Talk:allœopathic

RFC discussion: September 2012

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Category:English terms spelled with Œ

The entries in this category (and in a few other categories) are formatted with an array of different "alt-form-of" templates:

1. allœopathic : {{alternative form of|allopathic}}
2. homœomerous : {{archaic}} {{alternative form of|homoeomerous}}
3. amœba : {{rare spelling of|amoeba}}
4. œsophagical : {{rare form of|esophagical}}
5. amœbæan : {{archaic spelling of|amoebean}}
6. cœmeterial : {{qualifier|rare}} {{archaic form of|cemeterial}} ({{qualifier}} sic)
7. anœa : {{rare}} {{obsolete spelling of|anoia}}
8. amœne : {{obsolete form of|amene}}
9. Bœotia : {{dated form of|Boeotia}} (and possibly a few more variations)

(I cite each of those because it was the first of its kind I found in the category or the templates' Whatlinkshere. Many of those were created by the same editor, but this cornucopia of variants isn't that editor's fault, it's the fault of a number of editors including myself: I too have haphazardly used different templates.)

In some cases, the difference in templates is justified: some spellings are rarely used on Usenet up to the present day, while others have fallen into obsolescence. In many cases, however, entries fall into the same category of "spellings which haven't been in use in a hundred years": how should those be formatted? {{obsolete}} {{alternative form of}}? ({{obsolete form of}} implies to me that a form was the only form before it become obsolete, but perhaps others see that differently.)

There are also a lot of entires which are given as lemmata. In some cases, like [[Babœuf]], this is probably justified. In other cases, like [[Cœlenterata]], it's very misleading. DCDuring rightly worries that archaic words in definitions mislead non-native speakers who turn to Wiktionary for help translating or learning a language: the use of obsolete spellings as lemmata is as bad. (The reason North Korea's press releases use some obsolete words is said to be that they have only old dictionaries to use in translating them.) (Amusing side note: I used to use spellings like those myself, 'cause I thought the special characters were cool, till I wised up to how pretentious and unrelatable/un-understandable it made me to native Brits and 'Merkins.)

Anyway, to repeat the question: assuming that a lot of entries in this category haven't been in use for a hundred years, how should those entries be formatted? - -sche (discuss) 18:58, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

If the spelling is an obsolete form (for example) of a term which is in and of itself obsolete, I would still just use {{obsolete form of}}, simply because both are obsolete. An indefinite article may be included if necessary. Using {{obsolete}} with {{alternative form of}} could confuse readers, since the latter should imply that the form is still acceptable to use. Personally, I would like to utilize the unmade template {{rare obsolete form of}} to shotgun down—if you will—the problem of deciding whether to use the ‘obsolete’ or the ‘rare’ template.

I can easily go create the ‘reduced’ or ‘split’ forms for the considerably outdated spellings of modern terms, in which the bulk of information shall be moved to. I just really, really don’t want pricks cleaning up ‘messes’ I make and then bitching at me when they could have asked me to clean them up (a pleasant note: a good user at Wikcionario calmly requested long ago that I fix some etymology mistakes that I made which I soon fixed afterwards, instead of him becoming hostile towards me over fixing things he didn’t want or personally need to fix. I noted his complaint to stop myself from repeating the problem in future too.) --Æ&Œ (talk) 05:23, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Why wouldn't we just use {{alternative form of}} and "context/usage" tags as our base? I see that there would be instances where {{obsolete form of}} and {{archaic form of}} might be required if the form was the most common (or very common) at some time. I thought that we had decided against using "spelling", preferring "form", in the context of the L3 header at least.

If someone has thought this through and has at least a partial logic for this kind of thing, it might be time to write it down, so we could have a consensus and participate in the cleanup or, at least, sin no more. I certainly haven't thought it through. There is the problem that a system that is too complicated will not be implemented correctly by anyone other than the developer of the system and perhaps an acolyte or two. We have plenty of instances of this, some of which I may be in the process of perpetrating. DCDuring TALK 03:20, 11 September 2012 (UTC)