by mmooss | 2025-06-04 01:01:05+00:00
Wiktionary can be of great value without denigrating others.

> Unabridged dictionaries take decades to release new editions and are still navigating transition into the exploding digital age.

OED is now a 100% online service - a website - that releases updates every quarter, like much software. I don't see them 'still navigating' at all.

> barely accept any crowd contributions.

OED is famous for being arguably the first crowd-sourced research project. James Murray, the first great editor and driving force behind the first edition, solicited contributions from the public of usages of words and had a massive filing system of slips with all the contributions.

"Dictionary work relied on so much correspondence that a post box was installed right outside Murray’s Oxford home ...". "His children (eventually there were eleven) were paid pocket money to sort the dictionary slips into alphabetical order upon arrival." [0]

Today OED still solicits contributions, including specific appeals to the public. Every entry in the OED has a 'Contribute' button.

https://www.oed.com/information/using-the-oed/contributing-t...

> (Yesterday I tried to verify the latter English senses of "fandango" on Wiktionary with other dictionaries; OED's entry has not been touched for 131 years! What am I going to do with that, I need to use / understand the word now!)

You are misunderstanding what 'revise' means to the OED (which is unnecessarily confusing); they still update entries without a full revision. If you look at the entry history:

fandango, n. was first published in 1894; not yet revised.

fandango, n. was last modified in March 2025.

> I don't think definitions "are" highly accurate precise things. Sometimes yes. The same scholarship, skill, and need to not mislead also applies for so many other things: encyclopedic articles, taxonomies, news, maps, operating systems. Do people still question the value of Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap?

I think there's a difference between requirements - or expectations - for a dictionary and Wikipedia:

My guess is that people don't question Wikipedia because they have different expectations for it: They don't expect accuracy, as defined by the Three Cs: Completeness, Correctness, Consistency. Wikipedia is more the accumulation of information generally believed about a topic (with some standards, imperfectly followed, for secondary source support - but secondary sources reflect general, consensus belief). It's not expected to be Complete; no encyclopedia can completely cover any topic - the point is to be a starting place, a summary - and anyway Wikipedia is a sort of work in progress. It's not expected to be Correct; it's what people generally believe. And Consistency is tough with so many authors. It's really an product of the post-truth era; that's what people want - just try questioning it.

People's expectation for dictionaries - or my expectation at least :) - is not a starting point but the final word. Almost always I already have an idea of what the word means - from partial knowledge, from experience, from context, from its components. I'm expecting the Three Cs from the dictionary, to put a fine point on my understanding and use of the word, to fill in my blind spots - including knowledge of how others have been understanding and using the word.

Maybe Wiktionary just isn't for me. But I worry that people do assume it's CCC - many people believe anything they read is accurate, especially something from an authoritative-looking source - and are confused by it.

[0] https://www.oed.com/information/about-the-oed/history-of-the...