New LLorg Wiki articles

Discuss the LLORG's and HTLAL forum's past and its future here.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby fcoulter » Sat Nov 24, 2018 7:16 am

Finally (before I go to sleep), what's the purpose of the Wiki? What should, and should not, be posted?

In addition to whether the wiki should turn into an online dictionary -- IMHO a horrible idea -- as demonstrated by the Fruit article, what else should it be, and not be?

For example, one of the oldest recent additions to the Wiki was a page on the Netherlands, in both English and Dutch (I think). (https://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki ... etherlands) While I appreciate the effort it took to craft the page, I'm trying to figure out what purpose it serves. Is the Wiki supposed to be a resource for language learning, or a resource to FIND and review resources for language learning? Do we plan on incorporating entire courses within the Wiki?

(Let's not add to the discussion whether we should add additional translations to the Netherlands page. Do I need to work on a bad French translation? At this point, I'm not going to produce a good translation.)

Who's the Wiki administrator that will deal with these issues?

When I return to my home, I'll be looking at the other changes to the Wiki. I'll bring up other questionable changes for discussion here in the forum. That probably won't happen until Sunday. I've got about six hours to drive, then I need to get my daughter to the airport to finish her schooling. And I probably should try to be less grumpy as I review the recent changes.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby Axon » Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:43 am

I think fcoulter is right about there needing to be guidelines about the wiki.

I could see the wiki being home to all kinds of different pages, and the Fruit dictionary doesn't have to be so limited. In fact it might be an interesting idea to have a table with fifteen or twenty fruits and their names in many languages, to see which words have been borrowed and which are unique.

In my opinion, one of the greatest things we can offer as a community is the stories of successful learners and their methods. You can pick up how to learn languages on tons of other websites and blogs out there, but very few have anything like our language logs (or the much more extensive logs on HTLAL).

The next greatest thing is our shared expertise about different language products. There's almost certainly no other community out there that has used and can give detailed information about so many courses and materials.

If we can come up with solid and consistent formats for these two things, then they should be the main focus of the wiki. Other pages and other projects absolutely have merit and I think they can be (already are) a unique aspect that other sites don't have. But when you go onto the wiki as a total stranger to language learning, you should be able to see what other ordinary people have accomplished with languages before, and what you should use to get there yourself.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby Beli Tsar » Sat Nov 24, 2018 11:06 am

Axon wrote:In my opinion, one of the greatest things we can offer as a community is the stories of successful learners and their methods. You can pick up how to learn languages on tons of other websites and blogs out there, but very few have anything like our language logs (or the much more extensive logs on HTLAL).

The next greatest thing is our shared expertise about different language products. There's almost certainly no other community out there that has used and can give detailed information about so many courses and materials.

If we can come up with solid and consistent formats for these two things, then they should be the main focus of the wiki. Other pages and other projects absolutely have merit and I think they can be (already are) a unique aspect that other sites don't have. But when you go onto the wiki as a total stranger to language learning, you should be able to see what other ordinary people have accomplished with languages before, and what you should use to get there yourself.

As a newbie, I really agree with this. Like many, I've had to do a lot of digging up old threads to understand different people's methods when they are mentioned. Digging through logs with search takes a lot of time.

And some that exist as brief explanations on the wiki could be usefully expanded so People can see how to actually use them (e.g. s_allard's kernel method - I'm still not sure how anyone without a linguistics background would implement this!). Iversen's pinned thread on his method might also have a more natural home on the wiki?
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby rdearman » Sat Nov 24, 2018 11:19 am

Somethings which are on the wiki might have a more natural home on the blog portion of the site. For example iguanamon's method is on the blog. The language profiles are on the blog. So wiki is probably more useful for "generic" methodology and things like how to use Subs2SRS. But I'm not the administrator of the wiki, so it isn't my problem. :lol:
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby tommus » Sat Nov 24, 2018 12:30 pm

fcoulter wrote:The entire point of a wiki is that you DON'T need to remember the URL of another page within the wiki. All you need to know is the name of the other page.

The simple way to link to another article in the wiki is the following.
1) Include the name of the other article in the text you're editing.

I should have said that you have to remember the URL or the name of the article. When I edited the whole page of links to the 33 articles, I did it offline in a text editor. So remembering and saving all the URLs was important to me. But you are right. The system will find the article if you know the name.

I'll edit those instructions to be a bit clearer.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby fcoulter » Sat Nov 24, 2018 1:00 pm

tommus wrote:
fcoulter wrote:The entire point of a wiki is that you DON'T need to remember the URL of another page within the wiki. All you need to know is the name of the other page.

The simple way to link to another article in the wiki is the following.
1) Include the name of the other article in the text you're editing.

I should have said that you have to remember the URL or the name of the article. When I edited the whole page of links to the 33 articles, I did it offline in a text editor. So remembering and saving all the URLs was important to me. But you are right. The system will find the article if you know the name.

I'll edit those instructions to be a bit clearer.


I was thinking about creating instructions with screen shots. But I can't do it until Sunday, at the earliest. There's just so much you can do on a phone, then you're stuck.

My directions aren't as clear as I would like, either.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby fcoulter » Sat Nov 24, 2018 1:04 pm

rdearman wrote:Somethings which are on the wiki might have a more natural home on the blog portion of the site. For example iguanamon's method is on the blog. The language profiles are on the blog. So wiki is probably more useful for "generic" methodology and things like how to use Subs2SRS. But I'm not the administrator of the wiki, so it isn't my problem. :lol:


Blog posts are great for personal articlesabout a subject. What they're not so good for are reference material, especially reference material that links to more reference material.

Unless you can come up with a perfect description of a learning method that will never be edited, never need to link to anything else, and that no one else can improve, then a blog isn't the best place for a description of a method.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby tommus » Sat Nov 24, 2018 1:14 pm

fcoulter wrote:Be careful when creating a page. For example, someone recently created a page called Fruit. (https://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Fruit) It consists of a list of fruits in English and one other, unidentified language. I'm not sure what the heck the plan is.

Sorry about the Fruit confusion. You might have noticed that the page has a category of "Dutch Language Islands". But I appreciate the issue of an article name, such as Fruit, is the only "Fruit" you can have on the whole wiki. So I have made a new copy and named it Fruit (Nederland). I named all the "Dutch Language Islands" pages with Dutch names. Just happens that Fruit is the same in English and Dutch. I guess I'll have to change Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc.

I certainly support the idea that there should be a plan for the Wiki. Guidelines at least. I assume from the discussion recently that there is no administrator(s). So the Wiki is pretty much a "wild west" free-for-all at the moment. Guidelines would be great.

I think we should be gentle with our comments about editing the Wiki. Many (or most) members probably have not edited a Wiki and would be just learning. Lets not scare everyone away by criticism. I am trying to learn how best to do editing. There seem to be various versions of the Wiki software and when you look for help, many times the help does not seem to apply to our version. Does anyone know if we have the latest version? For example, I tried to delete the now-obsolete Fruit and I have so far been unable to do so. So I renamed it Delete for the time being.

The good thing is that we are now shining some light on our Wiki. I think it has the potential to be a great adjunct to our Forum. Lets put some considerable thought and effort into developing it into a real asset.
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby smallwhite » Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:22 pm

I learned at work that it’s best to have just one person do all the naming and numbering, or else sooner or later you’d get inconsistencies like:
- Fruit (French)
- Fruit (Italiano)
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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Postby Serpent » Sun Nov 25, 2018 4:26 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:And some that exist as brief explanations on the wiki could be usefully expanded so People can see how to actually use them (e.g. s_allard's kernel method - I'm still not sure how anyone without a linguistics background would implement this!).
The page was not intended as language learning advice. It was meant to prevent rehashing the same debates ad nauseam. S_allard removed his name from the page (he couldn't remove it from the title) but refused to clarify whether the description was inaccurate.
I don't think you can use his method on your own unless you're a false beginner who understands a lot but mixes up words while speaking.

I agree that we need clear guidelines. @tommus, please refrain from creating pages for word lists. Language islands should be ok because it's unique content and not something that can be found with a quick google search.
As for wikia software, I don't think we have control over it. If some features are unavailable that's because you lack admin access.

Yes, we still have many links to the old forum. I think in some cases they can just be replaced with links to the new one or to archive.org copies.
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