Sunday, August 09, 2020

Keeping it simple for "Abstract Wikipedia"

Abstract Wikipedia is confusing to me; it is said to be about "articles in a language independent way". Articles are complicated because the expression in any language has to be consistent with the grammar, the diction, the vocabulary for that language. Wikipedia articles have one additional complication; once you start reading you may end up in a rabbit hole of wonderful stuff that grabs your attention.

Abstract Wikipedia covers all of Wikidata and that is much more than what all Wikipedias combined cover. Currently there are two items for every item with a Wikipedia link. The first objective that seems obvious is to have something to say about each item. It can be as little as **Name** is a **human**. When we know his profession **Name** is a **chemist**. When an award was won, "**Name** is a **chemist**. The **Award** was received in **year**." Patterns like these are similar for every language.

This minimal approach is the basis for automated descriptions and are vital when disambiguating. It is an improvement over manual descriptions because they do not get updated when new information becomes available. Automated descriptions are not articles; they have to be descriptive and not describing.

When a Wikipedia articles exist, they provide a rich source of information when new texts are to be generated. Given that Abstract Wikipedia is based on Wikidata, a tool like "Concept Cloud" is useful because it shows all the links to other articles and how often they occur in an article (Concept Cloud is part of Reasonator). The challenge will be to model such relations in Wikidata OR allow for these relations to be registered in a new way as part of Abstract Wikipedia.

Once sufficient information is available, an article can be generated. That is what LSJBOT and the Cebuano Wikipedia are famous for. It follows that once the same amount of data is available for a similar subject in Wikidata, an article can be generated in for instance Cebuano. When we recreate these templates, we can update them for any language. 

The linguists who theorise Abstract Wikipedia to death, can apply their magic and find if their pet theories hold water in the real world. In Abstract Wikipedia their function is to enable the provision of information in any language. Obviously competing theories may be implemented and as a result the underlying technology may evolve.

Thanks, GerardM

1 comment:

Julien said...

>I am amazed by all the competing ideas, notions I have read on the mailing list so far. It is bewildering and does not give me a notion of what is to be done.


A point I think we should not let go. I am new to the mailing list and wikipedia in general and in general I feel that many communities fail in the onboarding of new volunteers, or person's of interest.

Regardless of my personal situation, elaborating on and developing your first sentence, and key point. I think having a couple people focus on organizing current ideas, initiatives and even possible virtual events would yield greater efficiency and help with onboarding.