[Foundation-l] Project Proposal: Wikicat

Sat Jul 29 21:11:18 UTC 2006

Jonathan Leybovich wrote:

>However, in a more general vein,
>I'm not sure the lexical construct WiktionaryZ wishes
>to impose on every sort of Wikidata entity makes
>sense.  For example, multi-lingualism is certainly
>important in a lexicographic context, but it does not
>apply to a catalog.  A catalog has language-specific
>data, for sure, but this is not multi-lingual data-
>the language(s) in which a book's title is
>historically expressed by the author or publisher is
>important, and you cannot just do your own translation
>into an arbitrary language and say that is also the
>book's title.  Similarly, films are given multiple
>titles by their distributors for different markets yet
>often these are very different from what a direct
>translation would look like.  Here is more detail on
>these issues:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_Wikidata
>
The common name of a taxonomic entity IS a translation of the formal 
Latin name.  Why should it be treated as a separate data type?  The 
endangered species Microhexura montivaga from North Carolina and 
Tennessee is known in English as the spruce-fir moss spider.  It may 
have a name in the first nations languages of the area, but can it 
really have a name in any other language.  You can invent a name in 
every other language, but these would be purely hypothetical, and not 
supported by actual usage.  This would amount to unverifiable original 
research.

Similarly, arbitrary translations of book titles would be unacceptable.  
For a translated title to be meaningful it must have in fact been 
translated that way.  The title of Camus' famous book "L'Étranger" has 
been translated both with the literal "The Stranger" and the literary 
"The Outsider"; these would both be valid entries for the repective 
translations of the book which would then require a "Translation of ..." 
entry.

>Regarding different referencing styles, I'm open to
>anything though I think you'll find that in practice
>standard numbers like ISBN are less cumbersome to use
>than titles.  For example, <<ref:The Davinci Code>>-
>does this mean the book, the movie, the audio book, or
>"The Davinci Code: Fact or Fiction?" ?
>
ISBNs have their limitations too.  My copy of the 1977, 22nd edition of 
"Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary" has two different ISBNs depending 
on whether there are index tabs on the fore-edge.  My earlier 1922, 11th 
edition, "The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary", (edited by 
Dorland) does not have an ISBN.  I bought that specific edition to 
enable me to check out potential copyright problems.  My more recent 
2003, 30th edition, "Dorland's illustrated medical dictionary", has four 
different ISBNs depending on whether it's a standard, deluxe, trade or 
international edition.  There are 27 other editions, and a distinction 
still needs to be made between pocket and full-size editions.  Sometimes 
the difference is important; other times it isn't.  The issue is not so 
simple that it can be solved by simply using an ISBN number.

>Also, citation is not just fetching bibliographic data
>for the purposes of displaying it in an info box like
>other information.  It is fundamentally about
>associating an assertion with evidence or support, and
>so must capture the cited "text" as well as the
>paraphrase text. Here is a mock-up of these idea in
>the context of an enhanced article validation feature:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikicite_spider_review_mockup.jpg
>
That simple example does best to illustrate some of the difficulties 
that are faced in scientific description.  My first inclination would be 
to ask whether the description is consistent (but not necesarily 
identical) with the description that is officially accepted by the 
relevant international society.  Would a spider be better described as a 
kind of arachnid arthropod rather than just an invertebrate.  The first 
citation is very poor because it uses a simile.  Saying that it is 
"like" most invertebrates does not imply that it "is" a vertebrate.  
Citation sometimes need to be rigorously applicable.

Ec