User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 31

Your GA nomination of Cistercian numerals
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Cistercian numerals you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ealdgyth -- Ealdgyth (talk) 15:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cistercian numerals
The article Cistercian numerals you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Cistercian numerals for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ealdgyth -- Ealdgyth (talk) 16:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cistercian numerals
The article Cistercian numerals you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Cistercian numerals for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ealdgyth -- Ealdgyth (talk) 16:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

"Buenaventura language" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Buenaventura language. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 11 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 11:59, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Wolaytta language page move
Dear Kwami, we've had this kind of discussion already some years ago: please, please do not make page moves out of the blue without any kind of preceding discussion. You moved Wolaytta language to Wolaitta language without giving any reason, probably having none, as Ethnologue, Glottolog and WALS all agree on calling it Wolaytta. This kind of move is not only pointless, but actually quite disruptive, as the title of the page now gives a different spelling than the first line, and Ethiopian language names are already confusing enough as they are. Most Wolaytta people can't even agree on how to spell their own given names, so why do we need to reinforce that when at least for the language name some kind of consensus has arisen, at least in the academic literature about the language? So, I kindly ask you to redo this move, or I will have to get myself into the trouble of finding out how to do this. Cheers, Landroving Linguist (talk) 08:18, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If you cannot not move it back, I think you can place a technical request ("revert of a bold move"). But unexplained does not mean pointless: at least Ngram has almost even counts of "Wolaytta language" and "Wolaitta language"; without "language", "Wolaitta" is quite dominant over "Wolaytta". So a discussed move request might be more fruitful. –Austronesier (talk) 13:47, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Good point - I shouldn't come over so aggressive and should first assume that Kwami wouldn't do it without a good reason. So please take my apologies! In any case, I think Wikipedia should spell the language (the correct spelling is anyone's guess with the messy Wolaytta orthography) the same way as the other three large online repositories on languages, particularly as they all agree on one spelling. Landroving Linguist (talk) 15:02, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't care which spelling we use. The reason I moved it was that I created a link w the 'i' spelling, and it was red. That surprised me. I could've created a rd directly or by moving the page, and it was easier to move the page. But I certainly won't object if you move it back.

One point, though -- the 3 repositories you mention are not independent sources. Glottolog started off with Ethnologue's language inventory and then set out to correct, augment and purge it. If they leave an Ethn spelling, that can just mean that they don't care. (And they generally don't care about labels.) I believe WALS also uses ISO spellings. So they're really a single source, ISO, which is not a RS for which name is best. If Glotto and WALS go along with ISO, that may just mean that it's close enough to not bother with, not that it's the dominant spelling in the lit. (Which in this case AFAICT it's not.)

Personally, I don't think that we should use ISO, an industrial standard, to determine language-name preferences for linguistics. — kwami (talk) 22:05, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * All fair enough, which leaves me with the point that just short of deleting a page a move to a different page name is about the most impactful thing you can do to a Wikipedia page, particularly as it is not easily fixed. If you are really in the habit of moving pages because they don't happen to match the spelling of a link you create somewhere, you have something that you should seriously address in your life. And you should not do it without having a discussion first, or people here will hate your guts. Well, since the spelling in the case of this language really doesn't matter (the dictionaries I worked on often used three different spellings on the same page), and since the redirect still works from Wolaytta, and since I really don't know how to go about this, I will leave it at that. Landroving Linguist (talk) 22:21, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I didn't move it because it didn't match the spelling of a link I made. I moved it because the most common spelling didn't exist and it needed to. I then had a choice of how to create the rd, and saw no reason not to do it by moving the article to the more common name. There are cases where I've moved an article half a dozen times to create half a dozen redirects. If anyone's ever objected, it was a trivial number compared to the thousands of page moves I've made and thousands of redirects I've created. And the choice is usually a trivial one anyway. Some of these languages, including some in Ethiopia, are so poorly covered in English that a single publication can change the dominant name or spelling in the literature. — kwami (talk) 22:33, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Another quotation
From Most Phallic Building contest:

"Cabinet wrote that the Ypsilanti Water Tower, called "the brick dick" by locals, "is clearly the world's most phallic." [...] Located on the highest point in Ypsilanti, erection began in 1889 [...]" --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:36, 14 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Ha! Thanks, I used to live in Ypsi, actually, and the tower was only a couple minutes walk from my house. It was something of a joke, but we mostly took it for granite. — kwami (talk) 00:58, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Edits at Pykobjê dialect
Hi there, Kwamikagami: I notice that your recent edit at Pykobjê dialect has created a reference problem with ref name= "glotto" which doesn't exist - is this from a different article? Can you please help me correct it to a real reference format ? Thanks. 09:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi. That's referring to the glotto param in the info box. Someone must've disabled support. I noticed the glotto params don't generate refs any more. Must be part of that. When I get a chance I'll revert the changes to the info box. — kwami (talk) 00:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

"Chaungtha language" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Chaungtha language. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 24 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Great lakes bantu languages
Hi, im jus curious why my edits of the classification of the Great Lakes Bantu languages were removed even tho i gave valid sources from as recently as 2019. Wojak6 (talk) 06:25, 3 February 2021 (UTC)


 * You did give valid sources, but from 1993, 1994 and 1997. Your claim that you were "updating" the article with more recent information appears to be false. I restored the previous, actually more recent classification from 1999, which had been stable for years. Your classification is followed by Glottolog, but the previous one is followed by Nurse, who is an expert on Bantu languages.


 * If you have a source from 2019, I'd be interested in seeing it, but you didn't cite it in the article. — kwami (talk) 06:34, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Creating redirects by moving
Hi, you seem to prefer creating redirects using the unusual method of starting with one redirect and then moving it in sequence across all the titles for redirects to the same target. Please don't do that. It may save you a few milliseconds of your time, but it adds to the labour for anyone else who's going to deal with those redirects afterwards. If the first entry in a redirect's history is a move, then this will almost universally be an indication that the title was previously occupied by an article (it's articles that get moved, not redirects). On several occasions I've had to go from one move long entry to another, looking for that elusive article in the history that I may need to have histmerged, only to find in the end it's just redirects all the way down. Also, these redirects will end up having more than one edit in their history (because of the double-redirect fixing), which means that if the target article ever needs to be moved over one of them, this won't be possible without advanced permissions. – Uanfala (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll try to keep that in mind.
 * It's actually quite a bit of time that's saved, when creating hundreds of rd's, e.g. from ISO, Glottolog or ELP names. — kwami (talk) 08:13, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Unconstrunctive behavior
Hello, Mike Novikoff removed all our edits from WP:RUSTRESS and restored an old version, even if I politely asked him not to do so and be constructive: here: The essay doesn't belong to you; it's in common space, and some other users actually asked me to edit it. One other user edited it before me, anyway, and another after me (I also included a sentence suggested by a third user). You can give a link to the old version here, and we can discuss the whole thing on the talk page. Anyway, I tried to include both points of view, and I didn't remove most of your arguments (save for the irrelevant or misleading stuff). Let's not complicate things. — Could you please do something about it? It's very frustrating, to say the least. Thanks. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 05:43, 3 February 2021 (UTC)


 * It only links from talk pages and ANI, so it isn't really important. Regular readers will never see it. But if he insists on making it his personal project, then it belongs in his user space, not in WP space. Let's see what happens, and if he continues to be recalcitrant, I can move it to his user space. If it goes beyond that, then you should take it to ANI. I don't want to get into an argument over something that at this point is essentially meaningless. — kwami (talk) 06:29, 3 February 2021 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks much. I'm shaking my head in disbelief, really. What a childish behavior. (May I quote you on the essay's talk page, btw?) P.S. Huh, Ymblanter has just moved the essay to Novikoff's talk page. That solves the question, I guess (more or less). THANKS. Taurus Littrow (talk) 06:38, 3 February 2021 (UTC)


 * An admin already moved it to his user space (I see that's happened before), warned him not to move it back, so that should hopefully resolve things. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 08:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Kaado language
would like to move Kaado language to Songhay proper or something similar. Glottolog lists it as Kaado. See Talk:Kaado language. — Sago tree spirit  (talk) 19:26, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Kaktovik numerals
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Kaktovik numerals you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chipmunkdavis -- Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:01, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Great! — kwami (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Kaktovik numerals
The article Kaktovik numerals you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Kaktovik numerals for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chipmunkdavis -- Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:01, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Kaktovik numerals
The article Kaktovik numerals you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Kaktovik numerals for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chipmunkdavis -- Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:42, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Barnstar for you

 * Thanks! — kwami (talk) 21:22, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Consonant
You might want to refresh yourself on WP:BRD. That image has been in the article for 8 years. You removed it. I objected to your reason and restored it. Please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than continuing to remove it. Meters (talk) 04:12, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's stupid, added by someone who doesn't understand the difference between a symbol and the thing it represents. Or perhaps had dumbed down the article under the assumption that our readers were too stupid to know the difference. — kwami (talk) 04:14, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, take it to the article's talk page. It has been there for eight years so you'll need to make your case and get consensus for removing it. A personal attack against the person who added it is not going to help you case.  And your summary did not specify the symbol, you simply said that the letter t is not a consonant, it's a letter. I disagreed. Meters (talk) 04:22, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Then you don't know what a consonant is either, in the sense the word is being used in the article. And calling out someone for ignorance is not a personal attack. — kwami (talk) 04:26, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't object your new image, but I find your comments insulting. I'm not interested in disusing this with you.  Meters (talk) 04:56, 14 March 2021 (UTC).

March 2021
Hello, I'm Hulmem. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, KBRW (AM), but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. hulmem (talk) 22:58, 15 March 2021 (UTC)


 * The FCC has no authority over cities' names. That's up to the city. And it's officially the City of Utqiaġvik. — kwami (talk) 02:28, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

"South Scandinavian languages" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect South Scandinavian languages. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 20 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:49, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Help:IPA/Latin
There's a disagreement between me and another user about the use of the Help:IPA/Latin key on the articles Manlia gens and Romulus. Thought you might perhaps be interested since you've contributed to that key in the past. Libhye (talk) 21:51, 20 March 2021 (UTC)


 * AFAIK Latin pronunciation is predictable if the full Latin is given, so IMO the IPA isn't necessary. But there should be some indication of pronunciation, if only the apices. — kwami (talk) 02:58, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Kaktovik numerals
Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

"Karipúna do Uaçá language" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Karipúna do Uaçá language. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 28 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. KittenKlub (talk) 12:21, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Snooker
Hi Kwamikagami, please can you explain your edit summary "still need pan-UK" in the Snooker article. I'm working on the lead section at the moment. I don't understand what you mean by "pan-UK". My best guess is that you are talking about the spread of snooker from the UK into other parts of the world, like Asia? Or is it a language thing? Cheers, Rodney Baggins (talk) 08:30, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I meant the IPA transcription. Not all of the UK is non-rhotic, and for the parts that are, ar-dropping is automatic, so we don't need to indicate it. — kwami (talk) 18:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * So it's a language thing. No worries! Rodney Baggins (talk) 21:07, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Baháʼí Faith in Chad for deletion
As the second most contributor to the article this may be of interest to you. A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Baháʼí Faith in Chad 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 Articles for deletion/Baháʼí Faith in Chad 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. Smkolins (talk) 14:15, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

IPA tones
Hi Kwamikagami, I am a specialist who works in this field. Nowadays, Southeast Asian linguists do not use tone sticks to mark tones. This is something that only old-fashioned Sinologists do now. If in doubt, you can e-mail linguists working on SE Asian languages or take a look at STEDT.

This is the equivalent of converting IAST into IPA on all Indo-Aryan articles, Semitic transcriptions into IPA, or especially turning combining accents in African languages into tone sticks.

Can we get community consensus on this first at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages? Lingnanhua (talk) 23:34, 9 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Or if some of us insist on using tone sticks, we need to at least have the numerical tones and tone sticks placed side-by-side. One way to implement this is to create a template that displays both numeral tones and tone sticks. Lingnanhua (talk) 23:55, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi

It's fine to have specialist, walled-garden transcriptions, but for general use we have a long-standing consensus to use IPA. Wikipedia is, after all, a global resource, not intended just for Sinologists and SE Asianists. We certainly should never use local conventions without explaining to the reader what they are! You'll notice that for IAST transcription of Indic languages, they're tagged as IAST and linked to a key (or at least they should be). The problem is not just that the digits are not IPA, but that they are undefined. '3', for example, might be high pitch, mid pitch or low pitch, and which it is varies from language to language and even from author to author. In the languages I've worked on, for example, '1' is HIGH and '5' is LOW. It's very confusing to try to read something where all the tone numbers are the inverse of what they're "supposed" to mean. Chao tone letters don't have that problem. As for combining diacritics, those are also IPA and unambiguous, so there's no problem using them.

What you're arguing for is more like Americanists insisting on using Americanist phonetic notation rather than IPA, or insisting that geographic articles use Imperial rather than metric measures. Sure, such local conventions are acceptable, but they should never be the default, not even in articles about the USA. — kwami (talk) 01:01, 10 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is a global resource, but readers delving into those articles still adapt to those specialist transcriptions. Those specialist transcriptions like IAST are still used for practical reasons. Sometimes errors can happen when specialist transcriptions are converted into IPA, so the original transcription must be preserved.
 * A potential solution is to create a template for East Asian transcriptions, same as for IAST. This would be better discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages. Lingnanhua (talk) 01:08, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree that's a reasonable approach. — kwami (talk) 01:13, 10 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Is there is a list of all templates that explain specialist transcriptions? If not, we can compile one. Lingnanhua (talk) 01:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

They seem to be scattered throughout Category:Wikipedia multilingual support templates. — kwami (talk) 01:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Congratulations
Your DYK hook about the Kaktovik numerals system created by the Alaskan Iñupiat drew 9,264 page views (772 per hour) while on the Main Page. It is one of the most viewed hooks for the month of March as shown at March 2021 DYK STATS. Keep up the great work! Cbl62 (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! (Sorry, I thought at first you were a bot acct.) — kwami (talk) 07:16, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Dire wolf
I do not know what you were attempting to articulate to me with your comments on my Talk page - who is "He"? - but it is clear that you did not bother to read the cited reference before you reverted me - that reference was not all about genus Canis.

As for your comment of "...your 'translation' is obviously nonsense...", and your edit summary of "...no evidence for obviously false translation..." (a) I refer you to WP:CIVIL, and (b) it was never my 'translation' because it was from the cited reference which you did not check.

As for your edit summary of "...It's not Canis! Did you notice the genus is different? Aenocyon does not mean "wolf"!...", please see my user page and then you can form your own opinion as to whether I know the difference.

Nor do I understand why an article on a Late Pleistocene North American canid on the English version of Wikipedia benefits from a lesson in ancient Greek. William Harris (talk) 21:38, 15 April 2021 (UTC)


 * When an article is factually wrong, it should be corrected. Noting that something you wrote is wrong is not a violation of CIVIL. Any article will benefit from correction of its errors, whatever they are. If they're not important enough to correct, then they're not important enough to include in the first place. — kwami (talk) 22:18, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

April 2021
Hello, I'm VeryRarelyStable. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added to Enochian have been removed because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. —VeryRarelyStable 07:30, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Mindoro and a map you created
Hi Kwamikagami,

I noticed that this map you created, which is used on many different articles throughout Wikipedia, is missing the island of Mindoro. Would you be able to correct it?

RedPanda25 17:23, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi RedPanda,
 * I've made a request to the user who fixed up the national borders. If they decline, I'll try something else. — kwami (talk) 21:31, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Montenegro recognition
From https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/montenegro-new-law-establishing-registration-of-same-sex-partnerships-enters-into-force/

(Aug. 5, 2020) On July 3, 2020, the president of Montenegro, Milo ÄukanoviÄ, signed Decree No. 01-1337 / 2 on the Promulgation of the Law on the Same-Sex Life Partnership. The president issued the decree two days after the Skupština Crne Gore (the Parliament of Montenegro) passed the Law on the Same-Sex Life Partnership (Law No. 868 of July 1, 2020.)

Forty-two lawmakers in the 81-seat Parliament backed the law, which required 41 votes for passage. Members of the Parliament from the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS); the Social Democrats; the Liberal Party; and the opposition party, the Social Democratic Party, comprised the votes for passing the legislation. Five MP’s voted against and the rest claimed during the June 30 debate that the law was being imposed by the “world Satanists” and abstained from voting.

'''The law enters into force on the eighth day after its publication in the Official Gazette of Montenegro, but the law’s provisions stipulate that its implementation (the issuing of certificates of partnership, etc.) will begin one year after it enters into force. (Art. 76.)'''

Naraht (talk) 18:26, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

You may be interested
I understand if you are busy, but judging from your contributions, you may be interested. Wretchskull (talk) 10:21, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yeah, it is an interest, but not something I know much about. Definitely deserves to be GA or FA, though. I'll take a look. — kwami (talk) 19:16, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Croatian language edits
Hi Kwamikagami. It was easier for me to revert all three edits at once, sorry about that, but I feel I owe you a longer explanation: when it comes to the language of Croats (Hr-VA-ti), stress is indeed on the thrilled R (HRRR-vatski) and that was not a typo. The four dialects are more than accents, but you're right that they should be listed with commas, not slashes. Thanks, Ponor (talk) 20:34, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fix.
 * What are the differences between e-i-ije-kavski apart from the jat reflex? — kwami (talk) 22:34, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, it's complicated because they also mix with other divisions of the dialect spectrum. The ča/kaj/šta/što (super)division has well defined geographical regions, then each of those has a few distinct regional subdivisions that some like to classify according to the e/i/je pronunciation, or the ways words are stressed (accents). On top of that there are historical influences of other languages that may or may not follow ča/kaj/šta/što or e/i/je borders. So imagine painting a map first by how the word what is pronounced, then paint e/i/je regions differently, add layer for accents, words from foreign languages that dominated the regions in the past, and so on. You'll get a spectrum in which not all e-i-jekavian dialects (in Croatian we call them 'govor', speech; in English they may be better called pronunciations, 'izgovor') are the same and you'll have to be more specific to describe each one of them. The e/i/je words are frequent, that's why I think they were chosen to *represent* different dialects. It's funny that as a native speaker from a country of 4M people I can easily recognize at least 20 distinct dialects and put them on a map; 3-4 of those I can hardly understand (and that's not only because they are ča/kaj/što or e-i-je). Ponor (talk) 09:12, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I thought it was primarily the reflex of the yat. When Serbian started switching from Ijekavian to Ikavian, was it really a change in dialect (grammar, vocab, etc.), or just of that vowel, like the regional difference of the /ɔː/ vowel in American English, or /bæθ/ vs /bɑːθ/ for the BATH vowel? — kwami (talk) 09:30, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * If you group all humans by the color of their hair, then the groups differ by hair color (yet no members of a group are the same). So yes, the main difference between E/I/Je-kavian is the reflex of the yat; it's a prominent characteristic so it makes sense to group by it. I don't know why and how those developed in distant regions: sometimes it's migrations, sometimes it's political decisions, or even independent development. I don't think other changes followed this one, maybe only accents. For example, (quite pronounced) vocabulary differences are more due to foreign influences, i.e. history&geography, and you add them on top of pronunciation differences: Venetian/Italian influence was the strongest near the coast (where Chakavian was dominant, either as Ekavian or Ikavian), and we had German/Austrian (in dominantly Kajkavian-Ekavian regions), Turkish (in dominantly Shtokavian-Ikavian, Shtokavian-Jekavian, Shtokavian-Ekavian regions), Hungarian, Serbian (...) influences as well. Grammar changes are less granular, distant regions did lose some verb tenses (one form of FT instead of two), word cases (Nom+Acc only instead of all seven; or Voc→Nom), and some do appear in dominantly Kajkavian or Shtokavian regions, but again, I don't think they developed *because* of the kaj/što difference, they developed on top of them and sometimes cross their borders. It's a spectrum, and you probably need three words to describe every single dialect, like Chakavian+Ekavian+Istrian or Chakavian+Ikavian+Dalmatian etc. Different authors do it differently, see tables at hr:Dijalekt. Ponor (talk) 14:38, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * In linguistics, 'dialect' implies more than just a difference in pronunciation, so if that's all the terms are tracking, I don't think 'dialect' would be an appropriate word. There have been discussions in the past on this point for the SC articles. But 'accent' is perhaps not quite right either. What we're really tracking are isoglosses. Perhaps the section could be recast in those terms. — kwami (talk) 19:24, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Slight voicing
Hello, I had one question. If a voiced consonant, say /b/, is said to be ‘slightly voiced’, then should I represent it as [b̥᪽] or would a simple [b̥] (without the parentheses) be fine? [For more details, this is a phenomenon in Standard Bengali in which initial and final voiced stops are slightly voiced, while full voicing occurs in intervocalic positions.] Thank you so much for your attention! — inqilābī  ‹inqilāb·zinda·bād› 01:35, 9 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi Inqilābī,
 * I don't think it's very standardized. Since voiced [b] has a dedicated IPA letter for its voiceless variant, "p", voiceless "[b̥]" doesn't have any obvious meaning. Some people use [b̥] for slack voice, others for a fully devoiced phonetic [p] (written with a "b" if it's from an underlying /b/, written "p" if it's from /p/, but phonetically identical), others use [b̥] vs [p] for a lenis-fortis distinction. You'd need to explain to your reader what "voiceless voiced labial plosive" was supposed to mean. On the other hand, [b̥᪽] has a reasonably clear meaning, so that's what I'd probably use. It's still ambiguous as to whether by "slightly voiced" you mean weakly voiced throughout, fully voiced but only for part of its duration, or both, but since that probably varies from utterance to utterance even for the same speaker, then unless you're being extraordinarily precise in your transcription of a particular recording, you can probably just leave it as "[b̥᪽]" and provide any details in your description. But "[b̥]" is just fine (and more common, since it's less effort), as long as you're clear what you mean by it. But that's true for all things IPA: you should always clarify what you mean by even standard use of standard IPA symbols, because they're not always used in the standard way, and because if you want your writing to still be useful a couple generations from now, there's a good chance that the standard will have morphed by then. If you've ever read phonetic descriptions from even half a century ago, you've probably appreciated the author explaining their symbols, or been frustrated when they didn't, even when they were normal IPA. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I am pretty sure that a voiced stop word-initially & finally is realised as weakly voiced throughout. Since using the symbol without the parenthesis could be ambiguous as you said, I shall then use [b̥᪽]. I would actually be using this phonetic transcription on Wiktionary where there will otherwise be no scope to explain what the symbol actually means. By the way that phonetic information is from Chatterji (1921) (a paper on Bengali phonetics) where the author does not employ any symbol for such voiced stops, but just explains the sound. Thanks again! ·~   dictátor · mundꟾ  02:20, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * English voiced stops are similarly weakly voiced word-initially, so you might check out how that's conveyed as well. — kwami (talk) 05:29, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Tomui River vs. Tomul River
Hi Kwami, is there a source that mentions the name of the Tomui/Tomul River? I need to see if the correct spelling is Tomui River or Tomul River. The Cebuano Wikipedia has Tomul River, but the Madang language articles here have "Tomui River." — Sago tree spirit  (talk) 14:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Looks like it might be from an old Ethnologue jpeg map, which is blurry enought it's ambiguous between 'Tomul' and 'Tomui'. According to the Gazetteer of Papua New Guinea, 'Tomul River' is at those coordinates and very close to the Josephstaal mission. I can't find any confirmation for 'Tomui'. I've changed the articles. Thanks for catching this. — kwami (talk) 19:24, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

RfC notice
This is a neutral notice sent to all non-bot/non-blocked registered users who edited Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics in the past year that there is a new request for comment at. Nardog (talk) 10:54, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Sfn reference error
Hi, in this edit you introduced an Sfn reference "Bender 2020" without defining it. This adds the article to Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors, as well as making it impossible for anyone to look up the reference. DuncanHill (talk) 19:59, 3 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm still working on the article. — kwami (talk) 20:04, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Maureen Wroblewitz
Hello. Help added IPA and Pronunciation respelling key. Thanks you. Vnosm (talk) 02:35, 4 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry, you'll need to give me something to base it on. An interview where she says her name, maybe? I have no idea what the English pronunciation of her name is. — kwami (talk) 02:56, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * |link. Thanks you. Vnosm (talk) 03:02, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Looks like you are still missing Pronunciation respelling key. Vnosm (talk) 05:13, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Do we need it? Guess it doesn't hurt. — kwami (talk) 06:00, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Everybody needs it somewhere, on this vast planet. Vnosm (talk) 07:06, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

IPA tone bar fixes
Hello, I've found some edits by you from about two years ago fixing duplicate tone bars; since search queries like Special:Search/insource:/˥˥/ do return results, maybe you could do a new run now? Thanks, User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)  10:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Ceres
This is a very delicate time right now. Before making any edits, may I ask that you carefully go through the peer review, the GA nomination, and the subsequent peer review. Some things you did were open to discussion. Others were not and I do not have the time to illucidate them individually.  Serendi pod ous  10:49, 16 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Okay. I'll let you take care of it for FA. — kwami (talk) 22:58, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Yongnan languages
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 * You're welcome to improve the article or to redirect it to another that better covers the topic. But we do not delete ISO names or codes, because it's important to direct readers searching for those names and codes to the appropriate article. — kwami (talk) 03:27, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

same-sex marriage in Yucatan
Please stop undoing references to the recently passed state constitutional amendment allowing same-sex marriage in Yucatan state. Every credible news source reporting on the issue says that the law allows same-sex couples to marry. That was the whole point of the amendment. One tweet from a random person does not discredit all of those sources. Please only make changes if a consensus emerges that this is incorrect, or if you can cite a credible source -- a news article or the government of Yucatan -- that says otherwise.

This article notes that the constitution takes precedence over all other laws, and that editing the Family Code is a mere formality: https://www.yucatan.com.mx/merida/en-espera-de-que-publiquen-cambio

Note that the Yucatan state congress' official twitter account tweeted that it passed a same-sex marriage law. This is clearly more authoritative than your twitter user.

More sources: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robsalerno (talk • contribs) 18:20, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Many of those sources are dubious. One appears to use the WP map that I've been editing! And I don't see how a tweet from an MP overrides a tweet by a lawyer involved in the lawsuit.
 * But your first source is convincing. Journalists often get things like this wrong. But here we have deputy Milagros Romero Bastarrachea explaining that, while the laws still need to be changed, they are in effect irrelevant. That's the critical question, and one that most sources don't address.
 * (For those of you reading this broken thread, Yucatan banned SSM twice: by law and through the constitution. The constitution is now gender neutral, but the law was not changed. So technically SSM is still illegal in Yucatan. The question is whether the state will follow the law, which according ot Milagros Romero it won't -- as in several other states where SSM is performed despite being illegal.)
 * — kwami (talk) 20:56, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

There are other sources that contradict yours at Talk:Same-sex marriage in Mexico. I'll copy over the first of your refs, but should present your case there. — kwami (talk) 04:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Hand shogi for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Hand shogi 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 Articles for deletion/Hand shogi 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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Ceres II
Sort this the fuck out. Wikipedia's article on Ceres has to say that Ceres is a dwarf planet. Because every other relevant, up to date reference guide does. The IAU have officially declared it a dwarf planet. It is the IAU's job to rule on issues of nomenclature. As long as that is the case, Ceres is a dwarf planet. I don't care if it isn't hydrostatic equilibrium, was in hydrostatic equlibrium, or is a banana fruit cake. Put a paragraph-long note at the end explaining the caveats if you must, but sort this out. I will not have your egomaniacal crusade derail four months of work and my first chance at a featured article in 10 years.  Serendi pod ous  01:30, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * It has been sorted out. You apparently don't know how science, or the IAU, works. The IAU created the definition for a technical term/category. That is its job. But dictating reality is not. Bodies which fit the definition are DPs. Those which do not aren't. It's up to astronomers to determine whether a body fits the definition or not. The IAU has not positioned itself as the arbiter of reality, and if they did, astronomers would simply ignore them.
 * We report on reality as best we can based on RS's, not according to bureaucratic announcements. This is no different than reporting which family or genus a particular species is classified as. We would never say that the Audobon Society has declared a bird to be in family X, therefore any ornithologist who classifies it in family Y is wrong. I honestly don't understand why that is not obvious to you.
 * As for FA review, simply cite the relevant sources. It's not difficult. Reality should no more be decided by your desire to have a star on your user page than it should be by bureaucratic diktat. — kwami (talk) 02:00, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I can cite one relevant source: the IAU. How many sources does your position require? Ten? A hundred? Hydrostatic equilibrium depends on chemical makeup, temperature, tidal history, and a hundred other variables. To say precisely when an object is is hydrostatic equilibrium is a fool's errand and really only serves to obscure the issue. And I think you know that. Just like I'm pretty sure Alan Stern knows he's obscuring the issue when he says that Jupiter hasn't cleared its neighborhood.  Serendi pod ous  02:32, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * If the IAU has put together a team to review the Dawn data, and determined that Ceres fits their definition, please provide a ref. That's all you need to do. I don't know why you're making this difficult. — kwami (talk) 02:41, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * You know as well as I do the IAU have not and will never do that so don't accuse me of making things difficult.  Serendi pod ous  02:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Since you know the IAU is not a RS on this issue, why do you keep bringing it up? Obfuscation on your part will definitely not bring the article to FA. Finding consensus among RS's for what you write will. So yes, you are either purposefully making this difficult, or you can't be bothered to do the research necessary to properly edit the article. — kwami (talk) 02:50, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

The IAU isn't a reliable source on a term the IAU invented and defined?  Serendi pod ous  02:57, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Either you're being obtuse, or you don't know the difference between a term and a referent. Of course they're THE authority on the definition, at least as how they use the term. They are not however an authority on whether an object fits that definition, unless they actually do the research, which you admit they haven't and probably won't. Do I really need to keep repeating this, or are you indeed just playing at being difficult? — kwami (talk) 03:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

IPA tone bar fixes
Hello, I've found some edits by you from about two years ago fixing duplicate tone bars; since search queries like Special:Search/insource:/˥˥/ do return results, maybe you could do a new run now? Thanks, User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)  10:30, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Restoring. User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)  14:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we should have some discussion on this. The IAU accepted Chao's tone letters, and Chao used double letters for unchecked tones. Completely redundant, of course, but I'm not sure we should be fixing them. Not sure we shouldn't either. — kwami (talk) 14:53, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Might be worth a thread on WT:PRON then. User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)  14:58, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. This should be decided. — kwami (talk) 15:57, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot, you certainly have a lot more knowledge on the topic than I do. Will reply to your email when I am back at my computer. User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk)  18:18, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Arrokoth and Nix feature names
Out of curiosity, how and where did you get these names from? The WGSPN page you linked in both articles is invalid and no official sources have announced these names as far as I am aware. N rco0e   (talk · contribs)   01:56, 5 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I'll email you if you like, or you can email me. — kwami (talk) 02:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Okay, you can go ahead and email me now. N rco0e   (talk · contribs)   04:24, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Regarding what you said about Vesta at Talk:List of possible dwarf planets
Yes, the poster's definition looks like it is just "is it at least the size of Mimas". But come to think of it, differentiated but not-round Vesta should allow one to make the same argument as that for Pluto. Pluto argues you don't need to clear the neighbourhood to have interesting planetary geology; Vesta argues that you don't even need to be round anymore. ;)

Although maybe this opens the Pandora's box to planet Phoebe and quite possibly a whole bunch of large M- and S-type asteroids. Well, they are the largest remnants of bodies that presumably were differentiated before they got whacked.

(I'm obviously not seriously advocating such a definition!) :) Double sharp (talk) 08:28, 4 September 2021 (UTC)


 * The nice thing about the word "planetoid" is that we could use it for objects that resemble planets like Vesta and possibly Psyche. — kwami (talk) 18:10, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that does seem to work. Definitely looking forward to when our Psyche article becomes obsolete (though I wish I could say the same for Pallas).
 * Do you think "planetoid" would still work for something like Hygiea, which instead of an exposed core is now gravitationally aggregated pieces of an original likely differentiated body? Double sharp (talk) 04:22, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If we're lucky, there will be a mini-sat for Pallas too. I emailed one of the team and asked if that was still on track, but never got a response.
 * I suppose the resemblance would be in the eye of the beholder, since it just means "resembles a planet". People still speak of asteroids as "small planets", so I doubt there'd much of a cut-off in practice. — kwami (talk) 04:42, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me! Double sharp (talk) 07:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

File permission problem with File:!Haunu.ogg
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File permission problem with File:=Ka'gara.ogg
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TNO planetary-mass moons
Following the Grundy et al. assessment, that means that the only TNO moon likely to be a "satellite planet" is Charon, right? Since Dysnomia and Vanth are in that transition range, they're quite dark, and everything else is smaller. Double sharp (talk) 07:06, 6 September 2021 (UTC)


 * They're well below the transition range, which is (approx.) R = 450–500 km. But since (AFAIK) we can't estimate the densities of the moons, we don't have as much to go on. Vanth is the size of Mimas and Proteus, Dysnomia a lot larger, between Enceladus and Tethys, but Saturn's satellites' are thought to be 2nd generation, right, after the first gen (apart from Titan) were disrupted? If so, I suspect that Proteus may be more representative of TNO moons of that size than Mimas. And both Vanth and Dysnomia are as dark or darker than Proteus (though since the error bars on their diameters are so large, I would think we don't know their albedos very well either.) We could compare to the Uranian moons, -- Miranda's right around Vanth's size, -- but they seem to have had an active history as well. Orbiting a gas giant probably does that to a moon. A TNO, probably not so much. And the next one up, Ariel, is substantially larger than Dysnomia. So if I had to guess, I would think both Vanth and Dysnomia are irregular. But maybe not like Proteus: Proteus has been badly battered, with at least one crater half its diameter. I would expect Vanth and Dysnomia had quieter childhoods. So maybe more like Pallas in shape than Vesta. But whatever we guess, we'll probably be surprised when we get there.
 * But yeah, if you're going to call Orcus a DP, then to be consistent Charon would be a satellite planet. Dysnomia at +1σ on its diameter would barely reach Salacia at −1σ. So maybe, but it's a stretch. But why do Eris and Orcus have large satellites? If they coalesced from the debris of a collision, like Charon, then that may be enough thermal excitation for them to be something like Mimas. I don't know if they can be explained as captures. Or could they be from the material that formed the primaries, like Arrokoth but without the two bodies ever coming together? Then they should (!) resemble TNOs their size. — kwami (talk) 07:41, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I removed them from Planetary-mass moon based on the transition range, though I left it open in the text that they might be. Dysnomia had also been added to List of gravitationally rounded objects of the Solar System, but I took it out again some days ago on those grounds.
 * Yes, Saturn's moons are thought to be 2nd generation at least, but isn't Proteus also 2nd-generation reaccreted rubble from whatever chaos Triton caused when Neptune captured it? Although Triton probably gobbled up quite a bit of that debris anyway.
 * It seems from our articles that the spectra of Vanth and Dysnomia are quite different from those of their primaries. Which would suggest that they were captured, and are not too different from TNOs their size (e.g. Huya and Ixion respectively), as you say. Then again, our article suggests that the latest view is that Charon was also "captured" in a way: it says that Pluto and Charon likely gently collided when still differentiating. But I suppose it does not matter, since Charon is larger than Orcus, which managed to become a DP anyway.
 * Yes, I think it's clear that orbiting a giant planet does things to you. Good luck finding an Enceladus-sized TNO that is that active. BTW, I wonder if Ariel might be "Uranus' Enceladus" or at least "Uranus' Dione". Double sharp (talk) 08:28, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The spectra could be different because the primaries are (or were) geologically active and have been resurfaced. But yeah, no evidence that either is in HE or geologically active, and the albedos suggest the opposite. — kwami (talk) 08:34, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Can't believe I didn't connect the dots for that! But at least the conclusion turned out alright, it seems. :)
 * This all seems to make the planet-definition camps quite a lot closer than it seemed in 2006 when Brown listed 44 Kuiper-belt planets including Huya. The big 8 plus at most 10 dwarf planets (if we grant Sedna and Salacia) doesn't seem too bad. Even adding the 19 big moons doesn't seem to make it too awful either. Though I wonder if anyone has noted this yet, since those posters about geophysical planet definitions are still using the same line for planetary-mass moons as for TNOs despite the more recent evidence. Double sharp (talk) 08:43, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, one of the arguments for restricting the def of 'planet' was that kids couldn't learn 20,000 planets in school. But we're looking at fewer planets than elements, which is certainly doable. It's likely that some smaller bodies are also DPs, or at least Mimas-like, due to some odd history, but probably not many and anyway we won't know for quite a while. So yeah, that argument doesn't hold water anymore. But Stern's (or his colleagues'?) diatribes I suspect are about politics and funding rather than a serious argument. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Mimas-like as in the huge crater, or as in not being in HE for its current spin (so presumably for a TNO binary that got tidally locked)?
 * A shame we don't know of an Mimas-sized haumeid, really. Also I wish we knew what Nereid looked like, especially if it's really the sole survivor of Neptune's original satellite system. :) Double sharp (talk) 14:38, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

BTW, I wonder how Salacia could be this dark (i.e. probably no resurfacing) and still be dense enough. Did it begin to collapse and just never finish? Double sharp (talk) 14:32, 6 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I meant Mimas as in frozen out of HE. Like Phoebe but presumably without the battering. With so few collisions out there, I'd expect that if something was ever in HE, it would most likely still retain the shape, unlike in the asteroid belt or a giant-planet moon. But probably also still the same rotation rate, so how would we tell the difference?
 * I suspect that Orcus et al. are not actually in HE. There should be a transitional range where a body is massive enough to compact into a fully solid body, but not enough to differentiate or to be plastic in response to large impacts. So technically (per the IAU) not a DP. But again, how could we tell the difference without an orbiting probe? — kwami (talk) 21:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, maybe if it has a large enough satellite to cause mutual tidal locking. Perhaps Orcus, indeed? Double sharp (talk) 08:29, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * All that would mean was that they were plastic when they became locked. Though that would be fine if in practice DP meant "not battered out of shape since it was in HE". — kwami (talk) 09:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, I meant as a way to find a TNO that could be frozen out of HE like Mimas. Double sharp (talk) 14:32, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

In appreciation

 * Thanks! — kwami (talk) 19:35, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Quanzhou dialects and Zhangzhou dialects
The moves seem a little premature. It seems to be motivated by one article (is it peer-reviewed?) that cites one netizen anecdote in each case. Is that really enough to justify the moves? — justin(r)leung { (t...) 08:29, 20 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Perhaps not. Though we already have separate article for some of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, with red links for more. But revert if you like. — kwami (talk) 08:55, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That self-published article, with all its web and wiki references, cannot be used as a reference. See the mess at Talk:Chaoshan Min. Kanguole 10:02, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. — kwami (talk) 16:36, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Ceres and Pluto provisional designations at dwarf planet
Regarding the provisional designations for Ceres and Pluto you added: I get that they're at the JPL Small-Body Database Browser, but surely they must be anachronisms? Ceres couldn't have had one when it was discovered, since there wasn't even a distinction between major and minor planets back then. And Pluto was thought on discovery to be Lowell's Planet X. The MPC does not list a provisional designation for Pluto (though it does for other named bodies like Eris); for Ceres, it lists what appear to be two rediscoveries from later (1899 OF, 1943 XB). Double sharp (talk) 07:11, 16 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Sure, take them out if you like. They don't add anything.
 * All the 'A' numbers are anachronisms. I don't know about Pluto's, but it wouldn't add anything to that article even if it were contemporaneous.
 * It would, however, be nice to track down whether 1930 BM was contemporaneous for the Pluto article. I'm not finding anything, though. kwami (talk) 08:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * MPC search does not include 1930 BM. It gives "Unknown object: 1930 BM". As an example for the preceding object, "1930 BL" works (it's 1551 Argelander).
 * I'm convinced on those grounds that it was never official, and therefore shouldn't be in the Pluto article either. Not surprising, since everyone thought it was a major planet then. Although I wonder what the procedure would be today: would Planet Nine would get one of those provisional designations if it were discovered?
 * Is there somewhere that explains those A-numbers? I'd like to add it to provisional designation in astronomy for the history, but I haven't been inspired with a helpful search term. :( Double sharp (talk) 08:53, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe 'A' is for 'Anachronism' ;)
 * I just had a list yesterday of all these designations, and could see the pattern in them. (Maybe here on WP?) Now I can't find it.
 * They all end in A as well, until you get to maybe 228 Agathe (A882 QA) and 229 Adelinda (A882 QB). Then you start getting A-B pairs, but not always. — kwami (talk) 09:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I suspect they follow the standard pattern of today, with the first letter meaning the half-month. Only that the first 1 in the year is switched to an A. For example 161 Athor (A876 HA, found 19 April 1876), 162 Laurentia (A876 HB, found 21 April 1876), 163 Erigone (A876 HC, found 26 April 1876). But the next one, 164 Eva, was found later on 12 July 1876, so it gets A876 NA.
 * Interestingly, the MPC lists 330 Adalberta as 1910 CB instead of A910 CB. Apparently 1910 CA was a precovery of 3071 Nesterov; 1910 CC was a rediscovery of 273 Atropos.
 * Sighting of A-numbers in the wild: A899 OF is used in this paper proving its identity with Ceres. (I do wonder how exactly Ceres of all minor planets could have been mistaken for a new discovery in 1899? Surely its orbit was quite well-known by then.) Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that makes sense. — kwami (talk) 18:53, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

OK, found it from the MPC:

This scheme has been extended to pre-1925 discoveries--such designations are indicated by the replacement of the initial digit of the year by the letter `A'. Thus, A904 OA is the first object designated that was discovered in the second half of July 1904.

So, it's basically a retroactive scheme. (Found it while trying to find info about the Ceres designations.) In which case A801 AA makes some sense to include, and certainly more sense than the mistakes A899 OF and 1943 XB.

Still no luck about 1930 BM for Pluto, though. Double sharp (talk) 09:40, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Added to provisional designation in astronomy as I originally wanted, anyway. Double sharp (talk) 10:21, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That's the important thing, anyway. I think if we keep it in the Ceres article, it should be explained as retroactive. — kwami (talk) 11:33, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Dwarf planet article names
If our position is that Quaoar is as much a DP as Ceres is, by general scientific consensus, then it seems odd that Quaoar's article is at the MP number (50000 Quaoar) while Ceres' gets parenthetical disambiguation (Ceres (dwarf planet)). Maybe Natural disambiguation suggests it should be 1 Ceres instead. And likewise 136199 Eris like 225088 Gonggong.

I guess Haumea, Makemake, and Pluto are still primary topics. But if we allow those exceptions, then there may be consistency questions about things like 117 Lomia where the minor planet is already the primary topic. OTOH I can't see a move to 134340 Pluto as getting any consensus, even though in practice the article would use just the name (like 6 Hebe being just called Hebe in the article). Or maybe we should just accept the exceptions since they are well-known? Or perhaps just Pluto can be the exception? Or perhaps we should just leave things alone as they work now and Ceres FAC is still ongoing? Double sharp (talk) 06:24, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Personally, I like [1 Ceres], which is what I type in the search window when I want to go to the article.
 * I think Pluto should be grandfathered in. It would be different if it had a MP number from when it was discovered, or even if it'd been assigned the celebratory number 10,000, as the MPC contemplated, but [134340 Pluto] is a bit ridiculous. And it clearly beats the god as the primary topic.
 * Haumea's not so clear. The god is still quite culturally important, at least in Hawaii, so it's harder to claim that she takes second billing to the planetoid.
 * For Makemake, the god is dead, so it doesn't matter so much. But if all the others are moved to their MPN, and that's the general pattern even for e.g. [117 Lomia], I don't see why Makemake should be an exception.
 * Eris feels a bit weird at the MPN, but again the primary topic issue isn't clear cut because of Discordianism.
 * So, yeah, I would support moving all to their formal names, with the exception of grandfathered-in Pluto.
 * In most cases I would probably support their eponym getting the main page, as at Gonggong and Orcus, though I'm sure an argument for a dab page could be made for some.
 * Moving them to MPN + name would avoid the whole argument of what is and is not a DP being prejudiced by the article title. — kwami (talk) 06:52, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Come to think of it, does anyone know anything about why Pluto was given the number 134340? I suspect that it was just because it needed to go on the catalogue right after the IAU planet definition became accepted, and 134340 was the first number available then. Since it needed to get a number immediately, there was no time to wait for a nice round number to appear, as that'd have been too far away. (Unless 135000 would've counted as round enough?)
 * That would be my guess. — kwami (talk)
 * DPs were supposed to be something different from SSSBs (minor planets), but in that MPC link it was argued that since Ceres already had a number, Pluto and Eris had to have them too. Which makes me wonder how it would've worked out if Ceres had been reinstated as a planet. Would it have been a planet that also had an asteroid number? Awkward. Would the numbers have all been bumped to give 1 Pallas, 2 Juno, 3 Vesta, ...? Also awkward (and confusing with pre- and post-change numbers). Or would the number 1 for Ceres just have been retired and left blank? Double sharp (talk) 08:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * They wouldn't've changed them. I would think the (1) would be noted as a historical number that's no longer used. But then there might be other numbered MP's that would later turn out to be planets, in which case their numbers would no longer be appropriate. Unless maybe they wanted to number the classical planets I to VIII, leave Ceres with its (1), and give Pluto a number like they did? It's a hack either way -- we just need to be able to unambiguously ID them, it's not terribly important how. — kwami (talk) 13:47, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll probably propose this for Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris after the Ceres FAC, then. Feel free to remind me if I forget. Double sharp (talk) 08:09, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't you think it should be simultaneous with the FAC, while ppl are still participating? — kwami (talk) 22:25, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I was worried about criterion 1e (stability) at WP:FACR if I did that. Double sharp (talk) 04:05, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If it were done as part of, or linked to, the FAC, I don't think that would be a problem. A discussion for a move would be different for (1e) than ppl edit-warring over s.t. And it ties in to the earlier debate over whether Ceres "is" a DP. If it's done later, someone might object that the FA was awarded for the article at its current location, so moving it would be contrary to the FAC. — kwami (talk) 05:16, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, if you're more convinced about doing it now than I am, then could you nominate it? :) Double sharp (talk) 06:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I suspect Serendipodous is going to freak out, and me proposing it would probably just make that worse. — kwami (talk) 06:43, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I'd rather not poke at this while the FAC is ongoing. If anyone makes the objection you suggested, then I'd note that the article usually refers to "Ceres", and that that would not change if the article was moved to "1 Ceres". Double sharp (talk) 08:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

BTW, I started a move discussion at Talk:Minor planet designation. — kwami (talk) 07:03, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * And supported. Double sharp (talk) 06:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

DP astrology symbols
I get Eris, Haumea, and Makemake (used by NASA that one time) and Sedna (made it into Unicode), but is there use of that Gonggong symbol yet? Double sharp (talk) 08:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * (Also, are symbols only used in astrology that important? At least the planet symbols still sometimes appear in astronomical contexts.) Double sharp (talk) 08:41, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Gonggong might just be software. But all of the planetary/asteroid symbols are used almost exclusively in astrology. Vesta's was even invented by an astrologer, in the 1970s. (And the fact that it took that long for someone to come up with a practical symbol suggests that the symbols had hardly ever been used for astronomy.) I don't see any planetary symbols in the ref you linked to, apart from 🜨 and ☉. E.g., Jovian masses is MJ, not M♃. I'd be interested in documenting astronomical use, but from what I've seen they seem to be used almost entirely for astrology.
 * BTW, do you know if ⛢ was originally an astrological symbol? It's explanation is astrological rather than mythological. Also, it would be nice if we had a date and who came up with it. — kwami (talk) 10:02, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The data points for the eight major planets in the graph on p. 10 are labelled with the traditional symbols (⛢ for Uranus). I agree, they're not used consistently (so Jovian masses is still MJ), but it's interesting to see them used at all so recently (2016).
 * ⛢ was suggested by Johann Gottfried Koehler, as a sign for platinum (but also to be used for Uranus). Maybe to extend the correspondence of the seven ancient metals with the seven classical planets. I think this is Bode writing in the Astronomisches Jahrbuch, apparently of 1785 (but cover page also gives 1782) (p. 191):

Endlich bin ich noch auf eine schickliche Benennung und Bezeichnung unser neuen Planeten bedacht gewesen. In der oberwehnten Abhandlung habe ich, da wir doch nun einmal bey der Mythologie bleiben müssen, bereits den Namen Uranus vorgeschlagen. Uranus wird bekanntlich für den Vater des Saturns, so wie dieser für den Vater des Jupiters gehalten. Ich bemerke auch mit Vergnügen, dass verschiedene Astronomen diese Benennung billigen. Unter andern schrieb mir neulich Herr Prof. Lichtenberg: „Ich denke der Name Uranus ist gut gewählt. Ich habe einmal im Scherz Asträa vorgeschlagen, weil man sagt, sie sey (und es ist leider! in gewissen Verstande so) aus der Welt gewichen und dem Himmel zugeflogen. Aber freylich ist Virgo schon eine Asträa. Ich werde in den hiesigen Kalendern etwas davon unter einen eigenen Artikel mit dem Namen Uranus einrücken lassen, er wird auch ins Französische übersetzt.“

Wegen eines Zeichens schrieb mir Herr Inspector Köhler: „Sie haben mich befragt, was man dem neuen Planeten für ein Zeichen geben soll. Ohnstreitig das von der Platina del Pinto, * Nur Schade, dass dieses zur Zeit noch kein allgemein angenommenes Zeichen hat. ** Lassen Sie ein Chymiker urtheilen, ob folgendes schicklich und den Eigenschaften und Bestandtheilen der Platina angemessen sey: ⛢ oder ⛢. Letztere Lage würde ich ihm deswegen geben, um solches nicht mit dem Zeichen der ♀ zu verwechseln etc.“

Die Platina, oder das weisse Gold, ist, wie die Chymiker finden, mit Eisen vermischt, also wäre das vorgeschlagene Zeichen derselben angemessen, und könnte zugleich sehr gut zur Bezeichnung unsers neuen Wandelsterns dienen. Nur deucht mir, dass die senkrechte Stellung desselben ⛢ dem Auge in der Reihe der übrigen Planetenzeichen besser gefallen würde, als die liegende, und dass es dennoch von den Zeichen des ♂ und der ♁ hinlänglich genug zu unterscheiden wäre.

* Eben diesen Gedanken habe ich schon ohnlängst gleichfalls gehabt.

** Der Hr. Graf von Sickingen hat in seiner Abhandlung von der Platina, diesem neuen Metall das Kometenzeichen (ein Stern mit einem Schweif) gegeben.


 * And a Google Translate with a few edits (don't trust it 100%, my German is rusty):

Finally I have also considered a proper name and symbol for our new planet. In the above-mentioned treatise I already suggested the name Uranus, since we must stick to mythology. Uranus is known to be the father of Saturn, just as Saturn is considered the father of Jupiter. I also note with pleasure that various astronomers endorse this designation. Among others, Prof. Lichtenberg recently wrote to me: "I think the name Uranus is well-chosen. In jest I once suggested Astraea, for it is said (and alas! for certain intellects it is so) that she has left the world and flown to heaven. But of course Virgo is already an Astraea. I will have it inserted in the local calendars under a separate article[?] with the name Uranus; it will also be translated into French."

Herr Inspector Köhler wrote to me about a symbol: "You asked me what kind of symbol the new planet should be given. Without a doubt that of the platina del Pinto [little silver of the Pinto river].* Just a shame that this does not have a generally accepted symbol at the moment.** Let a chemist judge whether the following is appropriate for the properties and components of the platinum: ⛢ or ⛢ . I would give it the latter situation so as not to confuse it with the sign of the ♀ etc. "

Platinum, or white gold, is, as the chemists find, mixed with iron, so the suggested symbol for it would be appropriate, and at the same time could very well serve to designate our new wandering star. Only it seems to me that the vertical position of the same ⛢ would please the eye better in the row of the other planetary signs than the horizontal one, and that it would still be sufficiently distinguishable from the symbols ♂ and ♁.

* I have also had this same thought for a long time.

** In his treatise on platinum, Count von Sickingen gave this new metal the comet's sign (a star with a tail).


 * Double sharp (talk) 12:44, 25 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Ah, nice. Basically like astrological use, labeling a chart.
 * Thanks for the Uranus source. I'll add it to the article. I like how they use the planetary symbols for the days of the week.
 * platina del Pinto, BTW, was just the Spanish name for platinum. It was only described scientifically 30 yrs earlier. I suspect that might be the reason it was chosen -- new planet given the symbol for a new element. — kwami (talk) 18:41, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Any astrological use for Quaoar and Orcus yet, BTW? Double sharp (talk) 09:36, 27 September 2021 (UTC)


 * They're not actually astrological symbols, just planetary symbols that are mostly used by astrologers. They weren't created for astrology.
 * I've seen Moskowitz's Orcus and Quaoar symbols in two unrelated astrological programs: Astrolog, which even has a WP article, and the Polish software Urania, which uses a bunch of weird symbols. Urania uses the Orcus symbol (which is an O-R monogram) for Makemake! They're just weird (even for astrology). But Astrolog is about as close to a standard as there is in astrology. — kwami (talk) 09:49, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, that's a nice way to think about them; I'm convinced. So, I've added the Quaoar, Orcus, and Salacia symbols to the articles. (If Salacia is not in Astrolog, feel free to take it out again.) :)
 * I guess his planetary-moon symbols wouldn't be much used then, because they're not really useful for terrestrial astrology. Has anyone tried to use medium-large asteroids like Interamnia that there are symbols on his site for?
 * Are Varda, Varuna, and Ixion also used? Double sharp (talk) 10:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I don't think I've seen Salacia or any of his other designs in use (as opposed to a mention in a list), and I'm not about to pay for astrology software to check! (Also, Varda isn't Moskowitz's design.) There is a free 'Astronomicon' font that includes Eris through Orcus, that was designed to work with Astrolog. You can see all the bodies there. Since both are free and well designed, they seem to be popular. Some pay software have custom fonts that they sell for $30 a pop (in addition to the commercial price for the software), and they're typographic hacks. Just a money mill, I assume. I've got a PDF of what appears in them, or at least most of it, but no way to tell from that what might be notable.


 * I just created a new Astrolog chart that includes all the TNOs (at right). I left out Pholus, Earth, Sun and the "theoretical" planets.
 * As for the moons, someone took his idea for the Galileans but used lower-case Greek letters -- they look much better that way. I don't like the Saturnians, apart maybe from Dione. But yeah, can't imagine much use for them apart from maybe a logo.
 * I love his constellation symbols, but can't find any use. — kwami (talk) 10:30, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, I took out Salacia. Who designed the Varda symbol? And where can I see those alternate Galilean-moon symbols? :)
 * I love his constellation symbols too! Double sharp (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Varda, I don't know, it was just on my list and I just thought it was appropriate. I was tempted to upload the inverted Pluto for Orcus, but doubt there's any need. There's also 8 arrows pointing out radially for Chaos, which is easy to remember, but again probably no need.
 * The l.c. Galileans are shown on his 'Sightings' page, last img from the bottom. — kwami (talk) 11:39, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice, thanks. Could we have a ref for the Varda symbol at Astrological symbol, though? Double sharp (talk) 13:48, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Not a good one, but enough to show it's not my invention. — kwami (talk) 22:24, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * LOL, I'd like to see that. In any case, by some definition it's not like astrology sources would often be particularly good. :) Double sharp (talk) 03:52, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There actually are RS astrological sources that describe things like that. I have some for the asteroids (often Earth-crossers) and centaurs that were given symbols in the 1970s and 80s. But these days there's also a lot of proposals on the web with no provenance. — kwami (talk) 04:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, is it Zane Stein? Double sharp (talk) 08:04, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I doubt it, but I can ask if he knows. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * yes, it was him. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * BTW, I created lower-case versions of the Galilean symbols, if you're interested, over at Commons. — kwami (talk) 00:41, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice! Double sharp (talk) 03:21, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

What's going to be our cut-off for astronomical symbol? I ask because previously we had only Haumea, Makemake, and Eris among the new ones (because NASA used them), but you mentioned Sedna in the text. Also we now have the symbols in the infoboxes for Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, and Gonggong as well (IIRC you added Sedna and Gonggong, and I added Orcus and Quaoar based on precedent), matching the idea that they've become more or less standard among those who actually bother with symbols anymore.

The symbol for Vesta in Unicode is, IIRC, a form that was only ever used for astrology, but we list that codepoint anyway in the astronomical symbols table. Sedna is in Unicode too, but not yet the others. And anyway the symbols for Ceres through Vesta are probably orders of magnitude more used in astrology than astronomy nowadays. So I can buy adding the TNOs that appear in Astrolog to some extent, but then again, no known astronomical use yet? Double sharp (talk) 03:21, 29 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I added Sedna because Unicode accepted there was enough attestation to encode it. Astrolog only supports the TNOs we already have, but also asteroids 1 to 4, Hygiea and Chiron. Chiron's been around almost as long as Vesta, and its symbol is just as universal. I'd say that's our cutoff -- unless you have an argument for something else? If we start seeing, say, Salacia or Psyche, I could see adding them later, but I haven't seen Salacia so far and Psyche is obscure (one of the "Apollo + 13" asteroids in use since the 1970s, but not mainstream). — kwami (talk) 03:38, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Psyche is already on astronomical symbol, though. As one of those originally proposed by the discoverer back in the day. Which is an interesting cutoff. (Does anyone in astrology use, say, Egeria? But it has a symbol from that period!)
 * Hmm. Good point about Chiron. So really, are we taking the scope of astronomical symbol as "the symbol has to be used in astronomy at least somewhere", in which case we shouldn't add any more TNOs, or look at who actually bothers with symbols rather than what's at this point a fringe use of them? If the former, we should probably not include Sedna on this article but leave it to astrological symbol. If the latter, then I can see adding Chiron, Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, and Gonggong to astronomical symbol as somewhat standard among those who tend to use symbols. Double sharp (talk) 03:43, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If an astronomer were to use a symbol for Vesta, it would almost certainly be the one in Unicode. I doubt many ppl even know it's not the original form.
 * As with the other DPs, Sedna wasn't intended as an astrological symbol. With it being in Unicode, I think we can argue that it's 'the' symbol for Sedna [even though there are some other obscure symbols out there that are astrological]. If we can put the utterly obscure symbols for 5 Astraea and 6 Hebe in their infoboxes, I think we can accept Sedna. I mean, we have the one at 14 Irene, despite the fact that it was never even drawn!
 * Sorry, Psyche has a different astrological symbol, which is just a distorted Greek psi. It's common among the subset of astrologers that are really into asteroids and centaurs (Psyche, Sappho and Amor are often seen together), but it looks like they're a pretty obscure group. It's possible with the upcoming Psyche mission we'll start seeing a symbol more, but I'm hoping for a variation of the old butterfly wing rather than a distorted psi.
 * I'm happy with where we are now. I wouldn't want to go any further, but I think a reasonable argument can be made for what we have. — kwami (talk) 04:06, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, you might well get your wish about the Psyche symbol, since it's the butterfly-wing that's on WP, and we all know how many writers get their info straight from WP. :)
 * BTW, 14 Irene was actually drawn historically (though well after the fact, in 1899; so perhaps someone simply made a form from the description).
 * So, what we have now as in the infoboxes (the dwarfs down to Orcus, plus Chiron), or as in the astronomical symbols article (only the IAU five)? Double sharp (talk) 04:09, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The DPs down to Orcus, Chiron, asteroids 1 2 3 4 10. Everything in the wheel chart above. (Really, Juno's practically useless, but you see it in every list there is. So I'm glad it's the one that got the blah-est symbol.)


 * I wonder if the Psyche logo was inspired by the old symbol. Though maybe it's just meant to be a reflection on a metal surface. — kwami (talk) 04:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Should we make astronomical symbol and list of planemos consistent with that and add the remaining DPs, then?
 * I think the line that would make me happier is all those early asteroids, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. On the grounds that that is the limit where you can point to some kind of astronomical rather than astrological use. That's where astronomical symbol currently is at. For that reason I added Haumea, Makemake, and Eris only to List of planemos (can't be bothered to remember the actual title).
 * OTOH, the Chiron symbol has been in the infobox for that article for over a decade by now. But it has not been in astronomical symbol. So perhaps, there's some case for letting symbols only used in astrology but standard there be in the infoboxes but not considered strictly astronomical symbols. Double sharp (talk) 05:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that would work. It's not just people interested in astronomy who read our planet and DP articles, after all. Whatever we think of astrology, they are part of our audience. Also, I suspect that a lot of people who think astrology is bunk might still be interested in having symbols for these bodies. As long as we're clear in the astrology article that it's pseudoscience (as we did when I checked yesterday), in most cases I don't see much point to trying to separate astrological from astronomical symbols. There often isn't a clear line. Some clearly are astrological (e.g. the symbols for imaginary planets), but as you noted, even the symbols for the main planets are discouraged by the IAU and used almost exclusively in astrology. So to me the point is not to avoid getting astrology cooties but, is the symbol notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia (like psyduck)? — kwami (talk) 05:43, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, they are now all in Astronomical symbols and list of planemos. I've added some text noting the blurring between astronomical and astrological symbols here, saying that although these symbols are mostly in use among astrologers, they are occasionally used in astronomical contexts too. (And anyway we head off in the lede by noting that really it's mostly astrologers that use any of these symbols at all, even the planetary ones.) Salacia is still left blank. Double sharp (talk) 08:42, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. LOL at astrology cooties. :) Double sharp (talk) 09:37, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Take a look at this font. Looks like they crammed everything they could in there, including some duplicates. They have Varuna and Interamnia, but even they don't have Salacia. — kwami (talk) 11:09, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, their website says they do, but maybe they use another symbol. In any case, I guess it's indeed clearly not standard. :) Double sharp (talk) 11:32, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Regarding Makemake's moon
Something I wondered re List of natural satellites: do you have the source for it being numbered Makemake I already? Over there it is, but at Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons it is not. (And I guess that list ought to have the other DPs added, but maybe to avoid a profusion of colours all the dwarfs should get the same one?) Double sharp (talk) 15:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry, no I don't. Maybe I assumed it. We could replace w a dash.
 * Yes, I agree it makes sense to have the same bodies in the list and at dwarf planet. And yes, maybe all but Pluto (or all but Pluto and Haumea) with the same color; since Pluto has 5, it might be nice if it continued to stand out.
 * Should Minor-planet moon really have the moons of DPs? Or should we treat it as equivalent to SSSB moon? For #Triple system, I would think they should be arranged by parent body, so the reader could see at a glance that they're triple systems. You can sort by name, but that doesn't produced unified cells for the parent body. — kwami (talk) 20:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The status of DPs is a bit ambiguous, isn't it? They're explicitly not small Solar System bodies = minor planets, but they get minor planet numbers. Given this ambiguity, I think they should stay (and, after all, the provisional designation for a new satellite of Pluto would use the minor planet number, just like it would for a non-DP). Agree on sorting. Double sharp (talk) 02:56, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * MP has been retired as a category for classification, so I suppose anything with a MP number is a MP. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I wonder when the conception of unqualified "planet" become generally that of major planet. In 1867 it was still alright to call minor planets "planets". Metzger et al. argue that the shift only came in the 1950s when it was understood that asteroids are geophysically not like planets. Admittedly they are arguing against the IAU definition here (Stern and Runyon are coauthors of that paper), but they do back it up with a lot of historical sources. Double sharp (talk) 08:14, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, even in 2006 tiny NEA Hermes was a "planet"! Double sharp (talk) 13:16, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Making Pluto continue to stand out on its own, without larger Eris, feels a bit too close to the pre-2006 situation for my taste (in the sense of giving Pluto a planet-like status by itself among TNOs). Pluto and Haumea seems less bad. Or perhaps I should just go and find more colours. XD Double sharp (talk) 15:05, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * indeed, it doesn't seem to have ever been universal. I've noticed minor planets being called 'planets' in fairly recent material too. — kwami (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Rereading Metzger et al., I think they are reaching quite a bit in their conclusions. Whenever "minor planet" is used as a subset of planets, Juno was always a planet, even though geophysically it would not have qualified. So clearly no one was thinking about the conception of "planet" they advocate. If they did, you'd have expected that Ceres would have been kept separate from the other asteroids historically (as in a way it is now as a DP). But if any were, it was the first four together, including clearly non-planemo Juno. (Not that we can blame them, since in the 19th century, who could have known the asteroids' shapes?) Even by the time we get to Singer (1954), he distinguished planets/protoplanets from asteroids based on whether they were surviving accreted ones or fragments, in which case we get planets Pallas and Vesta, which is again not Stern's concept since they're not round anymore. And even Metzger et al. admit that from the 1960s onwards evolved Pallas and Vesta have also been called planets, just to a lesser extent to Ceres! (It also seems more defensible to me, since even though Pallas and Vesta are not round anymore, they certainly have past planetary geology.)
 * But I do like the fact that their work has collected all these sources. And yes, "minor planet" still seems pretty common currently. :) Double sharp (talk) 14:37, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I suppose we could either go with separate colors for bodies that have more than one moon, or separate for each but just not bother to make them very distinct. The more colors, the more difficult it will be to make the article accessible to the color blind. Not that this is ever likely to be a FA. — kwami (talk) 21:48, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Finno-Ugric peoples
It's quite strange to see Finno-Ugric peoples now being redirected to Finno-Ugric countries, since "Finno-Ugric peoples" is a very well established term in ethnography (no less so than, say, Slavic peoples or Turkic peoples), and the non-linguistic characteristics shared by certain Finno-Ugric peoples were studied extensively as well. On the other hand, "Finno-Ugric countries" is a rarely used term (as it's not a political union or anything like that, and Pan-Finno-Ugrism is a rather fringe ideology). Finstergeist (talk) 20:40, 3 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I was trying to connect to the developing modern sense of ethnic identity. We could return it to 'Finno-Ugric languages', since it's defined by linguistics rather than by ethnicity. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think there is no doubt that "Finno-Ugric peoples" is a quite frequently used term. But is it an ethnographic topic? A topic in the sense that there is more to it than just to label the ethnic groups that happen to speak Finno-Ugric languages? –Austronesier (talk) 21:19, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, it's definitely a topic at least in Russian ethnography (there's even a peer-reviewed journal), and I think the situation with English-language sources might be similar. Overall, much like with Celts, Slavs etc. language is a defining factor, but non-linguistic characteristics are being taken in account too. Finstergeist (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Celts, Slavs, Germans, Finns (in the Russian sense) etc. are traditional races. "Finno-Ugric peoples" are a pseudo-linguistic construct. The term is just shorthand for "people who speak Finno-Ugric languages". Without linguistics, it wouldn't exist. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe (and so wouldn't "Semitic people"), but my point is that it exists nowadays, and not only in linguistics. Finstergeist (talk) 23:07, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It exists as a pseudo-linguistic category, and as a term of convenience similar to 'Khoi-San people', 'Papuan people', etc. If you want to write an article similar to 'Semitic people', where you note how the term is used but that it has no ethnographic meaning, I have no problem with that. ( do you?) But if you want it to be a list of the various "Finno-Ugric" peoples, with photos of what "Finno-Ugrics" look like, and sections on "Finno-Ugric" religion, then no, that would be pseudo-science.
 * I suspect that the term may be a modern replacement for "Finns", expanded to encompass the Ugric peoples that the Finns are linguistically related to. But I wonder, why are the Samoyeds excluded? — kwami (talk) 00:27, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Salacia
Currently, we give all TNOs as accepted DPs to Salacia. I'm wondering, though, if it's really right that we include Salacia. Has Grundy yet called Salacia a DP? In the Grundy source you gave me, that finds out its higher density, Salacia is still just called DP-sized. So should we really give it the same weight as Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna, and Orcus as a DP if even that paper doesn't accept it? It seems even weaker than Orcus as a candidate. Orcus is at the lower end of the transition range, and its density is unimpressive (it could easily be 1.4 g/cm3 within current uncertainties), but at least it is bright. Salacia is below the lower end, has the same unimpressive density, and is not even bright. Actually it is the darkest large TNO.

Or is the idea that objects below the lower end (900 km) of the transition scale can be included if something suggests that they might be DPs (so Salacia has its density possibly in its favour, but so far 2002 MS4 has nothing known, and it'd go in if we found its density to be high)? If so, then I'd point out that 2013 FY27 at albedo 0.17 is brighter than Varda and getting pretty close to Orcus at 0.23. If a body initially in the transition range managed to collapse due to some weird thermal history, then it should be smaller now, having closed up a lot of pore space, surely? In back-of-the-envelope fashion, a 900-km diameter body with 50% porosity has total solid volume about the same as a 720-km diameter solid body, which is not far from 2013 FY27. Double sharp (talk) 10:31, 7 October 2021 (UTC)


 * You're probably right about Salacia. I didn't want to be unreasonably inflexible and exclude it, since they revised the density upward after the primary pub we've been using that excludes it. But it would be OR to include it as a DP by default as well -- personally, I'd prefer to leave it in limbo, not demonstrably a solid body but not obviously excluded either, until we get sources that come down on one side or the other, or state directly that it's indeterminate with present evidence. So if you want to remove Salacia where I've included it, I'm not going to second-guess you. If it turns out that Salacia's density is near the lower end of its range of uncertainty, or Orcus is near its upper end, that combined with the diff in albedo would clinch it for me. But what if Orcus is at the low end and Salacia at the high end? Then I'd wonder if there's something wrong about our understanding, or if there are more exceptions than we've anticipated. At that point I'd probably conclude that Orcus is not a DP, and is relatively bright for some other reason. But you're right: if we're going to cue off of what RS's label a DP, then AFAICT Salacia does not qualify. — kwami (talk) 10:49, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I'll probably remove it then, since if "indeterminate with present evidence" was enough, then probably 2002 MS4 and a few other medium-large TNOs with unknown densities could also fall under that. I would indeed wonder if this understanding was wrong if Orcus was at the low end and Salacia was at the high end, but as it stands now I'd rather go by what RS's label as a DP rather than second-guess them for Salacia for now.
 * Has the paper about the orbit of 2013 FY27 I come out yet, BTW? Would be a useful data point. Double sharp (talk) 11:05, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, took Salacia out of the lists with the big eight TNOs (plus Ceres and possibly plus Charon) at dwarf planet and list of planemos. If I've forgotten any, feel free to tell me (or change it yourself). I think the wording at the latter re Sedna stresses that it's just about picking strong candidates: I'd have no problem with adding back Salacia if an RS called it a DP or at least a candidate, of course. Double sharp (talk) 11:25, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, haven't heard anything on 2013 FY27. Just emailed someone.
 * I put Salacia back in the lead of the DP article, where we talk about the largest of the possibly 120+ DPs having moons, as Salacia's the cut-off for having a moon. I don't think that conveys the idea that Salacia *is* a DP, do you? — kwami (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I thought it might to readers reading too quickly, because it used the word "objects" right after talking about how many DPs there could be; but I just replaced "objects" with "candidates", which should solve even that. Double sharp (talk) 05:33, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Just a thought: even among the round planemo moons, 16 out of 19 actually have diameter greater than 1000 km. Tethys, the smallest of the sixteen, has a diameter of about 1066 km. The only stragglers are Enceladus (504 km), Miranda (472 km), and Mimas (396 km) – yet between Miranda and Mimas lies Proteus (420 km). Not to mention that Miranda is so battered that it looks like it was badly glued together after having been broken. Therefore, I have to wonder if the 400 km figure that came from Mimas is even valid for icy satellites and bodies with such a density. Naturally the transition for them should occur at something significantly lower than 900 km, but it seems eminently possible that shape at ~500 km radius even for very icy bodies depends a lot on history or at least distance from the Sun (comparing Enceladus with Miranda, or Mimas with Proteus). And I suspect that if Saturn had preserved a Galilean-like satellites arrangement (so Mimas and Enceladus did not exist, and the only round-ish body in this range was heavily battered Miranda), we would've been a lot slower to assume a 400 km threshold, and may not have ever thought of it at all. Double sharp (talk) 13:19, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Earth symbol
That symbol was changed to the mathematical operator because the earth symbol as a subscript is not legible on many systems. It appears as an illegible blob. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 05:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Specifically, this edit. Might want to chat with Lithopsian. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 05:41, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Trying to optimize WP defaults to a particular user's fonts is not a good idea, since users are going to be optimizing against each other. Better to stick to Unicode unless there are actually accessibility issues. You can always change your browser font size. — kwami (talk) 06:01, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand. The *default* display on Apple products (at least, MacOS and IOS) make the subscript earth an illegible blob. Cannnot distinguish between mass(earth) and mass(sun). Ignoring the problem is essentially saying "It looks good on my screen, if a large chunk of the readership can't understand what's written, it is their problem to fix, not mine." The change was deliberate after considerable discussion. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 20:32, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That may be the best solution, then. But whenever we make a hack to correct an error in an OS, other OS's suffer. God knows there are enough hacks on websites to compensate for MS. But they're best avoided when possible. — kwami (talk) 21:18, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Ngunawal or Burragorang language?
Hi Kwami, I've just noticed that in April you redirected the page 'Ngunawal language' to 'Burragorang language' and I'm very curious to know why. I've never heard of a 'Burragorang language', apart from an odd, unsourced, mention in Dixon (2002) that seems to suggest it as an alternative name for both Gandangara and Ngunawal, and of course the use to refer to Gandangara people living in the Burragorang Valley (late 19th and early 20th centuries). I can't see any justification for it having its own page, let alone taking over the Ngunawal page. —— Dougg (talk) 23:59, 8 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Apparently I was following Glottolog, which calls Ngunawal + Gundungurra "Northern Inland Yuin". Glottolog tends to merge things like this only after analyzing word lists and finding inadequate reason to keep them distinct, or finding a source that makes the same determination.
 * AIATSIS says the following under Gundungurra [S60]:
 * AIATSIS doesn't assign a name to the language, and Glottolog names tend to be arbitrary, so if I find something else in the lit, I'll generally go with that instead. Presumably I found 'Burragorang' in Dixon, and figured that since it was ambiguous between the two, it would be a better cover term than 'Northern Inland Yuin'. I find annoying long geographic dabs used as language names -- they tend to all sound the same after a while -- but I don't have any attachment to the name. What do you think would be best? — kwami (talk) 00:19, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
 * AIATSIS doesn't assign a name to the language, and Glottolog names tend to be arbitrary, so if I find something else in the lit, I'll generally go with that instead. Presumably I found 'Burragorang' in Dixon, and figured that since it was ambiguous between the two, it would be a better cover term than 'Northern Inland Yuin'. I find annoying long geographic dabs used as language names -- they tend to all sound the same after a while -- but I don't have any attachment to the name. What do you think would be best? — kwami (talk) 00:19, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Glottolog and Koch are quite correct that the two varieties are very similar, were certainly mutually intelligible and no more different than, say, Australian English and General American English. But the differences are very important to the two groups, who consider themselves quite distinct peoples (again, much as with Australia and the USA). And as these are technical, linguistic uses of 'language' and 'dialect' I think it's best to have a page for each of Ngunawal and Gandangarra, and simply to state that they are very similar, and were most likely highly mutually intelligible. Not every level in linguistic classification schemes should get a page on WP... I note that there's no WP page on Macro-English (a Glottolog term). And I can't see any reason to have a page 'Burragorang language' as there is no Australian language by that name; as far as I know (from Jim Smith's work) it was only used to refer to a group of Gandangarra who lived (post-contact) on a reserve in the Burragorang Valley. Dougg (talk) 06:31, 9 October 2021 (UTC)


 * We do have an article on Macro-English, we just don't call it that. (Glottolog names are ad hoc and not notable.) I'm fine with moving the article to 'Ngunawal dialect'; I can create a stub for Gundungurra dialect. — kwami (talk) 06:48, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Third opinion request
Hi,

I saw (here) that you edited Levantine Arabic in the past.

We have an ongoing debate about the content of the summary and the infobox on the talk page. As you are experienced it would be great to have your opinion.

Thanks for any help you can provide. A455bcd9 (talk) 09:40, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Not kwami here, but my immediate third opinion first impression: stop WP:textwalling. Seriously. –Austronesier (talk) 16:02, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi ,
 * Thanks for your feedback.
 * What are you precisely referring to? My initial message on the talk page? If so, I'm surprised because another user who spontaneously came to give their opinion said: "The numbered organisation of points of disagreement meant I was always able to follow the points made by other users" Or are you talking about the tables with "Current version"/"Proposed version"?
 * Anyway, your opinion is more than welcome as well as you're a member of both WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Linguistics :)
 * Have a good day, A455bcd9 (talk) 16:17, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not going to read all that. It looks like the dispute has narrowed down to what's in the 'states' parameter of the info box -- is that correct? If so, I'd start a new thread so that ppl can follow what the issue is. If there's more to it, what do you consider the last good version of the article? — kwami (talk) 18:30, 10 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi kwami,
 * Yes way too long to read I'm sorry...
 * I've just created a new thread and summed up the remaining 3 contentious points here.
 * Please let me know if you have any question. Thanks for your help. A455bcd9 (talk) 18:53, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi kwami,
 * Thanks a lot for taking the time to give your opinion. As there was a wide consensus from contributors + other third party opinions (including yours), I implemented most of the suggested changes.
 * WatanWatan2020, who did not take part in the discussion has just reverted them all ("reverting to original form. No consensus is reached."). He also reverted other changes that had nothing to do with the discussion.
 * I have no idea how to deal with this kind of behavior and I would love to get some help :) A455bcd9 (talk) 14:22, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * tried to help (thanks!) but got reverted themselves: it's frustrating... A455bcd9 (talk) 15:21, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Pretty simple, really: if they refuse to accept consensus, then they need to rv each of us, which runs afoul of 3RR. It would be better of course to resolve issues through discussion, but if they insist on escalating, they're likely to lose. They just reverted you twice and Austronesier once. I've now restored the consensus version, and warned them about 3RR. (That's the 2nd warning 3RR for this article, and they've been blocked before, so it's not like they don't know how this works.) I haven't touched this article in years, so these aren't my contributions, except indirectly through the discussion. If they rv me, report them to ANI, or I can. — kwami (talk) 17:52, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot! A455bcd9 (talk) 18:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Kikongo
Hello,

I don't know why the next sentence was deleted "Kisikongo is not the mother language that carries the Kongo (i.e. Kikongo) Language Cluster". This sentence summarizes the studies (see references). Somebody040404 (talk) 01:42, 11 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Because it's unintelligible. What's a "mother language"? What does it mean for a language to "carry" a language cluster? I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.
 * BTW, if you're digging into sources, could you advise on which ISO and Glottolog lects should be included in the scope of the Kongo article? It looks like that needs to be revised. — kwami (talk) 01:52, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The map on Kikongo shows that Kisikongo is the mother tongue, that the other variants of Kikongo are based from Kisikongo, this is false because the Kongo cultural unit existed before the foundation of Kongo dia ntotila by Lukeni lua Nimi and Kongo dia ntotila was multilingual thus Kikongo of Mbanza Kongo (Kisikongo) was not the only spoken language, The name "Kikongo" is actually used for a cluster of related languages, including Kintandu, Kiyombe, Kimanyanga, Tsiladi/Ciladi, Civili, Kindibu, Kikunyi, Kibeembe, Tchibinda, Kisolongo, Kizombo, Kisingombe, Boko ´s Kikongo, Kihaangala, Kinsundi/Kisundi, etc. This is the reason why I have added the three sources that evoke Kikongo, the archaeology that has been done in some places of the ancient Kingdom of Kongo, etc. Somebody040404 (talk) 11:42, 11 October 2021 (UTC)


 * That level of detail belongs in the main text. The info box is supposed to be a short summary of what's in the article.
 * I still don't know what you mean by "Kisikongo is the mother tongue". "Mother tongue" means the language you were raised with. Those are all mother tongues. If you mean the ancestral tongue, then that would be Proto-Kikongo.
 * You say the maps shows "that the other variants of Kikongo are based from Kisikongo". I don't see that either. All it does is give Kisikongo is an alternative label for Kikongo, presumably for Angola. I can remove that from the map, if you like.
 * We have an article Kongo languages that includes Vili, Sundi and the other varieties you mentioned. I added your map there as well. It might be that we want to merge all these articles into the main Kongo language article. That might depend on how intelligible they are. If people can't understand each other, it's probably best to have separate language articles, even if they all identify as Bakongo. The main Kongo language article would then be those varieties that are intelligible with standardized/literary Kikongo.
 * Maybe you could take a look at Kongo languages and advise which varieties in that list should have separate articles, and which should be covered in the main Kongo language article? — kwami (talk) 20:07, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, by mother language I mean Proto-Kikongo. There are people Who think Kisikongo is the Proto-Kikongo. My bad I thought "mother language" also had the same meaning as "langue mère" in French. Yes, They understand each other but not so well (examples : Civili and Kimanianga speakers). Kituba already has its article. Let it stay like that because Kituba is grammarically different from kikongo varieties. It's a good solution to merge all these articles (Kongo language and Kongo languages) into the main Kongo language article. "it's probably best to have separate language articles, even if they all identify as Bakongo" This solution is also good but there are problems : Kikongo varieties and Kikongo ya leta (Kituba) are less and less spoken in Kongo Central even in the Republic of the Congo some Kikongo varieties are less and less spoken. Kisikongo is considered as standard Kikongo in Angola. In Cabinda it is Fyote. Two Kikongo varieties are used in Angolan TV news : Kisikongo and Fyote. Plus all the Kongos taken to the Americas came from all parts of the Kingdom. Somebody040404 (talk) 23:36, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I assume that at least Yaka and Suku should not be subsumed under Kongo? It might be nice to keep the classification of all the varieties separate from the main article, if only for legibility. Whether best to call it "Kongo languages" or "Kongo dialects", I don't know. But I think some kind of split would be warranted. Still, I agree that many of the current language stubs might be profitably merged into the main article. Though I don't know which ones, exactly: according to Vili language, the Bavili were part of the Kingdom of Loango, not of Kongo.
 * "Mother language" doesn't have any meaning in English. I didn't know what langue mère meant in French -- I would've assumed it was langue maternelle. There is an English phrase "mother tongue", which is probably a direct translation of the French. It can mean either the language you were raised with, or the ancestral language of a community. There's even a journal Mother Tongue for people trying to reconstruct the ancestral human language (or at least looking at long-distance relationships). But when reading the Kongo article I didn't connect "mother language" with "mother tongue". Anyway, "mother tongue" isn't a technical term, and it's ambiguous enough we probably shouldn't use it if we're trying to be precise. It's usually better to paraphrase. — kwami (talk) 00:07, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello,

Yes, Yaka and Suku should not be under Kongo even if those in Angola consider themselves as Bakongo but those in DRC don't consider themselves as Bakongo. No, langue-mère in French means the proto language. Yes, Vili were part of Kingdom of Loango but they consider themselves as Loangos and Kongos. In the Kingdom of Loango there were Vili, Yombe, Kugni (or Kunyi), Lumbu, Babongo (Forest people or pygmies) and Punu. Vili, Yombe and Kugni consider themselves as Bakongo. Lumbu, Babongo and Punu don't consider themselves as Bakongo. Kingdom of Loango also had influence among Orungu people in Gabon but Orungu people don't consider themselves as Bakongo. Woyo consider themselves as Ngoyos and Bakongo, it's the same with Kakongo. It might be better to classify as follows : North Kikongo, West Kikongo, East Kikongo, Central Kikongo and South Kikongo https://llacan.cnrs.fr/fichiers/nigercongo/fichiers/Bostoen_KikongoNC.pdf. The name Kongo languages is better. Somebody040404 (talk) 07:24, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * That classification from Bostoen is a decade old. He's published a lot more since then, and Glottolog is based on his more recent work. From the 2012 pub, it appears that Vili and Yombe should be excluded from Kongo, regardless of ethnic affiliation. — kwami (talk) 18:13, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry I misspoke! I just wanted to suggest that we can use this as a basis for classifying kikongo varieties according to their inter-comprehensibility, the localization also plays a role : North western or west : Vili, Yombe, Woyo, Ibinda, Kunyi…

North eastern or North: Ladi (Lari), Kikongo of Boko, Haangala…

The classification on the inter comprehensibility deserves a reflection.

Somebody040404 (talk) 23:33, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * That seems reasonable. Both are of interest. Feel free to work on it yourself, if you're interested; it might take me a while to get to it. — kwami (talk) 23:38, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Words without consonants for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Words without consonants 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 Articles for deletion/Words without consonants& 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. User:力 (power~enwiki, π,  ν ) 00:22, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Finnic peoples
Thanks for creating a separate article for that main term! I was always annoyed that a "Finnic peoples" article was missing. Good job. --Blomsterhagens (talk) 10:55, 13 October 2021 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. There'd been an article, but it was deleted as OR by someone who thought "Finnic" meant Balto-Finnic. I'd let that go for years, but there were just too many mentions in our articles of "Finnic" that meant Eastern Finnic or were ambiguous. — kwami (talk) 18:29, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Qahveh Khaneh Sign Language
A tag has been placed on Qahveh Khaneh Sign Language requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

"No sourcing. Unsourced claim. No language ISO code. Not notable."

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, pages that meet certain criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Which I deleted, though I did catch an error when checking the source.
 * Why wouldn't you bother to check the source before tagging a language for deletion because it 'has no sources'?
 * All languages are notable, even if you don't speak them. — kwami (talk) 07:02, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It had no source when I added the template. You have added a new source after the fact. However, this raises more questions than it answers. Before I added the template, the article said the language referred to a similarly named village. Now it is about coffee houses. This is a large leap in meaning. Is a briefly spoken language variant inherently notable if its only lasting impact is as a footnote? I'm not sure. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:52, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It did have a source. I corrected the article based on that source. You might want to actually read the articles you edit, especially if you're going to edit-war over them. — kwami (talk) 07:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not edit warring. You have no right to delete that template as the page's creator. That is mentioned quite explicitly by the template. You are being actively misleading about the sourcing, which was absent, and making ad hominem attacks. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:57, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * My god, have you still not read the article? It's a stub. It won't take you half a minute. Don't bother me any further unless you're willing to take a little responsibility for your own errors. — kwami (talk) 07:59, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * In addition, the prior version of the article referred to Iranian Azerbaijan; now it says Tehran. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:01, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. It was in error. I fixed it. Why don't you try reading instead of just bothering other people? Can't you admit that you screwed up? Granted, I caught that error because you tagged the article, so that's a good thing, but it's fixed now. You would have caught the same error if you'd bothered to check the source that you claim doesn't exist. Unless you have something intelligent to say, give it up and go away. — kwami (talk) 08:04, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Qahveh Khaneh Sign Language for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Qahveh Khaneh Sign Language 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 Articles for deletion/Qahveh Khaneh Sign 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.

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. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:12, 16 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Wow, you're really doubling down on being a troll, aren't you? — kwami (talk) 08:26, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Irregular moon
I guess we're not counting Triton in that chart, because it would totally overwhelm everything (I just added some text about that, because the rest of the article agrees that Triton is irregular). But I wonder how it should be treated in the first place, since Triton's story is probably quite a bit different from that of most irregulars. It's not even irregular by the 0.05 Hill radius requirement, and Nereid is borderline: there's a reason why often they are excluded by a reference to "normal" irregular satellites.

Also, I find it a bit odd that Triton is so commonly considered irregular, but not Iapetus, which actually has a better claim by its orbit (being near the 0.05 Hill radius requirement). In fact, by the orbital criterion, Luna should be irregular too. So it kind of suggests that some people are thinking of the term as meaning "captured", rather than being about the orbit. OTOH Amalthea is probably captured too, because if it were a primordial satellite it would be as dehydrated as Io, which it isn't. Yet no one seems to call it irregular. Might be interesting to do a literature search on definitions. Double sharp (talk) 15:49, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I don't know. The nice thing about the Wiki graphs, compared the PNG files I used to make, is how easy it is to adjust them for such concerns. I'm not sure how much the graph contributes either, so feel free to modify it as you see fit, or remove it if you think it doesn't contribute anything. — kwami (talk) 18:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it's pretty good. The masses going Nereid >> Phoebe > Himalia > Sycorax I knew (and is sort of guessable from the sizes), but I must admit to not having known that Himalia was more massive than Amalthea. I would've guessed the opposite. Learn something new every day, I guess. :)
 * I wonder if it'd be possible to design a Jupiter mission for the outer satellites. (Well, we know too little about Uranus and Neptune because small moons are not known yet, so it had to be Jupiter or Saturn. Jupiter is closer and its groups seem to be more compact.) I suppose you'd spend a lot of it flying in the middle of nowhere far from anything interesting, but you'd probably save quite a bit on delta-V costs and radiation shielding by being far from the planet. And one might still use Ganymede and Callisto for gravity assists to get the needed inclinations without getting too deep into the radiation belts, and those are obviously interesting targets that we already know something about. Let's just say that I wish we knew more than just Phoebe up close. Although IANARS. ;) Double sharp (talk) 20:43, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. Amusingly enough, Nereid is actually closer to orbiting in Neptune's equatorial plane than Triton. But of course it is so faint that Neptune's axial tilt was already known by the time it was discovered. If my memory does not fail me, for some time (maybe up till the early 20th century?) the only way to figure out the axial tilts of faraway Uranus and Neptune was to look at their satellites, and while this gave good results for Uranus, understandably everyone thought that Triton was a regular satellite and got quite wrong answers for Neptune. But I need to find the source for this, which I only dimly remember. Perhaps you do? Double sharp (talk) 20:46, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I don't know anything about the latter.
 * As for an outer-moons orbiter, I guess you'd have something like Lucy. Most of them have ≈ 2-yr orbital periods. Your orbiter's elliptical orbits would be shorter than that, but still, that's a long-term project. I'd guess, what, maybe one close flyby per year? Galileo and Cassini both lasted 13 years, so assuming the fuel budget is comparable, maybe we could hope for good images for a dozen (could we get delta-v mass measures for things that small?) and probably several dozen more at the low-res range we currently have for Himalia. Might be interesting to plug the results into the Nice model too.
 * Saturn would be more difficult. The outer moons have periods up to 4 yrs, and you presumably wouldn't be able to use solar that far out.
 * We know of plenty of outer Uranian moons, and their periods are even longer than Saturn's, so already more than a single orbiter would be able to visit. A- for Neptune, couldn't we just send something out, and use it to discover more outer moons and then target them? Though the ones we do know of have orbits on the order of decades, so we wouldn't be able to visit all the ones we already know about. — kwami (talk) 23:12, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, Lucy was the inspiration. It does seem plausible that if you found something interesting while you were already orbiting Neptune, you could just go there, since delta-V travelling around the Neptunian system must surely be quite small compared to travelling around the Solar System. Well, time needed to get there aside, with those long periods. ;) Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Re Neptune's tilt, I found it! :) Double sharp (talk) 22:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Margot and Levison's idea of "world"
I added it to geophysical definition of planet, since it's basically the same concept with a different name.

That said, interesting to see written "Roundness" can be used to define the subset of bodies for which gravitational forces exceed material strength. A "world" is an apt name for such bodies, and this classification need not be in conflict with the dynamics-based taxonomy of planets and satellites. I have to wonder where this leaves objects like Iapetus that freeze out of equilibrium (especially since they note that planetary material strength depends on temperature), as well as those with significant tidal heating like Enceladus. Double sharp (talk) 18:40, 19 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I like the phrasing "gravitational forces exceed material strength". That's not awkward like the phrasing we've been using, and maybe not as obscure as the word "plastic" I've been using. (Like "massive", "plastic" only means one thing for a lot of people.)
 * And if I recall, Stern called said that these were "worlds" as well.
 * But yes, the definition is the same, and just as questionable. If you melt a meter-sized meteoroid with a blow-torch, does it become a dwarf planet, a "world", until it cools down? I would hope not, but if you allow for tidal heating to make an object a world, it would seem to fit the definition. — kwami (talk) 19:04, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess one could probably argue that that's not a natural situation except just after a collision, and that we should probably wait until things quieten down. But yeah, if the main motivation for the geophysical definition is geological activity, then I feel like the fact that objects can geologically "die" presents quite a problem. Vesta is differentiated, so it must have been a "world" at some point. But it cooled down, got whacked, and couldn't recover, so now it's only impact cratering. But if it hadn't gotten that big whack, wouldn't we be calling it the only terrestrial dwarf? I suspect so, given how everybody treats dead iceballs like Mimas or Iapetus that still happen to look pretty round nowadays. Rhea is not much bigger and appears to be totally undifferentiated and homogeneous, but its shape is consistent with HE: is that actually a world? Or does its lack of differentiation mean it's "geologically stillborn", despite being larger than clearly-differentiated ocean-world Enceladus? Admittedly these are all under the scale that Stern calls "planetary-scale satellites", but even Mercury-sized Callisto and Titan may have failed to fully differentiate. So where are we then? But at least Margot and Levison note that roundness-based taxonomies have serious problems stemming from roundness being a continuum and being difficult to directly measure (you basically have to send a probe). As for myself, when thinking about geological issues I want to call these planets, but formulating a geophysical criterion just seems impossible. Maybe it's best to just accept fuzziness in the term like Margot and Levison suggest too. Double sharp (talk) 20:25, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * A lot of things are fuzzy in the real world, and we create difficulties when we try to make them clear-cut. It's just a happy happenstance that there's a clear line in the SS between dynamical planets and other worlds. I'm sure that if we could compare other systems, we'd find plenty with borderline objects, where counting the number of planets would be similarly difficult to counting DPs here.
 * I'd like eventually to use Margot's wording on other articles: world, dynamic planet, material strength. I think that's clearer than much of what we currently have (including much of what I've added). — kwami (talk) 20:33, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have no doubt that knowing more about exoplanets will drown the dynamic criterion in fuzziness. I distinctly recall old theories of planetary formation that were totally blindsided by hot Jupiters. ;)
 * The fuzziness kind of already happens in our Solar System if you accept Margot's definition of a double planet: The IAU has not formally defined satellites, which are informally understood to be celestial bodies that orbit planets, dwarf planets, or asteroids. Satellites to planets will have little or no impact on the classification if the satellite-to-planet mass ratio is low. At higher values of the mass ratio, satellites may affect the classification because it is the sum of the component masses in a bound system that determines the ability to clear an orbital zone. The terminology could in principle differentiate between two-body planets (where the sum of the masses exceeds Mclear, but the individual component masses do not) and double planets (where the individual masses both exceed Mclear). So Earth–Luna is a double planet, fair enough. Except that if you plug in the numbers for this, you find that Titan would have Π = 1.40, and that the Galilean moons would have 1.90 (Io), 1.02 (Europa), 3.15 (Ganymede), and 2.30 (Callisto). So if we take it literally that these values clear 1, we get Saturn–Titan as an extremely lopsided double planet and Jupiter–Io–Europa–Ganymede–Callisto as an extremely lopsided quintuple planet. But of course, values near 1 are not really decisive.
 * But indeed I like Margot's wording for these concepts; they probably make more sense to the average reader than what we're currently using. Double sharp (talk) 20:59, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That's like Azimov's definition that would make Neptune a triple planet. Simple, precise definitions don't work well for fuzzy categories. — kwami (talk) 08:09, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yup, though at least planet Titan is more palatable than planet Psamathe. :) Double sharp (talk) 10:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Sedna, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus
My main worry about those is what line we could use to justify keeping exactly these but not Pholus and the third Pluto, which are in both Unicode and Astrolog. (Did you mean to restore them in the infoboxes as well, or just the body of the article?) I like them and would like to have a complete set of likely-DP symbols, but I don't know what line we could use to justify stopping here and not going on with all those others. Double sharp (talk) 19:28, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I like having the symbols in the info boxes, though I won't quibble about it. But I think we should at least mention them in the text. They're not just astrological symbols, unlike 3rd Pluto. And I don't have any problem mentioning Pholus's symbol either. All of the minor-planet symbols apart from Pluto's are either obsolete or used primarily in astrology, so I don't see the astrology connection as a problem. Back to the 'astrology cooties' idea -- I don't mind providing info that astrologers would find of interest, as long as we're not promoting pseudoscience. I certainly wouldn't want a section in the Eris article on how it's an astronomical discovery that confirms astrological predictions of Proserpina, assuming that POV is notable at all. As for the cut-off for symbols, we mention the Unicode alt astrological symbols for Pluto in the text, so I'd say it's more a matter of what's notable in either astronomy or astrology. For the top of the info box, I'd include only the most common symbol (incl. for Uranus and Neptune), with Pluto as an exception because of the dual NASA/JPL coverage. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

The best excuse I can think of for such symbols to call them just "symbols" or "planetary symbols" in their articles, instead of "astronomical symbols". But, again: it then becomes pretty hard to justify why to have Sedna but not to have Pholus when neither its symbol nor Sedna's seems to have any astronomical usage. Double sharp (talk) 19:38, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Again, no reason in my mind to exclude Pholus. There's only one notable symbol for it, and the fact that it's for astrological use is in my mind no different than Vesta's being for astrological use -- or Pallas' or Ceres', really. — kwami (talk) 19:46, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

I made a try for that kind of thing at list of planemos. The other dwarf symbols are back, but now they are always called "symbols" instead of "astronomical symbols", and the note makes it clear that they are at this point mostly astrological symbols. (After all, Ceres today pretty much only gets its symbol among astrologers.) Double sharp (talk) 19:43, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * That works for me. "Planetary symbols" is fine in my mind, even though "planetary" refers to minor planets. I doubt it would cause any misunderstanding. We might want to retain "astrological symbols" for things that are purely astrological, such as the fictional planets. — kwami (talk) 19:47, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

OK, I think I'm happy now. Astronomical symbol still has only strictly astronomical symbols, but points to astrological symbol for the cases where something is different. (Maybe a return to this version would also be all right, minus the alternate Eris.) And I cut astrological symbol down to the relatively standard ones (so no Salacia etc.). For articles, I returned to the cut-off we had before this week, but let Pholus and Nessus through for the reasons you said, and also Vesta, Astraea, and Hygiea's astrological symbols as they're frankly more common than the astronomical ones at this point. (And anyway Ceres and Pallas are mostly astrological now). The extra Plutos are text-only, since they are astrological only, there's a much more common astronomical symbol, and it's not even Anglophone astrologers who usually use them. Eris gets only one symbol, since only one actually ever appeared in astronomy, and it's also the same one that is in Astrolog. Planet and dwarf planet have the symbols, though kind of as ornaments.

Re Uranus. Is the H+o symbol really so rare now? Double sharp (talk) 20:33, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I thought the platinum symbol was preferred in astronomy now, the little that anything is used -- it's the symbol in the article you found and the sole symbol at the NASA page, so I'm happy with having just that one in the info box. The H+o symbol is more specifically English, like the LV+o symbol for Neptune is French, and we are supposed to be an international encyclopedia (even though of course English and American things are going to be over-represented). Personally I prefer to avoid nationalistic symbols like H+o, LV+o and PL, and if we go with multiple symbols the box starts getting cluttered. Pluto's weird because of the whole is-it-a-planet thing. But the H+o symbol is common enough that it's easy to argue that it should be an exception. I assume we can find 21st-century attestation in astronomy for both, so yeah, add keep it if you like. Should the 2nd symbol maybe be in parentheses? — kwami (talk) 21:43, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * My memory suggests that H+o is not uncommon, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. OTOH it was encoded in Unicode before the platinum symbol and before LV+o, but maybe that was influenced by astrology where H+o apparently beats the platinum symbol in popularity.
 * H+o was proposed by a Frenchman (Lalande), so it doesn't seem to be nationalistic since Herschel was the undisputed discoverer and he was English. Probably rather to honour the discoverer, since Lalande had proposed to name the planet Herschel. I suppose the point is true for LV+o, because of the priority quarrel (even though in retrospect Le Verrier did have a much better claim than Adams); that probably came about when the planet was proposed to be Leverrier. As for Pluto, I wonder if NASA using the bident symbol has anything to do with the PL symbol being specifically being about Lowell. If it's not Lowell's planet and not even a planet anymore, then that symbol doesn't really make any sense other than as a monogram for Pluto, and the bident symbol makes more sense for the mythology. (The orb might be interpreted as the Helm of Hades, I guess.) Or maybe they didn't think that hard and just thought the bident symbol fit better with the other objects than the monogram. :) Double sharp (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. Just checked. Physics and Chemistry of the Solar System uses platinum for Uranus too. Double sharp (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, H+o wasn't proposed for nationalistic reasons. But perhaps because of the Neptune dispute, a bit of nationalism seems to have rubbed off on it. Hardly a big deal, though.
 * If all scientific sources use the platinum symbol, that would seem to be reason to stick with that. But the H+o symbol is quite notable in astrology, so yeah, maybe best to support both. — kwami (talk) 22:42, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Moskowitz's moon symbols
It's not defendable for WP (until any use is found), but my favourite is definitely his Charon astrological symbol. The floating orb evokes both that of Pluto's bident symbol and how Pluto would look in Charon's night sky and vice versa, thanks to the mutual tidal locking: a great motionless orb. It has the moon symbol (since it's a moon), but lying on its side it evokes Charon's boat. It's truly inspired. I know it's already one of the Pluto alternatives, but for me it is definitely far better as a Charon symbol. :)

That said, for the other planemo moons, I wish he had tried for some sort of evocation of the mythology rather than just initial letters. Or at least a larger nod to astronomy than the circle representing Titan's atmosphere. Double sharp (talk) 18:47, 18 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I like Charon too (and it's in Unicode!), but I agree, Titan's pretty bad. It's worth a unique derivation. Don't like the Saturnians in general, except maybe Dione or Hyperion. (If he made Tethys like Dione but with a theta, that would recall Ithaca Chasma.) But maybe that's because I keep seeing glottal stops in them. Someone used a lower-case version of the Jovians, and those work well enough. The Uranians and Martians look good as initials, and Triton works for me. The problem would be how anyone would remember them all without some phonetic cue. I assume that's why he tried incorporating a monogram in the DP symbols as well (though the Discordian community rejected his attempt to do that for Eris). — kwami (talk) 19:39, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Point taken: I guess a "watery" Saturn symbol might make one wonder if it was meant to be Tethys (a mythological reading) or Enceladus (an astronomical reading). But I'd like at least the truly planetary-scale Galileans, Titan, and Triton to get something special. Double sharp (talk) 22:41, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh well, I suppose one could argue that Earth-Luna and Pluto-Charon are really "double planets" (or double worlds). In which case it makes more sense that the other moons get symbols very clearly based on their parent planets. But I'd still like a unique derivation for Titan, though probably still with Saturn's hook if we follow this logic. Double sharp (talk) 07:15, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * You know what, I just tried handwriting them, and I have to admit that the lowercase Galileans actually work really well. Nicer than the uppercase ones, actually. Triton does seem kind of too similar to Neptune for me, but I guess the way it looks like a struck-through Neptune makes sense for the biggest "rebellious" retrograde moon.
 * Let me know if you find any nice ideas for Saturn. :) Double sharp (talk) 10:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Can't help but notice that some other WP's seem to be taking them straight from Wikidata, e.g. Russian and Romanian Wikipedias. But I guess it is up to their own editorial choice. Double sharp (talk) 10:42, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Ixion
Thoughts on whether Ixion makes the cut, since you added it? Double sharp (talk) 09:17, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe not, though it's common enough in astrology. — kwami (talk) 16:39, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Is it more or less standard there? If so, then we could argue that it's like Quaoar. Same question for Varuna, also on Moskowitz's page. (Ixion is one of my favourite symbols.) Double sharp (talk) 20:34, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Some variant of the wheel symbol seems to be standard for Ixion. I've never seen M's xi-iota variant, but have seen (a) the X-I variant he based it on (from Sandy Turnbull), (b) X in the wheel with a line on top (quite common), and (c) an 8-spoke wheel with a line on top (just once or twice, maybe just on WP-de?). I'm not sure whether (a) or (b) is more widespread. Zane Stein lists (a) and a couple others I've never seen in use, including his own. I've seen (b) more often myself, but in a very narrow selection of sources. Since Stein doesn't even list (b), maybe we should use (a)? I might have the impression (b) is more common just because I've just seen the same source or sources multiple times.
 * Not a RS, but cf here:
 * For Varuna, I recall two symbols. Both are on Stein's page: M's and a bold V with a thin ribbon at the bottom, the latter used by Urania (which uses a bunch of unique symbols) but also here (the same person who uses/designed? this variant of Ixion). I can't say either is common. — kwami (talk) 23:42, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, I restored Ixion. Could you link me to the places where you've seen the symbols in use? :) Double sharp (talk) 16:23, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I came across it while working on something else, and I didn't keep track because I was focused on the DPs used by Astrolog. It's not used by Solar Fire (no Ixion symbol is listed in their fonts), and I don't see a symbol I recognize as Ixion in the Urania charts, and it's not in their fonts either, though screen shots of the software show they do have an option for Ixion. And I'm not pulling anything up on a Google Books search either. Though there is this similar symbol for a Breton metal band. So at this point I'm reduced to citing Stein and Moskowitz.
 * BTW, here Astraea really looks like a % sign. — kwami (talk) 18:42, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * If it helps, here's a sighting of your (b) Ixion. (Strangely enough, it uses the old astronomical Hygiea.)
 * Interesting about Astraea! Double sharp (talk) 19:37, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Enigma font uses the (b) glyph for Ixion. — kwami (talk) 01:22, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Then I wonder if Ixion should really use the (b) glyph on WP. Or maybe if it just shouldn't be included at all for now. Double sharp (talk) 08:59, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Alright, removed it again for now. Double sharp (talk) 09:42, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Ophiuchus
Shouldn't there be some mention of Ophiuchus for the constellation symbols? It's already there among Moskowitz's, but it has an earlier origin in sidereal astrology IIRC. Double sharp (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (And BTW, did any proponents of a 14-sign zodiac propose a symbol for Cetus?) Double sharp (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I've never seen Cetus, but I expect that's the reason that of all of M's symbol, Cetus is the one that was uploaded to Commons first (back in 2013), though it wasn't used in any articles earlier this year.
 * As for Ophiuchus, I'd only heard of it as a sign of the zodiac from astronomers, when planetariums would have shows with Zeiss projectors and tell people that there are really 13 constellations in the zodiac, and that the dates in horoscopes are all wrong. That confuses 'constellation' with 'sign', but of course they're trying to debunk astrology, not explain away its inconsistencies.
 * Ah, here's the the symbol for Cetus used by Steven Schmidt in 1974. The one at right is clearer. — kwami (talk) 18:05, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice. Interesting how he used a different Ophiuchus symbol. Double sharp (talk) 09:01, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, doesn't look as though either of those ever caught on. — kwami (talk) 09:10, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, so I guess it's just Berg's symbol (= the one in Moskowitz' list) that should be mentioned. Was apparently added in Unicode 6.0. Double sharp (talk) 09:27, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, no contest, I think. I doubt his Cetus is notable either. — kwami (talk) 09:29, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you know how to search for the proposal that included that Ophiuchus? I guess I could use this as a source if I needed to (the symbol showing Ophiuchus as the serpent-bearer). Double sharp (talk) 09:35, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * In the doc registry somewhere. I found the proposals for the Uranus alt and the pentagrams, which were added to the same block in U6, but not Ophiuchus. I asked for help. I don't know if there's any good way to search of the titles of the proposals aren't helpful. — kwami (talk) 10:17, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

It's in L2/09-027. It was adopted as an emoji], as part of the Japanese Carrier Set. It didn't have a dedicated proposal. — kwami (talk) 17:46, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Umbriel, again
Jewitt and Sheppard argued in 2002: Several of the outer planet satellites are similar to Varuna in both size and density. For example, Saturnian satellite SIII Tethys has density ρ = 1210 ± 160 kg m−3 and is 524 ± 5 km in radius (Smith et al. 1982). The Uranian satellite UII Umbriel has density 1440 ± 280 m−3 and radius 595 ± 10 km (Smith et al. 1986). Even the much larger and, presumably, self-compressed object Iapetus (radius 730 ± 10 km) has a low density of only 1160 ± 90 kg m−3 (Smith et al. 1982). Internal porosity (due to the granular structure of the constituent materials) may account for the low densities of these satellites while simultaneously allowing rock fractions 0.28 ≤ ψ ≤ 0.66 (Kossacki and Leliwa-Kopystynski 1993). Within the uncertainties, these bodies all have densities consistent with that derived here for Varuna. Unlike Varuna, they are nearly spherical in shape, but this is because the satellites are tidally locked with rotation periods measured in days, not hours, and the centripetal accelerations are consequently very small. If rotating with Varuna’s angular momentum, they would adopt prolate body shapes and display large rotational lightcurves.

Varuna turned out not to be that large, but very interestingly, back then Tethys and Umbriel were thought to be denser than they actually are. If even Umbriel might not be solid, while orbiting a giant planet, I begin to suspect that the number of dwarf planets in the solar system might be hilariously small. But I'd like something more recent (not sure how much we could've learnt without a probe though). Double sharp (talk) 17:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I suspect that few meet the IAU definition. But more might meet the intended definition. I don't know if 'dwarf planet' might continue to be a fuzzy category based on appearance rather than a strict geophysical evaluation. — kwami (talk) 18:07, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree. Though I wonder if the intended definition ever suspected that objects this size could be porous. Thankfully it seems that Iapetus probably has collapsed out its internal porosity, but Tethys still might not have (its density is so low). Regardless, my general feeling is that the DPs according to the intended definition are probably the nine we now show, with some suspicious glances in Orcus' direction. Double sharp (talk) 18:37, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, Orcus is suspicious, but so are Haumea and Makemake, really. There have been attempts to prove that Haumea really truly could be a DP, but it seems to me like they're trying to justify the common wisdom rather than concluding from the evidence. I doubt we're going to be able to be confident for any of them until we can get flybys, though I don't have much doubt about Eris. And if we decide that something like Tethys should count as a DP, then we'll have effectively changed the definition (whether the IAU ever makes that formal) and there will be a lot more. The 600-800 km range in the table will be relevant for that. — kwami (talk) 18:52, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting; which attempts for Haumea are you referring to? Would be interesting to hear from you the problems you see for Haumea and Makemake. (I presume you're talking about the intended definition rather than the HE one?)
 * Effectively speaking, isn't Tethys generally called a satellite planet anyway? Its density must've been known to be super-low since Cassini. So maybe it's indicative and people really would just shrug their shoulders and allow in objects like Varuna as DPs, in which case the floodgates open again. Though, in that case, the 400 km cut-off that seems to be generally followed becomes a bit unmotivated, and really at that point we might as well have the completely arbitrary but Pluto-saving definition that anything larger than 2000 km is a planet. Seriously, it even makes some kind of sense, since the next bracket after that is Haumea-Titania-Rhea-Oberon-Iapetus and Rhea and Iapetus seem to be dead iceballs (Rhea isn't even differentiated, which given its active environment kind of suggests that pretty much all the TNO dwarfs but Pluto and Eris might not be either). Only trouble is Enceladus, as usual. Double sharp (talk) 21:47, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I suspect it is the case that ppl would just shrug shoulders at the formal def and accept whatever looks like a world. Which is exactly what Sterns is doing. But not Grundy et al, so maybe we'll get a range of practical defs depending on the researcher. Enceladus has tidal heating, of course, which TNOs won't, so IMO it's not relevant.
 * Re. Haumea, I'm thinking of the calculation (forget by who) that its shape doesn't fit a HE model. Then another refuting that, that if you have the proper density differentiation, you can make it fit. But that's the problem: making something fit our preconceptions of what it should be. And Makemake's smaller, less massive, and (presumably) doesn't have the violent history of Haumea. And they're right around the Rhea-Iapetus range. Denser, though, so maybe more active. But also because they're rockier, maybe able to support greater g forces before differentiation or becoming plastic. Haumea may've melted when it got struck, and fully differentiated, but then froze out of HE a Gy or so later. Could be that they're both geologically active, somewhere between the minimal activity of Ceres and the more obvious activity of Pluto; could be they're both dead worlds, with Haumea (like Vesta) preserving evidence of an active past and Makemake only having scarps from when it compressed. I'd be interested in any predictions of what they're like, and why, but not sure I'd actually believe any of them. Sometimes we get lucky and accurately predict what s.t. will be like, like the prediction of an active Io and Europa just before the Voyager missions, but I'm not going to count on it. — kwami (talk) 00:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Grundy thinks Makemake is geologically active, to account for its resurfacing with nitrogen. Which makes some sense, since it's presumably easier to melt nitrogen than water, and from Triton outwards that can be part of the surface. Since Charon appears not to be active, I would presume that Haumea and Makemake are the only really interesting intermediate candidates. Double sharp (talk) 08:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. There's actually a proposal for a Haumea mission now. Apparently Makemake will be close to Haumea in the 2040s and 2050s. :) Double sharp (talk) 08:35, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That would be nice, but we don't even support orbiters for Uranus & Neptune.
 * Re. Varda's density, with the m and r we have it would be 1.1, so I wonder if that 1.8 isn't a bit unrealistic. — kwami (talk) 09:24, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, the r is estimated from assuming that Varda and Ilmarë are both spherical and share the same albedo. That does not seem quite a safe assumption to me, since Ilmarë is smaller than Mimas. Orcus and Vanth apparently have very different albedos, although that might be because Orcus is probably large enough to have been differentiated. I agree that 1.78 is shockingly high, but its bounds overlap with the very large bounds Grundy et al. gave in the 2015 paper of $1.24$ g/cm3. The study giving 1.78 as first possibility assumes that Varda is homogeneous (seems reasonably) and in HE (uh-oh). It uses Grundy's mass value for the system and guess that Varda makes up ~92% of that.
 * So I gave the new paper a closer read. The 1.78 and the 1.23 solutions respectively come from single-peaked and double-peaked light curves, which are difficult to tell apart for low-amplitude light curves. Perhaps it's the lower value that should be prioritised, although I'm not sure I'm comfortable with only giving that one. (It is the one I suspect is more likely, though.) As long as a higher density is possible, I'm not comfortable with greying it out like UX25. In any case, even if Varda did turn out to be a Charon-like 1.7 or something like that, I'd simply suspect that actually the transition starts a bit earlier than 900 km, and that this one happened to have an interesting history. I mean, for all we know, it could be anywhere above UX25 and apparently also-not-solid AZ84: we'd need to know more about AW197, MS4, and FY27 to have a fuller picture. Who knows, maybe Dysnomia has a fighting chance to be Salacia-like after all!
 * BTW, do you know where the value $1.27$ we used to have there came from? Double sharp (talk) 16:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * We definitely can't delete it. And like you say, something funky could've happened to it.
 * Sorry, no. A search of the article history might turn something up, but we should be using the most recent values anyway. — kwami (talk) 17:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed, we can't. Just some funny understatement on my part (well, I'm in Category:User en-GB after all XD).
 * This is making me wonder if actually the transition is more like 725 km (because AZ84) than 900 km, or if we just got unlucky that the first two we could measure (Salacia and Varda) are both exceptional. I suppose we'll have to see if this higher value pans out. (Remember when Quaoar's density was that of an iron-rich main-belt asteroid? XD) Double sharp (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if Charon and Dysnomia should be included for comparison, since presumably being a TNO satellite is not actually that different from being an actual TNO. Do you have the values from this? Seems Dysnomia is a lot less dense than Eris. Double sharp (talk) 16:26, 26 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I would include any moons in our size range.
 * Maybe we should also add a parenthetical for a measured primary mass after the system mass? Esp. in the case of Orcus, since Vanth is so large.
 * I would assume that presentation presented the results from:
 * Michael Brown & Bryan J. Butler (October 2018) Medium-sized Satellites of Large Kuiper Belt Objects, Astronomical Journal, 156: 164.
 * But they don't derive any densities. They only plug in possible values to see what they would mean. — kwami (talk) 17:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Any moons? Among TNO moons there's only Charon and probably Dysnomia above 600 km. Do you mean including the giant planets' moons as well for comparison? Interesting idea, since that was Brown's original comparison, but most of them are quite different bodies in composition. OTOH we've already added Ceres, so much closer to the Sun. I think I'll at least add Triton though; it fits well with KBOs.
 * Agreed on the parenthetical. Double sharp (talk) 19:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm. We'd just included Ceres because it's a DP, but this is a list of "possible" DPs. So technically we could leave Ceres out. I think people would want it for comparison, though.
 * I meant TNO moons. Triton's okay because it's thought to be an ex-TNO DP, but the other large moons are indeed quite different animals. I think they'd just clutter the article without contributing anything. A link to planemo moons is enough IMO.
 * Vanth is a bit below the cut-off, but without a density measure it would be of limited value anyway. We might mention something about Vanth in the header where we note that we cover large TNO moons. — kwami (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I added something about Vanth. So, I've added just Triton, Charon, and Dysnomia to the table.
 * For Triton and Charon, I didn't find specifically geometric albedos (as this list uses), so I calculated them from the data. A bit weird that it led to half the value listed for Dysnomia (or is that a geometric albedo?), so maybe I should check my arithmetic again. Double sharp (talk) 20:08, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * For both, we should have a range of albedos available because we've resolved a range of albedo features. Presumably we'd want the average for the entire body, which may not be so easy for Triton. — kwami (talk) 20:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, grabbed them off the infoboxes for Pluto and Charon. For Triton, I've seen 60% to 95% quoted as a range. For a single value, JPL gives 76%. Double sharp (talk) 20:15, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * So, maybe Varda should be mentioned sometimes as another borderline case alongside Salacia? Double sharp (talk) 22:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh, re above about Haumea: true. It would kind of be "New Horizons 2" in a way, but I wonder if this wouldn't just harm the idea by making it seem like boring old hat "we've already done that". (Though I mourn the original concept which could have had an ice giant flyby. And possibly a UX25 flyby!)

Alas, I won't be surprised if anything beyond Jupiter is going to be just dreams for a while. But at least one giant-planet satellite system is way better than none. :) Double sharp (talk) 22:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

"Ӏу" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Ӏу. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 29 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 20:39, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

"List of digraphs" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect List of digraphs. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 29 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 22:03, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Czech language
Hi Kwami. I want to nominate Czech language for FAC but this edit you made could be problematic inasmuch as it contradicts "The phoneme represented by the letter ř (capital Ř) is often considered unique to Czech" in the phonology section which is cited (to a 70 year old grammar book, so YMMV). Do you know of a source which discusses the raised alveolar fricative trill and its occurrence as a phoneme? – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 11:40, 2 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Offhand, I'm only aware of it in Slavic, so it's perhaps unique (at least in Europe) in the sense of having occurred once, just a bit more broadly than Czech. It occurs in northern Kashubian, and used to occur in Polish (perhaps still does in some dialects, not sure).
 * UPSID claims a dental/alveolar fricative trill exists in loans in Guarani, though I'm not seeing it offhand in their sources. — kwami (talk) 17:21, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Per Sebregts 2014, it (as well as the uvular fricative trill) occurs allophonically in Dutch. I don't have time to re-read the study, but I think it only occurs in the coda, more commonly in the South than in the North. Sol505000 (talk) 22:53, 2 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Interesting paper!
 * I'm not positive, but it looks like all those fricative trills are voiceless, and he claims that "voiceless trills are inherently fricative." He may even be using the phrase "fricative trill" to mean voiceless trill. So that's not very similar to the Czech situation. I suspect that the Czech voiceless trill may be raised like the voiced one, but that the Dutch voiceless alveolar trill is not raised. It's also not a phonemic distinction in Dutch; "sound X is only found in Czech" could be read as meaning sound X is only a distinct phoneme in Czech. (Often that's what ppl mean by a "sound".) So I think we should be looking at (a) are voiced fricative/raised trills found in other languages? and (b) are they the dominant allophone? and (c) do they contrast with non-fricative trills? Other than Western Slavic, I'm not aware of any languages where the answer would be yes, but I would expect there to be some somewhere. — kwami (talk) 02:03, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Cheers for the edits, there was a cite confirming Kashubian on the alveolar trills page. It definitely did use to occur in Polish, unsurprisingly it "may" occur in Cieszyn and Jablunkov Silesian which are spoken on either side of the Czech border. Think I have the refs confirming that at home. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 09:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Stieber (1973) discusses the history of ř in Polish here, but from the snippets I can't see if he discusses any possible dialectal occurrences.
 * Re Cieszyn dialect, I think we have an article about it. The cited consonant chart includes r̝. Double sharp (talk) 22:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, never mind, I see some statements about ř in Kashubian and formerly in Polish have already been added. Double sharp (talk) 23:01, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

pronunciation of new Vatira name
Since the first asteroid inside Venus' orbit just got named (594913 ʼAylóʼchaxnim), I'd like to ask how its name should be pronounced. Original naming citation is here: The name 'Ayló'chaxnim means “Venus Girl” in the language of the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians whose ancestral lands included Palomar Mountain. Double sharp (talk) 19:33, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Cool!
 * It should be spelled with letters, though, not ASCII punctuation. It looks like the '9' shape is the one used.
 * Luiseño looks pretty straightforward. I doubt that [χ] is distinct from [x] -- I would expect they're in free variation as in so many other langs. There's a distinction between an English-type [s] and a Spanish-type [s], but that's not relevant for this name. (Current generation probably has assimilated them to English [s] and [θ].) Vowels are pretty straightforward.
 * For an English equivalent, ~ . Brits would use the TRAP vowel rather than PALM for the 'a'. Since that would maintain the Luiseño /a/ ~ /aː/ distinction, that's probably the way to go for generic English. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Found old sources that "Elutcax" or "Aylucha" is "Venus". So the -nim would seem to be the "Girl" part. — kwami (talk) 20:33, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

The 2nd glottal stop is not normally written, as it's predictable. — kwami (talk) 21:44, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, once again I am in awe at how much you know! Thanks so much for the information. :D
 * I'd expect that the name was chosen to begin with A to match Apollo, Amor, Aten, and Atira, though I haven't seen an explicit statement that that's the case.
 * Should we change "Vatira asteroid" to "ʼAylóʼchaxnim asteroid" now, or wait for it to be actually used? Since the first name was explicitly meant to be provisional until the first asteroid of that class was discovered, and then abandoned.
 * I also think Category:Apohele asteroids should really be at Category:Atira asteroids, since the article is at Atira asteroid and the first named object of that class was Atira, not the still-unnamed 1998 DK36 that "Apohele" was proposed for.
 * (Side note: I wonder if "Vulcan" is still reserved after all this time for the first intra-Mercurian asteroid. Since "vulcanoid" is pretty much unshakeable in the literature, it would be pretty weird for it to be named anything else.) Double sharp (talk) 22:29, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Not so much what I know as what I can look up! Elliot's 1999 dictionary was invaluable, though I still haven't ID'd the -nim part.
 * I'd wait for the MPC etc. to start using the new names before we adopt it formally.
 * I'd hope Vulcan is kept! Though it might be only a few meters in diameter. — kwami (talk) 22:35, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, for now I have just made ʼAylóʼchaxnim asteroid a redirect. Though I still think the Apohele-to-Atira category move should be made.
 * Yeah, I don't expect "Vulcan" to be discovered any time soon, but it'll be nice to have the name after all. And I'd find it very amusing to see "Named by U. J. J. Le Verrier" in the naming citation one day. :D Double sharp (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. The closest statement I could find about future use of the name Vulcan is in this IAU press release about naming Pluto IV and V: However, the name Vulcan had already been used for a hypothetical planet between Mercury and the Sun. Although this planet was found not to exist, the term “vulcanoid” remains attached to any asteroid existing inside the orbit of Mercury, and the name Vulcan could not be accepted for one of Pluto’s satellites (also, Vulcan does not fit into the underworld mythological scheme). So apparently Vulcan is sort of regarded as "taken", but it doesn't explicitly say that it's being reserved for the first vulcanoid (though this does make me suspect that it is). Double sharp (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I doubt there's been a formal decision. And that could've been used as an excuse if ppl just didn't like the name 'Vulcan' for the Plutonian system. Though I imagine if a proposal were made to name a main-belter 'Vulcan', there'd be push-back from the MPC. In the late 20th ppl were upset that 'Persephone' and 'Proserpina' were taken by asteroids, and they'd be the natural name for a planet discovered beyond Pluto. Ended up not being a problem, but ppl at the MPC are probably looking out for s.t. inside Mercury and will keep that in mind when evaluating names. — kwami (talk) 23:07, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * IIRC it's already discouraged to use significant mythological names for insignificant objects, isn't it?
 * I wonder if it would be allowed for a new major planet to duplicate the name of an existing minor planet, since they belong to different categories? In the past such collisions were accepted, e.g. 2758 Cordelia (named 1985, MPC 9769) and Uranus VI Cordelia (named 1988, IAUC 4609). But Nyx and Cerberus had their spellings changed to Nix and Kerberos for the Plutonian moons. So I'd guess not anymore.
 * Anyway, it's all speculation for now. Double sharp (talk) 23:13, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And we have the 6th largest moon and 6th largest asteroid both named 'Europa'. That's probably the worst case. Agreed, it looks like the IAU is considering such things more strictly, which IMO is a good thing, even if that means a lot of good names have been used up by insignificant asteroids and moonlets. So yeah, maybe "Vulcan" will remain as a disproven hypothesis, since there obviously isn't anything significant in that far. — kwami (talk) 23:32, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd probably plead that the first intra-Mercurian object would at least be of some historical significance, but yeah, not sure if that would convince them. :D Double sharp (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Sources calling Quaoar and friends DPs
I compiled a few recent-ish sources unequivocally calling those bodies DPs without qualification at User:Double sharp/Dwarf planets. It seems from Google Scholar searching that usually people stop at Orcus. Except Runyon, who apparently insists that everything over 400 km diameter is a DP (example), and then proceeds to ignore even this very lax criterion and list Lempo as a DP (see Fig. 1). But he's clearly an outlier there.

For an explicit statement of the boundary, Barr and Schwamb call Orcus and up "dwarf planets" without qualification, but does not even call Salacia and Varda dwarf planet-sized. For them, they are just "mid-sized bodies", and imply that the lower limit for that is radius less than ~400 km, mentioning UX25. (Well, Varda was already known to be smaller than that, so tilde presumably means it's a rough estimate. But Sheppard et al. also think this radius is some kind of threshold between smaller and larger TNOs when discussing FY27, which they call a DP. I suppose that means that there's a transition going on from about 350 to 450 km.) Double sharp (talk) 15:17, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * BTW, I went for separate colours for the dwarfs at List of natural satellites and Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons. Okay, kind of ugly colours, but at least they're separated now. Double sharp (talk) 15:19, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for collecting those. There hasn't been any pushback to calling these DPs so far, but it may prove useful to have these on hand.
 * Note that Holman only calls 2010 JO179 a 'candidate'.
 * I think it may be worthwhile to update our article by including 2013 FY27 where we mention that other authors have counted other bodies such as Ixion and Varuna as DPs. But maybe not 2012 VP113: Sheppard discovered that one, but doesn't call it a DP himself.
 * I suspect the odd wording for Salacia is due to its recently calculated greater density. But odd that no-one seems to have called it a DP.
 * There may be some color ideas here. — kwami (talk) 19:48, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, you're right about JO197. So, removed. (Otherwise there would probably be more.)
 * I restored Salacia and Varda to List of natural satellites and the discovery timeline as candidates. Mostly since these lists are more about the moons than the planets or dwarf planets, and as TNO moons Actaea and Ilmarë are pretty significant. But the fact that Salacia and Varda turned out to be denser did play into my decision, yes. My current excuse is that AZ84 is the largest object where we know the density and it turns out to be too low to possibly be a DP (seriously, it's lower than Tethys), and it's also at about 700 km, so it makes sense to include only the stuff we know is larger than it. That's just Salacia, MS4, Varda, and AW197. (Which was the line I remember you took back in November 2019, although probably for different reasons?) It is kind of a lame excuse because AZ84's density is not really sure, but I also don't want to add a satellite that we're not sure exists or not. But for the main DP article, I think we should stick to the nine that people seem to agree on, and not fish into the murkier waters of Salacia etc.
 * I did find one article calling Salacia a "planet". The author addresses the problem: Of the trans Neptunian objects, several of the largest bodies have been included alongside the planets Pluto and Charon. This includes the remaining IAU dwarf planets  Eris, Makemake, and Haumea as well as Orcus, Salacia,  Quaoar, Gonggong, and Sedna. Including these objects and not more was a subjective choice, given the relative  confidence that these objects are large and massive  enough to have spheroidal shapes. While there may be  hundreds and perhaps thousands of trans-Neptunian  planets, there is reason to believe that most candidate  objects with diameters below 1000 km may be too porous to have reached shapes near equilibrium, given their low densities. This means even trans-Neptunian objects as  large as Orcus and Salacia may not be planets.  Regardless, more observations are required of these  distant, poorly understood objects and the table is certainly open to revision. That said, while that's pretty reasonable, I find his inclusion of Uranus XV Puck really odd. (Yes, it's pretty spheroidal, but at that size, it is surely a coincidence. Soon we could argue for Saturn XXXII Methone to be a planet...) So, I am not sure how seriously I should take this, especially given the geophysical definition he starts off with (it's the one with the entertainingly bad wording spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid).
 * I wonder if that situation with Salacia means that people suspect its density is at the lower end of that uncertainty range. Its low albedo would seem to indicate that. OTOH, FY27's high albedo would seem to indicate that it could be a dwarf after all. OTOH, the recent paper on Varda says The relatively high densities derived for Varda (>1.5 g cm−3) when we adopt the McLaurin solutions 1, 2, and 3 are consistent with low porosity for an object in this size range, which is pretty interesting given what Grundy et al. wrote about Varda's size range. I suspect that the general opinion of objects around 700-900 km is in flux and that there isn't really a consensus about whether this is large enough to mostly collapse out porosity. I guess we just need more data.
 * Re colours, I kind of suspect it's a pretty lost cause with so many bodies. At least the colours are all redundant information, though.
 * I added FY27 to Dwarf planet, when we mention that several astronomers include more bodies than the consensus nine. Double sharp (talk) 20:19, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I like that your quote here casts doubt on Orcus, even if it's sloppy in other ways. I think we need to replace the bureaucratic announcements with the scientific perspective from both directions: not just that these "are" DPs or are in HE, but also that there's reason to doubt they're in HE. As you noted, it may turn out that only the IAU five are geologically active after all. That would be a happy coincidence, if the ppl who don't think about what they're repeating turn out to have been right all along, but we should be careful to cover potential changes to the population in both directions. — kwami (talk) 20:40, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with that. Though I guess I'd note that HE seems not to be taken too seriously as a requirement. For all that that source is sloppy, it at least addresses the problem: While the first point provides a fairly clear and objective condition (the presence or absence of nuclear fusion within the object at some point in its existence), the second point is intentionally more lax and inclusive. While an individual rock or pile of gravel orbiting the sun would be called a planet by no one, and the Earth is accepted as a planet by all, the distinction between small, irregular objects and gravitationally rounded bodies is not always clear-cut. Judging whether an object’s shape satisfies the hydrostatic equilibrium condition depends on precise knowledge of its size, mass, internal composition, rotational period, and other factors. As such, an object that initially formed with an equilibrium shape may later fall out of equilibrium if its rotational period changes, its shape is eroded by impacts, etc. While some earlier physical definitions explicitly mention the hydrostatic equilibrium condition, the revised geophysical definition leaves the precise amount of gravitational roundness open for debate and interpretation. After all, objects like Mercury and Venus deviate from ideal hydrostatic equilibrium, and no planetary body has a perfectly smooth, ideal shape.
 * On a slightly different note, do you know if Ilmarë and Xiangliu ever got provisional designations? Logically they should've been "S/2009 (174567) 1" and "S/2010 (225088) 1", but I can't find any serious use of them. Actaea is safe; its provisional designation was used in the MPC where it was named. Double sharp (talk) 20:52, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

unfortunately, even that wording is sloppy! Changing rotation rates and impacts do not cause a body to "fall out of equilibrium", they only make it obvious that it no longer is in equilibrium. Again, we seem to be back to the idea that "hydrostatic equilibrium" means appearance, not geophysical properties. I'll have to look. — kwami (talk) 22:15, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I said it was sloppy. But since it seems to be one of the few relating strict HE to the sense people seem to mean it in for (dwarf) planethood, I'll forgive its sloppiness as long as there's nothing better. :)
 * Thanks for helping to look! I couldn't find anything, but maybe you'll have better luck. :) Double sharp (talk) 22:20, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, no luck. Didn't figure there would be if you couldn't find anything. — kwami (talk) 07:40, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The situation for those TNO moons is weird! Salacia I Actaea was announced in its naming as "S/(120347) 1 Actaea = S/2006 (120347) 1". The first style without the year was used for Gonggong I Xiangliu in the webpage where the discoverers opened the name of Gonggong to voting: "S/(225088) 1". But Orcus I Vanth was already numbered in its naming announcement as "(90482) Orcus I". Same for Quaoar I Weywot, announced on its naming as "(50000) Quaoar I". Meanwhile, Varda I Ilmarë and Gonggong I Xiangliu did not even get their own naming citations; notes about Ilmarë and Xiangliu were just tacked on to the ends of those on Varda and Gonggong.
 * Come to think of it, though: I just searched it for Weywot ("S/2006 (50000) 1"), and I again can't find any RS giving that designation. For Vanth, the closest seems to be Brown's blog, but he got the format wrong. So I wonder how much use this format actually gets. Regardless, I don't think we can justify many of these designations unless there's something making them "automatic".
 * For Dysnomia, I can only find hits for "S/2005 (2003 UB313) 1", not "S/2005 (136199) 1". Then again, that's natural since it was named at the same time that its parent Eris was numbered. A bit more strangely, for Haumea's moons I can only find hits for "S/2005 (2003 EL61) 1" and the other one, not "S/2005 (136108) 1".
 * Well, at least MK2's was used. Although that's the discoverers. Double sharp (talk) 10:40, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * And it gives yet another reason not to include FY27; it's not at all clear what its moon would have to be named on such a list. Double sharp (talk) 16:37, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Why not ask at Wikiproject astronomy how we should label such things? I'd hate to hold an article hostage over a matter of bureaucratic trivia. At worst, we could always say "the moon of FY27". — kwami (talk) 23:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I admit that I didn't think of that, yeah. So I've added FY27 to List of natural satellites and Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons. (For the latter, since this seems to be turning into a 700 km threshold, I added Ixion as well; now it's looking like a good historical summary of all the death knells for Pluto as a planet. Well, Varuna's too small and probably isn't solid, but other than that, you can really see how the big ones came one after another until finally Eris was the last straw.) For now, its moon is just left unnamed pending what WikiProject Astronomy decides on.Double sharp (talk) 11:03, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

P.S. With nine consensus dwarfs, four large-ish bodies that should have mostly collapsed internally but not resurfaced (with potentially FY27 coming if we get something better on its size), and eight planets and one Sun to keep apart from them, my inspiration for the colouring has pretty much become the Tokyo rail network map. XD Double sharp (talk) 11:09, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Make that six large-ish bodies. :) Double sharp (talk) 11:03, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Re the designations: got them from JPL. Xiangliu (S/2010 (225088) 1), Ilmarë (S/2009 (174567) 1), Weywot (S/2006 (50000) 1), Vanth (S/2005 (90482) 1). So I'll add them back. Double sharp (talk) 00:24, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

That said, the moon of 2013 FY27 is apparently undesignated. Same for the unconfirmed moon of 2003 AZ84. Double sharp (talk) 00:24, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Glad you got that cleared up!
 * They're not going to issue designations until they have a confirmed orbit, so yeah, probably not getting one for AZ84 any time soon. — kwami (talk) 00:33, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * When did they start being that strict with the provisional designations? Pretty sure they were more lenient in the '70s and '80s. There's a whole lot of candidate Saturnian satellites from Voyager data that got designations back then. It seems like only one of them actually exists (it turned out to be Pallene), and even that one was literally only present in one Voyager image. And wasn't there some doubt about whether Charon existed for some time?
 * Last word I heard of AZ84 was from this occultation. Still no sign of the satellite.
 * P.S. I wonder if Pallene should really appear in 1981 under Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons. After all, it was just a candidate and had literally only appeared in one image, and I don't think it was generally added to lists of moons yet the way unnumbered but designated satellites are today. But then again Reinmuth is credited as discoverer for 69230 Hermes on that article. Not sure if that is really the same kind of case though. Double sharp (talk) 00:45, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

What the German Wikipedia does for unnamed moons: de:(208996) 2003 AZ84 1, de:S/2018 (532037) 1. Double sharp (talk) 23:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Either of those would work for me. The first is nice because it visually identifies the primary (I'll recognize "AZ84" but not "208996"), the second because it gives us a timeline. Overall I think I prefer the first, but it might be a good idea to have both. — kwami (talk) 23:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I added AZ84 and its moon to the lists (Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons, List of natural satellites). Admittedly the moon is lost, but at least 700 km is a good cutoff, and anyway the low-density result assumes it's in HE (which it might not be; by the book this would make it not a dwarf in either case, but probably people would just ignore it like for Mercury). And anyway there are many lost moons in there too, e.g. S/2003 J 10, and our only source for not finding it is a tweet. From Mike Brown, but doesn't really stop our other sources (including JPL) from listing AZ84 among binaries.

BTW, we have an 83rd moonlet of Saturn now: S/2019 S 1. Double sharp (talk) 00:04, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Although, LOL at the anachronisms at the JPL page: "S/1978 (134340) 1" for Charon. :D Double sharp (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * They're still P I to P V for me. We have the abbreviation, might as well us it. — kwami (talk) 04:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, at Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons I decided to keep following whatever was current then. So Charon, Nix, and Hydra use "P", but Kerberos and Styx use "(134340)". I admit that the designations for Dysnomia and IIRC Quaoar are slightly anachronistic, but otherwise I guess the format change raises more questions. :)
 * I added cites from Sheppard to Kerberos' and Styx' articles for the designations "S/2011 P 1" and "S/2012 P 1", just in case anyone challenges them. Yeah, not really "official", but they were in actual use. Double sharp (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Jonathan Hull renderings
They really do remind me of the Witch runes from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, LOL. Double sharp (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

IJustine
I reverted a problematic editor, but retained your pronunciation edit. Your edit was flagged as reverted. Cheers Adakiko (talk) 03:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Earth Mass
It's clear I'm not the only one with problems with your intended change to the "Earth" symbol. From Earth Mass history curprev 14:42, 29 November 2021‎ Double sharp talk contribs‎ 171 bytes +2‎  Undid revision 1057801525 by Tom.Reding (talk) it's still not the right symbol. the problem is not your browser but whether you have a font with the right symbol rollback: 1 editundothank Tag: Undo curprev 14:25, 29 November 2021‎ Tom.Reding talk contribs‎ 169 bytes −2‎  Undid revision 1048791519 by Kwamikagami (talk) Displays as a box in Chrome undothank Tags: Undo Reverted curprev 20:46, 7 October 2021‎ Kwamikagami talk contribs‎ 171 bytes +2‎  that's a mathematical operator, not the symbol for Earth, which is 🜨 undothank Tag: Reverted curprev 01:31, 11 July 2021‎ ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ talk contribs‎ 169 bytes −42‎  Rm interlanguage link to deleted target. They are hosted in wikidata now, so rm msg too undothank curprev 16:12, 12 October 2020‎ Lithopsian talk contribs‎ 211 bytes −2‎  Undid revision 982466559 by NuclearElevator (talk) needs discussion, does not display correctly in all browsers undothank Tag: Undo curprev 05:44, 8 October 2020‎ NuclearElevator talk contribs‎ 213 bytes +2‎  Re-introduced character change. It's been changed on template:val undothank Tags: Undo Reverted curprev 05:05, 8 October 2020‎ NuclearElevator talk contribs‎ 211 bytes −2‎  holding off on the character change until template:val is changed too undothank Tags: Undo Reverted curprev 04:22, 8 October 2020‎ NuclearElevator talk contribs‎ 213 bytes +2‎  Using ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR VERDIGRIS (U+1F728, 🜨) instead of CIRCLED PLUS (U+2295, ⊕) undothank Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Reverted

While using that symbol as a subscript may be "more correct", it's clear that support is not universal. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 19:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)


 * We shouldn't purposely introduce errors into an encyclopedia. That's just irresponsible. There are several correct ways to do this: M🜨, ME, MEarth. Debating which of those is best is one thing. Arguing that we should be wrong because it doesn't matter is another. — kwami (talk) 20:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed that errors are a problem, but if some arbitrary version of "correct" leaves things unreadable for a significant number of users, that's even worse. At least in the fontface that appears on my equipment (MacOS, iOS, iPadOS), the "earth" symbol is already a subscript, and making a subscript of a subscript leaves it as an undifferentiated blob. Workarounds have been to use the earth symbol as is (not subscripted), use a similar symbol which the font doesn't already define as a subscript (but is still identifiably a circle with a cross), or spell it out. It appears that on at least some versions of Chrome, we can't use the symbol at all. I'd prefer to use a symbol, but it appears the support for the "Earth" symbol (a relatively recent addition to Unicode) is insufficiently universal so as to preclude its usage. How do we move forward from here? <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 20:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I also prefer the Earth symbol. That "arbitrary version of correct" is the standard convention in astronomical sources. DoubleSharp just changed the template to MEarth, which works for me. ME might also be acceptable, though I don't think I've ever seen it in RS's.
 * In other fonts, the Earth symbol is as large or larger than the capital M, so not subscripting it causes a different problem. When so many typographers have been incompetent, I suppose we just need to avoid the it. There are other cases I've come across where we need to avoid a character because anyone using a Microsoft font is going to see the wrong character.
 * There are lots of times when something displays badly because I have poor font support. In general, the solution is to install better fonts, or to change my default display font on WP. Not everyone's going to do that, of course, but we can't hold everyone hostage to everyone-else's bad fonts. — kwami (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

For the record, looking at the back-and-forth diffs, on Earth-mass, this is how that symbol renders under all my equipment (I am absolutely clean on fonts - nothing special). On the left side is what Tom had converted it back to, on the right is the "correct" Earth symbol, which renders as an indistinguishable blob.



Regards, <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 23:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the illustration.
 * As with many things, if you want to be able to read anything other than non-technical English, you may have to install additional fonts. I'm on a new computer, and there are a lot of things on WP that I can't read yet. — kwami (talk) 23:26, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I haven't installed fonts on a computer since 1998, back when I was working on a graphical presentation app. Other than that case (on a long-deceased computer), I have never had the need for specialized fonts. I regard your position of "let them install fonts" as unacceptable - Wikipedia should be readable by rank beginners and others without administrative control over their computers. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 23:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There are tens of thousands of articles on WP-en that you can't read all of without extra fonts. I regard your position of "let WP be shitty because I can't be bothered" to be unacceptable. In this case, we have some options, such as MEarth. But there are times when the only options are (a) install supporting fonts or (b) replace letters with images. The latter has problems, esp. for extended text. In that case we're down to (a) install a font to read the article or (b) don't read the article. — kwami (talk) 00:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "There are tens of thousands of articles on WP-en that you can't read all of without extra fonts." I have yet to run into one of them. You're saying that a newcomer looking up something on Wikipedia shouldn't be able to understand articles unless he installs some unspecified special fonts from somewhere equally unspecified? How are they supposed to know? <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 01:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * We have templates telling them that they may need to install extra fonts to read the article. I come across articles I can't read constantly, and I have dozens of extra fonts installed. — kwami (talk) 01:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You can probably find many by searching what links to . Double sharp (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

BTW, I believe WP has started providing web fonts so that articles and symbols are displayed for those who don't have font support. But I don't know anything about that or where we'd go to get the Earth symbol added. — kwami (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Manlia gens and Romulus
Just letting you know the issues from March are ongoing. Libhye (talk) 04:34, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Emoji styling
How do you get the zodiac symbols to not display as emoji? Because I added Ophiuchus to Astronomical symbol. I'd like some sources for it: had been holding off on adding it, but eventually I felt it was too important.

Also, do you have a source for the galaxy symbol at the bottom of the page? Double sharp (talk) 16:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't know. According to emoji, setting theme=none should work, but it doesn't. I'll ask there. It might just be the fonts we have installed.
 * Ah, you can evidently force it in Unicode with &amp;#xFE0E; (plain text) and &amp;#xFE0F; (emoji), though I can't get that to work. Check it out on Wiktionary. But I only see a numbered box for the text version, ⛎︎ vs ⛎️, which is probably why my system is substituting the emoji. — kwami (talk) 19:14, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I copy-pasted in the text version. :) Double sharp (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oops, forgot. I don't have a ref for the galaxy symbol, just s.t. I've seen around. Feel free to delete. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Ratsua language
Hi Kwamikagami. The article has been in error since April, why are you reverting back in a cite error? If the issue is with the template then the template should be fixed, but we shouldn't just leave cite errors in article space. I see you marked as inactive, so I'll wait a few days and revert back if I don't here from you. Thanks ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 19:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I stuck it in manually. — kwami (talk) 20:03, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Rongorongo trolling
You are uploading rongorongos claiming them to be fair use and putting multiple rationales and copyright tags. This is considered licence trolling and your images are now being changed to public domain.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 02:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

You will also be discussed at the Teahouse.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't understand what that means, and I don't see any discussion at the Teahouse. Also, your description of your actions doesn't match your actions.
 * You say that the images are not copyrighted because you can't copyright a photo of an object you don't own? You clearly don't understand what copyright is. I'll rv your edits. — kwami (talk) 05:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I forgot to add the discussion, but since you are fighting me now, I will make sure I discuss you tomorrow.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 05:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Be careful what you claim. You've been removing Fair Use tags, which could be problematic. — kwami (talk) 05:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * dialog-warning.svg If you don't respond to the question I have asked you on User talk:Alex Mitchell of The Goodies, the licence on File:Rongorongo G-r Small Santiago (raw).jpg will be changed back to public domain, as well as your other files, without further notice.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 20:42, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not even a coherent sentence. If you have a problem with WP copyright policies, take it up at Arbcom. Meanwhile, I'll continue to revert your vandalism. (If adding (c) info to an img is "trolling", then deleting it is certainly vandalism.) — kwami (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, the only fair use rongorongos on the wiki are ones you uploaded, which is why I am suspecting you as a licence troll.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 20:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You don't even know what the word means. I'm ignoring you as an obvious incompetent. Don't post any more of your nonsense on my talk page. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Manlia gens
It turns out the issue has been discussed on the talk page. The main participant seems to think that we are prescribing and proscribing pronunciations and telling readers how they should pronounce Manlia, being patronizing in the process, rather than simply informing readers of a certain pronunciation, leaving them to do what they want with it or nothing at all. They also repeat the incorrect notion that the Classical Latin pronunciation of Manlia can be predicted from the spelling. Libhye (talk) 11:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Stern on DPs
Apparently, in 2014 Stern said that "at least eight more objects (Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, Ixion, Varuna, 2002 AW197, Pallas and Vesta) may well be round enough to fit the IAU's dwarf-planet definition". Well, I guess with that wording he was talking about candidates. Though it's weird that he included Vesta, after Dawn. Double sharp (talk) 09:06, 11 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Weird. Yeah, seems to be playing loose w the definition. — kwami (talk) 10:50, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Avilich (talk) 19:22, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Judaeo-Portuguese for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Judaeo-Portuguese 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 Articles for deletion/Judaeo-Portuguese 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. BilCat (talk) 07:21, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia ZA Annual General Meeting 2021
This is just to let you know that the Wikimedia ZA AGM will be taking place on 25 September 2021 See below for more details.


 * Time: Saturday, 25 September 2021, starts at 10:00 to 16:00. With intermission at 13:00
 * Location: held digitally online |at this link

our problem
Hi Kwamikagami, unfortunately that nobody agrees to fix our IP problem. I know that you are not an administrator at the French Wiktionnaire. If you became an administrator at the French Wiktionnaire, maybe you would agree to change our block duration, haha, it's a joke. Joe Pig (talk) 17:48, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi Kwamikagami, hurray! Our problem is fixed ! Joe Pig (talk) 18:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Congrats! — kwami (talk) 20:29, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Kwamikagami, unfortunately that someone block us indefinitely again. Joe Pig (talk) 17:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Stearn on origin of planet symbols
You wrote mysteriously that Stearn's assessment of the historic derivation of planetary symbols has been questioned by later research. Well earlier today I transferred the material you deleted from Gender symbols into Planet symbols, citing Stearn as the RS. "The symbols for Mars, Venus and Mercury are derived from the initial letters of the Ancient Greek names of these classical planets."

So do tell! If you point me in the right direction, I'm happy to draft something. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:51, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

At planetary symbols, Jones (1999) Astronomical papyri from Oxyrhynchu, which were discovered after Stearns wrote; "It is now possible to trace the medieval symbols for at least four of the five planets to forms that occur in some of the latest papyrus horoscopes ... Mercury's is a stylized caduceus. ... The ideal form of Mars' symbol is uncertain, and perhaps not related to the later circle with an arrow through it."

One problem w Renkema's speculation reported by Stearn is that he attempts to account for the Christian cross that was added in the 16th century as part of the original Greek abbreviation. He also doesn't seem to recognize that a stroke was added to an abbreviation to mark it as an abbreviation (much like a period is today); only in Z-stroke for Zeus does he have that. He appears to have just been making stuff up. Does anyone still consider Renkema to be likely?

But we really shouldn't have anything at gender symbols per FORK. Too hard to keep things up to date when ppl wouldn't know to look there.

Need to check further reg. Mercury for hybrids. Maybe Linnaeus used the same symbol for both hybrids and hermaphrodite flowers? — kwami (talk) 23:02, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * re Linnaeus, we know that he began by using the symbols for Mars, Venus and Mercury for male, female and hybrid but that he dropped the Mercury sign in favour of the multiplication sign (×). Stearn writes:
 * "However. the earliest surviving Linnaean manuscript, first printed in 1957 (as Linnaeus, Ortabok) but compiled by Linnaeus in 1725 at the age of 18, shows that by then he had copied them from the Pharmacopoca Leovardensis (1687; 2nd ed., 1698); see Figure 2. In his Systema Naturae (Leyden, 1735) he used them with their traditional associations for metals. Their first biological use is in the Linnaean dissertation Plantae hybridae xxx sistit J. J. Haartman (1751) where in discussing hybrid plants Linnaeus denoted the supposed female parent species by the sign ♀, the male parent by the sign ♂, the hybrid by ⚥ [☿] "matrem signo ♀, patrem ♂ & plantam hybridam ⚥ [☿] designavero". In subsequent publications he retained the signs ♂ and ♀ for male and female individuals but discarded ⚥ [☿] for hybrids; the last are now indicated by the multiplication sign ×. Linnaeus's first general use of the signs of ♂ and ♀ was in his Species Plantarum (1753) written between 1746 and 1752 and surveying concisely the whole plant kingdom as then known."


 * but specifically, no mention of ⚥ for hermaphroditism. The Mantissa Plantarum mentions hermaphro- just three times, and in none does it use a symbol. (See, free-text searchable.) There are multiple instances of the signs ♂ and ♀ for male and female.


 * Where do we go from here? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:37, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

It looks like Linnaeus never used ⚥ at all. He used ☿ first for hybrids and later for 'perfect' flowers. (He also used ♂ for more than one meaning: male parent, biennial and male.) Current usage is × for hybrids and ⚥ for perfect/bisexual flowers. The fn 12 at planetary symbols should now be accurate -- I corrected it against the original (minor errors) and expanded it to cover the 2nd use.

Re. Mantissa Plantarum, ☿ is used for "Hermaphroditus flos" on p. 21 (#1283) — kwami (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Phew, good find in Mantissa Plantarum. I was really beginning to doubt my sanity. Now I can just doubt my eyesight. :-D
 * Interesting that what was beginning to look like a wild goose chase turned up that little nugget (historic ☿ v modern ⚥). Presumably you will update the gender symbols article accordingly? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:04, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Is there something still to update? I don't have ☿ in the info box in the lead or in the Unicode table because at this point it's just a historical curiosity. Current use is covered at LGBT symbols. — kwami (talk) 00:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I've mentally swapped them again. I misremembered the content of the infobox at gender symbol. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:59, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Mentoring for FAC
Hi kwami,

After bringing it to GA status, I've listed the Levantine Arabic for peer review here in hopes of bringing it to FA status. As you previously participated in discussions on this article's talk page and because it would be my first FAC, I would love to get your feedback on this peer-review and maybe your assistance in the preparation and processing of the nomination.

Thanks for any help you can provide, A455bcd9 (talk) 11:45, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Sources for pronunciations
Please give sources for pronunciations that you add (such as those at Monoicy and Monoecy). There is wide variation in the way that such scientific terms are pronounced in my experience. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok. — kwami (talk) 10:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey!
Haven't seen you on an edit page for ages. I just thought I'd let you know that the Interlingue page has gotten too large to be the only page on the language and in its most recent Good Article review it was recommended that some of the finer details be shuffled off into their own articles. One recommended one was Comparison between Interlingue and Interlingua which I've started, while Grammar of Interlingue and History of Interlingue haven't yet but once they become their own pages then a lot of the grammar and historical parts are going to get moved off there to give the main page some space to breathe. I hope to get the main page down to about 100,000 bytes by the end but we'll see.

(And since you're a phonology and grammar guy, feel free to start the grammar page if you ever feel like it...if not I'll get around to it after the comparison and the history page, which are my two strengths for the subject) Mithridates (talk) 13:30, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. My main interest is that I suspect our description of the vowel system is inaccurate, so that /o/ ends up being pronounced as /a/ and /a/ as /e/, but I don't have the sources to fix it properly. — kwami (talk) 23:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Astronomical symbols at etwiki
Hello! Do I understand correctly that you replaced the description of the symbol picture because it will not produce coherent text when copied? Well, now when I move my cursor on the picture I see an empty square and when I copy it, a square with question mark instead of the actual symbol or a human-readable description. Adeliine (talk) 09:11, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Maybe there's a way to do both. If you're seeing a question mark, it's because you don't have proper font support. But you can't copy an image, so when there is a Unicode character available, we should make it accessible to the reader. — kwami (talk) 09:34, 31 December 2021 (UTC)