Note: Have just copied JP's edits to the main document here and add some of my own.

@Rehan: Amazon SimpleDB and Freebase does sound interesting. Freebase seems especially relevant to expand the reach and usefulness of WiserEarth's database.

 

"Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.

Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning. Developers gain access to this functionality within Amazon's proven computing environment, are able to scale instantly, and pay only for what they use."

 

 

"Freebase is an open database of the world’s information. It is built by the community and for the community—free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites.

Already, Freebase covers millions of topics in hundreds of categories. Drawing from large open data sets like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and the SEC, it contains structured information on many popular topics, like movies, music, people and locations—all reconciled and freely available via an open API. This information is supplemented by the efforts of a passionate global community of users, who are working together to add structured information on everything from philosophy to European railway stations to the chemical properties of common food ingredients.

... while information in Freebase appears to be structured much like a conventional database, it’s actually built on a system that allows any user to contribute to the schemas—or frameworks—that hold the data. This wiki-like approach to structuring information lets many people organize the database without formal, centralized planning. And it lets subject experts who don’t have database expertise find one another, and then build and maintain the data in their domain of interest.

 

Here are three good reasons to contribute to Freebase:

1) You’ve got a bunch of data that you’d like to share with the world. Freebase gives you a place to do it. A related benefit: once your data is in Freebase, you or anyone else can run MQL (Metaweb Query Language) queries against it.

2) You’ve got a bunch of data that you’d like to share, and said data would benefit from the knowledge and refinement efforts of other people. Freebase gives you a place to share it and others a place to improve it.

3) You don’t have data, but you're an authority on something, and you like sharing your expertise. Freebase lets you dive into the details and improve or add to existing data."

@ Roger: I think the idea for now is one site / one instance but the platform handles multiple languages. However, wikipedia has multiple distinct sites (i.e. one for each language) which bears remarking .....

How about having a human-and-machine translation server for all translation effort done in/for WiserEarth? This should help ease further translation effort. Below are the basic concept copied from a discussion on What does it mean to Internationalize?

 

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Camilla asked:

- does the community automate the translation?

- does the community look for volunteer translators and do this manually?

 

Have done some serendipitous research in this regard, with the answer being both. The translation effort must start manually, but can be automated to a certain degree once sufficient "translation database between languages" is developed by the community.

 

Discovered that in the translator community they have softwares that aid their work in translating documents. The latest development of the software enables the translation know-how of a great number of translators be aggregated into one large software-assisted human-auto-translation engine. Much like google translation, but using the database of translations by real, professional translators!

 

WiserEarth can imagine setting up such translation software/databse and integrate it into WiserPlatform somehow. Or if technically too difficult / impossible, WE can enable the community of volunteer translators to access, add and extract out translations from the software/database to then easily copy paste into WiserEarth's wikipages/wikispaces for further editing/refinements.

 

Here's a breakdown of the concept, explained further below it:

1. Each translator can develop his/her own translation memory (TM).

2. A termbase (TB) for each area of focus can be developed together by all translators.

3. These TMs and TBs can then be integrated into the translation software/database.

4. Any new translation effort can benefit from this database, where the workload for each translation can be reduced significantly.

 

Now, a more detailed explanation of each:

 

1. Each translator can develop his/her own translation memory (TM).

From a leading software in Computer Aided Translation (CAT):

A translation memory is a linguistic database that continually captures your translations as your work for future use. All previous translations are accumulated within the translation memory (in source and target language pairs called translation units) and reused so that you never have to translate the same sentence twice. The more you build up your translation memory, the faster you can translate subsequent translations, enabling you to take on more projects and increase your revenue.

 

2. A termbase (TB) for each area of focus can be developed together by all translators.

 

Again from a leading software in Computer Aided Translation (CAT):

 

Terminology is the foundation of all communication. At its most basic level it is the study and ultimately usage of words or phrases that have a particular meaning, these words or phrases are referred to as terms. Terminology is growing in importance as terms are becoming increasingly adopted by organizations to describe a company, product, service or even a unique selling point.

A termbase is a central repository, similar to a database, which allows for the systematic management of approved terms. It provides definitions and indicates when a particular term should be used. Use of a termbase alongside your existing translation environment ensures that you produce more accurate and consistent translations.

4. Any new translation effort can benefit from this database, where the workload for each translation can be reduced significantly.

 

As a result of the above, and as the database of translation for sentences and terminology expands, each new translation effort takes less time to do and gains in accuracy.

 

Concluding this section, I'll restate my previous point:

 

WiserEarth can imagine setting up such translation software/databse and integrate it into WiserPlatform somehow. Or if technically too difficult / impossible, WE can enable the community of volunteer translators to access, add and extract out translations from the software/database to then easily copy paste into WiserEarth's wikipages/wikispaces for further editing/refinements.