Wiktionary:Improving entries for the most common English words

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Project purpose[edit]

To improve the quality of the entries for the most commonly used English words.

Background and previous efforts[edit]

The recent Beer Parlor discussion: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2023/August#Wiktionary:Project_-_Cleanup_of_basic_English_entries

Previous efforts and discussions[edit]

Proposed word lists[edit]

Sample entries[edit]

Examplars

User:-sche has working on several entries that might be good to focus on to determine what we mean by a good entry for these words. There may be issues to be resolved before we proceed on some classes of entries.

Entries with a single principal PoS[edit]

NB: As used here high#Noun, go#Noun, know#Noun are not treated as "principal" PoSes.

Adjective
Noun

Nominations:

Verb
Determiner

Nominations:

Preposition/(Particle)*
Adverb

Nominations:

Conjunction

Nominations:

Entries with multiple principal PoSes[edit]

Pronoun/Determiner/conjunction
Noun/Verb
Adverb/Preposition/Conjunction
Preposition/Adverb/(Particle)*

Nominations:

Goodness[edit]

Characteristics of Goodness[edit]

  • A set of good definitions that span attestable modern usage with minimal duplication
  • A full set of supporting sections and subsections
  • Formatting consistent with wiki-wide standards
  • Within entry consistency of formatting where wiki-wide formatting allows differences between entries.

Stages of goodness[edit]

Not subject to major requests[edit]

Important English PoS sections should not be open for cleanups, verification, or deletion. Minor matters (obsolete, rare, etc) can remain. Best would be to resolve them before starting on more global entry improvement, second best would be to keep the items open while undertaking global definition or attestation work, prioritizing the Etymology and PoS sections that have the request tags.

Next steps: attestation, definition, structuring

Definitions complete, structured[edit]

  • Comprehensive coverage of definitions
  • Clearly worded definitions

Definitions attested, exemplified[edit]

  • Add usexes and quotations to all senses that are missing them. This may lead to adjustment of definitions and structure.
  • Move quotations out of "quotations" sections and under corresponding definitions;
  • Logical grouping/ordering of senses, using sense-subsense structure, especially for PoS sections with many definitions.
    Groups of common/basic definitions should appear before other groups
    Within groups common/basic definitions should appear before others
  • Definitions, not synonym lists or single words only
  • Non-gloss definitions distinguished from gloss definitions

Other[edit]

Some of the following items may depend in whole or in part on the definitions. Work on the dependent tasks (marked defs), should probably not proceed until the definitions (and attestation?) are at least written and structured.

Etymology[edit]
  • Ancestry always
  • Collapsible display of cognates, speculative etymology, competing etymologies, long etymologies
Pronunciation[edit]
  • Depending on who's participating, make sure that pronunciation encompasses every major English-speaking country
    Presence of at least American and British pronunciation
    Audio files for at least American and British pronunciation
Subsections[edit]
Usage notes[edit]
  • Usage notes for error-prone wordsdefs
Translation tables[edit]
  • Translation tables for every non-obsolete sense and subsense (because this can get unwieldy, could we perhaps consider indenting translation tables for subsenses as at quarantine?)defs
"Nyms"[edit]
  • Make sure that -nyms are displayed either together after all the definitions or listed under each one.defs
  • Special effort for synonymsdefs
Derived terms[edit]
  • Distinguished from Hyponymsdefs
  • Remove alternative forms differing only in punctuation, many as a result of Wonderfool's lazy DT dumping
Related terms[edit]
  • Same language cognates, etc, but distinguished from Derived terms
Formatting, consistency[edit]
  • Ensure consistent capitalization and punctuation at the beginning/end of all senses in an entry
  • Key terms wikified, common terms not wikified.defs
  • Grammatical labels
    Verbs: transitive, intransitive, reflexive(?)defs
    Nouns: countable, uncountable labels for departures from most common.defs
  • Usage examples for range of structures, eg, types of complements.defs
Supplemental material[edit]
  • Images, where applicabledefs
  • Examples, where applicabledefs
Other[edit]
  • Review of Etymology-PoS sections other than those for the most common English words for consistency, plausibility, absence of obvious flaws.

Perfection[edit]

  • When a few experienced users have reviewed an English section for the adequacy of each of these and found each of them good, we can declare the English section "Good".

Footnotes[edit]

* (Particle) is intended to refer to an item (usually also an Adverb and/or Preposition) used in a phrasal verb.

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