I agree with all of what Eric wrote below, except
that"Wiktionary was a good idea." It was not a good
idea to start a sectioned, English only dictionary.
The merits of the idea would have been rested in a
facile connectivity to the main Wp, and for it to be
international. The [[wiktionary:article]] link is not
facile -- it should just be [[d:article]] -- like the
[[w:article]] link on wiktionary and meta.
As for internationality -- From wikitionary main page:
"Please note that this is the *English Wiktionary:
while it aims to describe all words of all languages,
the definitions and descriptions are in English only.
Similar Wiktionaries in other languages will be set up
gradually."
Fortunately, this kind of above nonsense is being
actively contradicted : as in:
http://wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A3%AB
http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Cake etc...
All suggestions improvements best understood with
time. ;) Im out of time,
-s-
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> wrote:
I am a bit concerned about the pace at which new
Wikipedia spinoff
projects are created. Wiktionary was a good idea,
because it filled a gap
that was there -- we received lots of dictionary
entries, so it seemed
like the logical conclusion to start a
wiki-dictionary.
But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which was
started without much
discussion - possibly a good idea, but also possibly
too specific - and
shortly afterwards, a "Wiki-Quote" project was
created. Now people are
talking about creating a "Wiki-Piki" for pictures.
This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned
anything from the
Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary was set up without
much thought as to
how the wiki process could be applied to a
dictionary; it took months to
formulate some kind of standard template, and we
still don't have
Wiktionaries in other languages. Wiktionary could
have benefitted a lot
from better planning before it was set up. I'm not
sure I like the Wiki-
Quote idea at all, as it intersects a lot with
Project Sourceberg, is not
very wiki-like (a quote is a quote) and not very
compatible with the open
content idea. Wiki-Quote was only very briefly
discussed.
Furthermore, it's not exactly like we have lots of
free resources. Our
database server, pliny, is down on its knees, the
full text search on the
English wiki is now permanently disabled, we have
only a couple of active
server administrators, and hardly enough developers
to address problems in
the software.
I propose that
1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off projects
until our current
resources have been substantially expanded;
2) we formalize a process for starting such
projects, e.g. a planning
period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact
specifications as to what
is to be placed there. After this period, users on
the Meta wiki should
vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or
not. 3 months may seem
long, but if interest can't be kept up that long,
the idea may not be so
great after all.
Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with
lots of nice ideas that
all go nowhere, like the
sep11.wikipedia.org (which
IMHO should never have
been set up in the first place).
Regards,
Erik
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com