Wiktionary:Simple talk/Archive 1

Should this Wiktionary exist?

There is now a Wiktionary for every language that has a Wikipedia, including this Simple English one. Is this Wiktionary needed? Or does the overlap it would have with the Simple English Wikipedia, and the English Wiktionary make it obsolete?

Up until now, the Simple English Wikipedia has taken a different approach to the main English one, and the policy on dictionary definitions has been far more relaxed. Should the definitions there be moved here or left in that Wikipedia?

Another question is whether a simple English Wiktionary would be significantly different from the main English one. Is there a need to separate them? Angela 14:18, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

If the main English one is done properly, there shouldn't be any difference. I haven't had much to do with it though, so I don't know what kind of defining vocab they use. Simple Wikipedia uses a vocab very similar to that used by most dictionaries. -- Tango 15:07, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

I can't comment on the relationship between a Simple Wikipedia and a Simple Wiktionary. My predilection for an excruciatingly Victorian vocabulary would keep me away from both of them. :-) I still believe that the simple projects have a place.

As an active Wiktionarian I do see potential problems in any attempt to merge the two projects. Wiktionary has never adopted a formal "defining vocab". This would require a kind of self-discipline that many Wiktionarians may not be ready for. A number of Wiktionarians have attached considerable importance to developing a translating dictionary. Other Wiktionarians may be more interested in the historical development of words. Such information may be far more than what a reader of the Simple English Wiktionary may want. The additional information may leave him more confused than when he started. Perhaps the difference may be as great as the between the large many volumes of the complete Oxford English Dictionary and its Pocket edition. Eclecticology 19:01, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

If Simple Encyclopedia = Simple Dictionary, Simple Wikipedia is a misleading and inappropriate term. I think a distinction is important if we are called an Encyclopedia. If we are not an encyclopedia but a conglomeration of more things, our name should reflect that integral difference. --Menchi 08:47, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

The above comments went missing for a while due to a namespace changing. Brion has moved the history of the above comments to [1]. The only other page affected was Wiktionary:Recentchanges/broken. Angela 30 June 2005 07:12 (UTC)

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Should I be adding words to simple eng. wiktionary? User_talk:Charlie123

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when does a word belong to simple english?

It doesn't. Add pictures to "en.wiktionary.org" and call it done. -- 69.209.167.7 06:23, 15 September 2004 (UTC)

I would think that a Simple English Wiktionary could serve the same purpose as a learner's dictionary of English. There is a reason that learner's dictionaries are more than heavily-illustrated versions of regular dictionaries. (In fact, many learner's dictionaries don't have any pictures at all). A Simple English wiktionary would have the following properties:

1. emphasis on collocations and phrasal roles of high-frequency words.
2. use of a highly restricted vocabulary for definitions such that most definitions will be accessible to the non-fluent user without having to jump forever from one entry to another.

(maybe there are more). Thus a Simple English wiktionary would fulfill both the purpose of Simple English -- making the language accessible to adult learners -- and follow the same "rules" in terms of its content -- i.e., simplified high-frequency vocabulary. But it would not be restricted in terms of coverage; in principle an S.E.W. could contain entries for every word in the main English Wiktionary. It is the content of the definitions that would differ. -- 221.157.62.91 05:52, 10 November 2004 (UTC)

There's plenty of dictionaries out there - wikipedia is just one - but does anybody actually know what they go on about in them? I mean, what is a portmanteau? Simlple Wiktionary's aims are pretty clear: to create a dictionary that can actually be used by people with a limited knowledge of english, and there are quite a few of those, too. --H2g2bob 15:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

search page

When I write in a word which is not in Wiktionary, e.g. "simple", I get a search page which says: "Sorry! Full text search does not work right now. ... Or if you want to create an article of this title, click this link: simple" where the link to the page I might want to create is in non-simple Wikipedia. This needs fixing, but I can't do it myself. Oh, and the google search boxes are also for en.wikipedia.org Saintswithin 16:25, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I do not know how to fix it. But I have produced some other ways (a google link and some bookmarklets) to create an article and to search for a word. They are not so simple though. See my user page User:Wikibob. I have also changed Main Page to say Search is not working. -Wikibob 01:01, 23 March 2005 (UTC)

Useful places to look when writing definitions

These two learners' dictionary sites may help people to learn how to write simple dictionary definitions (without copying of course!):

• Cambridge Advanced Learners' Dictionary Online
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary Online

Saintswithin 07:38, 27 January 2005 (UTC)

The oldest talk is available at Wiktionary:Simple talk/Archive001.

Is this a Simple American English Wiktionary?

The words in it so far are American rather than Commonwealth. In color there is a brief mention that "color can also be spelt as colour in some countries, such as the United Kingdom" which has the feel that color is "correct" and the "United Kingdom" are some form of oddball community (which of course may be the intent and may be true, but...) Life would be simpler if we call this an American English wiktionary, then such asides handle things without getting in the way. But if we do this, then maybe we need yet another wiktionary for Commonwealth English. If we try to make this one wiktionary handle both the the color article needs to have headings such as Color (US spelling) / Colour (Commonwealth spelling) which gets away from the simple idea. -- SGBailey from wiktionary, no user here. 82.12.241.77

American English and Commonwealth English are too similar to have different Wiktionarys. We should have a page on both color and colour Gerard Foley 03:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Does this mean that we have to duplicate the same things in color and colour? As I administer Chinese Wiktionary where traditional and simplified Chinese have even deeper differences, sometimes templates are used.--Jusjih 16:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you give us an example? --Brett 19:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

At regular English Wiktionary, en:Template:color-colour (noun) and en:Template:color-colour (verb) are used for coordinating translations of both en:color (en-US) and en:colour (en-GB) since someone may want to add more translations. Other invariable information need not use templates.

At Chinese Wiktionary, zh:中國 (China) is used by traditional Chinese, Japanese kyujitai (old-style characters), and Korean hanja (Chinese-like characters in Korean) while zh:中国 (China) is used by simplified Chinese and Japanese shinjitai (new-style characters) but not normally in Korean. I have created zh:Template:中国 to share Chinese and Japanese information and translations while redirection is not so feasible.

After all, image what if no template is used. Someone might add a new translation to American English or traditional Chinese but not British English or simplified Chinese. Then other users have to keep tracking the changes and increase burdens. As I also administer Chinese Wikipedia, I have seen separate pages for traditional and simplified Chinese but out of coordication. Be glad that automatic Chinese converter has kept both writing systems in one site. American and Commonwealth English are more similar than traditional and simplified Chinese, but when needed, templates can coordinate what to be shown in related pages like my examples above. I hope that this answers your question.--Jusjih 15:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC) (admin at Wiktionary and Wikipedia in regular (not simple) English and Chinese)

This sounds like a nice solution, if it can be made to work. It doesn't look like it is working perfectly on en.wikt at the moment. For now, let's go with what we have: two different entries based on spelling. However, if anyone feels bold enough to try making it work, go for it! --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 19:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

small letters in titles?

At present all words are capitalized. Does anyone think we should allow all small letters, water instead of Water? Gerard Foley 18:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• Agree Gerard Foley 18:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• Strong agree. This follows the precedent of other wiktionaries (and regular dictionaries, for that matter) and is logical, since when it is a proper name, it should be capitalized, like in Murphy's law (for which we should certainly have a page). However, I don't think this should be an allowance so much as a requirement. Only proper names should be capitalized. --Cromwellt|talk 20:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

• Agree It makes a lot of sense to do this. --H2g2bob 10:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not sure MediaWiki will allow us to do this; all page names are capitalized by default and it would take developer attention to change this. There's a few articles on en wiki that have had this problem for some time now (eBay, etc.) but they haven't been fixed. Perhaps we should file a bugzilla request? Thanks! Flcelloguy 17:22, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

This has been sent to Bugzilla as bug 5058. Gerard Foley 23:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

All pages are normally capitalized by default, but English Wiktionary already has that changed, as you can see in during. I would think it would be easy for a developer to do the same thing for us that they did over there. There's even precedent. --Cromwellt|talk 04:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

This has been done! Gerard Foley 00:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Category capitalization

Shall categories begin with upper cases or not? I am asking this because I have found different uses of upper and lower cases at Special:Categories.--Jusjih 13:36, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I had the same question a while back, though I asked it somewhere else. I think that categories should all be lowercase unless they are proper nouns, so that they work just like the entry titles. I'd say that you can go ahead an boldly change it, and if someone doesn't like it or has a better idea, they can change it back. --Cromwellt|talk 01:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

If you do change it, don't forget to change the templates that refer to those categories, so that they put the words in the new place. --Cromwellt|talk 04:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I see that Jusjih has not worked on (or at least has not completed) changing the categories. I have completely changed my mind regarding them. The reason that articles in the (main) namespace are lowercase is to show the word as it is really meant to be and to distinguish between proper names and other words. This does not apply to categories or appendices (I just created the first appendix, Appendix:Prepositions), though it should still apply to templates so that we don't have to type a capital letter every time we insert a template. Categories and appendices are groups of these words, and so should be capitalized regularly, just as they are in other projects. I am changing categories accordingly. Other thoughts? As I mentioned above, if we decide I'm wrong, we can boldly change it back.  :) Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk 21:54, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I have not been here until now as I was too busy administering other Wiki sites. As I am now an admin at eight Wiki sites, I am unsure how often I will come here. Article names at Wiktionary should not be automatically upper cases, but for categories, I do not really mind whether upper or lower cases. In case you want to talk to me but I am inactive here, I suggest leaving a message at my talk page at Wiktionary, Wikipedia, or Wikisource in English version that I administer.--Jusjih 14:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

New logo

This is a logo I have come up with for our site. I sent a request for it to be used as bug 5056. Once that has been done we can update the logo by replacing Image:Wiki.png, so if anyone has a better one feel free to upload it. Gerard Foley 23:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I guess this is one topic I'm pretty neutral about. The new logo is more themed, but I also like the old one just fine. --Cromwellt|talk 04:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Looking at it again, I see a few problems, but not huge ones. The "a multilingual free encyclopedia" that is visible at the top is obviously from an entry on "Wikipedia," not "Simple English Wikipedia," as it would have to be to be right before "Simple English Wiktionary." Same goes for "Wilco," since it is under W, not S. The third problem is that the pronunciation only mentions "Wiktionary," not including the added "Simple English." Maybe I'm too picky, but these seem important to me. --Cromwellt|talk 04:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

This is defiantly an improvement, and it's also in-keeping with other wiktionaries. I edited the top text to be "an easy to understand free dictionary". (original version). --H2g2bob 11:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The logo should have a maximum dimension of about 135 x 155 px. The higher res version is still available from the history at Image:Wiki.png. Gerard Foley 01:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

If people are going to redesign it here are my thoughts:

1. It should look like the other Wiktionary logos
2. It should let me know I'm at the Simple English Wikionary and not en. Gerard Foley 01:13, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree strongly with both these points.  :) Maybe the part above should be some part of "written in simple English for easy reading," as SEWikipedia has for its subtitle on all its pages. Next should be the start of something like "simple harmonic motion" (which is the entry after where Simple English Wiktionary would be in the English Wiktionary). That is long enough that we don't have to worry about starting on the pronunciation, either. --Cromwellt|talk 01:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm be for adding a tagline - it's a good idea. I think we can change MediaWiki:Tagline to do this, but it didn't seem to work when I tried it. I think (as in I don't really know :-) that may be because the $wgUseDatabaseMessages variable is turned off. If this is the case, then we'd need to ask meta to turn it on for us. --H2g2bob 03:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the logo once again (it is on every page, after all), I think it would look smoother and less cluttered if we cut down the wording to say "an open content dictionary in Simple English". "Wiki-based" is not simple and could leave people wondering, though I think it is a good idea to explain that concept here in simple English; "written" is unnecessary and technically it is not written, we are writing it; and "for easy reading," while it does stick with SEWikipedia, does not really add anything here. If it is in simple English, that should be enough. I think the phrase "open content" should not be capitalized, since it is part of the "definition," not the title, and the "s" in "Simple English" could be lowercase or uppercase, depending on if we consider Simple English to be a special kind of English. I personally think that simple English is just that: English which is simple. Therefore I think that the "s" should be lowercase. But I wouldn't throw a fit if it stayed uppercase. BTW, though I am certainly not against a tagline, I was actually talking about the logo in the comments above. I was saying that, rather than "easy to understand free dictionary," we should have the end of "written in simple English for easy reading" showing at the top of our logo. Even if that is never changed, we definitely need to fix the bottom of the logo where it shows the start of a Wilco entry. As "Simple" starts with "S", the following entry should be something starting with "s," preferably something that would be close in the dictionary like the "simple harmonic motion" I mentioned above. I guess changing the pronunciation to reflect the full name would make it too different from other wiktionaries, going against Gerard's point #1, but I still think it would be more correct. As far as a tagline is concerned, I hope it would not just repeat what it says in the logo, since that is already on every page.

On another topic, I think we should put a link to Simple Talk right on the navigation section, but I don't know how to do it. I tried to find it on Special:Allmessages in SEWikibooks (to make a corresponding addition of its Staff Lounge), but all I found was one called "navigation" which had nothing more than that one word in it. (That reminds me of The Raven, one of my favorite poems: "But the raven, sitting lonely / on the placid bust, spoke only / that one word, as if his soul / in that one word he did outpour.") Can someone tell me exactly what it is called? If someone doesn't like the idea, I probably won't do it, but I'd at least like to know how. --Cromwellt|talk 04:04, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The navigation bar is in MediaWiki:Sidebar. I added a link to here to it. Feel free to play around with it if you don't like it. The logo was just a temp because I never knew which Wiktionary I was looking at. The changes you propose are good, someone just has to make them and upload it! Gerard Foley 12:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on the sidebar, and for adding the link. I would boldly make the changes myself, but I don't know much about how it works, since I've never tried it. I guess I should! I must admit (and this goes for everyone I've worked with here) that it is extremely refreshing to come here and find friendly agreement and reasonable disagreement after trying for a while to reason with Netoholic on SEWikipedia. --Cromwellt|talk 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Because I don't know how it works, I tried "save page as" when I was on the page with just the image. It seemed to copy right, but when I tried to edit it, it doesn't seem to work at all. Do I need a special program to edit it? --Cromwellt|talk 17:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Cromwellt, the file format is PNG, which "should" be editable in MS Paint. Some image formats might need MS Office installed if I remember correctly, or it could be the transparant background on the image that is causing problems. I'd say get the file on screen and use the Print Screen key and paste it into Paint if you can't edit it directly.

I used [GIMP when I edited it, though that's quite tricky to get the hang of. --H2g2bob 00:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick idea for the logo. It's pretty basic (simple, even ;-) but perhaps a bit too bare and empty - any ideas on this? The fonts are Free Sans Bold and Bitstream Charter Bold Italic. If you use GIMP, I uploaded the .xcf file. (why does xcf work and not bmp!?!) --H2g2bob 00:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, H2g2bob. Yeah, I tried to use Paint to edit it, and I'm guessing you're right about the transparent background being the problem. When it showed up on Paint, it was like it was a negative, with dark appearing light and light appearing dark (meaning it was very dark in this case), and the central section was totally dark. I have used GIMP before (though as you mentioned, it has a steep learning curve, so I've never used it very effectively), but I don't have it on this computer. I might like to download it, but since this is a somewhat public computer (at my office, which I share), I try to keep my program downloads to a minimum. Your possible logo isn't bad, but I think it is too bare and empty (as you said), making it too different from the logos on other Wiktionaries. Apparently Gerard Foley has a better way to edit the original, rather than coming up with something completely new (and therefore lacking certain elements like the parts of entries before and after, which I think are essential). Gerard, if you let us know how to do it the right way, we'll appreciate it. --Cromwellt|talk 18:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

My issues with editing here

As you all know, I think, I have made SEWiktionary into one of my pet projects, and I tend to spend most of my Wikitime here (or at SEWikipedia). I like editing here, and I plan on continuing. My main frustrations, however, are two. I like to start new entries (which is what we need the most, I think), but when I do so, I try to do too much. Rather than adding one or two definitions and leaving it at that, I try to be complete, and add all the definitions at once (with synonyms, antonyms, derived words and phrases, and see also), checking Word's thesaurus and English Wiktionary. This makes it much more work that it otherwise would be, and makes it much less fun for me. I'm sure it is just my perfectionistic nature, but my attempts at completeness are getting in the way of my enjoyment of the project. My other main frustration is related to the BE850. I copied the list into a Word document, and have created many of the definitions on my computer, waiting to be copied here. But while I was making those definitions, I made many of them using non-simple terminology, planning to fix them later. Now that I've made them, I don't want to place them here until I've simplified them (leaving things for later is very bad policy in this case), but that's (again) more work that it should have been, and keeps my contributions slowed down. Both of these issues have ultimately everything to do with my idiosyncrasies fighting amongst themselves and almost nothing to do with SEWiktionary per se, but they bug me. Has anyone else felt something like this? I guess the best solution for the first one is just to add a definition at a time. Any ideas on other solutions? --Cromwellt|talk 18:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Milestone approaching!

We are now approaching 300 entries! This is a milestone worth celebrating, because it means we have doubled the number of entries in a relatively short time, and that this Wiktionary is actually growing. I would love to see us pass up 1000 entries sometime soon (more editors first would be nice...:) so that we are more prominently featured on the Main Page of other Wiktionaries, especially English Wiktionary, but that is something of a long-term goal. Finishing the BE850 (one of my current projects here) would be a big help towards that, and give us almost 1000 entries by itself. --Cromwellt|talk 08:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

On a related note, we seem to be reaching consensus on Simple English Wikipedia that SEWikipedia should link to both English Wiktionary and Simple English Wiktionary, which is great news for this project, and will probably help us with both amount of exposure and (in direct proportion) number of editors. I'm hoping that either consensus can be reached to also add links to other Simple English projects on the Main Page of SEWikipedia as a parallel to linking here in articles, or that the links will be tacitly accepted when they are introduced, either by Odder (who is making a new Main Page that looks like it will be adopted) or by me. The only person that actively opposes links to other simple projects (and in fact, opposes their existence and deprecates and any and all references to them entirely) is Netoholic. This seems bizarre, since Netoholic is an administrator and bureaucrat on Simple English Wikipedia, and he/she feels strongly that that project should exist. I can not explain it, friends, I can only stand in awe. ;D But in any case, Netoholic is firmly in the minority on this point, and the community will prevail, I believe. --Cromwellt|talk 08:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Infrastructure

I think we need to spend some time also working on the infrastructure of this wiki, to get it to a more usable status. Much of this can be copied from English Wiktionary (after some simplification) or Simple English Wikipedia (after minor changes). Let's make this project into something great! --Cromwellt|talk 08:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiReader

What do we think about publishing a WikiReader with the BE850 and BE1500? I'd be happy to do most of the work behind it (exporting to PDF, managing download site etc). Archer7 12:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking we should probably have them mostly done before we worry about that, but other than that, sound good. --Cromwellt|talk 19:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Translations

Other Wiktionaries add translations for words into other languages. SEWiktionary is meant to give definitions of English words using simple English, so if we did add translations, we would not include those other words here, but only link to other wiktionaries. For example, if we translated "heavy" (meaning having a lot of weight), the Spanish is "pesado." We might link to the English Wiktionary page on en:pesado or to the Spanish Wiktionary es:pesado. These would be interwiki links, but under a translation section, not an "in other languages" sidebar interwiki, since each meaning should be translated separately.

I think there are pros and cons to this idea. The pros are that our focus audience are people who are do not know much English, and many of them only know it as a second language, so a translation into their own language could be quite useful.

The cons are that we are focused on English words. A translation would be a distraction from our focus. Also, that niche is already filled by the English Wiktionary. I think our focus should stay firmly fixed on simple English definitions of English words. Feel free to comment. We'll do what the community decides, of course. Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk 02:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that this simple English Wiktionary is for definitions from simple English to simple English only, right? This should be good enough since more complex contents should go to regular English Wiktionary.--Jusjih 14:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Simple English Wikipedia pages need to use some hard English words. I think Simple English Wiktionary needs definitions in simple English for those hard English words. It also needs definitions in simple English for simple English words. I think it's a good idea to link to English Wiktionary for translations. --Coppertwig 18:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Question: the word "kind": is it a noun in simple English? or an adjective? or both? How do we know or decide these questions? --Coppertwig 18:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Both. Word classes do not change in simple English. Does this answer your question? --Brett 02:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Different word classes would further complicate translations into other languages. I prefer that this simple English Wiktionary leaves translations into other languages to regular English Wiktionary that I administer, or we simply make excessive duplications.--Jusjih 16:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

We have articles for Cyrillic Alphabets. This makes me think how many kinds of non-Latin alphabets we will add. Japanese kana and Korean hangul are also alphabets but totally different from Latin Alphabets, so I do not support adding them to complicate this simple English site.--Jusjih 15:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed: No translations and no other characters.--Brett 18:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Etymologies/word histories

Another thing that has come up is the question of etymologies. English Wiktionary and others show the etymology of each word, and tend to have the earlier forms as separate entries. Because we are focused on English words (that is, Modern English), we would not include those early forms separately, but we could include unlinked word origins/etymologies. Again, there are pros and cons. Etymologies could be difficult to understand for someone who doesn't know much English. Additionally, they are not our focus, and could be a distraction. Plus, English Wiktionary already does that more effectively. On the other hand, I think it is cool to show where words come from, and this can help people understand why a word is spelled a particular way, I think. English orthography is one of the hardest parts of learning English, but knowing where a word comes from helps significantly in understanding its orthography (spelling). That said, teaching English is not our goal here, any more than it is the goal of Simple English Wikipedia. We are writing a dictionary here, not an English 101 textbook. If people use us to learn English, that is their own choice, but it is not our focus. I guess I could go either way on this one. I tentatively support adding etymologies to words. What do all of you think? --Cromwellt|talk 02:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I prefer leaving etymologies and word histories to regular English Wiktionary.--Jusjih 16:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. --Brett 20:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

How detailed do we go?

In articles such as that for sad, some users have obvioulsy gone to a great deal of trouble to flesh out all sorts of synonyms, related words, etc. Unfortunately, few of the words are very simple (or even useful. For example, on the sad page we have glum as a synonym.) I think this kind of detail needs to be pared back to avoid being overwhelming to English language learners. --Brett 01:26, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was the one who put all those synonyms and antonyms on there. I still think it is useful, and it is obvious that they are synonyms, etc. by their placement, but I guess I did go a little overboard. But this wiktionary should not be limited to Simple English words. It should include all English words, but the definitions should be limited to simple English. People may find the word glum and wonder what it means, but not be able to understand the English Wiktionary definition. We need that entry here, and its connection to sad seems very logical. I think lugubrious should be cut out sooner than glum. Limiting the synonyms and antonyms may be useful in some ways, but we are about including information, not leaving it out. We might even want to include (for example) a main synonym section, and later on a section on other synonyms. I don't know. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 20:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, we should have articles for simple words and other words, so there should eventually be an entry for glum, lugubrious and whatever else you can come up with. However, a typical user who is looking up the word sad, will not benefit from glum. The user who looks up glum, on the other hand, may well benefit from being told that sad is a synonym as they will likely have no idea what glum means, but may very well understand sad.

Furthermore, you write, "we are about including information, not leaving it out." To the contrary! Knowing what to leave out is at least as important as knowing what to put in. A 20-page dictionary entry on run is neither simple nor useful. This is, after all, a dictionary, not a thesaurus or an encyclopedia. If the user who looks up sad is looking specifically for uncommon synonyms, they're using a wrench to drive in a nail.--Brett 23:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Well how else do you expect people to look for uncommon synonyms, except by starting with a common word? Perhaps we can put common synonyms right there on the page, while listing rare ones separately on a thesaurus-like page. Kappa 07:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

If they're looking for uncommon synonyms, they should use a thesaurus, not a dictionary.--Brett 11:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey Brett, I really enjoyed your wrench-nail analogy. Kappa is referring to what EWikt has done in its Wikisaurus sub-project. We could do something similar here if people are interested in the idea. But either way, most dictionaries include at least some synonyms, and I think we should do so, too. You have a point when you say that glum should link to sad, but not necessarily sad to glum. Maybe if we tend to limit it to the first five or so most common synonyms and antonyms, it will be useful but not overboard. We can always change it later if we change our minds, etc. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 09:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I have used a wrench to drive in a nail. It works well. People who want many synonyms can look in English Wiktionary. I think a little number of synonyms here are able to be useful too. --Coppertwig 15:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)