function Z10070( Z10070K1, Z10070K2 ) {
return Z10070K1.includes(Z10070K2);
}
> In particular, according to Keet, Grammatical Framework notably lacks the flexibility to handle certain aspects of Niger-Congo B languages’ morphology. The traditional answer to this kind of critique would be to say, “Let’s just organize an effort to work on Grammatical Framework.” The design philosophy behind Abstract Wikipedia is to make as few assumptions about a contributor’s facility with English and programming experience as possible. Organized efforts around Grammatical Framework (or otherwise) are not a bad idea at all. They may well solve some problems for some languages. However, the contributor pools for under-resourced languages are already small. Demanding expertise with specific natural languages like English and also specific programming paradigms contracts those pools still further.
and
> A solution designed by a small group of Westerners is likely to produce a system that replicates the trends of an imperialist English-focused Western-thinking industry. Existing tools tell a one-voice story; they are built by the same people (in a socio-cultural sense) and produce the same outcome, which is crafted to the needs of their creators (or by the limits of their understanding). Tools are then used to build tools, which will be again used to build more tools; step by step, every level of architectural decision-making limits more and more the space that can be benefitted by these efforts.
and
> The evaluation acknowledges little to no value to the effort that Wikifunctions is investing in being multilingual in terms of natural languages, even for implementations. It is unclear as to how a solution that is built on top of (the existing Lua-based Scribunto scripting system) would succeed in being multilingual, and not just be an English project which the other languages may be invited to use, if they understand it, but would be mostly blocked from contributing to.
This of course only works if all functions, and all parameters, etc have had labels submitted for your language.
They indicate wanting to cater to cultures that might not use a base 10 representation of numbers, so would presumably autotranforms numeric literals for people from those cultures.
They are worried about programming languages being englished based, but seem to think that similar autotranslating of keywords is a good enough approach, so that is why they NEED to support multiple languages, so that they might hypothetically support some language that supports base 60 math and keywords based on [insert language here].
Plenty of room for abuse here, as it would be really easy to edit functions being used for text generation of less popular languages to output offensive text, for things not tested by the test cases. And nobody except people who know that language will be able to tell for sure that this is not a legit contribution.
Then of course people will by trying to code sandbox and then container breaks, cryptominers, etc. I expect a giant game of whack-a-mole between the project and the admins.
On that note even ignoring the abuse, or people trying to utilize the service for free compute resources, I can see the costs of this service becoming substantial really quick. Just from things like legitimate contributions of test cases, and new language implementations, and running the test cases again all the different implementations.
This is already the case with wikipedia, there was the recent story that most of the Scots wikipedia was written by someone who does not know the language, in the style of "English, as she is written".
WTF. Virtue-signaling identity politics has no place in computer science.
In my opinion this project is about 20 layers too abstract to actually produce working and useful software. But it's not virtue signaling if they're actually trying to do the thing, is it? Virtue signaling is when you act like you're doing something virtuous and then don't.
If they're trying to create a programming syntax that maps to every known human language, good on them. They'll probably fail, but it's not really a stupid concept, especially when your organization's purpose is to spread knowledge to the whole world.
If one belives avoiding well-known tools and (english-based) programming languages is likely to actually make it easier for contributors using those languages to contribute to Wikipedia in those languages, then it's real. If one believes that this is not actually going to result in more usable tools, and the intention of avoiding tools from English-speaking Westerners is signalling rather than actually getting better results, then it's virtue signalling.
I'd think us, or any foundation for that matter, should be able to lay out an agenda before outcomes are achieved, how (un)realistic they may be. A dot on the horizon to aim for, not necessarily achievable but a heading at least.
If you're just saying it for the upvotes, yes. If you're actually trying to get people to shift their efforts towards more effective things (such as translation support libraries that don't insist on avoiding English at every level), then no, it's legitimate effort.
> I'd think us, or any foundation for that matter, should be able to lay out an agenda before outcomes are achieved, how (un)realistic they may be. A dot on the horizon to aim for, not necessarily achievable but a heading at least.
An aim is fine. It's a question of sincerity.
Unless you equate "global" with "imperialist", in which case your statement is true by definition. But then everything that is done on a global scale is necessarily imperialist, and then one of the two terms does not seem useful anymore.
Equity can be global.
That would require the equation to be wrong.
For example, if the same sentence was formulated as something like "expanding the contributor community by including people knowledgeable and proficient in languages not commonly spoken in the West and soliciting feedback from such contributors would greatly expand the appeal of the resulting solution and make it more widely applicable" - wouldn't that sound more nice to people?
> A solution designed by a small group of people is likely to produce a system that replicates trends specific to this group and are not universal enough for our need.
The fact that I couldn't type my name for decades in most IT systems because of the charsets used is not "virtue-signaling" to complain about, thank you.
> with needing to support the vagaries of every foreign dialect in the world
Then don't impact the Roman software on people outside Rome. Basically the definition of imperialism.
Edit:
> I think the Internet was a better place before Eternal September, when it was the exclusive precinct of relatively affluent white male nerds. (...) I think elitism is right.
Ah, I see this from you in another thread. So you're basically against other cultures and groups being present online. No wonder you want everyone to conform to your definition of how things should be. Too bad the ship has sailed, we're here.
You (or others you depend on) are choosing to use "Roman" software.
> I'm trying to book an airplane ticket in my country. But it's not possible to write my name, even though my name contains letters found in our alphabet.
It is possible to write your name in a way that lets the airline and airports identify you, which is what matters. It might not be possible to write it exactly the way you'd like but that's not causing any real issues except making you upset.
It's also pretty ironic to complain about having to deal with other cultures for (presumably) international travel.
> Then don't impact the Roman software on people outside Rome. Basically the definition of imperialism.
"Anglocentric" software isn't forced on anyone. You can campaing for your country to disregard all English writings and re-discover all that knowledge from first principles instead if you'd prefer. But that would make you much worse off, wouldn't it?
English-first computing dominates precisely because not having to deal with localization (or at least not initially) lets people focus on what actually matters to make work. Don't like it? Write your own software instead of complaining that relying other people's work means you sometimes have to adapt a bit.
> So you're basically against other cultures and groups being present online.
Plenty of people from other cultures (including me) have no problem with learning English to interact with the world and tap into the vast pool of English knowledge and tools. Language != Culture.
> Too bad the ship has sailed, we're here.
So is English as the lingua franca of the computing age.
Computer programming uses a small subset of English in code and the industry nearly always uses the American socio-cultural kind of English.
English is the fullest language we have, with all the infamy of pilfered concepts from the European continent.
The language/natural language distinction is reductionist, halving all language, when in reality it is a structure that cannot be halved.
He recommends reducing languages down to their most basic elements. This is a mistake that doesn't go anywhere. You end up with a pile of sticks.
All his crictisms of English (one voice, limited understanding, ect) can be leveled at any living, breathing human.
I wonder where the experiment goes. His criticisms of English should be better.
When did we become Westerners and started to think in the same way?
I recognised a trend for such expressions in the news, too, in the last few years. It's misleading and creates a "we against them" mentality.
The West is essentially all the world's nations whose cultures are derived from or greatly influenced by Latin speakers and Judeo-Christian values, which traces its influence back to Ancient Rome.
It's a very valuable and important thing to recognize, because things that people in the US and Europe often implicitly assume are human universals, aren't. They're only universal across the West, and not found in e.g. China or India.
So it's not creating division. It's recognizing difference that already exists, but that not everyone is always already aware of, because we tend to exist in our own little bubbles.
Having a lingua franca for computing is a good thing. All these efforts to localize computing are nothing but a giant waste of time.
Just as each Wikipedia article is about one "thing", each Wikifunction performs one job. Once you know a Wikifunction works reliably, you know every other Wikifunction which depends on it can theoretically trust its output.
This project seems really exciting, especially in the context of AI. Very cool and I hope to see it flourish.
Stares at C/C++
this is also related to how 2 hour long movies will diminish into a niche... and movies of the future will be more like [0]
this observation is on the same trend as operas; which way back would last all evening (over 3 hours was typical)
this rant gave me a proper laught. thank you.
def Z10591(Z10591K1, Z10591K2):
word, is_ra_plural = Z10591K1, Z10591K2