Template talk:R:be:Skarnik

Institute of Linguistic Research of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences recommends to use Verbum and bnkorpus.info (those are projects from the Institute's representatives). Skarnik and Starnik is a project of one person which is not a lexicograph and tries to "modernize" the Krapiva's dictionary, adding new colloquial words, the dictionary was not fully updated to the 2008 grammar and in core could not be considered as a reliable source, because there is no professional overview. As student of belarusian philology I strongly recommend to not use this source in Wiktionary articles and add more parameters for particular dictionaries in Verbum and slounik.org, referencing to stable and verified sources. Plaga med (talk) 18:35, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

(Inviting @Ssvb) I strongly oppose not using Skarnik, although there are all these problems you mentioned, Skarnik is still an acceptable/usable dictionary on Wiktionary, editors just need to be careful to correct certain information when adding it to Wiktionary. Наименее Полезное (talk) 19:46, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Even though, why using Skarnik, if there are better sources? Plaga med (talk) 19:47, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

So use them too if you are bothered and pay attention to the warnings I give you in the edit summaries. Наименее Полезное (talk) 19:50, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I could miss something, but I try to find explanations in your edit summaries related to my activity and I see nothing, only that they are made from mobile device... So I don't understand why we should change Verbum with Skarnik and not vice-versa, considering mentioned above. Plaga med (talk) 20:05, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Responding again with the same argument: Skarnik is still an acceptable/usable dictionary on Wiktionary, editors just need to be careful to correct certain information when adding it to Wiktionary. Наименее Полезное (talk) 20:06, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I see Skarnik as self-published edition of a dictionary. Slounik.org and Verbum.by give multiple dictionaries in their original form, those dictionaries generally meet criteria for reliable sources, they do not change, they are in most cases have multiple editors and scientific advisers. Most of them are created by professional lexicographists, if not (which is mostly relevant for some works at.org) they should be used with precaution. Skarnik is an edition of one dictionary, acceccible on other previously mentioned platforms. This edtion is constantly changing, it is created not by lexicographist and there is no oversight from professional linguists. Even if in most cases Skarnik is correct, it is still not reliable source, because every researcher will need to double check information from this source. From perspective of belarusian researcher I would like to see information, that is checked directly in RS and not on some secondary self-published source, based on one partly deprecated RS, even if the information is factually and obviously correct.

And still the argument, that if we have some inferior source but still usable, so we should change a more reliable source with it, seem having no sense for me. Plaga med (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Skarnik is not inferior in the slightest to other dictionaries, I understand your concern about the issues that this dictionary is changing sometimes. And I also understand that you think it is better to use other dictionaries that you believe are more reliable and more complete, but this is not an absolute truth in my opinion. And as I said before, if you think it's missing something when editing, then add them, Skarnik is anyway a good source of information along with the Verbum and Slounik dictionaries, every time I removed the Verbum dictionary and added the Skarnik, It is because generally the articles in the dictionary in Verbum were absolutely inferior to the other dictionary, and whenever there is something "improper" in the Skarnik dictionary, it can be corrected by the editor, that is why I defend the idea that a language should have more native editors than people who speak other languages. Наименее Полезное (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I want to be clear, that I have no intention to insult the creator of Skarnik, it's users or someone else. By saying that some source is more reliable, and another one is less I am refering to the Wikipedia's community consesus on en:Wikipedia:WP:RS. The thing is not in mine or your personal preferences, there is consensus on criateria of a Reliable Source. Paper dictionary, published by professionals is always more reliable that self-published web-dictionary in it's core, even if there is a minimal difference between them, please read the criteria. Skarnik could be used is there is no other more reliable option, indeed, but in most cases there are alternatives, sometimes fully equivalent or more detailed.

Changing Verbum (project by representatives of Belarusian Academy of Sciences with a lot of dictionaries, unchanged, equivalent to the original works) to Skarnik, considering previously mentioned, looks more like promotion of Skarnik then justified improvement for now. We need to be directed by the consensus and to fill it up if needed with additional discussions. To not wasting efforts on senseless edit war it is always better to make a consensus. Please read Wikipedia articles on RS, consensus, criteria of quality in Wiki projects and then try to refer to them in your responses, and let's try to better react to the arguments in this conversation. It will make our conversation more specific and constructive.

My proposal is to consider Verbum and bnkorpus.info as the most reliable sources, because they are created by representatives of the Institute of Linguistic Research of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences (the second is a project of the Institute oficially), then particular verified dictionaries from slounik.org, knihi.com and other hostings with scans of books. Ideally names of particular dictionaries should be indicated. And only then, if there is no info about a problem in a dictionary or other publications, refering to Skarnik, with precaution, that this information is not verified by academia, similarly to the consensus of Belarusian Wikipedia though. Plaga med (talk) 21:48, 25 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Plaga med: The concept of "reliable sources" is relevant for Wikipedia, but the rules are different here and Wiktionary is not Wikipedia ("This means that while Wikipedia documents what others say about topics, Wiktionary documents the meanings of words and phrases without relying on the statements of others"). Any references to the academic dictionaries are a nice bonus, but quotations from the so called "durably archived sources", such as books, are by far more important for WT:CFI. We are not supposed to blindly trust any external dictionaries or the language governing authorities. --Ssvb (talk) 04:11, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm not happy about Skarnik myself and would prefer Verbum, but it's unfortunately inconvenient to use. In order to refer a specific article on Verbum, it's necessary to use the Latin transliteration of a Cyrillic term instead of the Cyrillic term itself as the search key. See this diff as an example. Some time ago, the Skarnik website started showing annoying commercial ads and I tried to replace {{R:be:Skarnik}} with a quickly hacked new template {{R:be:TSBM}}, but the problem is that it's not a perfect drop-in replacement. For example, in the надоечы entry, the template needs to somehow precisely link to https://verbum.by/tsbm/nadojechy without showing any other noise. And for comparison, this is achieved via https://www.skarnik.by/search?term=надоечы&lang=beld using Skarnik. I may give it another try with Lua, attempting to replicate the exact Verbum's transliteration rules. --Ssvb (talk) 04:23, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for comprehensive explanation! Now I understand the problem, I didn't noticed that links are invalid, my bad. You just need to add a query symbol, like this: https://verbum.by/?q=чалавек, and there is no need to use transliterations then. But if we want to use specific dictionary, then it is an issue. It would be fantastic if you coul manage it and add parameters to choose a specific dictionary on Verbum and slounik.org, I think it will seriously improve Wiktionary's quality and reliability for researchers. Maybe some clues on transliteration are on Verbum's github. Plaga med (talk) 09:50, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I see that link with query is currently generating properly and I don't see any changes in the template. So I ask @Наименее Полезное to not change my references to Verbum into Skarnik without proper justification. Plaga med (talk) 12:17, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've already justified this: every time I swap Verbum for Skarnik it's because the other dictionary had exactly the same definitions and others in addition. Наименее Полезное (talk) 12:27, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Take article жырафа, wich information is missing in Verbum, so it was needed to change to Skarnik? Plaga med (talk) 16:41, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Plaga med: It's actually a good example. Let's check not "жырафа", but "жыраф". The https://verbum.by/?q=жыраф query reveals one stray hit in the Polish-Belarusian dictionary, but not in the other dictionaries. The term жыраф, which looks like a straightforward adaptation of the Russian жираф, is a questionable case and certainly needs quotations from Belarusian texts to prove its existence. But using the Verbum template in references would kinda automatically fast-track "legitimize" it. Now I have finally adjusted {{R:be:TSBM}} to work as a drop-in replacement for {{R:be:Skarnik}}. Compare:

• {{R:be:Verbum|жыраф}}: "жыраф" in Belarusian-Russian dictionaries and Belarusian dictionaries at Verbum
• {{R:be:Skarnik|жыраф}}: “жыраф”, in Skarnik's Belarusian dictionary (in Belarusian), based on Kandrat Krapiva's Explanatory Dictionary of the Belarusian Language (1977-1984)
• {{R:be:TSBM|жыраф}}: "жыраф" in Kandrat Krapiva's Explanatory Dictionary of the Belarusian Language (1977-1984) at Verbum

I believe that the TSBM template is better than Verbum, because it can only land on a valid lemma headword. The term "жыраф" is undesirable and needs extra scrutiny.

And just like you said, TSBM may be preferable over Skarnik, because it's the original non-abridged academic dictionary. --Ssvb (talk) 04:48, 30 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, it also shows the problem, that not all dictionaries on Verbum, slounik.org are made by the Academy of Science, so we should tend to some sources more, and some – less. This example shows better why it is better to work with templates for each deictionary, rather then one template for Verbum or other platform. Plaga med (talk) 15:33, 30 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

BTW, I see that there are still some OCR defects plaguing the Verbum's dictionaries, but they are getting recent corrections fairly regularly: https://github.com/verbumby/slouniki/commits/main

For example, here are the latest fixes specifically in the Verbum's TSBM: . It's interesting that Skarnik suffers from exactly the same defects in the same places: , so they originally used the same scans. --Ssvb (talk) 03:39, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Plaga med: Compare https://verbum.by/?q=чалавек (594 pages of various hits) and https://verbum.by/?q=человек (42 pages of various hits). Currently the Skarnik template is primarily used as a simple formal guard tool to quickly filter out non-Belarusian words (anything not found in Skarnik needs quotations for attestation). In the past, some editors used to mistakenly add Russian words as if they were Belarusian and referenced slounik.org as a "proof" of their existence. Verbum is prone to the same problem with the "человек" query. --Ssvb (talk) 12:46, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for clarifying, it makes much more sense now. Then there is of course need to make parameters or subtemplates for each separate dictionary in Verbum and slounik.org, and I would suggest changing references to specific dictionaries then, rather to some web-sites as source. "Тлумачальны слоўнік беларускай мовы" is source, Skarnik, Verbum and other web-sites are just platforms. I think it is wise to use that principle. Plaga med (talk) 16:46, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I totally agree. Hence the name "TSBM" for the template. Because we reference the "Тлумачальны слоўнік беларускай мовы" in its paper form. Similar to the {{R:zle-obe:HSBM}} and {{R:be:ESBM}} dictionaries.

We could also turn HSBM / ESBM / TSBM into parameters for the {{R:be:Verbum}} template just like you suggest, but I don't like the explicit dependency on the Verbum website infrastructure. What if it goes belly up? For example, https://bnkorpus.info/index.en.html is already down for more than a week. --Ssvb (talk) 05:01, 30 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agree, Verbum is just a platform, but we refer to the source, not a platform. So it is logical to work with separate templates for each dictionary. Plaga med (talk) 15:30, 30 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Plaga med: Thanks for the hint about the Verbum github. Looks like the transliteration code is here. I'll try to see what can be done. --Ssvb (talk) 13:50, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I have created the initial version of Module:R:be:Verbum with this functionality. --Ssvb (talk) 05:03, 30 January 2025 (UTC)Reply