[Foundation-l] Adopting OmegaWiki as Wikimedia project

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
OmegaWiki is truly multi lingual in that depending on the amount of content
available in a language labels and annotations will show up in the preferred
language. Recently many of the relevant phrases were localised in Telugu and
consequently it became useful in Telugu.

When a language is right to left the user interface and the data is shown in
the right to left direction.

One or the more interesting things of OmegaWiki is that we do have links to
Commons and Wikipedia. This means that when you look for pictures of a
"hobune" you will actually find them. Having links to Wikipedia means that
they can effectively work as interwiki links.

To understand why we at OmegaWiki want the WMF to adopt this project, we
have always wanted OmegaWiki to be a WMF project. As far as the suggestion
goes to end the Wiktionary projects, we have always said that this is for
the Wiktionary projects themselves to decide. However particularly for the
smaller projects the effort of adding content to OmegaWiki is more efficient
as more people benefit from work that only needs to be done once.

As OmegaWiki has its data in a database, it is possible to use the data in
applications. This is very much our goal ... we are on record saying
"success is when people find an application for our data we did not think
off."

As to the license, PD would be our preferred license but sadly their are too
many people who consider that their must be a license because ... In our
view making our data available under a license prevents success. This is a
reason why we are not interested in "copyright violations".
Thanks,
      GerardM




On 19 July 2010 09:05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> (Just poking foundation-l, please continue with discussion at
> wiktionary-l, or, better, at Meta [1])
>
> During Wikimania I asked Gerard Meijssen would he be willing to give
> OmegaWiki to Wikimedia. He said that he doesn't have anything against
> it: software is free, content is free. More precisely, he told to me
> "Take it!" :)
>
> My initial idea was that it would be the best to replace all
> Wiktionaries with OmegaWiki. However, the last day of Wikimania I was
> talking with one Swedish guy who is working on Swedish Wiktionary. He
> has complained that philologists like more open form for writing
> dictionary. Thus, my suggestion is to adopt OmegaWiki as one of
> Wiktionaries, probably as http://wiktionary.org/, similarly to the
> multilingual Wikisource.
>
> And, of course, before possible adoption we need discussion and some
> software improvements of Wikidata extension.
>
> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Adopt_OmegaWiki
>
> * * *
>
> As multilingual projects are not in the scope of the [[Language
> committee]], before the implementation (or not) of the idea, community
> should discuss about it.
>
> [http://www.omegawiki.org/ OmegaWiki] is a formal multilingual
> dictionary based on MediaWiki extension
> [[:mw:Extension:Wikidata|Wikidata]].
>
> No matter would it be the only Wiktionary or it would be just one of
> the Wiktionaries, OmegaWiki would raise quality of Wiktionaries. At
> the other side, the project would get much more attention as a
> Wikimedia project.
>
> Wikidata extension should be improved (from user experience and
> linguistic points of view) before implementation as Wikimedia project.
>
> [[User:GerardM|Gerard Meijssen]], the founder of OmegaWiki project,
> doesn't have anything against adopting it as a Wikimedia project.
>
> == Advantages and disadvantages of adopting OmegaWiki ==
>
> === Advantages ===
> * It is possible to create one billion entries per Wiktionary: All
> synthetic languages could import at least ~10M of words, but probably
> more if all common phrases are counted. Thus, it means that we need
> just 100 synthetic or polysynthetic languages to create one billion
> entries per Wiktionary. This is very large number and while it is
> possible to keep technically one such project, presently it is hardly
> possible to keep a number of projects with more than billion of
> entries.
> * It is structured formally.
> * ...
>
> === Disadvantages ===
> * Philologists like more open form for dictionaries.
> * OmegaWiki is distant from the wiki principle. Software fixes should
> make it closer.
> * ...
>
> == How to adopt OmegaWiki ==
> * Instead of all Wiktionaries.
> * As www.wiktionary.org, like www.wikisource.org is the place for
> multilingual Wikisource.
> * As mul.wiktionary.org (ISO 639-5 code for multilingual entities)
> * ...?
>
> == Minimums for adopting OmegaWiki ==
>
> === If OmegaWiki replaces all Wiktionaries ===
> * Evaluation of software by linguists and adding necessary linguistic
> features.
> * Fixing bugs in software if needed.
> * Adding all needed features to satisfy philological needs.
> * Importing all data from Wiktionaries.
>
> === If OmegaWiki becomes one of the Wiktionaries ===
> * Evaluation of software by linguists and adding necessary linguistic
> features.
> * Fixing bugs in software if needed.
>
> == Licensing ==
>
> OmegaWiki licences are CC-BY and GFDL. It is a bit of pleonasm, as
> CC-BY is a subset of GFDL (and CC-BY-SA as well).
>
> * Licensing should probably stay CC-BY, not CC-BY-SA. There is a legal
> problem of copyrighting words, phrases, sentences and definitions,
> which mean that it would be probably better to leave the least
> restrictive license as the OmegaWiki license.
> * ...
>
> [[Category:Requests for comments]]
>
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