Wikifunctions talk:Glossary

Alphabetical Order in Other Languages

I have noticed that the translations for this page are confusing since they go out of alphabetical order, so genuine people who do not know English will struggle with finding terms in the Glossary (if they do not know about Ctrl+F). How can they be sorted in alphabetical order under the translation interface? BrightSunMan (talk) 12:09, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, good question. Looking around at m:Glossary#See also it seems most glossaries either have the same problem or aren't translated. Wikidata appears to be the only project that has solved this, in d:Wikidata:Glossary, but it's using a single-column-table to do so (which I believe is bad for accessibility?), and readers still need to realize that they have to click the grey rectangle (below the diagram) to re-order items. I'm not sure if those drawbacks are worth the benefits, but hope that info helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

what's the difference between a reference and a key?

Don't they both describe a slug like H5N1 Z5K1? Arlo Barnes (talk) 23:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

A 'reference' could be to many things, not just a key. Some examples:

• K2, a key reference (almost always in the context of a key argument);
• Z2, an object reference;
• Z2K2, an object key reference;
• Q2, a Wikidata entity reference;
• L2, a Wikidata lexeme reference;
• M2, a Wikimedia Commons file reference; or
• etc.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. Arlo Barnes (talk) 20:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

suggested addition(s)

• 'lazy', such as mentioned at WF:function model#Evaluation order

Arlo Barnes (talk) 20:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Describing linguistic names

I do not know much about how words and their grammatical cases are usually named. So it would help me if I can find a description what kind of word is used in a specific function. What do you think about a Glossary for specific things used in function names. I am not sure if the Glossary is intended to include things what need maybe clarification and what are included in function names. Hogü-456 (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Responsibility for the glossary

At https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T367926, as well as in some other places, @Jdforrester (WMF) says that the WMF team that develops Wikifunctions doesn't "write, maintain, or support the glossary".

This statement is confusing. A simple look at the page history shows that this glossary was created by @Denny, and edited multiple times by @Sannita (WMF), and @DVrandecic (WMF), as well as by @Quiddity (WMF), who, if I recall correctly, is (or was) specifically designated as a technical writer (but correct me if I'm wrong), and, finally, by @Jdforrester (WMF) himself.

What's much more important, however, is to recognize that this project really should have a complete and well-maintained glossary. It is a complicated and innovative piece of technology that involves an unusually large number of unique terms. Those terms are heavily used in discussions about the project and in the WikiLambda extension messages. It's impossible to learn to use Wikifunctions even in English without having a good glossary, and it's even harder to translate the extension messages to other languages well without one.

In the Wikimedia world, the volunteer community should own as many things as possible, but there are things that it simply cannot do. It's just natural that the people who know what those difficult terms mean better than anyone else are its developers, designers, product managers, and movement communications specialists. I remember positive discussions with Dr. Vrandečić and some other of the people above, mostly on Telegram and also on the old talk page at Meta, where they explained some terms, and encouraged people to update and clarify things in the glossary. That was good! Did anyone decide that it has to stop? Am I missing something?

With deep respect, a curious, but confused volunteer, Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:40, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

"function definition" definition

Hi! I'm new to Wikifunctions and preferred to ask before making changes to the glossary. We have several "function something" definitions: function call, function evaluator, function executor, function model, etc. And we have a definition for "function", of course. But we don't have a definition for "function definition", a term which appears in other documents (see for example here, here and here).

Do you think it would make sense to define "function definition"? If yes, would something like "the specification of which inputs a function takes and which outputs it returns" be OK? Diegodlh (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it should be defined.

@Quiddity (WMF) and @Jdforrester (WMF) added them to those pages, so they are the best people to write it. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:16, 23 July 2024 (UTC)