Gutza wrote:
I think Wiktionary is not a well-though project, I
guess some guy (gal)
said "let's do this" at some point, and it was done.
Wow. I'm really not the only one who thinks that? :-)
OK, here are my major problems with Wiktionary:
* English-centric (as has already been said)
* not automated enough. Linking from [[biscuit]] (an English word) to
[[Keks]] (a German word) should automatically add a link from [[Keks]]
back to [[biscuit]]. A lot of identical formatting/layout should be
automated (perhaps have a template automatically show up in the edit
window when you try to edit a not-yet-existing page?).
* too crowded in places. [[e]] should not contain all its meanings in
hundreds of different languages on a single page.
My suggestions for major improvement would be:
* wait for MediaWiki to support multi-language projects within a single
Wiki. This is already in the plans for Wikipedia. Once that is done,
you can have one page [[e]] in Spanish, another [[e]] in Italian, etc.
* add more options to the MediaWiki software to customise the appearance
and behaviour, including:
* * allow for the inter-wiki links (which should really be called
inter-language links once it's a single wiki) to be displayed in a
completely different fashion, i.e. instead of:
_dansk_ | _dansk_ | _Deutsch_ | _English_ | _English_ | _Français_
at the top and bottom, display them as a dominantly visible list
only at the bottom:
== Translations ==
* Dansk: _kiks_, _biskuit_
* Deutsch: _Keks_
* English: _biscuit_, _cookie_
* Français: _biscuit_
* * allow for automatic reciprocal adding of inter-language links
* make one major change of policy/aim/goal. I think it is completely
redundant and futile to try to define (explain the meaning of) all
words of all languages *in* all languages. I think a word should only
be defined in its own language, and if you want its meaning explained
in another language, then you should really look up its translation in
that other language. There are just so many things on Wiktionary that
are language-independent (e.g. the translations for each word, or
pronunciation written in IPA) that duplicating it hundreds of times
seems really dumb.
So far are my ideas.
Timwi