There is now a Wiktionary for every language that has a Wikipedia, including this Simple English one. Is this Wiktionary needed? Or does the overlap it would have with the Simple English Wikipedia, and the English Wiktionary make it obsolete?
Up until now, the Simple English Wikipedia has taken a different approach to the main English one, and the policy on dictionary definitions has been far more relaxed. Should the definitions there be moved here or left in that Wikipedia?
Another question is whether a simple English Wiktionary would be significantly different from the main English one. Is there a need to separate them? Angela14:18, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
If the main English one is done properly, there shouldn't be any difference. I haven't had much to do with it though, so I don't know what kind of defining vocab they use. Simple Wikipedia uses a vocab very similar to that used by most dictionaries. -- Tango15:07, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I can't comment on the relationship between a Simple Wikipedia and a Simple Wiktionary. My predilection for an excruciatingly Victorian vocabulary would keep me away from both of them. :-) I still believe that the simple projects have a place.
As an active Wiktionarian I do see potential problems in any attempt to merge the two projects. Wiktionary has never adopted a formal "defining vocab". This would require a kind of self-discipline that many Wiktionarians may not be ready for. A number of Wiktionarians have attached considerable importance to developing a translating dictionary. Other Wiktionarians may be more interested in the historical development of words. Such information may be far more than what a reader of the Simple English Wiktionary may want. The additional information may leave him more confused than when he started. Perhaps the difference may be as great as the between the large many volumes of the complete Oxford English Dictionary and its Pocket edition. Eclecticology19:01, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
If Simple Encyclopedia = Simple Dictionary, Simple Wikipedia is a misleading and inappropriate term. I think a distinction is important if we are called an Encyclopedia. If we are not an encyclopedia but a conglomeration of more things, our name should reflect that integral difference. --Menchi08:47, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The above comments went missing for a while due to a namespace changing. Brion has moved the history of the above comments to [1]. The only other page affected was Wiktionary:Recentchanges/broken. Angela 30 June 2005 07:12 (UTC)
I would think that a Simple English Wiktionary could serve the same purpose as a learner's dictionary of English. There is a reason that learner's dictionaries are more than heavily-illustrated versions of regular dictionaries. (In fact, many learner's dictionaries don't have any pictures at all). A Simple English wiktionary would have the following properties:
emphasis on collocations and phrasal roles of high-frequency words.
use of a highly restricted vocabulary for definitions such that most definitions will be accessible to the non-fluent user without having to jump forever from one entry to another.
(maybe there are more). Thus a Simple English wiktionary would fulfill both the purpose of Simple English -- making the language accessible to adult learners -- and follow the same "rules" in terms of its content -- i.e., simplified high-frequency vocabulary. But it would not be restricted in terms of coverage; in principle an S.E.W. could contain entries for every word in the main English Wiktionary. It is the content of the definitions that would differ. -- 221.157.62.91 05:52, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There's plenty of dictionaries out there - wikipedia is just one - but does anybody actually know what they go on about in them? I mean, what is a portmanteau? Simlple Wiktionary's aims are pretty clear: to create a dictionary that can actually be used by people with a limited knowledge of english, and there are quite a few of those, too. --H2g2bob15:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
When I write in a word which is not in Wiktionary, e.g. "simple", I get a search page which says:
"Sorry! Full text search does not work right now. ... Or if you want to create an article of this title, click this link: simple" where the link to the page I might want to create is in non-simple Wikipedia. This needs fixing, but I can't do it myself. Oh, and the google search boxes are also for en.wikipedia.org Saintswithin 16:25, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I do not know how to fix it. But I have produced some other ways (a google link and some bookmarklets) to create an article and to search for a word. They are not so simple though. See my user page User:Wikibob. I have also changed Main Page to say Search is not working. -Wikibob 01:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Useful places to look when writing definitions[change]
These two learners' dictionary sites may help people to learn how to write simple dictionary definitions (without copying of course!):
Is this a Simple American English Wiktionary?[change]
The words in it so far are American rather than Commonwealth. In color there is a brief mention that "color can also be spelt as colour in some countries, such as the United Kingdom" which has the feel that color is "correct" and the "United Kingdom" are some form of oddball community (which of course may be the intent and may be true, but...)
Life would be simpler if we call this an American English wiktionary, then such asides handle things without getting in the way. But if we do this, then maybe we need yet another wiktionary for Commonwealth English.
If we try to make this one wiktionary handle both the the color article needs to have headings such as Color (US spelling) / Colour (Commonwealth spelling) which gets away from the simple idea. -- SGBailey from wiktionary, no user here. 82.12.241.77
Does this mean that we have to duplicate the same things in color and colour? As I administer Chinese Wiktionary where traditional and simplified Chinese have even deeper differences, sometimes templates are used.--Jusjih16:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At Chinese Wiktionary, zh:中國 (China) is used by traditional Chinese, Japanese kyujitai (old-style characters), and Korean hanja (Chinese-like characters in Korean) while zh:中国 (China) is used by simplified Chinese and Japanese shinjitai (new-style characters) but not normally in Korean. I have created zh:Template:中国 to share Chinese and Japanese information and translations while redirection is not so feasible.
After all, image what if no template is used. Someone might add a new translation to American English or traditional Chinese but not British English or simplified Chinese. Then other users have to keep tracking the changes and increase burdens. As I also administer Chinese Wikipedia, I have seen separate pages for traditional and simplified Chinese but out of coordication. Be glad that automatic Chinese converter has kept both writing systems in one site. American and Commonwealth English are more similar than traditional and simplified Chinese, but when needed, templates can coordinate what to be shown in related pages like my examples above. I hope that this answers your question.--Jusjih15:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC) (admin at Wiktionary and Wikipedia in regular (not simple) English and Chinese)[reply]
Strong agree. This follows the precedent of other wiktionaries (and regular dictionaries, for that matter) and is logical, since when it is a proper name, it should be capitalized, like in Murphy's law (for which we should certainly have a page). However, I don't think this should be an allowance so much as a requirement. Only proper names should be capitalized. --Cromwellt|talk20:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure MediaWiki will allow us to do this; all page names are capitalized by default and it would take developer attention to change this. There's a few articles on en wiki that have had this problem for some time now (eBay, etc.) but they haven't been fixed. Perhaps we should file a bugzilla request? Thanks! Flcelloguy17:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
All pages are normally capitalized by default, but English Wiktionary already has that changed, as you can see in during. I would think it would be easy for a developer to do the same thing for us that they did over there. There's even precedent. --Cromwellt|talk04:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I had the same question a while back, though I asked it somewhere else. I think that categories should all be lowercase unless they are proper nouns, so that they work just like the entry titles. I'd say that you can go ahead an boldly change it, and if someone doesn't like it or has a better idea, they can change it back. --Cromwellt|talk01:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you do change it, don't forget to change the templates that refer to those categories, so that they put the words in the new place. --Cromwellt|talk04:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see that Jusjih has not worked on (or at least has not completed) changing the categories. I have completely changed my mind regarding them. The reason that articles in the (main) namespace are lowercase is to show the word as it is really meant to be and to distinguish between proper names and other words. This does not apply to categories or appendices (I just created the first appendix, Appendix:Prepositions), though it should still apply to templates so that we don't have to type a capital letter every time we insert a template. Categories and appendices are groups of these words, and so should be capitalized regularly, just as they are in other projects. I am changing categories accordingly. Other thoughts? As I mentioned above, if we decide I'm wrong, we can boldly change it back. :) Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk21:54, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I have not been here until now as I was too busy administering other Wiki sites. As I am now an admin at eight Wiki sites, I am unsure how often I will come here. Article names at Wiktionary should not be automatically upper cases, but for categories, I do not really mind whether upper or lower cases. In case you want to talk to me but I am inactive here, I suggest leaving a message at my talk page at Wiktionary, Wikipedia, or Wikisource in English version that I administer.--Jusjih14:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a logo I have come up with for our site. I sent a request for it to be used as bug 5056. Once that has been done we can update the logo by replacing Image:Wiki.png, so if anyone has a better one feel free to upload it. Gerard Foley23:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at it again, I see a few problems, but not huge ones. The "a multilingual free encyclopedia" that is visible at the top is obviously from an entry on "Wikipedia," not "Simple English Wikipedia," as it would have to be to be right before "Simple English Wiktionary." Same goes for "Wilco," since it is under W, not S. The third problem is that the pronunciation only mentions "Wiktionary," not including the added "Simple English." Maybe I'm too picky, but these seem important to me. --Cromwellt|talk04:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree strongly with both these points. :) Maybe the part above should be some part of "written in simple English for easy reading," as SEWikipedia has for its subtitle on all its pages. Next should be the start of something like "simple harmonic motion" (which is the entry after where Simple English Wiktionary would be in the English Wiktionary). That is long enough that we don't have to worry about starting on the pronunciation, either. --Cromwellt|talk01:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm be for adding a tagline - it's a good idea. I think we can change MediaWiki:Tagline to do this, but it didn't seem to work when I tried it. I think (as in I don't really know :-) that may be because the $wgUseDatabaseMessages variable is turned off. If this is the case, then we'd need to ask meta to turn it on for us. --H2g2bob03:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the logo once again (it is on every page, after all), I think it would look smoother and less cluttered if we cut down the wording to say "an open content dictionary in Simple English". "Wiki-based" is not simple and could leave people wondering, though I think it is a good idea to explain that concept here in simple English; "written" is unnecessary and technically it is not written, we are writing it; and "for easy reading," while it does stick with SEWikipedia, does not really add anything here. If it is in simple English, that should be enough. I think the phrase "open content" should not be capitalized, since it is part of the "definition," not the title, and the "s" in "Simple English" could be lowercase or uppercase, depending on if we consider Simple English to be a special kind of English. I personally think that simple English is just that: English which is simple. Therefore I think that the "s" should be lowercase. But I wouldn't throw a fit if it stayed uppercase. BTW, though I am certainly not against a tagline, I was actually talking about the logo in the comments above. I was saying that, rather than "easy to understand free dictionary," we should have the end of "written in simple English for easy reading" showing at the top of our logo. Even if that is never changed, we definitely need to fix the bottom of the logo where it shows the start of a Wilco entry. As "Simple" starts with "S", the following entry should be something starting with "s," preferably something that would be close in the dictionary like the "simple harmonic motion" I mentioned above. I guess changing the pronunciation to reflect the full name would make it too different from other wiktionaries, going against Gerard's point #1, but I still think it would be more correct. As far as a tagline is concerned, I hope it would not just repeat what it says in the logo, since that is already on every page.
On another topic, I think we should put a link to Simple Talk right on the navigation section, but I don't know how to do it. I tried to find it on Special:Allmessages in SEWikibooks (to make a corresponding addition of its Staff Lounge), but all I found was one called "navigation" which had nothing more than that one word in it. (That reminds me of The Raven, one of my favorite poems: "But the raven, sitting lonely / on the placid bust, spoke only / that one word, as if his soul / in that one word he did outpour.") Can someone tell me exactly what it is called? If someone doesn't like the idea, I probably won't do it, but I'd at least like to know how. --Cromwellt|talk04:04, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The navigation bar is in MediaWiki:Sidebar. I added a link to here to it. Feel free to play around with it if you don't like it. The logo was just a temp because I never knew which Wiktionary I was looking at. The changes you propose are good, someone just has to make them and upload it! Gerard Foley12:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info on the sidebar, and for adding the link. I would boldly make the changes myself, but I don't know much about how it works, since I've never tried it. I guess I should! I must admit (and this goes for everyone I've worked with here) that it is extremely refreshing to come here and find friendly agreement and reasonable disagreement after trying for a while to reason with Netoholic on SEWikipedia. --Cromwellt|talk17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because I don't know how it works, I tried "save page as" when I was on the page with just the image. It seemed to copy right, but when I tried to edit it, it doesn't seem to work at all. Do I need a special program to edit it? --Cromwellt|talk17:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cromwellt, the file format is PNG, which "should" be editable in MS Paint. Some image formats might need MS Office installed if I remember correctly, or it could be the transparant background on the image that is causing problems. I'd say get the file on screen and use the Print Screen key and paste it into Paint if you can't edit it directly.
Just a quick idea for the logo. It's pretty basic (simple, even ;-) but perhaps a bit too bare and empty - any ideas on this? The fonts are Free Sans Bold and Bitstream Charter Bold Italic. If you use GIMP, I uploaded the .xcf file. (why does xcf work and not bmp!?!) --H2g2bob00:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info, H2g2bob. Yeah, I tried to use Paint to edit it, and I'm guessing you're right about the transparent background being the problem. When it showed up on Paint, it was like it was a negative, with dark appearing light and light appearing dark (meaning it was very dark in this case), and the central section was totally dark. I have used GIMP before (though as you mentioned, it has a steep learning curve, so I've never used it very effectively), but I don't have it on this computer. I might like to download it, but since this is a somewhat public computer (at my office, which I share), I try to keep my program downloads to a minimum. Your possible logo isn't bad, but I think it is too bare and empty (as you said), making it too different from the logos on other Wiktionaries. Apparently Gerard Foley has a better way to edit the original, rather than coming up with something completely new (and therefore lacking certain elements like the parts of entries before and after, which I think are essential). Gerard, if you let us know how to do it the right way, we'll appreciate it. --Cromwellt|talk18:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As you all know, I think, I have made SEWiktionary into one of my pet projects, and I tend to spend most of my Wikitime here (or at SEWikipedia). I like editing here, and I plan on continuing. My main frustrations, however, are two. I like to start new entries (which is what we need the most, I think), but when I do so, I try to do too much. Rather than adding one or two definitions and leaving it at that, I try to be complete, and add all the definitions at once (with synonyms, antonyms, derived words and phrases, and see also), checking Word's thesaurus and English Wiktionary. This makes it much more work that it otherwise would be, and makes it much less fun for me. I'm sure it is just my perfectionistic nature, but my attempts at completeness are getting in the way of my enjoyment of the project. My other main frustration is related to the BE850. I copied the list into a Word document, and have created many of the definitions on my computer, waiting to be copied here. But while I was making those definitions, I made many of them using non-simple terminology, planning to fix them later. Now that I've made them, I don't want to place them here until I've simplified them (leaving things for later is very bad policy in this case), but that's (again) more work that it should have been, and keeps my contributions slowed down. Both of these issues have ultimately everything to do with my idiosyncrasies fighting amongst themselves and almost nothing to do with SEWiktionary per se, but they bug me. Has anyone else felt something like this? I guess the best solution for the first one is just to add a definition at a time. Any ideas on other solutions? --Cromwellt|talk18:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We are now approaching 300 entries! This is a milestone worth celebrating, because it means we have doubled the number of entries in a relatively short time, and that this Wiktionary is actually growing. I would love to see us pass up 1000 entries sometime soon (more editors first would be nice...:) so that we are more prominently featured on the Main Page of other Wiktionaries, especially English Wiktionary, but that is something of a long-term goal. Finishing the BE850 (one of my current projects here) would be a big help towards that, and give us almost 1000 entries by itself. --Cromwellt|talk08:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On a related note, we seem to be reaching consensus on Simple English Wikipedia that SEWikipedia should link to both English Wiktionary and Simple English Wiktionary, which is great news for this project, and will probably help us with both amount of exposure and (in direct proportion) number of editors. I'm hoping that either consensus can be reached to also add links to other Simple English projects on the Main Page of SEWikipedia as a parallel to linking here in articles, or that the links will be tacitly accepted when they are introduced, either by Odder (who is making a new Main Page that looks like it will be adopted) or by me. The only person that actively opposes links to other simple projects (and in fact, opposes their existence and deprecates and any and all references to them entirely) is Netoholic. This seems bizarre, since Netoholic is an administrator and bureaucrat on Simple English Wikipedia, and he/she feels strongly that that project should exist. I can not explain it, friends, I can only stand in awe. ;D But in any case, Netoholic is firmly in the minority on this point, and the community will prevail, I believe. --Cromwellt|talk08:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to spend some time also working on the infrastructure of this wiki, to get it to a more usable status. Much of this can be copied from English Wiktionary (after some simplification) or Simple English Wikipedia (after minor changes). Let's make this project into something great! --Cromwellt|talk08:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What do we think about publishing a WikiReader with the BE850 and BE1500? I'd be happy to do most of the work behind it (exporting to PDF, managing download site etc). Archer712:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Other Wiktionaries add translations for words into other languages. SEWiktionary is meant to give definitions of English words using simple English, so if we did add translations, we would not include those other words here, but only link to other wiktionaries. For example, if we translated "heavy" (meaning having a lot of weight), the Spanish is "pesado." We might link to the English Wiktionary page on en:pesado or to the Spanish Wiktionary es:pesado. These would be interwiki links, but under a translation section, not an "in other languages" sidebar interwiki, since each meaning should be translated separately.
I think there are pros and cons to this idea. The pros are that our focus audience are people who are do not know much English, and many of them only know it as a second language, so a translation into their own language could be quite useful.
The cons are that we are focused on English words. A translation would be a distraction from our focus. Also, that niche is already filled by the English Wiktionary. I think our focus should stay firmly fixed on simple English definitions of English words. Feel free to comment. We'll do what the community decides, of course. Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk02:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose that this simple English Wiktionary is for definitions from simple English to simple English only, right? This should be good enough since more complex contents should go to regular English Wiktionary.--Jusjih14:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Simple English Wikipedia pages need to use some hard English words. I think Simple English Wiktionary needs definitions in simple English for those hard English words. It also needs definitions in simple English for simple English words. I think it's a good idea to link to English Wiktionary for translations. --Coppertwig18:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Different word classes would further complicate translations into other languages. I prefer that this simple English Wiktionary leaves translations into other languages to regular English Wiktionary that I administer, or we simply make excessive duplications.--Jusjih16:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We have articles for Cyrillic Alphabets. This makes me think how many kinds of non-Latin alphabets we will add. Japanese kana and Korean hangul are also alphabets but totally different from Latin Alphabets, so I do not support adding them to complicate this simple English site.--Jusjih15:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Another thing that has come up is the question of etymologies. English Wiktionary and others show the etymology of each word, and tend to have the earlier forms as separate entries. Because we are focused on English words (that is, Modern English), we would not include those early forms separately, but we could include unlinked word origins/etymologies. Again, there are pros and cons. Etymologies could be difficult to understand for someone who doesn't know much English. Additionally, they are not our focus, and could be a distraction. Plus, English Wiktionary already does that more effectively. On the other hand, I think it is cool to show where words come from, and this can help people understand why a word is spelled a particular way, I think. English orthography is one of the hardest parts of learning English, but knowing where a word comes from helps significantly in understanding its orthography (spelling). That said, teaching English is not our goal here, any more than it is the goal of Simple English Wikipedia. We are writing a dictionary here, not an English 101 textbook. If people use us to learn English, that is their own choice, but it is not our focus. I guess I could go either way on this one. I tentatively support adding etymologies to words. What do all of you think? --Cromwellt|talk02:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In articles such as that for sad, some users have obvioulsy gone to a great deal of trouble to flesh out all sorts of synonyms, related words, etc. Unfortunately, few of the words are very simple (or even useful. For example, on the sad page we have glum as a synonym.) I think this kind of detail needs to be pared back to avoid being overwhelming to English language learners.
--Brett01:26, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was the one who put all those synonyms and antonyms on there. I still think it is useful, and it is obvious that they are synonyms, etc. by their placement, but I guess I did go a little overboard. But this wiktionary should not be limited to Simple English words. It should include all English words, but the definitions should be limited to simple English. People may find the word glum and wonder what it means, but not be able to understand the English Wiktionary definition. We need that entry here, and its connection to sad seems very logical. I think lugubrious should be cut out sooner than glum. Limiting the synonyms and antonyms may be useful in some ways, but we are about including information, not leaving it out. We might even want to include (for example) a main synonym section, and later on a section on other synonyms. I don't know. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs20:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, we should have articles for simple words and other words, so there should eventually be an entry for glum, lugubrious and whatever else you can come up with. However, a typical user who is looking up the word sad, will not benefit from glum. The user who looks up glum, on the other hand, may well benefit from being told that sad is a synonym as they will likely have no idea what glum means, but may very well understand sad.
Furthermore, you write, "we are about including information, not leaving it out." To the contrary! Knowing what to leave out is at least as important as knowing what to put in. A 20-page dictionary entry on run is neither simple nor useful. This is, after all, a dictionary, not a thesaurus or an encyclopedia. If the user who looks up sad is looking specifically for uncommon synonyms, they're using a wrench to drive in a nail.--Brett23:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well how else do you expect people to look for uncommon synonyms, except by starting with a common word? Perhaps we can put common synonyms right there on the page, while listing rare ones separately on a thesaurus-like page. Kappa07:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Brett, I really enjoyed your wrench-nail analogy. Kappa is referring to what EWikt has done in its Wikisaurus sub-project. We could do something similar here if people are interested in the idea. But either way, most dictionaries include at least some synonyms, and I think we should do so, too. You have a point when you say that glum should link to sad, but not necessarily sad to glum. Maybe if we tend to limit it to the first five or so most common synonyms and antonyms, it will be useful but not overboard. We can always change it later if we change our minds, etc. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs09:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have used a wrench to drive in a nail. It works well. People who want many synonyms can look in English Wiktionary. I think a little number of synonyms here are able to be useful too. --Coppertwig15:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The following was posted by Adam Kilgarriff on the Corpora mailing list
LEXICOM-ASIA 2006
A Workshop in Lexicography and Lexical Computing
Venue: Kowloon, Hong Kong
Hosts: Language Centre, Hong Kong Univ of Science and Technology
Dates: December 11th-15th, 2006
Led by Adam Kilgarriff and Michael Rundell of the Lexicography MasterClass,
Lexicom is an intensive one-week workshop, with seminars on theoretical
issues alternating with practical sessions at the computer. There will be
some parallel 'lexicographic' and 'computational' sessions. Topics to be
covered include:
corpus creation
corpus analysis:
o software and corpus querying
o discovering word senses, recording contextual information *
writing dictionary entries
dictionary databases and writing systems
using web data
Applications are invited from people with interests and experience in any of
these areas.
Over the last six years Lexicom has attracted 200 participants from 28
countries including lexicographers, computational linguists, professors,
research students, translators, terminologists, and editors, managers and
technical support staff from dictionary publishers and information
management companies.
The venue, HKUST, is beautifully situated on Clearwater Bay in Kowloon, only
30 minutes from central Hong Kong.
To register for Lexicom, go to: http://lc.ust.hk/~centre/lexi2006/
Early registration is advised (the Workshop has been oversubscribed in
previous years), and registrations received before 7th October 2006 carry a
discounted fee.
I apologise for writing in English. There is a discussion about the logo for Wiktionary at meta:Wiktionary/logo. Please go there and help us decide. Please also put this message on your community page.
Is there a way to find the article with the most links? In particular, I'm interested in finding the most-linked-to article that doesn't yet exist.--Brett21:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I recently had an idea for a sort of word rating system. This would show the SE user how difficult/complicated the word is considered by native speakers, and perhaps even include an easier and/or more challenging (for the basic words) alternative. I'm thinking of a kind of thermometer look, maybe up in the right-hand corner. It would have something like four or five degrees, including: basic or easy (from the BE850, words like do, cold, and woman), fairly basic or fairly easy (BE1500 or so, words like sink, math, and trust), medium or intermediate (about regular conversation level, somewhat less common than BE1500, words like complete, freezing, and feminine), fairly advanced or fairly hard (more complex or difficult a concept or term, words like nondescript, anthropology, and uncharacteristic), and advanced or hard (for jargon and other much less common words such as sodium benzoate, sesquipedalian, and indefatigable). We can tweak these levels or add new ones if/when we feel they are warranted. What do you all think? --Cromwellt|talk|contribs10:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a good idea, but I think basing it on BE is a bad idea, no matter how much you like BE. BE was not intended to choose the most simple or frequent words, but to bring together a list of words that would be sufficient to communicate any idea. Instead, I think we should base it on frequency counts, in the same way that the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English does. I think that using Paul Nation's word counts would be a great place to start. He counts 'word families', so that run, running, runner, etc. are all counted together. His counts are broken into 1000-word bands and are available for free.--Brett16:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Though different organizations have different frequency counts, I think the idea is a sound one, and I think that there are many other word lists which would do a better job than BE. The only reason I've stuck with BE this long is because it was already there, and fairly convenient, not to mention a good place to start creating words. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs02:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I asked Paul Nation, and he wrote, "The lists are freely available for whoever wants to use them." Have a look.--Brett01:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
After looking at the BNC spoken frequency lists, I think you're right. I much prefer the way that these lists are set up, and it is nice to see not only the word but all its variations. I think it is much better. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs01:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to throw up the idea of moving this page to the Wiktionary talk namespace. The advantage is that when editing a talk page MediaWiki:Talkpagetext is shown to the user. It would also leave this page open for FaQ's or something. Just an idea. Gerard Foley14:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input, Gerard. Nice to know you're still around every once in a while. You have a valid point about the talk page text being shown at the top of the page. It might be worth it to move it. However, I don't really care for the FAQ idea personally. It is supposed to be a simple *talk* page, so it should be something related to talk, even if it just redirects to its own talk page or explains how simple talk works. Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs00:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I decided to come here and help out the project, after I saw the request for deletion at Meta. Personally, I would hate to see a project with this much potential die.
So, my question. How many regularly editing people are left? I noticed that a bureaucrat and two administrators haven't edited in a fairly long time, with the only admin exception seeming to be Cromwellt. Just give a shout here, I suppose. Thanks! PullToOpen21:49, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Very few it seems, although I don't think left is the right word. There don't ever appear to have been many contributing memebers. Welcome though. Could I suggest you try to avoid difficult words in your definitions? For example, for approval, you wrote "Formal permission or sanction." both words are less common than the word you're defining, and sanction is significantly less common. Just a suggestion. The participation is appreciated, though.--Brett01:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion. I used the word "left" because I had spent a while reading talk archives. This place seemed to be a lot more active back in Febuary. PullToOpen01:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't checked if you deleted the cat/template for WotD, but I think it will probably be revived eventually (hopefully), so maybe deleting it was unnecessary. Then again, we can always recreate those I guess. No biggie. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs19:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for not being active for a few months. I'm still around, I've just been busy with classes, etc. A teacher's life is a busy one. To make things worse, I haven't had internet access for about a month or more. I'll see if I can make time to contribute more regularly again. :) Oh, and my "email this user" works, so if there's something that needs admin intervention (like MediaWiki stuff), you can still get ahold of me, even if it may be a little while before I get it taken care of. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs19:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Either [[:simple:wikt:definition]] or [[:wikt:simple:definition]]; if you're on a Simple English project, use [[:wikt:definition]] or, if you're on a Wiktionary, use [[:simple:definition]]. Cheers, Tangotango12:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, can we import some styles (specifically the messagebox class, and maybe some of its subclasses as well) from w:MediaWiki:Common.css into MediaWiki:Common.css? This is purely for cosmetic reasons, but some of the templates that we have (including Template:Delete) use the messagebox class, which is not defined here. (P.S. This requires an admin) Cheers, Tangotango16:40, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have gone ahead and asked for a temporary +sysop on meta, and have imported all CSS classes from the Simple English Wikipedia (with the exception of CommonsTicker-related styles). Cheers, Tangotango10:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In a dictionary such as this, I think it's important that the example sentences actually exemplify the use of a defined word rather than simply include it. Consider the following examples:
There was a book on the table.
He finished reading, closed the book, and put it down.
In the first sentence, book could be almost anything, animate or inanimate, of a size suitable for being on tables. The second sentence, in contrast, shows that book is related to reading and that it can be held and closed. This second sentence exemplifies book, while the first simply uses it.
We should also try to exemplify the syntactic properties of defined words. Notwithstanding, for instance, is an unusual preposition in that it can appear after the noun. Thus, examples showing both pre- and post-noun usage would be useful. Similarly, nouns that have both countable and uncountable senses should have example sentences showing these. And so on.
I don't know what to call them. When you were editing something, there was a row of buttons at the top of the edit window: bold, italics, math, signatures, etc. They're not there anymore. --Brett02:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's checked. The tool bar was there on Friday and gone on Saturday. I haven't changed anything. I take it, then, that others still have their tool bar? --Brett12:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I turned them off in my preferences and turned them back on and now they're back again. Something a programmer might have a look at. --Brett19:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My idea: all nouns need pictures in the definitions. Writers need ideas about copyright and about finding pictures. --Coppertwig 19:55, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I did it! I put a picture in! See wire. I think all definitions need pictures. Is that good? Did I do it right? I found the picture in Wikimedia Commons. --Coppertwig20:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well done! Many nouns already have pictures with them. Many other nouns, however, are too abstract for a picture. Put one in where it makes sense. --Brett02:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm having some problems formatting the pages with the pictures. I want the pictures near the top so people will see them immediately. On the page wave the picture covered some of the words. I put many "nbsp" so that it doesn't cover the words. But I think that will not work well for all browser windows. There must be a good way to do it. --Coppertwig04:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly I don't like moving pictures. It's hard to read when there is a moving picture on the page. But if I put it there, I like it. :-) Some people may not be able to see the moving picture. Some people may not be able to see any pictures. --Coppertwig13:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the words under the pictures are too small. Some people who are reading Simple English Wikipedia may be people who are learning to read. People who are learning to read need big letters. In trade, I wrote <big> to make the letters bigger. Is that a good idea for all pictures? --Coppertwig01:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why just the pictures? Actually, it's really easy for individual readers to change the font display size on their browsers. I'd leave it alone. --Brett02:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's easy to change font size. On my browzer I see something to change font size, but I don't see something to change font size of letters under pictures and leave other font size the way it is. Do you know how to do that? Do many people who know Simple English but not English know how to do that? When I display the pictures without "big" the words under the pictures are littler than the other words on the page. --Coppertwig04:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, I meant change them all at once. On my browser, the fonts under the pictures are the same size as the other fonts. I don't know why they would be different for you, but different browsers will vary. At any rate, I still see no point in it. --Brett11:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like where it says "change this page". That's Simple English. It seems friendly to me. But when a page has parts, it says "edit". It needs to say "Change this part." --Coppertwig05:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, Coppertwig. I'm glad to see some new users active here. I'll try to get this fixed this week or so, though I don't have time at this precise moment. :) I'm sure it is on MediaWiki somewhere under MediaWiki:Allmessages. If you can find it, that will speed up my job. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs19:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I may have found a way to do it, sort-of. I now have one userbox on my user page. I've put in a question at asking what is the best way to implement Babel boxes. --Coppertwig14:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I got Babel boxes working! I just copied Template:Babel from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia. It looks like just words, but really it has computer words to make the Babel boxes work. We need to copy many pages like "Template:User de-2" from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia to make all Babel boxes work. --Coppertwig01:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My ideas: Simple English needs to have only one definition for one word. I think the first definition for each word is the Simple English definition, and writers need to try to use only the first definition. But when there is a noun definition and a verb definition and they are very near, then those 2 definitions can be used.
The first definition needs to be the most important one.
A definition in Simple English can cover more things than the English definition. In English someone may say "bowl". "Bowl" is not BE850. In Simple English someone may say "basin" or "little basin" when talking about the same thing. The definition of "basin" in Simple English may be a little different from the English definition.
Frequently two definitions for the same word in English can be one definition in Simple English. "Black" does not need one definition for a colour and another definition for an adjective saying that a thing has that colour. It is the same idea. The adjective is most frequent and most important. If someone uses it as a noun, people will understand. OK, maybe it needs two definitions because one is a noun and one is an adjective. But many other words can have one definition in Simple English for two definitions in English, because the Simple English definitions are simpler and cover more things. Little things that are different between two definitions in English are not important in Simple English. If someone writing a Wikipedia page needs to say an important difference between two things, the person needs to use a sentence to say the difference.
Example: apparatus has 3 definitions. I think they are all the same idea. (see picture.) I think they need to be 1 definition here. Maybe in English Wiktionary they need to be 3 definitions. --Coppertwig14:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I generally agree, but wouldn't take things quite this far. I think:
Each word class should be represented and defined. For example, there should not be one definition that covers both adjective and noun, though the same definition could possibly be repeated with only minor changes.
Rather than trying to tease apart individual senses of the word, I think we should aim for broad definitions that deal with the underlying similarity of the various senses. For example, Paul Nation gives the example of head, which he defines as "the top or most important part, for example, head of your body, head of a match, head of an organisation." (Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, p. 92)
Where there are multiple definitions, they should be sorted from most to least common. Similarly, the more common word class should be listed first.
The BE850 is problematic because it has never been widely adopted and the word choices are often anachronistic. A better choice of words would be the BNC2000.
One more thing, Ogden, the sneaky guy, often specifically chose highly polysemous words to get more coverage from fewer words.--Brett18:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Simple English" is not defined. Maybe we need to make a decision. Maybe we need to mark the first (or sometimes two) definitions on a page "Simple English" and mark the other ones "English". But maybe we would use too much time talking and not agreeing. Maybe it's good to just put the most frequent definition first. I would leave out very rare uses.
Someone had the idea of asking the Wikimedia developers to make the Preview button show BE850 and BE1500 words in different colours. I think different underlining (underlining and striking out) is more useful because the colours show a link or no link. Hmm. It can be complex. Each user can choose in "my preferences" which list (BE850, BNC2000, etc.) marks the "Preview" when that user is changing a page. So we don't have to agree before we do that. (Forms of words, "make", "makes", "making" need to be used too.) --Coppertwig03:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Currently only red and blue are used. Other colours could be employed in different ways. I think it might be more useful to use a star system, or simply a line at the top, similar to the current BE850 or AWL ones.--Brett12:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We would need nine colours. Three possibilities (no link, good link, red link) times three possibilities (BE850, BE1500, not BE1500). I think it would be hard to remember what nine colours mean. I think underlining or something else is better. I don't understand what you mean by "star system", "line at the top", or "AWL". --Coppertwig04:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By a "star system", I meant something like the movies, where the most common words would get 3 or 4 stars, less frequent words would fewer, and rare words would get none. As for the AWL, that's the Academic Word List, see theory for an example.--Brett12:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe BNC2000 or BNC1000 is more useful than BE850. (BE850 doesn't have "big" or "small". It has "attempt" but not "try". It has "carriage" but not "car".) But the BE850 has a good page on this Wiktionary. The page is easy to use. I can look and see if a word is in BE850. The BNC1000 needs a page like that. The BNC1000 page is too long. I need a short page with the BNC1000 words starting at the top of the page, and only one form for each word, and many words on one line, like the BE850 page. I think I can make a page like that. Is that a good idea? --Coppertwig03:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Making the computer make many pages easily[change]
I want to make the computer make many pages. It is hard to make a big number of pages one at a time. I want to copy all language templates like "User de-3" from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia. Maybe an administrator or sysop can do that easily. I also want to make many redirects. healthier-->health, summers-->summer for example. I want to write a list of words that need redirects and make the computer make them easily. Maybe I will ask at the English Wikipedia Help Desk. Is this a good idea? --Coppertwig15:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I will make a page with a list of the 1000 most frequent words in English with marks to say which ones are BE850 or BE1500. Maybe I will make two pages like that. One will stay the same. The other page people can change, and it will be the list of Simple English words that we will use. People can move one word out of Simple English into "Not Simple English" and move another word at the same time into Simple English. Is that a good idea?
Maybe in 3 parts. Simple English Part 1 (300 words); Simple English Part 2 (700 more words = 1000 words) and Simple English Part 3 (1000 more words = 2000 words).
Words like "long" and "flat" I use many times when writing definitions. Those are important words. Words like "yes" and "please" I do not use much when writing definitions but they are still important words. Maybe some words are less important. I think we need "big" and "think" and "want". We don't need two words "big" and "large", only one of them.
I'm not sure I see the purpose. I would suggest you read Learning Vocabulary in Another Language by Paul Nation. I think you'll find quite a bit there that will interest you. --Brett02:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is the purpose: We can make the Simple English projects into a useful thing that anyone can use by learning about 700 or 1000 words. Now it is not like that. Now, some pages use BE850, other pages use E-prime maybe, other pages use the most frequent English words maybe. So if someone wants to read many Simple English pages, they need to learn much more than 1000 words. Later I hope we will all use the same words. We can use the page to talk about which 1000 words we will use. (Or another number of words.) Then after we make a decision, we can write Simple English using those words. Then it will be easier for people to learn Simple English. --Coppertwig14:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see now what you mean. The thing is there's little value in learning BE because there's little published in it. It's a good idea if you are working in a very limited setting, for example where you need to understand English weather reports and the meteorological agency publishes them using only BE (though none do, as far as I know.) But generally, people want to use English for a broad range of tasks. In such a situation, BE is really just a stepping stone, and not the best one, either, do to the problems I've pointed out before. It makes much more sense to use the most common words in English.
I just took a look at Simple English Wikiquote. I had misunderstood it! It is a worthwhile project! It is not about collecting quotes in Simple English. It is about collecting quotes in English (or maybe other languages?) and explaining them in Simple English. This is a worthwhile project! But there is a proposal to close it down at meta:Proposals for closing projects!
The reason Simple English Wikiquote is worthwhile is that many people may not understand some famous quotes in English and can benefit from Simple English explanations. Some people voting to close it down say that there's no use collecting quotes in Simple English. They just don't even understand that the project is not about collecting quotes in Simple English!
Others say that if someone doesn't understand a quote in English, they should read a translation of it in their own language. They fail to understand two things: first, that there are many people who can read Simple English but can't read any other language (or not well enough to understand translations of those quotes). This includes some children, some adults who can understand ordinary English but are baffled by expressions like "come what come may" or archaic terms in some famous quotes, many deaf people who have difficulty learning to read because their own language has no written form and they can't hear the sounds that make alphabets meaningful; and other people. Also: if someone is learning English, an explanation in Simple English of a famous quote would help them understand the quote without switching back to their own language; switching back can interfere with learning a new language. --Coppertwig03:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need many redirect pages. Example: when you type "translated" you find the page "translate" which has "translated" on it. People who want to help can write many redirect pages. Just create a page and write in it something like this: #REDIRECT [[translate]] with the name of the page you want it to go to inside the brackets. Every word that has different forms (example: big, bigger, biggest; talk, talks, talked, talking; book, books) needs redirects from the different forms to the page about the word. --Coppertwig13:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's about an article I read on Vancouver Sun about DINE-OUT-VANCOUVER
(a wait stuff at one participating restaurant complained about
dealing with customers who don't know the ins & outs of three-course
dinner and being have to explain what a "gastrique" is)
I happen to be one of those who don't know what a "gastrique" is
and I am willing to learn
Hi all. This page is long. I really think we should move the archive at the top of the page to "Archive1", and then archive all the old stuff with no comments since October 2006 in a new archive, "Archive2". I would do it myself, but I can't stay logged in for some reason. It really frustrates me. --Cromwellt, 22 Jan 2007
