"Wiktionary" anyone?

[Thomas Paikeday]

Grant Barret has apparently made a systematic study of Wiktionary since
2003. I have so far spent only about an hour browsing it, including the
Malayalam language section. But it does seem an interesting project if the
chief operators Wales and Sanger will get expert advice like Grant's to put
their house in order. Let's keep watching this new lexicographic phenomenon!

TOM.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant Barrett" <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 6:51 AM
Subject: Re: "Wiktionary" anyone?


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
> Subject:      Re: "Wiktionary" anyone?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>>>
>>