[Foundation-l] Forking the Wiki

Mon Jan 3 22:47:02 UTC 2005

A levelezőm azt hiszi, hogy Ray Saintonge a következőeket írta:
> Magosányi Árpád wrote:
> >>
> >I cannot see what should be the difference between words in wikipedia and
> >wiktionary beyond that wiktionary should have links to other words in
> >other languages, which can easily put into wikipedia in a
> >non-obstructive manner.
> >
> The difference is between what the words mean and the stories 
> surrounding them.  For a dictionary writer it is enough guide a person 
> to describe and document how that word might be used in writing.

False assumption. You won't be able to use a word properly until you
learn exactly what it means. And there are no two words which have
the exact same meaning in any language. What you traditionally put
into a dictionary and into a lexicon is just specific aspects of
the same word, same idea. (The problem is actually worse because one word
labels more ideas, sometimes very distinct ones.)

Separating these different views so far away makes exploring it more
difficult. I think that ideas should be described in the whole wikimedia
in a way which makes easy to wander through them in the same way as we
process ideas in our brain. We don't know much about the latter, but
it would be fruitful if we would use the information we do have.

> If we 
> approach a hot-button word like "terrorist" we would offer a definition, 
> and show how it would have been used by various authors, but we would 
> have no need to attach that label to anybody.  This allows us to look at 
> the word more objectively.  We don't need to get into an NPOV battle 
> over it.

I haven't yet found myself in a wikipedian NPOV battle, but I guess they
are about just some aspects of an entry, involving a few sentences.
If it would be about some dictionary example of the use of word
"terrorist", one side would use it as "Bush is a terrorist", the other
would use it as "Bin Laden is a terrorist", and I could still figure
out how to use this world to label someone as a terrorist. (And would
agree with both sides;)

I see only one potential problem by presenting all the relevant aspects
as one entry: volume of information. But this could be handled easily
by presenting it in a well thought-out manner.

But I can make a long list of problems arising because disconnectedness.

> >Think about yourself. If you are asked to instruct, you will instruct.
> >If you are asked for information, you will give it. If you are using a
> >word, you will be aware a lot of concepts attached to that word:
> >other ideas, events, pieces of art, quotations, forms of it in another
> >languages, etc.
> >
> Precisely so.  Words have denotations (specific dictionary meanings) and 
> connotations (supplementary impressions that are as much derived from 
> their context).  Words like "miserly" and "frugal" have very similar 
> denotations but their connotations are worlds apart.  When we look at 
> specific contexts, the word as a tool of the writer can easily be 
> overwhelmed.
[]

> If I wanted to write in Hungarian I would at 
> least need to refer back to the Hungarian Wiktionary to learn the 
> difference; this would also be the case of I were translating material 
> from Hungarian.  Translating by just using a dictionary can give some 
> strange results.

I think this supports my POV.

> A "dog" in English can also mean an "andiron", and it 
> could very well seem strange for a Hungarian to find a "kutya" sitting 
> in a fireplace holding up logs.   In any event, a person who wants to 
> know about the word "dog" may not be particularly interested in such 
> things as its biological history or about how it is used to herd sheep 
> in Scotland, or about children being killed by vicious breeds of dog.  
> These ideas are more suited to an encyclopedia.

But if the person interested can easily find the interesting aspect,
and when it proves to be too scant, can refer to the whole, this is
much better than what we have now.

> On Arthur Conan Doyle, I was disappointed that the person who began that 
> project on Wiktionary went away before he could take it further.

I was just referring to his book "The Hound of the Baskervilles",
because its title contains a dog. Did not know about such project
on Wiktionary (I am a newbie here), but you made me curious.

> >Our favourite wiki have never taken an art or literature class.
> >If it did, it would have a lot of asociations on each Wikisource items.
> >Also, when I have taken high school, our math, physics and chemistry
> >classes have been built upon each other. If they had been Wiki pages,
> >there would have been a lot of references.
> >
> This is all very fine, but what it comes down to is much work.  As 
> valuable as these references may be it still takes someone to do the 
> work of creating all those links.  If each one is to be checked properly 
> the work will be very slow.

Such a work would be of great value.

And now think about references between different wikies, like
wiktionary, wikispecies and wikipedia. As the current structure
encourages disconnectednes, such work now is not just slow;
it is _impossible_: the number of disconnectednesses grow larger
than the reconnections.

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