From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Apr 26 15:25:06 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:25:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1FYsRF-0000T0-Fe for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:24:49 -0700 Received: from nz-out-0102.google.com ([64.233.162.200]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1FYsRC-0000St-IA for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:24:49 -0700 Received: by nz-out-0102.google.com with SMTP id n1so1779415nzf for ; Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:24:45 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=JpzuLDcQE8XxovaGmsoqhpbHKZEO/VD2vvwYBRh6KpY5btEm/GIUKRsBDTjCEZQdnI1IpO59OlHYXJKMAcdWIhskhjWFDyeDjh8fI8bIFb5QBXmXcqf4ruBUSW/0ZJS8y+yfJn8JDdX/LiHepW3Fp/09rIvmtw2NpToiZ9SRJB8= Received: by 10.36.250.48 with SMTP id x48mr1943713nzh; Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:24:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.37.20.62 with HTTP; Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:24:44 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:24:44 -0400 From: "Matt Arnold" To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: jbovlaste query In-Reply-To: <20060426210621.GG2842@chain.digitalkingdom.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <20060426210621.GG2842@chain.digitalkingdom.org> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 11340 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: matt.mattarn@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list I was wrong to use such a disparaging word and I'm sincerely sorry. Your efforts are appreciated. I brag about jbovlaste's PDF dictionary production system at every presentation and it always impresses the crowds. There is an element of subjectivity to it. "Working" or "not working" begs the question "working/not working for what?" When my IRC client functioned intermittently on the channel, I thought it was working, in that it was meeting my needs, but you did not seem to. We had different expectations for it. Similarly with jbovlaste, it turns out that the administrator has a concept of the intent of function which is different from the assumption of an uninformed user. It's good for the user to know what question he is asking: "show me the word if there is a vote for it in both directions, and ignore its occurence of this string of characters anywhere but the Word field." By the Word field, I mean as distinct from the Type, Gloss Word, rafsi, or Definition fields. I was using it to ask the question "show me every occurence of this string of characters anywhere in the dictionary's text, including all fields." That's why Supermemo is so useful for word lookup. So this is why we need to let the users know what question the jbovlaste query is hearing them ask. I recommend "To improve the quality of results, jbovlaste search does not return words with insufficient votes. To qualify to be returned in search results, a proposed lujvo is required to have received a vote in favor in both directions: for instance, in English to Lojban and in Lojban to English." I'm not sure what other restrictions the search involves. Also, it would be interesting to allow users to vote against a word. That way when Alex Martini browses to {pelnimre} in the alphabetical valsi listing, he would be informed on that page that Robin Lee Powell has voted against it. Currently it just says "created by phma" and "created by noralujv" which seems like an endorsement of using {pelnimre} to gloss as "lemon." -epkat On 4/26/06, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 04:43:48PM -0400, Matt Arnold wrote: > > In my universe, "broken" means "the operator of the device can't > > predict whether it is likely to accomplish what it is for at any > > given time." > > Rant follows. > > That's not what "broken" means in English. > http://www.answers.com/broken&r=67 -- the applicable definition is > 10: Not functioning; out of order: a broken washing machine. > > The "technology" and "Hacker Slang" definitions move more in the > direction of allowing your usage, but they still clearly prefer > mine. > > Functioning intermittently != not functioning at all; the latter is > what "broken" means, unless qualifiers are provided. You did not > provide any. > > Many people use jbovlaste lookups on a regular basis, and it does > what they want most of the time. That's not broken. > > As the admin of a tool, someone saying my stuff is "broken" puts me > into hyper "I have to go fix this right now" mode. Having that be > spurious is rather frustrating. > > Furthermore, responding to a report about a single bug in an > otherwise working piece of software with a single line just saying > that that entire feature is broken is just rude, both because it's > false (I can look up "klama" just fine, thank you very much) and > because it disparages all the effor that went in to making the > system work as well as it does. > > -Robin > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org > with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if > you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help. > > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.