Wiktionary Project Launched

Yeah, this list still exists :-). The P2PJ scene has been a bit quiet
recently, though.

Wikipedia, the open content wiki-based encyclopedia (gradually
approaching the 100,000 article mark in the English version) now has a
spin-off project:

	http://wiktionary.wikipedia.org/

One of Wikipedia's rules is "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" - short
articles that just contain definitions of terms are generally unwanted.
With support from Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales, some Wikipedians have
decided to create a separate project for this type of content.

Like Wikipedia, Wiktionary will be available in multiple languages.
Currently, there is only an English version, which will contain
definitions of terms from many languages, with the definitions
themselves in English. If the project scales, it could become the
largest multi-lingual dictionary.

Wikipedia's (and, as a result, Wiktionary's) main problems are
performance-related. The current software uses MySQL (with the MyISAM
tables) as a database backend, which seems to result in locking problems
during high load. Also, not all tables/queries are optimized, which is
problematic as the tables are quite huge. So the Wikipedias can be very
slow at times.

The Wikipedia software itself is still quite neat (see
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net) and useful for a variety of purposes.
It's IMHO the best wiki engine that currently exists, because of some of
its advanced features like watch lists, and because of its excellent
user interface. The code is also quite clean. I encourage all hackers to
take a look at it and help to improve it. Like on the wiki itself, new
developers are welcomed with open arms.

In related news:
- An RDF backend for Wikipedia is now available here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/feed-en.rdf (substitute en with de, fr
etc. for other languages)
- Support for TeX/LaTeX formulas on wiki pages is currently in the
works. I have taken a look at it and it's coming along nicely. This will
allow using much of the content from planetmath.org, another open
content site.
- A dedicated Wikipedia client is being developed in REBOL.
- One developer has started to work on a next generation wiki engine
written in C, as an Apache web server module. See the wikitech-l
archives for details:
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Regards,

Erik

PS: Yeah, I agree it's a bad name ;-)
-- 
Scientific Reviewer, Freelancer, Humanist -- Berlin / Germany
Phone: +49 (0)30 45491008 -- Web: http://www.humanist.de/erik
Editor of: http://www.violence.de, http://www.infoanarchy.org

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts
the particular threat to society that aroused it.
  -- Denis Diderot

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