Kilo77

Kilo77, you are invited to the Teahouse!

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Foreign-language etymologies

Hi Kilo77, and thanks for your recent contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you've been adding material about foreign-language etymologies to various articles, for example Standard Chinese etymology to the hot dog and cocktail articles. I'd ask that you stop doing that. While we often include etymology sections in articles, in general it should be only about the English language, on English Wikipedia. Occasionally foreign-language etymology is included if there is a strong relationship between the subject and a particular language or culture. Beyond that, information about arbitrary foreign languages should not be included. Wikipedia is not a translation dictionary, see WP:NOTDICTIONARY. There is no particular relationship between Chinese language and hot dogs or cocktails. If we allowed this, then we would have to allow information about the use of calques or similar words in every other language, which would be unmanageable. I've undone the edits to those two articles, please review your earlier edits with this in mind and ammend them if necessary. Thanks for your understanding. --IamNotU (talk) 12:59, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, IamNotU. Following your feedback, I created the entry Etymological calque. Any comment always welcome.Kilo77 (talk) 01:55, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Ghil'ad Zuckermann

Hi Kilo77, following on from the above, I noticed also that essentially all of your edits, to a wide range of article topics, insert citations or references to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, his book Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, and/or article sections that are cited exclusively to the book such as pleonasm#Bilingual tautological expressions, or to the article you've just created at etymological calque, which is also cited exclusively to the book. Efforts to improve Wikipedia are always welcome, and many of your edits seem to have done so. However, it appears as if your primary purpose on Wikipedia is to add citations to Zuckermann's work. This raises concerns about potential problems, such as some of those described at WP:CITESPAM, WP:SPA, and WP:COI.

If you have a personal relationship with Dr. Zuckermann, you are not required to reveal your real-life identity, but you are expected to disclose that fact when making changes to any affected articles, as this constitutes a conflict of interest. Editors with a conflict of interest generally should not edit affected articles directly, but propose changes on article talk pages instead. See also WP:SELFCITE.

It's apparent that you have good knowledge of this field. Again, Wikipedia welcomes contributions that verify article content and help build the encyclopedia, following the policy on neutral point of view, and drawing from a broad range of reliable sources. You may find the advice at WP:EXPERT helpful. Thanks again for your understanding. --IamNotU (talk) 13:42, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi IamNotU. Thank you. No relationship. I am a student of linguistics. Right now I am reading Zuckermann’s book “language contact and lexical enrichment in Israeli Hebrew”. I am not aware of any other scholarly work on etymological calque or pleonasm#Bilingual tautological expressions but still consider them great additions to Wikipedia. The latter merits a separate entry. You are welcome to add. I made many other, unrelated improvements to Wikipedia. If you need help with linguistics, I am here for you. Kilo77 (talk) 22:33, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer! I can see how it could happen that one gets interested in a book, and wants to add the information to Wikipedia if it's not there. The book does seem to be well-regarded. The main thing however is that I don't actually see that you have made many other, unrelated improvements to Wikipedia as you say. Your account is only a couple of weeks old, and literally all of the sixty or so edits you've made either cite or link to Zuckermann's work. On April 13th alone, you added "see also" links to about twenty different articles, and citations to about a dozen more, at the rate of two or three a minute... This tends to set off alarms. It appears, on the surface at least, to be a textbook case of WP:REFSPAM behavior. That's something we see very often, and very often from newly-made accounts. You may want to consider taking a break from the topic, and broadening your contributions.

One other thing, the fact that you are not aware of any other scholarly work on etymological calque or pleonasm#Bilingual tautological expressions also sets off certain alarms. It indicates that the subject is not likely to meet Wikipedia's requirements for notability, and the existence of only one source makes it difficult or impossible to comply with the neutral point of view policy, and the requirement to represent scientific consensus as described in WP:SCIRS. Writing for an encyclopedia like Wikipedia is somewhat different than writing for many forms of scientific papers or journals, as secondary or review sources are generally preferred over primary sources and research. When the latter is used, it should usually have been cited by multiple other sources covering the topic. I hope that helps...

PS, I noticed in the Hebraism article, you wrote: "Hebrew has many idiomatic terms that are not easily translatable to other languages, for example בארבע עיניים be'arba enayim, literally 'with four eyes,' means face to face without the presence of a third person, as in, 'The two men met with four eyes.' You may be interested to know that that is a very common expression in contemporary German: "unter vier Augen" (under four eyes).[1] Not sure if it came to German from a Jewish idiom, or whether it entered Hebrew from German via Yiddish... also, I could actually use some help with Arabic linguistics, but that's another story... --IamNotU (talk) 02:07, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi again. Your hostility is against Wikipedia spirit, afaik. If you have any criticism about my improvements, great. Otherwise, I am here to contribute to Wikipedia and not to a talk page. The lexical item בארבע עיניים was there before I improved the entry. I guess that David Bivin, cited, thought of English rather than of German. I contributed to Wikipedia on various topics in the past, much beyond Zuckermann (who is most notable in the linguistics world). However, if you are an administrator (who are you?) and this is your attitude, then I will have to reconsider. All my additions have improved Wikipedia, which is the only thing I really care about here.Kilo77 (talk) 03:26, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you interpreted my comments as hostile, they were not meant as such. With regard to בארבע עיניים, since you were editing the article, I thought you might find it interesting to know, if you didn't already, that the expression is common in German - or if you did know, that you could tell me more about its origin, which I'm curious about...

I'm not an administrator, just a volunteer editor and worker for the past 12 years. Part of that work is reviewing the edits of others to help ensure transparent and unbiased contributions, and to help people understand the rules, which is particularly important with new accounts. I try to assume good faith, but that doesn't mean I look the other way when I see something that could be a cause for concern. You can probably understand that a brand-new account making dozens of rapid edits inserting the same citation into many different articles is a classic cause for concern! We have policies and procedures specifically about that situation. The use of Wikipedia for covert advertising and other promotional activity is a widespread problem, and one of the biggest dangers to its integrity. Combatting it has been identified as a top priority by the Wikimedia Foundation in recent years. I took the time to write you a personal note to try to understand what's going on, rather than slapping a form-letter {{uw-refspam}} template on your talk page, as others might have done. I've also tried to express that you are very welcome to make neutral contributions, and offered some suggestions about how you might avoid giving the impression that your contributions are in some way promotional. You mention that you have made many other contributions to Wikipedia on various topics in the past, but I don't have any access to that history. May I ask why you're editing from a new account? It's part of Wikipedia's policy that "to maintain accountability and increase community trust, editors are generally expected to use only one account". Again, I'm not making accusations, just trying to assess what's going on. If you prefer, I can ask someone else to take a look instead. --IamNotU (talk) 14:15, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for bearing with the process

Thanks for bearing with the process following my suggestion to start the discussion about improving the semantics in Wikipedia's language templates. I know that consensus building at Wikipedia can be plodding and pedantic, and I'm glad you stuck with it and got some improvements made. Nice going! Ibadibam (talk) 04:10, 15 May 2019 (UTC)