[Wikipedia-l] Re: The wiki software is written for wikipedia

Thu Jun 10 18:29:41 UTC 2004

Tim Starling wrote:

> Gerard.Meijssen wrote:
>
>  > Take a look at the restriction on the number of messages (5) per
>  > page. This is "reasonable" in wikipedia, but when you want to
>  > internationalise a page and use messages to indicate things that
>  > differ from language to language, like the gender of a word, you can
>  > have dozens words that are masculine and you get garbage as a result.
>
> I've received a number of complaints about this from Wikipedians, and
> this is the first one I've had from someone from Wiktionary, so I fail
> to see how this indicates Wikipedia-centrism. It's a problem I intend to
> address during my reworking of template inclusion, over the next week or
> two. 

My understanding must have missed something here.  I've never 
encountered such a problem.  Maybe I've just been around for too long. :-)

>  > When there are problems, they seem to be relatively quickly fixed for
>  > the wikipedia's but, for the wiktionaries the consistency  is
>  > lacking. 

While biting my tongue over the capitalization issue,  I don't want to 
be too critical of the developers about this.  They're doing what they 
can, and they need to priorize their limited times.  We need more 
technically competent people to deal with software issues, but they also 
need to be able to keep some distance between themselves and the 
frequent bickering that takes place.  Tim and Brion have handled that well.

>  > When you have an environment like wiktionary/wikipedia they _need_ to
>  > be the same in order to be able to fix things and understand the
>  > behaviour of the software. The wiktionaries do not behave in a same
>  > way. You can create an article with a Chinese (characters) name in
>  > English but not on the nl:wiktionary (and others).
>
> Wiktionaries were set up by copying the MediaWiki namespace and language
> files from the associated Wikipedias. You can't create an article with
> chinese characters in the title on the nl wikipedia either. English and
> German are exceptions to this rule because of special-case work done by
> the respective contributors. 

That's unfortunate about the Chinese titles; I guess that I have been 
under the mistaken impression that Unicode implied that CJK would be be 
broadly available.  Maybe I've been spoiled by having this feature 
available in English.

I don't think that it's a necessity that everything on a Wikipedia and 
its corresponding Wiktionary needs to function exactly the same way.  
The capitalization issue is a good example.  Current policy has worked 
well in Wikipedia, with only a limited number of difficulties.  For 
Wiktionary this has created awkward difficulties.

> Please understand that I'm not obliged to fix problems just because you
> want them fixed. You are not paying me. I try to make people happy, but
> you have no right to expect a minimum level of service. 

Agreed.  What positive contribution has our critic offered?

> I'm amazed at the poor quality of the English Wiktionary, it seems to
> miss so many important English words. Most new pages seem to be slang,
> jargon, and people adding a few dozen words from their native tongue.
> Plans to import a public domain dictionary were abandoned, and now there
> seems to be little organisation or direction. Perhaps Wiktionary can be
> revitalised with extra features, but I doubt stylesheet changes will be
> enough. It needs a different look and a whole raft of features. It needs
> methods for easily adding new words, and for categorisation and listing.
> But I'm neither excited by the project nor optimistic about its future.
> So most of all, it needs people who want to work on it. 

I want to take this personally in the most positive sense.  I 
essentially agree, and need to accept my share of the responsibility.  
One of our earliest debates was over whether we should be a primarily 
English dictionary or a translating dictionary.  A lot more people seem 
concerned with translations, and are satisfied with translations that 
show significant naïveté toward concepts of translation.  Slang and 
jargon need to be addressed, but should not become dominant.  The 
project to import a public domain dictionary has not been abandoned, 
only ignored. 

I too really would like to see more organization and direction.  That 
may require people to accept certain tasks and carry them through to 
completion.  I accept that my inability to herd cats as one of my own flaws.

New features, stylesheets, looks, etc. are not what will save 
Wiktionary.  They are not a substitute for hard disciplined work.  I 
don't see any difficulty in adding new words.  New ones are being added 
regularly, even if they are foreign or jargon.  Categorization and 
listing is a problem, and we did discuss the matter of pseudonamespaces 
some months ago. Of course, I've also been around long enough to know 
that without practical support from other Wiktionarians I would have 
been alone in this enterprise, and Wiktionary would not have been helped 
by a further fragmentary effort.

Most of all I agree that we need people wo want to work, not just 
dilettantes.  At this stage content is still more important than 
obsessing about format.  I still believe that the concept is sound, and 
that it has a tremendous capacity for becoming a unique resource.  It is 
unfortunate that all the projects have frequent visitors with fantastic 
visionary ideas, but little appreciation for the work needed to bring 
these ideas into reality.

Ec