Wiktionary:News for editors

Archive
2007–2017

• This page notifies editors of recent clarifications of or changes to policy or best current practice, major changes to templates, and the like.
  • All editors are encouraged to watch this page.
• Wikimedia-wide tech news is available at meta:Tech/News/Latest.
• Please note that older news listed here may no longer be current, and may in fact have been supplanted by newer standards of practice among editors.
• Please add news at the top!

• 27: The entry wbl has been made, making it the 1,000th entry to be added to Category:ISO 639-3.

• For taxonomic-name linking there are now two distinct templates: {{taxlink}} (Now with more Lua!!!), which is for taxonomic names for which enwikt DOES NOT have an entry, used as before, eg, {{taxlink|Rosa noentry|species}}, and {{taxfmt}} (New!!!, with Lua!!!), to be used for taxonomic names for which enwikt DOES have an entry, used just as {{taxlink}}, eg, {{taxfmt|Rosa multiflora|species}}. {{taxfmt}} will soon (months) have been applied automagically to all taxonomic names that currently have some link and eventually (many months) even to all now-unlinked taxonomic names. At present this just addresses formatting (various configurations of italics) and makes searches easier. In the more distant future it may make other changes (improvements???) easier. The resulting taxon formatting should be the same for both templates, but categorization will be different, mostly effecting only those with an active interest in taxonomic names.

• February 29: Following WT:RFM discussion, the Khanty (kca) and Mansi (mns) languages have been split into the Khanty and Mansi families, respectively, each consisting of three languages.

• "Revised proposal to encode Book Pahlavi in Unicode" by Anshuman Pandey

• October 24: The Lua memory limit was raised from 50 MB to 100 MB, and other improvements are being made relating to the way modules allocate memory. According to Tim Starling, this should give each page "3.6 times more memory" and essentially eliminate Lua memory errors. See discussion at Wiktionary:Grease pit/2023/October#Lua memory errors and Lua garbage collection.

• March 16: the vote to remove the horizontal rule passes, and WingerBot deals with all of them.

• February 5: Lite templates can now be used with reconstructed terms, using the normal syntax.
• Category:Pages using deprecated templates has been emptied of low-priority pages such as archived discussions, talk pages, and user pages. The category should now be empty in ordinary circumstances, just like our other maintenance categories such as CAT:E.
• February 2: Preliminary proposal to encode Ranjana

• January 16: {{trans-mid}} has been deprecated.
• January 14: The family code for the Finnic family of languages has been changed from fiu-fin to urj-fin, and the language code for Proto-Finnic respectively from fiu-fin-pro to urj-fin-pro.
• January 11: The language code for Eastern Mari has been changed from chm to mhr.
• January 5: The number list modules for Pite Sami (sje) and Ume Sami (sju) have been made.
• January 2: The number list module for Skolt Sami (sms) has been made.
• January 1: The number list modules for Inari Sami (smn), Kildin Sami (sjd), Lule Sami (smj) and Southern Sami (sma) have been made. Happy New Year, editors!

• Proposal to encode Tolong Siki
• Proposal to encode additional Tai Viet characters for the Jinping Dai

• Just in time for the new year, the translation boxes now use CSS columns (a second attempt after the first aborted try in August). This means that the number of columns in the translation box adapts to the width of the user's screen. There are also width options: an entry can contain {{trans-top|column-width=narrow}} to create a box with many short translations, or {{trans-top|column-width=wide}} to hold exceptionally long translations. If you find that you are now seeing too few columns on your screen, follow the instructions at T:trans-top#Personal customisation to tweak it to your tastes, or leave feedback at the Grease Pit.

• November 14: "The Unicode® Standard – 2023 Release Planning" by Peter Constable, Chair of the Unicode Technical Committee
• "Proposal for a compromise of the recent Old Hungarian proposal"
• "Proposal to Encode Latin characters for Initial Teaching Alphabet"
  • For more information on the Initial Teaching Alphabet:
    • http://itafoundation.org/about-us/what-is-i-t-a/
    • https://omniglot.com/writing/ita.htm

• As a result of the vote at "Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-09/Meaning of consensus for discussions other than formal votes created at Wiktionary:Votes", "Wiktionary:Voting policy" has been updated with the following:

Meaning of consensus for discussions which are not formal votes

Where the consensus of editors is required for discussions other than formal votes at Wiktionary:Votes (for example, in discussion rooms such as Wiktionary:Beer parlour and on discussion pages such as Wiktionary:Requests for deletion and Wiktionary:Requests for verification), the support of at least two-thirds of the editors taking a supporting or opposing stance in a discussion on an issue is a hint for the threshold for consensus, but it is not set in stone. As a result, the consensus determination is somewhat indeterminate and can take into account considerations other than pure tallying. Tallying does play a role.

• September 13: Version 15.0.0 of the Unicode Standard® has been released.
  • Specifically, the following blocks:
    • Kawi (Kawi; U+11F00–U+11F5F)
    • Nag Mundari (Nagm; U+1E4D0–U+1E4FF)
    • CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H (U+31350–U+323AF)

• User:This, that and the other/broken interwiki links contains lists of entries that have defective links to sister projects. The August 1 edition has such defective links (to WP) sorted by language section of the entry page with the defective links to make it easier for those who would like to correct the errors in entries in their favorite languages.
• The translation boxes now use CSS columns. This means that the number of columns in the translation box adapts to the width of the user's screen. There are also width options: you can specify {{trans-top|width=narrow}} for a box with many short translations, or {{trans-top|width=wide}} to hold exceptionally long translations. The {{trans-mid}} template no longer has a purpose and is now blank. This change has been temporarily reverted owing to a bug.
• The number list module for Maranao (mrw) has been made.

Following a vote, Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion has been updated to require a derogatory term to meet the usual attestation requirements within:

• two weeks of the term being created, or if this period has passed,
• two weeks of the term being nominated for deletion or verification.

Otherwise, it may be speedily deleted after that period. The template {{derogatory}} can be used to tag derogatory terms, or to generate boilerplate text when nominating such terms for deletion or verification.

Number list modules have been made for Burmese (my), Chakma (ccp), Oriya (or), Rohingya (rhg), Sylheti (syl), Santali (sat), Friulian (fur), Shan (shn), Lü (khb), Khmer (km), Uyghur (ug) and Yakut (sah).

• The pronunciation template {{lo-pron}} has been created.

• enwikt-translations, a Toolforge website to search the contents of translation templates extracted from Translations sections in the latest XML dump, was created.

• September 14: Version 14.0.0 of the Unicode Standard® has been released.
  • According to a document by Peter Constable, Version 15.0 of the Unicode Standard® is targeted for publication in September 2022.

• August 8: The URL format for specific sense IDs was changed; it used to be LanguageName-ID, but is now LanguageName:_ID. Existing links to IDs may be broken (but will still take to the correct page for now), and OrangeLinks as well as internal ID links might stop working temporarily, but should eventually start working again.

• The beta review period for Unicode 14.0 has started. The version will be implemented on or around September 14, 2021.

• Edit notices added for data submodules of Module:languages and for data submodules of Module:labels summarizing the format of the data.

• Completely new modularised methods are now in use for Bulgarian inflections with stress marks. Most of older templates will soon become obsolete.

• Module:Unicode data and its data submodules have been updated with data from version 13.0.0 of the Unicode Character Database.

• A search engine for {{IPA}} is available at Toolforge.

• Proto-West Germanic has been created as a language distinct from Proto-Germanic.

• The Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs is available online. It can be useful for analyzing English phrasal verbs and the adequacy of verb definitions.

• A filter has been added that checks for edits to entries in which the wikitext does not follow some of the rules for normalization. It adds a tag to the edit: WT:NORM. The tag does not indicate that the edit was bad, just that some part of the page needs reformatting. Some normalization rules are not included because they cannot be checked by a filter, and some are approximately checked by other filters, such as the missing headword template filter.
• Language data modules will now show messages from Module:data consistency check on their documentation pages, to alert template editors to any errors.
• A new set of categories for words coined by an identifiable person, organization or other entity has been set up, including categorization by coiner. Inclusion to these categories can be done using {{coinage}} (shorthand: {{coin}}).
• When not-yet-created categories are viewed, they will show suggestions of valid categories for languages, scripts, and languages. For instance, Category:en links to Category:En language and to Category:English language (en is the language code for English), and Category:Latin links to Category:Latin language and Category:Latin script. Category:Samaritan language links to Category:Samaritan Aramaic language and Category:Samaritan Hebrew language because both of those languages have "Samaritan" in their otherNames field.
• Not-yet-created templates will show suggestions for any matching reference (R:) or quotation template (RQ:) names with language codes or year suffixes. For instance, Category:Lane suggests Template:R:ar:Lane, Template:Asatryan suggests Template:R:Asatryan:1999/2000 and several others.

• The intonation scheme for Slovene has changed from the stress-based orthography to the tonemic orthography. The headwords of most entries have been converted, but inflection tables have not, and will need future work. Links to Slovene terms should be updated by editors as they come across them. There is also a new {{sl-IPA}} which generates IPA pronunciations when provided with the tonemic orthography.

• A new category named "multiword terms" is now available to categorise idiomatic terms made up of multiple words. The category is opt-in for the moment, only Category:Russian multiword terms and Category:Mongolian multiword terms are in use. The headword module of a language can be modified to automatically categorise terms in the new category. It may be made part of Module:headword eventually, if feasible. (October 2020: This has been done. Multiword-term categories for all languages are generated automatically. To opt a given language out of this, add it to Module:headword/data under no_multiword_cat.)
• The notation of Proto-Slavic has been changed in two ways:
  • ľ, ň and ř are now used instead of lj, nj and rj.^[discussion]
  • The use of accent diacritics has changed, detailed on Wiktionary:About Proto-Slavic#Accents.^[discussion] Nonconforming entries are now listed in Category:Proto-Slavic entries with invalid diacritics.
• The templates {{circumfixcat}}, {{infixcat}}, {{interfixcat}}, {{prefixcat}} and {{suffixcat}} have been renamed to include a space: {{circumfix cat}}, {{infix cat}}, {{interfix cat}}, {{prefix cat}} and {{suffix cat}}. (December 2020: These templates no longer exist. Use {{auto cat}}, specifying an |alt= parameter if needed to add extra diacritics to the affix.)
• The template {{inflection of}} now allows a list of inflection tags of the same category to be separated by double slashes, and the output is the same as if they were separated by and. For example, in phaenomena, {{inflection of|la|phaenomenon||nom//acc//voc|p}} or {{inflection of|la|phaenomenon||nom|and|acc|and|voc|p}}.

• The way tags are specified for WT:ACCEL has changed. Rather than specifying a single accel string, there is now one template parameter or table key for each tag. See WT:ACCEL#Adding the tags to a template for more information.
• Many common templates that had a mandatory language code in the |lang= parameter will now also accept it in the first parameter, and using the first parameter is preferred because it is more consistent with other common templates like {{l}} and {{m}}. For instance, {{IPA|en|/wɝːd/}} is preferred over {{IPA|/wɝːd/|lang=en}} and {{inflection of|la|verbum||gen|p}} is preferred over {{inflection of|verbum||gen|p|lang=la}}.
• Lists of often-linked entries in particular languages that haven't been created yet are now available at User:Jberkel/lists/wanted/latest. They serve a similar purpose to the subcategories of Category:Redlinks by language, but are more complete: they include links in many templates (not just {{l}}, {{m}}, {{t}}), and links to pages that exist but don't have a header for the language yet.

  If you are interested in a language and it is not in User:Jberkel/lists/wanted/latest, add its language code to User:Jberkel/lists/wanted/languages and it will be added when the next batch of lists is generated.

• A new version of the Unicode® Standard—Version 12.0.0—has been announced on the fifth (5th) of March, 2019. The data modules used by Module:Unicode data have been updated, for instance to include new code point names and block names.

• The {{cite}} and {{quote}} families of templates now support the following new parameters:
  • |translator= and |translators= (abbreviation: |trans=)
  • |text=, a synonym for |passage=
  • |t=, a synonym for |translation=
  • |tr= (in {{quote}} templates), a synonym for |transliteration=
• In {{quote}} family templates, use of the parameter |lang= is now mandatory; if it is omitted, the entry on which the quotation template is used will be placed in "Category:Undetermined terms with quotations".
• The CodeLinks gadget now makes most URLs in comments clickable, and links module names after require and mw.loadData to the module pages and tracking template names after require("Module:debug").track to Special:WhatLinksHere.

• The following updates have been made to the {{quote}} family of templates:
  • |language= and |lang= are now used to specify the language of the passage quoted, and will add the entry page to a category in the form "Category:Language terms with quotations". The parameters require a language code (see Wiktionary:List of languages).
  • |worklang= may be used to specify the language that the work as a whole is written in. This parameter takes either a language code or the name of one or more languages spelled out in full.

If there are no issues with the updates, similar changes may be rolled out to the {{cite}} family of templates in due course.

• The above changes have been rolled out to the {{cite}} family of templates. The parameters |lang=, |language=, or |worklang= may be used to specify the language that the work as a whole is written in. The parameters take either a language code (preferred) or the name of one or more languages spelled out in full.
• The {{cite}} family of templates now also has a |translation= parameter so that a translation of a passage can be added.

• Using a raw span tag to provide acceleration tags for WT:ACCEL is now deprecated, and may stop working in the future. Instead, provide it as a parameter to a linking or headword template. The documentation of WT:ACCEL contains more instructions.
• The WT:ACCEL script has been improved/modified some more:
  • When going to the edit page, the edit window now automatically scrolls to where the new entry has been inserted.
  • The creation rules are no longer defined in User:Conrad.Irwin/creationrules.js, but in Module:accel and its submodules, where any user can create and edit them. The format has remained the same, except that it's now written in Lua. (A tip for people who want to run form-creation bots: you can now use expandtemplates to call Module:accel and have it generate an entry for you, so you don't have to do it yourself and your bot will always generate entries in the most recently defined format.)
• {{derivcatboiler}} is now called {{derived cat}}, to match {{inherited cat}} and {{borrowed cat}} and their respective etymology templates. (October 2020: These templates no longer exist as they are unnecessary. Use {{auto cat}}.)

• To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press is offering individual subscriptions to OED Online from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 for £90 (usually £295). Subscription information is here.
• Quotation templates in the {{quote-}} family (such as {{quote-book}}) now accept the parameter |lang=, which will categorize entries into categories in the format “Category:[Language] terms with quotations”.
• The Wiktionary Discord server now has a bot which adds links to Wiktionary and other MW wikis in the server.
• The English Wiktionary now has more entries than the English Wikipedia.

• It is now possible to ping editors by linking to their username (e.g. [[User:Foobar]]) in an edit summary.
• The unofficial Wiktionary Discord server is still going strong, and open to all Wiktionary editors.

• The language name Azeri has been renamed to Azerbaijani on Wiktionary

• Interesting paper on Urban Dictionary; includes comparison with Wiktionary