Random expression

The link to show a random expression is now working as expected.

You can try it on the website (left panel) or with the link below:

Random expression from OmegaWiki

I got bugenwilla , it even has an image :-)

SQL dump with only lexical data

For people only interested in our lexical data, but not to create their own copy of the OmegaWiki website (including the wiki pages), there is now a dump called "lexical data dump".

Cf. http://www.omegawiki.org/Help:Downloading_the_data#Lexical_data_dump


Until now, the only option was to download a full SQL dump containing all the data (except for private user data). The full dump is large (more than 1GB uncompressed) and it takes a long time to process. The lexical data dump is much smaller (around 175MB uncompressed).

OmegaWiki database explained

This week-end, I have written the documentation of the tables used by WikiData and OmegaWiki. As far as I know, we were missing this kind of documentation.

It can be consulted at:
http://www.omegawiki.org/Help:OmegaWiki_database_layout

For anybody interested in the technical aspect: have a look, correct the mistakes, ask for clarifications or sample MySQL queries, etc. :-)

I hope it helps.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

More than 300 languages

At OmegaWiki, it is now possible to add definitions and translations in more than 300 languages.

Today were added the following languages.
- Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
- Bikol Central
- Central Aymara
- Chamorro
- Filipino
- Jingpho
- Northern Sami

Among all our languages :
- 227 have more than 10 words
- 122 have > 100 words
- 55 have > 1.000 words
- 11 have > 10.000 words
 and English is getting close to 50.000.

We also have definitions in more than 100 languages (though not for all concepts... all help is welcome)

For more statistics, visit the statistics page.

Subscribing to the Word of the Day

Since the beginning of OmegaWiki, in 2005, we have had a Word of the Day, almost every day.

The Word of the Day is displayed on the main page and is a nice invitation to contribute, either by adding translations, definitions, an image, or any other information.

From now on, it is possible to subscribe to the Word of the Day, either via Facebook, or with an RSS feed (generated by Facebook). The word of the day is also displayed on the right of this blog. Of course you are all welcome to subscribe and contribute ;-)

Today, the word of the day is mac 'n' cheese . It is something I ate recently. Very good when you don't care about your weight...

Main Page design changed

MediaWiki 1.17 came with the pretty Vector skin. This skin has the search field on top, and consequently I removed the pre-existing search area on top of the main page.

Then I centered the title, played a bit with the css border-radius, removed the boxes that nobody uses, and resized the looong list of language portals so that it takes more width (and less height).

Here is how it should look on modern browsers:

You can visit http://www.omegawiki.org and have a look! If you see squares where it should be round, you need to upgrade your browser...

The main pages for the other languages need to be updated as well. You can help! For the few languages where it was already up to date with the last version, it will not be too much of an effort. For the other ones, it requires a bit more time, but it is not complicated.

We are also planning on adding a section "Did you know?", updated e.g. daily, with interesting facts on words of all languages and interdependencies between languages. More on that later!

OmegaWiki upgraded to MediaWiki 1.17

OmegaWiki has been successfully upgraded to the brand new MediaWiki 1.17.

Most of the changes are internal things (the database structure has changed, and several things had to be rewritten here and there to be compatible with the new version).

As a user, you might notice that everything still works like before :)

You will also experience the new interface (Vector) which is now default, like in the Wikipedias. The old interface (Monobook) can be activated in your preferences.

The upgrade also permitted to get the latest translations for the interface and to upgrade the extensions. Some of them where 1-2 years old.

Feedback on any bugs that you may find are more than welcome.

Automatic search suggestions

The automatic search suggestion, that has been available at Wikipedia for some time now, has just been enabled at OmegaWiki.

Now, when you type a text in the search box, it suggests results according to the words that are present in our database.

At the moment, the "Expression:" will unfortunately appear, as well as data from UMLS and Swissprot that we would need to filter out. In fact, the functionality should be rewritten specifically for OmegaWiki, with also the possibility to specify a language (a nice mix of php, java and sql... anybody interested in programming it?)

However, I think it is already useful as it is now.

You are all invited to try it out (no need to be logged in).

Note that if you don't like, you can disable it in your user preferences under "Search Options" => "Disable AJAX suggestions".

Example sentences can be long

For some reason, the text annotations - contrary to definitions - were limited to 256 characters. This was too limiting for example sentences, in particular when these examples are citations where you need to extract a long sentence and add the title of the book, the author, etc.

This limit has just been extended. From now on, text annotations can be as long as definitions.

Other text annotations include IPA, hyphenation and other language specific annotations such as pinyin for Mandarin. At the moment, you can access the annotations by clicking on the link "Annotation »" in the last column of the translation table. We are still working on a way of making the annotations more visible for the word that is being consulted.

E-Mail functionality now working again

I have just noticed today that OmegaWiki was not sending any E-Mail. For example when you forget your password, you couldn't have it e-mailed to you.

This is probably due to the server change in March last year.

I've just repaired the functionality.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

Images to illustrate the definitions

There is now the possibility to add images from Commons in order to illustrate the definitions and make OmegaWiki look prettier.

The following is a screenshot of Expression:mouse.

The image annotation is given at the DefinedMeaning level, which means that when the image is added once to the concept, it becomes available for all the languages : souris , Maus , etc.

Anyone can edit!

As of today, anonymous users can also contribute to OmegaWiki, without the need to create an account and having to wait to be given edit rights by a bureaucrat.

However, since we do not have roll back functionalities at the moment, IP users can add new data, but not modify existing data.

Let's see what comes out of it (more spam or more contributors?).

Taboo subjects

Hi,

there is an ongoing discussion at omegawiki about why OmegaWiki is struggling (the number of contributors stays low), and what to do about it, such as find money and hire a developer.

Please take part in the discussion and submit your ideas.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

#Conceptwiki

The ConceptWiki environment is an umbrella for several categories of professional data. It is hosted by NBIC / the Concept Web Alliance and it provides a rich environment with many types of data that have a bio-medical background.

The software it uses is very similar to the one used by OmegaWiki. This is due to the long association between people behind OmegaWiki and the ConceptWiki. It used to be that there was no room for multi-lingual content in the ConceptWiki but that is changing.

The hosting of OmegaWiki and the ConceptWiki used to be on the same server. this made it easy to connect OmegaWiki translations to ConceptWiki ontological content. For a concept like yaws you find many translations at OmegaWiki, you also find a link to the Wikipedia article and a mapping to the UMLS part of its database.

Indonesian dance mask

There is no Commons category yet on the subject, otherwise you might find this mask depicting the face of a sufferer of this disease.

The plan is to bring OmegaWiki and the ConceptWiki closer together again. I hope that the ConceptWiki will become a multilingual resource and we are going to start by sharing resources.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Endangered African languages

Sorosoro is a program that aims at studying and documenting endangered languages.

They have recently published videos of native people giving some vocabulary in four endangered African languages: Punu, Mpongwe, Akele and Benga. The words are about body parts, numbers, colors and common phrases.

I have enabled these languages for editing at OmegaWiki and added all the words mentioned in the videos. By doing so, these translations are not only available to people speaking English, French or Spanish (the three languages of the video), but to all the other languages at OmegaWiki.

We now have 28 expressions in Akele and Benga, 59 in Mpongwe and 78 in Punu.

If you know about more resources (vocabulary) for endangered languages, you are more than welcome to mention them.

Thanks,
Kipcool.

So we like #Commons

Yesterday Kipcool surprised us with a more visible link to Wikipedia, today he added Commons to it as well. Commons is essentially different in that there is only one link to Commons per concept.

When you look for pictures of a horse at Google or Bing, it makes a big difference in what language you are looking for that animal. If you look for instance for an "សេះ" you will find far fewer horses.

This is what it looks like in Arabic. As there is an annotation referring to the Arabic Wikipedia article, the Arabic article is selected.
Thanks,
      GerardM

So we like #Wikipedia ...

Every now and then, I am happily surprised with new functionality for OmegaWiki. This time Kipcool made our existing Wikipedia visible. When there are references to a Wikipedia article, he will point you to the article in your language.

The expression dólar shows the Dutch Wikipedia article for me. It will show the Spanish article for Ascander and the English article for Kipcool (the French and German article are not linked yet).

The link is added to the page with Javascript. This prevents additional load on our server. I hope you like it, it is an other excellent reason to dig into our annotions.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Démoustication

For #OmegaWiki it is relevant to find as many translations as possible. This is what makes the concept work. The French word démoustication has as its definition "The control or reduction of a mosquito population in a certain place". This definition has me check if "muggenbestrijding" exists in the Dutch language. It does and I can even find pictures of people shooting with air guns on mosquitoes..

Having only three expressions for mosquito control is ok, as it is there with a definition in two languages. It is important to know the word. When the same concept appears starting with a different language we will always be able to merge the two DefinedMeanings.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia interlanguage links

On a mailing list of the WMF there is a big discussion about interlanguage links; should they be shown by default or not. This discussion is the result of a choice made by the Usability team to hide them. Many people have strong opinions, one of the best contributions is one by Gregory Maxwell.

That thread is not the place to improve the approaches to interlanguage links. The goal of these alternate approaches is to increase the number of people that are informed by a Wikipedia.

Alternative one
Allow for interlanguage pages when there is not even a stub. We aim to inform, but when there is no article, not even a stub, we currently do not inform. The page may include a definition, but what it should show is articles on this subject can be found in these languages. Followed by a list of languages and the names of the articles.

This is easy to implement. The links are still maintained by bots and these referral pages do not need to show elsewhere. 

Alternative two
The technology behind OmegaWiki supports links to Wikipedia articles for quite some time. It even refers to Commons categories filled with data files on a subject.

This alternative is a bit more involved, but it allows for more functionality. It may need to need some fiddling in order to get it ready for WMF usage, but hey it is great functionality with many links to Wikipedia in there already.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Omegawiki WOTD; adénosine

Today's word of the day is adénosine it is the French word for adenosine. It was a word started by Kipcool and I added some bits and pieces to the concept.

The first thing I did was add a load of translations. As I want to have on average more then 10 Expressions per DefinedMeaning, it has more effect to add translations then to start a new DefinedMeaning.

The second thing I did was to make it part of the chemical compound class. Once adenosine was known as a chemical compound, I was able to add some annotations like the chemical formula. The last thing I did was to map it to the concept adenosine in the UMLS. This is really valuable for those who want to map the translations of OmegaWiki to the rich information that can be found in this resource.
Thanks,
      GerardM