Saturday, March 11, 2006

Babel templates and WiktionaryZ

I discussed how to proceed with WiktionaryZ with Dvortygirl. What she said was that it is time to ask people to get involved. According to the planning, we hope to have an editable version of the relational data at the end of the month. The software will be an "pre-alpha release", the importance of this release is to show that we can edit relational data in a wiki.

WiktionaryZ is a fully functional wiki. This means that we can add content; we can create users, we can create templates, categories. We should when it makes sense. And it does. When we start the coming test, we will start with people who understand what WiktionaryZ is about. This means that they understand the concept of the DefinedMeaning. An other factor that will help us decide who to ask, is the languages these people master.

WiktionaryZ will for now not be available to anonymous users. People can create a user. When they add Babel information to their user page, we will learn who has expertise in what language. The templates we start with have been copied from the en.wikipedia and, we hope we will get many more templates that will allow us to have five levels; the native speaker and level 1 to 4 to indicate the growing level of proficiency.

The scope of the test is limited; priority is in learning the edit process for relational data. What does work what does not. What improvement will be needed to make us ready to meet the "great unwashed". We will also be able to work on information that will be important in later phases, things like names of languages and other terminology that is likely to end up in the user interface...

Thanks,
GerardM

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