Revamped Term Synonyms
Friday, March 13th, 2009The principle of Factolex is to explain terms using multiple facts. But these facts are not the only properties that define a term.
Oftentimes terms have more than one name. We used to call these additional names aliases, but from now on we call them synonyms. Wikipedia uses redirects to imply that a term has multiple names, but we do it differently.
Examples for multiple names for a term could be local spellings (Whiskey as spelled in Ireland vs. Whisky as it is spelled in Scotland) or local names (Vienna is called Wien in German).
An elegant aspect of Factolex directly attaching synonyms to a term, is that the synonym can contain an explanation why it actually is a synonym.
This is different from Wikipedia where it can happen to you that you land on a certain article through a redirect and only then have to figure out why you have been redirected and also why it is a valid redirect.
Today we introduced a new interface (see the screenshot below or live on Factolex) for adding and modifying term titles, modeled along the behavior of facts. You can select the synonyms that fit for the term and reorder them according to priority.
A further problem that we are facing — as we also use Wikipedia to build up our term basis: on Wikipedia sometimes multiple terms are enclosed within one longer article. On Factolex we need to create new terms from these entries that are can currently appear as synonyms. We will present a solution for that soon.
Synonyms
- are different words with identical or at least similar meanings
Vienna
- Austria's capital city with a population of about 1.7 million (2.3 million within the metropolitan area), it is by far the largest city in Austria as well as its cultural, economic, and political center
Whisky
- refers to a broad category of alcoholic beverages that are distilled from fermented grain mash and aged in wooden casks (generally oak)
Wikipedia
- a multilingual, web-based, encyclopedia project
- articles are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world
Alex, who currently lives in 