Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Larry Sanger (talk | contribs) at 18:11, 28 March 2001. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Someone wrote "Shouldn't we use the public domain 1913 Webster's Unabridged Dictionary as a basic definition reference?"

Larry Sanger responded: "To answer the question: no, 1913 is too old."

I don't understand this response. We have a handful of articles from the public domain version of Britannica, which is quite old, and these articles are too old, because much of the information is hopelessly outdated. But a dictionary is different. A 1913 dictionary surely has a perfectly good definition of 'shotgun' for example. Since I didn't know there was a 1913 public domain dictionary, I had to dig up a very legalistic definition from the US legal code.

I think that using the public domain 1913 Webster's Unabridged as a basic reference for definitions of words can be very helpful.

Of course, it is important for us to remember that Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, so the random copying of entries from that work can be discouraged. But using those entries as a jumping off point seems like a great idea.

I mean, shotgun is a great example. I "just knew" what a shotgun was, but never tried to put it into words. I found it very difficult to do so! A dictionary definition, especially a public domain one that I could just freely copy without questions of fair use, etc., would have been great.

Well, I deleted the question because I thought it was a nonstarter, but maybe it wasn't. As you said, we aren't really after dictionary definitions here; encyclopedias are different from dictionaries. We can use text from a public domain dictionary, sure. In most cases, though, I don't think it would make much sense simply to cut and paste a definition from an dictionary into Misplaced Pages. Basically, if someone doesn't have more to say about a topic than what is in a dictionary, then we probably shouldn't just create the article just in order to paste a dictionary definition in. Using them as a jumping-off point is fine, sure, I'll go along with that.

I have no objection whatsoever to putting a link to a 1913 public domain dictionary on the PublicDomainResources page. My reservations are about what people will most likely do with it. --LMS