[Foundation-l] 1.6 Billion USD to spare? How about liberation of some pictures

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Sorry, but a minimum of 25.000 linguistic entities will be included in the
ISO-639-6. Now Marc, what is your definition of a linguistic entity that you
call it ridiculous ?
Thanks,
     GerardM

On Jan 23, 2008 4:44 PM, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> 25000 linguistic varieties? that is ridiculous. you can reach
> everybody on earth with no more than 10000 I am sure because many of
> the linguistic entities on this planet are mutually intelligible with
> one another. Besides, even just the 300 most spoken languages will
> reach almost the entire human race, and for all intents and purposes
> will reach every single human being with computer access.
>
> Mark
>
> On 23/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 23, 2008 9:46 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > > OmegaWiki is not a constructed language. Representing is as such
> > > demonstrates clearly that you do not understand its concepts.
> >
> > Sure it is.  It is a conlang without a grammar but it has a lexicon,
> > its words are the unique identifiers for the "defined meaning"s. It
> > intends to create a word for every idea expressed in any language.
> >
> > The success of this approach as a tool for translation depends on it
> > being possible to find meanings distinct enough so that distinct words
> > remain distinct, but general enough that words in different languages
> > will share the same meaning.
> >
> > > What you
> > > propose with tagging it with namespaces makes it even more clear that
> some
> > > more understanding of the subject matter would be advisable. In the
> > > ISO-639-3 there are only some 7000 languages, the ISO-639-6 will
> include
> > > over 25.000 linguistic entities.
> >
> > Yes, there are a lot of languages defined.. which makes many things
> > hard. This is why OmegaWiki invents a new language with the explicit
> > goal of its words and ideas being a superset of all other languages,
> > so that all other languages can be mapped into this singular new
> > language.
> >
> > I'm quite aware of how many languages are defined but I am also aware
> > that the overwhelming majority of them are not either distinct or
> > popular enough to warrant common's specific attention.  The approach
> > you advocate requires first creating an enormous dictionary of ideas
> > and mapping them into many languages before it is useful at all.
> >
> > A simple handling of this issue could be undertaken right away with
> > little to no software development, no acceptance of the OmegaWiki
> > concept.
> >
> > Yes, a simple approach will not hope to cover all possible languages.
> >
> > But your proposal would hardly cover anything at all: You would have
> > us all so busy subsidizing the lack of interest in the majority of
> > your languages that no one but extreme language advocates would be
> > interested in participating at all.
> >
> > Instead, mapping and translation could be done on demand and as people
> > are interested, rather than being forced into accepting your grand
> > vision and undertaking a lot of work which they don't find
> > interesting.
> >
> > (.. and, as you should be aware, the word "namespace" has meaning
> > outside of mediawiki. I was not saying that multiple tag namespaces
> > need to be accomplished with actual MW namespaces, language prefixes
> > on tags automatically defaulted by the software, or some other
> > mechanism would work.)
> >
> > [snip]
> > > Your later assumptions are based on the "best" solution you can come
> up
> > > with. So please do some real thinking in stead of blowing
> > > smoke<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blow_smoke>
> >
> > I'm sorry that I do not share your position on the reasonableness of
> > first creating a conlang to unify "25,000 languages" as a reasonable
> > first step into making image tagging multi-lingual compatible.
> >
> > Our goal should to serve people not linguists.  Commons does not need
> > to support 25,000 languages in order to serve all the peoples of the
> > world.
> >
> > Any attempt to go beyond the dozen or so languages which could be
> > achieved simply through user contributed redirection will have
> > diminishing returns and will ultimately hurt the quality of the
> > results we provide for the overwhelmingly majority of the world in
> > favor of increasingly tiny minority groups whom do not have enough
> > size or involvement to support their own interests on the project.
> >
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>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
>
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