[Wikipedia-l] Transwiki

[Ray Saintonge]

Peter Gervai wrote:

>On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 01:52:54AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>Peter Gervai wrote:
>>
>>Although some of us would like to encourage other-language Wiktionaries, 
>>so far only the English version exists.  If you have somebody who likes 
>>writing up dictionary articles in Hungarian, maybe you can convince him 
>>to start a Hungarian Wiktionary. :-)
>>
>Well, not that anyone would allocate time for that, but newbies usually
>create dictionary entries (in Hungarian), and would be useful to keep them
>instead of deleting. If a hu.wiktionary doesn't require much space or
>resources it would be nice, even if there would be only 46 articles a
>year...
>
All the wikis start small. :-)   Once the opportunity is presented, some 
people will just naturally feel more comfortable working on a dictionary 
that on encyclopedia.  46 articles is a good start,  but it should take 
a *lot* less than a year to get there.  The transwiki concept would work 
just as well for moving an article from hu.wikipedia to hu.wiktionary as 
it does in English.  The message to people changes.  It is no longer, 
"Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so we're deleting your work."  It 
becomes, "Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but we respect your effort and 
have a better place for your good work in Wiktionary."

>>That being said, if someone wants 
>>to write up English definitions for Hungarian words that would go on the 
>>English Wiktionary.
>>
>
>Sure. (To be honest, I don't really grasp the idea, since it's pretty time
>consuming to update a definition. For example there's a word for "Dog", and
>there are 23 pages describing dog in 23 other languages. Then I come, and
>want to share Hungarian Dog, so I have to edit *24* pages to insert Dog
>everywhere. I know, it's a wiki not a database, but still, prevents me from
>wanting to do anything serious there.)
>
The en:wiktionary currently show a translation for "dog" into 72 other 
languages.  This is far more than for most words. It also gives an 
English meaning for the Dutch word "dog".  There is a brief entry for 
"kutya" showing it as the Hungarian word for "dog".  That entry also 
shows the translation of "kutya" into Dutch.  I personally don't believe 
that the Dutch rendering should be on the "kutya" article, but it's not 
the sort of thing that I would spend a lot of time arguing about.  Other 
Wiktionarians have been keen to develop an extensive system of 
cross-indexing, but have been less than diligent and focused on 
maintaining it.

I see three functions for the English Wiktionary:
    1. Provide detailed definitions  of English words in English for 
English speakers.
    2. Provide translations of English words into an indefinite number 
of languages.
    3. Provide entries for words in any foreign language for English 
speakers.
Substitute the name of another language in that statement in all the 
places where "English" appears, and you have how, in a big picture, I 
would envision developments in other language Wiktionaries.

Wikimedia's volunteer environment is such that we will not cut your 
salary in half if you work on only 12 of 24 dog articles, and we won't 
triple it if you choose to work on 72 either.  Effectively, you are 
limited in the number of meaningful contributions that you can make by 
the bumber of languages that you understand.  Some people have a passion 
for providing dictionary definitions of a word in as many languages as 
they can, but they can't convince me that there is any depth to their 
understanding of any of those languages.  Briefly, you are limited in 
what you can do by the time you have available, and there is never any 
obligation to do more than that.  Providing the perfectionist's depth 
across a large breadth of languages is often simply impossible.

Ec

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