Wikipedia collogue:Define namespace

RFC: Adopt Define namespace

CLOSED:

T247172 has now been filed. Thank you everyone for your participation! –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 18:28, 7 Mairch 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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It's mostly there on the page, but I'll reiterate it here. Sco.wiki is in major need of some form of wiktionary because spelling conventions have ebbed and flowed over time. Sometimes, words can mean different things in different contexts, but we have no method to get these definitions in Scots while on wiki. Therefore, while we can always use English Wiktionary to find out that bleck in Scots means black in English, we have no method of figuring out the reverse.
Having a dedicated namespace would both fulfil this need while also avoid splitting sco.wiki in two. That's the idea anyways. –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 23:32, 22 Dizember 2019 (UTC)

• Support, a fresh and promising idea to introduce this namespace here. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 00:18, 23 Dizember 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Wikipedia is not a dictionary. We have a separate project for that, which is Wiktionary. Support per MJL's comments. Masumrezarock100 (tauk) 01:21, 27 Dizember 2019 (UTC)

  @Masumrezarock100: Wiktionary isn't really a "project" as much as it is a set of projects. We have English Wiktionary and Simple English Wiktionary, yes. Would there ever be a Scots Wiktionary? It is highly unlikely. It'd be the third (and smallest) Anglic language Wiktionary and would require we split our time in half.
  There's also a lot more already established oddities if you look for them. We have a news section despite not being a newspaper, and we have a portal system despite not being a directory. Also, English Wikisource currently serves as the repository for all texts in Scots despite the two being separate languages. Things aren't cut and dry. –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 05:53, 27 Dizember 2019 (UTC)

  Makes sense to me. Masumrezarock100 (tauk) 00:35, 28 Dizember 2019 (UTC)

• Support, A wid support a Wiktionary fur the Scots leid. YoungstownToast (tauk) 21:08, 29 Dizember 2019 (UTC)
• Support, not a regular contributor here but I think this is the best option taking that there is already really little activity (114 active users and I believe a large majority are only here to revert vandals/rename files/rename users) here as compared to other wikis. 5 sysops here and only 2 are active in the last week, the last edit of the least active sysop (Fox) was in June 2019. As a simple.wikt sysop, I can say that I have basic knowledge on how wiktionaries work so I don't mind helping if this proposal passes. Minorax (tauk) 10:40, 3 Januar 2020 (UTC)

  @Minorax: That would be AMAZING!! :D –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 19:13, 3 Januar 2020 (UTC)

  @MJL: Just ping me when the time comes :) Minorax (tauk) 12:42, 4 Januar 2020 (UTC)

• support- can't see any issues with this. Makes total sense. Lee Vilenski (tauk) 16:51, 4 Januar 2020 (UTC)
• Support wholeheartedly this measure. --Cuatro Remos (tauk) 22:38, 4 Januar 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose How would the Define: namespace solve the problem you propose? "Therefore, while we can always use English Wiktionary to find out that bleck in Scots means black in English, we have no method of figuring out the reverse." Would we have the task of creating a page for all English words in the Define: namespace? I think the solution would be to enter this information into WikiData so that this translation is implicit in either direction. I've done so for black as an example Sorry for my lack of Scots, the Aberdonian private schools don't foster a doric friendly environment --carlinmack (tauk) 03:09, 28 Januar 2020 (UTC)
  • This is the second option of having definitions. First being the sco.wikt, which is relatively dead and as mentioned above, the time taken to maintain two different sites will double the work. Minorax (tauk) 02:28, 30 Januar 2020 (UTC)
    • I've now read the original source and I now see there is precedence with Bavarian Wikipedia. Is there a way for us to import from sco.wikt to the Define namespace? Finally, I would still recommend a WikiData strategy, as it solves the original problem at hand which is still outstanding --Carlinmack (tauk) 03:44, 30 Januar 2020 (UTC)
      • @Carlinmack: There are currently 423 on incubator:Sco.Wikt. That isn't a whole lot, so I imagine we could make a request on Phabricator to modify Special:Import to allow imports from Incubator per the guidance here.
        As for the Wikidata strategy, it leaves a lot to be desired. We can't present those translations in any reader-centered manner. They aren't coupled with any references or examples, and we can't easily track manual changes that way. It's a good thought, and it's something I try to actively do; it just wouldn't be enough to build a dictionary out of. –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 00:22, 6 Februar 2020 (UTC)
• Support straight-forward proposal. I can see no reason to oppose. Avicennasis (tauk) 12:26, 28 Februar 2020 (UTC)

Comments

• 1. Moving data between the incubator Wiktionary and a Define space, or Wikidata and a Define space, or any ither combination should be fairly easy.
  2. It would be good to ensure that the information goes into such other Wiktionaries as it can, if there's to be no sco.wiktionary
  3. The rules here don't need to mirror other Wikipedias, there is no reason you cannot allow a dicdef in article-space if there is consensus. In dead-tree land there are many "encyclopedic dictionaries".
  4. Wiktionary is a complex beast, covering a Scots term on Wiktionary properly would mean (a) creating an entry on every language project for the term, and (b) in the appropriate translation tables.

Rich Farmbrough (tauk) 11:24, 20 Februar 2020 (UTC)

@Rich Farmbrough: Can you elaborate please on number four? Are you talking about edits like this? –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 20:20, 20 Februar 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind for 4(b). Of course it's more complex than it looks as some languages, for example, have one word for both "rabbit" and "hare", as well as more subtle differences - Modern English languages often have synonymous or near synonymous terms for common objects, one from the Norman and one from the Saxon, etc. Rich Farmbrough (tauk)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Note: the result of the above is that Sco.wiki now has a "Define" namespace. See, for instance, Define:Ferlie. --R. S. Shaw (tauk) 18:32, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

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I just can't support this. Maintaining a dictionary is an entirely different project, this is massively expanding the scope of this wiki for little, if any, discernable benefit. This wiki in particular has a very poor track record with Scots, so non-native speakers trying to establish it as a authoritative source for Scots is frankly a bit insulting. A bad dictionary can do far more damage to perception of a language than a bad encyclopedia.

Analysis of how a language is used just is not the same thing as writing articles in a language. The only way I could support this is if it was backed by native or near-native speakers with academic backgrounds in linguistics (ideally on Scots specifically), in which case why should it be a wiki? my_hat_stinks (tauk) 19:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Issues and Opportunities

Topic Raiser

I'm an Englishman, and I see no need for me to learn Scots. I may be induced to make my contribution to Wiktionary more compatible with the Scots wikipedia. @MJL:

Multilingual Issues

I've seen that some of my contributions for the infrastructure for Pali in the English wiktionary have been technically pirated hither - they're being used in breach of the attribution clause! (English Wikipedia attempts to solve that with en:Template:Copied, but administrators are not well-trained in its implications.) If your aspiration is to document every word in every language, you're going to run out of memory with internationally common words like a. English Wiktionary is hitting this problem already. RichardW57m (tauk) 12:43, 15 Apryle 2021 (UTC)

There is a solution, but you might not like the interface implications. That is to have a page for each combination of language and word. You can do it by using a naming convention Define:lang:word, where lang is the ISO-693-like code for the language. For user convenience, you might want to keep it to Define:word for Scots words, while English 'a' would be on page Define:En:a, but see below. Note that as a wikipedia, the first letter is automatically capitalised. This has made a lot of seemingly currently functioning Wiktionary modules and templates relatively inaccessible to editors. RichardW57m (tauk) 12:43, 15 Apryle 2021 (UTC)

Casing

English Wiktionary has fully case sensitive page names. The first character of names on wikipedia pages is not case sensitive. This will make importation from wiktionaries difficult. However, if you require a page name for dictionary entries to have the language name, then that problem goes away. You can see some of the problems with the declension table at Define:ka#Pali. Algorithmically derived case forms start with 'K' because the page name does. Overrides to the algorithm have been defined with initial 'k', and that difference shows in the generated declension table. RichardW57m (tauk) 12:43, 15 Apryle 2021 (UTC)