The Job:
Simply chat on our chat room sometimes (URL is http://www.network54.com/Chat/82489>). First, let me know you want to participate so I can add you to the list of people to get words from.

How it works:
TechBot is a new creation of mine which will be helping out with this project. TechBot sits on the chatroom, storing all of the words that the volunteers use inside of a database.

Should you worry about privacy?
No, there's nothing to worry about. The database is stored in alphabetical order so that you can't make sentences out of it. Also, TechBot does not store the names of the contributers.


More info:
The goal of the project is to provide a large (10000 words) word list which does not come with any license agreement. It will take a long time to create this word list, but it is not tedious work for anyone other than me. I will have to sort through all of the words, deleting the non-words, but I think it's worth the trouble. Between now and the deleting of the words, only socializing is needed.

I mean you're going to collect a lot of strange stuff, CG. Is it a spelling list you are after? There are a lot of sites that have commonly misspelled words and several word-lists available.

Other than that, what will be accomplished by the completion of such a project?

Pete

1) They all have a license agreement that is very long. Though many of them have a very lenient agreement, they just make it too long to wade through.

2) The lists that I have found are either too long or do not have more than just common words.


There are two word lists that I use: One has 1000 common words (not enough), and the other has 173529 words (who needs 543 words that begin with z?). l0l_l0l uses the later, btw.


So why not make my own list? If I can get people to help (I've already got volunteers), all they need to do is chat on the chat room sometimes. And all I have to do is wade through all the words in a few months (I can do this; I've done tedious stuff like this before). The TechBot which is in the chat room right now does the hard work of collecting the words.

So, may I add your name to the list of people to collect words from?

Side projects are generally easy to do, don't take much work, and are done in spare time. This one is easy to do, and won't take much work until the end, and takes up virtually none of my time.

I'll use it. If no one else does, that's fine with me. I won't be able to say it's a waste of work or time because it's not taking up much of either.

I believe Enable2K is in the public domain. But still, Enable2K, while it may be suitable for scrabble players, it is simply too large for many other applications. For example, I made a radio riddle solver which really doesn't need 200k words -- that many words will just slow it down.

So this smaller word list will be of use to those projects which require a smaller list of words.


P.S. If you do find an ideally-sized word list in the public domain, great! I'll have competition.