New Online Dictionaries Automate Away the Linguistic Middleman 60
An article in The New York Times highlights two growing collections of words online that effectively bypass the traditional dictionary publishing system of slow aggregation and curation. Wordnik is a private venture that has already raised more than $12 million in capital, while the Corpus of Contemporary American English is a project started by Brigham Young professor Mark Davies. These sources differ from both conventional dictionary publishers and crowd-sourced efforts like the excellent Wiktionary for their emphasis on avoiding human intervention rather than fostering it. Says founder Erin McKean in the linked article, 'Language changes every day, and the lexicographer should get out of the way. ... You can type in anything, and we'll show you what data we have.'
Re:Wikitionary? (Score:5, Informative)
"The Free Dictionary" appears to be just a spammy repackaging of Wikipedia content. Lots of their articles even have a footer saying they're licensed under the GFDL from Wikipedia.
Lexicographers out of the way (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously, I'd suppose you still needed a few lexicographers to come up with the system.
And to maintain it, right?
The problem seems to be when you've put 95% of lexicographers out of a job, who's going to train the next bunch, and will it be cost-effective at a university level to have a graduate program in such for 1 or 2 individuals?
Re:Good idea? (Score:2, Informative)