"Wiktionary" anyone?

[Grant Barrett]

I have been following the progress of Wiktionary--though not
contributing--since early 2003 (and already have "wiki" on my WOTY
nomination list). It does show promise, particularly over other
user-created dictionaries like Urbandictionary.com, but it has
problems. The people involved in the project seem aware of these
problems, but they are hamstrung by a severe case of committee-driven
utopianism.

1. Irregular capitalization. Some headwords are capitalized, some are
not. A dictionary should be a place to go to see whether a word takes a
capital. This is an ongoing debate that it seems the technocrats are
winning.

2. Dictionary entries vs. encyclopedic entries. Some entries are not
suitable for a dictionary. One recently added as of this writing is
"Tallahassee Volleyball Association."

3. Pet entries, nonce words, ego-driven neologisms, and joke entries
are present. I see "Rm nd mnky" for "rum and monkey" was recently
added. This will continue to be a problem. Unless the number of these
lame entries are zero, this will always call Wiktionary into question
as a valuable source. One of the great things about Wikipedia--a
similar project--is that it is so well edited and monitored that
vandalism, propaganda, and spam are deleted in less than 24 hours. (See
this story about Wikipedia's self-healing powers:
<http://alex.halavais.net/news/index.php?p=794>. Make sure to read his
follow-up posts, linked in red at the top, and the user comments and
trackbacks.)

4. Many entries are just headwords with nothing else. Many others are
just glosses. See the recent "Batu" which entry just contains the word
"stone."

5. They are creating from scratch when they should be, at least for
English, building on a pre-existing work, just as the entire 1913
Webster's. I think the low quality of most of the existing entries
bears this point out very well. Some of the Webster's terms are in
there, but they are entered with the prefix "Webster 1913," which means
they are not alphabetized correctly. They are also very few, and they
often have only the headword with no definition. The help pages, too,
show an awareness of this work as a possible source, but no systematic
effort has been made to import it wholesale.

6. Entries are not properly categorized by language. Foreign words
which are in no way loanwords in English appear in the English
listings.

7. The wiki software does not lend itself to a dictionary. The
capitalized headwords is a classic case: apparently, the Wiki software
has this as a default. Also, it does not allow for separation of parts
of an entry so that one can search for, say, all German nouns beginning
with N that include a pronunciation.

Grant Barrett


On Oct 29, 2004, at 00:11, Thomas Paikeday wrote:

> I am forwarding the correspondence below for the List's interest and
> comments if any. I checked with Edward Gates and Enid Pearsons; they
> hadn't
> seen this new type of dictionary. Please see
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page.
> TOM PAIKEDAY
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> To: "Thomas Paikeday" <thomaspaikeday at sprint.ca>
> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 2:36 PM
> Subject: Re: Wiktionary
>
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> There is no "chief" but rather a community of interested volunteers.
>> They would *welcome* your participation and assistance and advice,
>> because expertise and experience like yours would go a long way
>> towards helping us achieve our goals.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>>
>> Thomas Paikeday wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jimmy Wales / Larry Sanger,
>>>
>>> As a practising lexicographer since 1964, I am impressed by your
>>> Wiktionary. I am curious to know who is the chief linguist or
>>> lexicographer behind this part of your project which is so expertly
>>> designed and executed. I trust it is not a trade secret since the
>>> work is
>>> of a scholarly or academic nature, not commercial.
>>>
>>> Many thanks.
>>>
>>> THOMAS M. PAIKEDAY
>>> www.paikeday.net
>>
>> --
>> "La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on
>> fr.wikipedia.org
>>
>