Ray Saintonge wrote:
Angela wrote:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:10:05 +0100, Anthere
<anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Wikidata is a new project... does the community
supports this ?
Wikidata itself isn't really a project. It's more of a technical
solution to some of the problems on existing projects.
The implementation of Wikidata will obviously need community support
-- do Wiktionarians want to merge their projects into the "ultimate
Wiktionary", for example -- but I don't think the feature itself
should need consensus before its written, only before its implemented
on Wikimedia in a way which would affect existing projects.
Gerard is full of technical solutions. Some of them may indeed be
brilliant, but I don't have the technical expertise to judge. The
real question lies in whether contributors whose primary interest is
language will be driven away because the editing process is too
complicated. One of the most important features of Wikipedia has been
that anyone can learn how to edit with very little training. At one
time their were passionate arguments over the use of html or wiki
markup. Wiki markup was seen then as too complicated. We've gone a
long way since then, but we still need to be aware that many of the
contributors that we may seek are not computer geeks, but
knowledgeable people in the subjects that are their passion.
One of the aims of the ultimate wiktionary is to hide all the
complicated stuff that you currently find in nl:wiktionary. I am on
record saying that it is a crutch. (typically you use a crutch when the
walking is difficult). When you CAN use it, you have learned many
ISO-639 and codes by heart like I have. In the ultimate wiktionary the
crutch will not be needed anymore as all the needed information will be
hidden in the User Interface.
I also see Gerard's proposal as directed toward
the needs of
translation. That's a commendable goal, but a dictionary is more than
that. It is just as much a reference for people about their own
language. And people writing about their own language need to feel
free to do so easily without needing to be concerned about the
potential effects on translations. \
The current implementation that led to Ultimate Wiktionary was directed
toward using content in multiple wiktionaries. The ultimate wiktionary
is directed towards integration of the wiktionaries so that content
added/changed in a language will be available to all people interested
in that language. The crux ot all that I have done in wiktionary, is
that 80% of wiktionary content is language independent.
Also much of what Gerard says is theoretical, and very
little of it
gives real practical examples of how things will work Saying that a
database structured on xml would be a big improvement does not mean
much to those who are not intimately acquainted with xml.
The current content of nl:wiktionary can be easily moved to
it:wiktionary to hi:wiktionary or to .. and it will be correct with the
exception of stuff like description and etymology. That is not
theoretical, that is really practical. I have moved stuff to the
fa:wiktionary (Persian) and, it works..
XML is nice. We will want an import and export mechanism. BUT the
proposal that is to be implemented is not about XML, it is about making
the 80% of all effort count in all wiktionaries so that when I add the
3000+ words in Papiamento with translations and everything, there will
be a Papiamento resource to ALL users of wiktionary.
As much as I've advocated for a unified
Wikisource, I also advocate
for separate Wiktionaries. Without getting too far into that debate
now, I can at least point out that Wikisource deals with static texts
that will not need to be repeatedly edited.
If Gerard wants to experiment with his ideas on some form of Wikidata
project I won't stand in his way. If he wants to go from that into
some kind of "Ultimate Wiktionary" he may come up with something that
works. Maybe it will eventually be meaningful to migrate existing
translation material there. But let's not go there until he has
something practical established. The timetable for that may be
considerably longer than the one which he so optimistically expresses.
The one thing I am asking is: read about the proposals, think about what
this tries to accomplish. Ask questions about what does not make sense.
The great thing about the wikimedia projects is the importance of the
community. I have a dream and, was able to accomplish something. I
sincerely hope that we will find it usefull and will be happy to move
forward
The current timetable is about implementing the necessary building
blocks. It is split up in several milestones that will allow us to do
reality checks on the way. The timetable says nothing about the
conversion of all the wiktionaries and, it does not make it mandatory to
move over to the ultimate wiktionary. In time, people will move over as
and when they think it is usefull to do so.
Ec