Hey everyone!

A while ago I posted a thread putting forward the idea of a human-curated dictionary as a better alternative towards either using our overly-restrictive dictionary or an overly-inclusive one. I think the best way forward is to take an overly inclusive dictionary, and remove the stuff we don’t want. That’s a lot of work… but that’s where you come in :D But don’t worry, I’ve made it as painless as possible.

So, the English Open Word List has about 130 thousand words. Obviously way too much for us to go over just at the moment. But if, for now, we just look at words that are 5 letters or less, that goes down to just about 15 thousand. Doable! Of course, everything in there is a collection of letters that somebody somewhere thinks is a word — rishi, zos and conia are all words to somebody or other — but that’s really not what we’re after here, so the idea is to flag any word that doesn’t “feel” like a word to you. Once we’ve ended the curation step, words that have been repeatedly flagged will undergo manual review before being removed.

If you would like to participate in the curation of our future dictionary, click here.

Is there a specific end date for this?
I like helping when there are sectioned goals and seemingly tedious tasks, but I’d like to divide my time to ensure I can look at all the sets of words ^^

Nice, thanks for the heads up :D
I can for sure fit about 12-13 groups every day for you guys.
(And it sounds a lot less daunting that I’m sure most people could do that too!)

this is actually kinda fun! i think it’ll be a good game to keep me busy without making me anxious or upset over ~goals~ or smth. its pretty easy and quick.

two things: i don’t think the five-second timer is working yet. i stared at one word for what i felt was longer than 5 seconds, and the little second countdown didn’t seem to be dropping at all!

second: after zipping through 10 sets, i really need to take a break. “deeds” and “rime” are starting to look like nonsense words, while “whats” and “homo” are starting to look like real words. xD

Excellent work! This is a GREAT solution.

I’m going to try to get through 500-1000 words or so throughout the day - in chunks, so I don’t get bored or distracted. :)

This is fun! I think I might have messed up a few times though- and I can see why you put a warning up after going through my first two rounds 0.o

I learned from this that I don’t have as big of a vocabulary as I thought xc

Hmm I submitted my first batch, but I do have to admit that there were maybe a few words that I honestly weren’t sure that were real ones? My vocabulary is limited |D They did seem like things that you’d try out of desperation when thinking of letters to put together in a game, but you wouldn’t think they actually accept it until it lights up right - something like that? XD

Nevertheless I’ll try to do more and help out~

...to remove words such as “varus”

oh no, poor Varus! You really are forsaken.

Varus is totally a real word that I knew the meaning of before reading this thread :( That’s the only problem I have with this system - some of the words it will flag will be ridiculous, others will be real words that are just somewhat uncommon.

When I’m doing a word search thing, there are two things that make me very happy to find - dirty words, because I get to giggle, and uncommon/technical words, because it makes me feel good to use uncommon knowledge. I hope we get to keep some from both categories!

Also, glitch - I seem to be having a minor issue. The counter stays at 0/50 for the whole time. I turned NoScript off, using firefox. Not quite sure what the issue is, hope my stuff is submitting.

Actually, this is a really great system to sort them with. It kind of reminds me of some psychology tests they do to check decision making and grouping abilities. 50 words is also a great chuck size because it’s not too daunting and you can get through it pretty quickly with enough breaks to keep paying attention.

Great work on the coding!

Whenever I get a word I tend to try and see if I can use it an a sentence but some words I recognise as words but I’m not sure if it’s from another language since English borrows words from other languages.

This is really fun, can we get a pick-the-definition game or something like this?
That aside, I will be doing a few of these every day since they go pretty quick.

It kind of reminds me of some psychology tests they do to check decision making and grouping abilities.

Heh, I actually made some of those for a few quick dollars when I was in college, and that’s what I based the interface on. Although I gather in psych tests usually you use the ‘Z’ and ‘M’ keys because using different hands makes a difference… or something. I dunno, I didn’t do the psych, just made the tests :)

This is really fun, can we get a pick-the-definition game or something like this?

That would be super fun! We don’t have any definitions, though :(

Oooh I love doing this kind of stuff x’D
In these small chuncks it’s quite easy to do and not so difficult to not get distracted :P

I get the feeling there’s a lot of words in here from other languages though? Or maybe they are just words I happen to know from other languages, which also exist in English? (I’m Dutch btw)

This is so addicting oh my gosh haha.

Though some words are just “normal” to me but I realized that they aren’t in English (there’s a lot of Spanish around here). Like “paseo” came up, and that’s a word I see all the time, but that’s because it’s part of “paseo de —-” which is a location type. There isn’t a good alternative word for it in English though so I guess it could count as a loan word?

I tried this and was all “Oh this is fun!”
Until I realized that since I’m not that great at English and some of those words look like they could be English, I probably should sit this out. xD
You could make up a whole new language here!

@Juney
*high-fives*
I vaguely recall you were in the Netherlands for a while, or so? I’m not even sure.. Must have been years ago on aywas I had this convo and that might even have been you. :P

Lmao..
I had to do some again because I clicked to quickly before realizing said ‘valid word’ was Latin and not English. Sometimes there’s a downside to knowing a lot of languages, I guess :P
I’m enjoying myself with this, anyway x’D

Ooooh, then it must have been someone else from the early years of aywas x’D I recall talking to someone who was living here for like.. a year or so? I don’t even know x’D I keep getting surprised all the time how many Dutch people frequent petsites.
I’ve been in this tiny country for like.. 24 years too! :P Nearly 25 by now though. (Admitting that makes me feel old o.o)