Talk:Leet/Archive 5

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Protection, "Obscure/True leet" and other bogus content

  1. This article desperately needs protection. Just by taking a look at the history page and seeing so much vandalism proves that.
  2. I think the sections on "Obscure" and "True" leet are bogus, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they got there. I suggest we revert back to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leet&diff=prev&oldid=116719490 before this was added, and please check around that time period to find the most useful version of the page before "Obscure" and "True" leet were added.
  3. I don't think many of the information on this article can be verified, especially since we've seen much content added such as "obscure" and "true" leet above which has stayed on this page for about 6 days. Please respond with your thoughts. ~Hangfromthefloor 18:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
i agree with you one most of that. this area is semi-correct in teh different forms of leet. just not very clear or precise. basic leet speak, wut they are calling true leet, was very simple.. yes this is a fact(not qwite sure how to prove this but most leet speakers know this information). teh obscure leet, which most gamers and wannabe hackers use, is just an over exaggerated form of leetspeak. in teh original leet simple letter replacements and word shortening were implemented for reason such as- bypass word filters, lazyness, bypass character counts limits, and common typos. leet as most ppl know it today is just an evolved version of is ancestor. created for allot of reason ranging from trying to simpley look cool to advancing teh level on how cryptic a message will appear to a newbie so teams/clans can chat w/o spy'n eyes. i think there should be some research done to back up ALL info and then come back to vote'n on when/how/if this should be admitted into teh article.(||stoney|| 08:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC))
Without many inline references, this page looks like it's 90% original research, which is obviously not good. I agree that alot of the stuff that has been added in the past week or so looks literally incredible. I don't think that we really need to revert, but instead just remove the stuff about true and obscure 1337. Also, we should go through the article and remove some excess statements, because I have a feeling that a good amount of the article's content falls under WP:NOT. Similar to what Hangfromthefloor was proposing, I also suggest that we bring back content from this revision, which was archived for its brilliant prose.
So basically, we should just cut down on examples and use its lost glory (this was a Featured Article) to improve it now. Cliff smith 02:57, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I'll start fixing up the article as soon as I can. What do you think about [semi-] protection? ~Hangfromthefloor 00:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I was just about to mention that. Just at pages like The Notorious B.I.G. or, more appropriately, noob, we should semi-protect this page (spcifically with the padlock icon in the upper-right corner). We should cut down on descriptions of specific popular conventions, like "kekeke", leaving it to a simple paragraph. Some of the info here could also be moved to the other specific pages (like for "noob"). Cliff smith 01:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I completely agree with Cliff, but if there was an intuitive way to protect or semi-protect sections of an article, [particularly the Noob section, where random users continually insert their own variations of the word] then less conflict/vandalism would occur, maintenance would be simpler, and above all, articles would improve. I doubt it's possible though, just an idea.
Another of my thoughts: We should try to remove any humor, including parts of the "brilliant prose", Cliff, which I thought was great, but the information quality of phrases like "Leet can be either be pronounced as "leet" (monosyllabic, rhymes with "eat") or by pronouncing the L separate from the rest of the word" is not influential. It should explain how leet was derived from elite, which only appears further into the article. If I had more time I would do this, but I trust you judging by the quality of your "brilliant prose". Excellent start! ~Hangfromthefloor 10:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll do my best to make things like that more clear and easy to understand. I have a feeling that even though some of the stuff will be removed, it truly just comes down to clarity & quality. Cliff smith 16:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that we should move some of the stuff about "pwn" to its own article, and possibly the same with a couple other terms. Thoughts?
Cliff smith 18:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely, furthermore this is well-supported- there are a number of articles that are "lists of words exhibiting xxx property". Spanish pronouns, for example. This page is excessively long in the first place. I believe a page like "List of Leet expressions" is merited to which the entire section of Leet vocabulary ought to be moved, then we can include a small section of it in here, like every other language article out there.
Mendaliv 09:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I think you're on to something. If we did this, the Vocabulary section would be converted into prose and each of the terms that are presently highlighted would just get a mention, in a sentence or two. Cliff smith 20:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
If we do it, all the refs here would remain for the abbreviated vocab parts; and they could also be employed at the new list.
Cliff smith 20:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps "pwn" has already been trimmed down?, but I certainly remember reading of exploits of crackers "pwning" long before its use on graphical internet games. Now I'm afraid this might require some original research to verify, but maybe some back issues of "2600" magazine might verify this?Cuvtixo 02:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
If I'm understanding what you mean by "original research" here (i.e., that ppl will need to do their own research to verify, or that we will need to do research of the claims thus asserted), then that's cool. However, I do have some general thoughts about what should be done with these individual word or word group subsections (or sometimes sub-subsections):
I say that we should try to keep these subparts at an absolute minimum, and if possible create new articles about each word where we feel there is enough information to do more than just create a sub or substub. We could then add the link to each word's section saying "Main Article: xxxx" at the top.
Remember, this is an article about Leet itself, not so much about the idiosyncrasies of the words that make it up. Yes they are important, but we need to keep their descriptions concise and talk about their specific contribution to Leet, rather than their general origins and trivia about them.
Mendaliv 05:48, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

WoW Custom Map Maker

Wtf? WoW can't make custom maps. Maybe it reffers to Wc3 or Wc2? 124.187.26.57 01:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I think they were talking about Warcraft 2. see pwn. Cliff smith 16:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Leet Translator

My leet tool link got deleted, even though it was better than the other one. :[ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.107.230.9 (talk) 20:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

Riiiiggghhhht... what's a leet translator? --Luigifan 23:48, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
It converts lots of text between lamer speak and leet - http://h4c.us/tools/1337.php 216.107.230.9 22:04, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Your link is broken is apparently why it was deleted. In any case, these tools are nice, but you need to keep in mind the nature of Leet is such that it's difficult to actually do "translations"; they generally just convert between known character substitutions and what is generally accepted to be the result- if anything this should be called a transliterator. You know, one of these days I'm gonna write a program that implements machine learning to do this. Mendaliv 05:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Liek?

If we're including teh (t3h) in this article, then surely liek should be included also?

alternate spelling li3k

Liek is more chat-speakish, not 1337. Teh crosses into both categories.

On validity

I just found a new reference which can be used here. It should be able to improve the article. Cliff smith 03:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, what is it? bibliomaniac15 03:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Oh, it's Anthony Mitchell's A Leet Primer. Cliff smith 23:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm liking what I see. bibliomaniac15 01:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I thought it was good too. As you can see, I've used it to verify some of the key points. Also, there are a couple refs here and there from other related articles which can be utilised here, at least to some extent (like the two for LOL). Cliff smith 02:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Furthermore, I think that the problem was that most of the stuff here was always attributable to the references, but they were just never properly cited, which is what I aim to do. Cliff smith 02:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I have just completed what I set out to do, as mentioned above. Some of the refs were improperly formatted with the cite templates, so I fixed those. There were a couple refs that, upon examination, had just about zero significance to the subject, so I removed those. And I checked out each ref and added inline citations where appropriate. Cliff smith 07:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Not a bad reference. Have a look at this paper [1] though, look for the section that talks about leetspeak in particular. Pretty interesting, though I'm more into it fro the classification stuff. Also look at this [2]- I've only read his abstract so far but it sounds like it should be useful (though annoying to sort through- 89 pages... and I know what a pain working with someone's thesis can be). Google Scholar is awesome. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mendaliv (talk • contribs) 20:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC).
Doh... anywho, I was gonna say also that if you find any articles that you can't get the full text of, let me know and I can see if my University has access to it (n.b., not that I'm going to send you a copy and thus probably violate copyright law- I plan to read through it myself and apply citations in such cases).
Mendaliv 20:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Great. More refs are always good. Cliff smith 23:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I've been reading through this one, your second suggestion, and it looks like this is a great source of info. I'll begin applying citations where appropriate.
Cliff smith 23:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Phonology → Morphology and the -xor suffix

This section was pretty clearly focused on morphological processes instead of phonological processes- both -xor and -age are examples of derivational suffixation. Although -ed→-'d is actually a phonological process, it's alone in the section; -and→& is an orthographic simplification or obfuscation.

In the -xor subsection itself, I deleted a lot of unrelated and unsupported data (here I define "unsupported" as "being without a supporting use which is clearly grammatical to speakers of Leet"). The supposed "superlative" suffixes were removed for this reason. The specific statement about -zor was moved up and explained as a form of morphophonemic alternation. The case of -ri, which I suspect to be an emphatic particle or morpheme of some kind. It could also be a phonological process required for attaching -age to the end of -xor in the given example, which didn't match the pattern given in the first place (I am the suxorixorage). The suffix -izzle was removed as it's a recognized suffix of colloquial English and not unique to or possibly not even a part of Leet. Mendaliv 07:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The info about the -xor suffix is great. Cliff smith 23:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted by the way that the IPA transcriptions on the -xor suffix and other variations are based on the General American dialect of English (more specifically from the Chicagoland area, with some idiosyncrasies). Thus it might be nice for somebody who speaks a non-American dialect of English to provide transcriptions, either for fun or completeness. 128.174.209.210 05:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Teach me not to log in... gah. Mendaliv 05:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

"Internet Social Corpus"?

What exactly is the Internet Social Corpus, referenced in section 2.1.

In any case, is that section really pertinent to the language itself? Half of these seem like they're merely novel uses of letter-number substitutions (i.e., Se7en or Thir13en Ghosts), rather than actual Leet-language implementations. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mendaliv (talk • contribs) 09:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC).

I totally agree. Most of that stuff doesn't belong here and should be removed; what remains will not warrant a subsection. These are the only things that I think would qualify as true Leet implementations:
And I'm not sure exactly what Internet Social Corpus means either. Cliff smith 03:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I'm gonna get rid of all that corpus stuff except for the above, plus the google hacker page, since that's clearly leet. Cliff smith 01:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer review

On the near future of this article, I think that once the things about "Internet Social Corpus" and Vocabulary have been addressed, we should open a peer review. Once the peer review—which would probably be around a fortnight to a month in length—ends, we can check the article against the FA criteria in preparation for FAC. As of now, these are the only things I think that may need attention:

  • 1c—"Factually accurate"; I think we have enough refs, but you never can tell.
  • 3—"...images where they are appropriate to the subject..."; I wonder if this is an absolute, since I'm not certain what proper pictures we'd include.
  • 4—"...of appropriate length..."; if there's any question about its length, that would probably be satisfied when some vocab stuff is moved.

But beyond those things, this is looking very good. Cliff smith 22:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the length is a real issue with this page, which is presently 34KB. Cliff smith 00:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
If I may suggest, with regards to item 3, we can refer to other language articles for examples- Chinese language has a picture of various forms of calligraphy used in the language. I suggest that we can go in this same vein with respect to Leet, that is, we get a picture of Leet being used "in context". This would most likely be a screenshot of Leet text in an IRC room or in an online game, especially of text that would strike the uninitiated as unreadable. This would hopefully not just be one capitalizing on the changes in orthography; I think this feature of Leet is what makes people feel that it's just a joke, and leads them to ignore the true linguistic validity of Leet, either as an argot or even pidgin in the making. Mendaliv 19:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea. Such a picture would probably go in "Grammar" or "Vocabulary" I would think. Cliff smith 22:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Assesment class

Even though this article has yet to make GA, it's been tagged an A-Class by the WP assesment team, so what rating is this article? Cliff smith 22:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no one rating. Each project assesses their own rating based on their criteria—which is typically about the same—but any two people may have differing views of the quality of the article and thus rate it differently. --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 14:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

How can you say "leet, often 1337 or 13375p34k"?

If it's often 1337, then why even put that horrible word "leet" in it? Seems pathedic..Change it, would you? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.153.232.82 (talk) 02:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC).

There are several reasons why its official title is "leet". 1- This is the spelling most easy for non-native speakers of leet to handle*; it actually has a mapping from orthography to sound representation in their eyes, where "1337" looks like it should be said "one-three-three-seven". This is, after all, the English-language Wikipedia; look at Chinese for example- its article is not titled by its equivalent in Chinese characters, while it is on the Chinese Wikipedia. 2- "leet" is a perfectly acceptable spelling of the name of the language, just as Chinese may similarly be called 漢語 (Hànyǔ) or 中文 (Zhōngwén)- they are effectively synonyms. 3- I assert that "leet" preceded "1337" as the name of the language in the internet (though I do not know how to locate evidence to this effect). I'm sure there's some search engine out there that would support my claim here. Maybe there's some way of doing it through Internet Archive. 4- Again, back to Chinese. On the English-language Wikipedia, we often use the pinyin romanization of Chinese characters, rather than Zhuyin Fuhao or Wade-Giles, to represent a way of pronouncing characters which appear unpronounceable to English speakers (though this gets into a problem of unequal sound-orthography mapping that is the same as in other languages which use the Latin alphabet).

(*n.b. I mean this in a "tongue-in-cheek" sense of course; I personally consider "leetspeak" to be entirely argot and not an independent language, pidgin, creole or the like)

I say that in light of these points, the reasoning that it "seems pathedic" cannot merit such a change. I will concede this, presuming my point #3 is correct, we are using a more traditional spelling, which seems to go against the idea of descriptive grammar and does not accurately depict the dynamic growing nature of the language. Mendaliv 05:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

vocabulary

I miss words from the dl/demo scene like leecher and lamer.

We should be doing a separate article on some Leet vocab one of these days. It's a real pain in the neck to give the article general enough when you have to include a lot of terms. Once we have a good vocab article though, we should be able to pick and choose those that are really important to include. :) Mendaliv 06:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Grammar section

This section needs some work in my opinion. First of all, and I may have said this before, the title is very very deceptive. The word "grammar" in the study of language does refer to a language in its entirety as it exists in a human mind, but in the colloquial vocabulary, it refers mostly to syntax and morphology. I suggest that this section actually be relocated to nearer the top, and its content be further tweaked to give a general overview of features of the language (which I feel is its current direction).

Secondly, I have to question most of the content in the first paragraph. A lot of what's being said is not unique or special to Leet at all, and are actually well-established parts of many languages. I shall give some examples:

  • In particular, speakers of Leet are fond of verbing nouns, turning verbs into nouns (and back again) as forms of emphasis, e.g. "Bob rocks" is weaker than "Bob r0xx0rz" (note spelling), which is weaker than "Bob is t3h r0xx0rz" (note grammar), which is weaker than something like "OMFG D00d Bob is t3h UBER 1337 R0XX0RZ". In essence, all of these mean "Bob rocks," not necessarily the other options.
    -The example given here is just an example of Leet interjections, and is not at all unique. The use of words for emphatic purposes is not uncommon in English at all, and furthermore the sentence "Oh my god, Dude. Bob is totally f*cking rockin'" is not Leet at all, but I suggest that one could hear this said at a party where not a single person there uses Leet.
  • Leet, like in other hacker slang, employs overgeneralization in construction of new words. For example, if haxored is the past tense of the verb "to hack" (hack → haxor → haxored), then winzored would be easily understood to be the past tense conjugation of "to win," even if the reader had not seen that particular word before.
    -This sentence describes the linguistic process of Analogy, which is very prevalent in English. Why do you think we don't say kine[3] anymore? I disagree that this is any kind of "overgeneralization", as that such a statement has a prescriptivist tone to it. Mendaliv 05:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Concerning your second of all, ("A lot of what's being said is not unique or special to Leet") does all information included in an article have to be unique to the topic in order to be included?
Past that, while "Oh my god, Dude. Bob is totally fucking rockin'" is not Leet and could be heard at a party where no one uses Leet, "OMFG D00d Bob is t3h UBER 1337 R0XX0RZ" is completely Leet and totally unlikely to be heard at a party where no one uses Leet.
Lastly, Leet can be pronounced as "leet" ([lit])1 or by pronouncing the L separate from the rest of the word ([ɛɫ.it])2.
^1L33t and lit are not pronounced the same. Although I'm not a linguist, I'm pretty sure lit is never pronounced with a long e.
^2What is that? I have no idea what that is, and I'm bold enough to assume many others don't either. This is an article about an online community/gaming language. It's not linguistic study material. I think that edit should be reverted. It was better the way it was. --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 06:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
What I'm trying to say with regards to the section not having "special or unique" content in that regard is that the way those sentences are worded implies that Leet contains extremely radical grammatical variations. This is true to a narrow extent; new suffixes (possibly extensions of preexisting suffixes) are observed in -xor and -age, for example. The "overgeneralization", on the other hand, has two reasonable interpretations-
  • 1. The level of generalization in Leet grammar is higher than in mainstream dialects of the language (especially relative to the prestige dialect), or
  • 2. The level of generalization in Leet grammar is inappropriate/excessive, or even ungrammatical to speakers of more mainstream dialects.
Interpretation #1 is the appropriate one, and therefore needs substantiation. The reading in #2 is quite prescriptive, and therefore non-neutral, and thus inappropriate for our goals.

Further, with regards to OMFG D00d Bob is t3h UBER 1337 R0XX0RZ: the problem here is that this sentence is not particularly special relative to other dialects of English. Yes, it incorporates Leet orthography, lexical items and some grammatical features. What is not true is what the author of the section claims, that the meanings of OMFG D00d Bob is t3h UBER 1337 R0XX0RZ and Bob rocks/r0xx0rz are "essentially" the same is misleading- the extra elements serve to provide emphasis. Thus the words "OMFG", "D00d", (possibly) "t3h", "UBER" and "1337" fill entirely the same role as the words "Oh my fucking god", "Dude", "totally" and "fucking" in that sentence. Moreover, "Oh my fucking god" and "Dude" are cognates of "OMFG" and "D00d". In fact, the only real difference that I can see is that it uses r0xx0rz.

As to putting IPA pronunciations in lieu of other methods, this is very well supported in other articles. I can reasonably assure you that the transcriptions are correct. The two pronunciations that were suggested originally are to handle "leet" as a single syllable and thereby pronounce it as a speaker of English would. [lit] is the pronunciation. An interesting note here is that it is pronounced the same as the second syllable of "elite". If you don't believe me, read up on IPA, specifically in this case i. The vowel [i] is observed in the English word "eat" (or [it]).
The author of the article was not clear on quite what the second pronunciation was, but it indicated that the initial "l" of "leet" was pronounced as the letter of the alphabet, or [ɛɫ]. This is a surface form, so it might be more appropriate to show it as /ɛl/ (as suggested in Wiktionary), but in pronunciation the "l"-sound is the "Dark L" or velarized "l". The vowel is [ɛ] as in "head" (see ɛ).

My apologies of course to whoever wrote those rhyming keys- I think that they are useful, but if we are going to talk about pronunciation we cannot do without IPA transcriptions.
Mendaliv 15:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

And also, there was one point to which I did not respond- the distinction between writing about an online/gaming language and writing about linguistics. This is a type of language, though I do not consider it much more than argot at this point in history, it is still a linguistic phenomenon. Therefore, it should be represented with a reasonable degree of linguistic representation. However, I do agree that it is good, and well-established to keep separate articles for a "basic overview" of a language and a "linguistics overview" of a language. I think it would be reasonable to relocate a large amount of this information to a new article which discusses Leet as a linguistic phenomenon rather than a social phenomenon. I just would warn you however that without the linguistic information, this article would become naught but trivia and a huge vocabulary list, as it once was.
Mendaliv 15:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I was a gamer for many years and am fluent, so to speak, in l33t. I understand it, know what it all means and represents, and I know where and how it originated. So this is an article that intrests me. My problem with this article is this: When reading the article through, my thoughts go back and forth between "impressively well written" to "what is that?" While I appreciate that Leet is a type of language, it's not an official language... there are no classes taught (although I have schooled many ;/), so I feel like, considering it is more of a slang, it should include a little less linguistic information that isn't easily understood by laymen. For example, the upside-down letters and little symbols; I realize that those are used daily in your profession, but most of us don't recognize those things. It seems more appropriate for explinations of pronunciation to be spelled out as they previously were. Even on online dictionaries, the only 26 characters used for this purpose are the letters of the english alphabet.
I'm not suggesting that it be stripped of any linguistic information. But some of the information and vocabulary—particularly IPA—is a bit much for slang, in my opinion. I'm simply hoping it can be toned down a little. It just doesn't seem realistic that the common reader would understand all of that, or appreciate it. --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 19:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Another issue that bothers me (maybe I'm just not understanding the point and someone can explain it to me) is the Kekeke section. It seems WAY over explained. One examples is: "In the Korean language, people expressed laughter in writing by repeating the letter "ㅋ" (Korean letter for the hard k [as opposed to the g or soft k, "ㄱ"], called 키읔 or "kieuk") many times over." And also "The phrase is an onomatopoetic Korean phrase similar to the English and French "hahaha", Spanish "jajaja", Chinese "hehehe", or Japanese "fufufu" (also romanized as "huhuhu"; the Japanese syllable in question begins with ɸ, a voiceless bilabial fricative similar to both English "f" and "h"), and is meant to express laughter." What's the point of all that in parenthesis? It's just too much... and seems like a lot of jargon to me. --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 20:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
However, we cannot go by the definition of noteworthy language as being only that which is taught in classes and has official standing. If this were the case, then what of African American Vernacular English and Louisiana Creole French, which have no official standing in any nation.
To your point of making this more of a "layman's description", I feel this is a good goal, and I further suggest that we diverge into two articles; one for Leet language/culture and another for Leet linguistics.
IPA is not easy, which is why I've kept the transcriptions on the page as broad as possible. Regardless, it's not solely a notation limited to my profession or academia- The Oxford English Dictionary uses it exclusively for its pronunciation keys, as does Wiktionary in almost all its entries.
How about this- we'll treat it like the metric system in the US. Put the better-accepted scheme of rhyming as the primary method, but include IPA pronunciation keys where possible and applicable.
With regards to Kekeke, you are entirely correct. It is poorly explained and worded, particularly in the sections you show. I'll try to clear things up for you though. The entire point about "hard k" versus "g or soft k" is talking about a (rather unusual) phonological distinction in the Korean language- fortis and lenis consonants. It's really unimportant for the purposes of this article. I'd keep the first Hangul character, however, since it is actually what we're talking about. Also, I'd say that the entire section that compares the onomatopoeic1 nature of the Korean expression to several languages is vacuous. However, doing this is good for completeness, and since this is after all the English-language Wikipedia, we may as well just include the English "hahaha". But the tangent into Japanese romanization systems is just unnecessary. Plus the explanation of the voiceless bilabial fricative is just wrong (it's actually the sound that corresponds to the "ph" in "phew!"). It's not so much jargon as it's unnecessary information that should be referenced a little, possibly with a "see this other article..." near the end in case the reader is more interested.
^1Actually, I question whether this is really onomatopoeia and not an ideophone. However, I've not studied either too terribly much so I'm in no position to make that kind of judgment call.
By the way, I am also a long-time gamer and feel a similar pride in the system. However, you need to realize that any aspect of language is one which merits linguistic analysis, even if it's just slang. You'd be surprised what we're working on in some areas of the science.
Mendaliv 23:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I'm not saying that there should be no linguistic analysis... simply noting that the current volume of linguistic information in the article is somewhat extreme, although it's already reading better. The revised Kekeke section is a lot better. Also, to be sure you didn't take my comment of "seems like a lot of jargon to me" the wrong way; I used the word jargon to refer to information that I do not understand, as opposed to jibberish or meaningless writing. I think the idea of a separate article to go into further linguistic detail is great. This article most certainly has all the requirements of a Good Article, it just needs to be trimmed a bit. --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 04:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
The earlier suggestion of a separate Leet expressions page could take care of any trimming (see above). Cliff smith 23:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The Otheruse template...

I've got to say that the description of which Leet we're talking about in that template is far far too long. I cannot think of a good way to shorten it however. Any thoughts? Mendaliv 06:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. I've been trying to come up with some sort of alternative or shortening, but such a solution continues to elude me. Cliff smith 21:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
What's the point of all this summarizing of the lead just above the lead text? What kind of reader would actually manage to read the dabmessage but not the first sentence of the lead? I simply shortened it to "For other uses, see Leet (disambiguation)".
Peter Isotalo 21:48, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Writing system proper?

Is Leet really to be considered a writing system equated with kanji or Chinese characters? That it's a popular and widespread phenomenon that has evolved particular rules and all that, but saying that it's the same as writing systems evolved for natural languages seems very pretentious.

Is this really supported by linguists?

Peter Isotalo 21:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure....but the way I see it, it's more of a specific variant of an existing writing system, as English alphabet and Persian alphabet are variations of the Latin alphabet and Arabic alphabet, respectively. The fact that it is also a variation of an existing language only used within the writing system is somewhat reminiscent of N'ko. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
To be honest, it seems like a variation of English to about the same extent as Pig Latin. Fine, Leet has much more advanced rules, but it's just basically English, and at most a type of written sociolect. But a writing system? I seriously doubt it. If this can't be properly confirmed through linguistic sources, it should be considered original research. I'm not against describing any language phenomenon thoroughly, but it needs to be properly described. The comparison with N'ko, for example, is really far-fetched.
Peter Isotalo 21:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I think that some consider it a writing system due to how it developed as an alternate form of writing in English. I'm not too sure either. Cliff smith 23:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it's necessary to clarify our definitions of "writing system" here. For me, it means a system by which the sounds or (in the case of a non-spoken language) words of a language are written on paper. Looking at the first line of the Wiki page on writing system, we have the following:
  • A writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.
I think in general this again goes back to the question of how seriously we take Leet. However, I do agree that it should be changed on thisL one point; it's not just a writing system, as we have seen from the new lexical items that are frequently used as shibboleths, and we have also seen new morphology as well as possibly new phonological and syntactic changes. I think it would be more appropriate to say that one major portion of it is an adaptive writing system that plays on peculiarities of standard English mappings between sound and orthography (c.f. items such as "phishing") as well as forming new characters by concatenating multiple other characters (which is reminiscent the Chinese system of combining a radical and phonetic component into a new character). Mendaliv 02:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
It's slang or a type of sociolect, not an independent language or a separate writing system. It's used by very specific people in very specific circumstances. Comparing an orthography that's merely an imitation of English and the Latin alphabet, without any properly standardized forms (as in consistent within the community, not officially regulated), to something as complex as Chinese is making it seem more complex than it is. Leet has so far not formed anything that is independent from English and it's speakers haven't really begun asserting themselves outside of. Leet has so far not formed any characters that have entirely new meanings or which are independent of English and there's certainly no trace of a highly abstracted radical-phonetic system, like with Chinese characters.
I'm also worried about statements like these:
  • While Leet is not generally spoken, it can be deemed close to stress-timed. – If Leet isn't spoken, it can't be measured either way. Am I correct in guessing that the deeming here has been done by author of the statement?
  • As the Leet cipher is highly dynamic, there is a wider possibility for multiple users to share the "same" name, through combinations of phonemes and transliterations. – What's "combination of phonemes and transliteration" supposed to mean? It seems like an overly complicated of saying "there is a lot of variation in how names can be composed in Leet". I hope you're aware that changing the spelling of something does not per se constitute a change in pronunciation. There's no way of telling without knowing how people are actually pronouncing those names, and I don't see any surveys quoted.
  • Leet can be highly lyrical and stylistic (even poetic), the way a typical pidgin language can be. – Here Leet is described in POV:ed peacock terms. Further more, those same terms are used to support the assumption that it's a type of pidgin. This flies right in the face of previous claims of how complex and creative Leet is. Pidgins are languages with simplified structure intended to make communication easier, and the objective of Leet is rather that of a secret language; to obscure the meaning of words to those who aren't initiated. Again, very typical of slang and sociolects, but not new writing systems.
As I read closer, the article is looking more and more like a hagiography of a cherished form of slang rather than a neutral and accurate description of an aspect of sociolinguistics. And I agree with Lara about the article using far too contrived language at times. It seems to favor linguistic jargon in a rather pretentious manner, when most of it could be explain in much simpler terms, or at least be clarified with circumlocutions. Just take this sentence:
  • It is realized in two different forms: -xor and -zor, having the same meaning but displaying morphophonemic alternation.
This, and pretty much all the information, could just as well be expressed as "There are two verb endings, -xor and -zor. That's it. "Morphophonemic aternation" isn't appropriate language for an article intended for the average reader.
Peter Isotalo 08:05, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Linguistic terms like those which you mentioned have their own articles so that if the average reader wants to know what it is, they can find out. However, some simplification could be in order, like what you and Lara were talking about. If there are no objections to your suggested revisions, then by all means take care of it.
Beyond the article, this is the bottom line: Leet was definitely developed as an alternate form of written communication (therefore it's a cipher, which may or may not be considered a writing system), and later on, some of the expressions began to be spoken (which is why it's also a form of English slang).
Cliff smith 00:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
The "may or may not"-bit is pretty much what I'm getting at. The definition as a writing system appears to be quite subjective.
Peter Isotalo 04:51, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I have to say that you raise some good points. I therefore once again put forth my suggestion that this article be split into a general Leet article, and one specifically on the linguistic aspects of Leet. I think this would suffice to permit the simplification of this article while keeping linguistic data present where applicable. In portions of the overview article that touch upon linguistic topics, there should be links to it for more information.
However, I completely disagree with your simplification of the -xor suffix analysis- I would much rather say something like "This suffix may also be realized as -zor" than suggest that these surface forms are completely different suffixes. Of course, as I see now what I'm suggesting has already been implemented in the article itself, so this is sort of a moot point. As to the rest of the simplification... at this point, I suggest that we wait until we implement a linguistics-geared article before we delete anything further, to make transfer easier.
I agree with your analysis of the neutrality and lack of references. A very large portion of the article is written as original research by speakers of Leet, which will therefore contain their insider beliefs of the language. In the case of Leet, which is rather limited in comparison to other languages, we probably won't get many non-speakers contributing information. A quick search through Google scholar does not show much good information or research into Leet. It's just too new a system.
You've taken my comparison of Leet orthography to Chinese characters in a completely different direction from what I intended. My suggestion is that Leet orthography takes advantage of English orthographic idiosyncrasies (e.g., "phreak") and similarities of shape (e.g., |\/|), and that this is similar to character formation in Chinese, where a character may contain phonetic components to serve as a hint towards pronunciation. Look at |\/|, for example- the shape composed of these symbols looks similar to "M", and thus there is a mapping from |\/| to the sound produced by "M" in that position. Compare this to Chinese 洋 (yáng), for "Western" (as in European), which has a 羊 (yáng), for "sheep", phonetic component- the pronunciation is the same in this case because there is a mapping from the phonetic component to the pronunciation of the original character (not that this is always the case; the pronunciation tends to be affected to some extent).
As to the actual validity of Leet as a writing system, I disagree that there are no standardized forms. There is just a high degree of redundancy, about which I do not feel there is anything wrong. Consider the possibility of ghoti in English, though it is technically correct, I do not believe that any speaker who had never seen this before would accept it. The same should be true of Leet.
But in any case, I return to my original suggestion- Let's separate the linguistics information out of here into another article. I agree that we should keep this as an overview page, but I completely disagree that we should eliminate this information. Mendaliv 08:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I still feel the comparison to Chinese is flawed. In the yáng meaning "West(ern)", the water radical to the left, which only has lexical meaning in this case, is required to actually complete the morpheme; without it, it's just "sheep". There is no such construction "|\/|" since it's just a slightly more complicated way of rendering your ordinary "m", not unlike writing it with a different font. It doesn't take on a new meaning and the components of "|\/|" can't be picked apart in any way that would make it obvious that it they are an integral part of that "m". "|", "\", "/" and "|" on their own have nothing to do with the letter "m" or the phoneme that it commonly represents. Neither is any meaning or applications inherent in any of those characters imposed on that "|\/|".
As for splitting the article into an general page and one for linguist(ic)s, I'm rather doubtful that it would be a good idea. It seems a lot like a classic example of a POV-fork. I don't know how much detail is required before we should start moving out content, but as of now, I don't feel there's a good reason to do so. Starting a new article with more specific information is nothing I can reasonably protest, but I don't think a general article should be vacuumed of linguistic content just because it might be a tad difficult to explain without all the buzzwords.
Peter Isotalo 10:35, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I don't really agree with your treatment of Leet spellings at this point, but for the sake of brevity let's drop the matter of analogy to Chinese for now.
As to forking the article, I suppose I shall have to concede that to you on account of different levels of experience. I would point out however that one reason why you don't see a significant amount of linguistic content is because of discussions as these- I know that I have completely stopped adding content from the articles that I found on Google Scholar (see earlier talk post), and do not plan to continue until we get this matter resolved- I don't want the time spent researching to go to waste simply because the current consensus is that this is an overview article with no room for description of specific linguistic processes.
Perhaps the words used in linguistically-geared descriptions are more opaque than you might like, but I would argue this point- a piece of terminology with a linked article describing it is a lot more concise than repeatedly giving a multi-word description. And furthermore, I don't know about you, but when I read through a Wikipedia article, I click on all the links to terminology that I do not understand, read the summary, and then the article if I'm so inclined.
Also, I would like to address the problem of original research in the article. I think that really is the single biggest problem we have, far far more than any matter of opaqueness of terminology or organizational problems. I have never seen attestations of half the forms in the orthography chart, and none have references. Everything that isn't cited in the morphology section is probably original research- when I rewrote parts of it a week or so ago there really weren't any citations. Mendaliv 00:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Don't let me discourage you about adding information. If it means that original research and other unverifiable claims will be weeded out, I'm all for it.
It might seem excessive to explain terminology that can be linked, but in my experience, relying on other articles to explain such vital information is not beneficial. For one thing, most of the articles linked are in of themselves very technical. When I showed previous, more linguistically nerdy versions of Swedish language to friends, they frequently pointed out the dense terminology. And I'm not just talking high school students and fellow posties, but college folk (even fellow language students) and people with degrees and experience with writing articles. To me that's a very good argument for stating the obvious more often than one might personally deem necessary.
Peter Isotalo 09:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Peter about stating the obvious. Also, some of the things that seem like OR, like stuff about suffixes, is pretty close to being common knowledge since Leet is just an English slang. It may need condensing, but since it's so close to English not everything will need referencing. Cliff smith 23:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Former Featured Article / Good Article Nominee

It was a featured article for a reason, I'm sure. After reading through ALL of the previous discussion, has it occured to anyone to possibly look back at what the article was during that featured time and build back toward that? Add whatever updated information has come along, but take it back to that style, that wording, that layout.

It's occured to me that I've not contributed that much to this article, so I could review its Good Article Nomination to get that over with. In its current state, I would put it on hold because there are still some issues. One example: under the Haxor, Suxxor, Suxorz heading it reads Using the word as a noun, one might say, “You are a suxxor.”, meaning “You are a bad person; you are bad at what you do.” Literally translated, this means, “You are the suck”, but it could also mean, “you are a sucker (i.e. fool).” The two variations appeared independently: the verb version is antonymous to roxxor (Leet for “to rock”), and the noun could be a counterpart to haxor. To me, it reads rediculous. It also needs a reference.

Last thing, I noticed the word behaviour in the lead section. In reading the entire article over I didn't notice any other British spelling, although I wasn't paying particular attention for it. I don't really know what all other words are spelled differently, but I didn't notice anything pop up at me. So I'm asking if the article is written with British spelling and that just happens to be the only word that's different, or is it in American spelling and that word just got looked over? --LaraLoveTalk/Contribs 02:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The word was just looked over. The article's in American spelling. Also, I have looked back on when it was FA, and I honestly think that it's better now. It was FA years ago, and had few if any references. I tried to incorporate some of its features, but I suppose that perhaps a couple more could be added. The stuff you point out about Leet when spoken can be condensed. Cliff smith 04:34, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I think the old version does better convey Leet as it is actually used, however. One problem that I have with the current slant of the article is that it seems to treat the system as an "all or nothing" approach- that the huge table of alternate spellings and character representations are all used all the time. Nothing could be farther from the truth in my experience (of course this is the problem; we need proof).
However, I think the entire old article below "Overview" is pretty junky- it consists almost entirely of long lists of substitutions and examples, entirely unreferenced.
About your reaction against that particular section of the current article... yes it has big problems. The interpretation of suxxor is pretty far off, and I'm not sure how "You are the suck" is a possible "literal translation" of "you are a suxxor". Also, the explanation of verbal "suxxor" being an antonym of verbal "roxxor" is confusing at first- "roxxor" needs a better interpretation to make the relationship less based on slang. I have no idea what it means by "the noun could be a counterpart to haxor".
I agree with your feelings about this article's current GA merits- it's just not there yet. We still have redundancy and conflicting statements in some parts of the article. But, perhaps someday we'll get it there. Mendaliv 03:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
This can easily be GA, and though it may not quite be there it's not far off. Once we've gotten things condensed, which will almost certainly involve the removal of some current things which would be deemed OR, we'll renominate it and go from there. The parts about Leet when spoken may end up going. Cliff smith 20:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

Looking over the article, I have decided to fail this GA. I think that it could be a Good Article, but the text as it stands is not up to current standards.

Here are some notes:

  1. The lead doesn't seem consistent with WP:LEAD. The second paragraph presents new information, rather than being a concise summary of the article as a whole.
  2. Because of the fannish nature of the material, you need to be doubly-careful with citations. The history section has a number of claims which aren't cited, as do many other sections. "Leet has since entered the mainstream." - says who? "It is also sometimes used as a nonsense script language." - by whom? While you may know these things to be true from personal experience, right now this reads like original research.
  3. You need citations for your chart in "Orthography". Again, this seems to be from your personal experience rather than because an academic or otherwise trust-worthy source on Leet wrote up this guide.
  4. Ditto with many uncited points in "Morphology" and "Grammar"
  5. No citation at all in "Rhyming and rhythm"
  6. Similar WP:NOR questions in the remaining sections. Sorry that I don't go into them.
  7. Fix up citation #24 (make it refer to a specific search you performed with a "retrieved on" date)
  8. Consider finding an image or illustration
  9. Some additional comment to criticism of Leet, to make the article less one-sided.

Here's the GAList:

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

So, while I don't doubt that your article is factually accurate, you need to go a ways before you'll dispel the cloud of original research. But, once you have citations for everything, I think you're quite close to GA. JRP 05:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy

I noticed that there is a link to the programming language 1337, and that it is redirected to the main article. Is there it a real programming language? If so than it should have an article, and if not I think the redundant link should be dropped. Kage-Lupus 03:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It was a separate article at some point, but is now apparently a redirect. I did a Google search on "l33t programming language" and it does not come up with text from this article (Leet), so I'm not exactly sure what took place. For now, the link will be removed. If a reference cannot be found for it, it will likely be removed. Cliff smith 03:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I found a Google Directory page with info on various comupter programming languages, and one of them is the l33t programming language, so hopefully that page should be a sufficient ref. Cliff smith 03:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
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