Talk:Japanese/Vocabulary

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

[edit] Sub-page scope

How big a scope do people want to give these sub-pages? On the one end of the spectrum, we could have big pages with lots of tables (like the proposed natural sciences page) which would reduce the number of pages one might have to browse through. On the other end, we could make very short pages so that once one has found the page, there won't be much clutter and the words of interest easily found.

I would lean towards smaller pages. I have nothing against longer ones and see no reason why we couldn't make a natural sciences page by including the relevant pages. I like the modular approach, but realise that it does introduce a certain amount of clutter on indexing pages.

Anyone have good arguments that tip the scales for one or the other, or a good compromise that will give the right tune. --Swift (talk) 09:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

How about setting a limit of vocabulary under a particular topic until it's made into a subpage. Astronomy and Glaciology (which is a subset of Earth Science) are all Natural Sciences. However, putting Glaciology and Astronomy directly under Natural Sciences would develop a rather large page. Making a limit would remove the clutter from the main Natural Science page and limit the need to make numerous subpages.

The only real problem I have is that some terms may go under multiple pages (and the main reason I decided to go with one page.) In the Natural Science page, it's easier to solve. All terms should go under the science they're directly related. For example, carbon monoxide is used under Glaciology. This is clearly a chemistry term - even though it's used in the Glaciology community. Similarly, "solid" should go under "Chemistry" even though many others would also use the term. Other terms may be more difficult - biochemistry (is this a Biology term? Chemistry?), Telescope (Astronomy or Physics?), Microscope (Biology, Chemistry or Physics?). What one person believes the term should belong, another person would disagree. This makes it rather difficult for people to find terms they believe should belong in one section. I guess there could be a section called "Interdisciplinary Section" or something similar. --Retropunk (talk) 04:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Sure, a limit could work. I'm not sure if a strict limit would be useful ... there are always situations where it's good to be able to bend the rules.

I don't see this problem so easily solved by putting it under a Natural Science page. You still have to section them off if you want to make browsing possible. An alphabetical list would allow for searching, but at that point we're approaching a dictionary, which Wikibooks is not.

I see these vocab lists more as a resource to practice phrases with new words and less as a tool to build up vocabulary (which is probably best done by the students themselves in their own context). For that end, we would be better off with a few short lists of related words per page with links to related content to allow for browsing.

It's true that many terms can fit under multiple categories. Since we're building a learning resource rather than a word index, I'd say that multiple entries of the same word in different lists is perfectly fine.

For searching, we could see if we can put a Wiktionary searchbox on the vocab pages. --Swift (talk) 02:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)