User talk:Brucep

From WikiPOBia

Revision as of 03:25, 4 January 2009

Hi, Bruce, I'm trying to get a project started up to add the nautical terms as part of the Lexicon

We currently have, thanks to their respective creators, terms from Guide for the Perplexed and Maturin's Medicine, but nautical terms would be an extremely valuable addition, particularly because I think coming to terms with those (no pun intended) is one of the biggest obstacles new readers of the Aubrey/Maturin novels face.

Rather than just adding terms directly to the Lexicon, I'd like to collect the information in a more controlled fashion, so that we can make sure we have page references (like the other Lexicon entries), can properly categorize the entries by book chapter, possibly language and perhaps other criteria, and cross reference them as much as possible. So, I've broached the subject with our server administrators and want to set up a database and a web interface to facilitate this collection and make it relatively simple to export the nautical terms to the WikiPOBia once they are assembled (or at least a good start is made).

The idea is to recruit a large number of "readers" who would be willing to do close readings of chapters, or even entire books, to collect terms and enter them along with page references. A smaller number of "researchers" (hopefully, people who start out with a fair amount of knowledge in the area) could then provide definitions for the terms. One or two editors would be required to ensure consistency, check page references, make sure the definitions aren't violating copyrights of other sources, and that sort of thing. The generation of the Lexicon entries (and cross referencing) would then be done automatically, and terms uploaded to the Lexicon.

So, that's the plan, but, right now I'm waiting to hear from our server administrators to see if they'll give me access to the server (to install the web interface, which I have to create) and database. If you're interested in working on this once thing are ready to go, let me know and I'll contact you then. Jblumel 21:51, 3 January 2009 (GMT)

Just watch the Lexicon project page. I'll post a notice there when the nautical terms project is ready to start up. Jblumel 03:25, 4 January 2009 (GMT)