Angela wrote:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:10:05 +0100, Anthere
<anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Wikidata is a new project... does the community
supports this ?
Wikidata itself isn't really a project. It's more of a technical
solution to some of the problems on existing projects.
The implementation of Wikidata will obviously need community support
-- do Wiktionarians want to merge their projects into the "ultimate
Wiktionary", for example -- but I don't think the feature itself
should need consensus before its written, only before its implemented
on Wikimedia in a way which would affect existing projects.
Gerard is full of technical solutions. Some of them may indeed be
brilliant, but I don't have the technical expertise to judge. The real
question lies in whether contributors whose primary interest is language
will be driven away because the editing process is too complicated. One
of the most important features of Wikipedia has been that anyone can
learn how to edit with very little training. At one time their were
passionate arguments over the use of html or wiki markup. Wiki markup
was seen then as too complicated. We've gone a long way since then, but
we still need to be aware that many of the contributors that we may seek
are not computer geeks, but knowledgeable people in the subjects that
are their passion.
I also see Gerard's proposal as directed toward the needs of
translation. That's a commendable goal, but a dictionary is more than
that. It is just as much a reference for people about their own
language. And people writing about their own language need to feel free
to do so easily without needing to be concerned about the potential
effects on translations.
Also much of what Gerard says is theoretical, and very little of it
gives real practical examples of how things will work Saying that a
database structured on xml would be a big improvement does not mean much
to those who are not intimately acquainted with xml.
As much as I've advocated for a unified Wikisource, I also advocate for
separate Wiktionaries. Without getting too far into that debate now, I
can at least point out that Wikisource deals with static texts that will
not need to be repeatedly edited.
If Gerard wants to experiment with his ideas on some form of Wikidata
project I won't stand in his way. If he wants to go from that into some
kind of "Ultimate Wiktionary" he may come up with something that works.
Maybe it will eventually be meaningful to migrate existing translation
material there. But let's not go there until he has something practical
established. The timetable for that may be considerably longer than the
one which he so optimistically expresses.
Ec