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[tools-yak@collab] Re: turned on ExpandingWikiWords on my wikilog

To: tools-yak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: "Peter P. Jones" <ppj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 20:22:58 +0100
Message-id: <3EC15422.2212.22B5AD@localhost>
Hi,    (01)

OK...having started the blaze I'll now fan the flames a bit more ;)
(My points are purely about Wiki words and not about the utility of 
wikis as information structures. Please allow me to ignore the 
positives for a moment.)    (02)

A series of opinions about Wiki words:
1) MashedTogetherWords muck up information retrieval and natural 
language processing.
2) How does the Wikiword auto-link process work for all those Asian 
languages that have no gaps between any of the words and no capital 
letters, like Chinese? Mashed wiki words are not internationalised.
3) For the purposes of solving the world's major problems spawning 
artificial concepts creates false positives more often than it is 
likely to generate a genuine insight (plus (1) & (2) - auto-
translation busts). It is not without reason that those philosophers 
that most folks agree talked sense in the last couple of millenia 
were pedantic about the use of language. How do you have an insight 
if you've fogged the picture so that objects within it are not 
distinguishable?    (03)

However, I'm willing to concede that, as Henry van Eyken so 
eloquently pointed out with a story about Native Indian discussions a 
while back, the positive insights that Tom Munnecke is searching for 
are about novel social interactions, and that in this sense the 
subliminal form precedes the detection of its consequences. 
Nevertheless, I maintain that on detection of that novelty it 
requires scrupulous analysis to reveal its full properties and true 
causes, hence traditional conceptual rigour would help at that point, 
imho.    (04)

So I suppose my point boils down to asking what Wikis are really for?
Saving the world or...?    (05)

Cheers,
-- 
Peter    (06)

-- 
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