Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Sabine Cretella wrote:
But if you had a look at the tables Polyglot uploaded to the meta site you would have seen that these tables ...
I looked at his pdf file and found it pretty. My browser would not open the other one; I don't know what software is needed for that.
The second file is in Open Office format. :)
Thanks. I've been informed that the two are just different ways of presenting the same thing, so now I don't really need to look at both.
The first thing that we need to address is the purpose and philosophy of a dictionary. To me, a dictionary is primarily descriptive, and not prescriptive. The multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary is a model to be followed. An ideal Wiktionary article will include a series of definitions that trace the history of the word over the centuries. The etymology is important for understanding these uses. I tend to view translations as a form of synonym which happens to be in another language. They are guide lines which the wise translator will consider but will not consider binding. I would not depend on BabelFish to give me a good Italian translation of Shakespeare or a good English translation of Dante.
Describing it to be like "the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary" is as helpfull as the "Dikke van Dale"; both are emminent dead wood dictionaries, and therefore there should be differences with wiktionary as well. If you propose we follow OED explain what makes it so relevant to you describe the features that are important to you. I do not have an OED, I have a van Dale, it is as authoritive and I am sure it has the same features but I do not know. Van Dale does a NE and EN dictionary as well, so models for translation dictionaries exist
My apologies. I think every language has its great dictionaries that go into great detail about the language. The key feature about the OED is the many quotes that it gives to show how a word has been used and has evolved over the years. I would be pleased if we could show how the language has evolved over the last century since then. Not only that, I envision a similar treatment for all languages.
A volunteer project does not usually need to think in terms of financial break even points. Nobody is getting paid. :-) Better results depend on what you mean by that term.
A volunteer project that does not value the time spent by the volunteers is not worth the time. Time of quality people is a scarce resource. Is this your argument against re-using content in nl:wiktionary for data from en:wiktionary ??
I said nothing about re-using the nl-wiktionary material. Bolunteers work on such a project when they have time. Sometimes that means that there may be delays that would be intolerable if someone was paying them for the work.
All of what you ask for is needed, but there are already plenty of glossaries that could be uploaded and I am sure, if we have the techniques many companies would agree to pass their glossaries with definitions to OpenContent. So what? We're not looking for mere glossaries.
When you do not know what these glossaries contain, so how can you judge their value to wiktionary. Glossaries add content and with a wiktionary it is like a telephone network; the more people who have a telephone the more valuable the network is. With so many words not yet described, glossaries may fill a need.
Yes. Glossaries are one way to start an article.
Contributions from any source are open to discussion; at present we discuss opening up the wiktionary content so that it can be shared in all wiktionaries. At this moment, nl: does contribute easily to en:wiktionary while it is hard to use the en:wiktionary content. Is that not a waste of your time; the work you have done could be so much more valuable !
Of course I support the sharing of content. The problem you are trying to solve here is for me one that does not exist.
So: in any case I support the XML and database way - it will take some time to develop it, but once it is there wiktionary has all the characteristics needed to become the main reference tool for people working with languages and people being interested in languages. The more people can use it the more will contribute. Gerard, Polyglot and whoever is convinced about this way: please don't stop going. You are on the right way.
We will be more able to discuss the proposal when we see what it looks like.
At this point we discuss the merites of opening up the wiktionary content and use standard XML formats that are/will be shared among electronic dictionaries. When we agree that there is a need, from that a lot of changes to the wiktionary content will follow. The first thing is to agree on the merits of opening up the content. We must first agree on this, this is part of our mission as I see it. Certainly we will not have less data, we will have data in a proper place that will enable open content.
Perhaps you should go ahead and do your XML coding. Once this is done we will all be able to experiment with it to see how it works on the test wiki. It will be a lot easier to come to an informed judgement at that point.
Ec