Dear Larry and all
On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 10:25:44AM -0700, lcrocker(a)nupedia.com wrote:
The more I think about it, the less I like my own
idea. The
dictionaries available on the net now are great resources, even if
they are a bit thin on technical detail. That kind of technical
detail is exactly what Wikipedia/Nupedia are designed to create, and
splitting the project further will surely result in duplication of
effort and less cross-linking. Furthermore, it reinforces the
distinction between "dictionary" and "encyclopedia" which I still see
as an artificial one.
I agree because the distinction has its root in physical constraints
of paper based works. The important thing about computer based
collections is that they have the potential to be any mix between
a dictionnary and an encyclopedia. What we need is features which
emulates the qualities of both.
It means advanced kind of search, or better page selections and sorting.
Easy Links, RecentChanges and Basic Search are great when creating pages in a browsing
manner, but not adapted to other kinds of queries and lookup.
Here's another suggestion: once we get version
0.92 of the Wiki
software, Cliff promises us parentheses. We can recommend that
information about words themselves be placed in pages
like "Mathematics (word)". That page can go into excruciating detail
about the etymology of the word, various senses, and usage (perhaps
seeded by the now-PD 1913 Webster or the soon-to-be-PD 1928 OED),
while the page "Mathematics" treats the subject of the word's primary
sense, so that ad-hoc links go to the right place. These primary
pages can contain links to the (word) page if appropriate.
0
I agree with the necessity to distinguish pages, but I am
not sure that surcharging the title in that way is the correct thing to do.
What about an extension of the wiki syntax, like the #REDIRECT,
which would allow to categorize pages, (the title would be changed accordingly)
and would allow to narrow search on the wiki database ?
#WORD
#LANGUAGE=SWAHILI
Olivier