Ryan Kaldari
| Tags | Gadgets, Languages, Structured Data, Wiktionary |
|---|---|
| Primary Session | Next Steps for Languages and Cross Project Collaboration |
| Secondary Sessions |
How should MediaWiki evolve to support the mission?
One of the greatest barriers to the spread of human knowledge is the barrier of language. While Wikipedia does a great job of supporting hundreds of languages, the amount of content available in most language Wikipedias is still paltry and has a small impact on the knowledge available to speakers of those languages. For a huge percentage of the world's population, the key to unlocking knowledge isn't discovering Wikipedia, but learning new languages. Even for English speakers, the impact of learning a new language can be life-changing and open up many new opportunities.
The Wikimedia Foundation is the steward of one of the greatest repositories of information about language in human history, Wiktionary. Unlike all other dictionaries on Earth, Wiktionary aims to define (in 172 languages) all words from all languages. In other words, not just defining English words in English and French words in French, but also French words in English, English words in French, Latin words in Swahili, Mopan Maya words in Arabic, etc. It's ambitious aim is to be the ultimate Rosetta Stone for the human species.
While Wikipedia is in some respects maturing and gradually yielding diminishing returns for more investment, Wiktionary is still a small and growing project that has yet to fulfill its potential or break into mainstream consciousness the way that Wikipedia has. While one of the impediments to Wiktionary reaching its potential is lack of structured data support, which is being worked on, there are many improvements that could be made in the meantime to improve the usefulness of the site to both readers and editors. These include converting many of the fragile gadgets and site scripts into maintainable extensions, customizing the user interface to more closely match what users expect from a dictionary site, and adding dictionary-specific tools to the editing interface. There is also unexplored potential with building apps around the Wiktionary data, including apps tailored around language learning.
Now that the Wikimedia Foundation has nearly 100 software engineers (and dozens of volunteer developers), it should explore the potential of its lesser known projects, especially Wiktionary, which has the potential to actually make a large impact on the Foundation's mission and bring more of the sum of human knowledge to more people around the globe.
