Use other source for dictionary (e.g. wiktionary)?

Value7609

The reason for this suggestion is, that I just searched for "MVP" and it only showed 'most valuable player', but I'd expect to also see 'minimum viable product':

I thought, maybe Kagi only shows one of the meanings in the dictionary widget, but I looked at the source, which according to the widget is 'WordsAPI' (can be seen when hovering over 'More Info') and they didn't have other meanings for 'MVP' than 'most valuable player'.

Then I looked further around on their page, and it seems like they didn't update it in a while?
Copyright footer is '2015-2019', their blogs (https://blog.wordsapi.com/) last post was 2019 and on Twitter they weren't active since 2017 (at least what Nitter shows me 🤷).

Also, one twitter comment (https://nitter.net/WordsAPI/status/903006099179266048#m) made me aware of another "weird" dictionary result.
Just search for 'woman' and it will tell you that a woman is "a human female employed to do housework":

I don't know if this could work for Kagi, but at least https://wiktionary.org never let me down, it supports more languages other than English and people can contribute to it. It could also pair nicely with the Wikipedia widget as they are often linked together.

For example, the entry for 'MVP' also shows 'minimum viable product': https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MVP

Vlad

Value7609

That's indeed bad, we do have to reconsider our soruce.

We can look into using Wiktionary

The issue I see is that
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woman

is a rather large page. How does one pick what to put into ₃₀₀ px high widget?

ProfessorTuring

Value7609 yeah and that definition seems super sexist to say women are literally defined by doing housework. Would be interesting to have more sources or be able to pick from a list to feed into the search engine.

Value7609

Is the category 'suggestions' the correct one for this? Or does this count as a 'bug report'?

Value7609

Vlad Good question. I looked a bit into it, this seems to be the definition of the format. The part directly after the "part of speech" header is the definition. Maybe return the first ~3 of these definitions, depending on the character length of the definitions. And then add the synonyms, amount does also depend on the length of the synonyms.

Just extracting these information returns a text that could fit into 300px (with some better formatting and whatnot than this plaintext representation).

Definitions:
1. An adult female human.
2. (collective) All female humans collectively; womankind.
3. A female person, usually an adult;
   a (generally adult) female sentient being, whether human, supernatural, elf, alien, etc.
Synonyms:
lady;
female;
see more at Thesaurus:woman

After this, link back to the Wiktionary for a complete list and more information.

I also found some other links/hints, which I don't know if they are of any interest to you.

Wordnik https://www.wordnik.com/about is a third party API that includes Wiktionary and other dictionaries, also includes audio which could be interesting for https://kagifeedback.org/d/321-word-pronunciation/5.

To take a look at the underlying format of the Wiktionary entry, you can use:
view-source:https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=woman&action=raw

To get the Wiktionary link (if any) for a Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&prop=iwlinks&page=MVP

This script (now defunct) returned the first definition as HTML via this API endpoint:
https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=parse&prop=text&format=xml&xslt=MediaWiki:extractFirst.xsl&page=Word
This uses some kind of XLS file that only parses the first definition:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:ExtractFirst.xsl

yokoffing

FWIW: I like the definitions on vocabulary.com. They’re written in simple, plain English.

MomentumBuffet

I think it would be a great solution to allow users to pick their own dictionary source (I think ProfessorTuring is suggesting that as well). I personally prefer Merriam Webster, DDG uses Wordnik. But overall I think that the current source is really not that good. I do like that it suggests synonyms

Vlad

We are planning to do this!

Augudev

When searching for "ADHD", Kagi spits out a harmful & misinformative definition from Words API that needlessly claims ADHD occurs mostly in boys.

This is an untrue stereotype that misinforms parents, preventing girls from receiving needed psychological attention.

Additionally, the usage of the word 'boys' promotes the stereotype that ADHD exists only in children. This is untrue, I am a man with ADHD, we do not grow out of it.

Here is a clear scientific reference backing up my claim about gender: https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00023210-200620020-00003

While I understand this definition comes from Words API, I believe it's pertinent that Kagi it out quickly with them because the definition is egregious.

Thank you
Family duo & Ultimate member that loves Kagi & Orion

Vlad

Augudev Thanks, time to look for another word definitions provider.

carl

Additionally, the usage of the word 'boys' promotes the stereotype that ADHD exists only in children. This is untrue, I am a man with ADHD, we do not grow out of it.

But you were a boy once if you are a man. It makes sense that they talk about the age when a condition appears, if it is chronic.

As for word definition APIs, is there any comparison of different offerings? As to not diminish quality in other areas when increasing quality for medical words. Maybe it's even possible to use different APIs for different categories/fields, in order to get the highest quality?

youngji22

In that case, it would have been correct to say "male" or "men" instead as it is genetic (and not limited to childhood or adulthood). Either way, the definition is incorrect.

guissmo

The definition widget favors interpreting wasp to be the White AngloSaxon Protestant as opposed to the insect.

I think it would be more useful to most people to favor talking about the insect first.

Not sure if it’s too opinionated to change the algorithm for this. But I definitely think it will be more useful for most people in the US, and almost all people outside the US.

A user searches wasp. The user gets a definition of the insect wasp.

Colonial

I also ran into this issue. For the time being, I created a custom bang that defers to Wiktionary - most of the time this will drop you right on the page (e.g. !define wasp will take you to the page for wasp, rather than going to search results.)

Jesal

worsdapi providing an overly narrow and odd definition for machine: