I had a great conversation with Dvortygirl today. We discussed many of the things that have to do with WiktionaryZ. We discussed locales and that the locales you use in computing do not match linguistic locales. Dvortygirl knew this resource where there used to be a dialect survey where Americans were asked some 50 questions to determine how the usage differs from place to place.
When people want to do this kind of research, it makes sense to have a place for it in WiktionaryZ as well. It dawned on me that I have not really considered many of the User Interface questions that will come up. Then again some things are obvious. People will not only want to select the language that they see. There will be a need for a portal page for each language. This could be the kernel for a portal page for the English language (from the Dutch Wiktionary).
With starter portals like this, it can be expanded in many ways. Many internal (to the Wikimedia Foundation) and external resources links can be added and give users a rich experience. The Main page of WiktionaryZ would therefore be similar to the http://wiktionary.org website particularly to point people in the right direction.
Thanks,
GerardM
3 comments:
la: is aiming for two portals for each language — One in the wiktionary: namespace, aimed at people who know the language and are interested in contributing, and one in the help: namespace aimed at people who are learning about the language and interested in finding the wiki's information on it.
So there is Victionarium:Lingua Anglica which links to: english-related categories words might be put in, the pronunciation key standards we are using, special formatting standards for english articles, the English-specific templates, and some links to dictionaries on other sites.
And then there is Auxilium:Lingua Anglica which links to the pronunciation key (again), a page describing the alphabet, the rhymes index, the thesaurus, the English language words category, and eventually bits about the grammar of the language (syntax, conjugation, declension) whenever they get written.
As you may know I am a fan of the la.wiktonary. It is a great resource created with a lot of attention for details.
The problem with the Portal pages will be in making them accessible to people who do still have to master the language. WiktionaryZ will have its user interface in many languages. The idea of having several "portal" pages per language is indeed a good idea.
One other option is to use other projects like Wikibooks or Wikipedia for specifics about a language.
Thanks,
GerardM
Portals are a good idea. Some Wiktionaries alreay created specific portals, for example for Math, Biology, Chemistry and so on. Those could become subportals for the language portals.
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