User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 32

2022

Happy New Year ! Are you still an administrator from Wikipedia? CFDG123 (talk) 14:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

No, not for several years now. — kwami (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I still worry, at Wiktionnaire, could you please ask Jamain that what should they do with our school IP 205.237.30.142 which is block forever? CFDG123 (talk) 19:05, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

At the bottom of this page, there's "problème" section, could you please leave a message there? CFDG123 (talk) 19:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

You've been blocked as a sock puppet, so this is no longer just a matter of your school's IP being blocked fro vandalism. I don't know the reasons you were blocked and am not going to second-guess them, so I suggest that you contact the blocking or another admin directly. You should be able to email them, either from an IP or from a new account. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Shogi variants

The Japanese Chu Shogi Association (JCSA) has a table detailing the names and movements of all the pieces in Dai, Tenjiku, Dai Dai, Maka Dai Dai, and Tai here. The promotion-only pieces are on the next page.

If I understand it correctly, promotion in Tai is often not described, and one assumes that it is the same as in smaller variants (登場するが詳細不明で、先に登場する将棋での成り駒に準ずるものと思われる。) The problem that they don't seem to mention, though, is that Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai often have the same pieces promote differently, so it is not certain which should be followed.

For pieces that first appear in Tai, it is mentioned explicitly that they do not promote there, which directly contradicts Japanese Wikipedia and agrees with the English sources. On the other hand, for pieces that only appear in Maka Dai Dai and Tai, not describing the Tai promotion seems to imply that it must be as in Maka Dai Dai (i.e. Coiled Serpent, Reclining Dragon, etc.), and so those should become "free" pieces as in Maka Dai Dai rather than not promoting at all. That said, some promotions don't match Japanese Wikipedia or the English sources: in Maka Dai Dai, we have Phoenix and Kirin promote to Golden Bird and Great Dragon as in Dai Dai, but according to JCSA they become Queen and Lion as in Chu.

I'd like to eventually go through this and check it against our diagrams to see if the moves match. If I understand correctly, a lot of them don't, though surely you can read Japanese better than me. :D But in some cases the moves listed do seem corrupt and they say so (e.g. Southern Barbarian in Dai Dai). And also, maybe it should be noted that the games are now also pretty well-known in the English rules (even if sometimes they do not accord with the historical sources), and for Dai Dai, Maka Dai Dai, and Tai, I don't think it makes that much of a difference if some of the weak step movers and range movers have changed moves when it's really the power pieces that run the show. If realistically the standard way to play them now has become the English rules, with some adaptations such as adopting the Japanese Wikipedia version of the Lion Dog as The Chess Variant Pages does, then I guess it makes sense to describe the games this way as the present step in their evolution. After all, these do not agree even with the JCSA's rules for Chu, regarding a minor point in the Lion-trading rules. Double sharp (talk) 12:32, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps this Tai Shogi set could've answered the question. On the other hand, Showa-era rules for Chu Shogi don't completely match the known historical practice on some minutiae about promotion and Lion-trading. Double sharp (talk) 12:37, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Gosh, there's a disagreement as early as Dai: the Evil Wolf is said on this page to move as Silver General. Though Japanese Wikipedia also says that's so in the SZ and SSZ: 『象戯図式』および元禄九年版『諸象戯図式』では、斜め四方と前方に動けるとしている。これは銀将と同じ動きである。I looked a little bit into Dai Dai, and the first few (e.g. Left and Right Chariots) do seem to follow some of the footnote-variants in jawiki about what the Edo-era sources read. But well, if the Japanese Wikipedia isn't following those, and neither are the English sources, then I'm not sure if the Edo-era sources should be taken as the "correct description" if that's not how anyone is actually playing the game, insofar as that ever happens. I mean, Chess is not Shatranj either. :D Double sharp (talk) 12:44, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Because these aren't played much if at all, and then mostly out of curiosity, IMO we should reconstruct the original play as closely as possible. I suspect that's what most people will be interested in. For a lot we'll need to say "A says X and B says Y" and let the reader work it out. We don't need to decide for them, just give them the info to decide for themselves. That leaves which diagrams to favor, but we can have more than one if needed (and can't just refer them to another article), and IMO we should show oddities even if that's not what we conclude is historical or current practice. If only so we don't add to the confusion. For promotions, where we give a list of pieces and the pieces they promote to, IMO we should have multiple columns for the different sources. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I admit that the reason I referred the readers of our Tai article to our Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai articles was laziness. A couple of days ago, I'd gone through the Japanese Wikipedia articles on Dai Dai pieces and translated in the footnotes detailing what the SZ, SSZ, and SRZ say, and I didn't feel like doing another such campaign that soon. :) But sure, I guess we should indeed copy them back in.

That said, are we sure Japanese Wikipedia is a reliable source, when it is not quoting the Edo-era sources? There's some pieces (e.g. Free Wolf in Maka Dai Dai) where it says that the SZ and SSZ show it one way, the SRZ shows it another way, and then it follows none of them. In that particular case I put the Japanese Wikipedia version as the diagram and left the others to the notes, but only because that is how The Chess Variant Pages (CVP) has it.

Anyway, George Hodges (TSA) claims that the rules did change and that he based his presentation of Dai Dai on the Shogi Zushiki. Apparently, by the time of the last decade of the 17th century, these games attracted enough interest that there was a desire to standardise the rules already, including making sure that pieces appearing in multiple games had the same move in each (which is so in the SZ and SSZ, but not the SRZ). This does explain why the SRZ often differs from the other sources. OTOH sometimes the piece move in the SZ and SSZ also seems wrong: it seems interesting that the JCSA proposes to emend the Southern Barbarian in Dai Dai in the same way TSA did (making it a mirror image of the Northern Barbarian). I presume TSA was in touch with Japanese experts too, so it seems plausible that there was some more of this desire to standardise the rules for modern play. Though I'll need to research if that's the case.

Presumably most people playing it are either doing it using the equipment purchased from TSA (where else produces them affordably?) or via computer (but those also usually follow TSA, except for some of the power pieces e.g. Lion Dog). So I guess the way I did it for Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai is at least defensible: putting the Western sources' move in the main body, but a whole lot of footnotes going "X says this, Y says that, Z contradicts itself, blah blah". (Though I prioritised CVP over TSA when they differ, since that's written by someone who has been programming engines for some of these variants and is more recent.) For Tenjiku, there appears to be a developing consensus against the TSA rules in some respects, so I was happier with following the original sources there. As for Wa, Fairbairn says that the original sources differ profoundly in moves, but it seems that modern players do it one way consistently, so I guess it's fine that we only show it that way (I also don't know where to find the alternative moves, since he does not mention them). Double sharp (talk) 08:51, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I suspected that the rules might've changed over time, not just that later authors either caught errors or misread their sources. We don't have enough attestation to say much about that, though, so probably all we can do is report the discrepancies between sources.

I have no idea if WP-ja is reliable. I had some minimal contact years ago, but don't remember anything about it. The main reason I relied so heavily on WP-ja is that I didn't have much else to go on, and I didn't trust the Western sources to interpret the sources correctly. — kwami (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The Fairbairn article has a byline from Hodges as editor, that they were cooperating with one Maruo Manabu and the "Kyoto University Shogi History book". So I presume these Japanese scholars were helping them to decipher the moves.

In fact, I just realised that Fairbairn does show the alternative moves for Wa in the SZ, and says that these are different from what TSA was proposing in 1980. He also mentions In Issue No. 25 we advertised Wa Shogi sets and stated that the game was played with drops. Current research seems to indicate that this is not the case and although the evidence for this is far from overwhelming, TSA now takes the official view that the game is indeed played without drops. A new leaflet has been prepared and the sets are now available with that new leaflet. So I guess TSA was not shy of making "official" decisions to get people to play by a single set of rules, though I don't know the Japanese scholars they worked with felt about that decision. And he also wrote The published rules of Dai Shogi and the larger games that appeared in The Great Shogi games booklet can now regrettably only be seen as playable versions of these games and as mentioned in the historical section above it seems unlikely that hard and fast rules can be established for these variants as it would appear that they were never played at all! But perhaps the rules from Hodges' 2002 document Ten Shogi Variants were changed from that, since before 1980 they had some different promotions in Dai, too. Double sharp (talk) 09:29, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I forget. Is there a reason we don't want the diagonal lines to be straight 45 degrees? — kwami (talk) 22:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Not that I can think of, but I don't really feel like changing it throughout. :D Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I can change them easily enough, but didn't want to mess up what you were doing. — kwami (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Please do go ahead if you want to. :) I made all the diagrams for the games I wanted to, since apparently there's still a great amount of confusion over whether or not the very names of the pieces are correct in Taikyoku, let alone the moves. Though it's funny that Hodges raises the argument that many pieces known up to Tai have a different move in Taikyoku as a reason why the moves are likely to be suspect, when actually in the SRZ there is no such consistency between pieces having the same name in different games. That only seems to have come later. :D

I do find it likely that the standardisation must have come with people actually playing the games, though. Tai would be massively horrible to learn at once. But if the pieces are the same in each game, then it seems more reasonable. We can assume that most shogi fans then were familiar with Chu, and Dai only adds a few weak steppers to that. To this Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai are both extensions in slightly different directions, and neither on its own seems too overwhelming a burden on the memory. But if you already know how to play Dai, Dai Dai, and Maka Dai Dai, then you basically already know how to play Tai. It becomes a logical ladder. Double sharp (talk) 09:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

That's why I thought they had a lot of time on their hands. Like combining the rules of different sports because the existing ones aren't enough to take up your time. — kwami (talk) 09:42, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Hodges agrees with you on that. :) Though I'm not sure if this argues for any particular set of rules for Tai. It seems to me that it will take forever regardless of which set of rules you adopt. :) Double sharp (talk) 10:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

BTW, there was recently a modern Japanese attempt to revive Maka Dai Dai, but with yet another different set of rules. Not sure what became of it, since the site seems to have disappeared off the Internet. Double sharp (talk) 09:42, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi

I want you to know that I've submitted a grant proposal to translate and proofread essential phrases from English to Twi on translatewiki.net I will be very happy if you have feedback on the application, and if you want to endorse it!. Thank you -- Robertjamal12 (talk) 08:49, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Robert! I'm not familiar w translatewiki, but I don't see any red flags in your application and it looks like you have universal support. — kwami (talk) 06:08, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Clearing the neighbourhood

Since it seems that sub-brown dwarfs can form even as low as 1 Jupiter mass, I wonder how clearing the neighbourhood will work for such systems. I don't think we want planet Pan if we look at the Saturnian system, but it seems to "clear the neighbourhood" pretty well by carving out a clear channel in the rings. :D Double sharp (talk) 08:00, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

You mean if we count them as stars so their satellites are planets? — kwami (talk) 08:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes. (Not that I'd do it myself.) Double sharp (talk) 08:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

A good definition is adjusted to reflect reality, or else the tail wags the dog. If the objects planetologists are interested in turn out not to be in HE (e.g. Mercury, Triton, Eris, etc), then I suspect that the def will change so that they can continue to be called planets. Either that or they'll just go with a Venn-diagramish prototype approach that 'a planet is an object that shares multiple features with geologically active bodies like the Earth'. After all, astronomers continue to study planets even though the name of their occupation is the study of 'stars' and planets are no longer considered stars.

I came across an amusing claim by an astrologer that horoscopes needed to be based on the fixed stars because "astrology" meant the study of the stars, not the planets. (I need a tail-wagging-the-dog emoji.) — kwami (talk) 08:16, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, this was a joke. :) Although since Margot and Levison have asserted that the roundness criterion in the IAU definition is redundant, it may yet be useful as a counterexample that leads to adjusting things. :D

Either that, or there won't be a definition at all, and it'll just be "I know it when I see it", with borderline cases being included or excluded according to what the context makes more plausible. After all, the chemists seem to get on fine without explicitly defining "metal", and clearly there are fuzzy cases there too (arsenic, antimony, etc.) just as there are in a planetary taxonomy (Pallas, Vesta, etc.). Double sharp (talk) 08:33, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

In astronomy, oxygen is a metal. Doesn't seem to do any harm. — kwami (talk) 08:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

That's more or less how I think about the definitions. When thinking about dynamics, it makes sense to say Ceres isn't a planet. When thinking about geophysics, it makes sense to say that it is one. Similarly, when thinking about chemistry, it makes sense to say oxygen isn't a metal. When thinking about astronomy, it makes sense to say that it is one, to use the term to mean "anything above helium". Each one for its own field. But even more than that, fuzziness doesn't even seem to matter: geophysics can certainly be done even if there are lots of borderline objects, and so can chemistry with a few borderline metalloids. And, anyway, I suspect that the only reason why the dynamical criterion doesn't look fuzzy at the moment is that we haven't seen weird enough exoplanets yet. :) Double sharp (talk) 08:49, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Definitely. The dynamic def happens to work for us, but I suspect that's coincidental. But the point of this mess was to guide a bureaucratic decision on naming Eris. Like you said, the IAU could've simply said the MPC gets to approve all names in the SS, or could've used their magnitude-1 criterion for a joint committee without defining anything. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Cancellation symbols

I see no reason why you shouldn't put something about these on the philately page, although a fuller note should probably appear under postal history, which cancallations are part of.Sbishop (talk) 07:32, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Vesta

Metzger claims on his blog that "over a Hubble time it will relax to roundness again according to some estimates"; do you have any idea what source there might be for this? (I don't see him giving one.) Double sharp (talk) 08:05, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

This is the first I've heard anything like that. I've asked.

I like his img comparing the sizes of Jupiter, Proxima and Sol. I had no idea Proxima was so tiny. What must its planets be like? We need s.t. like that. — kwami (talk) 08:58, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

We know some of its planets already: it seems to have a roughly Earth-sized terrestrial planet in the habitable zone, and a mini-Neptune further out. Interestingly with semi-major axes in the ratio of approximately our own Earth and Neptune. :) Double sharp (talk) 09:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

But presumably those are its giants. Does it also have Vesta-sized bodies that have cleared their zones? — kwami (talk) 09:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Hey, quite plausible! If I plug the numbers into Margot's Π, Vesta would clear its orbit around Proxima even if it were 2.36 AU away, like it is from the Sun. Very slowly and as a borderline case (Π = (4.33E-5) * 0.123 ^ (-5/2) * 2.36^(-9/8) * 807 ≈ 2.5, since M_Vesta ≈ 4.33E-5 M_Earth and M_Proxima ≈ 0.123 M_Sun) if we take the k value for a main-sequence lifetime of 10 billion years, but Proxima's main-sequence lifetime should be about 400 times longer than that. And presumably, Proxima's rocky asteroids will mostly be a lot closer in than that. So yes, I'd expect there to be dynamically dominant objects around Proxima that aren't even large enough to be gravitationally rounded. :) Double sharp (talk) 09:54, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

So if {A and B} are "planets", and {A but not B} are "dwarf planets", what are {not A but B}? — kwami (talk) 10:05, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. Sometimes {A and B} are called "major planets" specifically, and apparently "minor planets" are now supposed to be synonymous with "small Solar System body" i.e. {not A} (well, we can generalise to other star systems). (Never mind that Ceres and Pluto have minor planet numbers, I guess.) So, maybe {not A but B} should be "major minor planets"? Following the musicians we might call them dominant planets. :D Double sharp (talk) 10:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Minor planets include dwarfs but not comets, SSSBs include comets but not dwarfs. — kwami (talk) 10:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Then apparently the IAU is a bit confused: their wording surely suggests that the two are now supposed to be synonyms. The term "minor planet" may still be used. But generally the term small Solar System body will be preferred. The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology agrees that they're supposedly synonyms, though their definition mentions that "minor planet" historically was more a synonym for "asteroid" and that SSSB includes comets. OTOH, the dwarfs are in the MPC catalogue, but not the comets, as you have it. Double sharp (talk) 10:33, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

That one is preferred over the other doesn't mean that they're synonyms. 'Minor planet' was no more defined than 'planet' had been, and 'comet' was fuzzy; the terms that are defined are 'planet', 'dwarf planet' and SSSB. The defined terms are preferred over the undefined terms, though the latter may still be used. — kwami (talk) 10:51, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, so I suppose it's the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology that's confused instead by calling them synonyms. :)

But anyway, this does prove that the IAU definition doesn't really work for either thing. In our Solar System, all dynamically dominant bodies are indeed rounded, but this may not be the case everywhere else. It'd probably be better off if it simply dropped the rounding requirement: then it'd be a consistent dynamical definition and could immediately be applied everywhere. (Sure, asteroid-like "planets" around Proxima strain the layman's idea of what a planet is just as much as swarms and satellites, but as dynamically dominant objects I'd think they'd still interest dynamicists.) Or it could turn itself into a geophysical definition, and just agree that it'll be fuzzy just like the chemist's idea of "metal". Double sharp (talk) 11:04, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Or better yet not define anything, give the MPC authority to name all bodies (or a joint committee to name bodies with H < +1), and let the field work itself out. Which is what's going to happen anyway.

I don't know if they came up with SSSB to conflate MP and comet, which were getting ambiguous, or if that was also in the air. — kwami (talk) 11:08, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

"Not define anything" is actually exactly what the chemists did for "metal". It's not defined in the IUPAC Gold Book, and the sky has not fallen down. :) Double sharp (talk) 11:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Huh, on Google Scholar there are still some people calling Vesta a DP post-Dawn. Definitely a minority, though. Can't see anyone calling Pallas a DP now. Double sharp (talk) 12:20, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Ref's a bit dated: Stern & Levison (2002) — kwami (talk) 12:28, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah, OK. That supports the Metzger statement I mentioned. (Seems Pallas also qualifies by this measure.)

This measure seems a little bit optimistic for KBOs, by current knowledge. So maybe the curve in Fig. 1 is too low, in which case Pallas and Vesta might not clear the borderline after all.

Though I can't help noticing that Mimas would be below the curve even as it's drawn. I mean, we all know why, but I guess it illustrates the point about 400km never having been a particularly good guess for the threshold needed for KBOs to become round in the first place, because of tidal heating that giant-planet satellites experience. (Not to mention situation of colder Proteus and Miranda; the latter looks very broken. And also the fact that we have only four data points between 396km and 1000km even among those satellites: the next larger moon after Enceladus is already Tethys, which is about twice the radius.) Double sharp (talk) 13:09, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Early modern satellite planets

I wanted to include Titania and Oberon on that list at Planet, since they're the last that were actually called "secondary planets" in their discovery papers, but I can't actually find any ref for them being numbered I and II between 1787 and 1797 (when Herschel reported four more nonexistent satellites, thus messing up the numbering). Lassell vacillated between the I-II and II-IV numberings, until finally he fixed them as III-IV when he found Ariel and Umbriel; but that's way past any primary-source use of "satellite planet"/"secondary planet" for a new discovery.

That said, I wonder why Herschel said "secondary planet" when talking about Titania and Oberon, but not when talking about Mimas and Enceladus just two years later. I don't think it's likely that the language changed that fast. Given that he only says "secondary planet" once in the discovery paper for Titania and Oberon, perhaps it was just a rhetorical flourish. Or maybe it was considered common knowledge that satellites were planets, so he didn't feel the need to say it two years later. Who knows. Double sharp (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Although Herschel does call Titania "the first satellite" and Oberon "the second satellite" in 1788, without Roman numerals. Maybe good enough. Double sharp (talk) 20:58, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Cassini also spells it out in 1686: "the first satellite" (Tethys) rather than "Saturn I". So I suppose the short-forms might be equivalent, though I'm not sure how anachronistic they actually are. Certainly, I suspect "Neptune I" for Triton can't have been used much until there was a "Neptune II": IIRC it was mostly just called "the satellite of Neptune". Double sharp (talk) 21:04, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about the roman numerals, as long as we ID which is which. After all, several are likely to be anachronistic even in RS's. Or we could spell them out as 'first' and 'second' if you like, though that could get a bit bulky in a table.

It could be that Herschel changed his conception of the SS between Titania/Oberon and Mimas/Enceladus. But likely he just happened to not use the words. It's not like he was making a point by calling them "planets", or that he needed to get that on the record. Still, best IMO we stick to ones that were actually called planets and remain agnostic about the rest. — kwami (talk) 21:30, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, let's just leave it as Roman numerals to avoid bulk. And I agree with you on Herschel: it's likely he didn't feel he was making any point by calling or not calling them "planets", but in order to not read people's minds, best to stick to what he actually wrote. Double sharp (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Skyerise (talk) 21:12, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Copyvio

You can't copy the table out of Laycock's book into the table. That would be a copyvio. Skyerise (talk) 05:31, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Is this intentional disruption, because you're not getting 100% your own way (even though I've accepted that many of your corrections are an improvement), or do you really not know what copyright is? — kwami (talk) 05:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, so you're spuriously claiming you're reverting copyright violations as a way to get around 3RR. Well, I can claim to be reverting vandalism. You're the one making the changes, so it's you who needs to justify them when challenged. — kwami (talk) 05:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

I know that you can refer to what in the table, discuss it, etc. I also know that if you copy his entire pronunciation guide as a whole, you are violating his copyright. Shall I take it to the copyvio page to confirm that? Skyerise (talk) 05:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Go ahead. It's standard practice for us to copy phonological and orthographic tables from sources. Never been a problem before.

I've reverted the article to where it was before this started. I actually agree with the majority of your changes, including where you've corrected me, but a few are POV-pushing and aren't going to fly.

BTW, if you read RS, you'll see that we consider the expertise of the author. We don't go in chronological order. For linguistic claims, a RS would be a linguist. Not a magician. They might be a RS for the modern magical interpretations, which the linguist wouldn't be. For the historical meaning, a RS would be a historian. Etc. — kwami (talk) 05:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Your copyvio rates 85% similarity. Not gonna fly. Skyerise (talk) 05:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't matter. Lists of facts are not copyrightable. Many of our info boxes are even closer than that to their sources. Take it to copyvio if you like. — kwami (talk) 05:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but that depends on them actually being facts rather than theories. Laycock's is a theory, therefore the table is a copyrightable expression of that theory. I clearly know more about both linguistics and copyright than you do. Skyerise (talk) 06:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

:) — kwami (talk) 21:56, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

In case you haven't seen it

The Cambridge Planetary Science volume on Jupiter is fully available online. There's a lot of other stuff on the site it's on, too. :) Double sharp (talk) 23:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

(And on p.287 Io is called a "planet" in the figures. I guess it really is common.) Double sharp (talk) 23:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Cool!

I wonder if in that figure that's taken over from the source? In the text they distinguish planet from satellite. — kwami (talk) 01:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Skyerise (talk) 20:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

You really don't get it, do you? — kwami (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I do. You're gaming the system. And you're a gaslighter. And you're up for 72 hours I think. Skyerise (talk) 20:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Tagging direct quotes as "failed verification" is gaming the system. Falsely claiming copyvio to avoid 3RR is gaming the system. Claiming that scientists need to interview angels or they're not RS's is, well, that might be clinically insane. Either way, your edit-warring and failure to follow WP guidelines in not acceptable. — kwami (talk) 20:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Skyerise (talk) 21:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

ee:Xexe

Thanks for creating this page on the Ewe Wikipedia. There is only a picture here and I am not sure why it is labelled as 'xexe' The page is linked to Earth on the English Wikipedia. So far as I am aware, earth is not xexe in Ewe. It is anyigba. Am I mistaken?--Natsubee (talk) 01:12, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Natsubee: You may be right. I was going off Jacques Rongier's Dictionnaire français–éwé, where for 'terre' they have ànyí, ànyígbá for the sense of 'matière, pays' (e.g. 'it rained a lot; the earth (ànyígbá) is saturated with water') and xéxé, xéxémè for the sense of 'monde' (e.g. 'in our day, one can easily circumnavigate the Earth (xéxé)').

But according to the reverse index, xéxé is 'dehors, terre' and xéxémè is 'monde, terre, universe, temps'. Ànyígbá is 'terrain, terre, sol, parcelle, territoire, zone, pays, nation, continent,' and ànyígbá ƒé nɔ̀nɔ̀mè is 'globe terrestre'.

— kwami (talk) 01:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

If Europa is a terrestrial world, then maybe Eris should also be one?

Its density (~2.5 g/cm³) seems to be high enough to indicate that it must be mostly rocky. Double sharp (talk) 15:38, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

80% Europa's density. Seems reasonable, esp. if it's rock w an ice shell. But at those temps it might be ice mixed w rock, a bit rockier than Ceres at 72% Europa's density. I'd be surprised if we could fine a ref. — kwami (talk) 15:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Best I could find was that article saying it's mostly rocky and that Planetary Society article: There is a lot of overlap between terrestrial and icy worlds. Some that are usually thought of as icy worlds, like Eris and Europa, are actually mostly rock and metal with only a thin veneer of ice and/or water on top. Though this is also an article that classes Europa as icy, so doesn't prove much.

I suspect Eris has active cryovolcanism, because of its Enceladus-like albedo. Its size and density means it should have enough fission decay to allow that, and tidal forces from Dysnomia (with a non-zero eccentricity, and with apparently Eris close to but not quite tidally locked) could quite reasonably be enough for activity. Pity we probably won't get to see it for a long while. Double sharp (talk) 19:01, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Interesting. Hopefully the Webb can get a clearer picture.

I wonder if Dys ever got into HE from tidal damping or the heat of its formation. Phoebe suggests that a lot of KBOs might be in equilibrium shapes, if they're far enough out to not have been disrupted by subsequent impacts. But then Grundy et al. suggest most aren't. Given that we're not going to have spacecraft any time soon, I really hope the Webb can dedicate some real time to this, even if it's pretty far down its list of priorities. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, we're probably in luck. The Webb's website mentions Eris: Webb will observe Mars and the giant planets, minor planets like Pluto and Eris - and even the small bodies in our solar system: asteroids, comets, and Kuiper Belt Objects. That said, might not see much.

Yes, Phoebe vs Salacia is striking. OTOH Phoebe was likely captured early on when the realm of the giant planets was much more active; perhaps Grundy could also be right, and the KBOs that never got hurled inward simply never got the kicks that Phoebe did? (In that case we annoyingly can't really find much else to compare it with since no other "normal" irregular satellites are that big.) On yet another hand, Phoebe is quite dark, suggesting that maybe albedo is not as good as a proxy as Grundy et al. have it. Quaoar and Gonggong, after all, are not particularly bright, but they are so large that I can't believe they could fail to be solid. (Or could they? Tethys is about the size of Quaoar, and its density is so super-low that it could have significant porosity even if we assume it's almost all ice.)

I really couldn't say for Dysnomia. Its size is a thermal measurement, and judging from the history of measurements for Varuna, this might be a few hundreds of kilometres off either way. Since the current size corresponds to a Salacia-like albedo, I'd find it less surprising if it was smaller, but who really knows at this point.

I think this comment is a massive ramble that says nothing but "we need more than just Pluto-Charon as a sample of intact trans-Neptunian dwarfs to study". BTW, CNSA has some plans for Quaoar, so at least we might get a slightly bigger sample examined up close even if it's not Eris or Haumea. Double sharp (talk) 00:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Quaoar would be nice. But probably 50 proposals for every one that flies, so we'll see! — kwami (talk) 00:40, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

other astrological Haumea and Makemake symbols

Here (1:30). Uses circle+down-arrow for Eris. Double sharp (talk) 13:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. That would seem to explain where the alt Makemake and Haumea glyphs come from, then. I've only seen the alt Makemake in actual use once (I think Solar Fire uses it), and the other only in decorative use. Do you think Seltzer came up with the Eris arrow glyph, then? That's what it sounds like.

What of recent use of the PL monogram? I know NASA had it up in a list of symbols, but it would be nice to cite actual astronomical use. — kwami (talk) 13:42, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I remember seeing it in Physics and Chemistry of the Solar System (p. 64), but that's 2004. Double sharp (talk) 15:36, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Pre-DP, but that might work. Contrasts the monogram in a list of planets vs the other symbol in list of DPs. Also, I like the ang.mom. numbers. 33% Saturn vs 55% Jupiter, makes sense of the resonance pulled Jupiter out of the inner SS. — kwami (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Incidentally, I noticed that the Chen+Kipping source I mentioned for the planetary symbols does not use a symbol for Pluto even though Pluto is plotted in the chart. Luna is in the same situation. Though maybe that was for consistency with the other DPs and moons plotted (Eris; Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Rhea, Titan, Titania, Oberon, Triton). Double sharp (talk) 10:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I was going to ask where that was. Thanks. — kwami (talk) 21:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Hussmann et al. 2006 paper on subsurface oceans

I like the paper a lot, but shouldn't we de-emphasise its conclusions a bit because of its age? They're currently in a lot of pages like Rhea, Ariel, Orcus, Planetary-mass moon, etc. It models that subsurface oceans could exist today on Sedna and Orcus because of radiogenic heating, but only because it was assumed then that Orcus had a ~1600 km diameter (they cite this 2004 study). We now know that it's more like just over half that. Given that they noted that Quaoar at then-assumed ~1300 km could not support one, it seems to me that only Haumea, Makemake (not covered in this study), and Eris still are plausible candidates under this model.

The other thing is that while their model suggests the possibility of a subsurface ocean for Rhea, it seems like later measurements suggest that Rhea's interior is homogeneous, and so there would not be one. Also, the model does not account for tidal heating on bodies like Enceladus, where it would be important, and they admit that. Presumably this is why Dione, although too small for this model, may still have one today; and also why objects like Miranda and Ariel are considered today as candidates (because they may have been in resonance recently enough to still have the subsurface ocean today). Admittedly this wouldn't be much of a factor for the TNOs.

Finally the study also seems to be a bit optimistic about freezing-point depression from ammonia, according to this later 2016 review (maller bodies like Charon or Rhea have too little radiogenic heat to maintain an ocean at present, unless very severe melting-point depression is invoked [Hussmann et al., 2006].) Rhea we now know probably doesn't have an ocean, as I just said, and there's some evidence that Charon's froze long ago. Double sharp (talk) 15:50, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. The Dawn, Cassini and NH missions all informed us, so ideally we'd want something after ppl'd had time to digest their data. — kwami (talk) 18:40, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I've made some edits. Re Dawn, it still seems disputed if Ceres actually still has an ocean today. Though now there's a paper claiming that Mimas(!) might be an ocean world too, which would certainly be a surprise to current understanding. Double sharp (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Jovian irregulars

It seems CNSA might grant my wish after all: JCO and JSO would study the size, mass, and composition of Jupiter’s irregular satellites—those captured by Jupiter rather than formed in orbit, and often in distant, elliptical and even retrograde orbits—complementing science conducted by NASA’s Europa Clipper and Lucy missions, as well as the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission. Then the concepts diverge, with JCO going to Callisto and JSO to Io and then Sol-Jupiter L1. Well, with proposals like this and the Quaoar one, it seems like no matter what flies, it'll be really cool. :D Double sharp (talk) 19:27, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

:) — kwami (talk) 23:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

"Template:Aleph" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Template:Aleph and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 4#Template:Aleph until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 08:55, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Skyerise (talk) 21:36, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I've asked you not to post on my talk page

That includes 3RR notices when there are not 3 reverts in the last 24 hours. That's intentional bullying and harassment. If you can't count three reverts, you are misusing the warning. Skyerise (talk) 04:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

If you start an edit-war, I will warn you on your talk page. That's because you will game the system any way you can, and I suspect that if I didn't post a 3RR warning, then you would argue that you're allowed to edit-war because you didn't get a warning. If you want a collegial atmosphere, then start editing in good faith.

BTW, it is acceptable on WP to make trivial changes within quotations, such as initial capitalization and final periods <-> commas. Or at least it was last time I checked. — kwami (talk) 05:01, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Hypocrite. You start edit-warring all the time, multiple reverts in rapid succession. If you can, so can I. If you push it to and sometimes past, so can I. Deal with it. But don't post another 3RR warning on my page ever again. If you want to report me, it's sufficient to link the first one you ever posted. You don't warn people over and over again. And I don't give a flying eff about your warnings. I know how to count. Skyerise (talk) 05:07, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

So you're gaming the system by counting BOLD violations. That won't prevent you from being blocked under 3RR. — kwami (talk) 05:10, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Any editor may ask another not to post on their talk page - even optional warnings aren't allowed and are considered WP:HARASSMENT. You're gaming the system by giving harassing warnings at one revert. Stop harassing me on my talk page. I understand 3RR and I don't need more warnings from you. It's an optional warning that you are using to harass. The only required notices are when you actually file a report. I know this is the case and I've had it enforced before. Just stop. Skyerise (talk) 05:13, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

P.S. I take your comment as a confession; you do the same damn thing - push your reverts right up to the line. But nobody else is allowed to act just like you. I bet you hate mirrors too. You're the best teacher ever! I've learned more ways of gaming the system by watching your actions than from any other editor. Superb gamer! Skyerise (talk) 05:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

So, I've asked you not to post on my talk page any more, but you're still allowed to because ... you're you? You've asked me not to post on your talk page any more, so I'm not allowed to because ... I'm not you? Help me with the logic here. — kwami (talk) 05:21, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

You didn't stop. Every time you post an unnecessary 3RR warning, you are giving me permission to post on your talk page in response. Skyerise (talk) 05:26, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

HE for Titan

From a 2019 paper: The new solution likewise confirms that, despite Titan's considerable excess flattening, its interior has relaxed to a state compatible with hydrostatic equilibrium with a moment of inertia factor close to 0.341, though the presence of such significant non-hydrostatic topography is a reminder that hydrostatic equilibrium is not guaranteed, precluding a definitive determination of the moment of inertia. So, shape is consistent with HE, but it depends on the internal structure. More or less like Callisto. (Which raises the distinct possibility that under the geophysical definition read strictly, Ganymede could end up standing in splendid isolation as the only actual satellite planet. But obviously that's not the intended reading.) Double sharp (talk) 16:29, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

An amusing idea about "clearing the neighbourhood"

Since you mentioned that Proxima b and c are probably its "giants", and I ran the numbers and found that indeed you could have something orbiting Proxima that would clear its orbit but still not be big enough to be round:

Well, maybe we could do a similar take on the ring-moon systems of our neighbours. Well, Jupiter's "inner planets" are clearly the Amalthea group, with "asteroid belts" (rings) between them. Further out are its four "giant planets": the Galilean moons. Then it has an "Oort cloud" of irregular satellites. (Which is indeed pretty much a spherical cloud that doesn't care about being in the plane of the system at all!) Similar takes for Saturn and Uranus: we even have "Kirkwood gaps" in Saturn's rings, caused by Mimas as "Saturn's rather diminutive Jupiter". Neptune clearly stands as a warning to stars trying to capture rogue giant planets. :D

Yeah, I often wondered how you could possibly give a count of moons for Saturn. Then they came up with the term 'moonlet' for those who haven't cleared their neighborhood, but only use it for the innermost system. All natural categories leak. — kwami (talk) 00:25, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Aren't Methone and Aegaeon then moonlets? Come to think of it, is there any sane argument for calling Aegaeon a moon and even giving it a permanent number, but not just about every large ring particle further in?

Extra thought: Nereid must then be Neptune's "Planet Nine"! :D Double sharp (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Dunno. How do you define a "moonlet"? AFAIK they only used the term for things like the propeller moonlets in the rings. Move one of them out of the rings, and it's just a (tiny) moon. — kwami (talk) 00:29, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Well, I was going by what you'd just said – "moonlet" for something that fails to clear its neighbourhood. I guess orbiting right in the middle of a ring arc would count as failing that? Double sharp (talk) 00:36, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

(Which means that shepherd moons have "cleared the neighbourhood", and would be planets if one thought of Jupiter and Saturn as sub-brown dwarfs. Which is a bit silly, but probably just goes to illustrate that the IAU definition really has two notions fighting each other, roundness and orbital dominance, and that the fact that one is subsumed in the other for our Solar System is only a coincidence. Not to mention that this suggests that an extrasolar Janus and Epimetheus, or extrasolar trojan planets, might not be far-fetched at all!) Double sharp (talk) 00:20, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Trojans are only stable to what, 10% the mass of the secondary? I wonder why we didn't get a trojan planet w Jupiter. Maybe the resonance w Saturn would've disrupted it? — kwami (talk) 00:27, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Jupiter trojan#Origin and evolution seems to suggest something like that happened: Jupiter captured some trojans while the giant planets were migrating, but when the resonance with Saturn was reached, the existing ones were ejected. Apparently only weak resonances are needed for that to happen, and about a sixth of the current trojans might not be stable over the age of the Solar System either.

It's more like 1% according to Trojan (celestial body)#Stability, and it gets stricter as more massive bodies are in the vicinity. (Suggesting that it's Saturn's fault after all, again.) Double sharp (talk) 00:35, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

That's a different figure than when I read about it. Maybe its 1% for stability over the age of the SS? Ties into Thea, where the 0.1 Earth-mass of the impactor was explained as the limit of stability for a trojan. — kwami (talk) 00:39, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Come to think of it, this suggests that we should actually see subsatellites of irregular satellites. Further in it wouldn't work, for reasons similar to why Mercury and Venus don't have moons. And indeed it seems likely that Saturn's Kiviuq is at least a contact binary. Double sharp (talk) 00:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but how would one form with that little material around to be captured? And I wonder if there isn't an additional parameter: that the gravitational effect needs to be significant over the distance of their separation. Maybe if a galileian-mass moon were in the outer system. — kwami (talk) 00:42, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

True, but maybe one might form in a collision? After all, the current families around Jupiter probably formed when a captured asteroid broke up. We now know some prograde moons crossing over into the retrograde region (Valetudo, S/2004 S 24), so over the age of the SS, I'd expect some collisions to have happened. Halimede seems to be a fragment of Nereid, so maybe Neptune's system might have one of these, thanks to all the violence Triton must've created?

I wonder how Kiviuq became a contact binary, especially when apparently its fellow Inuit-group moons Siarnaq and Paaliaq also look like contact-binaries. (So does Ymir, though.) I mean, probably they were already that way when they got captured, but who knows.

Though the fact that we don't see them around Phoebe is itself probably a data point. Though now I wonder again what's going on with the brightness variations reported for Nereid. Which is after all not much smaller than Mimas, which can pull its weight around more massive Saturn's system. Double sharp (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Marius' suggestion of "the Mercury of Jupiter" (Io), "the Venus of Jupiter" (Europa), "the Jupiter of Jupiter" (Ganymede), and "the Saturn of Jupiter" (Callisto) seems to accord with the "Jovian frost line" pretty well. :D

BTW, I found a 1916 English translation of Marius' 1614 Mundus Jovialis. Double sharp (talk) 22:37, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

That's good to have. Weird to read all the "their majesties" folderol at the beginning, though. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Venus Symbol

Dear Kwamikagami, Could you please look into the changes you made on this symbol? Its size and overall design is not fitting with the male counterpart anymore which makes this table look quite uneven. I don’t have the required permissions, so please take action :) Thanks and BR --Affegass (talk) 10:00, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

They did match, but someone changed the Mars symbol. It's been on my to-do list, but not tonight. — kwami (talk) 10:17, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Affegass: Is that better? — kwami (talk) 23:35, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Saltillocap

Template:Saltillocap has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:06, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Notice of Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Doug Weller talk 09:27, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Solar system

I have nominated Solar System for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Cinadon36 15:40, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

SSM in Chile

Hi I would like to understand why you undid the modification I made to Chile on the same-sex marriage list. As I see you not only undid it but you proceeded to do the exact same change afterwards putting your name instead of yours.

Care to explain me why ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rafa1239 (talk • contribs) 20:22, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Rafa1239: Because you provided no sources, and I could not verify. Just because a govt says they will do s.t. doesn't mean they'll do it. Later, someone provided a German newspaper reporting on the first SSM in Chile, confirming that the law was indeed in effect. At that point I restored your edit, and changed other articles/maps as well.

And I didn't "put my name on it." — kwami (talk) 20:29, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

When clicking on the image your name appears and not mine.

I might be a noob at trying to make changes on wikipedia (and I'm totally aware of it as I'm just starting here) but I did make this honest change this morning on the map using Inkscape (just discovered the tool today) and somewhat proud of me I uploaded the change to the wiki.

Now that you verified that indeed same-sex marriage is legal in Chile and I made the change on the map why does your name appears and not mine when I click on the image ? I would genuinely like to understand.

As a Chilean this topic specifically concerns me. Thank you. Rafa1239 (talk) 20:40, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Rafa1239: Ah, you mean the map. I thought you were talking about the article.

We don't want hundreds of duplicate maps. When something changes, the map should be updated. It shouldn't be replaced with a new map that a month later will be replaced with yet another new map, until each article (and each wikipedia) has a different map, all contradicting each other. (That map is used on over 200 articles, including dozens on Spanish Wikipedia, and you didn't change them all.) If you had updated the map, I might have reverted you, but if so I would later have restored your edit, and your name would be in the edit history. And if you had provided your source on the map talk page, I wouldn't have reverted you either. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Okey. I get it.

I really thought that I just changed the image and nothing else. I guess I did something else wrong.

Could you just quickly explain to me how to update (and not replace) a map so I don't do the same mistake next time ?

It's kind of sad I wasn't able to get it on the first time because I really wanted my name to show up there but I guess it's life. At least now people know that SSM is legal in Chile. Rafa1239 (talk) 20:52, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Rafa1239: At the bottom of the file history, there's a link "Upload a new version of this file." Click on that, upload your file, and it will replace the current version of the map, with your name in the file history. You uploaded your update under a different file name, which made it a separate file.

As for getting credit for edits, you might want to look for other maps in the same category. (Categories are linked at the very bottom of the page.) I think I got them all, but I may have missed some if you want to give that a go. — kwami (talk) 20:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

News article calling Quaoar and Sedna DPs

Here. So I guess now even popular-facing articles aren't sticking to the 5-dwarfs line. Double sharp (talk) 10:15, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 11:13, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Your replacement of zodiac signs on German Wikipedia

Hey, Kwamigami. I've noticed your replacement of zodiac signs on German Wikipedia[1].

Now, I'm not against colored zodiac signs in general, but this version just doesn't make sense. I can see you've obviously used a coloring scheme based on planetary rulers for each sign from *ASTROLOGY*, but pretty much no astrologist on earth uses or recognizes Ophiuchus as an actual *ZODIAC SIGN* instead of just a constellation. The only people who do are *ASTRONOMERS*, and they definitely don't recognize planetary rulership. Moreover, even the color scheme based on planetary ruiers that you've picked is the ruler system from Classical Antiquity when only 7 planets were known, while ever since the 19th century, the vast majority of astrologers use Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto as new rulers for Aquarius, Pisces, and Scorpio ever since their respective discoveries.

On top of it all, it's highly uncommon in astrology to color signs based on their ruler. If anything, they're usually colored by which element they belong to (red for Fire, green for Earth, yellow for Air, and blue for Water). --2003:EF:1702:2734:15BC:BB02:AFCE:CFCE (talk) 11:34, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

They're just decorative. I have no problem with you reverting me.

Ophiuchus is commonly used in astrology in Japan. I assumed that's why it was included in the list, since astronomers rarely use zodiac symbols at all.

From what I've seen, a lot of astrologers continue to use the 7 planets as rulers for all 12 constellations. Some use one or two of the new planets, some all three. There is no standard.

— kwami (talk) 18:22, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Template:Saltillocap TfD closure

So the TfD for {{saltillocap}} got closed as being no consensus, but I think a good approach for this (as well as others) might be to add a parameter caps= to {{saltillo}} that displays the majescule with a non-blank value so that we can essentially merge them. I think you'd be less likely to run into issues of having these kinds of character entry templates going to TfD for being unused if they were naturally twice as likely to be used in any given circumstance. It's especially likely to help where the caps form is a modern back formation, so is much less likely to be used outside of limited presentation circumstances. Just a thought. VanIsaac, MPLL ^cont_WpWS 20:42, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. I'll go ahead and do it. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@Vanisaac: It's now a rd. I'd support deleting it now, if it's worth the effort. Maybe a speedy?

BTW, I designed so that if you enter anything in param 1, you'll get a cap, so users won't have to remember the keyword. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds fine. I don't know if there's much behind leaving the redirect, but I'm sure there's a deletionist out there who will eventually find it if it truly does bother anyone. VanIsaac, MPLL ^cont_WpWS 04:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Levantine Arabic FAC

Hi kwami, I nominated Levantine Article for FAC. As you contributed to this article in the past (and looked at it when we had a conflict with another user...) and given your expertise in linguistics, I thought you could be interested in reviewing it. Thanks for any help you can provide. A455bcd9 (talk) 14:30, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

On expanding my consonant-repertoire again

So exactly how does one pronounce implosives? I'm not quite getting a lot out of our article on them. Okay, I'm supposed to pull my glottis downward: how do I do that and how do I know I've done it right?

(Asking because Vietnamese is on my language wishlist. But when listening to their b and đ I can't quite hear what I'm supposed to be doing different. It would be nice to know how to do it properly. :D) Double sharp (talk) 14:59, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Double sharp: The Vietnamese implosives are quite light, and there's no contrast with modal voice. Better to learn from a language with a voiced ~ implosive contrast, and where the implosives are more salient, like you're swallowing while speaking. (Even when there's a contrast, it can be subtle.) — kwami (talk) 20:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, okay. No wonder I couldn't hear much of a difference, then. I guess I should go learn my implosives from another source indeed. :) As for actually learning Vietnamese, I guess this suggests I'll mostly be fine using /b/ and /d/ temporarily till I learn proper implosives. Double sharp (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

If you use [b] and [d], you'll have a slight accent is all. Won't matter much. But if you didn't know about implosives and were trying to fix you accent, you might have a difficult time figuring out what was wrong. — kwami (talk) 02:04, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

That's good to hear! :D Double sharp (talk) 06:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I studied one language with a /b/ ~ /ɓ/ contrast where the /ɓ/ didn't sound implosive to me at all. Turned out it had some glottalic action, but no resulting ingressive airstream -- the glottalization was just enough to cancel out any egressive airflow. It took a while for me to be able to hear it. — kwami (talk) 10:09, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Just curious, which one of the two sounded more "tense" (or "fortis") to you? I'm asking because in languages like Muna or Wolio, the implosive is articulated more weakly than the plain stop, even though [ɓ] still has a quite audible "swallowing" sound. When I studied Muna, it was easier for me to produce [ɓ] than [b]: for the latter, I tended to produce a Javanese-like fortis /b/ (which is actually [pʰ] followed by a breathy vowel), which my Muna friends found pretty annoying... It took me some time until I found out that the key to it was just to slightly prolong the lip closure time for /b/. –Austronesier (talk) 21:00, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, it's been so long I don't remember, and no idea where my notes are. I was working with just one informant and wasn't in country, so didn't need to make myself understood to anyone. — kwami (talk) 21:30, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Battle of Kherson

Hey, I'd like you to have a look at this edit and others like it. Drmies (talk) 15:09, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The replacement may be more up to date, I can't tell. (It didn't use to matter for this battle.) The new colorblind colors are harder to see than the original ones, though. Best to stick to one map, and the only problem w the current one is the color of the yellow arrows. — kwami (talk) 19:30, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Timor-Alor-Pantar Languages

Hi Kwamikagami, I noticed that in your file File:Trans-New_Guinea_languages_(Usher_2018).svg, specifically in the section for Timor-Alor-Pantar languages, the island of Leti to the east of Timor is being shaded green (for Trans-New Guinea families) while the island of Kisar (nearby, also to the east of Timor) is being shaded yellow for being Austronesian. However, the information I'm seeing is that on Leti, the Austronesian Leti language is spoken on Leti while the Trans-New Guinean Oirata language is being spoken on Kisar. I wonder if this is a mistake in the graph and, if so, whether you'd be open to changing it. - Erictxcao (talk) 09:15, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. Yes, I just got the islands mixed up. The error affects dozens of maps, but most are focused on other areas so I'm not going to bother fixing them all. But I did find one that still showed Adabe as a Papuan language. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

90377 Sedna - featured article review

I have nominated 90377 Sedna for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Renerpho (talk) 05:46, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Balaibalan

It is a complex sentence, but from my perspective it's missing that word. Otherwise it reads odd, from an English perspective. "or collectively his followers in the 15th century" Note that this clause is incomplete and doesn't make sense. Within the context it can be understood though still it reads poorly. I cannot see a justification to remove the "by" and will revert it, though I am curious to hear your thinking. Jhonevans (talk) 16:29, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

→Upon re-reading I see that you were right. My apologies. Jhonevans (talk) 16:39, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

June 2022 Good Article Nominations backlog drive

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The Sequence [ɾɡw] in Rwandan.

In a recent edit to Kinyarwanda, you removed the [ɡ] from the phonetic representation of the orthographic sequence rw, calling it a “stupid claim” that “makes no sense.”

But rw is indeed generally realized as a [ɾɡw] sequence in Rwandan and this claim is made by all the classic works of Rwandan grammar. To give only a few examples, please consult Coupez, Abrégé de grammaire rwanda, vol. 1, pp. 32, 34, Bizimana et al., Imiteêrere y’îkinyarwaanda, vol. 1, pp. 23, 25 and Shimamungu, Le kinyarwanda : initiation à une langue bantu, p. 17. The sequence is also audible 20 seconds into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtJL6yqpdQw&t=0m20s. I could cite many more sources.

I do note that the sequence you edited had oblique strokes around it, incorrectly indicating that it was phonemic. It is true that there should be no /g/ in the phonemic representation, but the context made clear that this was supposed to be a phonetic representation, so I changed it to use square brackets accordingly. It appears to me that you were asserting that there should be no [ɡ] in the phonetic representation.

As far as I can see, you cited no sources for your edit. Please share any sources that have led you to this conclusion. Do be aware that labialization of a non-dorsal consonant in Rwandan generally entails the insertion of a velar consonant with the same sonority and manner of articulation as the consonant being labialized.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 13:18, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Ciringacenjunga. I'm the one who originally added the claim that /rw/ is normally pronounced [ɾgw], so no, I don't dispute that. My problem is that people keep turning the description into gibberish. This is supposed to be an illustration that /rw/ is a sequence, not a labialized [ɾʷ]. The point gets lost if we mix up phonemic and phonetic transcription: why would anyone ever think that [rɡw] is a labialized [ɾʷ], that we'd need to explain that it's not? We currently say, in effect, "Even when Rwanda is pronounced Rgwanda, it's not pronounced Rwanda," which indeed is a stupid thing to say. I tried to clarify it yet again. If my fix is inaccurate, then perhaps we should remove the example as unintelligible, as we already say in the preceding para that /rw/ "is normally pronounced [ɾɡw]." But from what I can tell, the presence of the [g] is variable (/rw/ varies as [rw] ~ [rɡw]), and the point here is that even when the [ɡ] is not present, we still have a sequence rather than labialization.

Also, later in your vid, at 1m09s, the /r/ in Rwanda sounds like a short, maybe one-contact trill rather than a flap. People often misinterpret single-contact trills as taps or flaps -- could it be [r̆ɡw] rather than [ɾgw], i.e., like the short /r/ in Italian rather than Spanish? — kwami (talk) 18:42, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying.

You're right about the phonetic realization of /rw/. Actually, there is a lot of variation in the phonetic realization of /r/ in Rwandan and I don't know that it's been studied in too much detail. Kimenyi describes it as a "voiced alveolar flap" (A Relational Grammar of Kinyarwanda, p. 9). Coupez describes it as a « vibrante apicale » in some contexts, in others as a « latérale retroflexed plus ou moins frappe » (Abrégé de grammaire rwanda, p. 30). I believe both single trill and flap variants exist, among others. If you know of any detailed research on the phonetics of the Rwandan /r/, please do let me know. The most careful Rwandan phonetics work I'm familiar with is Demolin's, but it doesn't focus on /r/ (although it does use [ɾ] in its phonetic transcriptions). I believe /rw/ exhibits free variation as +[ɾɡw] ~ [ɾw], but that [ɾɡw] is more common and typical.

You are saying there is no need to emphasize that [ɾɡw] is different from [ɾʷ] because that's obvious, and from what I gather, that is the source of your irritation. I would argue that [ɾw] is also obviously different from [ɾʷ] and that there is no mention of [ɾʷ] beforehand anyway, so the whole statement seems unnecessary. I think this paragraph might be more relevant if the article were using the term 'labialization' earlier, as it could serve to emphasize that when we talk about labialization in Rwandan, we are not talking about phonetic labialization of the [ɾʷ] type, but we are talking about labialization on the phonemic level (/rw/). However, this paragraph has the only mention of labialization in the article and there's nothing else to suggest a [ɾʷ] articulation. How would you feel about removing the paragraph? I think the IPA above it is clear.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 00:52, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The problem with that, IMO, is that people commonly write <Cw> in IPA for [Cʷ]. It's therefor natural to assume that [i need to hit 'save' and edit this reply directly, since the 'reply' option doesn't allow me to use the shift key]

that ⟨ɡw⟩ is supposed to be [ɡʷ], or to at least wonder if that might be the case. That's why I added this section in the first place -- I was confused with descriptions of Rwandan, and it took me a while to find a source that clarified things. I wanted to add that understanding to our article to spare our readers the same confusion. Since there's no symbol in the IPA for "non-labialized" or "non-palatal", the way there is in extIPA for "non-aspirated" and "non-dental", we need to spell it out in words.

Sorry, I don't know of anything on Rwandan /r/.

While I've got you here, how would you say "derived words"? E.g., say from root A you have the diminutive form B and the compound word C. What would be the term for B and C -- amagambo akomatanya maybe? — kwami (talk) 01:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

When you write <Cw> above, the angle brackets suggest to me that you're referring to the orthography, hence not the IPA. Do you mean that people write [ɡw] in phonetic transcription where they mean [ɡʷ]? I think the two IPA transcriptions mean different things, regardless of what people may commonly use them for. As I'm sure you're aware, there are tons of examples of poor IPA usage in Bantuist literature, sometimes under the influence of the IIALC phonetic alphabet. There's also broad versus narrow transcription.

In any case, I don't really have a problem with the paragraph as it is now. That said, the article as a whole could be improved in a lot of ways. I might clean it up and add to it sometime, but I know any edits I make will still leave a lot to be desired. It's such a complex language and there are a lot of divergent analyses on even fairly basic aspects of it.

No worries. The thing with linguistic terminology in Rwandan is that a lot of it is neologisms and different authors (or the same author writing at different times) may use different neologisms with the same meaning. There are also ambiguities such that the same word can mean different things depending on who is using it. I tend to go with Bizimana's terminology as put down in Imiteêrere y'îkinyarwaanda, but bear in mind that most Rwandans (and even those familiar with linguistics) may not readily understand it.

Bizimana uses nkomooka for "derived," so "derived words" would be amagaambo nkomooka. In this phrase, nkomooka is an inanimate declassed substantive with cl.-9 class marker in apposition to amagaambo. This kind of appositional construction is often used in neologisms. The apposed substantive (called insobaanura) effectively functions as an adjective.

The verb gukómatanya has to do with collecting things or doing multiple things at the same time. For example, rukómatanyo can mean (semantically) "collective." I would understand amagaambo akómatanya as meaning "compound words."

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 04:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Yes, I'd given up on trying to say 'derived' (was worried it could mean derivation [the source] rather than derivations [the product]), and so substituted 'compound' as close enough. I'm a bit surprised that was intelligible, actually.

With the angle brackets I meant IPA transcription, as opposed to the sounds being transcribed. It's not just poor usage and not just Bantuists -- lots of people fall back on the basic Latin alphabet if there's no distinction to worry about. So if there weren't a /gw/ ~ /gʷ/ distinction in Rwandan, we might expect people to write "/gw/" for /gʷ/. And at first that's what i assumed had happened when i came across "/gw/" in descriptions of kinyarwanda phonetics.

Any improvements you decide to make will of course be appreciated. I picked this one detail because I found it interesting; I wasn't trying to present a fleshed-out account. — kwami (talk) 04:46, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

For "derivation," we use the nomen vicis, ikómoora. If you're interested in Rwandan linguistic terminology, I highly recommend vol. 1 of Bizimana et al., Imiteêrere y'îkinyarwaanda. The book is in Rwandan and contains a bilingual (Rwandan and French) glossary of linguistic terms at the end.

I don't really get the distinction you're drawing between "IPA transcription" and "the sounds being described." Can you elaborate on this? Also, my understanding is that angle brackets should be used to indicate orthography rather than the IPA.

Your references above are to phonemic representation. (You said "'/gw/' in descriptions of kinyarwanda phonetics," but my understanding is that oblique strokes are used to indicate a phonemic representation, so /gw/ wouldn't be directly relevant to phonetics.) Of course, phonemic representations need not use the IPA because they deal with abstractions rather than actual speech-sounds. Regardless, phonemic representation isn't relevant to the section of the article we've been discussing. The paragraph and the preceding table contain phonetic transcriptions, not phonemic ones. I've just double-checked the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association and don't see anything there to suggest that [w] can be used to indicate labialization.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 11:39, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Angle brackets are used to indicate letters as letters. This commonly means the original orthography, or Latin transliteration of the original orthography, but can also be used for IPA letters as letters. For example, in the IPA Handbook illustration of Sindhi, the letters ⟨c ɟ⟩ represent the post-alveolar affricates [tᶴ dᶾ] (my interpretation of their verbal description). That is, ⟨c ɟ⟩ is the IPA transcription in this particular source, for sounds that another author might transcribe ⟨tʃ dʒ⟩ (as is the case with the post-alveolar affricates in the Hindi illustration of the Handbook). That might reflect a difference in analysis, an arbitrary choice for intermediate sounds, or simply a matter of economy in transcription, as ⟨c ɟ⟩ require less space on the page and a text using them is probably easier to scan. And of course the many many authors who use IPA ⟨r⟩ for English /ɹ/ aren't claiming that it's a trill; the choice may be because it's easier to typeset or more familiar to their target audience. In such a book, ⟨r⟩ is the IPA transcription, [ɹʷ] the sound being transcribed. (Though the Handbook chooses ⟨ɹ⟩ for their illustration of American English.)

(I've very occasionally seen single and double angle brackets to distinguish different levels of transcription. I doubt there's any standard distinction, but would assume that, iconically, double brackets would be the 'more original' of the two. E.g. maybe an author uses a source with an idiosyncratic transcription that he's normalized; single brackets might mark his normalized orthographic transcription and double brackets the orthography of his source. But he'd need to explain the distinction.)

In this section, we're addressing both phoneme and phone, e.g. that phonemic /rw/ is phonetically [ɾɡw] ~ [ɾw]. I might've been sloppy in my use of slashes vs brackets; sometimes I have a hard time deciding which to use. Technically, the IPA is designed for phonetic transcription; since phonemic transcription doesn't imply any particular sound value, the choice of letters can be rather loose.

I didn't say that the IPA advocated or even allowed the use of ⟨w⟩ for labialization, only that people commonly use it that way. Similarly, in the Hindi and English illustrations in the Handbook they write ⟨tʃ⟩ for [t͡ʃ] (in Polish [t͡ʃ] and [tʃ] are phonemically distinct). Again, according to the Handbook, ⟨ǂ⟩ does not represent a full consonant but only its release. Thus tenuis palatal click should be written ⟨k͡ǂ⟩. Yet many linguists transcribe [k͡ǂ] as ⟨ǂ⟩, even in phonetic descriptions. There's enough variation in IPA usage, synchronically and diachronically, that it's good practice to explain what the symbols mean even when following the Handbook to the letter, because otherwise a reader cannot be sure that a source means what it says. And that was my concern when I first came across descriptions of Rwandan. — kwami (talk) 21:47, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the useful note on angle brackets. I think we agree that phonetic transcription is the primary purpose of the IPA, that phonemic transcription doesn't imply any particular sound value, that economies can be applied in broad phonetic transcription and that usages such as a lone [ǂ] or [ɾw] for a labialized [ɾ] are not really proper IPA even though they are used by some authors.

As for the paragraph we're discussing, I think it's only tangentially related to the phonemic representation and is mainly about the phonetic realization. The phonemic representation is a matter of abstract analysis and there is not necessarily one correct analysis, whereas the phonetic realization is a matter of concrete empirical fact. I don't think we want to advance any particular phonemic representation. What we're trying to emphasize is that the phonetic realization is a sequence of phones. (Incidentally, if you're interested in the phonemic analysis on this, you might be interested to read Walli-Sagey's "On the Representation of Complex Segments and Their Formation in Kinyarwanda.") I certainly agree that an explanation of the phonetics of a language should not rely only on the IPA, that this should be accompanied by a verbal description (which hasn't really been done in the article yet). With many authors, it's the only way to make sure sense of their phonetic descriptions.

Anyway, I think I'm fine with keeping it phrased as is for now, but if I do decide to attempt a comprehensive revision of the article I may propose changing it up once the preceding section is improved. Incidentally, I just noticed /dy/ is listed as a consonant cluster, but this only occurs in /ndy/ sequences. I might go ahead and change that now.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 22:57, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Would you happen to know the Rwandan word for 'comet', assuming there is one? It's hard to tell with dictionaries whether a word means 'comet' or 'meteor'. Also, if you have the interest to review any of my several very short articles on Wikt-rw, linked from Inyandikorugero:ibimenyetso by'imibumbe, I'd appreciate it. (They're rather repetitive, so if you find an error on one, it's likely repeated on the others.) — kwami (talk) 22:08, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm just seeing your reply now.

"Comet" is nyakóotsi. It is an inanimate declassed substantive. The same word as an animate declassed substantive means "heavy smoker." For reference, see Coupez et al., Inkoranya y íkinyarwaanda mu kinyarwaanda nó mu gifaraansá, vol. 2, p. 1640 as well as Huylebrouck, Africa and Mathematics, p. 25 (the latter lists names for heavenly phenomena in Rwandan).

"Meteorite" is less straightforward. My understanding is that a meteoroid becomes a meteor upon contact with the atmosphere and its remains after collision with the Earth are a meteorite. The word kibon-umwé (which you'll generally see spelt as either kibonumwe or kibona umwe) means "shooting star" or "meteor." This is a hypostatic construction from kibona umwé, which means "[only] one [person] sees it." I believe the idea is that its appearance in the sky is so fleeting that only one person can catch a glimpse of it before it disappears from view. For reference, see Coupez et al., Ibid., p. 1283 and Huylebrouck, Ibid.

I think the etymological meanings of nyakóotsi and kibon-umwé clearly distinguish them each from the other. But I do see some sources online that use kibon-umwé to mean "asteroid" or "comet." I think these are incorrect usages though.

But as for "meteorite," this is less clear to me. Habumuremyi, Iriza Bilingual Learner's Dictionary English-Kinyarwanda (forthcoming), p. 424 gives ^?meteworite. I put the question mark in front of it because he does not indicate its tonality. If I were to guess (and I do mean guess) the tonality for it, it would be meteworiíte or simply meteworite. I assume this is from Fr. météorite. But I might avoid using this in favour of something to the effect of "the remnants of kibon-umwé." I have ideas about how one could say this, but I would want to consult with a native speaker. I hope this helps nonetheless.

I'd be glad to look through your articles there. I'll do so soon and get back to you.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 17:27, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Ciringacenjunga. I don't actually need the word for meteorite (which BTW I've sometimes seen as 'sky stone' rather than as 'remnant of a meteor'), I just wanted to make sure that I didn't misgloss the word 'shooting star' as 'comet'. — kwami (talk) 17:38, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I've just made some edits. Take a look and let me know if you have any feedback. Incidentally, what is the term meaning "sky stone" that you've seen?

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Not in Rwandan, sorry! I've seen that for Somali and I forget what else. A calque of "meteor-ite" might be just fine, just thought that there could be something else. — kwami (talk) 21:21, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I touched a few of them up a bit. Not all of those are used in astronomy, and there are a few additional symbols. Pretty straightforward, though I assume a final vowel is needed for Charon here. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I've just made a few more edits. I have avoided using non-attested Rwandan names (such as for Chiron) and have used French names in their place. I also noticed that the symbol for Charon isn't in the template. You might want to add it.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 22:05, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I left out a few rare symbols from the template, to keep it a reasonable length, and only linked them as synonyms. Neptune and Eris also have uncommon to archaic symbols that i only linked from their synonyms. — kwami (talk) 22:09, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Got it. Incidentally, I've just made a few edits to the introduction to Kinyarwanda.

Ciringacenjunga (talk) 22:54, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Your thread has been archived

Hi Kwamikagami! The thread you created at the Wikipedia:Teahouse, How do I get pinged when s.o. replies to my Talk comments?, has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still read the archived discussion. If you have follow-up questions, please . See also the help page about the archival process. The archival was done by Lowercase sigmabot III, and this notification was delivered by Muninnbot, both automated accounts. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=Muninnbot}} on top of the current page (your user talk page). Muninnbot (talk) 19:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I warned Bigdan201 about calling you a vandal in an edit summary

and now I'm embarrassed because he points out you started it. It's just unacceptable to call what is a content dispute vandalism. Doug Weller talk 12:12, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

You're right, adamant refusal to follow RS policy on FRINGE material doesn't amount to vandalism. Nor does repeatedly pushing self-published material that the author himself now says is wrong. But after nearly a decade, it is frustrating. — kwami (talk) 20:40, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Frustrating for sure. Doug Weller talk 12:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

BigDan is repeatedly deleting entire sections on the history of decipherment, ones that are well sourced, cited in RS's and that passed FA. These appear to be POINTy "if I can't include my pseudo-scholarship, then you can't include RS scholarship" edits. No discussion, or rather the "discussion" is in the edit summary. Is it time to consider a topic ban? — kwami (talk) 21:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I’m involved and it would probably need ANI anyway. Doug Weller talk 07:11, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:15, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Map software

This may be completely random, but is there a particular system that you use to make a colored map of the United States, as in File:Abortion availability in the US by fetal gestational age.svg. ? I would like to be able to do that for other projects both on and off Wikipedia, and I was just curious. TNstingray (talk) 01:00, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, no. I just copy from what others have done. I can't even add stripes to the states: they come out blank. It's easier when it's acceptable to edit the maps with Inkscape, because then you only need to make minor manual changes to the underlying text. (Inkscape's not very powerful, so you still have to do some manual editing, and it adds a lot of garbage to the files, which is why people don't like it.) — kwami (talk) 01:06, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Salacia

Per User talk:Double sharp/Archive 19#Salacia – wait, so is DM on board with this new "Latin" Salacia? Double sharp (talk) 09:36, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

What he had said was that it should be Latin-based and that maybe he should take the time to design something. When he didn't, I gave it a try. He didn't object to it, but didn't adopt it either. I expect he'd come up w s.t. a bit more elegant. — kwami (talk) 11:46, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

OK. The IAU 2006 Q&A plus the later density determination persuaded me to add Salacia back to some articles as a DP as the most plausible borderline object for now; since somebody added Moskowitz' other TNO symbols to astronomical symbol (and they do appear in the Unicode document), I've been including the "Latin" Salacia since that apparently is more in keeping with his current view.

That said, I feel like the tail of this "Latin" Salacia makes me think more of delta than S. Double sharp (talk) 04:23, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree it may be a bit much. Care to give it a shot? It might be easier if we flipped the symbol horizontally. For any symbol, we'd expect graphic variation between fonts and authors anyway. — kwami (talk) 04:26, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Funnily enough, I was actually thinking of having a horizontally reversed S for the curl instead. But then it starts looking like Saturn in some fonts without the crossbar. So I'll think a little bit more. :) Double sharp (talk) 04:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

How does it look to you if we eliminated the bit that completes the circle? (Then it looks kind of like a h/s ligature, I guess.) Might be easier to draw by hand, too. Double sharp (talk) 04:36, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, that would look like Saturn w the cross-bar drawn w the same stroke as the stem. But its mirror image should be okay.

An actual ligature would be odd, IMO. It's supposed to be a tail with an ess-shaped curve, not an actual initialism. — kwami (talk) 04:42, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

The mirror image seems pretty fine. Would be interesting to know what DM thinks of it, but anyway a lot of the symbols have been mirrored historically (e.g. Ceres), so it seems fine to me. Double sharp (talk) 04:45, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

July 2022

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 24 hours for edit warring. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions.

During a dispute, you should first try to discuss controversial changes and seek consensus. If that proves unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection.

If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.  Daniel Case (talk) 03:02, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Table fix

Your recent edit at United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories#Change in status by administering state seems to have a created an issue with the table at row - New Caledonia. Can you fix this? Dhruv edits (talk) 06:44, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Never mind, I have done it. Dhruv edits (talk) 06:52, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. I caught it the first time, forgot this go around. — kwami (talk) 07:25, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

New Arrokoth lobe names

Hi,

Can you add information about the new names for Arrokoth's lobes that were mentioned in McKinnon et al.'s recently-published Geophysical Research Letter? I figured I'd ask you since you're knowledgeable when it comes to name origins and meanings. As far I'm aware of, there hasn't been any formal announcement of the new lobe names "Weeyo" and "Wenu", let alone the introduction of "lobus" as the formal term for lobe features. Nrco0e (talk · contribs) 05:51, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Emailed you; made a start at it. Need to create an article or rd for 'lobus' as well. — kwami (talk) 06:51, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Please set China to grey as it doesn't legally recoginize same-sex unions at all

In the graph World marriage-equality laws (up to date).svg, China is set to blue which is very misleading. The author set it to blue as he/she thought China had legal guardianship law. But this law was made for any two consenting adults. It is not for same-sex couples benefits at all! Actually, the Chinese government is trying to weaken its usage by same-sex couples. Such laws can be found in many other countries. Since it's not made for same-sex relationship protection or recognition purpose, as a Chinese citizen, I strongly suggest that we change China from Limited domestic legal recognition to Same-sex unions not legally recognized. e.g. Almost all the countries have laws allowing a person to nominate his/her heir by will, which can be taken advantaged by same-sex couples. Does this mean that all countries have limited domestic legal recognition? The answer is obviously No unless this country has special laws for inheritance between same-sex couples. If we set China to blue, why don't we do so to many other grey countries which also have similar legal guardianship laws between two consenting adults? Thank you very much! Hueofwind (talk) 17:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

This thread should be on the map's talk page. But this color is for limited recognition.

If "many other countries" have such laws, please let us know what they are, and we can add them to the map.

If the govt is trying to limit use, please share your refs. Though, really, they don't need to "try". They can just ban it. — kwami (talk) 18:05, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

On this Chinese page: it says that "意定监护不为同性伴侣社群而设，但被认为可在一定程度上保障同性伴侣等群体。南京公证处在2019年7月26日发文说明，LGBT群体可以通过意定监护协议指定伴侣作为自己未来的监护人，方便处理医疗等多方面问题，但此文在数日内被删除。". I'm not sure if you are able to read it. But it clearly says that the guardian law is not set for LGBT people, but it can be taken advantage by same-sex couples. The Nanjing Notary Office announced that this law worked for any two consenting adults including LGBT people but it was deleted in a few days. It hints that the government doesn't like to see any connections between the law and the same-sex relationship recognition.

Also I don't agree with your last reply - they don't need to try. They can just ban it. The same-sex relationship is not legal or recognized at all in China. What's the point for them to ban it if it's already illegal or not recognized? Hueofwind (talk) 18:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

The notice was deleted in a few days. That doesn't mean the law was changed. Courts in multiple cities have held that SS couples can use the guardianship. That confers a minimal amount of recognition.

As for it being illegal, please give me an example of a SS couple charged, convicted, fined or imprisoned for setting up a guardianship.

Marriage equality doesn't mean having special laws for queer ppl. It means applying the same laws to SS and OS couples. Which appears to be what is happening here. — kwami (talk) 18:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, according to your logic, SS couples in most of the world can use the inheritance law to nominate their partner as the heir by wills just as the guardianship law in China, Does this mean all the world provide a mininal amount of same-sex relationship recogniztion?

SS couple are not recognized doesn't mean they will be charged or imprisoned. It means that their relationship is not protected by laws under certain circumstances.

The inheritance by wills work for both SS and OS couples all over the world. So you think the marraige equality appears in most of the coutries? Hueofwind (talk) 18:48, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

In China, they could've done that before this law.

Anyway, the discussion belongs on the talk page. — kwami (talk) 18:49, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

The guardianship law(意定监护) has nothing to do with stopping charging or imprisoning SS couples. It's a law to nomiate another adult as someone's guardian. It works for every adult citizen, which shouldn't be seen as any recognition of SS relationship. Just as LGBT are not banned from putting their partner's name into their wills in most countries, it has nothing to do with SS relationship recognition in law. Hueofwind (talk) 18:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your first reply. I already moved this topic to the map's talk page. Hueofwind (talk) 18:50, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Please move your request to the existing talk page on Commons. I don't know if anyone will see it at the English mirror. — kwami (talk) 18:53, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Could you pls provide the correct link of the existing talk page on Commons? Many thanks! Hueofwind (talk) 18:58, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

If you go to the file, at top one of the options is "view on commons". That should get you to c:File talk:World marriage-equality laws (up to date).svg. — kwami (talk) 20:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

RFC on Modern Taino Identity

I'd appreciate your input on this topic to resolve some long disputed issues about modern Taino movements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Taíno#Request_for_Comment_on_Modern_Taino_Identity Poketama (talk) 01:32, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Hlubi dialect of Xhosa

I saw in the article Hlubi language you originally called Hlubi/amaHlubi a dialect of Xhosa, and I'm not a Xhosa speaker but it seems to contradict some stuff online including the Tribal commission document, now used as a source in the article, that categorizes Hlubi as "similar to amaSwazi" (and others online just call it a dialect of Swazi). I don't know if it can be considered closer to Swazi or Xhosa, but Ethnologue (archived copy) does not classify Swazi as a dialect of Xhosa or vice-versa, and they seem to classify Hlubi as a dialect of Swazi/Swati (archived copy). I'm going to make the change on the page for now since I have the RS, but if you have a source, please bring it. SamuelRiv (talk) 13:19, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

According to Maho (2009), which is already a ref for that claim, there are two lects called 'Hlubi': S403, which they consider a distinct language and which is presumably the putative dialect of Swazi, as well as the topic of the article, and S41I, a dialect of Xhosa which isn't on Maho's map but was spoken in Ciskei. — kwami (talk) 18:04, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry for reverting and not seeing this: I forgot to set your Talk page to update on my Watchlist, and I've been doing a lot of other small anthropology page edits lately (unusual for me) which probably made me a bit careless in my revert. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:11, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

No problem! — kwami (talk) 00:21, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Simulated Braille in articles

Hi,

What is your opinion on adding Braille to articles? I noticed it done on the Braille article, and figured it would be a good idea to add it to other relevant articles as well, but a blind admin has deleted both my added Braille and the Braille that was already on Wikipedia. As I see it, this is no different from adding any other relevant script, and making an exception for Braille would need consensus, but my opponent sees Braille as a special case and feels that including Braille would need consensus. There's a discussion on my talk page. Libhye (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Talk Page Discussions

[2] Per WP:TPG please don't refactor talk page discussions as you did here. This gives the false impression of the discussion as it unfolds. WCM_email 07:07, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

I didn't refactor anyone's comments, merely added a section heading for accessibility, which would appear to be acceptable per TPG. They even list "sectioning" as an example of appropriate editing. It's certainly common enough, and I've never seen anyone complain. — kwami (talk) 07:17, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Well I've got one editor repeating himself and effectively sabotaging his RM with reams of tendentious argument and badgering, I want to make sure a closer sees it for what it is. And FYI I have seen plenty of objections in the past to precisely this sort of thing. WCM_email 07:33, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

We can rename it "arbitrary break", then. That makes it obvious that the thread has become so unwieldy that it needs some structure. — kwami (talk) 07:35, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Please don't, feel free to do that with your own comment. WCM_email 07:40, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

That's a misunderstanding of WP:TPG. To quote the guideline: "If a thread has developed new subjects, it may be desirable to split it into separate discussions with their own headings or subheadings." Per the how-to: when properly applied, resectioning is considered an appropriate kind of refactoring and can be helpful to "improve the clarity and readability of the page". Resectioning "is useful when a section becomes overly long, or when conversation begins to diverge into a number of separate points. Resectioning may help both readers and participants understand the flow of the discussion and help them find relevant parts of the text." Simply adding a new header such as ===Discussion=== as kwami did in this edit is one of the most common resectioning edits and is seen often in many discussions across Wikipedia, and is both fully within the recommendations of the guideline, and is supported by broad community support and a very long history of such usage. Mathglot (talk) 20:44, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Serendipity: 'Hadza' rang a bell

Hi, kwami,

In this comment of yours at Template talk:Infobox language, you mentioned the Hadza. That gave me a deja-vu feeling. By sheer happenstance when looking for something entirely different, I ran into some notes I had taken for a forthcoming template for parsing citations, and the citation example I had in my notes happens to be Groyecka et al., 2019 in which the Hadza were included as subjects in some research on perception. My next question, though, was where the heck did I get that reference? Turns out, it was from an article I created last year, called Gendered associations of pink and blue. In the § Academic research section, if you follow note 41, you'll see it links to the source "Similarities in Color Preferences Between Women and Men: The Case of Hadza, the Hunter-Gatherers From Tanzania", and was included in the article in an attempt to broaden the scope beyond just Western subjects. So, nothing to do with language at all, nor even Hadza culture per se, although related to one minor aspect of it.

In any case, "deja vu" mystery solved, and you'll also find a Hadza image which is used only in the pink & blue article, and might make a good addition to one of the Hadza articles, and there are plenty more Hadza images available. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 20:47, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the ref & link. I know several people who might be interested (besides myself). — kwami (talk) 20:56, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Query about two files

Hi kwami,

I was wondering why you created c:File:Trans woman power symbol.svg, and c:File:Trans woman power symbol (purple).svg. Aside from the default size being 15x15 pixels, and the second file being coloured in purple, it seems otherwise identical to c:File:A Transfeminist-Symbol black-and-white.svg. I'm particularly concerned that this breaks the attribution of the file, as the original file was the creation of User:Adarkhairedone, however the two files that you have created say that you're the original author and have uploaded it as your own work. This is particularly important, as the original file is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 which requires attribution to the original author, in this case Adarkhairedone, which is not done on either file.

Could you shed some light on this please? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:20, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

A circle and a cross are simple enough to make, and two creations might look similar. I created mine from Moskowitz's Venus and Mars symbols, not Adarkhairedone's. The only detail that might be of concern for copyright is the fist, which Adarkhairedone didn't create. Rather, we both lifted it from AnonMoos's File:Woman-power emblem.svg, where it says that it came from a font by toa267, who had declared it to be in the public domain. — kwami (talk) 01:27, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

That doesn't match with what the file source states on Commons for each file. Both files state they use c:File:Woman-power emblem.svg and c:File:Gender sign (bold).svg, though Adarkhairedone's file uses the original file name for the gender sign, whereas yours uses the file name that was present after a move you executed on Commons back in December. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:37, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

We took from different versions of that file, as the dates show. But you're right, the attribution can get rather confused after a while. I didn't use Adarkhairedone's work. — kwami (talk) 01:41, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

If your end goal was to just resize Adarkhairedone's file, why did you not do so on the original, as you did at c:File:Gender sign (bold).svg? Why was it necessary to recreate Adarkhairedone's work, using the same constituent images? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:47, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Because I've been instructed, rather crossly, not to change other people's work, but instead to create parallel files. Some Commons policy who's name I don't remember. For example, if I were to do it today, I wouldn't change and move File:Gender sign (bold).svg as I did, but would instead upload the new version directly under that name. File:Gender sign (bold).svg dates to before I learned about that policy, File:Trans woman power symbol.svg dates to after. — kwami (talk) 01:54, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey Kwami. Sideswipe asked me to take a look at this, as there seems to be some confusion here. There is no difference between the files you uploaded on the 25th of August this year and this 2017 one, aside from one of yours being purple, and the sizing. Independent of whether you made it yourself in an image editor, pixel by pixel it is identical to the 2017 upload. You are not the copyright holder and should not be listed as the author. Creating a derivative work for color and sizing is permitted by the 2017 work's license, but must be attributed and marked as such. Are you okay if I make those changes to the two file pages? Best regards, Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 01:56, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi Rae. Perhaps we're looking at different files. The files I created are not identical to anything from 2017. They are visibly distinct, let alone pixel by pixel identical. The only thing identical between them is the fist, which we both copied from a third source, and which we both acknowledge. So no, it wouldn't be appropriate to attribute my file to someone else. Not that I care about the credit, since there's hardly anything original in either file, but it would be factually inaccurate. I won't really care if you do, but I wonder if that might cause further confusion down the road. — kwami (talk) 02:02, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

What is the difference between c:File:Trans woman power symbol.svg and c:File:A Transfeminist-Symbol black-and-white.svg? Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 02:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

They're based on different symbols for Mars and Venus. Similar, since these are simple geometric designs, but independent. — kwami (talk) 02:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

After looking further...might as well leave it. Your upload, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, is a slight modification of a CC BY-SA 3.0 licensed image which itself is the combination of a PD work and a CC BY-SA 2.5 work. I'd say it's safer to call it a derivative work but...it's not a big deal. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 02:15, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Oh, and if you could also address why you've been removing usage of the original file, and replacing it with your recreations please? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Some are improvements IMO, and I've gotten several thanks for changes in balance and color. Some don't make much difference, but are consistent in size and line weight to symbols they may be partnered with. I won't quibble if you revert any changes you disagree with. — kwami (talk) 01:28, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Academic research about UFOs and related phenomena

Hello Kwamikagami,
I'm gonna start, what I have to say, of by first stating that I'm of the opinion that anybody who "believes" in UFO's is either crazy or dumb. Having said that I think you were wrong to delete the above article. Whatever opinion you or I hold, UFO's are part of human culture and there has been research by "academia" (however you want to define that) into it. WP attempts to collect "the sum of all human knowledge" (words by Jimmy Wales) and this topic should be in WP.
Regards, Dutchy45 (talk) 10:16, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

The key word is "knowledge". If the article were a survey of belief in UFOs, that would be different. But we don't present obvious bullshit in WP's own voice. When we present conclusions from the "academic research" that UFOs are (a) extraterrestrials or (b) terrestrial "interdimensional beings", we're not being serious. All of this is covered by WP:FRINGE and WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE and similar policies. — kwami (talk) 16:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

EW

You are editwarring re Kaktovik Numerals (Unicode block). You should have started atalk way earlier. DePiep (talk) 19:36, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Merging a content fork is not "edit-warring". Restoring it is. You're the one who should've started the talk. I shouldn't have had to. You know this. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I have unreviewed a page you curated

Hi, I'm FormalDude. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed or created, Kaktovik Numerals (Unicode block), and have marked it as unreviewed. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

––FormalDude (talk) 01:51, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

FYI, Kwamikagami, as you might have noticed FormalDude has heavily interfered without going to any talkpage, without editsummaries even, knowingly while we were in our WP:BRD. On top of this, they later appeared quite arrogant on my talkpage (or is it paternalising? intimidating? OWNing? I'm not specialised in these words). Actually, I find his templated notice here quite unclear, unless it is to signal something creepy -- but what? All the best. -DePiep (talk) 04:54, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

@DePiep: It makes little difference to the article. Normally when I edit an article, it's automatically marked as "reviewed". All that means, is that someone (a 'reviewer') looked at the article, and found that version to be acceptable. Some readers will only see the last reviewed version of the article, which helps prevent them from seeing vandalized versions. That option is in your user preferences.

Eventually another reviewer will check this article, at which point it will be marked as "reviewed" again. This seems pointless to me; I've never before had anyone 'unreview' an article I edited. If they objected to what I did, they might revert me, or edit it further, but removing the 'review' status seems pointless. Especially since in this case there is no last reviewed version, so all readers will see the article regardless. Anyway, it won't make any difference in the end. — kwami (talk) 05:07, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes I understood it must be something like this. However, I never received such a templated NPP-notice ever, and, again for this editor(!), their post lacks any point of contact into handling (improving?) the article. Why is it up to others to do homework to learn its meaning? Anyway, have a nice edit. DePiep (talk) 05:13, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

NPP reviews have nothing to do with the appearance of the article for any users, it sounds like you're thinking of pending changes. And these unreview messages are standard, in fact I can't unreview an article without sending it. This article was unreviewed because it was written and created by someone else so it is exempt from autopatrol. If you're not aware of any of this and you think NPP is "pointless", might I suggest you ask an admin to remove your autopatrolled userright? ––FormalDude (talk) 05:30, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I mixed those up. Still, I think it's pointless to mark a reviewed article as not reviewed. I wonder what you think the point of that is. Not that you need to bother answering -- it makes no difference to me. — kwami (talk) 05:36, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

@DePiep: I suggest you retract your unfounded personal attacks. ––FormalDude (talk) 05:35, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

"unfounded"? You wrote This doesn't need to be discussed yourself [3]. Anyway, FormalDude, could you, for once, start with specifying what you point to? So far, you have not contributed a single editsummary or tag or quotation to what you mean. So, unless you are getting specific in which statement(s) you ask me to redact, I cannot react. -DePiep (talk) 05:43, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Obviously I'm referring to you calling me "arrogant", "paternalising", "intimidating", and "OWNing". ––FormalDude (talk) 05:44, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Could you take this somewhere else? A trivial point has become a serial drama. — kwami (talk) 05:46, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

If they don't remove it we can take it to ANI. ––FormalDude (talk) 05:47, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

What's your problem? Stay off my page. — kwami (talk) 05:49, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Category:Flap consonants has been nominated for merging

Category:Flap consonants has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. 1234qwer1234qwer4 14:31, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Curlies in title of Kwakwaka'wakw

This is a totally new subject for me, and I noticed the title had been changed to include a curly, rather than straight, apostrophe. IIRC, there is a consensus to avoid them. Here's the redirect page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kwakwaka%27wakw&action=history

What's the story? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:40, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Valjean, that's not an apostrophe, but a letter of the alphabet. All the apostrophes in that article are straight.

There's some debate about non-English letters and diacritics too, but for American languages there seems to be general consensus to spell words correctly when using native orthography. That's similar to Hawaiian, which has its own MOS (MOS:HAWAII). — kwami (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Please excuse my ignorance, but that letter looks like a curly apostrophe to me, not an okina, and now I see you have just changed the straight ones to curly ones. You had also been the one who moved the article from a title with a straight one to the current title with a curly one. That's why I knew to ask you.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but the MOS says:

"An apostrophe should never be used in place of the ʻokina diacritic, even if it is used in the source. Unless used as a part of a formal spelling, apostrophes should be replaced with the ʻokina character (ʻ)."

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:55, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Valjean, "ʻOkina" is a letter of the Hawaiian alphabet. That MOS is specifically for Hawaiian. But the rationale here is the same: If we're going to use orthography, we should use orthography. If not, we should use anglicized spelling. There's a trend, especially in Canada, to use orthography, but if a word or name is sufficiently common in English, COMMON may override that. The anglicized equivalent of Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw is "Kwakiutl", which many sources object to as inaccurate.

Yes, when I checked out the article, I noticed some mistakes, which I fixed. Someone had added text with ASCII substitutes for Kwakʼwala orthography.

As for whether the glottal stop is 6-shaped or 9-shaped, we follow usage in the language. In Tahitian, it's turned on its side, which doesn't have direct Unicode support. In Hawaiian it's 6-shaped, in much of Anglo-America, it's 9-shaped, and in Mexico it's generally straight (the saltillo), but still not an apostrophe. For example, you can have a capital saltillo, but there's no such thing as a capital apostrophe. In still other languages, you use a gelded question mark, or even the digit '7'. Those are all commonly substituted with apostrophes, but that's no different that substituting for German umlauts and eszett: okay in a chat, but not what we expect from an encyclopedia. — kwami (talk) 19:03, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Okay. I still don't understand all of this, but I trust your judgment, so keep up the good work. I'm more familiar with the danish stød. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

@Valjean: I think if we were going to ignore diacritics, as sports journals commonly do with Croatian names in tennis, then we'd drop the glottal stop entirely and spell it "Kwakwakawakw". Just as we do with "Hawaii". — kwami (talk) 20:02, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Unicode Charts

Hi Kwami, I have reverted your template merge [4]. In this case it is preferable to have a separate template, for multiple reasons. First of all, there is no wikilaw that forces us to do a single-transclusion merge like this. So we can judge case by case. In other situations, it may be done for conveniance. Keeping all the Category:Unicode charts (327) consistently a template, makes maintenance easier (much easier), even automatable sometimes. Also, it allows for reuse in the future (when an second article can use it). I have very good experiences with developing and maintaining a similar set with 1-transclusion. And, obviously, no harm is done this way. DePiep (talk) 05:29, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. — kwami (talk) 05:39, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Vatiras

The discovery paper is out, and proposes the rename: we propose that the class of interior to Venus asteroids be referred to as 'Ayló'chaxnim asteroids. So, should we replace "Vatira" now? Double sharp (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Sure! It's a "proposal", but not much doubt about it being applied. — kwami (talk) 20:17, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Double sharp: I went ahead and made the change, but kept "Vatira" too.

Great, thanks! Double sharp (talk) 06:46, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Nǁng language

In case you want to hear what it sounds like, and learn how to say "de ezel is lui": [5]. Drmies (talk) 20:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks!

The name Nǀuu is really breathy. That would have to be in the click, wouldn't it? I wonder why we don't see it in the orthography. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

"NIuu" is how the Dutch article spells it--that bar looks like a capital I to me. I don't know much about clicks. I was struck by the fact that the kids all spoke Afrikaans and I'm reading the Dutch subtitles. I mean, it makes perfect sense, historically, though I wonder if they're speaking a localized version of Afrikaans--and if they, way out there, still speak Afrikaans, that just shows you how powerful that colonial oppression was. Coincidentally, de Volkskrant is running a series (on their Instagram, couldn't find this on the website) on the Dutch colonial past--and today that concerned precisely these people, the San and the Khoi, and how they were portrayed by Westerners. Ha, and every other Dutch racist felt the need to chime in and say WHAT ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE STORIES LETS JUST MOVE ON. Drmies (talk) 21:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, that's just a typographic substitute.

Afrikaans is the native language of the colored population. It's not just official because of the white population. AFAIK it's close to universal in the Western Cape.

I don't think there's any strong distinction between Kaaps (the Afrikaans spoken by the coloreds in the Cape) and Boer Afrikaans. There are some differences, such as a word nǀa (with a click) 'good, cool', and differences in grammar and pronunciation, with some colored speaking something closer to a creole [maybe, that's debated], but AFAIK you can't reliably identify someone by the way they speak. — kwami (talk) 21:29, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

The OED is a document of the entire English language

not just British English. Serendi^podous 09:29, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Obviously. But claiming that Oxford English is not British English is rather odd. — kwami (talk) 09:32, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Kaktovik numerals

@Kwamikagami Could you please stop reverting all of the changes

Hi, I see that you reverted a change I made, with a comment about Greenlandic not using base-20. Could you please help me understand your reasoning? Thanks! Dowobeha (talk) 06:38, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Dowobeha: Sure. Greenlandic has a decimal system, under Danish influence. (Rather ironically, since Danish is partly vigesimal.)

Also, the family tree you've been adding isn't appropriate for every article. We try to avoid duplicating info, it makes it difficult to keep things up-to-date and consistent. Also, it's not cited to the best source, AFAIK is not well supported (e.g. there is no Yupik branch of the Eskimoan languages), and is pushing revisionist terminology rather than following COMMONNAME. — kwami (talk) 07:08, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami Thanks for the response. I appreciate your work on maintaining high quality articles. With respect to the language family, the family is broken into a major branch containing the Inuit and Yupik languages, and a much smaller branch that contains the Unangan (Aleut) language. The major branch is further broken down into Inuit and Yupik branches, as shown in the diagram. This is very widely documented. For example, see the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary, the Grammar of Central Alaskan Yup'ik, the Alaska Native Language Center language map, the Grammar of St. Lawrence Island Yupik, the St. Lawrence Island Yupik dictionary, the Central Alaskan Yupik dictionary, the Naukan Yupik dictionary, as well as many academic publications by Soviet, Russian, and Alaskan scholars. With respect to COMMONNAME, the terms Yupik, Inuit, and Unangan are the common names for those language groups. Dowobeha (talk) 07:27, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

It's the Eskimo-Aleut language family. That may change some day, but currently practically no-one knows the name "Unangan", and Alaskan Inuit continue to call themselves Eskimos.

As for the family, last I knew the Yupik branch was considered to be spurious, united in name but not linguistically. The family tree should reflect best knowledge. — kwami (talk) 07:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami I have provided academic citations. I am trying in good faith to make the articles the best as possible. If you have a counter-point, I would really appreciate it if you could also provide citations to back up your statements. Simply saying X is true and Y is not without providing citations does not help make good articles. Dowobeha (talk) 07:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

The refs are in the family article. I see that Glottolog, citing Dorais 2010, currently support your classification. There might be reason to adjust our classification to match, but that should be discussed on the family article. But even if an Inuit-Yupik bifurcation is accepted, the file still shouldn't be repeated in 20 different articles. — kwami (talk) 07:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami I'm not sure what you mean by an Inuit-Yupik bifurcation being accepted. The Eskimo language has always been classified into Inuit and Yupik branches, and I have provided numerous citations to back that up. Dowobeha (talk) 07:48, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

No, it hasn't. Last time I delved into this, Yupik was paraphyletic. Again, consensus may have changed, but best to establish that on the main article before you start adding it to dozens of others. Especially where it's not relevant. — kwami (talk) 07:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami Could you provide any citations? Dowobeha (talk) 07:54, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Should be in the family article. That's the first place I'd look myself. If not, I'd need to dig through my refs, which are on a different computer. — kwami (talk) 07:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami If you could please look through your refs, that would be great. Dowobeha (talk) 07:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

If you could provide a citation regarding the Greenlandic decimal system, that would be much appreciated. All of the languages in the family historically had base-20 numbering systems. While it is certainly true that exposure to colonial languages (Russian, English, French, and Danish) led to widespread usage of base-10 number systems, as far as I know base-10 is universally used when speaking in the colonial language (Russian, English, French, and Danish) or when using colonial words as loan-words. If Greenlandic has incorporated base-10 into the language itself, that needs a citation. Dowobeha (talk) 07:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Should be in the Greenlandic article. I don't know the language, but I've come across that statement several times. If it's not true, that would simplify things. Do you have a source that contemporary Greenlandic is vigesimal? — kwami (talk) 07:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Please stop all of the reverts. I am happy to discuss this issue. The mass reverts are not helpful. Dowobeha (talk) 07:35, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

The mass changes and duplication of information are not helpful. Please get consensus before you continue. — kwami (talk) 07:36, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

OK. What specific changes did I make that you see as problematic? Dowobeha (talk) 07:39, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Duplicating information, contrary to WP:FORK, which makes articles difficult to maintain, and pushing revisionist terminology rather than following WP:COMMONNAME. — kwami (talk) 07:43, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I haven't duplicated any information. I'm not sure what you mean by revisionist terminology. Could you please explain what you mean by that and provide an example of what I did that failed to follow the common name policy? Dowobeha (talk) 07:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Repeating the same thing on dozens of articles is indeed "duplication". Many times over.

Follow COMMONNAME. Chipmunkdavis told you the same thing. — kwami (talk) 07:47, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Are you concerned with the fact that I included a link to the language family tree on all of the individual language pages? How is that duplication? Dowobeha (talk) 07:49, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how to respond without repeating myself. You're adding the same paragraph of text to dozens of articles, where it's only marginally relevant and is best handled with a link to a single, central account. — kwami (talk) 07:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami I am asking because I legitimately don't understand what you think I have duplicated. I did two main things in my series of edits. 1) I clarified existing text to use ethnonyms where possible, and 2) I added a link to a diagram of the language family tree to the individual page for each language in the family. The diagram included a citation to the academic publication where the diagram was published, along with a quote from the article as part of the citation. At no point did I include the same paragraph of text to dozens of articles. The only thing that was duplicated was the quote within the citation. Dowobeha (talk) 07:58, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Okay, but that quote is irrelevant on all these articles. Information should be centralized. That's what links are for. Read WP:FORK. — kwami (talk) 08:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami OK. I attempted to do exactly that by providing a common image file and then linking to it. I don't know of a way to do the same thing for a reference. Is there a mechanism for creating a reference that is linked to from multiple articles? I would love to learn that there is. Dowobeha (talk) 08:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

But why does the file need to be duplicated? If we want to replace it in the future, we'd need to replace it in dozens of articles. When you say X is a language in family Y, and link family Y, that gives readers who are interested the ability to follow up on that info. That's why we have links. Encyclopedias are modular, with information centralized in discrete locations. If you want to now about X, you look up the article on X. If you want to know about Y, you look up the article on Y. Where they're interconnected, they state that and provide links. — kwami (talk) 08:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami I hear what you are saying. Thank you for helping me to understand your point. I thought that providing a link on each language's page to a language family chart from a reliable source would be appropriate. From what you are telling me, I was clearly mistaken. Dowobeha (talk) 08:24, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

It's not the links, it's the duplication of information. If it were in a centralized place and you linked to it, that would be fine. But you copied it across dozens of articles. That means that any correction or update will need to be copied across all those articles as well. And, inevitably, they won't be. Which means that different articles will end up claiming different things. That becomes a real pain to maintain, and is a disservice to our readers. — kwami (talk) 08:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami I understand, and I don't want to create duplication. I included the reference and the quote along with the link to the chart because I thought it was appropriate to cite the source where the chart came from. If I understand you correctly, the primary issue then is fact that there was a duplication of the quote across numerous articles. Is that correct? Dowobeha (talk) 08:38, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Also duplication of the file. Why does it need to be repeated over and over and over again? the place for the classification of the family is the article on the classification of the family. Although, at least for a transcluded file, any corrections to the file on Commons will appear in all the articles, so it's not as bad as duplicating text. — kwami (talk) 09:02, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

BTW, you don't need to ping me on my talk page. We get notices automatically for that. — kwami (talk) 09:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused. I don't think I duplicated any files. I created a PDF version and a PNG version of the language family chart, in order to figure out which one would look the best. I then linked to that file on multiple articles. Did I somehow make multiple copies unintentionally? Dowobeha (talk) 09:18, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami Could you please explain what you mean by revisionist terminology? I'm not familiar with that term. Dowobeha (talk) 08:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

It's not jargon, just my wording. I meant the trend to change everyone's name every couple of years, so that no-one can keep track of who anyone is. Sometimes this is due to the people themselves advocating a different name, such as the Inuit of Canada (though not of the US) dispreferring 'Eskimo'. But probably more often it's patronizing outsiders who think they need to protect the poor natives by correcting their names, based on what they imagine is authentic or might be offensive. A few years later they'll decide they (or someone else) got it wrong, and will go on a campaign to correct it all over again.

So e.g. the Lolo were renamed the Yi because 'Lolo' was supposed to be pejorative. Then 'Yi' was changed to the constructed name 'Ngwi' (which English-speakers can't even pronounce) because 'Yi' was a Chinese exonym. But 'Lolo' is the endonym and there's nothing pejorative about it, and the Lolo continue to call themselves that. Or the Bushmen were renamed the San because 'Bushmen' was supposedly racist. But actually 'San' is a racist slur, and 'Bushmen' is only racist if you think their traditional lifestyle is inferior, which is itself racist and a POV they're trying to correct.

One problem with changing names of small peoples is that as a result no-one recognizes them, which can be a real problem when achieving recognition is much more important to them that whatever people happen to call them (assuming it's not actually a slur).

We don't feel the need to 'correct' the name of the Germans, or Greek, or Armenians, or Chinese, or Koreans, or call Hebrew "Ivrit". Best to leave familiar names alone unless and until common usage shifts. — kwami (talk) 08:48, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami That makes sense. I live in Alaska at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I work next door to the Alaska Native Language Center and interact every day with Yup'ik faculty members. I am very aware of the danger of outsiders choosing names. The changes that I am making to prefer the names Inuit, Yupik, and Unangan over Eskimo and Aleut are the direct result of members of those ethnic groups consistently asking that their own ethnic and linguistic names be used. If you look through the edits that I made, I was very careful and conscientious to provide appropriate and reliable academic citations to back up the changes that I made. It is very frustrating to have those careful changes indiscriminately reverted without even the courtesy of a discussion. Dowobeha (talk) 08:58, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

But we're not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. If readers recognize 'Aleut' but not 'Unangan', then it's a disservice to use the latter. (It would be different if 'Aleut' were pejorative, but it's not.) If common usage shifts to 'Unangan', so that readers come to recognize it, then WP usage will follow. But we follow the shift: we don't create it.

Similarly with the names of countries. Turkey has recently decided that from now on they should be called "Türkiye" because they don't like sounding like the bird. But common English usage is "Turkey", so that's what WP continues to use regardless. If common usage shifts, then WP will follow, but we're not here to promote the decisions of organizations or governments. — kwami (talk) 09:29, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not trying to right great wrongs. Let me ask you this. How would you know when common usage shifts? What metric should Wikipedia use to measure that? Because in my professional experience, the usage has shifted, and in my edits I have referenced reliable sources that use the terms that I am using in my edits. Dowobeha (talk) 09:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami I also want to point out that from my perspective, this situation is a clear example of Wikipedia's problem of [expert retention]. I am a published expert in this field. I am being very careful not to conduct original research and to provide justifications through reliable citations to everything I do. Your statement that Yupik isn't a branch of Eskimo is a great example of amateurs promoted dubious or plainly wrong positions in spite of their utter lack of knowledge of the topic [6] Dowobeha (talk) 08:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I see that you're the one who added the claim that Eskimoan bifurcates into Yupik and Inuit, rather than Inuit being just one of several branches of the family, back in 2008. Perhaps the linguistic reconstructions that lead to that conclusion have been superseded; i haven't reviewed the lit is years. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I have never seen any reliable source that claimed that Yupik wasn't a subgroup of Eskimo. Every source I have ever read clearly states that Yupik and Inuit are the two branches of Eskimo. This isn't something new. If someone on Wikipedia claimed something else, that was a case of amateurs making edits that weren't backed up by references. Dowobeha (talk) 09:29, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

No, it was a matter of it not being properly cited. Yes, the traditional classification was that Eskimoan has two branches. But at least at one point, when people tried reconstructing it, they found that there was little evidence for a Yupik branch: genealogically, Yupik was anything that wasn't Inuit, and that as far as they could tell there were half a dozen branches of Eskimoan, one of which was Inuit. Similarly, the traditional bifurcation of Yupik into Alaskan and Siberian branches didn't hold up either. It looks like no-one's resurrected that. — kwami (talk) 09:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

If you have citations that actually show what you are claiming, I would love to read them. I have studied multiple Yupik languages, and I posted reliable citations, including multiple published by the Alaska Native Language Center, which is one of the world's leading expert organizations on the language family. What you are saying about reconstruction sounds like amateur speculation. It certainly isn't discussed in the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates by Fortescue et al. That is the foremost work on the subject, written by three of the top scholars in the field, first edition in 1994 and second edition in 2010. Dowobeha (talk) 09:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, Fortescue reconstructed proto-Yupik, so it wasn't him.

I don't know if I'll be able to find the citation; it was the latest reconstruction when I learned the structure of the family. Not a positive reconstruction, just a conclusion that proto-Yupik didn't hold up. I'll keep looking, but if all RS's since then have most of Yupik as a coherent branch, then that's what we need to show on WP. Perhaps the exclusion of Sirenik from Yupik is the remnant of that agnostic position? that Yupik holds up once Sirenik is excluded? — kwami (talk) 09:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

The only thing I can find to support what you remember is the text on the Eskimo-Aleut page from 2008 "Traditionally, the Eskimo language family was divided into the Inuit group and the Yup'ik (or Yup'ik-Yuit) group. However, recent research suggests that Yup'ik by itself is not a valid node, or, equivalently, that the Inuit dialect continuum is but one of several languages of the Yup'ik group. However, although it may be technically correct to replace the term Eskimo with Yup'ik in this classification, this would not be acceptable to most Inuit. Also, the Alaskan-Siberian dichotomy appears to have been geographical rather than linguistic." No references were listed.

The following all show the language family laid out as I showed in the diagram I posted:

- Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates by Fortescue et al

- Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska

- Grammar of the Central Alaskan Yup'ik Language by Steven Jacobson

- Grammar of the St. Lawrence Island / Siberian Yupik Language by Steven Jacobson

- A Grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik by Osahito Miyaoka

- The Alaska Native Language Archive's collection of comparative works on the Inuit, Yupik, and Unangan languages

- The Language of the Inuit by Louis-Jacques Dorais Dowobeha (talk) 10:00, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, the 2003 version of the Eskimo-Aleut languages page shows essentially the same version of the diagram that I have. Dowobeha (talk) 10:12, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

It looks like the change you are referring to was added in 2005, and no references accompanied that addition.

- Dowobeha (talk) 10:14, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I suspect that the source was ca. 2005, give or take a few years.

From Dorais, it sounds like most of Yupik was until recently a dialect continuum, so that means the Yupik branch consists of just that and Aleutiq (unless Aleutiq was also part of the DC?). But Dorais and several other recent sources posit three branches to Eskimoan, which means that the traditional bifurcation is indeed dead. Not uncommon for someone to reject a branch only for much but not all of that branch to later be resurrected.

I'm also noticing that a lot of relatively recent sources continue to use EA as the name for the family, even when they change the names of the individual languages. — kwami (talk) 10:23, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I've got my copy of Dorais right in front of me. Can you point me to where you are referring to with respect to Yupik being a dialect continuum. I can believe that with respect to Central Alaskan Yup'ik. But making that claim about Naukan, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, and Sugpiaq is a stretch.

Dowobeha (talk) 10:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

He says on p. 18: As far as mutual intelligibility is concerned, Naukanski stands midway between Central Siberian Yupik and Central Alaskan Yup’ik. It seems that when the latter was still spoken on the north shore of Norton Sound (southern Seward Peninsula), all the way to Bering Strait, there existed an east-west linguistic continuum that linked Central Alaskan Yup’ik with Naukanski (across Bering Strait) and Central Siberian Yupik (the south-western neighbour of Naukanski). — kwami (talk) 10:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I see it. At that point in the text Dorais is discussing mutual intelligibility in the the historical distribution of the languages. Central Yup'ik was once prominent on the Seward Peninsula, but was mostly replaced by Inupiaq quite a long time ago. I'd need to check the dates, but I would guess quite some time ago. Given that the Yupik languages have a common proto-language, then of course at some point there would have been something like a dialect continuum. But Dorais isn't making the case here that that is true today, only at some historical point in the past. Dowobeha (talk) 10:54, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I figured that would've been in the last few centuries. Was it older than that? — kwami (talk) 10:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd have to dig. The Inupiaq invasion of the Seward Peninsula isn't my area of expertise. The next time I see Larry Kaplan I can ask him. He would definitely know.

In any case, all sources agree that the Yupik languages (Naukan, Yupik, Yup'ik, and Sugpiaq) are definitely not mutually intelligible today.

Dowobeha (talk) 11:05, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Don't worry about it! Yes, I got that about not being MI. I just meant that if we can trace the connections that closely, then we're not talking about deep divisions. And that's consistent with the bi/tri-furcation of the Eskimoan languages. — kwami (talk) 11:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

There are certainly still places where you will see the term Eskimo-Aleut used. But the most reliable and most highly cited sources don't:

Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska. Krauss, Michael, Gary Holton, Jim Kerr, and Colin T. West. 2011. Fairbanks and Anchorage: Alaska Native Language Center and UAA Institute of Social and Economic Research.

The original 1974 edition used the terms Eskimo and Aleut. The current version is from 2011 and is the best and most cited source for the language family. It uses Inuit-Yupik and Aleut as the names of the sub-branches, and then uses the endonyms for the specific language names.

Dowobeha (talk) 10:43, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Dorais, Fortescue and Berge all use EA. — kwami (talk) 10:49, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Could you point me to the citations? Dorais (2010) primarily uses Eskaleut, as do the publications by Berge that I have seen most recently. I haven't seen anything recent by Fortescue.

Dowobeha (talk) 10:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Both are more recent. I was looking at Fortescue 2000 parenté génétique des langue eskaléoutes. — kwami (talk) 11:04, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah. I would say that the change away from the term Eskimo and towards the endonyms Inuit and Yupik has been gradually shifting for the past thirty or forty years, and has definitely sped up in the past 15 years. But really you can trace the changes back quite a long way, at least as far back as the Alaska Native Claims settlement act.

Dowobeha (talk) 11:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Also, I don't speak French, but isn't eskaléoutes Eskaleut? - Dowobeha (talk) 11:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes. My point is that they're not calling them the Inuit-Yupik-Unangam languages. The difference between "Eskaleut" and "Eskimo-Aleut" is trivial, like "Afrasiatic" vs "Afro-Asiatic". But I can't even write the other without looking up what Aleut's supposed to be called. — kwami (talk) 11:14, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah, but it's not a trivial difference. The difference between the use of Eskaleut and Eskimo-Aleut is huge. Whether you use Eskaleut or Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, either way you are recognizing that Eskimo-Aleut is not really the best name. And the fact that Fortescue was using Eskaleut in 2000 is really important. There is a consensus that Eskimo is not the right term. There is a consensus that specific endonyms should be preferred whenever possible. - Dowobeha (talk) 11:19, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

So... going forward it would be great if I could provide my professional expertise (with citations) in making edits to the articles in about these languages, especially in my area of expertise in the Yupik branch. I'm very happy to back up my proposed edits.

But it would be really nice if I could do so without having to constantly fear that my changes will be reverted by well-meaning editors who quite frankly aren't familiar with the field.

- Dowobeha (talk) 11:24, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Dowobeha: You are of course welcome to share your expertise. And I do mean "welcome": we need people like you. But this wasn't a matter of a factual dispute, but of maintaining an encyclopedic presentation.

1. Text shouldn't be unnecessarily duplicated when it can -- or already is -- centralized. For a guideline, if you look at the coverage of our other language families, you'll see that we don't have family trees in the individual language articles and even dialect articles, as you've been adding. Uyghur language, for example, does not have a tree of the Turkic language family. And neither do our articles on the peoples who speak these languages, such as Uyghurs. This is true both for familiar languages in large families and for obscure languages in tiny families. We will occasionally make an exception to illustrate some point or other, but we don't, for example, duplicate the Afroasiatic family tree in our articles on the dozens of Arabic dialects that we cover.
2. Terminology should be consistent. Readers have enough difficulty with the jargon we use without us constantly switching terminology on them. If it is desirable to rename a language family, we should rename the main article. If not, then we shouldn't rename it by proxy in the dependent articles. Whatever name we use for the main family article, we should use for mentions elsewhere. For example, if I thought Indo-European should be returned to the original name of Indo-Germanic, I would do that by starting a rename-discussion on the main article. It would be inappropriate for me to try to accomplish it by changing all mentions of "Indo-European" across Wikipedia to "Indo-Germanic", and if I did that, someone would rightfully revert me.

These are your edits that I reverted. Your recent edits at least came across as an attempt to subvert consensus on naming; I assumed that unnecessarily duplicating the tree was a further strategy to change the name. It's possible that a few changes of fact got caught up in that, and if so I apologize.

Perhaps taboo-avoidance is part of the reason for changing the family name to "Eskaleut", but you see this pattern elsewhere, e.g. in "Afrasian" for "Afro-Asiatic", "Algic" for "Algonkian-Ritwan", "Celtiberian" for "Celtic Iberian", "Japonic" for "Japanese-Ryukyuan" where there is no opposition to the component names. Generally, shortening a family and using familiar names seems to have a greater chance of success than the opposite. I'd have no problem moving the family to "Eskaleut" based on recent sources. That would be an easy change to make, where IMO the other would be disruptive until external consensus converges on it.

BTW, Austronesier who responded below is an excellent resource for editing WP. They're a professional linguist who knows WP conventions well. — kwami (talk) 23:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Kwami,

Thank you for taking the time to elaborate. Hearing your motivation and your reasoning is helpful.

It would have been greatly appreciated if you had you been willing to take the time to explain this motivation and reasoning prior to performing all of the reverts, especially given that I had taken the effort to contact you and initiate a conversation.

-Dowobeha (talk) 01:59, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

@Dowobeha: @kwami: you're having an important discussion here, and maybe we should move/condense/continue it in Talk:Eskimo–Aleut languages. I just want to make three points:

1. . As for the terminological shift from Eskimo-Aleut → Inuit–Yupik–Unangan, I see it on the way to become established, but we're not yet there.
2. . As for Dorais (2010), I agree with @Dowobeha that it is state-of-the-art, see e.g. Alana Johns's chapter "Eskimo-Aleut"(!) in the 2019 Routledge Handbook of North American Languages, where Dorais's classification is adopted 1:1.
3. . It's not advisable to duplicate significant content in multiple articles, as this becomes a maintenance nightmare. Ok, using a template or a graphic helps to keep stuff synchronized, but note that WP page watchers will not see when a Commons image is fiddled with. I had this experience with the map in Austric languages, which had rubbish added to it, and also with a classification template of the Dravidian languages, which was defaced by a "Tamil is the oldest language in the world"-freak—in both cases unnoticedly for quite some time. In any case, agree with @kwami that full classification schemes only belong in the article about the parent group.

–Austronesier (talk) 11:35, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, @Austronesier. I actually started a section in Talk:Eskimo–Aleut languages listing references. I agree that would be a great place to continue. I just hope the conversation can stay professional. There is a lot of ugly sniping in the history of the Talk:Eskimo page.

-Dowobeha (talk) 11:43, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello Dowobeha. I'd like to mention here that the text you added was copied from this copyright paper, and thus was a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Please don't add copyright material to Wikipedia. Please see your talk page for more information. — Diannaa (talk) 21:40, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Diannaa I am the copyright holder. I wrote the article. I created the image. I have the rights to contribute it to Wikipedia. -Dowobeha (talk) 01:21, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

@Diannaa In any case, even if I wasn't the copyright holder (which I am), the text was included as part of a citation, which is very clearly fair use. -Dowobeha (talk) 01:23, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a very strict copyright policy, stricter in some ways than copyright law itself, because our fair use policy does not allow us to copy material from copyright sources when there's a freely licensed alternative available. In this case the freely licensed material is prose that we write ourselves. Another choice would be to release the paper under a compatible license. Another option is to place the text in quotation marks so that our readers will know that it's been copied directly from the source. Regardless, Wikipedia frowns on people citing their own paper, and also frowns on the author using it as a citation in dozens of places. It looks very spammy. — Diannaa (talk) 01:31, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I have sent an email to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org with the appropriate CC licensing verbiage.

With respect to the self-citation, I hear what you are saying, and I can see how it could look. In this particular case, I cited my own work because my diagram of the language family is the most thorough one that I am aware of, in addition to the fact that I had the rights to contribute it.

-Dowobeha (talk) 02:04, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Besides sending the email to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org, is there anything else that I should do to get the file deletion for copyright violation reversed? Dowobeha (talk) 02:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

It's quite possible to create a tree in WP html coding, without a static image. That would make it easy to update. — kwami (talk) 02:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of C/2012 S4 (PanSTARRS) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article C/2012 S4 (PanSTARRS) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C/2012 S4 (PanSTARRS) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

C messier (talk) 09:36, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Frankish religion

I'm not sure I agree that the page is really more about religion than mythology, but I do think that "Frankish paganism" would make a better title than "Frankish religion". Srnec (talk) 00:20, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. — kwami (talk) 00:36, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Maps and Mexico

Hi Kwami!

There are only three states left to legalize same-sex marriage in Mexico and there are bills in each of the remaining states. This means the [State recognition of same-sex relationships in North America & Hawaii] map is about to be almost full. Same with the [Same-sex unions in Mexico] map. In the event that this happens, I was wondering if you could make a same-sex marriage map that includes all of North America, including Central America and the Caribbean. I'm wondering if the info for [State recognition of same-sex relationships in North America & Hawaii] could be combined with the info for [Homosexuality laws in Central America and the Caribbean Islands.] They all are part of North America so technically our North America map on Recognition of same-sex unions in the Americas has been incomplete. I'm thinking that when the final three states in Mexico legalize, the [Same-sex unions in Mexico] maps on each of the pages like Same-sex marriage in [Mexican state name] can be replaced with the new/proposed comprehensive North America map. In states that have legalized but not codified yet (such as Chihuahua), we can also put the [Legislation for same-sex unions in Mexican states] map on those specific state pages until they codify. The new map with all of North America doesn't need to be published until the last state legalizes, but would you be willing to make such a map?

Thanks! -TenorTwelve (talk) 01:24, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that those countries are too small to be very visible at that scale. Isn't the Latin American map enough? — kwami (talk) 01:29, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

I suppose -TenorTwelve (talk) 01:33, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Heyy, Guerrero and Tamaulipas congresses just legalized same-sex marriage, that means same-sex marriage is legal countrywide since today. Could you update the maps please? c: Miguu Parley! 04:27, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

They haven't legalized, actually. They just passed the legislation. The governors could theoretically veto the laws, and they won't take effect until published in the official gazette. — kwami (talk) 04:32, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Delhi

Hi User:Kwamikagami, I noticed your edit here and agree with it, including the summary you left there. Please see my comment on the talk page. Kind regards, Anupam^Talk 19:08, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Indonesian language sock

FYI on the history here and here, it seems you dealt with the content situation already, but just a note that the author in question is a blocked user with some peculiar views on Indonesian language linguistics, so if there was anything that felt questionable during the merge there is no need to keep it. Best, CMD (talk) 01:41, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Additional Chechen letters

Hello - you seem to have added a bunch of Chechen letters back in 2008, which we still list as being part of the Chechen alphabet, that I'm not sure are recognised as distinct members (irrespective of whether they represent an individual phoneme). Is this not a bit like listing English digraphs like "th" as part of the English alphabet? I've noticed this situation at the pages for other Caucasian langauges, too, such as Avar - though I haven't checked who added what. Theknightwho (talk) 15:14, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Even if that's the case, we need to list them for the correspondences between the alphabets.

The long vowels and consonants are not listed in the WP-ce article. Perhaps we could split them off into a separate table? — kwami (talk) 18:30, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not saying we shouldn't list them; just that we should make the distinction between letters and phonemes clear. I suggest we add one of those beige tables with just the letters, and keep the current table with the more detailed info. The Russian WP article has an accurate table. Theknightwho (talk) 19:10, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

A beige table would be fine. I already split the html table -- does that work?

Yeah, WP-ru shows the same inventory as WP-ce. — kwami (talk) 19:22, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I quite liked having everything in the list, as it makes it more useful as a single reference guide to pronunciation; whereas a table of letters is used for a slightly different purpose. It's no big deal, though, and I'll have a look in more detail when I've got a bit more time later. Thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 19:31, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Portola, California

Pronunciation of the village hamlet "Portola California" Osomite 🐻 (hablemos) 02:17, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

If you wish to add a second pronunciation, first, you can't claim it's the same as the first pronunciation, and second, you need a source. Somebody mentioning it on YouTube would be good enough for me, but you need to have something, especially since another editor denies that your pronunciation exists. — kwami (talk) 02:26, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion for Sedna, Gonggong, and Orcus

I think you might be interested in participating in this. It appears Quaoar already got moved to remove the number, and this is proposing it for three others. Double sharp (talk) 21:05, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

"ISO 639:dlc" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect ISO 639:dlc and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 November 15#ISO 639:dlc until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Glades12 (talk) 10:46, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Roentgenium

Our infobox gives two pronunciations, probably as different attempts to approximate the [œ] in Roentgen's name that we don't have in English. The Oxford Learner's Dictionaries give yet another alternative. Should we add it? Double sharp (talk) 22:47, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

That's at odds with the other variants in both the first two vowels, though the first vowel does agree with Everyday Science. Dict.com has the two we have, plus variants with /dZ/ for the 'g'. I'd rather go off what chemists/physicists say, if we can find stuff on Youtube, that to give all six of those variants. — kwami (talk) 23:47, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

[7] a few times near the beginning. Not sure if this is useful. — kwami (talk) 23:57, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if Poliakoff is trying to say an [œ] there, or if I'm just hearing something that's not there because I know how Röntgen should sound like in German. I kind of suspect that this word may not be 100% assimilated into the English phonological system anyway, because it was coined by the German discoverers, and is most likely to be said by superheavy element researchers. The Rg discovery was made in a German lab and the most stable isotopes were then made in a Russian one, so the way superheavy element researchers actually say the word may often not have all that much to do with English phonology. :)

Darmstadtium might be a similar case of varying levels of assimilation into English, based on some pronunciation clips I found online having an /s/ instead of the German /ʃ/. Though at least in this case, that doesn't require any vowels absent from English. (I don't think anyone has /ʃ/ in einsteinium, which should be more assimilated.)

Other cases in point about more common vs. rarer elements having differences: carbon has /ən/ while boron and argon have /ɒn/. It's not quite clear to me if the halogens should all rhyme; at least, I've heard iodine with both short and long i's. Double sharp (talk) 15:27, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Other element pronunciations I'm surprised by, looking at the infoboxes: for me technetium and lutetium end in /iːsiəm/, but the infobox has /iːʃiəm/. Prof Poliakoff agrees with me (Tc, Lu.) Double sharp (talk) 23:22, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Is Pete Licence stressing antimony on the second syllable? Double sharp (talk) 23:31, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

I believe Poliakoff is saying [œ], giving it its German pronunciation, though it sound to me rather like [ʊ]. (I'd need to hear it next to /ʊ/ to verify whether it really is distinct in his accent, but if it's not perfect German, I suspect it's his pronunciation of German.)

And yes, Licence is saying an-TIM-@-nee. That pronunciation feels quite comfortable/familiar to me, even though I don't use it myself. Too bad Lexico's defunct and my print OED is in storage.

Dict.com has /iːʃiəm/. I've noticed that British English tends to maintain /t/ and /s/ in this position more often than does AmEn, which tends to assimilate them more. — kwami (talk) 01:37, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I guess I'm not alone in saying Rg with [œ] then. I guess I think of it as a recent, not-fully-assimilated borrowing from German. Probably Poliakoff does too. Double sharp (talk) 02:32, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I believe you're right. I follow the pronunciation of roentgenize, which is assimilated. But there's still the question of whether it's RENT-gen or RUNT-gen -- or (shudder!) -jen. Usually the German ö sound is the NURSE vowel, at least in RP, but that doesn't work so well after an R. — kwami (talk) 03:21, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Now I'm wondering how you'd say the old Russian names joliotium (from жолиотий) and kurchatovium (курчатовий) for elements 102 and 104. (Came to mind because I'd recently read through an old book using kurchatovium in English, and because they're mentioned in our articles on nobelium and rutherfordium.) For me, Jl would probably be /ʒɒˈljɒtiəm/, but arguably that's still not totally assimilated as AFAIK all English words with initial /ʒ/ are loans. For Ku, I'm less certain about how assimilated it could be. I guess fully assimilated, it would be /ˌkɜːrtʃəˈtoʊviəm/, but I might break my usual non-rhotic phonotactics for it and start with [kuːr].

I wonder if any other marginal segments might similarly occur in such recent learned borrowings. Double sharp (talk) 12:05, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Poliakoff is trying to say kurchatovium in this video, but I suspect that he probably didn't hear Yuri Oganessian correctly, as he has an /r/ instead of the expected /v/. Double sharp (talk) 23:47, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Here's John Wells on Sb. Double sharp (talk) 16:49, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Another chemical borrowing where I wonder about pronunciation: kainosymmetry (just turned it into an article). I've never actually heard this word, just seen it. Double sharp (talk) 13:43, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure about Greek kai in English when it doesn't pass through Latin, but Dict.com has /ˌkaɪnoʊ/ for kainogenesis. We could as easily argue for the ai having its value in bait, esp. given that's also how it evolved in Greek. They have the same for cainogenesis, though for Cainozoic they have both /ˌkaɪnə/ and /ˌkeɪnə/, so I'd assume that would work for kainosymmetry too. — kwami (talk) 21:43, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Cool! I was mentally pronouncing it /ˌkaɪnə/, mostly because it was originally a Russian coinage as кайносимметрия. But this is a better reason. :) Double sharp (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Dict.com puts stress on the GA of 'oganesson', /oʊˈgænəsən/. That seems odd. — kwami (talk) 00:33, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I think I've heard that on YouTube, but indeed, to me it sounds wrong. Double sharp (talk) 11:52, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Wrong information

Why are you wrong information post my society Royal the calture (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Please provide a link. — kwami (talk) 21:44, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baria_Koli?wprov=sfla1 Royal the calture (talk) 04:37, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

That doesn't tell me anything. — kwami (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Dysnomia pronunciation

There's an unreferenced footnote claiming that Mike Brown pronounces Dysnomia in a certain way. Can you add a video link to back this up? Thanks. Nrco0e (talk) 03:36, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Nrco0e: I don't think I've ever heard it, only read verbal descriptions. I'll check around. — kwami (talk) 05:13, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

This isn't terribly accurate (they claim the apparently coincidental connection between Dysnomia and Lucy Lawless was intentional, and omit that in 2006 we thought Eris was larger than Pluto), but give Brown's story of the pronunciation. — kwami (talk) 05:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Tsogo language for deletion

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The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tsogo language until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

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SpyridisioAnnis Discussion 06:58, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Is Tethys solid?

If we follow Grundy et al.'s line for dwarf planethood and demand that the body be solid, then should we say something about Tethys? Its density is so low that there's been some doubt about its solidity. This other paper (1991) is quite old, but it also raises the issue. Double sharp (talk) 13:33, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I think a body would have to be solid to fit the IAU definition of a DP, but I can't access the first link. GBooks just shows blank pages with yellow highlighting. — kwami (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The relevant bit is: In comparison, Tethys' very low density indicates a small silicate mass fraction and possibly some non-negligible internal porosity. On the next page, some doubt is also offered for Mimas: Mimas was much studied after Voyager flyby by Eluszkiewicz et al. (1998) and Leliwa-Kopystyński and Kossacki (2000). The latter authors inferred that the satellite has preserved some porosity although the exact amount is model dependent. I haven't yet been able to access the whole book to see if more is made of these doubts, but I found the Leliwa-Kopystyński and Kossacki paper, and it suggests that Mimas should be about 15% porous. Double sharp (talk) 21:31, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

More recent stuff about Tethys: Tethys is unusual among icy moons for its low bulk mean density of 0.985 g/cm³, suggesting a low rock mass fraction and/or high porosity. (From this, which later became this in 2022). Though also a 2019 model suggests that the porosity only extends to the top 66 km or so of a 533 km radius (well, still about an eighth), agreeing with this 2018 paper suggesting a porous outer shell of ice, a solid inner shell of ice, surrounding an ice-rock core. This seems a bit like what Grundy et al. suggest for the higher end of the transitional range, in which the porosity collapses out in the centre, but not all the way to the surface. OTOH Tethys certainly isn't dark!

Obviously this is on a sliding scale, and at some point it's not relevant, e.g. Luna which is only porous in a few kilometres of upper crust and thus should count as "solid" by any reasonable definition. It's just that Tethys' extremely low density is a bit suspicious. Double sharp (talk) 00:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Looks like we have additional RS's that they may not be satellite planets, beyond the likelihood that they are not in HE. Definitely worth mentioning, IMO, if for no other reason than that people are likely to update the claims as new work comes out, which would be nice. — kwami (talk) 02:00, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I searched for "porosity" in the book. The doubts about Mimas are repeated later (p. 671).

Per pp. 596–597, Iapetus probably collapsed out (it's modelled as starting at 850 km radius). Not surprising given its size, though even now it's less dense than Mimas. Double sharp (talk) 02:16, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Saturn's 2nd-generation moons appear to have had a rather complicated history. They're probably not a good analogue for TNO's. — kwami (talk) 02:25, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, they're probably not. Though maybe they could be a good analogue for Uranus' moons: Miranda's low density and probably traumatic history may suggest something.

Enceladus and Dione are called "rock-rich" and not doubted, unsurprisingly. At least on p. 686 it says near-surface porosity is unlikely to significantly affect [Enceladus'] bulk density. Didn't see mention of Rhea, but if Iapetus collapsed out, surely Rhea did too (it's a bit larger and denser). Double sharp (talk) 02:29, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I added comments about Mimas and Tethys to planetary-mass moon and list of planemos. Didn't think it was DUE enough for the main Planet article, since for now it seems to be a "maybe" and they're still generally listed with the other round moons.

Re list of planemos, I'm not sure "SV" is really a "symbol" for Rhea of the same kind as ☾ is for Luna; in that case it would make sense to put the initial letters for the big 8 + Pluto as IAU abbreviations. Double sharp (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

BTW, since last year we did some updates about icy moon subsurface oceans, you might like this paper on the Uranian moons if you haven't seen it already. It concludes that Titania and Oberon could still have them today even without any tidal heating. Double sharp (talk) 00:18, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

A pretty nice popularisation article on the DPs

Here. It even has the symbols!! Double sharp (talk) 23:46, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

That's fun to see. — kwami (talk) 02:45, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Cybele

Hi, a recent paper on VLT imaging of Cybele was just posted on arXiv a few days ago (The equilibrium shape of (65) Cybele: primordial or relic of a large impact?). Thought it'd be worth sharing with you if you're still updating the major asteroids. Nrco0e (talk) 05:08, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! That's one of 3 200km+ asteroids missing from the initial releases. — kwami (talk) 08:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Its shape matches equilibrium and it probably hasn't been whacked? That's interesting! Double sharp (talk) 18:58, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

From the deconvolutions it looks like it's been whacked! But it's about the size and density of Phoebe, so maybe a similar ex-DP. — kwami (talk) 19:18, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, in any case Cybele joins Euphrosyne in making some trouble for the definition Stern and others are practically using, which seems to just be that a planet has to look round. Though since one of those posters included Vesta and Proteus(!), I guess they might then retreat to "a planet is something larger than or equal to the size of Mimas". Not that it makes any sense anymore as a cutoff. Well, at least it gives less strange results than asking for literal hydrostatic equilibrium and then dropping Mercury off the big 8, LOL. Double sharp (talk) 12:17, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

19521 Chaos

Per a 2020 occultation it's probably smaller than 600 km (the figure from Herschel thermal data). Should we remove it from List of possible dwarf planets? Double sharp (talk) 07:18, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Do you know what the mean diameter and sigma were? But only 3 chords, and it could've been end-on. If a 2nd occultation gives the same size and it's below our threshold, then sure, or if RS's start using the new smaller size as the most likely, but I wouldn't want to make that judgement myself w/o more info. — kwami (talk) 07:33, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't know beyond what's been written. There's another link from this year (new 2022 occultation, 8 positive detections + 3 near misses), but it doesn't give the updated size either. I guess we could keep it for now as a case like (78799) 2002 XW93: probably smaller, but might still cross our threshold. Double sharp (talk) 07:47, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

That's good news. But they say they "expect to derive an accurate size and shape". Presumably they'll publish when they do, and at that point we'll likely have a RS to remove Chaos from the list. Meanwhile Chaos isn't a likely candidate, but none of the bodies at the bottom of the list are very likely.

I wonder if it will prove to be within the −130 of the 600+140
−130 km. Sounds like it might. — kwami (talk) 19:00, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Edit summary

When editing on the Czech Wikipedia, please always fill in the edit summary. You have been repeatedly notified there. Thanks for your understanding. KPX8 (talk) 07:52, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of elements, again

It occurs to me that pertechnetate should probably have a pronunciation added: it has a /t/ even though technetium itself has /s/ or /ʃ/. The same thing should apply to lutetate (naturally, for lutetium), but that's a redlink and I've never actually heard that.

Has anyone said "natrium", "kalium", and "stibium" in an English context? They are in this 1998 IUPAC report as alternative names. (They're clearly not just there to explain the symbols, as they're in the same format as "aluminum" and "cesium", and the other Latin names e.g. "ferrum", "cuprum", "stannum", and "plumbum" are not there.) Double sharp (talk) 08:48, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I think they're just historical. I don't think I've ever encountered them in English. — kwami (talk) 09:57, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I've found 'stibium' in Egyptological publications from a hundred years ago and a recent alchemical text, 'natrium' in a drug name, and 'kalium' only in embedded Latin terms (e.g. in homeopathy), not as English. So yeah, they seem vanishingly rare. — kwami (talk) 10:06, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, not too impressive. Makes me wonder why IUPAC included them in this report, though.

"Wolfram" (which was also included) at least has a slight existence in modern scholarly literature: [8], [9], [10]. But always alongside "tungsten". I have found "wolframate" though ([11]), which is interesting as per the IUPAC Red Book the name for the anion should be "tungstate". I guess this has a solid if minor claim to be a sort-of double-named element. Double sharp (talk) 10:11, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiktionary has some recent uses of 'natrium'. The Egyptological usage of 'stibium' is apparently for kohl. — kwami (talk) 10:14, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Cool!

Not sure if "columbium" is dead yet, or just moribund. Double sharp (talk) 10:18, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

'Azote' for nitrogen, but that seems to only be historical. — kwami (talk) 10:20, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

In the 2011 IUPAC Principles of Chemical Nomenclature: "azote" is only mentioned as the French name and as the root for aza-, etc. Similarly θεῖον for sulfur (e.g. thiosulfate). Na, K, Sb are only mentioned as "Latinate names" with all the other usual suspects. W gets its own footnote: For historical reasons, the element symbol W is derived from the name of the ore, wolframite, from which the metal tungsten was originally isolated. The name wolfram is still used for tungsten in some languages, but is no longer recommended for use in English.

In a 2019 IUPAC document explaining the discoveries of the elements, again all the Latinate names are only mentioned to explain the symbol. Azote and θεῖον are not there at all. Columbium is mentioned, but only as part of the history (For more than a century, the name columbium continued to be used in America and niobium in Europe. Since the priority of discovery could not be settled unambiguously, IUPAC’s CNIC adopted the name niobium in 1949 based on consideration of prevailing usage. The tungsten/wolfram thing is explained: In 1949, IUPAC’s CNIC officially adopted wolfram as the scientific name for the element and reserved tungsten for the commercial name, in a similar fashion to iron and steel. By 1951, the chemical community erroneously thought that the name tungsten had been eliminated. A world-wide protest resulted. The CNIC decided to change back to the name tungsten pending a further review, which has never occurred. Well, I guess that explains why "wolfram" occasionally appears alongside "tungsten". Double sharp (talk) 10:26, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

'Azote' was used in English in the 19th century. Found it in medical dictionaries from 1910's, but no active use that late. Even early on it seems to be explained as meaning nitrogen, so possibly a French influence, just retaining the verbiage of the work they're citing. — kwami (talk) 10:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

The obsolete name I have most difficulty finding a "date of death" for is "emanation" for Rn, because that has other meanings. Whereas it seems that "glucinium" (beryllium), "cassiopeium" (lutetium), and "celtium" (hafnium) were given up relatively quickly after IUPAC decided against them. Double sharp (talk) 10:51, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I think I may have figured out the Na and K mystery: when IUPAC was first standardising chemical nomenclature in 1949, it considered it across multiple languages (not just English): see 10.1021/ba-1953-0008.ch005. So natrium and kalium make sense to mention in this way, as they are the names in German.

But I can't find many modern languages using "stibium". Only Lithuanian, lt:Stibis. Maybe Chinese 銻 at a stretch, but that's been quite heavily changed in the borrowing. So, that's still mysterious. Double sharp (talk) 11:54, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, 'stibium' is still used in embedded Latin, though I don't know about any actual chemical as opposed to esoteric use. Chem from 2019 has the article "Stibium: A Promising Electrode toward Building High-Performance Na-Ion Full-Cells". — kwami (talk) 19:09, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Added that to Wikt. Still can't find 'kalium' in English. — kwami (talk) 19:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Both "kalium" and "natrium" are in this 2021 paper. Double sharp (talk) 03:02, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

P.S. I guess a fun citation for "natrium" in English might be this translation of Stanisław Lem's How the World Was Saved. Double sharp (talk) 03:07, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I loved the robot recycling center in Return from the Stars. — kwami (talk) 04:44, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

While you're looking at Russian transliterations

I've wondered since last December how we should handle Efim Bogoljubow's patronymic in the lede. He was born in the Russian Empire, but in 1927 he moved to Germany and thereafter used the German transliteration of his surname, so it looks odd to write Bogoljubow but not Dmitrijewitsch. But Hans Kmoch who knew him claimed that he actually adopted the spelling Ewfim Dimitrijewitsch Bogoljubow. His name is spelt extremely variably in chess literature anyway according to various transliteration schemes: very reliable historian Edward Winter uses Efim Bogoljubow, which settles the article's title, but I don't see anything for his patronymic.

I also kind of wonder how pronunciation should be handled for chess figures – his name would presumably be pronounced in some kind of English approximation in his eponymous Bogoljubow Variation. And in my experience Bogo-Indian is totally assimilated, like here or here, though that's not conclusive on the full name. I found this on YouTube, at least. There's also a soundfile at his Chess.com biography, but I'm pretty much 100% sure that's by a Russian speaker.

Irrelevant PS: the very different subjects of the three latest threads I now have on your talk page amuse me! :D Double sharp (talk) 14:43, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd just give both: E. B., also (known as) E. D. B, ...

It looks like the YouTube vid-er is Armenian maybe?, and presumably bilingual in Russian, so not a good indication of an english pron. Odd to have 'o' as the STRUT vowel. — kwami (talk) 18:41, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

O as STRUT in this name makes sense as a close Anglicisation of the Russian pronunciation /bəɡɐˈlʲubəf/, but not at all from the spelling, which is why I wondered. I've edited the lede to give both names. Double sharp (talk) 03:09, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

It's also the SON vowel, but not normally seen for 'o' in foreign loans. I suppose it could be in this case, but it would be best if we could verify from monolingual chess players. — kwami (talk) 03:12, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

If my memory serves me right, monolinguals often call him just "Bogo"! But I'll look through YouTube. Double sharp (talk) 03:26, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Eric Schiller says it here (0:17). Double sharp (talk) 08:18, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, /ˌboʊɡɒlˈjuːboʊ/. — kwami (talk) 08:20, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, added. :) A bit of an odd syllable boundary between the /l/ and /j/, I'd think. Double sharp (talk) 08:24, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

otherwise it would be the initial of "lewd", which would cause people to mispronounce it. unless some do pronounce it w/o the /j/. — kwami (talk) 08:25, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the explanation! Here also is Ben Finegold (0:23) stressing it on the second syllable and ending in /v/. At 0:35, he gives the third syllable stress as a possibility, but still ending in /v/. Double sharp (talk) 08:28, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

He says he doesn't know how to pronounce it. — kwami (talk) 08:30, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, oops. :(

How is Schiller saying it in this video (1:40)? Double sharp (talk) 08:32, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like maybe /ˌboʊɡɒlˈjuːbɒv/, but it's so fast/slurred that it's hard to tell. — kwami (talk) 08:36, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought I heard a /v/ there, but it was hard to tell. I think it should be fine to base it on the clearer one, then. Double sharp (talk) 08:50, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

The /v/ is pretty clear. Not so sure about the vowels. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I've added your transcription as a /v/ variant, since that part at least is clear. Double sharp (talk) 10:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)