Asaf,
That is not how I understand it. First, I do not mind bots. When Wiktionaries have information on words in Malagasy, I am perfectly happy for the translations to be copied from one Wiktionary to another. When the descriptions are translated using machine translation, the question becomes only slightly different.

The question becomes about the quality of the machine translation. Now I do not mind key words in Malagasy without definitions. With dodgy translations it is ok because it is still better than providing nothing. When the quality of the machine translation is such that it is understandable but not quite there, I am  of the opinion that it is much better than providing nothing.

The biggest problem I have with the notion of perfection is that it is the enemy of the good. The good is to provide the best we can offer. When it needs work, it is acceptable because it is a wiki.

The biggest problem with language support is that products that are perfectly functional like Special:MediaSearch are not promoted because "the next iteration will be even better". It  also shows the extend we have moved away from our Wiki roots. 

The notion that a bot operator is not people... really...
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Fri, 18 Sep 2020 at 16:33, Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I am surprised you consider it "people add content", Gerard.  It is explicitly *not* people adding content, but a bot using machine translation.  Machine translation is problematic enough for just reading some text, but a machine-translated *dictionary* is literally worse than nothing.  It is a travesty, and it is better to *not* offer dictionary entries in Malagasy than to offer machine-translated ones with zero human supervision.

I encourage this committee to consider whether it is beneficial to the mission to allow this to continue.

   A.

Asaf Bartov (he/him/his)

Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities

Wikimedia Foundation


Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!


On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 12:18 PM Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
An error rate is expected when people add content, this is true for any project. Given that the information is based on what other Wiktionaries offer, from a Wikimedia point of view, no new errors are introduced. What we do not have atm is a process where translations are shared in one database. This is possible at OmegaWiki but that is outside of WMF.

From my perspective, a good effort as with any project it has its flaws.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Thu, 17 Sep 2020 at 20:54, MF-Warburg <mfwarburg@googlemail.com> wrote:
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