Vicipaedia:Taberna/Tabularium 11

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.

Quaestio nova

Compendia VP:T

Hic colloqui possumus.

Hic sunt tabularia! Disputationes antiquae ad specialia tabularia motae sunt. Si vis, hic infra scribendo in talibus tabulariis quaerere potes.

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)

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)

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)

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.--Rafaelgarcia 16:30, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

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)

America Meriodionalis anno 1606

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

Television presenter (or showman?)

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

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

I don't think that movie-per-year categories would be appropriate now. We do have many more movies than I thought we did, but I think some very broad genre categories would be more appropriate. We already have one for science fiction, and maybe one for comedy and one for drama and one for animated would be nice. But very broad categories like that to start. Okay? --SECUNDUS ZEPHYRUS 22:18, 18 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

We've got sapor now, but I am not sure if sapor is flavour or taste, as it seems it can be both, thus I made a discretiva--Xaverius 11:45, 16 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

According to dictionaries, gustatus & sapor seem to have closely overlapping denotations relating to flavor & taste. Cassell's says Cicero used gustatus specifically for 'taste' as one of the senses, so that's how I used it in the referenced article, keeping sapor for 'flavor'. Surely we shouldn't ignore a striking parallelism: all five senses are fourth-declension nouns derived from verbs: auditus, gustatus, odoratus, tactus, visus. IacobusAmor 12:51, 16 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

A Modest Proposal

salvete omnes. I'm a Latin student who's interested in Vicipaedia. Recently, I've developed an interest in translating American television into Latin. However, none of my friends really like to read them. Therefore, I have decided to attempt to put these skills to use by assisting Vicipaedia -- if successful, this could greatly increase our article size and our clout among the different-language-wikis. Is anybody else interested in starting categoria televonis? Or at least helping me find out what the Latin word for Television is?

Welcome Angelica. You might want to look at our page televisio for some of the latin terminology. You might also avail yourself of Morgan's website and other links on my user page (at the bottom under lexica interretialia). --Rafaelgarcia 01:47, 16 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

You'll find a few relevant articles at Categoria:Televisio, but most of them, let's say, could do with improvement. Welcome indeed. Andrew Dalby 10:10, 16 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

How common is it to write and pronounce 'tsh' as 'tz' in New Latin?

I found a New Latin name for the Vorarlbergian village Tschagguns. It ist Tzucconium (Ulrich Campell 1574-1577). Do I have to pronounce it with 'tsh' or just 'tz' as it's spelled? Are Tzilia and Tzechia pronounced the same, what ever, way?

I'm usually Thomas but I had to reassign for the German Wikipedia. The suffix -aci in Capsicaciolum is langobardic latin.Capsicaciolum 18:12, 16 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC), friday, jannuary 16, 2009, 19:12 (CET)

Well, for Latin and fully Latinized names I don't know why not just obey normal pronunciation rules of Latin, i.e. pronounce how spelled. One would get mad being obliged to find the original pronunciation of every word that has once been borrowed by Latin. Ergo tz should be pronounced /tz/, /tdz/, /tzz/ ... depending on the pronunciation you are using.
Pronunciation of tz also tends to be discussed on Disputatio:Res publica Bohemica. --Gabriel Svoboda 19:06, 16 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. 213.163.227.121 12:01, 22 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Steward election notification

Nuntius de comitiis dispensatoribus creandis in situ Metavici transtuli. Aliquis translationem perspicere vult? I've translated the notification about the steward elections on Meta. Could anyone take a look to check the translation? Translation hic invenies. Gratias ago! Wikibelgiaan 14:54, 24 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Perspexi. Pauca mutavi. --Neander 17:26, 24 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Gratias ago. Mutationes iure factae sunt... 80.200.223.205 22:30, 25 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Auxilium peto in pagina Calendarii

Please see the table in the section Calendarium#Calendaria fiscalia of the page calendarium. If the first two dates in that table are "today", then the ISO date should show "today" too. Previously the dates shown were for Jan 1 2008, but a user tried to improve it but inserting templates to calculate the current dates. However, now there is a discrepancy between the first two dates and the last. I don't know if there exists a template that allows the automatic calculation of the ISO date...If so this is what would be required. If you can help, or know someone who can, please do!--Rafaelgarcia 00:28, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

City square

Would forum be an appropriate term for a (modern) city square? If not, what would you use? --Ornil 01:18, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

It depends, I think. Traupman recommends "area" for a "rectangular space surrounded by buildings or streets"; however, I think Forum captures, the idea of a central city square better. The term Forum comes from the word for door, meaning "the out of doors, a public place." The idea behind the forum being a market place and place of justice in ancient Rome, comes from the ancient Roman legal custom that contracts transfering property, legal judgments, and the like had to be done in public in front of witnesses to be binding, as a way of preventing fraud or coercion. --Rafaelgarcia 01:38, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Gratias ago. --Ornil 18:10, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

"Platea" (unde "place", "plaza", "piazza" etc.) Tergum violinae 12:56, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Et ego verbum "platea" amo; sed olim in disputatione aliqua (ubi??) "forum" a multis praelatum est. Andrew Dalby 13:16, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Credo "platea" potius significare "broadway" vel "street".--Rafaelgarcia 15:17, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Secundum Cassell's: forum "= a market-square." IacobusAmor 15:57, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Pagina Mensis

Please give your suggestions, votes, opinions as to candidates for February's pagina mensis : Disputatio Vicipaediae:Pagina mensis.--Rafaelgarcia 11:41, 29 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Amabo te, da tuas suggestiones, suffragia, et sententias de candidatis pro pagina mensis Februarii: Disputatio Vicipaediae:Pagina mensis.--Rafaelgarcia 11:46, 29 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the page - it was a mess of old nominations (back from 2006), discussions, cross-outs and so. --Xaverius 10:45, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Ken(n)ethus

We have a dispute between Kenethus and Kennethus. Can one of the translation-of-forenames enthusiasts say which is preferable? Andrew Dalby 14:21, 29 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

No idea - How is it written in English?--Xaverius 10:22, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Duae "n" adhiberi solent Anglice. At nonne "Canitius" dicendus est?Tergum violinae 12:54, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Videte etiam hanc symbolam. --Neander 13:44, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Categories for dates and authors of botanical/zoological descriptions

[Copied from my user page and Hendricus's:] Salve Andrew, i was thinking to put all species and groups into categories by it's author an the year of first description, see example at: Animalia and Porifera, i like to know your opinion about that, Hendricus 23:36, 29 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

It's a very good idea, and, since you are making so many pages, quite practical. I am going to mention this on the Taberna in case others comment on the best form of words to use. OK? Andrew Dalby 09:53, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Well, then, looking at the redlink categories that Hendricus has added to Porifera and Animalia,

1. For the date of official description, I would suggest Categoria:Descripta 1759 (etc.) This would match our current Categoria:Nati 1759 etc., and I guess we might eventually have an supercategory Categoria:Acta 1759 or something like that.
2. For a series of categories giving the name of the "author" (as the describer of a new species is technically called) I'm not sure what is best. Maybe Categoria:Linnaeus (auctor biologicus)? Or just Categoria:Linnaeus? Or ... what?

Please comment on all of this! Andrew Dalby 10:13, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea to me. Categories such as categoria:Linnaeus, or categoria:Descripta a Linnaeo could work--Xaverius 10:21, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

A problem with using descripta (at least in botany) may be that it seems to ignore two of the three essential parts of the work that a scientist does when publishing the existence & identity of a species: name, diagnosis, description. IacobusAmor 13:28, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, but what do you suggest to cover it all? Andrew Dalby 14:59, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Would categoria:Classificatio secundum Linnaeum work?--Xaverius 15:02, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. Again, I think, that isn't quite it. The event concerned is the pinning down of a single taxon; classification is only part of it, and the part that may be changed by others later. And to take Hendricus's original idea and make it Categoria:Binomina anni 1759 is also no good, because some of these taxa are not binomina but single names of orders, genera, etc. So maybe Categoria:Taxa anni 1759 and Categoria:Taxa auctore Linnaeo (ablative absolute, "Linnaeus being the author")? Andrew Dalby 15:13, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Is something wrong with Categoria:Taxa 1759 and Categoria:Taxa Linnaei? The structures of these possibilities parallel those of Categoria:Nati 1759 and Categoria:Scriptores Franciae. IacobusAmor 16:01, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Great! I love succinctness. In the second case, however, since not all biologists' names are declinable, we would get examples such as Categoria:Taxa Rafinesque. Is that acceptable, or would Categoria:Taxa auctore Rafinesque be more pellucid? Andrew Dalby 17:09, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. If "1759" can be in an oblique case in Categoria:Nati 1759, couldn't "Rafinesque" be in an oblique case in Categoria:Taxa Rafinesque? IacobusAmor 17:38, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Fine. If no one objects, we'll begin on that basis! Andrew Dalby 18:14, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Supplementary question

Categories Categoria:Taxa 1758 are beginning to be created. Fine. Ought they (and the Nati and Mortui categories for each year, and any other types we might add) to be put in a supercategory Categoria:Acta 1758, "things that happened in 1758"? It seems logical, but at present, unless I'm mistaken, we have no such series of supercategories. Each of them, if they are to be created, ought to be interlinked with the existing year pages e.g. 1758. Does that make sense? (Optimistic postscript:) can such a series of supercategories be created automatically? Andrew Dalby 12:44, 31 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Sure, that would be an easy thing to do. Firstly, it would be easy to change the templates {{Categoria Nati}} and {{Categoria Mortui}} so that the births-by-year and the deaths-by-year categories are automatically placed in the appropriate year category. Secondly, UVbot could easily mass-generate categories such as

{{Categoria anni|1758}}

[[de:Kategorie:1758]]
[[en:Category:1758]]
[[fr:Catégorie:1758]]

(I would just add the three interwiki links to de, en and fr and leave the rest to the interwiki bots). We could model the new template {{Categoria anni}} after our existing templates {{Categoria Nati}} and {{Categoria Mortui}}. Thirdly, we could manually add to the newly-created year categories other something-by-year categories, such as

• Categoria:1505 (1 member)
• Categoria:1912 disestablishments (1 member)
• Categoria:197 (1 member)
• Categoria:Acta 1758 (1 member)
• Categoria:Acta 1816 (1 member)
• Categoria:Architectura 1931 (1 member)
• Categoria:Birotarii apud Olympia 2004 (1 member)
• Categoria:Canticum 1933 (1 member)
• Categoria:Cantus 1814 (1 member)
• Categoria:Cantus 1978 (1 member)
• Categoria:Clades 1954 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutiones 1886 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1558 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1635 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1666 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1738 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1753 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1755 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1788 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1793 (2 members)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1795 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1820 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1826 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1833 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1839 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1869 (1 member)
• Categoria:Constitutum anno 1905 (1 member)
• Categoria:Disci 1958 (1 member)
• Categoria:Singuli 1958 (1 member)
• Categoria:Singuli 1959 (1 member)
• Categoria:Singuli 1972 (1 member)
• Categoria:Taxa 1758 (1 member)
• Categoria:Taxa 1816 (1 member)

I would just suggest that we do not call our year category Categoria:Acta 1758 but rather just Categoria:1758, for consistency with the other wikipedias (see e. g. the interwiki links at en:Category:1758). --UV 18:36, 31 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this very helpful response! Yes, the simpler name Categoria:1758 makes good sense. Andrew Dalby 20:09, 31 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

(Discussion continues below at #Categoria:Constitutum anno 1869‎, for example)

Praemium dandum

Schulz-Hameln nominatus est ad praemium Numismae Romanae, videte Disputatio_Vicipaediae:Praemia_Vicipaedianis#Schulz-Hameln.--Xaverius 11:32, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revisions extenion on la:

I wonder if you are aware of the meta:Flagged revisions extension. Here's a good summary of its features. It is used on several wikis (notably German and Russian) and may be used on the English one soon. I can speak of the way it's used on ru:, since I am very familiar with it, maybe someone active on de: can also chime in. In ru: it's used to mark pages that have no vandalism, no rules violations and minimal stylistic standards. I think it can be used on this wiki to indicate Latinitas verification. The idea is that if someone like me (poor Latin) makes a change, I'd like it to be looked at by someone who has better Latin. If it's at least grammatically valid, they may mark the change as valid. Another reviewer who may be watching the page would then see that the latest revision is marked as valid Latin, and may not need to look. Also, only the changes since the last "valid" revision need to be looked at, and only by those users who don't have a flag marking them as fluent Latin speakers (or a bot). All changes that require validation are marked in the recent changes and watchlists, and there are special pages listing pages requiring verification.

Note that I am not proposing that this is done as moderation, any change I make would be seen by everyone as soon as it's made. However, a reader would have an option to look at the last approved version. I think this would encourage editing by students and at the same time keep quality high. Hopefully some fluent speakers would be interested enough to go through recent changes and validate a large proportion of them. I don't know the stats here, but it seems to me most changes are made by users who are fluent, and so would require no extra work. And the changes by anons and students do need to be looked at, to maintain quality. --Ornil 22:28, 30 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a very good idea. But I quote your interesting words "keep quality high". Our quality is, let's say, variable (the same is true of every wiki of course). How are existing pages treated at the moment when the scheme begins? Andrew Dalby 12:38, 31 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Old pages are neccesarily treated as unapproved. However, the pages that are edited only by those who are approved by the community as fluent speakers can be marked as approved. Either directly or if not supported then by a bot. The pages that are edited by lots of different users would require a look by the fluent speakers and be approved. After this only diffs would need to be looked at. --Ornil 18:12, 2 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Categoria:Constitutum anno 1869‎, for example

Just wondering why it's in the singular (constitutum): most (all?) other categories are in the plural. Also, might some interwiki links for the foundations of each year be available? IacobusAmor 19:52, 1 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

en:Category:1869 establishments. --UV 19:55, 1 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Iacobus that this style doesn't conform to our rule, and I think now's the ideal time to change it. I can't think of a better general term than "Constitutum", however, so I suggest Constituta 1869. Do others agree? Andrew Dalby 20:14, 1 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

For writings of all kinds we could use Categoria:Scripta 1869; for films, Categoria:Pelliculae 1869; for songs and music, I would suggest replacing the various forms in UV's list above (disci, singuli, cantus, canticum) with something like Categoria:Musica 1869 -- maybe there's a better word? Andrew Dalby 20:21, 1 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

There's another one -- laws and legislation. Will Categoria:Statuta 1869 be OK for that? Andrew Dalby 20:24, 1 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

UVbot created the year categories for all years AD, but not for years BC, since these would probably mostly be empty. What would be a good supercategory for our six music-by-year categories? --UV 02:07, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

... just like that! That's wonderful, UV. I'll deal with those Musica categories now, and I'll have fun creating some Scripta categories soon. Andrew Dalby 09:59, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I used the supercategory Categoria:Musica secundum annum editionis digesta. I hope others think this will do. It's meant to be slightly ambiguous (publication? editing? broadcasting? putting on paper? performance?) so that a piece of work with a complex history can be put in more than one year category. Andrew Dalby 10:10, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to close Latin Wikipedia

In 2005, the Klingon Wikipedia was closed to editing and a de-branded fork opened on Wikia. I'm going to propose on Meta that the same be done of the Latin Wikipedia and Wikibooks, and that it be decided never to open a Latin Wikinews, for the same reasons. As far as I can tell, like Klingon, Latin lacks:

• Native speakers.
• An authoritative active group of lexicographers.
• Any way to gain consensus from the whole Latin-speaking community (rather than just from Wikipedians) on words for new concepts. Without one, how are we to choose between computatrum and ordinatrum, or vīra and vīrua (for viruses, per en:plural of virus), or metallum vis and potens metallum?
• Reliable 20th- or 21st-century sources in Latin to direct readers toward, on topics other than Catholicism.

This proposal won't affect Wikisource, Wikiquote or Wiktionary, since they don't need modern content the way an encyclopedia does.

Could this notice please be translated into Latin for the benefit of non-English-speaking contributors, and posted on the relevant page? (If for some reason it can't be translated, I rest my case.) Seahen 07:57, 2 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Anno 2005, Vicipaedia Klingona clausa est contributionibus et disceptio apud wikiam coepit. Proponam eadem rem vicipaediae Latinae et vicilibris latinis, itaque nunquam vicinuntios latinos coepient. Tamquam ego scio, Latina lingua caret:

• Quem naturaliter latine loqui
• Auctoritatem lexocographicam activam
• Modum consensum agendi communitati Latinae (necnon solum Vicipaedianis) de verbis novis. Sine hoc modus, quomodo inter computatrum et ordinatrum, sive vīra etvīrua (pro viruses, en:plural of virus), sive metallum vis et potens metallum eligamus?
• Fontes Latinae non Catholicae saeculorum XXⁱ et XXIⁱ, ad quas lectoribus referamus.

Haec propositio non Vicifontibus, vicicitationibus necnon Victionario pertinget.

[ Seahen scripsit, ego latine converti--Xaverius 09:59, 2 Februarii 2009 (UTC)]

I added my comments here: Disputatio Vicipaediae:Legatio nostra#Proposal to close Latin Wikipedia. Sometimes I think people have nothing better to do with their time.--Rafaelgarcia 13:05, 2 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

The proposal on Meta has not yet materialized. Meanwhile, if anyone has a few minutes to spare from writing Latin, I suggest that it would be a good idea to improve the articles about Vicipaedia on other wikis. Someone (guess who?) has just created one on the Basque wiki. To get to them all, use the interwiki links at Vicipaedia Latina. Judging by Seahen's misconceptions (which others share, let's face it) we need to hint that Latin rivals Esperanto as an international language, and say that it is, right now, an international language of zoology and botany, not just of the Catholic church. Andrew Dalby 13:25, 4 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I edited the article to reflect our practices. Please check it to make sure that I didn't misstate anything.--Rafaelgarcia 14:28, 4 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Great. I've just started an article in French: others please extend and improve it! Andrew Dalby 16:52, 4 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I'll be working on Iberian-languages wikies then.--Xaverius 17:44, 4 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Paginam Svecicae Wikipediae creavi, Finnicam autem paginam renovavi paulumque auxi. --Neander 00:21, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Xqbot is on a mission to remove all interwiki-links (not just on la but everywhere) to fi:Wikipedia:Latinankielinen Wikipedia. Can we stop it? Or what is wrong with the Finnish page? --Fabullus 15:34, 6 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Commentum scripsi apud [1] ... Andrew Dalby 17:15, 6 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Could it be that Xqbot is responding to some irregularity in the page name? The Finnish page is the only one with "Wikipedia:" prefixed before the name. --Fabullus 07:40, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we could block Xqbot in our wiki until this has been solved, we will not need to revert his canges over and over again.--Xaverius 09:44, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC) Andrew noster iam id fecit ;) --Xaverius 09:46, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Xqt explained on my userpage. Fabullus is correct, and, from what Xqt says, other bots might well do the same. Maybe the page should be moved on fi:wiki, if possible. The best person to try that might be Neander. On fi:wiki, all similar articles are in that namespace. Andrew Dalby 12:28, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Pagina Nederlandica de Vicipaedia Latina agens, licet exigua, nunc exstat. --Fabullus 12:47, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

anche io cerco di ampliare la pagina in italiano--Massimo Macconi 20:48, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Paginam in lingua Anglica simplici addidi. Andrew Dalby 22:12, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

A quanto hominibus lingua Klingon unquam locuta vel saltem scripta est ? Suntne in lingua Klingon poetae et philosophi qui, e.g., Vergilio aut Spinoza componi possint ? ThbdGrrd 17:03, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Ferunt Klingones scripsisse "Hamlet" et Gulielmum Shakespeare mere Anglice transcripsisse. Tergum violinae 22:30, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

We haven't heard from our Seahen for almost a week now and he has not made anything on meta to put his case forward, I very much doubt he was serious about this matter or maybe our self-eviden arguments have convinced him. --Xaverius 09:42, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Violent deaths

At ThbdGrrd's suggestion we now have more detailed categories: Necati and Necatae for those killed by assassins and what not; Morte damnati and Morte damnatae for those condemned to death by some authority. (I chose "Morte damnati" (Seneca) rather than one of the other Latin terms because it's brief and accurate). All, along with the various more specific Victimae ... categories, are subcategories of Categoria:Interfecti. If anyone would like to look through the existing members of Categoria:Necati, and put them in one of the other categories where more appropriate, that would be a good thing!

Incidentally, in Vicipaedia, unlike real life, you can have more than one death (i.e. you can be a "Morte damnatus" and also a "Victima Stalinismi", or whatever). So don't hold back.

We don't yet have a specific category for people killed in battle. The first person who encounters one of these, maybe in the current category "Necati", gets to choose what to call it! Andrew Dalby 15:33, 3 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Quaestiones ex disputatione transcriptae.—What about those condemned to death but reprieved? And those condemned to death but still alive (e.g., Salman Rushdie and thousands of people on "death row")? IacobusAmor 15:52, 3 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Oportet commentationes scribere et postea nomina categoriarum invenire! Andrew Dalby 16:43, 3 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Steward Election Translations

Hey everyone! At the top of your screens is an ad about the Wiki steward elections. In the bottom right of the that ad it asks you to help translate the steward information pages into latin. I have completed one of the pages (the introduction page) but there is much more to do, like the full instructions page and arguments by steward candidates. Perhaps no one, including us, will ever read these pages, but maybe having these pages translated will be a strong slap to any of the Latin Wikipedia nay sayers? --CeleritasSoni 02:02, 5 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

in eum laborabo! (Hope I got that right. Haven't learned future tense yet.) But where do the Latin!Steward pages belong? I can't start translating until I know where to post said translations. Angelica K 13:34, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Laborabo is good. It seems that on the right side of the page meta:Stewards/elections 2009/Guidelines you click "Translations +/-" and proceed from there. It looks complicated ... good luck! Andrew Dalby 14:46, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Okay, we have ourselves a stub [2] there. It's definitely a work in progress, but I think it's going to turn out well. Angelica K 15:46, 7 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Locational concepts

To make some categories, I'm looking for the best (single) Latin word to include the English concepts of "city, town, village, hamlet," perhaps something like the English 'settlement'. Also, for 'landform' (to cover a variety of geological features), would conformatio terrena or conformatio terrestris do? and which is better? or is a single word available? IacobusAmor 15:26, 8 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I believe the right word to cover all those ideas of settlement is "colonia". I believe conformatio terrestris would work very well for "landoform"--Rafaelgarcia 15:34, 8 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

IUCN status information in taxobox

I like to ask for everyone's attention at: Disputatio Formulae:Taxobox and want to ask to keep the discussion about the matter at that page, Hendricus 16:49, 8 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Some other expressions

Salvete!!!

Adiuvate me, quaeso, ad transducendas has expressiones:

• as time passed
• start to do something
• to use someone/something as some other thing

Gratias multas vobis prius ago!!!!--Le K@l!^nuntia? 05:48, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I'm a tironis, I would like to suggest for:(--Jondel 18:50, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC))

start to do something

coepit facere aliquid/ incepit facere aliquid --Jondel 18:50, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Haec tibi spero idonea fore:

• (interiecto / intermisso) tempore, aut si vis poetarum elegantiam aemulare, volventibus annis
• Jondel scripsit qui se modestius ut tironem introduxit (at nota bene nominativum tironis esse tiro)
• utor aliquâ re vice alicuius rei--Ceylon 19:52, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

• transiente tempore

Tergum violinae 21:35, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Fontes ~ Bibliographia

Videmus Andream in commentatione de Nelson Mandela convertisse titulum fontes in bibliographiam. Oportet nobis omnes tales fontes mutare? Rogare UV? IacobusAmor 16:07, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Si erravi, muta! Andrew Dalby 18:52, 9 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

De LucienBOT

I think it is doing well with interwiki links, maybe we should flag it, otherwise it is impossible to see what other changes are being made--Xaverius 16:46, 10 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Done by Adam, our grapheocrates. --UV 09:12, 11 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

IP vandalica

I have made this new formula: {{IP vandalica}}, so it can be put in the vandal's page and we can know how many vandalisms have been made, and allows non-magistrates to point vandals even though they cannot block them. Do you think it is a good idea? If not, I can always delete it--Xaverius 11:58, 11 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

well, for persistent vandalism from static IPs this is fine. However, most home internet users (I think) have dynamic IPs, which means that the IP that had been assigned to and used by a vandal a few hours ago may be assigned to and used by a different person and a useful contributor now. We would "welcome" such a person with a glaring red template. Although Vicipaedia has fewer visitors than e. g. the English wikipedia, which makes it less likely that this will happen often, it is still a possibility. Why don't we just use {{experimentum}}? --UV 21:22, 11 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Translatewiki.net update

• Translatewiki.net formerly known as Betawiki is where the Internationalisation and Localisation of MediaWiki is concentrated. Over 300 languages are supported, issues with MediaWiki programs are dealt with. We need all the help we can get to ensure that we can maintain this service in the face of an increasing workload.

• Currently 72.16% of the MediaWiki messages and 6.89% 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 translatewiki.net. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 08:55, 15 Februarii 2009 (UTC)
• PS Please help us complete the most wanted messages..

Enigma novum

Salvete!!! Enigma parvum habeo: quomodo transducendum verbum anglicum "as" esset ut hoc utor vice praepositionis, exempli gratia: He had to work as the boss?

Gratias multas vobis prius ago!!!--Le K@l!^nuntia? 02:02, 16 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

In general, "ut" or "sic ut" or "sicut" does the job.However here you want to use fungi + abl of function, so that "Ei principe fungendum erat=Is ut princeps fungi necesse erat."--Rafaelgarcia 03:38, 16 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

In exemplo tuo, "quasi" etiam adhiberi posset: Oportet eum quasi principem laborare.Tergum violinae 18:44, 16 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Often, you don't translate 'as' at all. Example 1: te duce, Caesar 'with you as our leader, Caesar' (Horace, Odes, 1.2). Example 2: 'to serve as' is esse with a bare dative or pro + abl.: portae fuit ~ pro porta fuit = 'it served as a gate'. ¶ I think sicut & ut are medievalisms, and suspect that for Is ut princeps Cicero would have said Is princeps (or just plain princeps). ¶ Both my Latin dictionaries list quasi only as an adverb, and all their examples have it modifying verbs, phrases, and clauses, not nouns. The as that you're asking about is, as you say, a preposition. ¶ For 'He had to work as the boss', my best guess (for the moment) would be Caput laborare debuit. But if you don't mean 'work' literally (and so you mean 'He had to serve as the boss'), then perhaps: Capiti esse debuit or Pro capite esse debuit. IacobusAmor 19:32, 16 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Vere gratias plurimas vobis omnibus ago!! Mihi nimis placet quod me valde adiuvavistis in ombius a me incognitis!!--Le K@l!^nuntia? 01:58, 19 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Your examples are excellent Latin Iacobe, however ut and sicut in the sense I give above are classical too. " qui canem et felem ut deos colunt, Cic. Leg. 1, 11, 32: Hannibalem, non ut prudentem tantum virum, sed ut vatem omnium quae tum evenirent admirari, Liv. 36, 15, 2: [3]...quibus in causis omnibus, sicut in ipsā M.' Curii ... fuit summa de jure dissensio, Cic. de Or. 1, 56, 238; Nep. Dat. 9: omnibus periculis, sicut cum Spartam oppugnavit, id. Pel. 4: sicuti cum, Lucil. ap. Non. p. 154, 27:"[4]--Rafaelgarcia 02:47, 19 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Puto te inventurum esse, Iacobe, quia "quasi" in exemplo meo vero est adverbium phrasem modificans. Verbum "oportet" intelligi debet, sic: "oportuit eum, quasi [oporteret] principem, laborare". Insuper, in lexicone meo notatur "quasi" numeris praeponi posse cum sententia "circiter". Tergum violinae 21:35, 21 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

'National (State, County, City) Park'

Did we ever settle on a Latin word for 'park' in this context? To the prior discussion (which I can't find just now), I can add the following, from the OED: reservation = "a tract of land set apart by Government for some special purpose, or for the exclusive use of certain persons, esp. of a native tribe." So while Latin reservatio would seem obvious for an American Indian reservation, it might also be apt for parks "set apart by Government for some special purpose," such as national (state, county, city) parks. On a small scale (as with a city park), the concept of 'park' might seem closer in sense to hortus, but under the OED's definition, it would still seem to be a special case of a reservation (= reservatio). IacobusAmor 15:02, 17 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

See Vicipaedia:Taberna/Tabularium_8#National_park--130.215.96.195 20:14, 17 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Nonne licet "parricus" adhiberi? Tergum violinae 21:41, 21 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Categoriae

Sorry to make such trouble over categories for you, Andrew, but it's partly your fault for deciding to make Vicipaedia's categories incompatible with the English wiki's. :) IacobusAmor 21:09, 21 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Actually I think they are quite largely compatible, so far as they go. But we are a hundred times smaller, and that makes a huge difference (see below). Andrew Dalby 10:23, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Categoria: Homines qui sibi mortem consciverunt

Two questions here. (1) Is homines qui good Latin? As I recall, this qui all by itself means 'people who'. (2) What's wrong with suicida for 'a suicide, a person who commits suicide'? Classical Latin already had homicida for 'murderer', matricida for 'matricide, a mother-murderer', and parricida for 'parricide, a father-murderer'; suicida would approximate the pattern. Also, if we can infer from the etymology in the OED, the New Latin word suicida came into existence in or before the seventeenth century, and we already use plenty of words coined much more recently than that. IacobusAmor 21:09, 21 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be a question for me (or for the taberna, really) so I'll copy it to Disputatio Categoriae:Homines qui sibi mortem consciverunt. Andrew Dalby 10:16, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Categoria: Inventores vs. Categoria: Inventores Anglici, &c.

You've got several categories like this, where the English wiki breaks down the larger category by country (or maybe additionally other political or cultural criteria) but Vicipaedia doesn't. Is it your contention that Vicipaedia will never grow big enough to want such a breakdown? If not, why not plan ahead for it? IacobusAmor 21:09, 21 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Who is you? :) [Oh, I see now, I'm named above. Sorry]

But, since I do create a lot of categories, I'll give an answer. My answer is that we do plan ahead by having the category Inventores (in a structure whose supercategory is Categoria:Homines secundum munera digesti) and, parallel to it, the structure beginning from the supercategory Categoria:Homines secundum civitates digesti. Both structures are infinitely extensible. Whenever any category under Categoria:Homines secundum munera digesti becomes rather well-stuffed, it can be split up according to countries. This can be done by creating e.g. Categoria:Inventores secundum civitates digesti and then creating all the country categories as they are needed. So long as the structure remains predictable, this is easy and even fun (to some!)

The big, big reason for not creating infinite categories immediately, and for maintaining a predictable structure, is that people use categories now, and we very much want them to do this because it is one main way that they navigate among our pages. In an anarchic structure, containing numberless one-member categories set up for a much-desired future, they will find navigation impossible or boring and in either case won't persist. We have then lost one major method of getting people to our pages. This isn't just me saying it: many wikis have a recommendation or a strict rule that categories should not be set up at all unless they are going to contain 5 (or sometimes more) members immediately; and the reason I gave is the best reason why they have this rule. Andrew Dalby 10:12, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

That seems reasonable, but red categories at the bottom of texts haven't been "set up": there's nothing productive to click to, and inexperienced users know that (or soon learn). Why shouldn't they be kept in red until their category has been created? For example, IIRC, a category for "Episcopaliani Americani" was deleted from or hidden in Fredericus Astaire; but why not leave it there, until such time as somebody figures out that it's potentially a huge category, including (as it will) George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Colin Powell, Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, an absolute majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many others (see http://www.adherents.com/largecom/fam_anglican.html). After the category has been created, the link will turn blue; but if you undo the original work of inserting the category into the text, then somebody later will have to go and undo the undoing—provided it doesn't get forgotten. IacobusAmor 20:26, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I'll answer on your talk page -- Andrew Dalby 18:33, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Other wikis also have a definite category structure, e.g. for biographical categories, and, again, they do this because it makes the result easy to navigate and easy to extend.

We all long for the Vicipaedia future, and we all plan for it, but if people don't find our pages now, there won't be a Vicipaedia future. That's my answer. Andrew Dalby 10:12, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

De "people use categories now, and we very much want them to do this because it is one main way that they navigate among our pages."—Since I never navigate this way, you can understand how all this categorizing mystifies, and why the best course of action when translating articles from en: seems to be to translate the categories along with the rest of the text. Is there any way of getting data on how frequently typical visitors (other than experienced vicipaedianistae) use the categories to navigate? and on the navigational tracks that they actually follow? IacobusAmor 20:13, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

If you never use the categories that exist, you may never become less mystified. I suggest you try them. Andrew Dalby 20:49, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I do browse, but the list of articles I might write is long enough to last a lifetime, and the last thing it needs is more ideas. The activity that a small wiki needs most is probably the writing of articles. To attract visitors, a reference work needs to offer what visitors want. (If we don't build it, they won't come.) For example, according to Google Trends, these are the top topics being searched for today:

1. new american tea party

2. lisa lavoie

3. fat tuesday 2009

4. produce the note

5. paczki

6. sea shadow

7. paczki calories

8. laissez les bons temps rouler

9. mardi gras history

10. let the good times roll

11. punchki

12. national pancake day

13. hughes mining barge

14. ihop

15. king cake

16. 9 year old bride

17. fausnaught day

18. jayla cooper

19. roadrunner webmail

20. paczki day

21. sharon stone oscars

22. chinatown fire

23. fasnacht day

24. international house of pancakes

25. orbiting carbon observatory

Those are the topics that our potential customers want to know about, right now. One wonders how well Vicipaedia is serving them. IacobusAmor 16:16, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Something that's immediately clear in that list is the seasonality of interest. If I undertstand these terms right, fourteen of the top twenty-five—a majority!—reflect the fact that today is the day before Lent. Accordingly, to boost any drive to attract customers, Vicipaedianists might want to keep an eye on the calendar. (Which is why it was a shame, a crying shame, to have missed having Darwin be the subject of this month's featured article, and to have missed having Obama be the subject of January's.) IacobusAmor 16:28, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

"Role-Playing Game"

How do you translate role-playing game, or RPG? FructusMalus 00:01, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but I might start by unpacking the English into 'game of the playing of roles'. For that construction, a famous phrase, annus urbis conditae (year of the founding of the city), then suggests a syntactically parallel solution: ludus partium actarum. ('Role' = partes and 'to act on a stage' = agere.) Maybe somebody will offer an attested rendition? IacobusAmor 01:01, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Besides partes, role is also persona. My suggestion: ludus personarum or ludus personatus. --Neander 03:09, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Macte, amice! If simpler were better, those are indeed better! Also, they're a reminder that idiom can trump syntax. Even if some common syntactically parallel phrases, like 'mind-altering drug' and 'death-defying stunt', could stand to receive a quasi-literal translation (which might have amused Cicero, but still would have been intelligible to him), others, like 'ground-breaking discovery' and 'earth-shattering event' and 'blood-curdling scream' and 'breath-taking ride' and 'heart-warming story' (the last two take no hyphen in American English, but I'm here including a hyphen to emphasize the parallelism) might not. ¶ I'd worry, however, about the possibility that ludus personarum and ludus personatus might wrongly include other games describable as 'masked games' (ludi personati), games whose players actually wear masks; no such games come to mind (though visions of masked balls and trick-or-treating do), but that doesn't allay the worry! IacobusAmor 15:40, 22 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Amicissime, don't worry about possibilities. If you look at the Thesaurus linguae Latinae X,1, fasc.xi s.v. persona (1715, 29 - 1729, 34), you'll see that persona is quite rarely used to refer to the concrete mask (larva). In the majority of cases, persona is used to refer to various kinds of (rhetorical, social) roles, also by Cicero. A RPG can be construed as a rhetorical game. Lexicographically, persona is a heavily polysemous word. Most of the time, however, polysemy isn't harmful at all, because in natural communication, words are used in situational contexts which effectively enough disambiguate threatening possibilities of misunderstanding. I see no real danger in dubbing RPGs as ludi personarum. /// Another tack would of course be to go back to the ancestor of the word role in varius European languages (It. ruolo, &c), which is rollus (attested in 1005) 'list, catalogue'; < rotulus. However, I find this tack problematic. /// Other suggestions? --Neander 03:02, 23 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Oh, don't worry: I'm truly worried by almost nothing, except for rhetorical effect (when, for example, I might point out that in baseball, one person plays the role of pitcher, one plays the role of catcher, one plays the role of hitter, and so on, yet we don't ordinarily call baseball a role-playing game). ¶ Thanks for the reference to the Thesaurus, about whose day-to-day operations I recently read a fascinating article in the TLS: "You say 'putator': The first word on the first day of a Latin lexicographer" (6 February 2009, pp. 14–15). About half the article traces the author's process in producing an entry for the word putator. It notes that over 600 years passed before the noun, basically meaning 'pruner', acquired the sense of '[Christian] believer'. The article in turn led me to Watkins's PIE dictionary, which lists putare as cognate with pavere and pavire, all three verbs reflecting the same PIE root! IacobusAmor 14:37, 23 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support ludus personarum, for the reasons given by Neander. Additionally, it closely matches the modern French jeu de rôle, which also omits the verb 'to play'. Moreover, it enables us to further distinguish the sub-genres of such ludi, such as the ludus personarum tabulae (table-top RPG), ludus personarum actandus (live-action RPG, or LARP), and so on. AlexTiefling 13:56, 23 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Could you and I conspire ...?

Among categories for people who oppose the current state of things, we currently have Categoria:Rerum novarum cupidi (like Catiline) and Categoria:Repugnatores (rebels, resistance fighters). I don't think we have a category yet for people who set off bombs or for people who assassinate politicians (or try to do so). How are we to categorise Ioannes Wilkes Booth? Should the same term apply to Guido Fawkes? Andrew Dalby 13:35, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

How un-latin are categoria:Magnicidae or categoria:Conati Magnicidia?--Xaverius 13:41, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Homicida 'murderer', matricida 'mother-murderer', and parricida 'father-murderer' are classical; suicida 'self-murderer' is sixteenth-century (or so); magnicida would seem to match the pattern. I don't much like it, but people who accept a verbal catastrophe like televisio may have no standing to oppose just about any neologism. ;) IacobusAmor 16:38, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

What is magnicida supposed to mean? (Maybe this ain't my day ... :-) --Neander 23:39, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

(DRAE dixit) magnicidio. (Del lat. magnus, grande, y -cidio). 1. m. Muerte violenta dada a persona muy importante por su cargo o poder. - violent death given to a person who is important due to his power or position.--Xaverius 23:49, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Xaveri. I'm afraid this gets a bit difficult. Unless I'm mistaken, magnicidio is an exclusively Spanish word. As a lemma it exists in the Spanish wiki without iw links. Language-internally, it also kind of competes with atentado and asesinato. It seems that different languages tend to conceptualise murders in different terms (maybe some languages fail to differentiate between murder and (hu)manslaughter). Though magnicida is morphologically quite blameless, do we really need this (political) category? Anyway, magnicida would overlap with sicarius. Hmm, good luck to anyone entering this quagmire of Sprachspiele. :-) --Neander 01:09, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

For the record: I'd never met the Spanish word magnicidio, but I assumed that a Latin word magnicida would refer to the killing of magnates, and that turns out to be approximately what Xaverius meant. IacobusAmor 02:07, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Yes, approximately. Would all persons in this list or here be magnates? The point I'm trying to make is that "magnate" may be a POV term. I don't know. And I'm not worried (but perhaps a bit metaworried... :-) --Neander 02:45, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

One or two of them look nearly nonmagnatelike, but that raises the eternal question of notability, and reminds us that notability is infinitely variable, not an either–or concept. Classical Latin already had sicarius. Do we we have Classical attestations of sicarii who did their deed with something other than a dagger? A sicarius is fundamentally a person (-arius) who uses a sica. Cassell's quotes Cicero in an idiom that's especially salient: accusare aliquem inter sicarios, presumably literally meaning 'to charge someone [with being] among the sicari,' but Cassell's glosses it more generally: 'of murder', not 'of murder-by-dagger'. Do we have Classical attestations that garotters were sicarii? If so, then that would be warrant enough to extend the concept to poisoners, shooters, bombers, etc. IacobusAmor 14:14, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I think we would admit a difference between wanting to kill just anybody, and wanting to kill someone who holds power. Therefore this is a handy word, at all events; all praise to Spanish for verbalizing the concept.

To say that those who hold power are magni is, of course, a metaphor, but does it or does it not betray POV? Isn't it roughly similar to saying that they are notabiles? -- and every Wiki editor has to be able to make that claim about a chosen subject! Andrew Dalby 12:59, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

As far as I understand magnicidio, it normally applies to the assassination of heads state or of government, although for that we have also regicidio just for kings. Killing a president would be a magnicidio, without any POV involved, sticking to the definition of magnicidio.--Xaverius 14:32, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

According to Webster, regicida is assumed New Latin for a king-killer (Anglice: regicide, first attested in the sixteenth century), as is regicidium for the killing. IacobusAmor 15:02, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see, there has never been a folk-category magni, comparable to, say, optimates, proceres, boni, or in late Latin magnates. Vir magnus may have denoted a great king, but also a great orator or even a great friend. Regicidium looks like being a well-defined category, maybe superseding the older folk-category tyrannicidium (maybe a more up-to-date category would now be praesidicidium :-) . But seriously, if we adopt a neologism, what about magnaticidium or procericidium? /// Re sicarius, at least in Italian, sicario is a contract-killer (cf. also [5] and [6]). --Neander 23:52, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

and another thing

And while others are still thinking about that, CeleritasSoni's page Eugenius Victor Debs is one of our first labour leaders. It would be good if others would have a look at the page and consider terminology before any potential categories are created: "trade union", "labour leader", "Industrial Workers of the World", etc. Any discussion could go at Disputatio:Eugenius Victor Debs, I guess. Andrew Dalby 15:14, 24 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Google finds us quickly

This may be no news, but I thought it worth mentioning that in checking the name of Alexandra Bullock I noticed our page is already on Google, just one day after it was created. Andrew Dalby 13:19, 25 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Catharina

I think "Catharina" is the Latin spelling I would expect for this forename. I was going to move our new "Caterina"s to that spelling, but I realise we have sometimes accepted "Catherina" in the past. Which should we prefer? Andrew Dalby 09:58, 27 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

The typography of footnotes

At least on my screen, any line of text that has a superscript footnote in it gets a tiny bit of extra space (leading) above it. Accordingly, the vertical spacing of paragraphs is irregular if they contain footnotes. This (to put it most charitably) is unsuccessful typography. Can any of our resident coders fix it? To avoid it, I've been preferring the customary social-science form of references: in-text parentheses giving surname, year, and (if necessary) page, thus: (Jones 1985:27). That solves the spacing problem, but wikipedians naturally seem enamored of the cachet of footnotes, and so they proliferate, pointlessly duplicating information that's already present in bibliographies. ¶ There's also a question of the style of footnotes & bibliographies. Traditionally, the order by which footnotes present their data (with controlling punctuation) differs from the order by which bibliographies do. IacobusAmor 14:44, 27 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the irregularity of line-spacing is a bad thing.

I don't think I agree with the implication that footnotes are to be deprecated. My feeling is that, in this, a long encyclopedia article differs from an academic paper. Academic papers don't usually offer a guide to further reading and other such general aids: encyclopedia articles, on the other hand, need to do this. Therefore, I think, in an encyclopedia article a bibliography and footnotes can usefully serve different purposes: the footnotes to indicate what are the sources for specific statements in the text; the bibliography to provide general further reading.

And (I guess this humble act of mine may have sparked off your comment!) that was why, in the Wordsworth article, I moved Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses and the history of Hawkshead grammar school from the bibliography to the footnotes (because these two works, unlike the others, don't offer further general information on Wordsworth); but if you think I did wrong, please revert my move: I intentionally did it in a single edit so that it's easily revertible.

I agree very strongly that we should have a style for citations. For what it's worth, a style is suggested at Vicipaedia:Structura paginae, but I don't believe there's ever been any discussion of it. There are two big problems, I think: 1. those who know about these things seldom agree on the best style to adopt; 2. those who write Wikipedia articles aren't always skilled at making bibliographical citations, and they are sometimes copying the details from others equally unskilled. Andrew Dalby 16:00, 27 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Line spacing: I changed the line spacing settings but we will have to wait a few hours until we can see the effect. Style of footnotes: The style of footnotes could by unified by promoting the use of citation templates such as those listed on en:Wikipedia:Citation templates, but that would require transferring at least some of the templates from en.wp to Vicipaedia. --UV 16:37, 28 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

At least on my screen, it's gotten worse: the extra spacing above a line with a footnote in it has remained the same, but now the spacing below that line has shrunk! So now we have a space that's too big, followed by a space that's too small. Incidentally, the "DIS" notice (for fuzzy links) generates the same irregularities. IacobusAmor 04:57, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

I changed the line spacing settings once again. Again, we will have to wait for a few hours until we can see the effect. Please tell me how it looks on your system now – and if it looks bad, please tell me which browser and browser version (e. g. Firefox 3, Opera 8, Internet Explorer 7) you are using. --UV 13:58, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

I think the new line-spacing is definitely an improvement. I believe you have also enlarged the footnote numbers slightly: good idea. Thanks, UV! Andrew Dalby 13:35, 2 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's better now, and it looks fine. Macte! IacobusAmor 15:31, 2 Martii 2009 (UTC)

[On citation style:] Although I have (for years and years) had a personal preferred style, and I currently use it when starting new Vicipaedia pages from scratch, I would happily go along with any consensus and apply it from now on. I don't much like the templates on en:wiki because I find them time-consuming, but I must admit they produce consistent results. Andrew Dalby 12:33, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Quid encyclopaedia est?

Nescio quo spiritu haec vicipaedia aut aliae vicipaediae natae sint, sed video articulos latissimos et encyclopaediae improprios esse, maxime inter vicipaedias aliarum communitatum. Fortasse alii nexus ad continendos articulos tam latos creandi erunt aut apud secundam paginam breve compendium addendum erit, quia quisquis vult biographiam aut principalia facta legere, invenit valde longam informationem. Inde saepe malo vicipaediam latinam consulere, quia continens recolligit, quamquam tamen oportet bibliographiam cum qua singulariter haec themata amplificari possint.--Imtoo 11:34, 28 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

Changes to edittools

Edittools

I made a few modifications to the edittools box today. There should not be much visible change, but if you encounter any problems (in particular: JavaScript errors), please tell me!

Technical background: Previously, the contents of the edittools box (all those special characters that you can click on in order to have them inserted in the editing box) had to be included on every page load of an editing page. This caused unnecessary network traffic and page loading times. Now, the special characters are included not in every single editing page but just in one JavaScript file (MediaWiki:Onlyifediting.js). This JavaScript file needs to be downloaded much less often because it can be stored in browser cache.

(If you currently do not see the edittools, please force-reload an editing page and/or clear your browser cache.) --UV 23:55, 28 Februarii 2009 (UTC)

They've all disappeared from my screen. :( IacobusAmor 16:01, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Please open any editing page (e. g. open this section of the Taberna for editing) and try the following:

1. press Ctrl+F5 or
2. hold down Ctrl and click on Reload or
3. hold down Shift and click on Reload or
4. clear your browser cache.

--UV 21:26, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Dei Graeci contra deos Romanos

In commentario de Polytheismo, nexus "Ares" (Ares) ad paginam discretivam redirigitur, ubi nexum "Martem" (Mars) invenimus. Ares, secundum Cassell's, "corresponds with" Mars, sed nonne sunt hi dei etiam varii? et cur nobis non sunt commentarii distincti? IacobusAmor 05:42, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

I believe the true problem lies with our inability to live through the development of the polytheism in Ancient Greece and Rome. Technically speaking, yes they are distinct deities, but, for more general purposes, Vicipaedia must agree whether or not to redirect Greek gods to Roman counterparts. For most of the purposes on Vicipaedia, I believe that "Ares" should redirect to "Mars" because of the Roman influence here, but I do not take a firm stance in support of this because I recognize the need to have information on the similarities and differences between deities from the two distinct cultures. Because the gods developed over time, they slowly absorbed the qualities of similar local gods as the influence of the culture spread. Also, the Greek gods had an obvious influence on the Roman gods and the two should have similar gods as counterparts. So, after all of this ranting, I think that, unless the specific Greek god(dess) is needed for the article to make sense or the author referenced is Greek and would not have recognized the existence of the Roman counterpart, the links should redirect to Roman deities.

And I think commentators haven't distinguished each because they either never needed to or they saw the deities as interchangeable for their purposes. Sapiens23 18:44, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Since (as Josh or Justin has occasionally pointed out) this is a Latin encyclopedia, not a Roman one, we don't want to privilege Rome over all other cities of the world. In fact, if anything, the other wikis may privilege the Greek versions of these gods: where the English wiki has articles on both versions of similar gods, the Greek one is longer. Its article en:Ares has 18,765 chiliocteti, but its article en:Mars has 12,409. Its article en:Aphrodite has 37,462, but its article en:Venus has 17,123. Its article en:Zeus has 38,430, but its article en:Jupiter (mythology) has 12,409; its articles on the similar Hindu deity, en:Indra, has 22,453, and its article on the similar Etruscan deity, en:Tinia, has 1858. The French, German, and Spanish wikis have separate articles for Ares and Mars. The precedent set by the large wikis is clear: our Ares should have its own article, and the redirect to Mars (deus) should be deleted. Ares and Mars are similar, but not the same. IacobusAmor 14:01, 2 Martii 2009 (UTC)

I'm with Iacobus here. Writing in Latin doesn't enjoin us to a Roman pov. Given the category Mythologia Graeca, it'd be weird to be redirected to a Roman deity. An interpretatio Romana tends to obscure the fact that Greek gods and Roman gods seldom if ever have a shared conceptual history, to say nothing about provenience and etymology. --Neander 21:38, 2 Martii 2009 (UTC)

As a user who is much more a bystander than an actual editor over here at la.wiki, I would have to say that deities from the Roman and the Greek realm should have separate articles. If they were considered to be separate entities back then, so they should also be considered separate. And as IacobusAmor pointed out above, other Wikipedias have separate articles on appropriate gods. --Ouro 07:32, 5 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Anglice: god vs. godhead

Vocabulario Latino est discrimen inter haec verba? God = 'deus' et godhead = 'deitas' ~ 'numen' ~ 'natura dei'? Or what? IacobusAmor 16:07, 1 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Nomen "religio"

In libris qui latine scripti sunt, "religio" non est quod in anglice "religion" appellatur sed indicat metu deum. Estne melius nome "pietate" appellare haec pagina?

Pius est qui solvit vota deis et monstrat timorem deorum aut Dei, tamen religio sunt doctrinae aut rituales fixae secundum praeceptum.--Imtoo 22:36, 2 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Verum ego quoque non existimo "pietatem" esse optimum nomen, tamen ne quidem "religionem", si scribendum est lingua latina pura et sincera.

Religio sec. L&S: "1. Reverence for God (the gods), the fear of God, connected with a careful pondering of divine things; piety, religion, both pure inward piety and that which is manifested in religious rites and ceremonies; hence the rites and ceremonies, as well as the entire system of religion and worship, the res divinae or sacrae, were frequently called religio or religiones (cf. our use of the word religion): qui omnia, quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent, diligenter retractarent et tamquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo, ut elegantes ex elegendo, tamquam a diligendo diligentes, ex intellegendo intellegentes: his enim in verbis omnibus inest vis legendi eadem, quae in religioso, Cic. N. D. 2, 28, 72: religione id est cultu deorum, id. ib. 2, 3, 8: religio est, quae superioris cujusdam naturae (quam divinam vocant).."; Confer Pietas:"I dutiful conduct towards the gods, one's parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc., sense of duty.:I Lit.

A With respect to the gods, piety: est enim pietas justitia adversus deos, Cic. N. D. 1, 41, 115; 1, 2, 3; cf.: aequitas tripartita dicitur esse; una ad superos deos, altera ad manes, tertia ad homines pertinere. Prima pietas, secunda sanctitas, tertia justitia aut aequitas nominatur, id. Top. 23, 90: pietas adversus deos, id. Fin. 3, 22, 73: deos placatos pietas efficiet et sanctitas, id. Off. 2, 3, 11; id. Rep. 1, 2, 2: senex fretus pietate deum, Naev. B. Punic. 3, 1; Enn. ap. Non. 160, 2 (Trag. v. 369 Vahl.): nec pietas ulla est, velatum saepe videri Vortier ad lapidem atque omnes accedere ad aras, etc., that is not piety, to incline with veiled head to the marble, etc., Lucr. 5, 1198. — 2 Conscientiousness, scrupulousness, Ov. F. 6, 607. — So of love and duty towards God (eccl. Lat.; freq.), Vulg. 2 Macc. 3, 1; id. 2 Pet. 1, 6. — Plur., Vulg. 2 Pet. 3, 11. —

B With respect to one's parents, children, relatives, country, benefactors, etc., duty, dutifulness, affection, love, loyalty, patriotism, gratitude, etc.: Pa. Salve, mi pater insperate. Tr. Volup est, quom istuc ex pietate vestrā nobis contigit, Plaut. Rud. 4, 4, 132: patrem tuom si percoles per pietatem, dutifully, id. Trin. 2, 2, 3: justitia erga deos religio, erga parentes pietas nominatur, Cic. P"

Ergo, Religio Latine melius dicit Religion quam pietas, ut dixit Cicero ipse.--Rafaelgarcia 20:57, 3 Martii 2009 (UTC)