Ray Saintonge wrote:
Muke Tever wrote:
On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 08:04:32 +0100, Gerard Meijssen gerardm@myrealbox.com wrote:
Hoi, Yannf has added a category "language" to the categories that hold the words in a language. This gives you one list with all lists of words in a particular language.
What, like our Latin [[Category:Linguae]] ? ;) http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Linguae
(I realize I digress entirely with this next section here:)
A lot of Latin categories belong to other categories. It keeps them all in order. For example you can start at the list of names of animals in the family "Canidae": http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Canidae
and it is categorized under the order "Carnivora", which is categorized under the class "Mammalia", which is under the phylum "Chordata", etc., the whole tree under a taxonomy category. I think it is a better system than other wiktionaries use. Instead of being broad in domain but narrow in coverage (like en:'s "English mammals" or fr:'s "Lexique en français des animaux") it goes for narrow in domain but broad in coverage: entries are categorized by family, but contain words in all languages, which I think is a more useful kind of collection...
It does have the drawback of requiring many more categories, though: currently with 682 words we have 213 categories, which is even more categories than en: has! ;)
I do find the use of "English" as a category name to be useless. For me the correct use of "English mammals" as a category name would refer to mammals that are found in England. Even "English language" should be limited to terms that are about the English language. A very broad application that reduces it to any English word dilutes the value of the term. Using another language name that way on the English Wiktionary is slightly more justifiable, but the efficient use of "==Spanish==" should work just as well to came up with a list of all Spanish words in the Wiktionary, and a reliable Boolean search of "==Spanish== and ===Adjective===" should give us all Spanish adjectives.
I don't know whether using "Carnivora", "Canidae", etc. will do much for us. Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the new Wikispecies?
Ec
Ray, You do miss the point why the use of templates like {{-en-}} is usefull. They help to make data portable between different wiktionaries. The data of the English wiktionary is very hard to use as there is a reluctance to understand and accept innovations like these templates for what they are; a way of increasing cooperation. A list of all words in a lanuage is of a relative merit except for the fact that it was created to have a list with all words in a language that can exceed the 500 entries limit that exists when you ask for the usage of a particular lemma. It has added benefits as this list is in alphabetical order. These categories for words in a language were requested by a user from the ENGLISH wiktionary by the way.
On previous occations I have explained that the use of templates like {{-en-}} is not for a lexicological reason. They are there for a technical reason. it allows for the easy transfer of data as mentioned earlier and it has different content than just a definition of a term on the nl:wiktionary, in other wiktionaries it points to a definition on wikipedia, to the wiktionary definition or not at all. That is up to the local wiktionary. This is what the use of the templates allows for. There is only efficient use of "==Spanish==" if you are not interested in looking further than the English wiktionary. That is in my view a bit short sighted given the current amount of active wiktionaries and the need for quality content in all of them.
Thanks, Gerard