User talk:GerardM

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Why are these macros like Template:fi linking to language names? I think common target is to use unlinked base text for these "meta names" of languages. Aulis Eskola 19:58, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Have a look at nl:fins and look at the source. It will enable people to copy text from en: or nl: and use it in an other wiktionary. GerardM 09:09, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about using User page for messages...

I undestand that it will enable people to copy text from language to another - I have already started to use these macros. More exactly said: I mean why are these macros in format [ [ language ] ] ? Double square brackets effect linking to language name and target has been that common language names are not links. I prefer language names without linking (without square brackets) also in macros like msg:fi (= Finnish), if there is no special need for linking. I have changed some already. Aulis Eskola 19:39, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Note that while common languages (e.g.: fi) don't have brackets, uncommon languages (e.g.: lg) generally do retain the square brackets, and it's probably better not to remove the brackets from them. —Muke Tever 21:57, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Re: Adding stuff from nl:wiktionary

Gerard, I'm not sure what kind of problems you're having with vi:Tiếng Đức. But I did check the page for misspellings. The page didn't have any misspellings, but I did go in and add many alternate spellings, synonyms, etc. (Vietnamese is very non-standardized when it comes to proper names.) – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog)]] 01:32, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Okay, your problem seems to be with the Vietnamese letter Đ. It's identical to the Icelandic letter Ð (thorn), so you might have had problems there. But you moved it to the right place, so there's no problem there. – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog)]] 02:23, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The word vi:Tiếng Đức was different from the spelling that was originally on nl: I removed the spelling as I had it originally. I really want to have the spelling of the templates iexactly the same as on nl: GerardM 07:31, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Re: Synonyms

Sorry, I was tired and didn't think to list some of them as synonyms. But some of them really are just variations in spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog)]] 14:30, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Re: Synonyms

The problem in Vietnamese is figuring out which spelling is the preferred one, since Wikipedia is case-sensitive and cares about hyphens etc. What I've started to do is to go with a more traditional spelling, i.e. separating words and capitalizing each segment, instead of using hyphens. Well-respected websites like the BBC Tiếng Việt tend to follow this convention, so I'm probably going to go with it, and redirect alternate spellings to the "preferred" form. – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog)]] 21:20, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please tame your bot!

Some of us have a greivance with your bot filling up Recent changes because its changes are not marked as bot changes. Please stop running it until it has official bot status. I do appreciate the work it is doing but we have specific bot support to keep Recent changes useful and it's very important that it be used. If there is no response I will ask on IRC and may even block the bot's user account for a short time. (A version of this message also appears on the bot's talk page) — Hippietrail 07:10, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another wiktionarian was so kind to ask me, I have e-mail skype. No need to threaten, I was under the assumption that it had already been done and, that it was a bug. The scn:wiktionary did not block bot content either and, that one should have had bot status.

Hi GerardM. I didn't mean it as a threat. I just wanted you to know in advance in case I had to block the bot. I think the bot is a great thing to have and I'm very glad to have it and even gladder to have Recent changes useful again too. — Hippietrail 00:10, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

FYI I have now a bot that can upload new content. It is being used on the scn:wiktionary. Here they have chosen to upload the minimal content as it will encourage people to contribute. It is also an encouragement to the people that have promissed 60.000 Sicilian words with an Italian translation.

PS it can run on en: as well when we have content .. GerardM 15:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gerard, Hello again. It was a pleasure talking to you on skype last night. Sorry to have removed you from my skype contacts list - I try to use skype only for my work contacts. I think the bot you were running was great, and I hope (now that it is marked correctly as a bot) that you continue running it...perhaps throttled down to one entry/minute? I am in MST (UTC - 7) and was very tired when we talked last night. I hope you can tell me more about the -xx- vs. xx templates sometime when I'm coherent. I think the extra value we all get from having bots such as yours run well behaved is monstrously undervalued - I hope you continue with them now in earnest. Congratulations again, on getting "Official" bot status! --Connel MacKenzie 19:56, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hoi

The bot is well behaved by design, the pywikipedia bot gets info, minimising database access in bulk, and updates or writes one record a minute. At this moment the Sicilian wiktionary is running the same software, adding a record every minute database availability and local hardware permitting.

Thanks for your kind words. GerardM 21:45, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can you point us to a copy of the ISO639-3, please

Copy of message in Beer parlour. Please reply there for all to see.

Can you point us to a copy of the ISO639-3, please --Richardb 11:41, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The next version of ISO 639 GerardM 20:16, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Writing a Bot

Hi Gerard, I volunteered to write a bot to do the first letter thing. I haven't written a bot before but since you have I thought I'd ask you how it's done. Are there Wiktionary pages on this topic containing a tutorial e.g? Ncik 17 Apr 2005

It is even better there is an existing bot framework called pywikipedia and it has its pages on Meta and its source on sourceforge. If you want to replace ALL words with lower case, then it is easiest to ask Andre Engels for some help. It will be a trivial job for him. If we want an exception for all words that have interlangauage links to non capitalising wiktionary it is only slightly more work. GerardM 11:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Page "Wiktionary:Project - Ultimate Wiktionary"

Gerard,

I've created this page Wiktionary:Project - Ultimate Wiktionary and started to populate it with information and links to the Ultimate Wiktionary project in WikiMedia.The idea is just to have a local space to inform current Wiktionary users about the Ultimate Wiktionary project.

It would benefit from just some of your time to really put some useful links in. Please.  :-)
--Richardb 05:48, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Administrator

You are now an admin. I know that we have had strong differences recently, but it would have been abusive of me to continue withholding that status. In all cases, I do and will continue to delay appointments. In those circumstances I am often looking to see whether the person will go away, or whether he shows too much urgency about becoming a sysop. I hope that despite our differences we will find areas where we can find common cause. We have agreed that en:wiktionary should have some kind of decapitalization of first letters, but I think that neither of us would have wanted it to happen the way it has.

As for UW, we still have a wide gulf between our opinions about that. I do think that it has a role, but not one that is so all-encompassing as what you see. I can see it as an important network for translations that draws from and ties together all the various language wiktionaries. I absolutely do not see it as something that will obviate the need for these separate projects. I appreciate that you have said that the separate projects will not be forced into a union, but your confidence that they will gives a contradictory impression. Frankly speaking, I think that your way of expressing yourself makes you seem worse than you really are. Here, based on the experience of one immigrant individual who went on to become provincial premier, we have a lot of jokes about flamboyantly stubborn Dutchman. :-)

In any event, I hope that the future emphasis in relation to UW and other matters, will be on those points where we agree. Eclecticology June 30, 2005 17:01 (UTC)

Congratulations

I just could not resist :-) congratulations for Adminship on en.wiktionary.org - I believe it will be a constructive co-operation. Ciao! --SabineCretella 30 June 2005 17:50 (UTC)

Thanks, I will do my darnest to make is as great a cooperation as possible. GerardM July 1, 2005 10:32 (UTC)

Deprecated templates

Language templates are deprecated, especially their use in translation tables. Please refrain from using things like Template:m, too. Ncik 17:24, 13 Jul 2005

Somhow I do not agree with you and even stronger, I will not use anything but these templates as it is otherwise to much work for me.

It is only the English wiktionary that does not use these templates and I either share this content or I don't. GerardM 18:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Is this the attitude you would prefer for us also to take when adding words to your Wiktionaries I wonder? — Hippietrail 00:16, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

You cannot compare it. I am quite happy to share stuff and I do. But it does not make sense to change my templates to English words. It is just not productive time spend. I wonder if you add content to any of the other wiktionaries that use the tempplates. I wonder if it makes sense to you to add Անգլերեն when you add the word "cooperation" to the Armenian wiktionary.

For me it makes sense to follow whatever the consensus prefers on another project. It is a shame that you feel you are above this. Wiktionaries because first I have to learn their standards which takes too much time. If I were to add "cooperation" to the Armenian wiktionary I would cooperate with the way they would like me to do it. — Hippietrail 04:22, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

When you talk about cooperation; do realise that I have updated the interwiki links on most of the wiktionaries after the en capitalisation change. That I am discussing with Andre Engels a bot to fix the wikt templates on the English wikipedia. If you ask me if I want people with my attitude to contribute to any of the projects I work on; Hell yes !! GerardM 14:25, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Umm thanks for the off-topic self-promotion. Do realise that the English wiktionary tries to decide its way of doing things which you do not buy an excemption to with your other good deeds. — Hippietrail 04:22, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

By the way, has it been discussed and voted upon. I have not seen it discussed or I cannot recall. We are talking here about templates used in translations not headings. GerardM 06:13, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

IRC

Gerard,

Thanks for taking the time out for our conversation today. It really is important that we continue to work together, not only to try to make UW a reality, but to make Wiktionary better along the way. Since language is a barrier, it is more imporatant than ever to clarify terminology.

There were many things from that conversation I either misunderstood, or am otherwise at odds with now. Again, none of this is intended as a personal attack - I am just trying to understand your logic. Some of the terminology you used is ambiguous. Most was not. But some of the terms you used do not mean the same thing, apparently. Data corruption seemed to be an exaggerated case, where we were talking right past each other.

For this entire message, I shall talk about external data integrity: how the data appears outside of the squid servers. What it is doing internally is of little consequence - none to this conversation.

For this conversation, I will talk only of the Dutch Wiktionary and the English Wiktionary as nl:wikt: and en:wikt: respectively. I will talk of the day before the Dutch lowercase conversion as "Day before", the day after the conversion was done (and converted to lowercase) as "Day after" and the day one month later as the "Month after". Likewise, I will use the same headings for the comparable events on en:wikt:.

You asserted that an intrinsic data "corruption" occured at the moment the nl: wikt: became case sensitive. But you apparently had the same uppercase 1st letter to lowercase 1st letter conversion performed for you? How then did the external view change (once the process was complete)?

Table redone, below. --Connel MacKenzie 01:01, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

You asserted that nl: and en: handled the conversion to lower case differently. But later you said the conversion itself was the same, you (nl:) just procedurally delete redirects. If that is how you look up words in nl:, well, who am I to say it is wrong?

But when transposing the analogy to en: though, it doesn't work so well. As I said, we look up terms in only 26 letters even though our alphabet has 52. How terms are sorted into a dictionary is completely case-insensitive...therefore looking up a term is also completely case insensitive.

We leave the redirects intact. We crosslink our #3 splits, so that if the external link was for the lowercase version, it can still find it.

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There were a gazillion other things said, but I'm too sleepy at the moment. Good night.

Connel

Response

Hoi, I was talking about data integrity not corruption. The data integrity from within has improved as the granularity of the data has improved, all the content is there and it is not at the same place. From the outside the data is not the same anymore as Kind and kind are seperate entries and the referral is not to the combined content anymore. Consequently it is inherently different data.

The argument for redirects is moot anyway as people use redirects to refer inflections to a headword as you may have read in a proposal for the nds wiktionary. The result is that links have a meaning regarding spelling and as such the existence of redirects in a wiktionary content is flawed and wrong.

After our conversation of today, I have added a Miss Pelling table to the ERD, the argument that it helps against people adding wrong content is powerfull. There is a seperate table as one misspelling may be a misspelling for multiple words.

Thanks,

GerardM 10:49, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Gerard,

Please do not say any argument here is moot. SOME redirects have that meaning. Unfortunately redirects are used for many different things. Perhaps the greatest difficulty I have is understanding why the Dutch language considers an incorrect capitalization to be a spelling error. In the English language, such a thing is not a spelling error, it is a capitalization error.

The existance of technical redirects with redirects because of other reasons is incompatible. From an integrity point of view you can only have ONE reason for having redirects. GerardM 11:14, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

On en.wikt:, redirects are not supposed to be used for misspellings, but occasionally a newcomer will enter one anyway. We try to correct these as we find them. But on the en.wikt: a capitalization "error" is not a spelling error at all - it is just a different path for looking up a term. Print English dictionaries usually list capitalized versions of words the same way they would list any other homograph with different etymologies.

But the fact of the matter is that you have both technical redirects and other redirects and that way you lose your dataintegrity. GerardM 11:14, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I hope to correct and repost the table above, as it is ambiguous, even still. --Connel MacKenzie 22:23, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Truth table

OK, so this first truth table indicates what the Dutch Wiktionary looks like as a result of their "lower-casing" one year ago. This is with the assumption that essentially all redirects on the nl.wikt: have been deleted (in column labeled "Month after (iii)".) The "Day after (ii)" columns shows the "broken" state before the cleanup has happened.

Also note that a better example for section 2 would have been "Amsterdam." Since you don't follow general Wiktionary practices of "all words in all languages" you don't seem to have nl:Kind either. If you know of a more illustrative example for section 3, please indicate it.

The assumption that we do not follow the practice is wrong. It does owever not make sense to spend time now by adding Kind when it will be automatically be generated when we convert the content to the UW. GerardM 11:16, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Type	URL or link	Day before (i)	Day after (ii)	Month after (iii)
1a) Term should be lower case	http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/dog	finds article at Dog	finds article at dog	finds article at dog
1b) Term should be lower case	http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dog	finds article at Dog	redirects to dog	404
1c) Term should be lower case	dog	finds article at Dog	finds article at dog	finds article at dog
1d) Term should be lower case	Dog	finds article at Dog	redirects to dog	<redlink>
1e) Term should be lower case	dog + [Go]	finds article at Dog	finds article at dog	finds article at dog
1f) Term should be lower case	Dog + [Go]	finds article at Dog	redirects to dog	finds article at dog
		(i)	(ii)	(iii)
2a) Term should be upper case	http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/god	finds article at God	redirects to God	404
2b) Term should be upper case	http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/God	finds article at God	redirects to god	finds article at God
2c) Term should be upper case	god	finds article at God	finds article at god	<redlink>
2d) Term should be upper case	God	finds article at God	redirects to god	finds article at God
2e) Term should be upper case	god + [Go]	finds article at God	finds article at god	finds article at God
2f) Term should be upper case	God + [Go]	finds article at God	finds article at god	finds article at God
		(i)	(ii)	(iii)
3a) Split article into upper and lower case	http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/kind	finds article with kind and Kind contents at Kind	finds article with kind and Kind contents at kind	finds article for kind only at kind
3b) Split article into upper and lower case	http://nl:wiktionary.org/wiki/Kind	finds article with kind and Kind contents at Kind	finds article with kind and Kind contents at kind	finds article for Kind only at Kind
3c) Split article into upper and lower case	internal nl: link to kind	finds kind and Kind at Kind	finds kind and Kind at kind	finds kind at kind
3d) Split article into upper and lower case	internal nl: link to Kind	finds kind and Kind at Kind	finds kind and Kind at kind	finds Kind at Kind
3e) Split article into upper and lower case	kind + [Go]	finds kind and Kind at Kind	finds kind and Kind at kind	finds kind at kind
3f) Split article into upper and lower case	Kind + [Go]	finds kind and Kind at Kind	finds kind and Kind at kind	finds Kind at Kind
3g) Split article into upper and lower case	kind + [Search]	finds kind and Kind at Kind	finds kind and Kind at kind	finds kind and Kind at kind and Kind
3h) Split article into upper and lower case	Kind + [Search]	finds kind and Kind at Kind	finds kind and Kind at kind	finds kind and Kind at kind and Kind

Differences with en.wikt:

Since the en.wikt: practice is to not delete the redirects, only the following items behave differently:

• 1b.iii) becomes "redirects to dog"
• 1d.iii) becomes "redirects to dog"
• 1f.iii) becomes "redirects to dog" <--this one seems to be your main concern?
• 2a.iii) becomes "redirects to God"
• 2c.iii) becomes "redirects to God"
• 2e.iii) becomes "redirects to God" <--and this?
• 3a.iii) becomes "finds article for kind at kind with 'see also' link to Kind at Kind."
• 3b.iii) becomes "finds article for Kind at Kind with 'see also' link to kind at kind."
• likewise for 3c & 3d, 3e & 3f and 3g & 3h.

In each of those cases, I cannot see how the nl.wikt: method is superior.

In the cases where you dislike redirects as misspellings, just change the text at nl:MediaWiki:Redirectedfrom to say "(Incorrect capitalization of word as $1 has been redirected here.)" or however you would say that in Dutch. Much easier than hunting down all those redirects on nl.wikt:.

There is no need to hunt for redirects, they do not exist. GerardM 11:11, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

You had to hunt for them though...that had to have been problematic. For en.wikt: the magnitude makes it unthinkable. I was asking you to try making the change and testing it on a word or two, so that you could consider it as an alternate approach that acheives better results. --Connel MacKenzie 08:08, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

If you want me to delete all the redirects can be achieved in one day. The issue it not the but delete the #redirect stuff. So if you want me to I will delete all redirects.. it just needs some planning

Now of course that doesn't work for other languages, particularly ones (like nds.wikt: or en.wikt:) that use redirects to indicate inflected forms that are correctly spelled. (Please also note that en.wikt: no longer condones that practice...as such redirects are found they are being corrected with inflection stubs.)

--Connel MacKenzie 01:01, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

The "see also" practice is horrible. You will only add them when you know that the other word exist and it will only be added by those "oldtimers" that know that this would be good.. GerardM 11:18, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I think a similar argument was made about people using the "==English==" heading. Later, I think the same argument was again made against using the "{{-en-}}" form of that heading. The "oldtimers" excuse is not valid. I would expect other Wiktionaries (such as nl:) to use a template for the "See also"s. --Connel MacKenzie 08:08, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Inflections stubs are the preferred way of handling this. The point however is that the existance of redirects for alternate spellings and corrected spellings in incompatible with having redirects for technical reasons. You cannot have both. GerardM 11:10, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Isn't that what I said? I said that on en.wikt:, most opinions are that we are to no longer redirect for inflections; existing ones are being corrected. The practice of having redirects for spelling corrections has never been allowed (but sometimes is mistakenly entered by newcomers; then corrected later by others.)

Your think of the en.wiktionary in isolation again. Even though the en.wiktionary may clean up this act, there are projects where they think like this. So the situation is not pretty. GerardM 07:37, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

more responses

Gerard,

To wrap up what we were talking about above, please don't change the subject (yet) to all Wiktionaries. We have so far been talking about only en: and nl: with occasional mention of others only for illustration. The realm of this discussion has not evolved to UW level yet: I'm still trying desperately to clarify what you are saying so I can understand it clearly. I agree that the UW situation is not pretty for redirects, but that is not yet what we are talking about!

Anyway, back on topic, from the teleconference, I gleaned several points: 1.) In English orthography, capitalization is irrelevant. Spelling errors are not capitalization errors, nor are capitalization errors spelling errors. Perhaps (erm, evidently) in Dutch they are.

In the English language, we pronunce the letter "a" as "ay" but we pronunce the letter "A" as "ay" also.

In the English language, we pronunce the letter "b" as "bee" but we pronunce the letter "B" as "bee" also.

In the English language, we pronunce the letter "c" as "sea" but we pronunce the letter "C" as "sea" also.

...

In languages that name their upper and lower case letters with different names, it is possible for capitalization to be considered othographic; but not in English.

2.) REDIRECT vs. redirect. Gerard, you maintain that there is a semantic difference between A.) a redirect for "technical reasons," i.e. a move, B.) a redirect for valid alternate spellings, C.) a redirect for valid alternate capitalization, D.) a redirect for valid alternate (relevant) punctuation and E.) invalid spellings/capitalizations/punctuations. I can certainly see the difference between E vs. A,B,C,D, but I cannot in good faith make any distinction between A, B, C and D. Or perhaps I could say that A should only be done because it is one of B or C or D. (Note that on en:, moving an article to the correct spelling will get the leftover redirect deleted pretty quickly, requested or not.)

3.) I finally learned that your major complaint about redirects is the simple text "(Redirected from _____)" because that implies that both are valid. (Note that in English, therefore on the English Wiktionary, this is true...both are valid...see #1 above.) I agree that it would be nice if one were able to customize the redirect message for each and every redirect (including blanking, if so desired, i.e. on nl:.)

This is in itself a problem. The major problem is that people give meaning to redirects that they should not. That is not what is intended. However, people do. Combine this with the fact that not only native English language people use the en.wiktionary and therefore you should not assume that what seems "natural" for English language is also good for other languages. The en.wiktionary has words in many languages --User: GerardM

Yes, as I said, it is the text "(Redirected from _____)" that bothers you the most. It is not up to either you or me, however, to change en.wiktionary.org policy with regards to redirects...particularly with the current use of them, that does match the English meaning of orthography. It is not that we (en.wikt:) don't like or respect the other languages, it is just that there is an expectation in English that one looks up a word by the 26 letters of the alphabet...not the 52 letters of the aLpHaBeTs. --Connel MacKenzie 07:55, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

4.) On the "Gerard" list of future development requests is for a bot that searches all of Wikipedia for "[[wikt:" and if that link points to a Wiktionary redirect, change the Wikipedia link to the redirect's target.

5.) Also on list: request that external links be made to mimic the "[Go]" button functionality - have extensive 404 parsing/handling to determine if it is a naked lookup term (i.e. no "?" after it) then apply all the same rules to the lookup that the [Go] button gets.)

6.) Also request: Make all lookup case sensitivity a user preference.

Finally, yes, I do appreciate your copious quantities of helpful edits, particularly the 'bot edits. Interwiki links are easier to understand now that they are becoming more common. I suspect they will gain in popularity, as people learn to depend on them.

Kind regards,

Connel MacKenzie 06:34, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

About UW timeline and templates structure

Hello Gerard, I am an user of Spanish Wiktionary fascinated with the project of UW. I ask myself if we will be able to move easily to UW pages done with template structures such as es:abonanzar, because a good amount of entries in our community are made with templates. On the other hand, it's not my purpose to be a stressmaker, but I was also wondering if you have a timeline for iniciating the project, or just a guessing. It would be good to have an idea about it because some of us don't collaborate thinking that this collaborations may be useless work if it cannot be moved to UW. Regards --Javier Carro 10:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

gerald semper blotto's trolls have to go. look at what he or she is doing creating undicts and causing a impersonation. what do you have to say?

juvenilia

You gave no reason for deletion in the deletion summary, and there was no RFD discussion. What was the reason for your deletion of what appears to be a perfectly acceptable article? Uncle G 18:16, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

There is this person around called Semper whatever, impersonating our esteemed friend. As it was one of his contributions I deleted it. GerardM 18:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

RobotGMwikt

Gerard,

Do you keep logs of changes your bot makes? Is it possible to get a list of all entries that the bot removed "en:" entries? In November/December, it seems to have removed a lot that were actually the old depricated Wikipedia style links. I had posted a cleanup list on WT:RFC a while back, but it was a low priority task. I'm not certain that that list covers all such tags your bot might have removed. The list I generated was for namespace=0 only.

Connel

The bot does make logs, I always bin them. I do not understand what you mean by "wikipedia style links". What it does is modify the existing MediaWiki interwiki links. That is all it should do. While it is doing it, it does things in some 30 projects. Even though there are currently some 13.135 edits on the English Wiktionary, I have not targeted the English wiktionary; all changes are the result of changes elsewhere. GerardM 09:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

In the past, you could link a Wikipedia article be using the "en:" prefix in your wikilink - this has been replaced by "w:" that we use now. The old syntax still works though.

Your 'bot doesn't single them out; it simply assumes that the links (presumably back to itself) are invalid, and removes them.

My list is at Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup#Words with old links. One example "incorrect" edit by the 'bot is: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=sic&diff=680585&oldid=655134.

What is wrong with this edit? It is perfectly OK as far as I am concerned. Interwiki links are always at the bottom or at the top. For the English wiktionary they are at the bottom. GerardM 11:31, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

--Connel MacKenzie T C 09:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

What your bot removed was not an interwiki link at all! It was a reference to a page on the English Wikipedia. The resulting text omission leaves the definition grammatically incorrect and substantially incoherent. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:12, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can see it is plain wrong syntax [[en:Apache webserver|Apache webserver]] it does not link to the English wikipedia. I am afraid that there is not much that I can do about this. GerardM 21:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the point: it used to work; when those entries were made, it was valid syntax. It is our my goal to correct all of those with the newer "proper" w: syntax.

Since the 'bot under your control errantly hosed them, can you assist in generating a list of entries that have had en: syntax removed by your 'bot? Sheesh, I'm not even asking you to do the grunt work of cleaning them up! (Perhaps I should be.)

--Connel MacKenzie T C 20:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I discovered yesterday that my SAMBA share tripped me up with the 2GB file size limit, so my analysis of the "full" dump is no more than 1/2 complete. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Connel, I have five bots running concurrently. They edit on some 30+ wiktionaries all the time. I have not run the bot on the English wiktionary while having some 18K edits. I have binned the logs because their increasing size crashes my system. GerardM 10:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

By "binned" you mean "sent to the trash bin?" Oh my. I though you were referring to a compression tool. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Do you know of any way to list all the edits of RobotGMwikt (and grep "Removed"|grep "en")? --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The number of edits of RobotGMwikt are some 89154 on the English wiktionary alone. It is doing removings and additions in almost all of them. It may be possible to grep for "[[en:" and "-" I do not know. GerardM 12:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Template:gil ?

On the page tabernacle you have used Template:gil which does not exist. Can you please add that template because I don't know what language you mean (+page tabernacle looks bad now)? --Thv 19:33, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Your bot

Hi, could you please update you bot with newest pywikipedia software. There are a lot of changes now. Thank you --Sasa Stefanovic talk 16:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I will carefully test it. Last time I did an update it crashed the Wiktionary interwiki functionality. GerardM 18:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki-Bot

Hi Gerard,
Your bot makes good work with the interwiki-links, but there is a mistake with the Serbian summery. Perhaps you will find "Áîò" in the msg-section of the script and can change it to "Бот" :).
Greetings --Red Baron 16:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I am afraid that I am a "user". I run the functionality and it works well that way.. I leave changing the software to developers. I do test the newer versions before I update all my bots... I learned to do that the painfull way. Thanks, GerardM 18:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you are afraid to make a mistake then leave it. Does'nt matter ... the main thing is that the bot works well further on :) --Red Baron 16:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

RobotGMwikt

I've noticed a lot of manual entries of interwiki links lately. Is your bot no longer refreshing from XML dumps? --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It never worked on XML dumps, it runs on the life data. I have not run the bot on en for some time. And I can, and will when one of the current bots has run out. GerardM 05:07, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I just checked, the bot had done some 7978 edits this month anyway.. GerardM 05:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Sek-ín:ji-sìⁿ

Hi, this is A-yao of the Min Nan(zh-min-nan) Wiktionary. May I request that "Sek-ín:ji-sìⁿ"'s interwiki be left as Chinese(zh) "Wiktionary:姓氏"? Thank you for your understanding.

Min Nan Wiktionary needs help

Hi, this is A-yao again of the Min Nan Wiktionary (zh-min-nan). May you please let your robot check if there are missing interwikis. Thank you for your cooperation.

The bot runs quite regularly.. It did not yet make it in my list of wiktionaries that I run all the time (that is it always checks if the word also exists in that wiktionary..). I started it again for you .. :) GerardM 11:14, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.

We need your bot. We had made at about 300 articles after your bot had revised the interwiki. Did it had a bot flag already? If yes, why doesn't it run in the Min Nan Wiktionary regularly? A yao 14:52, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The bot runs all the time; at the moment I am running five instances of the bot. I have started to do a first run on many of the smaller wiktionaries.. There are many... When I add a wiktionary to run ALL the time, it means that the time required to finish a run is n+1 times longer (n being the current number of wiktionaries I run on). This does not make sense if the hit rate is not good. Many of the current languages do not even have a 1% hit rate...

Yes, I will come back to the nan.wiktionary.. i will use one instance of the bot to cycle through the smaller projects.

As to the bot flag, your bureaucrat can give this to the RobotGMwikt... Thanks, GerardM 11:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I just asked now. We should wait for a few days. I'll tell you when your bot has received the bot flag. A yao 13:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Cheers! Our bureaucrat has given RobotGMwikt a bot flag! A yao 09:28, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Above message

Hi, GerardM! Please see above message. This is A-yao of the Min Nan Wiktionary. I logged-in as A yao becuase I made an A-yao account and forgot my password. Please disregard if I forgot to log-in. 203.76.211.238 09:25, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Redefining WiktionaryZ objectives

I have no account at WiktionaryZ, so I leave you this message here. I would like to discuss an important point that nobody else seems to really consider (or that everybody prefer not to consider): how could a multi-language wiki be possible? I understand that sub-communities are envisioned, with, probably, discussion rooms by language. Anyway, what about discussions (and votes) at the project level (e.g. « may website names be included, and on which conditions? »). It seems that the current view is that such discussions will be in English. This would exclude many contributors (maybe most contributors), either because they cannot speak English at all, or because they think their level in English is not advanced enough. And this would make WiktionaryZ an anglophone wiki (which already appears clearly enough if you consider its name).

I am afraid that many wiktionaries could decide to migrate to WiktionaryZ and then to disappear. But I am convinced that many contributors of these wiktionaries (which often are rather few) will, immediately or after a while, stop participating. Therefore, the anglophone part should benefit of it, but all other parts will progress much more slowly than now. I don’t think that this is the objective. One major interest of the Wiktionary (and Wikipedia) concept is that all languages are equal, and that everybody can participate equally. This major strength would be lost.

I do not mean that your work at WiktionaryZ is useless. I can make two different proposals using it:

• keeping current wiktionaries, but considering WiktionaryZ as a format, not as a wiki, and proposing current wiktionaries to migrate to this format. If the format is well designed, this would allow easy automated imports between wiktionaries, and this would benefit to everybody.
• same proposal, but all WiktionaryZ wiktionaries could share, if they want to, a common database, and redundant information which can be displayed independently of language (e.g. pronunciation in standard phonetic alphabets) would thus be stored only once. This should leave a complete policy freedom to each wiktionary, while allowing automatic information sharing.

I give my strong preference to the first proposal, because the second one would probably not work as simply as I explain it (it still could imply, in some cases, discussions between people not understanding each other). But I am convinced that, without this kind of change in its objectives, WiktionaryZ simply cannot be a success (remember the Tower of Babel project: it seems that it was not very successful). Lmaltier 20:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in, but I suggest you create an account there and repeat this on the "International Beer parlour". It's a very real problem that for once doesn't pertain to the software, but to the very nature of the project itself. Discussion, opinions and ideas on it are called for. — Vildricianus 21:02, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The international beer parlour? On which site? If you were referring to the WiktionatyZ site, could you copy it yourself? (it seems that, for getting an account, you have to create your Babel templates, and I don't intend to create them). Lmaltier 21:15, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

You don't have to create them for an account, only if you want edit access to the relational data. You don't need that access to post on the International Beer Parlour. — Vildricianus 21:18, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

RobotGMwikt

???? Why is RobotGMwikt inactive in all Wiktionary projects? A yao 11:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Because I was away for a week, and because I forgot the password to the syste that I run the software on. Now that I did recall it, you will find the software runnng again. GerardM 18:52, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Please explain your stupid, destructive Dutch robot-vandal

[1] --Londheart 22:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

This user misunderstood a revert by SemperBlotto to the last version by the bot. "Londheart" had tried to copy encyclopedic text into the wikt entry, got reverted. Robert Ullmann 22:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

'Tried to copy encyclopedic text'??? --Londheart 22:16, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Dear Gerard,

Thank you for signaling your confidence in my ability to act as a CheckUser for the English Wiktionary. Your vote means a lot to me. I deeply appreciate it.

You may not be aware, but the Meta: policy dictates that there must be multiple CheckUsers on any given project, or else none will be granted. Each must get 25 votes on their local wiki, as per Meta: policy, to be granted the CheckUser privilege.

I'd like to take a moment to endorse my friends and co-runners. Each of them offers different skills that, as a whole, complement the needs of the English Wiktionary.

1. User:Uncle G has been an English Wikipedia sysop longer than he's been an English Wiktionary sysop. This year (2006) he has refocused his efforts outside of Wiktionary. He was dragged away from Wiktionary while cleaning up the tens of thousands of entries on Wikipedia that linked incorrectly to Wiktionary after the case-sensitivity change in June 2005. He knows Wiktionary very well. And he is very competent at focusing his efforts wherever they are most needed. He operated the original Transwiki: bot, before we had the Special:Import feature we have now.
2. User:Kipmaster is a French Wiktionnaire sysop and bot operator who is very technically capable. He also is in Europe, making his hours of availability complementary to his American counterparts. He is active in WiktionaryZ imports and understands very well which data can be imported here, from there. He normally acts as our primary liaison to fr.wiktionary, whenever compatibility issues arise.
3. User:Jon Harald Søby is a steward. As a meta: steward, he is the primary person we call on to perform CheckUser checks now. His availability is often limited, but his Central European timezone proves to be very, very useful on occasion. He has contributed extensively to Wiktionary over the years.
4. User:Kelly Martin was recently called in to help perform CheckUser checks on the English Wiktionary. She is currently up for election also for the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation. (In the unlikely event she wins that election, she will no longer be available to pursue her CheckUser nomination here.) Since she also has CheckUser privilege on other sister projects, she is accustomed to the 'can's and 'cannot's of CheckUser procedures, in detail.

I hope you can take a moment to consider these fine candidates again. Your support means a great deal to them, as well as to Wiktionary's ability to perform its own CheckUser checks in a timely manner.

Thank you again, for your support.

--Connel MacKenzie 06:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

RobotGMwikt

Hi GerardM,

I have added an interwiki (on :fr and on :en) and RobotGMwikt has removed them. Do you have an idea why? This interwiki is real: one meaning of fr:automobile is en:automotive and another one is the already noted en:automobile.

Can you do something for it to not remove it again please?

Regards, Eden2004 09:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The Wiktionary interwiki model is not the same as the Wikipedia interwiki model. An interwiki on Wiktionary connects words that are spelled EXACTLY the same. Automobile, automobile and automotive are explicitly not the same. GerardM 12:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah ok, I am too used to WP interwiki model indeed.

Thank you for your explanation and sorry for the bother. Eden2004 21:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

tobogganing

Hi Gerard

I'm the Keith Dixon from whom you quoted in your Wiktionary definition of tobogganing. I'd just like to say thanks for quoting me, though I dare say it was your robot who found the quotation.

Thanks anyway!

Keith

Your Robot

Hi, I started to wonder about a couple of edits by RobotGMwikt on sv.wiktionary: in the edit [2] it removes three iw links I believe are quite valid as the articles in question in ko:, pl: and it: all existed at that date (according to their respective version histories). Or have you changed something concerning the tasks of the bot? This edit does not seem to be isolated though, when glancing through the last 15 edits, all removals seems to have been of valid interwiki links. \Mike 12:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed this as well. This happened at the same time when the databases were rearranged on the servers. I have stopped the bots for a few days.. this will hopefully be good when the caches have expired.. Then I will try again. GerardM 19:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, good to see it wasn't some kind of bit rot affecting it :) \Mike 19:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I have a similar question about your robot's edits. It removed the iw link to the Greek wiktionary for the word βοῦς. Ι suppose this might have happened because the word el:βοῦς actually redirects to the word el:βους. Nevertheless, since this is what we usually do in el.wiktionary, I think there should be iw links to polytonic redirecting to monotonic and I'd appreciate if you did something to fix it. --Flyax 12:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki links are exclusively to words that are no redirect and are spelled exactly the same. This has always been this way. GerardM 14:18, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

RobotGMwikt

Would you care to add vo.wiktionary to the list of Wiktionaries your bot processes? Thanks, Malafaya 18:45, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Feedback

Hi there GerardM - as the most friendly face in the nl-N user category could I please ask you to have a glance at Wiktionary:Feedback#roepingetje. Thank you Conrad.Irwin 19:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

filmflam -- your edit of my edit

Re: 03:15, 20 May 2008 Ruakh (Talk | contribs) m (190 bytes) (Reverted edits by Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (Talk); changed back to last version by RobotGMwikt)

Gerard: Thanks for removing my citation. I moved it to Citation / User Talk. Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas 17:36, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

IW bot on Swedish Wiktionary

Hi! On the Swedish language Wiktionary we've decided to use a customized sorting order for interwiki links, as described by "Dodde-order" on sv:User talk:Conrad.Irwin. We've also decided to include interwiki links to redirect pages. Unless you are able to change your interwiki link script settings, we would like you to stop further editing on Swedish language Wiktionary, so that we can avoid a bot flame war. Thanks, Skalman 22:29, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

m:Wiktionary/logo/refresh/voting

I do not want to come across as contumelious but please consider casting your vote for the tile logo as—besides using English—the book logo has a clear directionality of horizontal left-to-right, starkly contrasting with Arabic and Chinese, two of the six official UN languages. As such, the tile logo is the only translingual choice left and it was also elected in m:Wiktionary/logo/archive-vote-4. Warmest Regards, :)--_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 02:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2010-04/Voting policy

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

autrice in Dutch

Hi GerardM,

I created a "Citations" tab in autrice, with some Dutch ones, and I was wondering, as you have recorded the pronunciation of a lot of Dutch words, if you would like to record the pronunciation of autrice (and autrices, autricetje, autricetjes) in Dutch? You could use Lingua Libre for that. Thanks a lot for your help! Thomas Linard (talk) 14:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC)