Jonathan Leybovich wrote:
However, in a more general vein, I'm not sure the lexical construct WiktionaryZ wishes to impose on every sort of Wikidata entity makes sense. For example, multi-lingualism is certainly important in a lexicographic context, but it does not apply to a catalog. A catalog has language-specific data, for sure, but this is not multi-lingual data- the language(s) in which a book's title is historically expressed by the author or publisher is important, and you cannot just do your own translation into an arbitrary language and say that is also the book's title. Similarly, films are given multiple titles by their distributors for different markets yet often these are very different from what a direct translation would look like. Here is more detail on these issues:
The common name of a taxonomic entity IS a translation of the formal Latin name. Why should it be treated as a separate data type? The endangered species Microhexura montivaga from North Carolina and Tennessee is known in English as the spruce-fir moss spider. It may have a name in the first nations languages of the area, but can it really have a name in any other language. You can invent a name in every other language, but these would be purely hypothetical, and not supported by actual usage. This would amount to unverifiable original research.
Similarly, arbitrary translations of book titles would be unacceptable. For a translated title to be meaningful it must have in fact been translated that way. The title of Camus' famous book "L'Étranger" has been translated both with the literal "The Stranger" and the literary "The Outsider"; these would both be valid entries for the repective translations of the book which would then require a "Translation of ..." entry.
Regarding different referencing styles, I'm open to anything though I think you'll find that in practice standard numbers like ISBN are less cumbersome to use than titles. For example, <<ref:The Davinci Code>>- does this mean the book, the movie, the audio book, or "The Davinci Code: Fact or Fiction?" ?
ISBNs have their limitations too. My copy of the 1977, 22nd edition of "Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary" has two different ISBNs depending on whether there are index tabs on the fore-edge. My earlier 1922, 11th edition, "The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary", (edited by Dorland) does not have an ISBN. I bought that specific edition to enable me to check out potential copyright problems. My more recent 2003, 30th edition, "Dorland's illustrated medical dictionary", has four different ISBNs depending on whether it's a standard, deluxe, trade or international edition. There are 27 other editions, and a distinction still needs to be made between pocket and full-size editions. Sometimes the difference is important; other times it isn't. The issue is not so simple that it can be solved by simply using an ISBN number.
Also, citation is not just fetching bibliographic data for the purposes of displaying it in an info box like other information. It is fundamentally about associating an assertion with evidence or support, and so must capture the cited "text" as well as the paraphrase text. Here is a mock-up of these idea in the context of an enhanced article validation feature:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikicite_spider_review_mockup.jpg
That simple example does best to illustrate some of the difficulties that are faced in scientific description. My first inclination would be to ask whether the description is consistent (but not necesarily identical) with the description that is officially accepted by the relevant international society. Would a spider be better described as a kind of arachnid arthropod rather than just an invertebrate. The first citation is very poor because it uses a simile. Saying that it is "like" most invertebrates does not imply that it "is" a vertebrate. Citation sometimes need to be rigorously applicable.
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