User talk:Wenli

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And thank you for your contributions so far!--Brett 12:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

present-participle & gerund-participle

Thanks for the friendly notice. :-) --Brett 02:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for archiving the request. I should have thought of it.--Brett 00:59, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Defining style

For your consideration: Although there aren't enough active editors here to really talk about consensus, there seems to be some agreed preference for "explanations" rather than terse "definitions", (i.e., "If you bother someone, you disturb or annoy them." rather than just "to disturb; to annoy"). Either way, I'm glad to have your contributions. We need more active editors like you.--Brett 00:07, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not suggesting something long and encyclopedic, but rather just a full sentence. My learners tell me that these are easier to understand and sound more friendly. I think it's important to keep our audience in mind. Explanations also give you a chance to exemplify a sense's key pattern. Your point about 'bother' is more a problem with my lack of precision than with explanations themselves. You could equally say that a definition that read simply "to disturb" (which yours doesn't) allows for bothering rocks, but that's not a valid criticism of that style, just of that particular definition.--Brett 02:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Comparative adverbs

Perhaps I'm not thinking clearly. Can you remind me what a comparative adverb would be?--Brett 14:41, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, like "dig deep" and "dig deeper". I'd never thought about it.--Brett 01:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Examples

There is a difference between examples that employ a word and those that exemplify it. For example, in differently, "You cook things differently." is of very little help. Contrast that to a sentences like:

• Many women believe that salesmen treat them differently just because of their sex.
• Sometimes the teacher uses a program quite differently from the way in which it was planned.

If you're interested in getting more illustrative sentences, Just the Word is a great place to start.--Brett 12:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The examples there are taken from the British National Corpus. As such, they come from a corpus of 100 million words consisting of thousands of documents, so the likelihood of taking a number of sentences from any given document is very small. Such use is easily covered under fair dealings. This is analogous to how James Murray got quotations for the OED, just a lot easier. Other modern dictionaries, such as the _Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English_ are compiled using the BNC. Of course, you can always make minor edits.--Brett 02:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

contractions vs. negatives

Did you see this?--Brett 00:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, the distinction was first identified by Zwicky & Pullum in 1983. Though linguists widely agree that it is a useful one, dictionaries evolve on time scales similar to the human species. I think it would be wonderful if we could bypass that by looking at the empirical facts rather than relying on tradition. Does the reasoning presented seem... uh, reasonable?--Brett 02:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Adminship

Congratulations on the adminship. I thought you were still listed as a candidate or I would have mailed you earlier about the recent difficulties:) --Barliner 21:43, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not currently an admin; I requested temporary sysop permissions on IRC to block the vandal. The steward did not give me permanent sysop privileges because we have a bureaucrat, User:h2g2bob. I have already contacted him at User talk:h2g2bob. — Wenli ^{(reply here)} 22:05, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! I'm glad to see you as an admin.--Brett 19:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Plurals

Don't be too eager to say there's no plural. Most nouns do have plural senses. cares for example is unexceptional in expressions like "having no cares of their own." Ices is a Britishism: "the serving of tea and ices at small tables". It's actually rare for there to be no plural form.--Brett 03:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Understood.--Brett 03:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that in the example above the phrase as a whole ("tea and ice") is being treated as single word and pluralized, rather than "ice" per se. Though I might be willing to accept "ices" as a word for kinds of ice :/ --Jared 18:22, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

No, ices are frozen fruit juice deserts such as popsicles.--Brett 19:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki

Thanks for your help with the interwiki! Now I can move on to more productive things... :-) - Tygrrr ^-talk- 00:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back

Hi, it's good to see you here again. Not that it's been all that long.--Brett 12:23, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Klingon

I'd like to bring this to your attention as a possible task for your bot. Thanks. · Tygrrr... 17:20, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Mistake in legal notice

Can you please fix the legal notice on the pages of the logos? The current notice says "Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.", which is wrong. I can't edit that page, as it is protected. Thanks. Chenzw  Talk  11:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

a bot

hi wenli, i would like to make a bot to mass-add this list by the Internet Dictionary Project into this wiki. There are 50,000. crazy idea?

i posted in simple talk but got no response. Spencerk 22:30, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the rollback rights. --The New Mikemoral (talk) 06:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome! — Wenli ^{(reply here)} 07:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Related words

Re: scold. Related words are morphologically related, not semantically related.--Brett (talk) 02:11, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Desysopping

Hello there! You've now been inactive on this wiki for over one year and not edited or made any other logged actions. I've proposed you for desysopping here. Best, -Barras (talk) 17:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Your admin rights have been removed per WT:DEADMIN and this consensus. Best wishes, -Barras (talk) 17:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)