Haec est taberna Vicipaediae ubi potes si dubia habes, explanationes quaerere, nuntia ad nos mittere et cetera.
Ut sententias antiquiores legas vide tabernae acta priora.

VP:T

Calefactio globalis

Please comment on the proper title at Disputatio:Calefactio cuncta aeris. And Happy New Year, everybody! Andrew Dalby 14:55, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Compass points

I thought that Septemptrio ant Meridies only worked in the Northern hemisphere and that Borealis and Australis were deemed better global terms. How is it that America Australis has been redirected to America Meridionalis? (Meridionalis would surely be North from a Southern hemisphere perspective)Matthaeus Tomlinson 15:39, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't pre-empt your argument: it's simply a normal first reaction. Creating a redirect acknowledges that your suggested term is acceptable. The discussion will eventually show which term is the best! Andrew Dalby 19:48, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Both terms are suspect in a way since borealis and australis strictly speaking refers to winds from a reference point of Rome/Greece, while septentionalis and meridionalis refer to stars from the Roman/Greek reference point too.

Er...no. Meridionalis refers to the midday sun, which is in the south for us Europeans, but is in the North for Argentinians, Australians etc.82.36.94.228 22:20, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When used as a "map direction" it means the direction given by the direction of the midday sun from the perspective of Rome, which indeed is in Europe. This direction is the south everywhere on earth at any time of the day unless indicated by context. Otherwise the various attestations of south america as america meridionalis wouldn't make any sense. Likewise australis means south even when there is no south wind.--Rafaelgarcia 22:47, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note I'm not arguing "for" meridionalis, just pointing out that both are correct. Personally I would prefer Australis here. But Meridionalis is more common: drr Hofmann Lexicon Lat. and the map from the commons--Rafaelgarcia 23:12, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

However, I believe America Australis is also correct; and both versions are attested, as a couple of google searches for maps reveals.--Rafaelgarcia 16:30, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Et continentem Australiae habemus, non "Meridionaliae"! IacobusAmor 20:05, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Partly out of curiosity, but it may be relevant: Belgian French, unlike Academy French, habitually uses the word 'Midi' for south, which obviously derives from a late Latin form of Meridionalis. Would a Belgian-French-speaker in the southern hemisphere use 'Midi' for south? AlexTiefling 14:00, 3 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Global bots - allow them automatically?

Bots are useful in that they are designed to perform uncontroversial tasks that would be too tedious for humans to perform (at least in the required quantity and within an acceptable time frame), e. g. updating interwiki links.

A large number of bot edits without any distinction from human edits would lead to the situation where Special:Recentchanges or Special:Watchlist would become cluttered with (uncontroversial) bot edits, making it difficult to see the (comparatively few) edits by humans. Therefore, the MediaWiki software has long provided the possibility to grant a "bot flag" to a bot user account on a particular wiki (let me therefore call this type of bot flag, as it is restricted to a particular wiki, a "local bot flag"). The bot flag has the effect that the edits of this bot are not normally shown on Special:Recentchanges or Special:Watchlist (although there is an option to show them as well). This does not effect Special:Contributions and history pages, where bot edits are always shown (just like non-bot edits). Hiding bot edits from recentchanges and the watchlist has a clear advantage when the bot edits are uncontroversial but makes "bad" edits (unintentionally "bad" edits or even malicious edits, such as vandalism perpetrated by bot account holders) hard to detect quickly. Therefore, caution has to be exercised when granting the bot flag.

The bot flag is granted or revoked by a local bureaucrat (or, for projects where there is no active bureaucrat, by meta:Stewards). This system has worked well on la.wikipedia. Some bot owners asked for the bot flag in the taberna, some asked our bureaucrat directly, and sometimes a bot was making so many edits that a member of the community asked our bureaucrat to grant the bot flag. Adam, our bureaucrat, reacts very promptly to requests on his en.wikipedia talk page, and there has never been a problem on our side.

But there is a relatively high "entry threshold" for bot operators: Bot operators needed to deal with each wiki's different policies for granting the bot flag, even for the most uncontroversial of tasks: updating interwiki links. Therefore, some time ago, a model bot policy has been devised that wiki communities may opt in to. In its original form, the bot policy aimed at easier granting of the bot flag for uncontroversial bots (i. e. bots that only maintain interwiki links and fix double redirects), namely by entitling meta:Stewards to grant the bot flag directly, without the involvement of local bureaucrats or the local community ("automatic approval"). This procedure was further simplified technically a few weeks ago by introducing the possibility of a "global bot flag" for an even-more-restricted group of trusted bots – this "global bot flag" takes effect on all projects that have decided to allow global bots. A current list of these projects can be found at meta:Bot policy/Implementation#Where it is policy.

Global bots are trusted bots that will be given bot access on every wiki that allows global bots (currently, la.wikipedia is not among those). The current requirements for global bots are:

a global bot must only maintain interlanguage links or fix double-redirects;
a global bot must have already been active on several wikis, with long-term contributions to back up its trustworthiness.

Proposal

In order to simplify dealing with uncontroversial cases, I propose that la.wikipedia opts in to global bots, but otherwise does not use the bot policy. (The English wikipedia has done the same thing, see meta:Bot policy/Implementation near the bottom of the page.) This would have the following consequences:

Global bots would automatically be allowed to maintain interlanguage links and fix double-redirects on la.wikipedia and would automatically have a "global bot flag". Global bots are trusted bots, the current requirements for global bots are:
- a global bot must only maintain interlanguage links or fix double-redirects;
- a global bot must have already been active on several wikis, with long-term contributions to back up its trustworthiness.
This would limit the number of bot requests in uncontroversial cases and I think it would also improve bot activity on Vicipaedia, as the "entry threshold" for trusted bots would be lower.
All other bot flag requests concerning la.wikipedia would still have to be decided by the community/by our bureaucrat (in particular, "automatic approval" as described in the bot policy would not be permitted). That way, all but the most uncontroversial cases would still have to be decided on by ourselves, exactly as is the case now.
Technical consequence: Quite a number of global bots currently have the local bot flag on la.wikipedia. After the global bot flag has become active on la.wikipedia, we can remove the local bot flag from these bots so that a possible removal of global bot status for whatever reason (loss of trustworthiness, inactivity, etc.) would also take effect here.
And just to be sure: In the event something goes wrong, global bots can still be blocked by local Vicipaedia:Magistratus just like local bots.

Views on this? --UV 23:08, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I support your suggestion. We would still be able to block bots if we don't like their work, but in general I think it is better for us if globally approved bots can add their interwiki links to Vicipaedia as easily and quickly as possible. Andrew Dalby 10:23, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a good idea to me. IacobusAmor 14:10, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. The majority, possibly all, of the bot requests are for bots that already have global status everywhere else. Adam Episcopus 18:47, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Highlight links to disambiguation pages

Most of the time, a link that points to a disambiguation page is a bad thing. Take for example the page Iustinus I. It contains the sentence: "Praedecessor Iustini Anastasius I fuerat." Now Anastasius I is a disambiguation page that disambiguates between Anastasius I (imperator) and Anastasius I (papa). In our case, the context makes it clear that the predecessor of Iustinus I was Anastasius I (imperator) and definitely not Anastasius I (papa). In the long run, the page Iustinus I should be edited so that the link points not to the disambiguation page, but directly to the only correct link target in this context, Anastasius I (imperator). Even if this might not warrant an extra edit just for this purpose, it would be a good thing to do this while performing some other edit on that page.

Now how does one notice that a link leads to a disambiguation page? For this purpose, I have adapted a gadget from de.wikipedia. If you choose to enable this gadget, after a page has been displayed, this gadget will load information on linked-to pages (which requires a certain amount of bandwidth) and will highlight those that are redirects (you may notice a small delay in time). Please consider enabling (or trying out) this gadget in your Special:Preferences. I doubt you will encounter any javascript errors (I believe that the guys at de.wikipedia have done a good job), but if you do, please tell me so that I can try to fix it or report it to the original author of the script. Greetings, --UV 23:42, 2 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's very useful, and I have enabled it in my preferences, but I find the bright pink background quite distracting. If it's possible, and if others agree, could it be made a lighter colour -- light grey for example? Andrew Dalby 17:48, 3 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure the colour can be changed. If others agree, I will gladly change the default value for everyone, but you can also adapt the colour by adding

.bkl-link-inner { background-color:silver; }
.bkl-link-sup   { background-color:silver; }

to your Special:Mypage/monobook.css (assuming that you are using the default monobook skin, otherwise replace "monobook" by the name of the skin that you are using). --UV 18:08, 3 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, UV. I have made that change on my monobook.css page. Andrew Dalby 09:50, 4 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Television presenter (or showman?)

... ideal Latin word for this? Please comment at Disputatio:Gordonus Ramsay. Andrew Dalby 10:28, 7 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tromocrates aut terrorista?

Terminus '-ista' substantivo adiunctus ad nomen agentis creandum saepe invenitur in Latinitate Medaevali. Cur non vocabulo "terrorista" utimur quod, simile vocabulis in tot aliis linguis, latius intelligetur?Tergum violinae 14:49, 9 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Latine terminus rectus est tromocrates, non 'terrorista' (qui forsitan solum "frightener" significaret). --Rafaelgarcia 16:13, 9 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sic pronuntiat Ager Vaticanus; Radio Bremen autem verbum terrorista Latine usus est (de duis verbis vide nexus apud Tromocratia) ... Debemus admittere terrorista verbum utile esse posset, quia internationale sit. Andrew Dalby 16:52, 9 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Immo, Raphaele, "territor" aut "perterritor" significaret Anglice "frightener". "Terrorista" sententiam fert "peritus terroris" aut "magister terroris" quae recta michi videtur. Nam sententia suffixi 'ista' est subtilior quam "istes" in lingua Graeca quod suffixum tantum ducitur ab illis verbis "izein" terminantibus. Tergum violinae 18:44, 9 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Categoria:Pelliculae -

Salvete, amici!

Volo proponere creare categorias per annos productionis pellicularum. Suntne satis commentationes de pelliculis?

I have a suggestion: What would you think of establishing movie-per-year-categories in Categoria:Pelliculae? Or are there still too few articles for such categories? --Darev 10:24, 10 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Betawiki update

Currently 72.82% of the MediaWiki messages and 9.16% of the messages of the extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been localised. Please help us help your language by localising and proof reading at Betawiki. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 13:07, 10 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A gadget problem?

When Andrew Dalby goes to http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipaedia:Hierarchia_paginarum (vide eius paginam disputationis), the criteria for stipulae & paginae are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; but when I go there, those criteria (as displayed on my screen) are numbered 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. What's awry? IacobusAmor 15:05, 12 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I saw the strange numbering as well but it appears to have disappeared now. I doubt this has had anything to do with gadgets. --UV 23:54, 12 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By golly, you're right! Whatever the problem was, it's been fixed! IacobusAmor 01:45, 13 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Missing general & philosophical terms=

In preparing a draft of Guna, I was surprised to find that Vicipaedia lacks articles on the following topics (for some of which I've had to use or suggest medieval or New Latin terms): animi motus, conatus, cupiditas, demeritum, disiunctio, distinctio, dolor, ens, entitas, existentia, fluiditas, gustatus, humanitas, industria, integritas, libratio, longinquitas, meritum, odium, odoratus, perspicuitas, proximitas, quantitas, sapor, tactus, visciditas, voluptas. Most of these concepts exist as independent articles in en:, as they have consequential general senses or important philosophical implications, which deserve to be accommodated in an encyclopedia. Anybody who'd like to provide articles for them is free to do so! They're all red today: help them turn blue! IacobusAmor 15:55, 13 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]