Meta:International Beer Parlour

The strategic discussions have been moved to an new page: Meta:strategy. Your contribution is waited for there. --Fiable.biz 07:44, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Start a new discussion

Discussion pages

Strategic discussions

International Beer Parlour - archives

List of Beer Parlours

International Linguists Beer Parlour - Inflexions

Questions about words

Articles needing attention

Insect room (report bugs) - archives

Meta:Functionality wanted - archives

bug about duplicate part of speeches corrected

For quite some time, we've had duplicate when we wanted to select part of speeches (e.g. twice "noun", twice "verb", etc.).

I finally understood where this comes from and have corrected it. :-)

If you still see duplicates for certain languages:

1. This is normal!
2. It means they are defined both in the "lexical item" entry and in the language entry as a language-specific attribute
3. Please report it (which language is affected), so that I know where to act first

The final aim is to move from annotations in "lexical item" (which is now a huge ugly list) to annotation in each language page for language-specific attributes, including grammar. This will be done directly in the database (when I find the safest way to do it).

I mentioned part of speeches, but other annotations such as "gender", "grammatical case" will also be moved from "lexical item". This will avoid for example to have "grammatical case" show up when annotating an English word (at the moment, when you click on it, it shows an option "undefined", this is not nice) --Kip 18:03, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I am starting the reorganisation as announced.

At the moment, I will create the annotations for individual languages. In order to make the difference between the newly created annotation and the current one, I have renamed the current one to "part of speech OLD", "gender OLD" and "number OLD".

If you do not see "part of speech" for your language, it is ok to annotate by using "part of speech OLD" (same for gender)

It is best if you do not help, so that I keep track of what I did and what is still to be done.

Thanks (and be patient). --Kip 18:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Done Part of speech --Kip 19:44, 27 February 2012 (CET)

Done Gender --Kip 21:35, 28 February 2012 (CET)

Importing a complete dictionary into a collection?

Assume, I had a digitized version of a bilingual dictionary, having expressions, a list of translations, some grammatical and usage annotations per expression, and I may enter it in OmegaWiki. In order to guarantee proper credit, each syntrans pair should be annotated with a pointer to a collection, which may be named after the book title or so, and should include a reference each of the exact place where it was found such as volume X, page Y, column Z, probably row R. Also, from the collection, the full bibliographic data of the dictionary should be accessible. (I know, we can put expressions in collections, are there collections of syntrans pairs as well?) Further more, since the data reflects a printed book, the data taken from that book should not be edited later, while anything relating to it can and should be open for changes. Can that be had? How far are we from it? Would the book hav to occupy a dataset of its own so as to refelct the limited edit right? If so, how would it interact with the community data? These are not urgent questions but I thought to better ask here before they become urgent :-) --Purodha Blissenbach 16:29, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Strategic discussion page

I suggest we open a different parlour for strategic discussion, rather than having it in the middle of discussions about narrower points. It would make it more easy to read, and more visible.

--Fiable.biz 09:17, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea of a strategic discussion page! I am in holiday at the moment, and will add more thoughts to the discussion when I get back (next week). --Kip 09:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I've just opened a new page Meta:strategy. --Fiable.biz 07:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

MySQL 5.1 upgrade

Hi, I upgraded the MySQL version on the server from 5.0 to 5.1 (which is better at optimizing complicated queries). I also had to upgrade the linux kernel which was a bit scary because I had to reboot the server via ssh... The server was down for some hours. But in the end, it went fine :-) --Kip 15:24, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

current bugs

• when you add an etymology, it is not saved
• when you add many translations, only the first N (20 or so) are saved, and the other are ignored.
• if you edit an "Expression:" page, the identical meaning flags are checked out. If you edit a "DefinedMeaning:" page, it's fine...

It may be linked to the upgrade of apache. Sorry... I'll report back when the problem is solved. --Kip 16:49, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Solved :-) --Kip 21:50, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Yay! --Tosca 09:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup ! I managed to put an advert on Omegawiki. He he! DefinedMeaning:price_(2959). I expect a high commission from "Douglas fir".  ;-) --Fiable.biz 09:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Too many administrators

We have 832 administrators!

Administrators are supposed to be people that we trust (preferably that are active), since they have the rights to delete pages, and block other users from editing.

It used to be that you need the administrator's rights to edit the lexical data, but it is not true anymore. From the 832 admin that we have, I'm sure that many of them never edited, or are unknown to the community. Furthermore, many people cite this as a reason why OW cannot become a WMF project.

So, I'm proposing to reduce this number to the active and/or trusted editors. If you agree to this, we need to establish a list of people who will keep their admin rights (apart from me :D ). --Kip 09:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Let's agree. Fiable.biz doesn't like monopolies so much, so I'm not fond of seeing OmegaWiki becoming a Wikimedia foundation project. And if the rule, in force in English Wikipedia and others, that a company cannot contribute as such, apply one day to OmegaWiki, Fiable.biz would just withdraw. --Fiable.biz 09:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

A story

I wrote a story (a new help page) to explain to people why we are not a WMF project, why we are not importing the Wiktionaries, etc. See Help:OmegaWiki, Wiktionary and the Wikimedia Foundation. --Kip 09:09, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

You both stated that OmegaWiki is and would like to be hosted by Wikimedia foundation servers. Which on is true?

No, I said the source code is hosted by the WMF (subversion, etc.).

But the current server www.omegawiki.org (where the source code is installed) is not a WMF server (it is hosted by Hetzner.de). --Kip 11:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

"Its software is an extension of MediaWiki called Wikidata. It is stored on the WMF servers." leads people to think that Omegawiki runs on a WMF server. Do you mean that Wikidata is developed on a WMF server but the live copy used by OmegaWiki.org is installed on a non-WMF server? --Fiable.biz 13:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

For me, software is the code itself, which is called Wikidata. OmegaWiki.org uses this software. kipcool.dyndns.org also uses this software. Maybe there is a proper and less confusing terminology to use in the case of a webserver, but I don't know it.

Saying that Wikidata is developed on a WMF server is also not correct. At the moment, it is developed on my personal computer at home, and I commit the changes to the central repository.

Anyway... I have changed the sentence to "Its software is an extension of MediaWiki called Wikidata. It is opensource, and the subversion repository is stored on http://svn.wikimedia.org" --Kip 14:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Rather that importing automatically the Wiktionaries, I would suggest a semi-automatic importation: OmegaWiki would link automatically any expression to the corresponding pages of wiktionaries, present Omegawiki and the wiktionary page of the selected language side by side, and propose to the reader to import one by one the fields automatically found, by drag and drop. A "field" is either a translation or a paragraph. But dealing with inflexions seems to me more urgent than this. --Fiable.biz 09:31, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

This is a very good idea, but it would need a lot of work. --Kip 11:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

UTF8 sorting in tables

I found a way to have a correct UTF8 sorting in the tables (e.g. language names), so that for French, "hébreu" appears before "hongrois" and for German "Dänish" appears before "Deutsch".

However, I have to define manually each special letter and how it should be treated (e.g. "ä" => "a", etc.). So please report any wrongly sorted letter. Thanks. --Kip 20:33, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Javascript reorganized

Yesterday I have reorganized the javascript files. In particular, javascript functions which are needed for editing only, such as clicking a combobox or clicking the green "+" button to add a line, are now in a separate file that is loaded only in edit mode. So, when just viewing a page, the page is now slightly lighter because less javascript is loaded. There were bugs:

• I had forgotten to put the automatic sorting when a page is loaded. It is now there.
• I also put an other function in the wrong file, so that annotation could not be opened in view mode.

So, you need to refresh your cache to take into account the new javascript files (Ctrl+F5 on Firefox, and also for Internet Explorer I think). If you see some other bug, please notify me.

--Kip 08:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Definition - formal or dynamic?

Does the definition need to be formal, literal (word for word) or can it be dynamic (thought for thought)?

A definition of yellow is as follows in

• English - Having the colour of a yolk, a lemon or gold.
• Mandarin (simplified) - 像丝瓜花或向日葵花的颜色。

Where the Mandarin has it as "Like a loofah or sunflower flower color" (translation from google translate)

Is this ok? --Hiong3.eng5 05:09, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Usually it is better if we keep the same words, when possible, to be sure that the concept defined is really the same. However, it also has to be adapted to languages and cultures.

For example, "lemon" translates in French to "citron", however, "citron" is more general and can also mean "lime", which is green. So, "lemon" is an example where an other word might be chosen for the French language.

In the case of Mandarin, if "yolk" and "lemon" are not common in Chinese culture, then it should be removed or replaced with a better reference (loofah?).

About loofah and sunflower: I don't know what loofah is, but it seems to be green in many pictures... There is also the problem with sunflowers that some varieties are orange, and a few are red (although I agree, most of them are yellow). So, I believe that at least "gold" should be added to the Mandarin definition. --Kip 08:40, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification--Hiong3.eng5 04:22, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

▶ and ▼

As you might have noticed, I have replaced the "+" and "-" with ▶ and ▼. The intention behind this is to make it more clear to new visitors that when they land on a page with only a definition, the definition can be clicked to see more information. Other ideas are welcome. --Kip 10:16, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I also added edit links in the Expression: pages, on the right. It saves one click (and one page load) and allows to edit directly the DefinedMeanings. --Kip 21:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Armenio

A typo I spotted but I do not know how to fix: the glottonym in Spanish for "Armenian" is "armenio", not "armeno". Regards. --Piolinfax 15:13, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Corrected in DefinedMeaning:Armenian (6015), thanks for reporting the error. --Kip 17:12, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Refresh your cache

I have made changes to all .css and .js files. So, if you see pages with no colors, it means you need to refresh your cache. For most browsers, it is Ctrl+F5 (or clear cache and reload the page).

Of course, I might have done something wrong in the process, so if you see something unusual, please notify me.

For the curious of the inside, I adapted the code to use ResourceLoader. It is said to be faster, it makes other MediaWiki developers happy, and it is necessary to stay compatible with future versions of MediaWiki. --Kip 20:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

omegawiki.org

omegawiki.org is an empty directory.

www.omegawiki.org works.

--Hiong3.eng5 17:22, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, my fault, I had disabled a RewriteRule in apache. Should work now. --Kip 19:16, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Most visited pages

I forgot to mention that I've added these statistics: Meta:Most_visited_pages/2011-11. --Kip 10:26, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

One language at a time

I have just implemented a new feature: one language at a time.

• If you look at Expression:love, only one language is displayed.
• There is an arrow next to the language, if you put the mouse over it (or over the language name), the other available languages will appear in a dropdown menu.
• If you click on a language, it should work.
• It also works in edit mode.

For pages like Expression:India, it looks much better and loads really faster.

Please note that:

1. for words that belong to one language only, the arrow will not be shown, and the dropdown menu will not appear.
2. I had to change a lot of code to make it works, so I might have introduced a bug somewhere
3. if you click e.g. Expression:love, you'll be taken to the Danish word (it just takes the first record it finds). Then you can click on "English", but if you then click on "edit", you'll be taken to the Danish word again and need to click "English" from the edit page to really edit the English. (Don't worry, I'll find a solution).
4. I am not an artist. I have spent some time playing with the css styles to have a not-too-ugly dropdown list. If you have some opinion on the matter, please tell me, for example:
   • if you have an idea on which color to use
   • if you want it to appear and disappear with a nice animation (slow / fast / blur / transparency are all possible and easy to do)
   • if you find a dropdown on another website that looks better...
5. for long dropdown, I could implement something like this http://css-tricks.com/examples/LongDropdowns/ . What do you think?

Unrelated to that, I have also changed something else: when a word has only one definition, it will be automatically expanded (i.e. the definitions, translations, images, etc. are visible without the need to click).

--Kip 22:20, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your work, but I'm not sure the situation is much better than before. Most people probably use Omegawiki for multi-language purpose, as I do. All languages were many too many, but one language is too few. The ideal would be that one can choose the list of languages he is interested in. By the way, you did this big job, but you didn't finish the previous one concerning the grammatical properties, so it has been confusing for a while now.--Fiable.biz 03:58, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure the situation is much better: when you load the page "India", you don't have to wait 10 minutes, and you don't crash the server...

Filtering the list of languages one is interested in, for displaying only some translations and definitions, is somewhere on the todo list. You can also learn php, mysql and help programming.

Correcting the grammatical properties <= yeah yeah I know... (but actually I started it after) --Kip 09:22, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Chinese Characters (expressions) with no defined meaning

Can we add Chinese expressions that does not have any meaning by itself? --Hiong3-eng5 04:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but we need some definition.

I am not sure how we could do for Chinese characters, but I have created similar entries for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana. Cf. Expression:ら.

A definition for a Chinese character could include the identification of its radical, its number of strokes, and ...? (I see Cangjie input on Wiktionary, but I don't know if that's useful in a definition).

I am not sure at that point how we would indicate pronunciations, since the pronunciation of a Chinese character depends on the language using it. --Kip 15:37, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

This is one of the very rare cases where a definition of the signified is no possible because there is no signification, so a definition of the signifier is needed, i.e a definition of the expression, rather than of what is expressed (since nothing is expressed). A definition of "cow" (the signified) is "Female bovine animal (Bos taurus) of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae.", not "(Word) used to refer to a female bovine animal (Bos taurus) of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae.", which would be a definition of the signifier: the word "cow", not of the cow itself. A cow is an animal, while "cow" is a word. The former has horns while the latter has letters. In such a case, this should be noted. I suggest to put such definitions between square brackets and to limit strictly this usage to 2 cases: a definition of the signified is not possible, or a definition of the signified would be much more complicated than a definition of the signifier. --Fiable.biz 12:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Two word classes for one definedMeaning (e.g.: "to construct", "construction")

Following Synagonism's remark, I wonder if it would not be better to be completely logical and regard 2 words of 2 different word classes with the same meaning as one definedMeaning. This mainly happens for a verb and the corresponding noun of action. The fact that some variations of a word are inflectional (i.e. don't need to be memorised as such, and are regarded as 2 forms of the same expression, like "to cover"/"covered") while others are lexical (i.e. have to be memorised, and are most often regarded as 2 different expressions, such as "to cover"/"coverage") is language-dependent and has little to do with the meaning. For instance, French language uses much action nouns ("J'aime le ski."), English language, less ("I like skiing."), and Mongolian even less. Verbs and nouns are not used the same way, but the way they are used is language-dependent and this is is also true for different forms of the verb: a participle ("covering"), an infinitive ("to cover") or a verb in a finite mood ("covers") are not used the same way either, but are not treated for that as different definedMeanings. In English, the similarity between nouns of actions and verbs is such that many nouns of actions have exactly the same form as the present participle. For instance "sewing" can be a verb or a noun. Even in French and English, there are verbs with no corresponding noun of action (usually because it wouldn't be very useful.), such as "bruler", "to burn": if needed the infinitive or the present participle is just used instead, and this doesn't mean that the concept doesn't exist in the language. It already happens in OmegaWiki that a definedMeaning is expressed by words of different word classes according to the language. See for instance DefinedMeaning:uncircumcised_(1280465), DefinedMeaning:ainsi_(1290998), DefinedMeaning:happy_birthday_(1307861) (In this last DM, word classes are not written but some of these exclamative sentences are verbal, other ones are nominal.)

In practice, this proposal would probably consist in merging many definedMeanings 2 by 2, such as DefinedMeaning:hate_(6573) and DefinedMeaning:hatred_(6587).

Of course, in such an hypothesis, noting the word class would become crucial. And we should be careful that often a noun of action came to refer also to the result of the action, such as "construction" which means both the action of constructing and the constructed building, so this is of course another definedMeaning. Sometimes, one of the 2 words got a more specialised meaning than the other one, in which case 2 definedMeanings are also needed, such as "to manage"/"management". --Fiable.biz 07:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear fiable.biz, the MANY parts-of-speech of ONE concept are NOT identical in meaning! The "one" concept is a GENERIC-concept and the many word-classes and inflexions of them denote SPECIFIC-concepts of this one generic-concept. It would be impossible for OmegaWiki to store all the specific-concepts denoted with a word-class. I found that the greek-verb has more than 200! OmegaWiki must store the inflected-forms of the names of the word-classes of the generic-concepts. Also we see languages (because they are created unconsciously and independently) not to express the same specifics (same inflexions) for the same generics. These generic-concepts are the COMMON entities languages have. And ONLY relying on these we can correctly translate meanings among languages.

Last, OmegaWiki must not make the same mistake with wikipedia. Concepts are subjective entities. There is never only ONE true. The "every one can edit" in my opinion could become "every one can edit and express himself". But if we want to communicate, everything we express MUST be defined, of course subjectively and not anonymously! --Synagonism 09:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't really understand the purpose of this idea. Wouldn't it make the DefinedMeaning rather large, complex and unwieldy? And what would be the exact definition of a DM that includes the verb "hate" and the noun "hatred"? I don't think it would be intuitive and helpful to deviate so much from the traditional dictionary structure. --Tosca 17:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Synonyms for 'colonna'

Happy belated New Year, friends Romans and country man ;-),

Searching for the Castillian/Italian expression colonna we find in my opinion too few extensive definitions. Just added Dutch. English, French, German and more natives are cordially invited to add theirs to improve this very fine project. Thanks in advance. Cheers or better said: Don't Worry, Be Happy,
ClubFavolosa(TFD) 01:01, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Cannot add meanings in another language

If I try to add a new meaning in a new language to an existing espression such as Expression:Karo or Expression:Eckstein, which I do in the last section, it is not stored when I klick the [Save] button, while other changes to the existing expressions are. I all the time did three things: Set the language in the headline, set the language in the DM, and enter a definition text in the DM. --Purodha Blissenbach 11:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

It did work, but maybe you are not aware of the new system where only one language is displayed on a page.

For example, when you go to Eckstein, it shows only the definitions in German (http://www.omegawiki.org/index.php?title=Expression:Eckstein)

if you then hover over "German ▿", a dropdown box should appear (otherwise, refresh your cache) and you can then click on Kölsch.

it should take you to the page http://www.omegawiki.org/index.php?title=Expression:Eckstein&explang=134 , where your definitions are.

(please delete the extra definitions that you have created)

So, if you create a definition in a new language, you then have to switch to that new language, by using the dropdown box.

More on this at http://omegawiki.blogspot.com/2012/01/one-language-at-time.html

--Kip 16:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Hallo? Ist hier Jemand? --Kip 21:36, 28 February 2012 (CET)

"is" and related matters

Hello, I am new here and am trying to build the Turkish language entries. Turkish is an agglutinative language, so certain words in other languages correspond to suffixes in Turkish. I am thinking of the word "is" in English (I really am at the beginning!) which can be translated either with the -dir suffix (in more formal speech) or with nothing at all (zero copula in linguistic terminology). For example "Deniz mavidir" means "[The] sea is (always, characteristically) blue". More informally, you would say "Deniz mavi", which means "[The] sea [is] blue". Given this background, I have a few questions:

• Can expressions be in OmegaWiki be suffixes as well? If yes, is there a rule on writing them? (e.g., can I spell the Turkish translation for "is" as "-dir"?)
• Given that the translation of "is" can be nothing at all in Turkish, how can this be represented in OmegaWiki? The absence of a synonym does not mean absence of an entry in the database, but that the synonym is a nothing. In fact I think in some linguistics texts, the zero copula is represented with the Ø symbol. Should we create a "Ø" expression to this end? It would not mean the Ø letter but a signifier that is implicit.

--InfoCan 16:42, 8 March 2012 (CET)

For suffixes and prefixes: yes, we have for example Expression:Gehirn- and Expression:-ibility. --Kip 18:51, 8 March 2012 (CET)

For the zero copula, I have no idea. --Kip 18:51, 8 March 2012 (CET)

What about " " or better "‌" (the double quotes are just to show the effect) respectively &nbsp; or &zwnj; ClubFavolosa(TFD) 00:29, 9 March 2012 (CET)

This does not look like a good solution to me, it'll look like there is a bug. An explicit symbol, as proposed by InfoCan, would therefore make more sense. --Kip 09:34, 9 March 2012 (CET)

The empty set symbol Ø represents the null morpheme in linguistics. Not only is it used for the zero copula (see some examples I found on the Web at [1][2][3]) but it is also used to denote that a morpheme is invisible as in some irregular words in English that do not take an -s in the plural:

cats = cat + -s = ROOT ("cat") + PLURAL

sheep = sheep + Ø = ROOT ("sheep") + PLURAL

So, using the Ø as an expression here in OmegaWiki would be very appropriate. --InfoCan 20:39, 9 March 2012 (CET)

Currently Omegawiki doesn't even have conjugations and so the "is" problem is not a pressing issue in my opinion. It all depends on how conjugations and declinations are going to be implemented in Omegawiki and that's quite a difficult thing.

Also, a dictionary can never really explain all the grammatical subtleties of a language, that's what grammar books are for. That "is" can be omitted in some cases in Turkish (same is true for Latin) is not really information suited for a dictionary entry. We could create a Grammar Appendix for those kind of things. --Tosca 12:50, 10 March 2012 (CET)

One other thing: An expression is supposed to be a word (or a word form) in a specific language. Expression:Ø would link to many DMs, in many languages just to show that something can be left out? Doesn't strike me as very useful. --Tosca 12:55, 10 March 2012 (CET)

Indeed, "is" is not currently defined in OmegaWiki, but my point applies to "be" just as well. My original point remains, the translation of "be" in Turkish is the zero copula. By not putting an entry for Turkish in the translations/synonyms list to indicate this fact, you would make Turkish look no different from any other language that nobody got around to putting an entry for. Absence of data should not mean that the data is a nothing. The fact that "be" corresponds to a null morpheme in Turkish is useful information and this is a different situation from the fact that there is no word for "shallow" in French. As for Ø having multiple meanings, that would be no different than any other word with multiple meanings. --InfoCan 21:59, 10 March 2012 (CET)

Vowel harmony

Moving along in the Swadesh list, I have another Turkish-related question, which pertains to other languages with vowel harmony. "Not", as a verb modifier in English, is an infix in Turkish. For example "Ali geldi" means "Ali came" and "Ali gelmedi" means "Ali [did] not come". So, the tranlation of "not" is "-me-" in Turkish. Because of vowel harmony, certain suffixes can be modified depending on the vowel of the preceding syllable. For example, "Ali aldı" means "Ali took" and "Ali almadı" means "Ali [did] not take". So, the tranlation of "not" can also be "-ma-" in Turkish. Semantically "-ma-" and "-me-" are exact synonyms but syntactically they are not interchangeable. Can/should this situation be indicated in OmegaWiki? --InfoCan 17:10, 8 March 2012 (CET)

According to me, but that is open to discussions,

• "-ma-" and "-me-" should be indicated as exact synonyms
• A "usage" or "note" annotation should be introduced and used to explain the specific use of each one. We already have an annotation called "usage", which could be used that way, but I am not happy with this one because it is a "simple text annotation" and not a "translatable text annotation", which prevents e.g. to explain the use of a Turkish word in English.
• So I propose a new annotation, which would be a translatable text (like etymologies), and I don't know how to call it. --Kip 09:38, 9 March 2012 (CET)

Can't we just move Annotation - Plaintext - Usage to Translateable Text? --Tosca 12:25, 10 March 2012 (CET)

In Latin, the English possessive "'s" is translated by a genitive case "-i", "-ae", "-is" etc., according to the declension, so that there are several suffixes meaning "'s", according to the inflexion group (declension). Even in English, it can be "'s" or just " ' " (apostrophe) if the word already ends with an s. This problem is extremely common, both for inflectional morphemes (like "-i", "-ae", "-is"…) and for lexicographic morphemes, like "-tion" ("action"), "-sion" ("evasion"), "-ing" ("firing"), "-al" ("withdrawal") etc., all meaning an action. I already proposed there to treat this with inflexion but nobody answered anything. :-( I'm happy this question is dealt with now. :-) To my mind, as Kip wrote, it should be treated as synonyms when it is lexicographic (i.e. when this creates a new word, present in a normal dictionary) but such a treatment wouldn't be adequate when it is inflectional, because the reader should be able to access the rule (vowel harmony, declension etc.) even if the reader is a translation machine. --Fiable.biz 22:51, 11 March 2012 (CET)

So, in situations where a word in one language corresponds to an affix in another language, are you suggesting that the SynTrans table should list not the inflectional morpheme ("-me-" or "-ma-" for the Turkish example I gave above), but a link to a grammatical rule? For example "not" as a verbal negation word in English, may have to be linked to the Turkish grammatical rule named "Turkish_verb_negation_rule" which may say something like "if vowel of last syllable of verb root is one of [eiöü], then add "-me-" to verb root, if vowel of last syllable is one of [aıou], then add "-ma-" ". --InfoCan 18:19, 12 March 2012 (CET)

You are probably right in suggesting affixes should be listed. But should all their forms be listed? A problem is that there are quite many declensions, sub-declensions and exceptions in languages as Latin or ancient Greek, so that an exhaustive list, though possible (and realised in grammar books) may be a bit long. My main point however is that such a list is not enough and a note readable only by humans is not sufficient: a computer reading Omegawiki should be said that the Mongolian suffix "-сан" (past participle) has the 4 forms of vowel harmony according to the normal Mongolian vowel harmony rule ("-сан", "-сон", "-сөн" and "-сэн"), while the suffix "-тай" (comitative case), as an exception, only accepts 3 forms ("-тай", "-той" and "-тэй"). The same way, a computer (specially a translation machine) should learn from Omegawiki that the Latin "-ae" is the genitive of the 1st declension, "-i" the one of the second one, "-is" the one of the third one etc., not only that there are genitive forms. I think we need at least an inflexion group field, because, although it's not traditional, vowel harmony could be treated this way too: I don't know Turkish, but in Mongolian, one can say there are 4 groups of words according to their main vowel. Since affixes may be influenced both by vowels and by the last consonant, maybe it would be easier to say that a word can belong to 2 or more groups, for instance a declension group, a vowel harmony group and a last-consonnant group (This said, I don't know any example where the 3 are needed, but 2: yes.). --Fiable.biz 20:04, 12 March 2012 (CET)

Alright, let me try to summarize. We are saying that an Expression can be either a word, or a phrase, or an affix (suffix/prefix/infix) group. We can have a link to any of these from the Synonym-Translation table. If it is an affix group, its name will be generic (for example "Turkish verb negation suffix group", not "-me-"). It will have a Defined Meaning, which will be a simple definition like "a suffix to negate a verb". In the language-specific entry of the SynTrans table, there should be a "grammatical rule" annotation link where the grammatical rule can be detailed. Agreed? --InfoCan 20:53, 12 March 2012 (CET)

Translatewiki news

Ciao fellow editors of this great project OmegaWiki,

I noticed that one or two of you might be active @Translatewiki as well. Since a couple of weeks there is a group on professional social network LinkedIn to discuss general features, eventually even bugs that might occasionally happen. The group is simply called "Translatewiki" (without the double quotes). It's a closed group, but when you tell management you're an OmegaWiki editor management will be happy to let you enter and join our 'Discussion' section and more.

Cheers, Klaas V 00:57, 9 March 2012 (CET)

Byebye identical_meaning

I've just removed the column "identical meaning". I believe it has been more confusing than useful, for several reasons:

• it looks ugly (for everybody) and confusing (for new users)
• many people seem to have different expectations of what it is for. If we all have different definitions of what it is, then it is useless (for example, for me it does not make sense to indicate non-identical translations when we already have identical translations)
• due to the html nature of a checkbox, it is buggy. Basically, in html, when the user click on save, a checkbox sends a value only if it is clicked. If, for some reason, the server does not send all the input of the form, it will be assumed that the checkbox are unchecked, and all the identical meaning will be set to 0, as had happened many times before.
• even if a definition has non-identical translations, then, we have a proposition of a word in a foreign language that could be used, but that word is not related to its actual definition. That is to say, there is no indication of how the translation is different from the current DM. So in my opinion it is useless the way it is implemented now.

What should be implemented is a separate "non-identical translation" section, where a link is made to other DMs with close meanings for certain languages (I am not sure yet of the actual implementation, but the idea would be to have a definition of the non-identical translation, to know how it is different from the current dm). It should also be separated from the real translations in the database. --Kip 12:18, 10 March 2012 (CET)

Yes! I never liked that thing. It encourages peoeple to add too many translations that are vaguely related to the definition and that makes a DM bloated and useless. --Tosca 12:28, 10 March 2012 (CET)

I think related and exact synonyms can both easily be stored in the same database, doing this requires only a marginal investment of resources. However, display and editability are important considerations, otherwise the editors and users would get overwhelmed. I glanced at some major online thesauruses, they are all organized slightly differently, they may inspire us for a good design here. See the "eat" entry at thesaurus.com [4], infoplease.com [5], thefreedictionary.com [6], Macmillan [7], Collins [8] and Merriam-Webster [9]. So until a better user interface can be designed, I think Kip should hold onto the existing data of related words. Let's discuss this more. --InfoCan 14:19, 14 March 2012 (CET)

Yes but "identical meaning" is not about related and exact synonyms, but about approximate and exact translations. I don't know any dictionary that proposes approximate translations...

For related synonyms, we already have what we call "relations" (hypernyms, hyponyms, etc.), which have the advantage to (1) have a name which allows to specify what type of relation applies and (2) link a DM to another DM, so that we can see, for their definitions, how they differ.

What we could do is introduce a relation called "near synonym". This would already be better than the current non-identical translation (since it links to a DM, and not just gives a word), or the "related terms" relation that we got from Gemet. However, the problem would be to agree on an objective definition of what a "near synonym" is... hypernyms and hyponyms (and meronyms and holonyms) have the advantage to have a clear definition.

P.S. with relations: At the moment, if we specify that A is an antonym of B, the relation that B is also an antonym of A is not automatically created. Same with A hypernym of B which should automatically create the relation B is a hyponym of A. This is one of my many projects for the future... (of course anybody can learn php and do it...) --Kip 19:09, 14 March 2012 (CET)

I think for "near synonym" information to be stored, we need to define a concept tree. For example the word "eat" can have the definitions of 1) "consume food" and 2) "destroy over time". These belong to the following concepts (actually, this is how the Oxford English Dictionary does it):

1. the external world > the living world > food and drink > food > consumption of food or drink > eating > eat [verb (transitive)]
2. the external world > matter > bad condition of matter > cause bad condition in [verb (transitive)]

(1) would contain "eat", "feed" (intransitive) and "consume", while (2) would contain "eat", "corrode", "erode".

The concept would be an attribute of the DM. --InfoCan 19:20, 14 March 2012 (CET)

I have just been struggling with a case of a near synonym. It seemed to me that I could get around the problem by using hypernym and holonyms but then I became uncertain. I am realizing that I have not understood well some of these relation terms and need some concrete examples. If you could assist me with my questions below, it might also help with finding solutions to the broader subject of near synonyms.

In Turkish there are separate words for "sister of mother" (teyze), "sister of father" (hala), "wife of uncle" (yenge). In English all these concepts are expressed with one word, aunt. So aunt is a near-synonym of these three Turkish words.

• Would it be correct to label aunt a hypernym of teyze ?
  • yes, a "sister of mother" is an "aunt".
• Would it be correct to call "relative" a holonym for teyze?
  • No, I think in this case it is still a hypernym. A "sister of mother" is a "relative". It could only work in the case you mention if we had a definition for the plural "relatives", like "the group of people who are related by blood or law to someone". teyze would be a holonym of that group. This could work maybe with family.
• Should teyze also be in the class of "relative"? (If so, isn't class redundant with holonym?)
  • Class is a bit redundant with hypernym, but the aim is different. I tried to explain it there: Help:Class. A class is only useful if we want to add some class attributes.
    • I am confused. "Relative" is one of the choices under the Class dropdown menu, but does not appear in the list of used classes shown here [10]. Or is this a bug resulting from "relative" being a synonym of "relation"?
      • See [11] It seems that the (ugly) class viewer does not use English as default. If you want to start with learning some php, rewriting this page could be a nice newbie exercise ;-) --Kip 16:36, 19 March 2012 (CET)
    • I am still not clear. What are the class-specific attributes of "relative" (or "släkting" as it is called in the database)? (sorry, I don't think I will have time to learn php in the near future) --InfoCan 17:11, 19 March 2012 (CET)
      • In this case, it is the relation "partners with", which is available only when a DM is added to the class "relative". --Kip 18:41, 19 March 2012 (CET)
        • How was the relation "partners with" attached to the class "relative"? I do not see it mentioned in DefinedMeaning:släkting_(6740). --InfoCan 15:06, 21 March 2012 (CET) And, for DefinedMeaning:niece_(6735), where do the relation terms "is part of theme" and "related term" come from (they are not among the Relations choices)? --InfoCan 17:39, 21 March 2012 (CET)
• The relation term "partners with" is defined as "goes together on the same level". In this context, how am I to interpret "goes together on the same level" for the concept of "sister of mother": brother of mother, sister of father, or husband of sister of mother?
  • I think that here, "partner" in the sense of "married with" is meant. So I'd say "husband of sister of mother", but I've never used or seen this "partner with" before.
• As meronyms, should I list all family relative terms or a perhaps a subset of them?
  • same as for holonyms.

Would entering the above information satisfactorily resolve the relationship between "teyze" and "aunt"? Can you think of an example where hypernyms, holonyms etc. cannot help resolve a near synonym situation? --InfoCan 21:11, 17 March 2012 (CET)

Regarding entering all terms or only a subset, it should be kept in mind that at some point, transitivity will be implemented. i.e. the possibility to see relations in the form of a tree, as is done in WordNet.

So, this means that it is best to enter only direct hypernyms, such as a "father" is a "man" and a "man" is a "human", but not indirect hypernyms such as a "father" is a "human", since this can be deduced (by transitivity) from the two others.

For an example with holonyms, maybe: "father" has for holonym "parents" (plural), which has for holonym "family". --Kip 11:03, 19 March 2012 (CET)

It seems that for objects or people, near synonymy can maybe always be expressed by hypernyms, holonyms, etc.

But for more abstract concepts, such as feelings, I'm not sure how this works out. What would be the relation between "happy" and "delighted"? --Kip 11:08, 19 March 2012 (CET)

I am not sure about happy and delighted, because the definition of delighted is "very pleased". Because this definition is a qualification of "pleased", it should be a subset of all the variations of the "pleased" state. Therefore, I think pleased is arguably a hypernym of delighted.

As an example for a holonym, I can think of exuberant, which is defined as "joyously unrestrained and enthusiastic". Because you need both adjectives to define the word, exuberant should be a holonym for "joyously unrestrained" (which we can further breakup as joyful and unrestrained) and enthusiastic, it seems to me. --InfoCan 15:22, 19 March 2012 (CET)

I don't think that hypernyms / holonyms apply to adjectives.

However, we could get some ideas from WordNet. See http://wordnet.princeton.edu , "Relations". --Kip 16:41, 19 March 2012 (CET)

• Going back to teyze ("mother's sister"), until the "non-identical translation" section is implemented, I do not enter "teyze" as a Turkish translation of "aunt", and I do not enter "aunt" as an English translation of "teyze", right? Or do I, but explain the exact meaning in a usage note? --InfoCan 19:04, 19 March 2012 (CET)
  • For Turkish, no, you wouldn't enter "teyze" as a translation for "aunt".
  • For English I am not sure. I think it would not be wrong to add the translation, considering that a "mother's sister" is always called an "aunt" in English (it is also called a "maternal aunt", which also includes mother's sister-in-law, so this is not exactly like Turkish). Then, when we consult "Expression:aunt", we would see "mother's sister", "father's sister" and "the sister or sister-in-law of a parent". This is not wrong, but maybe too many? --Kip 09:05, 20 March 2012 (CET)

Requests for comment/Adopt OmegaWiki

I made a comment at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Adopt_OmegaWiki regarding the adoption of OmegaWiki by MediaWiki. If you could make your views known there, perhaps a consensus will emerge. --InfoCan 22:14, 10 March 2012 (CET)

uw_transactions table in SQL export?

I just refreshed my local OmegaWiki database copy from the .sql export provided on the Development page, and one of the differences I noted when compared to my own copy (dating from August 19, 2011) was that the uw_transactions table is no longer included in the output. Many other tables reference the uw_transactions table with add_transaction_id and remove_transaction_id columns, so I think including it in the export is necessary to achieve full data integrity. Was there a good reason to remove it, other than saving space? László 14:43, 18 March 2012 (CET)

I removed it recently from the dump because I discovered that it contains the IP of users, which I think should not be made public.

I am not sure what would be the best solution... --Kip 10:29, 19 March 2012 (CET)

Would you be willing to add this to the daily export?

mysql -u username -pPassword --execute="SELECT transaction_id, user_id, '0.0.0.0' as user_ip, timestamp, comment FROM uw_transactions" -X omegawiki > uw_transactions.sql.xml

This assumes the database is named "omegawiki". Also note the "-X" parameter: this enables XML output, which eases importing into an existing schema. The IP column is redacted by filling it with "0.0.0.0". This leaves out the CREATE statement for the table, but that shouldn't be too hard to export.

But how do I merge the obtained XML file with the .sql backup of the other tables? --Kip 19:03, 19 March 2012 (CET)

I would have suggested providing the file as a separate download, but your ultimate solution is even better. Thanks! László 13:36, 31 March 2012 (CEST)

I think I'll rather change the code so that it saves the IP only when there is no user_id (as is done in MediaWiki [12]). --Kip 13:44, 20 March 2012 (CET)

It is now in the dump again, with the IP of registered users blanked. --Kip 18:39, 23 March 2012 (CET)

Superb! Downloading now. László 13:36, 31 March 2012 (CEST)

WordNet?

WordNet is a free resource of the English language that is the product of years of labor and has been used by many other linguistic resources. There is a free French version being developed as well [13]. (Versions in other languages do not have free licenses.)

In WordNet, words have definitions, lexical relation annotations (like hypernyms, attributes, similar meanings, example sentences, troponyms,sentence frames, etc.). To give you an idea of the data, here is the entry for the word "long" [14].

The idea of doing a bulk import of it was discussed in 2009 here [15] but I couldn't tell what became the outcome. Why not do it here? (Other than the reason that there is only one of Kip!) WordNet may not be as comprehensive as the Oxford English Dictionary but it is quite good, any minor imperfections can always be fixed here, and especially the lexical relation annotations are very extensive. Yes, integrating the new info with the old one would be time consuming, but it would still be faster than doing it by hand (the WordNet web client is very very slow). I am imagining an import tool with two panels, the left panel having the different meanings of an Expression in OmegaWiki, the right one having different meanings of an Expression in WordNet and you would click on boxes to indicate which entry matches which one and to select which subset of the information to import into OW. --InfoCan 17:33, 18 March 2012 (CET)

Reading the discussion you linked, it appears that the main issue is the license of WordNet. It is freely available, but the attribution clause from the license seems quite strict: Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and database and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you agree to comply with the following copyright notice and statements, including the disclaimer, and that the same appear on ALL copies of the software, database and documentation, including modifications that you make for internal use or for distribution. IANAL, but that doesn't sound very "remix-friendly" to me. László 18:05, 18 March 2012 (CET)

That shouldn't be a problem. Omegawiki's licenses, GFD and CC-BY, also require attribution to the original content creator(s) in all copies and modifications of the software and data. --InfoCan 18:21, 18 March 2012 (CET)

buggy DefinedMeanings?

Take a look at these: DefinedMeaning:ellas_(7765), DefinedMeaning:ellos_(7766), DefinedMeaning:skeleton_crew_(7767) I ran into these while closely examining the database structure. A total of 41 possibly duplicated defined meanings can be retrieved using this SQL:

select dm.meaning_text_tcid, dm.defined_meaning_id
from (
 select meaning_text_tcid, count(*) num
 from uw_defined_meaning
 where meaning_text_tcid > 0
 group by meaning_text_tcid
 having num > 1
) duplicated_dms
join uw_defined_meaning dm
on duplicated_dms.meaning_text_tcid = dm.meaning_text_tcid
order by dm.meaning_text_tcid;

Below is the complete list. I've put each "set" on a separate row. The first number is the meaning_text_tcid, the second is the defined_meaning_id, linked to the article. They are redlinks, but when you click them you see the old data anyway. I have crossed out the defined meanings that I think should be deleted.

7012, DefinedMeaning:(7206) 7012, DefinedMeaning:(7208) the former has no expressions
7586, DefinedMeaning:(7786) 7586, DefinedMeaning:(7787) the former has no expressions
7812, DefinedMeaning:(8013) 7812, DefinedMeaning:(8014) 7812, DefinedMeaning:(8015) None have expressions
8171, DefinedMeaning:(8370) 8171, DefinedMeaning:(8371) the former has no expressions
145447, DefinedMeaning:(7323) 145447, DefinedMeaning:(7324) the former has no expressions
146000, DefinedMeaning:(7728) 146000, DefinedMeaning:(7729) the former has no expressions
147104, DefinedMeaning:(8086) 147104, DefinedMeaning:(8087) the former has no expressions
149545, DefinedMeaning:(7482) 149545, DefinedMeaning:(7483) the former has no expressions
150591, DefinedMeaning:(8255) 150591, DefinedMeaning:(8256) the latter has no expressions
152588, DefinedMeaning:(7792) 152588, DefinedMeaning:(7793) the former has one expression, but it does not match the definition
152615, DefinedMeaning:(7207) 152615, DefinedMeaning:(7209) the former has no expressions
152716, DefinedMeaning:(7325) 152716, DefinedMeaning:(7326) the former has no expressions
152773, DefinedMeaning:(7396) 152773, DefinedMeaning:(7397) the former has no expressions
152803, DefinedMeaning:(7627) 152803, DefinedMeaning:(7628) both have at least one valid expression, the latter has more, so the former should be merged into the latter.
152901, DefinedMeaning:(7543) 152901, DefinedMeaning:(7541) 152901, DefinedMeaning:(7542) The first two have no expressions
152946, DefinedMeaning:(7591) 152946, DefinedMeaning:(7592) The latter has one expression, that the former also has.
153100, DefinedMeaning:(7765) 153100, DefinedMeaning:(7766) 153100, DefinedMeaning:(7767) The former one has one expression that should be merged into the latter; the middle one is way off and has a few expressions that should probably be merged into one of the DM's matching "They". Probably a lot less work overall to just delete it, though.
153206, DefinedMeaning:(7899) 153206, DefinedMeaning:(7900) the former has no expressions
153407, DefinedMeaning:(8413) 153407, DefinedMeaning:(8414) the former has no expressions

How do we clean this up?

László 18:34, 18 March 2012 (CET)

It was due to a bug that we had some years ago...

I'll see what I can do to correct this in the database. Thanks for reporting the problem! --Kip 10:40, 19 March 2012 (CET)

I just noticed that I need to put brackets around the id in order to make a proper link; fixed that. As for how to proceed: I think the best way to merge the problematic DM's above would be to pick the DM whose describing expression_id most closely resembles the meaning (and indicate it by marking it in the list), and then write a custom SQL script that moves all expressions from the other one(s) to it, and deletes the empty DM's entirely. The remaining cleanup (i.e., removing clearly incorrect expressions) can then be done manually through the web interface. László 22:05, 1 April 2012 (CEST)

I don't think that merging is a solution. From what I saw above, the DMs that share the same definitions have nothing in common (regarding the translations). The solution seems to be to delete the faulty DMs from the database (I think the ones above are already deleted from the web interface).

The reason why I'm still waiting a bit is that I am changing the way to access DM, so that the links will not be "DefinedMeaning:(7591)" but rather "DefinedMeaning:7591" (as you wrote earlier). DMs are only numbers after all, and the text that is shown next to the number is sometimes wrong and has led to some confusions in the past. The php code for that is ready, I just need to run a script on the database to move the DM pages and talk pages. However, my private life is quite busy at the moment, so I'm not sure how long that will take. --Kip 10:03, 2 April 2012 (CEST)

I don't think that's true, because both 7765 and 7767 can be examined in the web interface (or did you mean something else by "deleted from the web interface"?). More importantly, where 7765 has only the (IMO valid) expression "minimal crew", 7767 has three others. So in this case, deleting 7765 would remove valid information.

Regardless how we fix this, can I assume that afterwards, there will be no more DefinedMeanings sharing a single meaning_text_tcid? In other words, can we add a unique constraint to the uw_defined_meaning table on the meaning_text_id column? László 07:41, 3 April 2012 (CEST)

Ok, forget my remark, I picked the wrong example.

Yes, we could add a "unique" on the meaning_text_id column. --Kip 09:15, 3 April 2012 (CEST)

Alternative organization for Example Sentence

I think an example sentence is as important as a definition in giving the sense of a DM. Sometimes two definitions can be written for an Expression, and because they are not stated the same way it may not be clear what the creator of each entry meant. (Example: is "one: An unspecified individual" the same sense as "one: Any person in general, including the speaker"? I couldn't decide.) Example sentences would help us decide.

But more philosophically, I think that the sense of a word is the same thing as its correct usage, that is, a computer program that can use a word correctly (in translating from another language, for example) does not need to "understand" it, as long as it conforms to the patterns of usage observed for that word. I assume that OmegaWiki's design goals include the facilitation of computer-supported applications.

When I write an example sentence in English for a DM of an expression, I try to translate it to Turkish as well, to document how the same concept is expressed in the two languages. However, there is nothing to indicate that the example sentences that I write are translations of each other. Sometimes I write two example sentences each, and it is not necessarily clear which sentence is the translation of which one.

I suggest that the example sentences be organized differently in the relational database of OW. Here is how it would work in practice. Say you enter an example sentence Sent1 for a SynTrans ST1 in a language L1; after you save it, you can go back to this sentence and write an associated sentence Sent2 for it and select another SynTrans ST2 (in language L2) associated with the DM. When you do that, the language L2 of the ST2 you chose will be associated with Sent2, and Sent2 will be associated with ST2. Next time you look at this DM, you will see Sent1+L1 and Sent2+L2 associated with ST1, and also Sent1+L1 and Sent2+L2 associated with ST2. (I hope this is clear!) I think the way to implement this idea is to have a SentenceMeaning entity that can be associated with one or more Sentence entities (keys: sentence_text and lang). The SentenceMeaning entities will have a many-to-many relationship with Syntrans entities.

This way you can see which example sentence is meant to be a translation of which one in a different language.

--InfoCan 17:09, 22 March 2012 (CET)

Yes, also related to this idea Functionality_wanted_..#Namespace_for_sentences and also this International_Beer_Parlour/Archive20101106#Example_sentences. --Kip 18:30, 22 March 2012 (CET)

Reading the previous postings on this idea, I noticed the suggestion that a given sentence can be associated with more than SynTrans, which is also a great idea. This way you would accumulate a large number of manually parsed sentences, a great resource. --InfoCan 19:01, 22 March 2012 (CET)

Deletions

You may have noticed that I am deleting lots of DMs at the moment. I'm beginning to wonder whether I haven't deleted more stuff than I have added... However, I think it is necessary to delete stuff that is bad/useless/confusing because it makes Omegawiki look bad to visitors and diminishes its usefulness. Better to have a small, well-maintained database than a big one full of messy data.

Most stuff I deleted belonged to GEMET, the environmental database which served as the starting point for Omegawiki. It contained many DMs not suited for a dictionary and faulty definitions and/or translation. Well, it still does. Clean-up isn't finished yet.

Another thing I am deleting at the moment is the class conjugation. I'm very sorry for all the work that went into it, but this isn't how it's supposed to be. Inflections (e.g. conjugations, declensions, plurals) are definitely a feature that we want, but it needs to be implemented via software. One of the conjugations DMs I deleted had the definition "Past participle of possess". The problem is that "possess" has several meanings (for example: to possess a car, to be possessed by a ghost, to have sexual intercourse with) and you can't add translation without knowing what exactly is meant. And I'm wondering if it even a good idea to translate inflected forms. --Tosca 19:39, 24 March 2012 (CET)

You are right. Regarding inflected forms, for example, the simple past tense of lie is lay (last night I lay in bed unable to sleep), while lay in the present tense has a different meaning (I now lay the baby on the bed). --InfoCan 20:28, 24 March 2012 (CET)

You have my support! Thanks for doing that boring job that nobody dares/cares doing. --Kip 21:14, 24 March 2012 (CET)

Regarding GEMET, I notice many expressions whose meaning is simply the sum of the meaning of their component words, such as "agricultural_policy", "abandoned industrial site", or "atmospheric ozone". I would like to help, but want to make sure we have the same criteria. Do you delete these types of DMs? --InfoCan 02:33, 2 April 2012 (CEST)

Meta expressions in definitions

On the page Help:Defining_a_new_word it says "Do not use "meta-expressions" such as "the word" or "the expression". However, there are some words that cannot be defined without doing that, like "and" (A conjunction to separate the last item in a list from the previous items). Also, some definitions need to be given at a meta-level, indicating the meaning in relation to who is saying it (for example, "this": Something near the speaker that he or she is refering to). It seems to me that if such "meta" definitions are unavoidable, they should be displayed differently from a "normal" definition, otherwise there could be ambiguities ("podium": The thing a speaker stands behind. The "speaker" mentioned in this def is not the speaker of the word, it is a speaker in general giving a lecture). My understanding of a 'normal' definition is one that can substitute for the word it defines and the sentence that used the word still makes sense (e.g., "car": A vehicle with four wheels. Substituting this definition for "car" in the sentence "His car can go very fast" results in a sentence that still makes (almost) sense.). I propose that if a definition does not work that way, then it is a "meta-definition" and should be written inside square brackets (for example, "and": [a conjunction to separate the last item in a list from the previous items]). This would provide some consistency and probably make OmegaWiki more useful for computer-supported linguistic applications in the future. --InfoCan 15:20, 28 March 2012 (CEST)

We had similar discussions (and conclusions) here DefinedMeaning talk:no (5576) and above in this page (see the section about Chinese characters).

So I agree to indicate these definitions with square brackets, and amend the page Help:Defining_a_new_word to reflect this. --Kip 11:17, 29 March 2012 (CEST)

WMF support?

I am copying the following comment from Meta:strategy to here as it is of interest to the community. --InfoCan 01:23, 2 April 2012 (CEST)

A comment from me in my role as WMF Trustee: OmegaWiki is clearly part of the core Wikimedia mission, and could be suppported by the WMF if that is desired by the community here. It sporadically comes up as an issue that we should consider - most recently at the Board meeting we just concluded in Berlin. Warmly, Sj 07:51, 1 April 2012 (CEST)

• As one member of the community here I would like to state my desire for WMF supporting OmegaWiki. I would like to see OW develop to its full potential, and I can see that with the limited resources that are available, it will take a long time for that to happen. I can feel that once a critical stage is reached (a faster server response time, more functionality, more content) Omegawiki will become appealing to more volunteer developers and content creators, as well as more end-users. OmegaWiki needs support to reach this point as soon as possible. I believe that WikiMedia Foundation is the best suited to provide this support. OmegaWiki aims to make lexical information freely accessible to all, in a non-commercial way, and this goal is one that is already supported by WMF with the Wiktionary. I also believe that WMF has the wisdom to appreciate that OW represents the next generation of Wiktionary. --InfoCan 01:31, 2 April 2012 (CEST)

• Same as InfoCan ;-) --Kip 10:05, 2 April 2012 (CEST)
  • I was asked off-wiki whether the above could possible have been an April Fool's joke :-O The answer is, no. The date was a coincidence  :-) I am working to revive the new project creation process. Could interested people here please choose a single wiki page to use to consolidate related discussions? OW is the most obvious project to start with. Sj 04:48, 3 April 2012 (CEST)
    • Done, copied to Meta:WMF support. Further discussions will take place there. --InfoCan 20:08, 3 April 2012 (CEST)
    • See further developments there. --InfoCan 16:44, 25 April 2012 (CEST)

Meta:Requests for deletion

I made a partial list of GEMET words (just those starting with the letter A) that I thought should be deleted. Since I am rather new here, I didn't want to delete them all without getting some feedback and thought it would be more efficient to review them in bulk rather than place {{attention}} templates for each DM separately. They are listed in Meta:Requests for deletion (RFD). I copied that page from Wiktionary and adapted it to here, as I thought we would eventually need such a page here also. Feel free to further modify the RFD page as you see fit (or discuss its design/functionality in its Discussion page). --InfoCan 20:30, 10 April 2012 (CEST)

Spanish: Ser and Ester

Could somebody who speaks Spanish please improve the definitions of the verbs ser and estar and provide example sentences that distinguish their meanings? A usage note would be useful, as in the Wiktionary [16]. --InfoCan 20:10, 11 April 2012 (CEST)

The same phenomenon occurs in Portuguese. I'm not sure how to define it, but I will try to describe it here.

• ser is to be in the sense of a property of the subject, usually something intrinsic to it, somewhat permanent or long-term. For example, you would use ser to say that I am Portuguese, because that's an "attribute" of myself, not a transitory state. The same would occur in less obvious and not always univocous cases, such as saying I am married (in the sense that I'm a married person).
• estar is to be in the sense of a somewhat transient state of the subject, such as whe I say that "I am tired".

Some examples:

I am blind: you would use "ser" to state you are a blind person, but would otherwise use "estar" if you are temporarily blind (such as after an explosion, or after having your eyes pepper-sprayed :))

I am white: "ser" for the racial context, but "estar" if you suddenly realize you are covered in white paint

I am Bill: only "ser" is admissible here

I am standing: only "estar" is admissible here, as a transient state (standing is not a characteristing of your being)

I hope this helps defining the two verbs. Malafaya 00:07, 13 April 2012 (CEST)

Thanks, I think I understand. It seems like "estar" is the direct equivalent of "to become" or "to have become" in English, like "I have become blind" (or white, or standing), but if you don't use that construction and just use "to be" then it becomes ambiguous and you can't really distinguish between these two senses in English.

This information should be stored somewhere and linked to the "ser" and "este" entries in Spanish and Portuguese. Doing this four times seems rather inefficient, if anybody were to correct my text, they would have to do four times. A better solution may be to enter this information in one centralized place and give links to it from the usage fields of these words. For now I'll do create a Help:"Ser" and "este" page and link to that page from the Portuguese and Spanish "ser" and "este" entries. When Kip returns from vacations he may suggest a better solution... --InfoCan 22:12, 13 April 2012 (CEST)

Visual dictionary

Commons has a number of diagrams (such as [17][18][19][20]) which give visual definitions of certain technical terms. I thought such pictures might be useful on OmegaWiki. I am not sure of how best to implement the idea, I am hoping to get ideas from the community. If you scroll down on the links given above, you can see that each picture has versions labeled in many languages, and also one version with just numbered labels.

Here are some ideas on how this could be implemented.

• Place all versions of these pictures on one page.
• Place the version having the numbered labels, and below have a large table where each column corresponds to a label and each row to a language. The intersection cell would have the expression of the labeled part in that language.
• Make the image with the numbered labels a clickable image. Clicking on a label would take you to the DM of the labeled part, where you can read the definition and the SynTranses.

What do you think? How should it be implemented? --InfoCan 15:49, 1 May 2012 (CEST)

What to do with GEMET definitions that are not suitable for OmegaWiki?

There are a number of definitions that were imported from GEMET that are proposed for deletion at Meta:Requests for deletion. While a few of these compound terms may be kept, most seem to be inappropriate for OmegaWiki because their meaning is the sum of the meaning of the words that make them up. Others give multiple-sentence encyclopedic information about their subject instead of a simple definition. Yet, deleting them seems a waste to me, because there is useful information there. They represent parallel corpuses (corpi?) that would be useful for training natural language processing software. I was wondering whether those GEMET definitions that are decided to be not good for Omegawiki should be moved to a different place in OmegaWiki so that information is not wasted. Perhaps a "Corpus" namespace could be created to store them? --InfoCan 19:12, 2 May 2012 (CEST)