Hoi,
I did send this message using the wrong mail-ID so I do it again using a
forward. This is my request to speak at Wikimania.
Thanks,
GerardM
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Wiktionary presentation
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:28:34 +0200
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerardm(a)myrealbox.com>
To: cfp(a)wikimedia.org
CC: wiktionary-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Hoi,
Several times I have tried to make sure that we would have a wiktionary
presentation. I was told that this could not be as I already am slotted
to speak. That workshop I would gladly do away with in order to be able
to speak about Wiktionary. Wiktionary will become very relevan for many
people and as I say in my presentation this will be increasingly true.
The one thing that Ultimate Wiktionary does is synthesising one
lexicilogical resource potentially containing all words of all languages.
I believe that with the intial deployment of the Ultimate Wiktionary, we
will continue on a learning curve that will result in something
extraordinary.
Thanks,
GerardM
---------------------------------------
The excitement of Wiktionary
A paper for a presentation for Wikimania 2005
Wiktionary is the biggest project after Wikipedia. As there will be big
changes in the way Wiktionary will work, there is a need to explain what
these changes are about. These changes will be quite fundamental; they
will merge wiktionaries in one Ultimate Wiktionarie and consequently the
communities will merge as well. Technically the changes are as profound,
the software for Wiktionary and Wikipedia are the same; with the
inclusion of Wikidata in the Mediawiki software it will be possible to
host structured data within a Mediawiki project. This will have a
profound impact on the way information will be added.
The current wiktionaries are all separate projects; they all do things
in their own way. Some have adopted a set of shared templates that allow
for the easy transfer of data from one Wiktionary to another. This
manual transfer allows for over 80% of the data to be the same in each
Wiktionary. The drawback of this system is that changes in one project
are not easily shared. It is not explicitly clear who added new content
and it can therefore be argued that the rules of the GNU-FDL are not
complied with.
As the different wiktionaries will be merged into the structured
“Ultimate Wiktionary” all changes will be possible to all users never
mind what primary language is used. It means that the rich Neapolitan,
Sicilian, Papiamento resources will be available to all users. The
Kurdish content will have much more links to other languages, it will be
a richer resource based on what we already have.
In the implementation of UW, we will incorporate logic that is
associated with thesauri. It will be possible to rank terminology, to
say things like relations, inclusiveness etc. This logic is particularly
important, as we want to include thesauri like the GEMET thesaurus.
GEMET is one thesaurus of the European Community; inside UW it will be
possible to add translations to other non-EU languages. This in turn
will facilitate trade from an to the EU.
One reason why we want to include this kind of information is, because
it will make UW relevant. As we will include more and more lexicological
information more people will turn to UW for this type of information. As
UW will have the “edit” button people are invited to add content and
improve content.
One other thing we envision doing with UW, is to allow for the import
and export of XML data. We hope to get formal cooperation with
organizations like the EU. This way we enable the EU to keep their
quality eye on their thesaurus.
It is incredible that the funding by Kennisnet for the initial
development of UW makes it possible to entertain all these
possibilities. In my mind it is just a matter of time, hard work and
enthusiasm that will make all this come true.
I have given presentations about Wiktionary before, you can find them on
META:Presentations.