Great news on licenses

Today, Jimbo Wales told me that I can quote him; "the license will not prevent Open / Free software projects to use our data". This is indeed good news. It means that we can host data and cooperate with every and all. It means that we can host data for organisations that are less well equiped to do this.

When we can pull it off to do these kind of things we will add extra relevance to the Ultimate Wiktionary.

Thanks,
GerardM

Old spelling / new spelling / alternative spelling

When you think about an Ultimate Wiktionary, the idea of including all words of all languages is a given. That is ambitious enough. You do not need anything more, right ?

The Dutch language will change in 2006, it will change things that are artificial like paardenbloem back to paardebloem, it has always been pronounced as paardebloem.. The result will be that many words will be wrong from 2006 onwards.

In October 2005 a list of words will be published with the old and new spelling. It means that we have to cater for this list in the Ultimate Wiktionary. So the Ultimate Wiktionary has to be more ambitious alas..

This is then the time to start experimenting. So I am using the word Imbiß as an example, in modern German it is spelled as Imbiss, I have introduced two new templates. One to be used in front of everything to signal old spelling and the correct one. One to say that it used to be correct.

Having a date for the change will make the information even more valuable. When UW is used within software to be used for optical character reading, it may be used as a pass after the initial pass that did the scanning. It will allow for an appropriate spellcheck that will allow to enhance the quality of the OCR process.

One thing to consider as well is that some spellings are local to a certain region or country. Rudolf Heß is called Rudolf Hess in Switzerland.. the "scharfes S" is not used in die Schweiz.. So words that still have there "scharfes S" in German, are spelled differently in Switzerland. This is just spelling. Some words or their meaning are not known to all people who speak German like "Paradeis" which Austrians know to be a "Tomate".

I am more and more appreciating the fact that linguist find it astounding that we attempt to make the Ultimate Wiktionary a reality. What makes us try it is that it was for us a natural growth path from Wiktionary. So we have our problems serially and not in a parallel fashion. The issues are there to be solved and they can be solved. Getting the issues serially helps because it prevents you from being overwhelmed by complexities for us it is just a matter of refactoring.

Thanks,
GerardM

The value of computer conferences

I have written earlier about the Holland Open software conference, I was happy to be there and gave a presentation there as well. A conference like this is really valuable, you make contacts and when you have a new project like Ultimate Wiktionary these are really valuable. They may alter the way a project is run. One such contact I had with Mr Bart Knubben of OSOSS. This organisation is about Open Standards and Open Source Software in the Dutch government.

OSOSS is working hard to make the list of properly spelled words maintained by the NTU available for the public. Because of all kinds of contractual restrictions this is not possible at this time. To alleviate this issue, they are working as the focal point of the Dutch Open world to get the list of the NTG, the Nederlandstalige TeX Gebruikersgroep, validated for the spelling. This means that some 222.872 words will be validated.

This list of differently spelled words, comes with indications how the word is to be broken up at the end of a line. When the UW is to host such a list, it will mean some adaptions to the software; we will want to keep track correct spelling. As the Dutch spelling will change in August 2006, it means that we will want to retain the old spelling and mark it as such. As the change of the spelling rules will be in the future, we will have to consider how to deal with this.

When we host a resource like this for the NTG, it means that our license has to be compatible with the NTG. Currently they use the GNU Lesser General Public License. They do not care who uses it under what license as long as it stays Free.

Technically there is this issue; we want to host this data for the NTG. It would be really cool to be the resource for the Open/Free content world and host the Open/Free resource for the Dutch language. It would very much be in line with our objectives. We will find a solution for this issue; one thing is sure the LGPL is not applicaple for a wiki. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

What do you need in a dictionary item

When you have an entry in an electronic dictionary like Wiktionary, what is enough to make it worthwhile to have it? The question is relevant as there are people who are of the opinion that any article that does not have extensive defenitions and etymology is substandard.

My opinion is a bit more inclusive, I would like to have extensive definitions and etymology but for me the sheer fact that a word is properly spelled is enough to have it in an electronic dictionary. The Dutch language knows an institution that does provide the authorised list of correctly spelled Dutch words. For me a list with these words would be a worthwhile contribution to the Ultimate Wiktionary. Obviously, it would be a bit meagre but it does serve its purpose.

When the correct way of spelling words changes, like it will do on the 15th of October, an electronic dictionary has a clear advantage over paper based dictionaries. It is however not clear to me how We should cover the old correct spellings. In a way it is relevant to have a history of correct spellings. It could/should be part of the database..

Thanks,
GerardM

Proof of the pudding; cooperation

Some people tell me that I should say that "Ultimate Wiktionary" will improve cooperation. I have been saying that with UW we will get cooperation. At this moment the Italian and the Dutch wiktionaries are cooperating as well as possible. Today there were some changes on the word [[Jiddisch]] I had to check some things on the Italian wiktionary as a result and found that they have at least 10 more translations.

With UW we will get the cooperation, the synergy that we do not have at this moment. The will to cooperate is there but it just does not happen. So I am unapologetic, only with the UW we will get the synergy that we so desperately want. It is not that we do not want to, it is that it does not happen in a practical manner.

Thanks,
GerardM

How to connect using e-mail

On a good day I get some 100 e-mails on a bad days there are many more. Many of these e-mails are spam. The e-mail software I use has an inbuild spam filter, it must be trained and it more than halves the work that I need to do. For the other stuff, I have to look at the mail to decide its relevancy. When it is from a bank or monetary institution I do not do business with it is spam, when it is from China in Chinese it is spam. As I am Dutch many of the American names that send me stuff are suspect. Typicaly this works out fine.

When I want to connect to people who are "official" or high up in an organisation, there is little chance for me to actually reach the right level. There are often many intermediary levels before my message gets to Mr or Mrs Right. These intermediary levels have similar strategies like mine; I do not expect that they are impressed with my myrealbox.com or gmail.com e-mail adressses. It makes me just a person of the public (and I am) not someone who asks something on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. So it would be helpfull if people who are known to be active on behalf of the WMF to have a wikimedia.org e-mail adress. It helps to overcome the barriers thrown up by the intermediary levels and get a job done, a message delivered.

Thanks,
GerardM

Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин

Sometimes it is a nice suprise when you find that a nice idea gets some following. The pronunciation of famous people is one such thing. When you listen how an Italian pronounces the name of the Italian prime minister or how an American pronounces the name of his president, you realise that it is different from how it is pronounced in other languages.

Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин is a suprise for me because it is the first famous person I found on wikipedia with a sound file that I did not ask for.

The funny thing with pronunciations is that the pronunciation of Mr Bush can be heard on the Dutch Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia objects to the soundfile; it has been removed already several times. Some people use Wikipedia to learn languages, it is therefore usefull to learn how a local pronounces famous names.

What I would really like is to have soundfiles of famous people. We have already asked the new pope... One can always hope :)

Thanks,
GerardM

Working on Farsi text, a browser story

I have been working on Farsi training material on Wikibooks; it is a project to teach the Farsi characters and sounds to Dutch people. I do not speek Farsi, I am not learning to speak Farsi, I am just helping this project to improve.

A lesson has two parts; the spoken Farsi words and the translation in Dutch. When you click on the Farsi words, you may hear the pronunciation in the .ogg format. When you press the Dutch words it takes you to the nl.wiktionary.org. When a word does not exist I create it when the word exists I add the Farsi translation.

It is really hard if not impossible to use my favourite browser, I have to move to the other side as it is clearly superior when editing a page like FarsiLes5. In the past I did enter bugreports for Mozilla and Mediawiki, I learned today that they are working on it. I hope they do a good job because Firefox is almost useless when editing pages where there is a mix of languages.

Automagic sounds

When you have been away for a few days, you have a lot of reading to do. I had little time to read my e-mail so I had to wade through hundreds of e-mails. There is this big temptation NOT to read many of those e-mails and just delete them.

I decided to wade through the wikitech-l and found this interesting concept of "transcluding a sound". I think they mean that this means that a sound is played automagically. This needs some clever software that will play the sound in-line. The article says that there is no need for such a feature .. Would it not be cool if you find a word, you hear it automagically ?? Yes, it could also be something that you can enable/disable from your preferences ..

Thanks,
GerardM

Chippewa or Ojibwe

Within the Wikimedia projects we have some rules. One of them is "ignore all rules" but that is a different story. The rule about what languages we support is based on a few things. For me the existence of a ISO-639 code is the more important one. I have been "bold" as I use the ISO-639-3 code; this one is not even ratified yet but it does include many more languages ..

Today I was working on some translations from the English Wiktionary and the word "fruit" had two translations in language I had not seen before. One of these was the "Ojibwe" language. There is not mention of this language in the ISO-639-3 so I had a problem. The language codes that indicate that a word is a language are based on this code.

Google as so often turned out to be my friend; the Ojibwe are better known as the Chippewa; the code for the Chippewa language is ciw. So I was pleased to have a code to go with the Ojibwe language.

In the Ultimate Wiktionary there will be no reliance on the existence of an ISO 639 code. We could have more languages and nobody would realise ..

Thanks,
GerardM

babel

"babel" is a template used on several Wikimedia projects. It intends to inform about the language skills of a person. I am not a particularly good at languages I only care to post about three languages on my user page. The rating is funny because you rate yourself; I do not think much of my German skills, Sabine thinks I should be a de-2 .. She is a "profi" at this language :)

What a template like this can be used for, is not only indicate who has some expertise in some language but also to use it as a filter on the recent changes in an Ultimate Wiktionary. This could function in a same way as it would work for the inclusion/exclusion of bots.

Another use would be to help indicate who shares knowledge of a language, this in turn could help form a community for a language.. I can appreciate that there could be a need for a "village well" or a "kroeg" for each community.

One thing I did find was that it is also a bit of information where you need LOADSA localisation.. There are three templates for each language; Oscar one of my Dutch Wikipedia friends is a tr-3 there is no template for that yet. His being only a tr-3 means that you cannot expect him to write this template in Turkish :)

Thanks,
GerardM

Licensing and mirrors

Most of the Wikimedia projects are licensed with the GNU-FDL license. It works relatively well for server content. There are many people who have issues with it, but given its rules and regulations the content is free and will forever be free. That is genuinly cool.

As I recently explained we do want to use the data in Ultimate Wiktionary for non server purposes as well. I mentioned the .dict data format. Data in this format is also used in off line usage. To create this data you create a subset of the data we hold. Given the license we should inform about every contributor to each word. This is not practical. It is practical to refer to the UW for the history of every word.

As the Ultimate Wiktionary is a new database, it is best to start with an appropriate license that is free and prevents the data from becoming unfree.

With the UW containing the free data, it does not pay to be too concerned about mirrors that host UW data. Given time and the entheausiasm of our community, the UW content will grow and therfore has the potential to outcompete this type of competition in all important ways.

Thanks,
GerardM

RFC 2229 and dict

One of the important things for an open content project is cooperation. Currently every Wiktionary has its own community and, when Ultimate Wiktionary will become a reality, we hope that many wiktionarians will find there home in the Ultimate Wiktionary.

The biggest challenge however will be to grow both the content and the community. As there still a limited number of languages present, we do need to grow a presence, a community for the missing languages. For many languages including my own mother tongue, there is no comprehensive coverage yet. We will be searching for content to be added by our community and by incorporating existing glossaries, wordlists and thesauri.

Today I learned about a third way of making free content available, it is by use of the RFC 2229 a protocol to provide people dictionary information over the Internet. The trick here is that there is a database and that it does provide the information where it is available. So from a user point of view it would be great when we cooperate with dict.org.

There will be two issues that need to be resolved. We use the GNU-FDL license for our content and the GPL for our software and they use the GPL. In order to cooperate we will need to work something out. Licenses are a necessary evil but it would be a travesty if free licenses are found to be mutually exclusive.

RFC 2229 compliance would be for Ultimate Wiktionary mark II .. It is funny that Ultimate will be as much a work in progress as everything else.. Not really a suprise. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

Ziekenhuis.nl again

Yesterday I mentioned that we received this big body of work of nl-en nl description medical wordlist. People downloaded this list. A Portugese guy who is active on the Portugese Wiktionary has started translating words into Portugese. He found some potential errors as well; what is a diuretic, "diurese" or a "diureticum" ??

More than 18 people downloaded the file already. This is extroadinary when you consider that it was posted on an Italian list for translators.. :)

I understand that some work may be done to translate the list into German.. Is free content not exciting to watch? With these effects I am convinced that we are growing a community that will make the Ultimate Wiktionary a success. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

Ziekenhuis.nl

Ultimate wiktionary will get its prominence partly because of what it aims to do and partly because we will actively look for glossaries and coherent bodies of work. The theory is that the whole is more than the sum of the parts..

Ziekenhuis.nl has a 1834 words glossary with academic medical words with a description and an English translation. I received permission to use this in Wiktionary and it is a perfect addition to the EU thesaurus with medical terminology. They will both be included in the UW.

The Ziekenhuis.nl words will be included in the Dutch wiktionary. I have a few reasons to do it, one is my sister teaches nursing and it is nice for her to have it. Another is, that I want to create some buzz about wiktionary and UW and finally as I aim to have words pronounced, I might as well start with it.

As these words are now available under the GNU-FDL, Sabine also mentioned this on some mailinglists and made the file available for download. It would be stellar if this resulted in some translations ..

Thanks,
GerardM

It is lonely at the head of a curve

Call it hubris, but I am making a difference in the wiktionary world. I have made it possible for programming on the Ultimate Wiktionary to start. I got into contact with GEMET and it may result into something great. I will be the first to acknowledge that it is something whose time had come and that what I have done would not have been possible without the inspriration from people like Sabine Cretella.

But it is hard to communicate the vision that we have. Why UW may make a difference. It is hard to communicate what will be included, why UW may gain a big community why it will matter practically what UW becomes.

People complain that I am not forthcoming with information about what is going on. But I am at a loss how to be more open and communicative. The problem is that there are so many seperate groups of people that start to know UW and want to be informed. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be everything to all.

Today I have finally finished and send an article to LISA, it took me two weeks to write because I consider working with them vitally important. The best thing that can happen is when we get a bigger community around UW. It will make it even more difficult but it will not be so much dependent of a few people.

Thanks,
GerardM

Swear words

When you compile words in a dictionary, at some stage you will be asked the question, what about swear words. My answer would be: why not. If someone insults me, I want to know what is said and, what it means. Another argument is that many resources do not carry swear words and for translators it is hard to find proper translations. So as far as I am concerned, I think we should include them.

As swear words are a rare resource in the lexicological sense of the word, it would enhance the Wiktionary. When we combine several relevant collections, the total is more than the sum of the parts..

One question I have no answer to, yet, a word like "godverdomme" of god damn me, is only valid in a religious conotation. Should it be in a religious glossary or, should we treat it as we treat categories and have "Christian swearwords" as a subcategory of "Christianity" and "swearwords"??

Thanks,
GerardM

Ilse and inspiration

Today I went to Ilsemedia to discuss cooperating on Ultimate Wiktionary.. Ilse is a company focused on the Dutch language market. They want to include lexicological content to the search results that are produced in their search engine. They were looking to implement something themselves but they are interested in cooperating with Wiktionary on this. They produced a mock-up of what it might look like. They are interested in Ultimate Wiktionary because it is free both in software and in content.

We discussed many things about wikimedia, among them Commons.. currently some 90.000 pictures. The problem is finding something. We came up with an interesting idea that helps both Commons and Ultimate Wiktionary.. To motivate you to have a look: it has a nice picture of horses. :)

Thanks,
GerardM

New resource found :)

In the Dutch Wikibooks there is a resource that is lexicological by nature. They are words that are foreign to the Dutch language with a description and Dutch equivalents. As the license is the same license as we use in Wiktionary, it is a good candidate for inclusion. It is a glossary in its own right.

Thanks,
GerardM

Windows SP-2

Windows SP-2 is old news. It has been around for quit some time. It is thought to be so important to all Windows XP users that it will become mandatory to have it. There are security patches that insist that SP-2 is installed.

For translators, it is a major pain in the rear-end as the software that they bought will not work with SP-2. Many application either do not have an upgrade path or involve the partition of dineros. The consequence is that these people loose on security or on functionality.

One thing with Wiktionary is that it will be free of charge. It is an Internet phenomena and the only thing it lacks at the moment is cooperation between the different language based communities and content. Isn't it funny that Microsoft's SP-2 is a reason why some translators hope that Ultimate Wiktionary will be a success ??

Thanks,
GerardM