Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mtxinu!shore From: shore@mtxinu.COM (Melinda Shore) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Info on Lotus Marketplace Message-ID: <1990Dec18.080034.8237@mtxinu.COM> Date: 18 Dec 90 08:00:34 GMT References: <1990Dec14.004404.1671@ddsw1.MCS.COM> tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley) writes: |> Can you give examples of a dictionary ringer? How would they work? |I don't know if they were all ringers or not, but my edition of the OED |(that's Oxford English Dictionary, no, not the latest edition, the one |before that) contains a section on "Spurious words". These are words they |found in other dictionaries which they never found anywhere else in printed |english text (and they look at a *lot* of printed text!). This practice is fairly widespread. In Grove's Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians, for example, there are several completely fictitious composers included, along with complete "biographies" and lists of works. If these entries show up in another music encyclopedia, it provides evidence that they've been plagiarizing from Grove's. Now, the situation is somewhat different from a database like Lotus', because when you go to a dictionary or encyclopedia you generally have a name or term and are looking for further information. You never should have any need to use one of the bogus entries. In a database, on the other hand, you typically have a description of what/who you're looking for and want to find records matching that description. I really don't know how to keep bogus records from being retrieved other than to tag them, and that gives the game away. -- Hardware brevis, software longa Melinda Shore shore@mtxinu.com mt Xinu ..!uunet!mtxinu.com!shore