Ray Saintonge wrote:
Yann Forget wrote:
This seems like an awfully difficult problem to police. We are
basically at the mercy of the person who puts up this kind of
material. Although I'm very active on the English Wiktionary I seldom
touch the translations except for matters affecting formatting. This
is because I have absolutely no idea whether most of these are
correct. Often these translations are imported from some other source
without any attempt at fact checking whatsoever; some people seem to
take pride in having the longest possible lists of translations.
Having persistently dead wrong information can affect credibility even
more than rampant POVs. At least with a POV issue there is a
recognition that there is more than one way to look at a subject.
A possible solution might be to forbid the inclusion of translations
unless
1. There is an active Wiktionary in that language, or
2. A source has been cited for a particular translation.
Are there any other fairly easy ways for us to fact-check this kind of
information?
Ec
The problem here is not that we need to POLICE it, this is a situation
where we meet our strengths and our weaknesses. The model that we use is
one of collaboration; the more people work on the same data the better
the quality. Our problem is that to a large extend we do not work
together as much as we could; we all have our own little wiktionaries
and we hardly notice what happens outside our view. This increases the
likelyhood of errors. The proposal to come to one integrated wiktionary
is a way of solving many of these problems.
I am happy with the increased cooperation between many wiktionaries, I
see it as one of the prerequisites of the maturation of the Wiktionary.
The idea of forbidding translations is contrary to what wiktionary aims
to be. With Wiktionary content it is simple; it is correct or it needs
improvement. The idea that errors are persistent is wrong as the idea is
to correct any and all errors. The conclusion should be to increase any
means that will improve cooperation and not restrict the inclusion of
new data that is believed to be correct.
Thanks,
GerardM