Template talk:IPA notice

Recreated
See Template talk:Orthography notation for a discussion leading up to the recreation.

Could you restore the deleted revisions of Template:IPA notice, Template:IPA notice/doc, and this talk page for reference? I want to create the documentation before I replace Contains special characters, and I want to see the previous documentation before creating it. Nardog (talk) 23:52, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ See Template:IPA notice/Old, Template:IPA notice/doc/Old, and /Old — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:34, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much! Sorry to be picky, but wouldn't the old revisions of Template:IPA notice/Old serve better if buried in Template:IPA notice? People tend not to like having unused templates (I among them to some extent). Nardog (talk) 00:42, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Eh, I'm not a fan of mixing page histories if it's not necessary for attribution. I blanked the most recent revision to prevent the unused template problem, but if you really want these histories together it's not a hard change. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Well there's an eight-month gap between the deletion and recreation so they won't be mixed, and those wanting to know what the template looked like at a point in time will have an easier time finding it if they are merged. Nardog (talk) 00:57, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:11, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! It's actually fun to see the evolution of the template. :) Nardog (talk) 01:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Brackets
The brackets sentence is redundant, since the template already links to International Phonetic Alphabet and Help:IPA, both of which have sections about bracket notation. I imagine it was included because has it, but of course that template does not otherwise link to IPA. I know there's no to turn it off, but shouldn't that at least be the default, since the template being replaced didn't have that sentence. Kanguole 13:13, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

xref your (valid) edit to Welsh (language), would you expand the IPA box at the end of Template:Infobox language to include the $⟨⟩$, / / and [ ] notations, please. I don't speak templatish well enough to do it.

If you can tone down the virulent purple background while you are at it, that would be great. It violates MOS:ACCESS. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:13, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's Kanguole who hid that sentence from the infobox. Given how common it is to see people conflate [ ] and / /, I agree the sentence is helpful even if the same information can be found in Help:IPA (and who knows how many people actually click on it and scroll so deep), although I would probably phrase it more directly like "Enclosed in [ ] are phones, in / / are phonemes". And even if a consensus was made that it wasn't necessary, we should be at least be consistent about it, so I too object to the removal of the sentence from the infobox. Nardog (talk) 14:25, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, the change to the infobox was that you added the sentence. I restored an approximation of the previous state.  Kanguole 14:32, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * But it makes little sense to mention them in some templates and not in others. The new template differs from in more ways than just that sentence (the primary difference being the former no longer mentions rendering support since most devices can show them now), so just that it wasn't there before is not a compelling reason for its removal. Nardog (talk) 14:39, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You are attempting to force a change in the behaviour of that infobox, even though this template has an option to approximate the old behaviour. I have opened a discussion at Template talk:Infobox language. Kanguole 14:54, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Consistency should be achieved between templates or otherwise users may find it justified to add IPA notice in articles that already have Infobox language on the grounds that the latter doesn't mention brackets. So if you find it redundant, get a consensus to remove it from all templates using IPA notice/msg. Nardog (talk) 04:53, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I need to get a consensus to remove something that you just boldly added to 500 articles and 3 infoboxes? You've got that the wrong way round. Kanguole 09:42, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I've restored the previous version of the note in Infobox language on your behalf since the change is not just an addition of the sentence (which was first suggested by John Maynard Friedman and revised by LiliCharlie). I'm merely suggesting that you get a consensus to remove it from all templates for the sake of consistency if you want to remove it from any of them, so that we wouldn't have to have multiple templates with overlapping functions in the same articles. Nardog (talk) 09:52, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Furthermore, I must challenge 's opening assertion with a highly notable exception that disproves their rule:  (grapheme) is _not_ a standard IPA notation.

More generally, there are many articles that take for granted that visitors are already familiar with these grapheme, phoneme and phonetic notations. We should not do that, we cannot make such an assumption: think of the reader. I am entirely at a loss why anyone would think we should not provide the notation sentence. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:53, 10 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I think that the short text and link to brackets and delimiters does no harm, and is probably useful to the vast majority of Wikipedia readers. Regarding the purple background that John Maynard Friedman mentioned near the start of this discussion, that seems to be a problem with Infobox language. See my comment at Template talk:Infobox language. Cnilep (talk) 01:38, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The link is indeed redundant, because both of the first two links go to articles that have sections covering brackets, where both discuss.
 * If your point is that  isn't part of IPA and so doesn't belong in an IPA notice, then sure.
 * Text in templates should be kept to a minimum, because they are repeated all over the place, particularly if they are included in widely-used infoboxes. Kanguole 12:33, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, think of the reader who may encounter these notations jointly or severally in a number of articles and fail to distinguish between them. It costs next to nothing to give all three notations, especially when they all have the same article for explanations: it has no practical effect on the infoboxes. Giving all three indicates to the reader their consistency of purpose. There are very few articles that use the grapheme notation without also using the phoneme notation and vice versa: nor can your purity of purpose be guaranteed in the future. Would you seriously suggest that an editor who makes a one sentence change to an article, using a notation that is widely used in the field, should check whether the infobox needs a standard notation adding because some purist in the past didn't approve? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:51, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree it's overly wordy. The problem with that is, who's going to bother reading it? The shorter the better IMO. We could capture it with "For an introductory guide on IPA symbols and brackets ..." — kwami (talk) 03:04, 9 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Yet again, WP:think of the reader. You should not presuppose that the visitor already knows that || and // are IPA symbols or even that $⟨⟩$ are brackets. The space saving that you want to make is trivial. Clarity and accessibility are far more important. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 07:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * We've lost the note that without proper fonts installed, they may not be able to read the transcription. If they have a MS machine out of the box, for example, with fonts like Calibri, TNR and Arial, they're not going to be able to see a lot of IPA. You specify the ⟨ ⟩ brackets, for example, but Calibri and Google's Noto fonts don't even have them. — kwami (talk) 08:36, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know what MsWindows does nowadays, but certainly Android+Chrome displays angle brackets correctly and as done to my certain knowledge since at least five years ago (but probably longer). So the ref to Noto is incidental (though surprising, given its raison d'être). I agree that full IPA support will need users to install specific fonts. But surely it is reasonable to assume that anyone who is familiar with the full spectrum of IPA would already know that? Would we be stating the obvious? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:48, 24 August 2022 (UTC)