In a previous blog I wrote about the Russian Wiktionary being ostracised by the Polish Wiktionary. There was not enough content and consequently they did not want to have links on the Polish Wiktionary.
Yesterday, I blocked a bot run by an Arab Wiktionarian. I blocked it because it did not comply with the way interwiki links are created, it also did not have a bot flag. A link is only created when the words are exact matches. The problem at the Arab Wiktionary is that they have imported with a bot many words, English words, and they are all upper case.
I have blocked the bot because it is technically wrong. I do run my bot to correct the "damage". The biggest damage however is in the lack of communication between the Wiktionary projects. It is for this reason that I am of the opinion that though courageous efforts, many of them are failures.
Thanks,
GerardM
2 comments:
"Russian Wiktionary being ostracised by the Polish Wiktionary. There was not enough content
Well, this does not represent the truth, I am afraid. Not not enough content, but "over 80.000 entries with no content at all, not even stubs". It's damaging for the project (will they ever recover from that?) and useless for anyone who'd want to consult this Wiktionary.
Compared to this, the Arab dictionary at least has some content to work on (though the decision to stop interlinking for the time being was right, IMO). Give them some time to sort it out.
I agree that some Wiktionaries are failures; though it is debatable whether the lack of interwiktionary communication is the cause of this. I'd say it's the lack of organisation, lack of planning and non-existent internal control (if there are no rules, no control is possible, as everything is acceptable).
If all Wiktionaries had been initiated in the incubator project and had had a chance of developing some policies before going "live", perhaps the situation would be different now. But in 2004 no-one though of that.
tsca
What I have done is stop their interlinking and started running my bot on their content.
I do include the Arab wiktionary as per usual.
Thanks,
GerardM
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