Wikilambda talk:Wikilambda/Name
Script error: No such module "Reply to". I wonder if "translingual" would be better than "abstract" as a name for what we are doing. This is because "abstract" is used in linguistics to refer to words that talk about complicated concepts without a physical representation, in an "abstract" vs "concrete" distinction. Example:
- Concrete - tree, water, hill, sound
- Abstract - resolution, legitimacy, motive, assumption
This isn't the sense of "abstract" being used here, but I suspect it's the image that many readers will conjure up when they see the name Abstract Wikipedia. In my opinion "translingual" is a better description of this project and I like Wikirosetta / Wikisetta too. But as I wrote before, I'm still unconvinced that this project should be given sister project status with its own 2LD (same level as Wikidata, Wiktionary, Wikipedia etc) rather than feature status (same level as VisualEditor, WikiLove, Lexemes etc) so I'm not too fussed about the name.
I don't know how "lambda" is used in computer science research in relation to what we're doing, but my first thought is if "lambda" isn't already accepted computer science terminology, we should consider "Wikiprogram". Although this name might lead to confusion about where mw:global templates should sit amongst Wikimedia projects. Deryck C. 13:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
- Translingual is a great word! Thanks! I added that to the page. I think it has many advantages over multilingual, as one could rightfully say that the current setup is already multilingual, and thus ask, "What's the difference?". On the other side, 'translingual' is rather uncommon. Thank you for the suggestion!
- Talking about uncommon terms, regarding lambda, the reference is to the Lambda calculus, and the idea is that all functions can be defined in terms of the lambda calculus as its foundation (and in fact, the abstracttext demo does that). But it also recognise the relevance of lambda in linguistics. But yeah, whereas I start liking the name "Wikilambda", I really am not sure it is a good name. We'll see how the community process will go, I am quite looking forward to that. --denny (talk) 14:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC)