Tomer Chachamu wrote:
On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org, causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too many for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten who it was.
It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away from the computer for the next several hours.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org, causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too many for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten who it was.
It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away from the computer for the next several hours.
There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when. Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not ready for the change. Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.
Polyglot
............
It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away from the computer for the next several hours.
There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when. Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not ready for the change. Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.
As much as I remember the switch over should have been done on April 1st (no, not a joke), but then, even if it was decided no-one really moved.
I am already cleaning the links on it.wiktionary to en.wiktionary since someone (withour logging in) added manually some interwiki-links using capitalised words and besides that creating messed up pages using {{PAGENAME}} instead of re-writing the word in the title - so basically all double work. Should whoever added these pages read this message: please never use the pagename-template again like you did - if you don't know how to create a proper page, just contact me (also by e-mail is fine)..
Ciao, Sabine
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Sabine Cretella wrote:
............
It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away from the computer for the next several hours.
There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when. Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not ready for the change. Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.
As much as I remember the switch over should have been done on April 1st (no, not a joke), but then, even if it was decided no-one really moved.
I am already cleaning the links on it.wiktionary to en.wiktionary since someone (withour logging in) added manually some interwiki-links using capitalised words and besides that creating messed up pages using {{PAGENAME}} instead of re-writing the word in the title - so basically all double work. Should whoever added these pages read this message: please never use the pagename-template again like you did - if you don't know how to create a proper page, just contact me (also by e-mail is fine)..
Ciao, Sabine
Gerard wanted to force the move through quickly after the vote had been cast, but that would have been way too soon. He proposed the 1st of April, but noboby of the regulars agreed with that. 1st of May was proposed but also not done. Anyway, I think a request to flip the switch should only have been considered when a sysop had requested it and even then after asking for confirmation. On the other hand I'm really excited it finally happened and I want to say thank you to Tim as it may have been the only way to actually do it. A request for confirmation would merely have blown up some dust and everything would have stayed the same in the end. Since full agreement of everybody involved seems impossible to attain in a larger project.
Polyglot
Maybe someone can think of a way to create automatic links to pages with titles differing just by the case of the first letter? E.g. it would be helpful to have link to "aa" from the article titled "Aa". I have had no success trying to accomplish something like that using the available means of mediawiki. That's by the way one of the reasons why not-yet-so-big Estonian wiktionary has not switched over to case-sensitivite first letters yet.
There could be use for a magic word similar to PAGENAMEE which would return the page title with spaces substituted by '+' characters.
Klaus
Klaus-Eduard Runnel wrote:
Maybe someone can think of a way to create automatic links to pages with titles differing just by the case of the first letter? E.g. it would be helpful to have link to "aa" from the article titled "Aa". I have had no success trying to accomplish something like that using the available means of mediawiki. That's by the way one of the reasons why not-yet-so-big Estonian wiktionary has not switched over to case-sensitivite first letters yet.
There could be use for a magic word similar to PAGENAMEE which would return the page title with spaces substituted by '+' characters.
Hi Klaus, as much as I know there is a bot that can revert everything to lower case (see the mails of Biron today). So creating all pages in lower case should be possible without problems. If you then need help to have a look at the German words that often have capital initial letters ... let me know.
I noted you already use templates like {{-en-}} so I suppose the category for German is there.
Do you have a template list somewhere?
Ciao, Sabine
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Klaus-Eduard Runnel wrote:
Maybe someone can think of a way to create automatic links to pages with titles differing just by the case of the first letter? E.g. it would be helpful to have link to "aa" from the article titled "Aa". I have had no success trying to accomplish something like that using the available means of mediawiki. That's by the way one of the reasons why not-yet-so-big Estonian wiktionary has not switched over to case-sensitivite first letters yet.
There could be use for a magic word similar to PAGENAMEE which would return the page title with spaces substituted by '+' characters.
Klaus
Hoi, This would be a bad idea. It may help some wiktionaries but it would certainly break others. There is a big difference between the implementation of the English wiktionary who for whatever reason stayed overly long with capitalised articles and wiktionaries like the Dutch, the Italian and may others who changed the capitalisation at the first opportunity. The difference can be found in things like the English wiktionary seems to cherish the redirect pages while all redirect pages on the Dutch and Italian .. and others are always deleted. The reason for this is that like in a paper dictionaray we only want correct spellings and an incorrect spelling should result in a "not found" message.
Ultimate Wiktionary is a project that intends to merge wiktionaries and its communities and build additional functionality and community. However, until individual wiktionaries start to merge into it, you cannot assume functionality and certainly automatic functionality is possible that is incompatible with other wiktionaries. It is possible to create the Ultimate Wiktionary because from a technical point of view, it makes a clean break with the existing wiktionaries. The result will be a single project and as a consequence it will be possible to change its functionality when the need arises.
One thing you have to consider with regard to the implementation of case sensitivity is, that the longer you wait the more work there is to make the necessary changes.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
The difference can be found in things like the English wiktionary seems to cherish the redirect pages while all redirect pages on the Dutch and Italian .. and others are always deleted. The reason for this is that like in a paper dictionaray we only want correct spellings and an incorrect spelling should result in a "not found" message.
I don't think that feelings are unanimous on this in the English Wiktionary. I frequently delete redirect pages, and see no point in keeping Transwiki pages once the contents have been assimilated.
One thing you have to consider with regard to the implementation of case sensitivity is, that the longer you wait the more work there is to make the necessary changes.
=-O ;-)
Ec
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The reason for this is that like in a paper dictionaray we only want correct spellings and an incorrect spelling should result in a "not found" message.
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
*Muke!
Muke Tever wrote:
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The reason for this is that like in a paper dictionaray we only want correct spellings and an incorrect spelling should result in a "not found" message.
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
*Muke!
Hoi, When a word is correctly spelled in several ways, every alternative is as good as the other and deserve its own article. It should therefore be abundantly clear that they are correct. As a consequence of the massive rename action many thousands of redirects have been created words like "Lightbulb" are now correct because there is a redirect ?? So the spelling of a sentence like: "A Lightbulb Is Typically Found In A Lamp." is apparantly correct?? I think not.
Redirects are not an appropriate tool for spell checks.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
When a word is correctly spelled in several ways, every alternative is as good as the other and deserve its own article. It should therefore be abundantly clear that they are correct. As a consequence of the massive rename action many thousands of redirects have been created words like "Lightbulb" are now correct because there is a redirect ?? So the spelling of a sentence like: "A Lightbulb Is Typically Found In A Lamp." is apparantly correct?? I think not.
Capitalization is separate from spelling (though both are parts of orthography). Your sentence is spelled correctly, though capitalized unusually.
In any case, free capitalization of words is quite common--it occur in titles of works ("Antique Lightbulbs of the Early 19th Century"), in advertising ("Save Today on Great Unbeatable Prices"), in any case where a word is given a special kind of emphasis ("it wasn't just a smell, it was a Smell"), is used as a title of address ("you're not listening to me, Mother"), is made into a proper noun ("he was a Zealot"), etc., and formerly also optionally of nouns in general.
One of the most venerated documents in our country begins: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The only words never take normal capitalization are those that are decreed to be so from technical context, such as "pH" or 'sinensis' in "Alligator sinensis."
On these grounds first-letter case-folding should never have been turned off; but, since it has been so done, redirects from capitalized forms should ALWAYS exist, because all other words may be found either capitalized or not capitalized, and a user, seeing an unfamiliar capitalized word in a text, does not know whether it is properly capitalized or not (and here we come again to the problem of users going to the dictionary to ascertain a word's orthography, and the need for redirects to establish same).
In other words I think the whole move was nonsense, but you already knew that.
Redirects are not an appropriate tool for spell checks.
Then what do you suggest would replace it, so the dictionary can be useful?
*Muke!
Muke Tever wrote:
Redirects are not an appropriate tool for spell checks.
Then what do you suggest would replace it, so the dictionary can be useful?
There are several reasons why redirects will not work. * At this moment in time, there are some 76.000 words. When you have some 760.000 words, you will have a need to add a redirect for every added word. I do not think that this is reasonable to ask from the contributors to Wiktionary. * When a word exists both as a capitalised word and as a noncapitalised word, you will not be directed from one to the other word. This works both ways. * In a paper dictionary you only find words in the proper capitalisation. * When the content of the Ultimate Wiktionary is to be used for spell checking, there will be software that will perform this functionality. The functionality that will allow for uppercase that is typically not correct will be in the software not in the content of the UW. Even so, certain words are only correct in a certain context, otherwise words like their and there can be used without it being recoginised. This is to say that there is more to spellchecking than what can be indicated by redirects in any Wiktionary.
Consequently, as far as I am concerned redirects are of no use whatsoever in any Wiktionary. Your arguments against having words in the proper case do not convince me, but you already knew that.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
Redirects are not an appropriate tool for spell checks.
Then what do you suggest would replace it, so the dictionary can be useful?
There are several reasons why redirects will not work.
- At this moment in time, there are some 76.000 words. When you have
some 760.000 words, you will have a need to add a redirect for every added word. I do not think that this is reasonable to ask from the contributors to Wiktionary.
Yes, that was why I thought breaking case-folding was silly.
- When a word exists both as a capitalised word and as a noncapitalised
word, you will not be directed from one to the other word. This works both ways.
Yes, and this is why en.wiktionary is now being pushed into adding a see-also line to every such page, like the one at the top of http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nadir
- In a paper dictionary you only find words in the proper capitalisation.
Yes, and you will find them whether you are searching with the proper capitalization or not.
- When the content of the Ultimate Wiktionary is to be used for spell
checking, there will be software that will perform this functionality. The functionality that will allow for uppercase that is typically not correct will be in the software not in the content of the UW. Even so, certain words are only correct in a certain context, otherwise words like their and there can be used without it being recoginised. This is to say that there is more to spellchecking than what can be indicated by redirects in any Wiktionary.
Yes, as I said earlier, it needn't be mediawiki #redirects, but there will have to be a reference of some kind. I am not talking about machine spell-check, but *human* use of the dictionary. There will be notes saying that people who have found [[its]] may be looking for [[it's]]. Such in fact already exist, e.g. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/its#Usage
Consequently, as far as I am concerned redirects are of no use whatsoever in any Wiktionary.
Yes, IMHO #redirects are much less useful than most of en: thinks, though I do find them to have their use occasionally. On la: where words are to be disambiguated, it makes sense to redirect [[sulfur (en)]] and [[sulphur (en)]] together, because they are the same word.
http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sulphur_(en)
Your arguments against having words in the proper case do not convinceme, but you already knew that.
No, I'm not against having words in their normal case; I just don't think that the URL is a useful place to communicate such information. (And as I have mentioned before, it is improper for a title to be in lower case.)
*Muke!
Yes, and this is why en.wiktionary is now being pushed into adding a see-also line to every such page, like the one at the top of http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nadir
Why don't you just insert the word in the "Related words"??? It is a related word - so a "see also" doesn't make any sense. (or maybe "variants")
- In a paper dictionary you only find words in the proper
capitalisation.
Yes, and you will find them whether you are searching with the proper capitalization or not.
So what you are talking about is the search function, but not the article - this means that whenever you insert a word into the search field it should give back both results, with capital letter and without (it is sufficient thought to use google search). German has loads of words with capital and non capital letters - Deutsch, deutsch for German, Weiß, weiß for white etc. depending on how words are used and people who study German know this as well as Germans know this. I don't think people are so stupid to search for an English word with a capital letter if it isn't normally capitalised - when studying English the first things you learn is that English uses capital letters only for months, days, countries, languages etc. and in titles and in some exceptional cases - so why should native speakers pretend capitalised entries in a dictionary? I don't think that English and/or American people know less about their own language than foreign students do - and if they knew less it would be really tragic - it would mean that the educational system does not work at all ... really I suppose it to work.
Yes, as I said earlier, it needn't be mediawiki #redirects, but there will have to be a reference of some kind. I am not talking about machine spell-check, but *human* use of the dictionary. There will be notes saying that people who have found [[its]] may be looking for [[it's]]. Such in fact already exist, e.g. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/its#Usage
Also this has to do with the search function - if I remember well, using google for the search it already works like this.
Consequently, as far as I am concerned redirects are of no use whatsoever in any Wiktionary.
Yes, IMHO #redirects are much less useful than most of en: thinks, though I do find them to have their use occasionally. On la: where words are to be disambiguated, it makes sense to redirect [[sulfur (en)]] and [[sulphur (en)]] together, because they are the same word.
No, they should be two single words, connected on the relative page under "Related words" or "Variants". Redirects do not have any sense even if there are some printed dictionaries that use this in order to save space - we don't have the space problem so why use it and not just create two separate pages connecting them under relations?
Your arguments against having words in the proper case do not convinceme, but you already knew that.
No, I'm not against having words in their normal case; I just don't think that the URL is a useful place to communicate such information. (And as I have mentioned before, it is improper for a title to be in lower case.)
I am not going to answer this ... it would not be fun for you to read it, but if you would like me to: I can answer on this as well.
Ciao, Sabine
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Sabine Cretella sabine_cretella@yahoo.it wrote:
Yes, and this is why en.wiktionary is now being pushed into adding a see-also line to every such page, like the one at the top of http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nadir
Why don't you just insert the word in the "Related words"??? It is a related word - so a "see also" doesn't make any sense. (or maybe "variants")
Because they are not at all related. [[nadir]] is from an Arabic word naẓīr meaning 'counterpart', and [[Nadir]] is either from nazīr "rare" or naḍīr "auspicious". Outside of having a common source language they have nothing in common.
- In a paper dictionary you only find words in the proper
capitalisation.
Yes, and you will find them whether you are searching with the proper capitalization or not.
So what you are talking about is the search function, but not the article - this means that whenever you insert a word into the search field it should give back both results, with capital letter and without (it is sufficient thought to use google search).
Actually here I am talking about paper dictionaries, which don't have search functions. The Wiktionary search hasn't come up at all.
I don't think people are so stupid to search for an Englishword with a capital letter if it isn't normally capitalised -
It's rather the contrary really. People are used to case-insensitive search, and generally don't bother to capitalize anything when typing in search boxes, if my webserver's logs are any indication.
when studying English the first things you learn is that English usescapital letters only for months, days, countries, languages etc. andin titles and in some exceptional cases - so why should native speakerspretend capitalised entries in a dictionary?
Wiktionary page titles have no direct counterpart to anything in a paper dictionary.
http://frath.net/stuff/wikt-vs-paper.png
This is especially noticeable in languages which use optional pointing, such as Hebrew and Arabic, in which case the pointed form you would find in a paper dictionary is the in-page headword, and the page title is a normalized form *without* points--exactly the form the user normally searches for.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%93%D7%99%D7%9D
Cf. http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categorie:Woorden_in_het_Hebreeuws which also uses normalized page titles. It is inconsistent to only normalize certain languages.
Yes, as I said earlier, it needn't be mediawiki #redirects, but there will have to be a reference of some kind. I am not talking about machine spell-check, but *human* use of the dictionary. There will be notes saying that people who have found [[its]] may be looking for [[it's]]. Such in fact already exist, e.g. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/its#Usage
Also this has to do with the search function - if I remember well, using google for the search it already works like this.
Not everyone uses Google for searching Wiktionary. In any case, Google suggests spellings when you give it a word that it doesnt recognize... both "its" and "it's" are English words; it won't suggest "it's" if you've searched for "its".
Consequently, as far as I am concerned redirects are of no use whatsoever in any Wiktionary.
Yes, IMHO #redirects are much less useful than most of en: thinks, though I do find them to have their use occasionally. On la: where words are to be disambiguated, it makes sense to redirect [[sulfur (en)]] and [[sulphur (en)]] together, because they are the same word.
No, they should be two single words, connected on the relative page under "Related words" or "Variants". Redirects do not have any sense even if there are some printed dictionaries that use this in order to save space - we don't have the space problem so why use it and not just create two separate pages connecting them under relations?
Because you will have duplicated information (viz., etymological information, pronunciations, derived and related terms, translation tables, definitions, etc.) that have to be synchronized--that, or you deal with the POV issue of labelling one spelling as "more correct" and worthy of hosting the information alone. This problem has been run across in several places on en.wikt, such as gray/grey, armor/armour... and in the source of several yet remains the injunction:
<!--If you edit this entry, please also edit the following entry to ensure these two entries remain in synchrony: grey-->
<!--If you edit this page, please also edit "armour" to ensure these pages remain in synch.-->
This is ridiculous, especially when the variation is not due to regional issues, as is the case with gray/grey--'gray' is, as the pages say, an American spelling, though this is slightly misleading, as it is not a color/colour-type pair: both 'gray' and 'grey' are common acceptable forms within this country (cf. gray vs lightgrey in HTML).
*Muke!
Muke Tever wrote:
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
When a word is correctly spelled in several ways, every alternative is as good as the other and deserve its own article. It should therefore be abundantly clear that they are correct. As a consequence of the massive rename action many thousands of redirects have been created words like "Lightbulb" are now correct because there is a redirect ?? So the spelling of a sentence like: "A Lightbulb Is Typically Found In A Lamp." is apparantly correct?? I think not.
Capitalization is separate from spelling (though both are parts of orthography). Your sentence is spelled correctly, though capitalized unusually.
In any case, free capitalization of words is quite common--it occur in titles of works ("Antique Lightbulbs of the Early 19th Century"), in advertising ("Save Today on Great Unbeatable Prices"), in any case where a word is given a special kind of emphasis ("it wasn't just a smell, it was a Smell"), is used as a title of address ("you're not listening to me, Mother"), is made into a proper noun ("he was a Zealot"), etc., and formerly also optionally of nouns in general.
One of the most venerated documents in our country begins: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The only words never take normal capitalization are those that are decreed to be so from technical context, such as "pH" or 'sinensis' in "Alligator sinensis."
Capitalization can be a function of either the word or its context. Wiktionary only needs to be concerned with the former. It would seem that the drafters of the Declaration of Independance took a little liberty with their emphases, and that's not unusual in preambles. I don't know why you abject to the lack of capitalization in "defence".
Ec
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Capitalization can be a function of either the word or its context. Wiktionary only needs to be concerned with the former. It would seem that the drafters of the Declaration of Independance took a little liberty with their emphases, and that's not unusual in preambles. I don't know why you abject to the lack of capitalization in "defence".
'sic' is not an objection. It is the Latin word for 'so, thus' and is used to indicate that an unusual feature of a quoted text is present in the original--i.e. 'it was thus given'--and is not due to editorial oversight. The unusual feature of 'defence' is that it is the only noun in that preamble that is not capitalized--all the other ones are; the point being that the framers of the Constitution[1] were writing English where nouns are regularly capitalized. This is not a feature of emphasis, and was carried on through even mundane regions of subsequent text:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths[sic] of all other Persons.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/
Current en.wiktionary practice _will_ require separate articles for [[number]] (modern practice) and [[Number]] (former practice), which I don't think is at all reasonable; redirecting from [[Number]] to [[number]] would be a thinkable alternative (and is what happens currently), but even the removal of these redirects has its advocates.
If capitalization is as integral to spelling as the advocates of this recent move have been insisting, then to divorce [[number]] from [[Number]] is to rob us of our linguistic history.
If the Bund für vereinfachte rechtschreibung [sic] were to have its way and la Germanophonie were to do away with the obligatory capitalization of nouns, what would de.wiktionary do with [[kind]] and [[Kind]]? This is not a hypothetical situation, as this has already happened in English and the Scandinavian languages, and is something Wiktionary _has to document_, as 'all words in all languages' implies 'in all ages' as well.
*Muke! [1] The text quoted was not the Declaration of Independence, however topical it would have been to post it about now.
Muke Tever wrote:
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Capitalization can be a function of either the word or its context. Wiktionary only needs to be concerned with the former. It would seem that the drafters of the Declaration of Independance took a little liberty with their emphases, and that's not unusual in preambles. I don't know why you abject to the lack of capitalization in "defence".
'sic' is not an objection. It is the Latin word for 'so, thus' and is used to indicate that an unusual feature of a quoted text is present in the original--i.e. 'it was thus given'--and is not due to editorial oversight. The unusual feature of 'defence' is that it is the only noun in that preamble that is not capitalized--all the other ones are; the point being that the framers of the Constitution[1] were writing English where nouns are regularly capitalized. This is not a feature of emphasis, and was carried on through even mundane regions of subsequent text:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths[sic] of all other Persons.http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/
Current en.wiktionary practice _will_ require separate articles for [[number]] (modern practice) and [[Number]] (former practice), which I don't think is at all reasonable; redirecting from [[Number]] to [[number]] would be a thinkable alternative (and is what happens currently), but even the removal of these redirects has its advocates.
If capitalization is as integral to spelling as the advocates of this recent move have been insisting, then to divorce [[number]] from [[Number]] is to rob us of our linguistic history.
If the Bund für vereinfachte rechtschreibung [sic] were to have its way and la Germanophonie were to do away with the obligatory capitalization of nouns, what would de.wiktionary do with [[kind]] and [[Kind]]? This is not a hypothetical situation, as this has already happened in English and the Scandinavian languages, and is something Wiktionary _has to document_, as 'all words in all languages' implies 'in all ages' as well.
*Muke![1] The text quoted was not the Declaration of Independence, however topical it would have been to post it about now.
Yes the reference to the DoI was my error.
It is to be noted that the peculiar capitalization in the articles of the Constitution does not generally extend to the amendments. The latest amendment to have any of these antiquated capitalization was the 12th and it went through Congress in 1803. Deos the use of the word "Citizens" in the 11th amendment mean anything different than the word "citizens" in the 26th? I don't know if there was any change in the capitalizations in the 27th between the time it was introduced and the time it was ratified.
I was looking for a scanned copy of the original Constitution but the only one that I did find was not readable. If you really want to be accurate about 18th century texts, maybe we should be considering support of the long "s".
Ec
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It is to be noted that the peculiar capitalization in the articles of the Constitution does not generally extend to the amendments. The latest amendment to have any of these antiquated capitalization was the 12th and it went through Congress in 1803. Deos the use of the word "Citizens" in the 11th amendment mean anything different than the word "citizens" in the 26th?
Neither is the use of any German word that is capitalized in standard texts changed in those texts that do not employ that language's unusual capitalization standards. It is decorative, an aid to reading, and little more.
I was looking for a scanned copy of the original Constitution but the only one that I did find was not readable. If you really want to be accurate about 18th century texts, maybe we should be considering support of the long "s".
Yes, I have been using long ſ, whenever it occurs, in the texts I have been citing when giving quotations for la.wiktionary, e.g. under http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bisemutum -- it comes up so often that I memorized the keyboard shortcut for it some time ago (it is 'alt-0383').
But then, I often use ſ in handwriting, so perhaps I'm biased.
*Muke!
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The reason for this is that like in a paper dictionaray we only want correct spellings and an incorrect spelling should result in a "not found" message.
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
Hoi, When a word is correctly spelled in several ways, every alternative is as good as the other and deserve its own article. It should therefore be abundantly clear that they are correct. As a consequence of the massive rename action many thousands of redirects have been created words like "Lightbulb" are now correct because there is a redirect ?? So the spelling of a sentence like: "A Lightbulb Is Typically Found In A Lamp." is apparantly correct?? I think not.
Redirects are not an appropriate tool for spell checks.
I agree. Although some very common misspellings probably should be listed, there should still be some standard for what is common. Perhaps a reference to a grammar text that shows common misspellings. A listed misspelling should perhaps explain the misunderstanding that underlies that error, and thus be instructive. There is no reason to have an endless list typos.
To the extent that we do list misspellings the page should show #a common misspelling of [[...]] A redirect of the misspellings is a form of dumbing down. It may very well be that the person won't even notice the "redirected from" message at the top of the page.
A dictionary can to an extent be used to find the correct spelling, and that is somewhere that the paper dictionary has an advantage. Having a browse function could help to some extent there. But this solution only works when the correct spelling is reasonably near to what you expect it to be. I recently went shopping for a music CD by Theresa Sokyrka, but couldn't find it because I had the first vowel of her surname wrong. A possible solution to finding the correct spelling of words could be something like the Soundex system used by the US Census Bureau.
Correct spelling is a bigger problem in English than in many other languages Ultimately it is a matter of consensus rather than the dictates of a language academy. Insisting on "correct" spelling can lead to the somewhat pejorative charge of being "prescriptivist" when one rejects an imaginative spelling or a new word. Such issues are matters of perpetual debate on the English Wiktionary.
My response to your question about the "Lightbulb" sentence is yes and no. It is a question of defining the difference between spelling and grammar. I would consider the sentence wrong, but I would hesitate in saying that the sentence is wrong becaus of the spelling.
Ec
On 7/1/05, Muke Tever muke@frath.net wrote:
Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The reason for this is that like in a paper dictionaray we only want correct spellings and an incorrect spelling should result in a "not found" message.
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
Only as useless as a paper dictionary already is.
Hippietrail.
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Andrew Dunbar hippytrail@gmail.com wrote:
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
Only as useless as a paper dictionary already is.
Ehehe :) At least in a paper dictionary you are given a whole page of entries at once, and can skim them. On wiktionary you either get the full, single-article view or the empty index view which gives no indication a spelling might belong to the word one has in mind.
*Muke!
Yes it would be very nice to have a proper "browse" function someday. Right now it's not really possible due to all languages sharing the article space and few users will be interested in having all languages sorted together. In the future with a more dictionary-aware wiki this would hopefully become possible.
Hippietrail.
On 7/4/05, Muke Tever muke@frath.net wrote:
Andrew Dunbar hippytrail@gmail.com wrote:
In the US, and probably in other places where spelling is not phonetic, one of the most common uses for a dictionary (if not the most common) is to find what the correct spelling of a word is. If there is not "spell check" in the form of redirects or see-unders, then the Wiktionary is useless for this.
Only as useless as a paper dictionary already is.
Ehehe :) At least in a paper dictionary you are given a whole page of entries at once, and can skim them. On wiktionary you either get the full, single-article view or the empty index view which gives no indication a spelling might belong to the word one has in mind.
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On 6/30/05, Klaus-Eduard Runnel klaus.eduard@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe someone can think of a way to create automatic links to pages with titles differing just by the case of the first letter? E.g. it would be helpful to have link to "aa" from the article titled "Aa". I have had no success trying to accomplish something like that using the available means of mediawiki. That's by the way one of the reasons why not-yet-so-big Estonian wiktionary has not switched over to case-sensitivite first letters yet.
There could be use for a magic word similar to PAGENAMEE which would return the page title with spaces substituted by '+' characters.
Ok, no need for that. Special:Search is the answer to my question. Somehow I had no idea it existed. The code I was looking for is that simple:
[[{{ns:special}}:Search/{{PAGENAME}}|Search for {{PAGENAME}}]]
Klaus
cookfire wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
On 30/06/05, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Someone has changed the $wgCapitalLinks setting on en.wiktionary.org, causing many thousands of links to break without warning -- far too many for humans to fix up in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm really, really, really annoyed about this, and I'd appreciate it if whoever made this premature change would at least confess to the deed.
I'm really, really sorry about this: I'm sure somebody announced it in the IRC channel and thus knew who was responsible - but I've forgotten who it was.
It was Tim. He didn't announce the change (that I noticed, anyway) and forgot to log it in the administrator's log, then happened to be away from the computer for the next several hours.
There has been a vote with a very positive outcome and somebody apparently said something about it on irc. The English Wiktionary had indeed decided to switch over, but it had not been decided when. Anyway, on the page where the vote had happened this was indicated and there was a link to a page where a discussion was held how to go about it. If Tim had read all that, he would have known we were not ready for the change. Anyway, I for one, am glad the change has finally happened and I'm sure we'll manage to clean up the mess, eventually.
That's pretty well my take on the situation. I wouldn't put too much blame on Tim for this. A self-administered slap on the knuckles with wet spaghetti should be adequate punishment. We'll believe him when he says the punishment has been carried out. ;-)
One determined opponent had succeeded in grinding the process to a halt, and it didn't look as though it would go anywhere without bold action. The clean up will be bigger than I would want, but we'll cope. There are a few points where we may still need special help from the devs, and those will become clear over the next few days.
Ec
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