Clarify language describing scope?

[jaronheard]

This is such a cool project! ☺️ After reading through the project website, documentation, and issues, I feel the purpose and intent, but it's still a bit fuzzy when I try to clarify the scope.

I find the description on the home page most helpful at describing the purpose, intent, and focus.

A modern dictionary about us. We define our words, but they don't define us.

Self-Defined seeks to provide more inclusive, holistic, and fluid definitions to reflect the diverse perspectives of the modern world.

With the foundation of vocabulary, we can begin to understand lived experiences of people different than us. Words can provide us with a sense of identity and allow us to find kinship through common experiences.

The main question that I come away with from this and the other documentation and issues is -- what is the scope of the dictionary? Is it focused and limited along the lines of the purpose, or is it aiming to be more comprehensive? Or did I miss something? 😅

Expanded question and thoughts:

• What words/phrases are in scope? What would make a word or phrase out of the scope for this project?
  • I see an emergent focus on words that describe identity, lived experiences, and diverse perspectives, as well as words that benefit from flagging, because they are problematic or need a content warning.
  • There are translations into other languages. Is this dictionary primarily based around English, meaning that words are added are words that are commonly used with English? Or would a word or phrase primarily used in another language and doesn't have a corresponding English phrase qualify for inclusion?
• An interesting test case is "unreal", which doesn't fit the emergent focus categories I identified above.

The intent of this issue is not to limit or influence the scope of the project, but rather to clarify how the scope of the project so that it is more inviting to potential contributors and more successful in its aims. I could also see leaving the scope a bit unclear to see how the project develops organically.

This may tie into #313. I'd be happy to attempt a PR to update if desired.

[tatianamac]

@jaronheard Thanks for bringing this up. This is actually a long-time ongoing project of mine, I'm just not able to dedicate quite focus on it yet.

To concisely answer your immediate questions:

• Unreal might be an anomaly and I don't remember why it came up.
• The dictionary started in English but it's not limited to it. There are and will continue to be words that don't necessarily translate across all languages and that's okay.

Many issues are open around this topic (or are adjacent ways to address some of your questions):

• 288

• 178

• 208

If you're interested in helping, I'd be open to you creating a PR/and/or helping to complete one of the open issues.