Abstract Wikipedia,
Hello. I am pleased to share a new project proposal: Wikianswers (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikianswers).
Like similar projects, users will be able to receive one or more answers to their questions from artificial intelligence question-answering systems, but, unlike other projects, they will subsequently be able to edit these answers and any provided justifications using wiki technology. User-corrected content could later be utilized to retrain consulted question-answering systems, resulting in continual improvement.
The proposed project would greatly benefit end-users and would create a valuable resource for the training of artificial intelligence systems.
As broached in the proposal’s technical discussion section (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikianswers#Technical_discussion), components and features which could add value to Wikianswers could also add value to Wikifunctions: server-side document-processing, annotations, and client-side user interface topics. With these components and features, in a manner resembling an IDE, users could receive informational, warning, and error messages when working with source code, e.g., Python, in a wiki document context.
Thank you for any ideas, comments, questions, or suggestions with which to improve the project proposal.
Thank you for taking the time to express your support for or opposition to the newly proposed project.
Best regards,
Adam Sobieski
http://www.phoster.com
भारत बर्षा: अस्माकं देशः अस्ति l अस्य भूमिः बिबिधसंतान जननि अस्ति l अस्य प्राकुतिकी शोभा अनुपमा अस्ति l हिमालयः अस्य प्रहरी अस्ति l एषः उतरे मुकुतमनिः इब शोभते l सागरः अस्य चरनोउ प्रख्यालयति l अनेकाः पबित्रतमः नद्यः अत्र बहन्ति l गङ्गा, गोदबरि, सरस्वोति, यमुना प्रभुतयः नद्यः अस्य सोभां बर्धयति l अयं देशः सर्बासं बिधानं केन्द्रं अस्ति l अयं अनेक प्रदेससु बिभक्तः l अत्र बिबिध धर्मबलंबिनः संप्रदायिनः जनाः निबसन्ति l अस्य संस्कृतिः धर्म परम्परा च श्रेस्था अस्ति l अयं भू - स्वोर्गः अपि बर्तते l इश्वोरस्य अबताराः अस्मिन् देशे संजाताः l संकट काले बयं खुद्रभेदन परित्यज्य देसहितम् चिन्तयामः l
बिसाल भूमण्डलं ब्याप्य अयं देशः एसिया महाद्विपस्य अन्यतमः रस्त्रः संजाताः l बयं सदा स्वोरास्त्रस्य रख्याम कर्तुं उद्यताः स्याम l
कथित मस्ति -' जननि जन्म भूमिश्च सवोर्गादापि गरीयसि l ' यस्मिन् देशे यस्य जन्म तं देशं प्रति तदीया भक्तिः देसभक्तिः l यः मानबः यत्र जन्म लभते सैब तस्य जन्मभूमिः कथ्यते l अस्मिन् जगति समेसाम् बहुमूल्य बस्तुनां मध्ये माता मत्रुभुमिस्च एब एते द्वे स्रेस्थे l असारे खलु संसारे अलव्याः अपि पदार्थः परिस्रमेन लब्धुं सक्यन्ते l परं माता पिता जन्म भूमिश्च न केनापि यत्नेन प्राप्यते l मनुस्यानं मनसि जाते देसभक्ति प्रबेसे तदियं जिबन्मेब स्वोदेसस्य कृते भबति l तदारभ्य मनबः तदियं स्थितम् उनेतुं एब प्रयतते l सत्यं अबस्यकतायां ते प्राणानपि त्यक्तुं कृतसंकल्पः तिष्ठन्ति l
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-21
--
As planned, we are closing the licensing discussion. The decision,
summarizing the will of the community, is as follows:
- All contributions to Wikifunctions and the wider Abstract Wikipedia
projects will be published under free licenses.
- Textual content on Wikifunctions will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Function signatures and other structured content on Wikifunctions will
be published under CC 0.
- Code implementations in Wikifunctions will be published under the
Apache 2 license.
- Abstract Content for Abstract Wikipedia will be published under CC
BY-SA 3.0.
We proposed a summary last week
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-16>,
and we heard your feedback. During Monday’s office hour, which was also
used to officially close the discussion, we incorporated two more points of
feedback:
- First, we will leave the question about the license of the generated
content from the abstract content open for now. We will re-visit this
question when we discuss the location of the abstract content for Abstract
Wikipedia next year.
- Second, we will write a document with the Legal department about how
people can re-use code from Wikifunctions as painlessly as possible, while
adhering to the license.
We also published the complete logs of Monday’s office hour
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/Office_hours_202…>
.
We couldn’t really reach consensus on the questions (which probably had to
be expected), so we followed the !votes and arguments raised. Thanks to
everyone who participated in the discussion, thank you for the lively
arguments, and thank you for working through the complicated situation. I
want to particularly thank Stephen LaPorte
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Slaporte_(WMF)> for his support, and
Quiddity <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Quiddity_(WMF)> for
facilitating the work.
--
The team, together with a few volunteers, had the opportunity to reflect on
our wishes and hopes for Wikifunctions in 2022. I wanted to use the chance
of this year’s final newsletter to let you know about some of these hopes.
Our plan is to launch Wikifunctions in 2022. And our expectation is that in
the first few weeks and months after launch we will discover many bugs and
issues, and we will rely on your patience and help with those. We will
switch from a team developing a product into a team maintaining and
expanding a product, reacting to bug reports and issues. We will need to
balance the issues of an on-going project with the need to develop new
features beyond those with which we will launch.
One thing that was mentioned several times was that we look forward to
being surprised. Surprised by the creativity of the community, and what
they will do with this new project. We hope for a number of communities to
grow around parts of Wikifunctions, and that Wikifunctions will be used in
novel and unexpected ways.
Particularly high on our wishlist was the hope that smaller, underserved
communities will find their way to Wikifunctions, and that Wikifunctions
will be one way for achieving more balanced and representative communities
within current Wikipedias and the Wikimedia movement as a whole. We hope
that the functions in Wikifunctions will be requested and used by a great
diversity of contributors and users, and that Wikifunctions will start
contributing to knowledge equity in our world sooner rather than later. We
hope to see the diversity of the world reflected in our usage, in our
users, in our contributors, and in the depth and breadth of our catalog of
functions.
We hope that Wikifunctions might have the opportunity to dispel the myth
that “programming is really hard”. WIkifunctions will let people ask their
questions and answer them using functions. But not just that: we will also
expose and make transparent how these functions work. Everyone will be able
to "peek behind the curtain" and see how the answers are being computed.
This is not only meant as a way to build trust in the results of
Wikifunctions, but also to show that these computations are not that
complicated. By showing how functions are composed from simpler functions,
and allowing people to read these compositions in their language, we hope
to democratize access to functions and the knowledge of their inner
workings, not just in Wikifunctions itself but in the computers that
surround us all.
We hope to overcome in a timely fashion any challenges of technical scaling
and our growing pains as we discover new use cases for Wikifunctions. We
have a lot of ideas on how to grow and improve the system and the services
that we will offer, and we hope that the usage patterns of Wikifunction and
discussions will guide us in picking the most productive areas for
improvement.
We hope to iterate and experiment with the Wikifunctions software, and over
time discover and implement a good experience and a good conceptual model
to make Wikifunctions widely usable for everyone. We hope that people will
discover the low hanging fruit with which Wikifunctions can help them, and
that we will quickly grow beyond that into the role of being an integral
part of tomorrow’s knowledge infrastructure.
The first newsletter of 2022 should be expected in the week of 10 January
2022. Happy holidays, and a great start into the new year 2022!
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-16
--
The discussion about how to license the different components of Abstract
Wikipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Licensing_discussion> is
ebbing down. Given the status of the discussion, we propose the following
summary and decision:
- All contributions to Wikifunctions and the wider Abstract Wikipedia
projects will be published under free licenses.
- Textual content on Wikifunctions will be published under CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Function signatures and other structured content on Wikifunctions will
be published under CC 0.
- Code implementations in Wikifunctions will be published under the
Apache 2 license.
- Abstract Content for Abstract Wikipedia will be published under CC
BY-SA 3.0.
The last point was a particular focus of the discussion. As you can see, we
are proposing to adopt CC BY-SA. This was the most common !vote. We also
found the arguments for having the same license for Abstract Content as we
already have for Wikipedia convincing: this will allow us to use Wikipedia
as an inspiration for creating content without having to worry about a set
of rather complex legal and also moral issues. This is much more likely to
set up the relationship between the existing Wikipedia communities and the
community that will work on Abstract Wikipedia for a good start.
There were three main arguments raised by the supporters of CC 0:
- First, it was said that knowledge should not have a copyright in the
first place, and it should be as free as possible. And whereas I deeply
sympathize with that stance, more than twenty years ago Wikipedia decided
to use a copyleft license, and Wikipedia did rather well.
- Second, in a similar vein, it was said that abstract content should
never have copyright. There is not much legal precedent for copyrighting
abstract content, and therefore our licensing decision might influence the
wider perception on the copyright status of abstract content. Given that,
their argument is that we should encourage fewer things being copyrightable.
- Last but not least, it was said that a lot of the Abstract Content
probably would not pass the threshold required to be copyrightable in the
first place (which means that applying a license based on copyright would
not work). In order to not overclaim copyright protection on content that
has no copyright, we should just declare everything public domain. But note
that there are some Wikipedia articles that are so short and simple they
also might not meet the threshold for copyright. But most of our articles
do. And we don’t differentiate between these two. I expect a similar
situation for Abstract Wikipedia, and hope that over time it will be
increasingly obvious that much of our content will pass the threshold
required for copyright.
Regarding the license for Code implementations: once Wikifunctions is
launched and has been around for a while, and a community has formed, we
will re-consider the question whether we should allow for several licenses,
similar to how Commons does it. At that point we will understand much
better how the system works, who is forming the community, and what kind of
contributions we are missing by not having the option to have several
licenses. I am looking forward to that discussion.
Note: the proposal leaves the decision open about the license for Abstract
Descriptions for Wikidata (which likely should be under CC 0, in order to
keep the licensing of Wikidata consistent), or about Abstract Content for
other Wikimedia projects. These questions will come up in the future, as we
get a better understanding of how the components interact with each other
and the world. Given the limited participation of the community in this
discussion, we will likely use a more lightweight approach towards deciding
these questions, now that the wide strokes of the licensing questions are
decided.
We are putting this proposal up until Monday, December 20, 2021, for the
office hour, where we will adopt this as a decision (see below). We feel
that the decision above reflects the will of the community. If you disagree
that this decision is a valid outcome of the discussion, please raise your
concerns by Monday.
Thank you all for participating in this discussion! Your voices and
opinions were read carefully and were very valuable to us.
------------------------------
We are happy to let you know that Mariya Shilova
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MShilova_(WMF)> has joined the
Wikimedia Foundation this week. She will share her time between the
Abstract Wikipedia team and the Growth team. Let’s hear about her in her
own words.
*"I was born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia. I studied for four
years at Saint Petersburg State University with a focus on Math and
Computer Science. In 2008, I moved to the USA and transferred to Lehman
College, CUNY. I graduated from Lehman College in 2011 with a Bachelor's
Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.*
*"I bring nine years of experience as a Project Manager, Scrum Master, and
Program Manager. I worked in both non-profit and private sectors and
managed projects in a variety of industries, including e-commerce, health,
education, and robotics. I am especially proud of my contributions as a
Technical Project Manager for the organization called Vibrant Emotional
Health, an NYC-based non-profit specializing in mental health innovation
and suicide prevention. I worked at Vibrant for 2.5 years and led technical
projects that impacted health, wellness, and suicide prevention for
thousands of people nationwide.*
*"I have four professional certifications: PMP
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Professional>, CSM,
PMI-ACP, and ITIL <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL>.*
*"I currently reside with my husband in Central New Jersey, USA. Outside of
work, I enjoy traveling, spending time by the ocean (luckily I live by the
shore), hiking, and baking things with all sorts of flours (buckwheat is my
favorite one for savory goods)."*
Let us all welcome Mariya to the team!
------------------------------
As mentioned above, on Monday, December 20, 2021, at 19:00 UTC
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1640026842>, we will have our office hour.
Like last time, the office hour
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia#Office_hours> will be
in IRC and also bridged to Telegram. We will start by summarizing our work
since the last office hour, and then be open for any questions. We will
also use the office hour to close the licensing discussion and adopt the
decision suggested above.
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-09
--
A few weeks ago in this newsletter we discussed inclusion and diversity in
coding
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-10-22>,
and how mathematics, often without bad intentions, functioned as a barrier
towards inclusion and diversity in coding. One question we may raise is how
come that mathematics itself can become a barrier to diversity? Why would
the colour of your skin or your gender make any difference when we are
talking about such a pure discipline as mathematics, which seems detached
from the arbitrary discriminations we humans far too often employ in our
society. Aren’t numbers and angles and derivatives all the same to all
humans?
This September saw the publication of Jessica Nordell
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Nordell>’s book *The End of Bias: A
Beginning*. One of the stories she tells in the book is about Federico
Ardila <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Ardila>, professor of
mathematics at the San Francisco State University. Mathematics as an
academic field struggles with diversity, just as Computer Science does:
most are White or Asian, most are men. Among Ardila’s students, though, 60%
come from ethnic minority groups. Ardila worked hard to reimagine what
teaching mathematics could mean.
He made mathematics personal and relatable. The students were allowed to
bring their whole self to the university, and to learn math in ways that
matter to them. He made sure to keep the toxicity and brashness which far
too often permeates mathematical culture out of his classroom. Avoiding
phrases such as *“It is obvious”* or *“It is easy to see”* helped to not
alienate students who were challenged by an argumentation. He started a
joint class with the Universidad de los Andes
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidad_de_los_Andes_(Colombia)>, and
many of his latino students used their mother tongue, Spanish, for the
first time to speak and think about higher mathematics.
Research shows that having a sense of belonging, feeling accepted, helps
people to persist and stay motivated. And the numbers speak for Ardila’s
approach: of the 21 students in the first joint class, 14 are already
professors. An astonishing success.
You can read the story about Ardila and his approach to teaching in the
Atlantic
<https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2021/09/bias-math-sexism-raci…>
.
In related news, last week also saw the release of the first draft of
the *Critically
Conscious Computing <https://criticallyconsciouscomputing.org/>* book by
Amy J. Ko, Anne Beitlers, Brett Wortzman, Matt Davidson, Alannah Oleson,
Mara Kirdani-Ryan, and Stefania Druga. The book is available for free on
the Web. The goal of the book is to teach Computer Science in secondary
education while honing the critical abilities of the students, *“with the
hope of fostering a more equitable, culturally sustaining, and just future
of computing.”*
Whereas the target population of the book are high school teachers, it
provides a unique lens on a wide selection of topics: it covers algorithms,
data structures, abstraction, and everything else needed for a full basic
course on computer science.
Let us all together be mindful of aiming for equity and inclusion. Let us
avoid toxicity and brashness in our language and acknowledge that we all
come from different backgrounds and start with different pieces of the
puzzle. Many who have been active Wikipedians for a while might have
noticed that sometimes the projects allow for exclusionary behaviour
particularly from contributors who have been very active on the projects.
We tend to overlook the behaviour of some, instead of gently but firmly
guiding them to stay as productive members and become friendly ones too.
This also means not to expect perfection: we will all make mistakes, will
communicate less than perfectly, use the wrong language. Let us all be
willing to listen and learn.
With Wikifunctions we have one of the few opportunities to start a new
Wikimedia community. And our early interactions will have an outsized
effect on the development of the project and its community. Let us aim
towards being particularly nice to each other, to be welcoming and tolerant
to those that are different from us as we are to our friends, and draw firm
lines against patterns of behaviour and against language that turns out to
be exclusionary and discouraging. The challenge we are facing is formidable
enough as it is.
We know and understand that the community of Wikifunctions, like all
Wikimedia communities, is self-governing and autonomous. It is not the
development team that will write the rules and processes of the wiki. But
we want to accompany you and offer help and resources towards becoming the
best community we could be. To make sure that this challenging project
builds a community that is up for the task.
------------------------------
We are going to have our next office hour
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia#Office_hours> on 20
December, 2021, at 19:00 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1640026842>.
Like last time, the office hour will be in IRC and also bridged to
Telegram. We will start by summarising our work since the last office hour,
and then be open for any questions.
------------------------------
The discussion about licensing the components of Wikifunctions and Abstract
Wikipedia
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Licensing_discussion> is
still ongoing. Whereas the wide strokes seem settled, we are still looking
particularly for input regarding the license for Implementations of
Functions written in code (should that be Apache or GPL?) and regarding
Abstract Content for Abstract Wikipedia (should that be CC BY-SA or CC 0?).
Even if you don’t have an opinion about the license, we would like to hear
your opinion on wiki, in order to understand what the community thinks. Our
plan is to summarise the discussion and opinions towards the end of the
next week, that is, probably on December 16, to leave the draft summary and
draft decision up until December 20, and finalise the decision just after
or during the office hour, assuming the feedback is positive.
Please join the discussion and let us hear your voice.
The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-02
--
The discussion about the licensing of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia
has been going on for a few days now, and we can now see better which
questions are contentious, and which ones seem to have found an early
consensus.
In order to keep the discussion moving, we plan to restructure it.
We have identified the following points as having achieved a rough
consensus.
1.
Everything is published under a free license.
2.
We are launching with only a single license for implementations. We
*may* add the option to have other compatible open source licenses for
software contributions after launch. This is a discussion for a later point.
3.
Textual content on Wikifunctions (i.e. documentations, project pages,
talk pages, etc.) is all published under CC BY-SA. For the sake of
consistency, we will use the 3.0 version of the CC BY-SA license at this
point.
4.
Function Signatures and other structured objects (besides Abstract
Content and Code Implementations) are published under CC0.
5.
Output Content has the same license as the input to the functions
producing the Output Content. This means in particular that Output Content
used for Wikipedia will be published under the same license as the license
we choose for Open Question #2 above.
We have identified the following two questions as being the core unresolved
questions:
1.
Which license should be used for code implementations: GPL or Apache?
2.
Which license should be used for Abstract Content for Abstract
Wikipedia: CC BY-SA or CC 0?
I doubt that we will be able to achieve consensus on the two open
questions, as they touch on a very long-running open question whether or
not licenses for free content and open source should better be viral. We
don’t expect, nor do we really want to moderate a discussion that has
happened repeatedly in the last few decades, and that likely will not lead
to many people changing their opinion anyway.
You are still free and welcome to add reasonings and to discuss on the talk
page, but we would particularly like to see the vote from a large number of
people on which of the two options you’d prefer, and also whether you
actually care or not, as long as the content is free.
This will help us to find a decision that is aligned with the community.
To make it explicit: in case of a close outcome, we reserve the right to
not necessarily follow whichever option has more comments/!votes.
Our plan is to summarize the conversation around December 15, in about two
weeks' time, and then leave that for final comments and reactions, before
we close the discussion on December 20.
Please join the discussion and give your !vote on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia/Licensing_discussion>
.
--
We have launched the Design hub
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Design>, which we will
steadily expand in the coming months. It will include a variety of
meeting-notes, design sketches and mockups, and reference material links
that are created as part of the Design process for the user interface of
Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia.
--
We have uploaded the finalized logo assets for the Wikifunctions logo. You
can find the assets, including a vectorized version, favicons, etc., all on
Wikimedia Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikifunctions_logos>.
--
Some of you already noticed that we have started working on setting up our
beta cluster wiki. It is not ready for prime time yet, and we will announce
it here as soon as this changes. This is also when we will post the link.
For now, we hope you don’t mind keeping the link a bit hidden, as the site
isn’t working properly yet.