4 ms·

I really enjoyed the article, reading it more from the perspective of what 21st-century lexicography could be, less as a customer of a word game however thought

by hftf 1y ago

I really enjoyed the article, reading it more from the perspective of what 21st-century lexicography could be, less as a customer of a word game however thoughtfully designed. As a Wiktionary editor (and Android user who's also grown out of bare word-relationship puzzle games) though, it's sad that there seems to be no way to just use the end-product network as a reference, which I would love to do, but I suppose they did spend a million bucks on it. I'll also use this post to wish that more people would edit Wiktionary. It has such a good mission (information on all words) and yet there are only like 80 people editing on any given day or whatever. In some languages, it's even the best or most updated dictionary available. The barriers to entry and bureaucracy are really not high for HN audience types.

michaeld123 1y ago
I second that! I have edited a few Wiktionary pages myself, and find it's a better overall environment than Wikipedia, if you can find something meaningful to add.
Suppafly 1y ago
>I'll also use this post to wish that more people would edit Wiktionary. If it's anything like wikipedia, there is probably a reason more people aren't working on it, and it's because the existing people discourage it.
- hftf 1y ago
  I get the impulse to assume they'd be alike, but I've found that Wiktionary really isn't much like Wikipedia.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    The Wiktionary equivalent of citing sources confuses me. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclusion#Attestation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclu... Which words should be attested? Presumably only uncommon ones? And how is it done, is the "quotes" section the attestation? Is there vandalism to clean up, like people adding their own names to define themselves as awesome? Wiktionary seems to "just work", and I don't really understand what holds it together.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    I have a feeling that LLM model collapse will be accelerated as humans lose control of smaller Wiki projects like Wiktionary. They’ll be unable to effectively patrol or prevent generative updates to the project, and for all intensive porpoises, humans will be unwilling to step foot into disputes, and AI will have free reign to redefine all human knowledge.
mmooss 1y ago
> it's sad that there seems to be no way to just use the end-product network as a reference, which I would love to do, but I suppose they did spend a million bucks on it. From the OP: "This research and computational scale was made possible by $295k NSF SBIR seed funding (#2329817) and $150k Microsoft Azure compute resources." Does that NSF funding mean it's open source? Also, I'm not 100% sure that the quote applies to all the research rather than just one component of it. > I'll also use this post to wish that more people would edit Wiktionary. It has such a good mission (information on all words) ... I support open source, contribute to it, and love the spirit of Wiktionary, I don't understand the practical reality of applying 'wisdom of the crowds' to a dictionary, especially the English edition, for two reasons: Definitions are highly accurate (complete, correct, consistent), highly precise things - otherwise, what is their value? Assuming Wiktionary is descriptive - reporting the words' actual usage - it takes quite a bit of scholarship, skill, and editorial resources not to mislead people. I can't just write what I think it means - the meaning to me might not match the meaning to the person at the next desk. It takes quite a bit of research, using powerful (and sometimes expensive) tools, and understanding of lexicography to be complete and also precisely correct, including usages in places and times that are mostly unknown to any particular author. Also, writing definitions is tricky: You are using words - which have those aformentioned problems with meaning - to define words. Also, any writing anywhere can be easily misinterpreted - skill and editors are needed to avoid misunderstanding. How is the accuracy and precision problem solved? Also, in English there are already many authoritative sources, many with a century of profesional lexicography behind them by the best in the business. Some are free. There are also meta-lookup engines such as Wordnik and OneLook. Why use Wiktionary? The few times I've compared definitions or etymologies, the authoritative sources almost always exceed or equal Wiktionary (though online copies of older print editions suffer from the minimalism caused by the constraint of printing costs). Arguably, there is nothing else both unabridged and free: Oxford unabridged costs $, so does Merriam-Webster (the free edition is abridged); American Heritage is free, but has the minimalism issue I mentioned above.
- genewitch 1y ago
  I'm one of those people who says, unironically, "words have meanings." I readily argue with people who present "language is living and evolves" - sure, but in order to communicate we have to agree on a decent subset of overall definitions. I enjoy etymology, maybe too much. It's like magic, finding out what a barrow was, or how filibuster has a direct lineage to pirates (freebooters... In Dutch.) I can't afford, really, the nicer old English, scandi, frisan, Norse, etc. etymology dictionaries. I have incomplete scans that were printed and bound of some of them. I still have 6 etymology dictionaries, so I can be about as quick getting a dictionary as getting on the computer and going to !eo.
0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
Could I make a plea to make a wikitionary export easier to find/use? Assuming I can even find the magical page which hosts them, Wikipedia dumps are terribly documented and seem to incorporate shorthand which I do not recognize.
- michaeld123 1y ago
  And they are full of wiki markup, templates, and inconsistent formatting. A human brain can easily understand it, but automated parsing is impossible (pre LLM).
  - wahnfrieden 1y ago
    https://kaikki.org/index.html https://kaikki.org/index.html

by hftf 1y ago

michaeld123 1y ago

I second that! I have edited a few Wiktionary pages myself, and find it's a better overall environment than Wikipedia, if you can find something meaningful to add.

Suppafly 1y ago

>I'll also use this post to wish that more people would edit Wiktionary. If it's anything like wikipedia, there is probably a reason more people aren't working on it, and it's because the existing people discourage it.

hftf 1y ago
I get the impulse to assume they'd be alike, but I've found that Wiktionary really isn't much like Wikipedia.
- card_zero 1y ago
  The Wiktionary equivalent of citing sources confuses me. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclusion#Attestation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclu... Which words should be attested? Presumably only uncommon ones? And how is it done, is the "quotes" section the attestation? Is there vandalism to clean up, like people adding their own names to define themselves as awesome? Wiktionary seems to "just work", and I don't really understand what holds it together.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  I have a feeling that LLM model collapse will be accelerated as humans lose control of smaller Wiki projects like Wiktionary. They’ll be unable to effectively patrol or prevent generative updates to the project, and for all intensive porpoises, humans will be unwilling to step foot into disputes, and AI will have free reign to redefine all human knowledge.

mmooss 1y ago

> it's sad that there seems to be no way to just use the end-product network as a reference, which I would love to do, but I suppose they did spend a million bucks on it. From the OP: "This research and computational scale was made possible by $295k NSF SBIR seed funding (#2329817) and $150k Microsoft Azure compute resources." Does that NSF funding mean it's open source? Also, I'm not 100% sure that the quote applies to all the research rather than just one component of it. > I'll also use this post to wish that more people would edit Wiktionary. It has such a good mission (information on all words) ... I support open source, contribute to it, and love the spirit of Wiktionary, I don't understand the practical reality of applying 'wisdom of the crowds' to a dictionary, especially the English edition, for two reasons: Definitions are highly accurate (complete, correct, consistent), highly precise things - otherwise, what is their value? Assuming Wiktionary is descriptive - reporting the words' actual usage - it takes quite a bit of scholarship, skill, and editorial resources not to mislead people. I can't just write what I think it means - the meaning to me might not match the meaning to the person at the next desk. It takes quite a bit of research, using powerful (and sometimes expensive) tools, and understanding of lexicography to be complete and also precisely correct, including usages in places and times that are mostly unknown to any particular author. Also, writing definitions is tricky: You are using words - which have those aformentioned problems with meaning - to define words. Also, any writing anywhere can be easily misinterpreted - skill and editors are needed to avoid misunderstanding. How is the accuracy and precision problem solved? Also, in English there are already many authoritative sources, many with a century of profesional lexicography behind them by the best in the business. Some are free. There are also meta-lookup engines such as Wordnik and OneLook. Why use Wiktionary? The few times I've compared definitions or etymologies, the authoritative sources almost always exceed or equal Wiktionary (though online copies of older print editions suffer from the minimalism caused by the constraint of printing costs). Arguably, there is nothing else both unabridged and free: Oxford unabridged costs $, so does Merriam-Webster (the free edition is abridged); American Heritage is free, but has the minimalism issue I mentioned above.

genewitch 1y ago
I'm one of those people who says, unironically, "words have meanings." I readily argue with people who present "language is living and evolves" - sure, but in order to communicate we have to agree on a decent subset of overall definitions. I enjoy etymology, maybe too much. It's like magic, finding out what a barrow was, or how filibuster has a direct lineage to pirates (freebooters... In Dutch.) I can't afford, really, the nicer old English, scandi, frisan, Norse, etc. etymology dictionaries. I have incomplete scans that were printed and bound of some of them. I still have 6 etymology dictionaries, so I can be about as quick getting a dictionary as getting on the computer and going to !eo.

0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago

Could I make a plea to make a wikitionary export easier to find/use? Assuming I can even find the magical page which hosts them, Wikipedia dumps are terribly documented and seem to incorporate shorthand which I do not recognize.

michaeld123 1y ago
And they are full of wiki markup, templates, and inconsistent formatting. A human brain can easily understand it, but automated parsing is impossible (pre LLM).
- wahnfrieden 1y ago
  https://kaikki.org/index.html https://kaikki.org/index.html