I think this is à propos in this discussion about how authoritative can be the Wiktionary... here a scientific article starts by using a definition from the Wiktionary: http://theconversation.com/de-facebook-au-developpement-des-plantes-quand-les-reseaux-sen-melent-90891
JP On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 9:49 AM Amir E. Aharoni <[email protected]> wrote: > 2018-02-28 23:09 GMT+02:00 James Salsman <[email protected]>: > > > > > building an authoritative dictionary is considerably > > > harder than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. > > > > What reason is there to think that? My any measure of editor hours, or > > the amount of money it would take to replicate the effort, or the > > maintenance load going forward, I'm sure that even a three shelf foot > > encyclopedia is harder than a 100,000 word dictionary. > > A couple of reasons: > * For the particular case of Wikimedia, we are using the same software for > Wiktionary as we do for Wikipedia. It's insane. MediaWiki wasn't made for > that. It was made for Wikipedia. > * An *authoritative* dictionary needs authority. It must be built by a team > of trained and certified linguists. It needs a large and systematized > collection of citations. It's just harder to do this for a dictionary than > for an encyclopedia. Citations for an encyclopedia these days are often > easily googlable, and the form of an encyclopedia article is freer than the > form of a dictionary entry, which must be super-strict. > > The English Wiktionary community is overcoming both of these problem > valiantly. > > It is overcoming the first problem by using lots of templates and gadgets, > which kinda work in practice, but which are hard to learn and to replicate > for other languages, and hard for software to process. > > It is overcoming the second problem by being more practically useful than > authoritative, similarly to Wikipedia. Lexicographic citations in English > are particularly easy to google up, given that: > * English is the #1 language on the web > * Google is a company based in an English-speaking country and (probably) > getting most of its revenue from English-speaking customers > * English has a simple morphology, for which it is particularly easy to > build a well-working search engine for > > However, while it's easy to google up examples for English word usage, I > strongly suspect that googling won't produce results that will be as > systematized as a citation database of Merriam-Webster is. > > Wikipedia had proved long ago that it can compete—even if not necessarily > win—with the authority of Britannica, but Wiktionary hasn't yet proven that > it can compete with the authority of Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Houaiss, > Duden, etc. > > (The English Wiktionary is not necessarily special; I also got to use the > French, German, and Dutch Wiktionaries a bit, and they all do it at a level > of quality that is comparable to the English one.) > > Is it desirable for Wiktionary to get better? Of course it is. Can > Wiktionary get better? Yes, and path is quite clear. Wikidata's Lexeme > project is progressing slowly, but its direction is right. It will finally > build a technical platform that is actually good for a dictionary. > > At https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186421 I've been writing my ideas > about how Lexical Wikidata can actually be used by editors and readers. So > I'm very much on board with the idea of better Wiktionary. (Before you jump > to conclusions: These ideas were not solicited by Wikidata developers. They > are totally mine, and they are not in any way "official". I'm just writing > them down as a brain dump, in my personal volunteering capacity, hoping > that they will be useful to Wikidata developers.) > > > > We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. > > > > What is the difference between delivering the text of an encyclopedia > > article and teaching it? Encyclopedias are not written to be > > accompanied by a lecturer, tutor, or teacher. We even teach how to > > write them, to students, in schools, and the students often if not > > almost always get academic credit for their work: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_program/Educators > > Exactly: As Wikimedians, we are actively teaching people to write in > Wikipedia (and in other Wikimedia projects), but we are not teaching the > *subjects* of the articles. Not as Wikimedians. Some Wikimedians are also > teachers, and they use Wikipedia articles as handouts, but this is not > really a Wikimedia activity. > > As Wikimedians we just make materials available, and we teach others *to > make them available*. > > > > Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki > articles. > > > > Why? We are already the best at that. > > We may be the best, and we are definitely the most popular, but we could be > so, so much better. And we should be. > > As a simple high-level example, it's still not NEARLY as easy to become a > Wikipedia editor as it should be. > > I often wish that Wikipedia had more substantial competitors, so it would > drive us to be faster at improving ourselves. Medium.com, Quora.com, > Genius.com, and some other web properties are occasionally mentioned as > Wikimedia's competitors, but none of them is doing quite the same thing as > Wikimedia does, and though each of them is quite popular, none is as > popular as Wikipedia is. > > (I will readily admit, however, that Google is a competitor for providing > quick facts, and Facebook and Instagram are competitors for people's spare > time, especially on mobile devices. This is widely admitted, but > unfortunately we are not doing much to compete with them in these areas, at > least not yet.) > > > Why not make the wiki articles > > in Wiktionary better by not just playing audio recordings of words, > > which volunteers (not the Foundation) already provide, but meeting > > that initiative by recording utterances and predicting whether they > > are intelligible pronunciations, and doing the same with recording > > gadgets in Wikipedia's pronunciation articles? http://j.mp/irslides > > Cool! I've never said I'm opposed to such a thing. Collecting data that is > useful for teaching anything, including languages, is exactly what > Wikimedia should be doing, and doing it in new ways and media is welcome. > It's not just my opinion; it's explicitly written in the strategic > direction, and it makes a lot of sense. > > But again, it's not *teaching*. It's *collecting data that is useful for > teaching*, which is not the same thing. > > -- > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > “We're living in pieces, > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
