Greetings!
I am, first and foremost, a contributor to the English Wiktionary (under the same username). I regularly create Ancient Greek entries using Perseus, and I’ve registered for this forum because I too often come across phrases too difficult for me to translate.
Outside of that, my interests include programming, conlanging, linguistics, and occasionally writing.
That is a good work. The ancient Greek entries on Wiktionary are incredibly useful.
I’d recommend using print versions of Smyth + LSJ to check Perseus. There are a number of errors in Perseus. . I am told that Helma Dik has been compiling a large list of Perseus LSJ errors, which will hopefully be incorporated in a future release.
We had a discussion just the other day about a vowel length error in Wiktionary’s plural form for βασιλεύς.
I do cross-check verbs with Smyth when I can (although I don’t own a print copy so I use Perseus’.) Recently I’ve also started transcribing Alcaeus to Wikisource (working from the book by John Maxwell Edmonds through the Internet Archive.)
What was the error? I usually don’t run into problems with vowel length – most of the time it’s hidden anyway.
I had written some software that downloaded many of the Wiki entries for Anki flashcards, and ariphron noted that βασιλεύς was wrong it in the thread about it.
It’s not anything major, but accusative plural should have a long alpha. Also nominative plural is somewhat incomplete with just βασιλεῖς which Smyth refers to as a “later” post-329 B.C. form. I strongly recommend using a PDF version of Smyth instead of the Perseus version, which has poor formatting and sometimes transcription errors.
On βασιλεύς see Smyth 275, 275 D 1, 277 B, and 278. You’ll notice that the Perseus version in 275 confuses the nominative plural with its poor table formatting.
I didn’t make any changes because it seems that all ευς verbs in Wiktionary are tied together. I think that they can act somewhat differently (see Smyth 276 and surrounding). βασιλεύς is different because it was once βασιλῆϝ–.
Also, hidden values are just the ones that you go to a dictionary to find out!
I think I’ve fixed βασιλεύς; please check for correctness.
Well, I was referring to quantities of α ι υ before two consonants… not to mention that LSJ often omits quantities in prefixes and suffixes even when they’re not hidden.