Disputatio Formulae:Unienda

Policy

I'd like to suggest this policy:

• If a page has interwiki links we should prefer not to merge it, even if it is very short.

--Rolandus 06:40, 26 Maii 2007 (UTC)

I guess you mean, if the two pages have different interwiki links. Yes, that makes good sense. In such a case we ought normally to aim to expand and improve both pages.

Do you have any particular examples in mind? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:27, 26 Maii 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification ;-) Examples? I thought we had more of these pages, but I found only: Centum dies, Pecunia non olet and Romani ite domum (from [1]). --Rolandus 10:54, 26 Maii 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, as long as each page constitutes a valid stub in itself. --UV 15:22, 26 Maii 2007 (UTC)

Ars grammatica Latina

The original message (before 2023) usually became ungrammatical as soon as the suggested name was inserted. I'm afraid it's because we have used these formulae and other bits of repeated text so commonly that we have ceased to read them. It's highly desirable to correct this in each case, but before correcting it's necessary to consider: will the change we make result in greater complexity or not?

This happened with the == Vide etiam == standard heading that we used to use. The list following it was always ungrammatical, because the object of "Vide" should be in the accusative. When someone at last noticed this, Helveticus Montanus, who was at that time producing thousands of bot-like pages about French communes, changed his practice to convert the items in each "Vide etiam" list to the accusative. If he had reflected or discussed before doing it, we could have agreed at once to change the heading to "Nexus interni" (meaning that the following list is not linked grammatically to the heading and can therefore remain in the nominative). We eventually did this, making things correct and easy for the future, but unluckily leaving the links that Helveticus had hastily converted to the accusative just as they were ... Many are still there.

In the case of this "Unienda" formula, it seems to me, the same pause for thought is needed. We don't want to offer an alternative between grammaticality and ungrammaticality, we don't want to make the formula more complicated than it was, and we don't want to suggest a move to a title in the genitive case. What we want to do is to make the formula grammatical and as easy to use as it was before. So let's remove the genitive parameter and change the message in such a way that it's possible to keep the name of the other page in the nominative. First suggestion: Suadetur ut pagina "Sphinx" cum hac pagina uniatur. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:04, 31 Iulii 2023 (UTC)

I approve the nominative. I will update it in the next hours. --Grufo (disputatio) 09:14, 31 Iulii 2023 (UTC)

Ok, done. But now I was thinking that the new text suggests that the "Sphinx" page gets merged into this page, while the previous text seemed more to suggest that this page got merged into the "Sphinx" page. Maybe we can just use a conjunction and put both pages on the same level? I was thinking to write Suadetur ut haec pagina et pagina "Sphinx" uniantur. --Grufo (disputatio) 09:49, 31 Iulii 2023 (UTC)

Up to now the same formula has been added to both pages, because the decision to merge may be independent of the question what title the merged page should have. But your suggested text is fine anyway. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:26, 31 Iulii 2023 (UTC)

Done! If you find other template whose text you think needs to be changed let me know. Vicipaedia:Index formularum might be where to start looking. --Grufo (disputatio) 12:44, 31 Iulii 2023 (UTC)