[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and Wiktionary

[Wikimedia PR]

I have been talking about this since quite a while (although without any concrete proposal)... using Wikipedia's popularity to benefit Wiktionary.
Jimbo Wales showed up in IRC and I took the opportunity to talk with him about it. I had already discussed it on the IRC channel.
Here's a transcript of the chat
<pre>
<Hemanshu> hello
<jwales> Hello!
<Hemanshu> I was wondering if Wikipedia should incorporate links to Wiktionary in articles?
<Hemanshu> Wiktionary is really lacking interest
<jwales> It sounds like a reasonable concept to me.
<Hemanshu> we need to use Wikipedia's popularity to make Wiktionary more popular
<jwales> I agree with that.
<Hemanshu> good
<jwales> I can think of two ways...
<jwales> First, encourage more interwiki linking with wiktionary, somehow.
<jwales> Possibly even go so far as to have a bit of new markup.
<Hemanshu> yes
<Hemanshu> maybe we can have a small icon link next to words
<jwales> Second, we could put a link on every page of wikipedia, "Look for a definition of 'Article Title' in Wiktionary".
<Hemanshu> yeah
<jwales> That second one might generate resistance, though, because many many times the article title is not really a word that needs defining, per se.
<jwales> Take a look at this:
<jwales> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_Japan
<jwales> just an example for us to brainstorm about.
<jwales> Now, that article has interlanguage links for 'fr' and 'ja' versions of the same topic.
<jwales> Perhaps a simple extension of the interlanguage syntax, but for definitions, would be sensible.
<Hemanshu> yeah I see
<Hemanshu> yes
<jwales> Here's a better brainstorm:
<Hemanshu> that would make it possible to link to definitions of article titles
<jwales> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics
<Hemanshu> and that could be implemented really easily
<jwales> There are 4 interlanguage links there.
<jwales> We could have a new one, like:
<Hemanshu> being able to provide quicklinks to definitions of word used in the article could be more difficult
<jwales> [[definiton:paraphyletic]] could be the simple new markup.
<Hemanshu> yeah
<jwales> And that magically makes a a link, in the text at that point, to wiktionary.
<jwales> I would support something along those lines.
<jwales> Will you run this by wikipedia-l and wikitech-l?
<jwales> I'll make noises of joy.
<Hemanshu> :)
<jwales> Maybe it will excite someone and then it might happen.
<Hemanshu> I haven't joined the mailing list
<Hemanshu> I just have to send an email to?
<Hemanshu> wikipedia-1@?
<Hemanshu> can I post this conversation on the wiki?
<jwales> Yeah
<Hemanshu> ok
<jwales> Anyhow, talk to you later I'm going to have to go.
<Hemanshu> ok
<Hemanshu> nice talking
</pre>


		
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