[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] What's up with Wiktionary?

[Ray Saintonge]

Jay Bowks wrote:

>Greetings!
>
>What's up with Wiktionary?
>
>I've been reading the Talk pages and 
>there's an awful lot of complaining and
>whining. First, about the Interlingua 
>entries. I need a large file type of list
>that I can work from to add entries.
>They are moving to the index section.
>They can be deleted when I'm done
>the bulk of entering the multilingual
>info I have.
>
These  bagan to appear in quantity.  They were lists of interlingua 
words followed by apparent translations into 5 or 6 languages.

>Now, please don't misunderstand me...
>I'm willing to follow protocols and 
>learn the wiki-ways. Plus whatever
>conventions can be made clear I'll
>willingly follow.
>
The conventions are being developed.  Your opinions on these 
developments are as welcome as those of all others.

>Someone complained about my French,
>ehem ehem, not my swearing mind you,
>my use of French, in that it isn't proper
>enough, and not accurate enough. Well
>all I can say is that I'm not a native 
>French speaker, my French High School
>teacher learned it in Algiers and it's been
>years since I had a fluent conversation in
>it for more than five minutes. I do what
>I can. My German is rotten also, but
>I do what I can. When I don't know 
>I either leave it blank or put in the English
>as a marker for me to look up that word
>later. Again, the index entries are there
>to help me enter in new info into the main
>Wiktionary... similarly with Wikipedia
>articles. Two windows open, cut and
>paste the look ups, edit here and there,
>etc.
>
More often leaving things blank is better than putting in something that 
is knowingly wrong.  When you put erroneous material into the articles 
it may stay that way for a long time.  If large quantities of this stuff 
appear, there simply aren't enough people available to clean up the 
errors.  I didn't really look at the German entries because I am not as 
familiar with that language as French, but the French did leave me 
suspicious about all the others.  The mixed assortment of tenses in the 
French verbs instead of the usual infinitive also made me uncertain 
about what tense was being used to express the Interlingua verb.  If, as 
you say, the purpose of these articles is to have an index to help you 
 begin new entries and the index will be deleted later anyway, then put 
manageable quantities on a Sandbox subpage of your user page.  When you 
have finished with one batch there it's easy to replace it with a new 
batch.  No regular participant ever disturbs what you put in a sandbox 
because it is presumed that you are experimenting on something that is 
often partial or incomplete.  

>Now I'm getting requests to "slow down"
>how un-wiki is that???
>
Yes.  Because you're rushing along in your own direction without regard 
to what others are doing.  Nobody regards your contributions as 
malicious.  It's more like you're functioning like a bull in a china shop.

>Then about the use of HTML tags, well,
>frankly, the "list" tags in the Wiktionary
>are all HTML, my additions are usually
>a mixture of both HTML and wiki-coding.
>I find it more assuring to write <BR> than
>to let the parser put a line where it thinks
>it should. Same for <P> and for <HR>
>the ---- is sometimes good sometimes 
>not clear enough for me. These are basic
>HTML tags that shouldn't scare anyone.
>If tables are a problem, I've only put these
>in the Wikipedia Homepage for Interlingua
>and Volapuk and in a couple of wikipedia
>entries where everything needed a certain
>layout, like the table of HTML and ASCII
>codes in the Interlingua Wikipedia.
>
Not everyone is familiar with HTML, and as long as nobody feels the need 
to edit the article they will remain untouched.  It is much easier to 
develop some kind of standard format for articles if we are all using 
the same mark-ups.  Using tables is an entirely negotiable matter,

>Now my questions regarding the Wiktionary
>are:
>
>Is there a set way of entering the info?
>
It's under development in a co-operative manner.

>Is there an entity that can decide this once
>and for all?
>
Realistically:  No.

>Is it possible to have foreign language 
>appendixes on the English Wiktionary
>
What would such appendices do?

>Or...
>
>Is there a possibility that a namespace
>will happen anytime soon for other languages?
>(There's even complaints that "this is an English
>dictionary, isn't it!!!" Well, maybe so but I thought
>it was also a multilingual dictionary, and that's where
>I'm interested in helping out).
>
Hopefully a sub-domain instead of a namespace for each language. 
 Consider the existing Wiktionary as a dictionary for English speakers 
rather than simply a dictionary of English.  It is multilingual in its 
efforts to present an understanding of other languages for English 
speakers.  I expect that a parallel situation will exist when the 
sub-domains are developed for other languages.

Eclecticology