User:Saforrest

Hi, I'm Saforrest. I've yet to decide what I'll contribute.

For my other Wikimedia identities see meta:User:Saforrest.

An impromptu essay on the idea of Wiktionary

For what it's worth, I greatly value the idea of completing an open-content dictionary of this form, but I have some reservations about the manner in which entries are handled.

Organizing everything in the manner in which it was done is fine, but I think it follows Wikipedia's format too closely. In particular, in a dictionary, one is often desiring to get at distinct pieces of information from an entry, such as whether the thing is a noun or a verb, or what the case of the case of the thing is (in the case of a translation dictionary).

As it stands, each entry is a document unto itself, with no structure apart from that put there by its authors, and its organization is dependent on the goodwill and diligence of the Wiktionary contributors. Dependence on humans is fine for something that is to be used by humans, but an effort like this should be able to be sliced and diced by computer programs to end up with a useful data set.

In particular, one should be able to take this (English) dictionary, which is an English-to-English dictionary and a translation dictionary from every language at once, run some computer programs, and get:

• a dictionary that is wholly English-to-English, i.e. no trulyforeign words (i.e. zeitgeist is in, but zeit and geist are out)
• a set of distinct translation dictionaries that translate Language X -> English

The specific goal I would like to see is a free-open content (i.e. GFDL) equivalent of LEO, an English <-> German and German <-> French dictionary which is probably the best online translation dictionary I have ever used. (In fact, I when translating stuff to French I often find the equivalent term in German with LEO, then find the French equivalent of that).

Note that I may well be wrong in my claim at the supposed disorganization of pages. If so, I will heartily embrace the wiktionary project. (Well, if not, I will still embrace it, but not as zealously. :))