. Ioaxxere (talk) 04:42, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ioaxxere I am not saying you need to use inline modifiers for things like ID's that occur frequently. You will find, for example, in {{it-conj}} that there are various delimiters used, e.g. {{it-conj}} for riempire might look like {{it-conj|a/riémpio,riempìi,riempìto:riempiùto}}; here the a/ at the beginning indicates the auxiliary verb avere; following are three principal parts, comma-separated, and alternatives for principal parts are colon separated. Some verbs need four principal parts and use ^ to separate the fourth principal part, e.g. venire, whose full spec looks like {{it-conj|e/vèngo^viène:viéne,vénni:vènni,venùto.fut:verrò.presp:veniènte}}. To help unpack this, the format for principal parts is PRES1S,PHIS1S,PP in most verbs (specifying the 1sg pres indic, the 1sg past historic, and the past participle), but PRES1S^PRES3S,PHIS1S,PP in verbs where the 3sg pres indic is also irreg. In addition, . separates distinct specs, where the main principal parts are collectively a single spec, and fut:verrò is another spec indicating the future principal part, and presp:veniènte is yet another spec indicating the present participle. I could have used the format of fut:verrò for all principal parts, which would look like {{it-conj|e/pres:vèngo.pres3s:viène:viéne.phis:vénni:vènni.pp:venùto.fut:verrò.pres:veniènte}} (BTW you can put spaces and newlines next to any delimiter to make it easier to read), but that's a lot more keystrokes. Benwing2 (talk) 05:07, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is handling language and ID the same way throughout, as in

{{ety|en:polity|stat:enm:condition|inh=1}}

less intuitive than handling them in different ways like this?

{{etymon|en|id=polity|inh|enm>stat>condition|tree=1}} ed: nevermind; see below

I wasn't aware you're considering getting rid of "X terms derived from Y" categories. Is the problem the name (as it happens I'd been thinking of suggesting "X terms of Y origin") or is it the problem that such categories exist at all? Nicodene (talk) 04:58, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Biolongvistul, Qwertygiy, Ioaxxere, Theknightwho, Benwing2:

Adjusting for your comments, we get something like:

{{ety|en<id:X>|en:clever<id:Y>|en:-ly<id:Z>}} "From clever + -ly".

Does that syntax satisfy everyone?

If so perhaps we can get to discussing Ioaxxere's proposed changes to categories. Nicodene (talk) 09:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like this, to be honest. Vininn126 (talk) 09:18, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd prefer something like

{{ety|en|clever#Y|-ly#Z}}

That way you minimize typing. Benwing2 (talk) 09:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to go for #X instead of <id:X> if people like it.

It looks like you favour setting the default assumption for language codes to “same as the first one mentioned, unless otherwise specified”? So in this case, given the {{ety|en…}}, the following clever and -ly are assumed to be English.

I suppose in that case the syntax for Russian монтировать (montirovatʹ) would read {{ety|ru#X|de:montieren#Y|-овать#Z}} “From German montieren + Russian -овать (-ovatʹ)” or similar. Nicodene (talk) 10:47, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This raises the issue of adapted borrowings anyway. I suppose for the tree you'd have a fork either way, but the question is whether to print "bor" in the tree or not. I have a slight preference for <id:X>. Vininn126 (talk) 10:51, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no strong feelings about the exact markup, I can adjust. Vininn126 (talk) 08:47, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, to indicate uncertainty, you might do something like {{etymon|ine-pro|id=father|af|unc|*peh₂->protect|*-tḗr>agent noun}}. As pointed out by @Fenakhay, this is a bit unintuitive due to the fact that there are two "layers" of keywords present (both etymons are associated with both af and unc). As an alternative, I support being able to write {{etymon|ine-pro|id=father|af|*peh₂->protect?|*-tḗr>agent noun?}}. This is intuitive and also saves two characters. We would just have to make sure that there are no IDs ending in a question mark.

Also, I'm personally not a fan of using # to show IDs, since it could be confused with the actual fragment. In Benwing's example, {{ety|en|clever#Y|-ly#Z}} would link to clever#English:_Y. Ioaxxere (talk) 19:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you like <id:X>, perhaps another inline modifier like <unc:1>? Nicodene (talk) 21:24, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think using ? to indicate uncertainty is fine. I'm not sure about what > and -> mean here; I need to read the docs, but they maybe could be replaced with something more intuitive. Benwing2 (talk) 04:36, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

> precedes an ID, and the hyphen is just part of the PIE lemma *peh₂-. Nicodene (talk) 04:41, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see. In that case maybe use @ or ^ to separate the ID from the lemma. Benwing2 (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Umm ... I have come across several of these. Do we really want them? E.g. λέγω, where on top of everything else, the pronunciation is completely wrong; the speaker says /leːɡuː/ when the reconstructed pronunciation should be /lɛɡɔː/. Some others (which I have not checked yet): καί, ὁ, ψυχή, φύσις, αὐτός, εἰμί, χείρ, οὗτος, χθών, τίς, φθόγγος. Benwing2 (talk) 00:48, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe there was consensus to remove the audio files for Classical Latin, so this should be no different. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want them either personally. At the very least they should be labelled with a disclaimer like ‘modern attempt to approximate Attic’ to convey some idea of the uncertainties involved in attempting a phonetic rendition of a pronunciation predating Christ. Nicodene (talk) 01:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The ones you have not checked, I am surprised how well they match. Such small details could make readers fond, in their grim and despondent struggles to master Greek. Can’t withsay them in the interest of the art and science. Fay Freak (talk) 01:42, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, following the passage of Wiktionary:Votes/2024-04/Allowing etymology trees on entries last week, etymology trees generated by {{etymon}} have been added to a number of entries. Earlier today, there was some discussion on the Discord server about the inclusion of etymology trees in the "Etymology" sections of multi-word entries like United States of America (added here) and Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (not added as of writing). Some supported etymology trees on such entries while others opposed their inclusion. The discussion started getting detailed enough as well as got enough attention that I've decided to try and move it here, on-site so that it is more "official" and can have more organization and visibility. Pinging those who expressed views on Discord: @Qwertygiy, Vininn126, Lattermint, Ioaxxere, Akaibu, Soap, Saph668, AG202, Theknightwho. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 02:08, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to say that I don't think it's best to have etymology trees on multiword terms like United States of America. It starts to get unwieldy, and while it looks "cool", we should be aiming for information presented in a concise and helpful way, not the pseudo-gamification that I've started to see. AG202 (talk) 02:15, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Completely agreed. In general the etymology of a multiword term should indicate the way the term was constructed in the same language, and that's it, unless the term was calqued from some other language. Benwing2 (talk) 03:20, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the same vein, the discussion around adding a tree to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch on Discord shows me the gamification that I'm talking about. Even after being pointed out to that they shouldn't work with languages that they don't know, the tree was still added. I assume because it's a long word and they explicitly stated that they couldn't edit pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (locked to auto-patrollers and up). I'd also like to remind editors of the statement from the vote:

This vote does not:

Allow or encourage editors to mass-add etymology trees across the site. As stated above, each language community will decide if or when they are appropriate.

AG202 (talk) 00:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Weak support etymology trees on multi-word terms. I don't see the harm considering they're collapsed and don't take a lot of effort to create. However, I admit that the tree on United States of America is virtually unusuable simply due to how wide it is. I think the best course of action is to have trees of a certain width display in a horizontal format as seen in Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/May#Descendant tree design. Ioaxxere (talk) 04:22, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This user is making an awful lot of noise for very little signal, and judging by their mainspace-to-talkpages edit ratio, they don't seem particularly interested in actually building a dictionary.

Purplebackpack will probably argue that they're not making as many mainspace edits as they'd like because other people are constantly putting spokes in his/her wheel. They apparently don't like their work being reviewed and quality-controlled, or their edit history being looked at, and will readily dismiss criticism as "harassment", an accusation they've levelled at no less than four different people in the course of a single week (diff, diff, diff, diff).

While we should look to see if there isn't some truth there (I think we could have done without WF's trolling, at least), and make sure that there isn't a systemic problem of people feeling pressured (a topic which has recently been brought up), I would argue that rapid-fire accusations from a single editor make it harder to think clearly on such an issue.

And the fact that the same person has levelled similar accusations at an entirely different set of editors many years ago (diff, diff, diff, diff) certainly doesn't help in taking their claims seriously now.

They seem to take particular exception to people challenging them on their votes (see this discussion); notice the similarity between this and the accusation of harassment thrown at Benwing2 after his comment (on Purplebackpack regularly failing to provide a rationale for his/her votes).

I'd also like to mention that, while complaining of other people's behaviour towards them, they seem unbothered (diff, diff) by the idea that their own attitude might have played a role in the abrupt decision of a fellow editor to leave; note the striking temporal proximity between the aforementioned discussion and that editor's departure.

If Purplebackpack perceives any kind of scrutiny as harassment, I would say Wiktionary simply isn't the right place for them. Everyone on this project must be ready to face criticism - sometimes repeatedly.

I personally am loath to imagine not being able to go through a user contributions and express earnest concern about the quality of their interventions (in the main space or elsewhere) without being labelled as a "harasser".

Therefore, for the good of the project, I would like to propose that this user be prevented from further editing. This is not meant as a punitive measure (I'm not "out to get him/her"), but as a way of putting an end to highly toxic and massively detrimental behaviour, thereby preserving an atmosphere more conducive to serene dialogue and productive work. PUC – 23:07, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PBP's false harassment accusations have gotten to the point of trolling. I view such unwarranted accusations, esp. a pattern of them, as a blockable offense, and I think if PBP makes any more such accusations that aren't clearly warranted, they should be blocked, maybe on the schedule of one week, then one month, then permanently if they keep it up. PBP reminds me of Dan Polansky; a ton of heat, little light, and a strong increase in the toxicity of the atmosphere as a result of them. In Dan Polansky's case, I finally permablocked him for outright racism on top of everything else. I suspect PBP is smart enough not to engage in outright racism, but IMO that should not prevent a warranted block. Benwing2 (talk) 04:33, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Notifying -sche, The Editor's Apprentice, Mahagaja): : I recently created this vote (start date TBD): Wiktionary:Votes/2024-06/CFI for mainspace constructed languages, in hopes of coming to a consensus on which conlangs should be included in the mainspace and why. Since its creation, nonetheless, I've come to realize that we currently include possibly two conlangs in the mainspace outside of the ones listed at WT:CFI, and I'm not sure what to do about them. These include:

• Eskayan
• N'Ko, though it's debated as to whether or not this is a conlang (per Glottolog) a mixed language per Ethnologue, or simply a literary register per Wikipedia.

If we consider N'Ko a conlang, should it be included in our permitted mainspace list? I would think so, but I also don't feel like it's an actual conlang. I don't know anything about Eskayan to comment on it.

On the same note, I'd like to bring up the case of palawa kani, created by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as it seems closer to the revival of an indigenous language instead of a language like Volapük, at least based on my surface-level research of it. It looks to be taught to children, is used in place names, is used in official dubbing, has a growing oral tradition and more. I cannot yet verify if it has native speakers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does, if not for a lack of direct access to the language (the merits of which I won't comment on). If so, I'd like to see what the consensus is about adding it to Proposal 1 of the above vote. AG202 (talk) 23:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Mar vin kaiser since you seem to be the most active editor of Eskayan & @Thadh since you mentioned it on Discord. AG202 (talk) 00:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In a previous discussion (before the Interslavic discussion), someone said it felt like the divide we make between mainspace conlangs and appendix-space ones was that the handful of long-used conlangs are in mainspace, and new ones are in appendix space... and they said that thinking it was a bad thing (arbitrary), but I think it's been a reasonable approach. Having a fair number of native speakers and/or works in the language could be another decent rule of thumb. As regards Eskayan, I note how many aspects of our attitudes to / treatment of artificial languages seem to have been developed with Western conlangs in mind (often created recently and for certain reasons, attempting and failing to be world languages or new nations, or for fiction), to the extent that the existence of old non-Western artificial languages like Eskayan (created for different reasons and used in rather different ways, in Eskayan's case as a language of the Eskaya people, taught in several schools) seems to have slipped the minds of the people devising the original conlang policies, and flown under the radar. All things considered, that (fact that Eskayan is currently included) seems OK to me. I'm not wedded to it being in mainspace if people want it moved to appendix-space, but it does seem to be in a different boat from various Western conlangs that have been suggested for inclusion. - -sche (discuss) 00:53, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no strong opinions either way on Eskayan; it feels different in some way from run-of-the-mill conlangs but I don't know if that's just a bias based on its non-Western origin. Benwing2 (talk) 04:06, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BTW as for N'Ko, from reading the Wikipedia entry it sounds more like Standard Basque, Standard Moroccan Amazigh, Rumantsch Grischun or Unified Kichwa, which I do not consider conlangs so much as intentionally created koines. These are on the same spectrum as Modern Hebrew, standard German and standard Italian, all of which are partly planned languages but none of which are reasonably considered conlangs IMO. Benwing2 (talk) 04:17, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've since done a skim of relevant chapters of The Last Language on Earth: Linguistic Utopianism in the Philippines by Dr. Piers Kelly (Dec 2021), which focuses on Eskayan, and based on what I've read, it seems like it has a strong rationale for inclusion. It's taught in schools to children, used in praying, singing, speechmaking, excluding overhearers, and common phrases, and there's an extensive literary history. "In effect, Eskayan appears to have supplanted the special authoritative role of English." They estimate that there are between 500-550 speakers of Eskayan, with several speakers with a high degree of linguistic competence in speaking, reading, and writing the language.

The only issue I'm seeing is that it's technically not a mother tongue: "Unlike Boholano-Visayan, which is acquired as a mother tongue, knowledge of Eskayan is learned through voluntary attendance at traditional Eskaya schools, and mastery of the language is considered a prerequisite for becoming truly Eskaya." Thus, there technically aren't any L1 speakers from birth, but seeing as though there are children taught it from a fairly young age, would that not qualify as a pseudo-native language? It's definitely different from the typical conlang, and has fully-fledged educational aspects, including arithmetic & equations being taught and performed in schools. The author starts out the final section, stating:

The immediate future for Eskayan as a viable language is reasonably assured. Competent speakers have status within the communities; in Biabas and Taytay the language is being actively learned by children, and plans are well under way to construct an Eskaya school in Cadapdapan. Recent government recognition, through the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, provides additional legitimacy to an already valued language.

This makes it clear to me that it holds legitimacy and should be included in the namespace. AG202 (talk) 05:06, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have a policy on this? I have encountered some, e.g. at inconsequential the audio is explicitly labeled "CA synth", which I take to mean synthesized Canadian. Although it's now possible to synthesize realistic sounding text-to-speech audio, this particular audio sounds very artificial to me, and I think it doesn't belong. Even for realistic-sounding audio, I'm skeptical. Here are some other words with audio labeled "CA synth": extraterrestrial, catamaran, angst, centralization, depolarization, disorganization, amnesia, counterfactual, homily, atherosclerosis, icicle, ecclesiastical, enclose, intruder, gasp, entitle, grievance, goose flesh, biodiversity, lethargic, hyperventilation, coliseum, macrobiotics, impracticality, autobiographical, disputant. An additional file labeled as ca-synth in the filename but not the caption occurs in isolationism. Some of these have additional non-synthesized audio files, some don't. Benwing2 (talk) 04:04, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our general rule (not sure how much of a policy it is) is that audio pronunciations ought to be recorded by native speakers of the languages—a machine is admittedly not a native speaker of any language. Some time ago I came across a bunch of synthesized audio files on English entries (around 20–30 IIRC) that were all created by a single Commons user years ago and then a few years later were automatically added by a bot (User:DerbethBot) that was adding missing Commons audio recordings not on the entries. The quality of the audios was really poor and many weren't even correct, so I went ahead and removed them. I admit perhaps I should’ve brought up the matter here, but it seemed pretty clear-cut to me that they had to go as, with an audio recording, one would expect the voice of an actual native human speaker. Even with better quality recordings and as voice synthesis technology gets better and better (particularly with the AI stuff), I think we should still try to supply authentic human recordings as any voice synthesis services will be available to the readers elsewhere. lattermint (talk) 05:05, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]