March 2021 - Abstract-Wikipedia - lists.wikimedia.org

Assigning languages to ZIDs
by Denny Vrandečić 31 Mar '21

31 Mar '21

How would you assign languages to ZIDs? Currently the idea is to reserve the four digit ZIDs for languages. I would like to start with the languages that are user interface languages for MediaWiki (but there's enough space to extend this considerably later). But how to turn them into numbers? The best way I can come up with is to take the language codes, sort them alphabetically, and take that for the first set, and then, when more come in, add them chronologically. Let's have that as the strawman proposal, but maybe someone can come up with a smarter idea?

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Newsletter #24: Outreachy intern analysis of Scribunto modules across wikis
by Denny Vrandečić 25 Mar '21

25 Mar '21

This week's update can be found on-wiki here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-03-25 -- Back in December 2020, we introduced the Abstract Wikipedia list to Aisha and Jade, Outreachy interns participating in Abstract Wikipedia / Wikifunctions data science.[1] We want to share the exciting results of their work. During the past few months, Aisha and Jade developed a Vue.js web application to help people find user generated code across the MediaWiki Scribunto modules written in Lua. Their creative approach involved a complex data pipeline using Wikimedia Cloud Services which analyzed the usage and similarity of code across different language editions of Wikipedia and its sibling projects. This approach is intended to aid users as they consider the problem space of consolidation of certain types of code into pure, re-usable functions in the Wikifunctions project. The application can be found here: https://abstract-wiki-ds.toolforge.org We hope you enjoy the following 3 minute demo video of the web-based tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M31scvrfGdE Here is the longer 41 minute audio discussion with Aisha and Jade and the rest of the Abstract Wikipedia team about their data science work: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AAbstract_Wikipedia_D… You can review the extensive data analysis and pipeline development and web-based tool material, including Jupyter notebooks (on the PAWS public notebook system) and code hosted in Wikimedia GitHub, starting from here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Data#Get_important_modul… We want to thank Aisha and Jade for their excellent work during the internship, and we hope they return in the future. If you'd like to collaborate on the data pipeline, further analysis, or the web-based tool, please do drop a line on the abstract-wikipedia mailing list and we'll see if we can connect on Phabricator and GitHub to grow this work further. We believe the approach taken here, if further generalized, may also be of interest as we look deeper at the natural language constructs across Wikipedias and sibling projects for Abstract Wikipedia, and as more folks explore topics like global templates as well. We'd like to thank Srishti and all of the Wikimedia Foundation's Developer Advocacy unit for their support in Outreachy efforts and Wikimedia Cloud Services capabilities, as well as for the encouragement from Isaac in Wikimedia Foundation's Research unit to foster this collaboration with both Aisha and Jade - they formed a productive partnership and as the mentoring group we were delighted to work with Aisha and Jade. We're delighted to have such a supportive global movement and knowledge network helping to increase the impact and awareness of this valuable initiative. -The Abstract Wikipedia Team https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia P.S.: We also wanted to let you know that an overview of how all the pieces fit together is now published in the April 2021 edition of the Communications of the ACM: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251343-building-a-multilingual-wikipe… [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/abstract-wikipedia/2020-December/0003…

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Newsletter #23: Logo concept voting closes, and 30 Lexic-o-days opens
by Denny Vrandečić 17 Mar '21

17 Mar '21

The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-03-17 -- Logo concept vote Earlier this week, the voting for the logo concept for Wikifunctions <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Wikifunctions_logo_conce…> concluded. We are very happy to have seen so much participation in the process — to be honest, I was personally worried whether there would be enough participation or not. The last time we started Wikimedia projects was in 2012: Wikidata <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page> was started from scratch, and Wikivoyage <https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Main_Page> moved to the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikivoyage came with an already existing community, and for Wikidata we presented the project in many face-to-face events as it was getting started, talking with many members of the global Wikimedia community. The two projects had their logo votes in 2012 and 2013, where Wikidata saw 493 voters, Wikivoyage saw 521 voters. I was worried that we would fall short of both numbers: due to global events, there was no Wikimania at which we could have explained the importance of Wikifunctions in person. Wikimania 2012 was a huge boost for Wikidata, a place where we could share excitement, answer questions, and find our first Wikipedia communities willing to try out Wikidata. For Wikifunctions, we did go to many virtual events, but we didn’t know how successful these would be in creating excitement and helping people to understand what we are doing. I am thus extremely pleased to see that 561 voters participated in the Wikifunctions logo concept vote, casting 1051 votes on the 22 logo concepts which were taken from the almost fifty submitted proposals and variants. The race was very tight for the first week, and then one proposal started gathering more momentum, eventually displaying a quite comfortable lead over the runner-up. Proposal 11 had 124 votes, and thus is the community favorite. It is followed by Proposal 5 with 112 votes and Proposal 9 with 107 votes. (We have vetted the votes of the winning proposal, but we did not go through all votes on all proposals beyond that, so numbers are not final.) I am personally saddened that my favorite proposal <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Wikifunctions_logo_conce…> not only didn’t win, but in fact ended up not fourth, but fourth from the bottom of the list. We have now forwarded the results to the Legal department of the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to screen the top logo concept. After this, we will let the design team have a pass on the logo. We expect that this whole process will take four to six weeks, depending on possible complications, and hope to be able to announce the refined logo by the end of April. Congratulations to user NGC 54 <https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizator:NGC_54> for creating the winning proposal! Congratulations to Jon Harald Søby <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by> and Steven Liu Yi <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stevenliuyi> for having their logos perform so well! Thanks to everyone who has submitted a proposal, and to everyone who has participated in the contest. 30 Lexic-o-days The Wikidata team have begun a festival of events bringing focus around lexicographic data on Wikidata, which will be a key part of the future of Wikifunctions and particularly Abstract Wikipedia. Check out the 30 Lexic-o-days <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Events/30_lexic-o-days_2021> program, and if you want to see something happen there, feel free to join in or to suggest it! The submissions for focus languages for Abstract Wikipedia and the lexicographic extension for Wikidata are on-going. We currently have seven applications, and the last day to apply is April 7: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Lexicographical_data/Focus_languages During the 30 Lexic-o-days, we will also have Question and Answer sessions regarding the Focus language selection. There will be two of them to accommodate two different time zones: March 30th, 17:00 UTC, and April 6th, 03:00 UTC Other “XLSemanal”, the most widely circulated magazine in Spain, had an article about Abstract Wikipedia: https://www.xlsemanal.com/conocer/tecnologia/20210225/wikipedia-20-aniversa… (it is mostly a translation of the article published earlier this year in the German magazine “Der Spiegel”) We presented Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions at the Alan Turing Institute <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_Institute>, opening the Knowledge Graph Interest Group. A video will be made available later.

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Newsletter #22: Vue.js and Abstract Wikipedia
by Denny Vrandečić 11 Mar '21

11 Mar '21

The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-03-10 You may know that we've been building the Wikifunctions UX with the frontend framework Vue.js <https://vuejs.org> since we started. Vue.js has been selected as the frontend framework <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T241180> for all future Wikimedia development efforts, and we've been enjoying the benefits of the framework's design. We wanted to share with you that we've extended the team with support from two people from the consultancy This Dot <https://www.thisdot.co/> for the next several months. They will both be working part time with the Abstract Wikipedia team on Wikifunctions, helping us to develop a high performance and scalable Vue.js UI layer. They may also support other teams with Vue related auditing and support as needed. Simone and Lindsay have been onboarding over the last two weeks, and we're most thankful for their expertise. In their own words: Simone Simone is a self taught developer currently living in Wales (UK), but originally from sunny Naples (Italy). He studied business and management, obtaining a degree at Swansea University in 2011, but quickly fell in love with developers. Simone started his career as a Junior Software Engineer in 2012, and has since then progressed to become a Consultant working at This Dot helping creating high performance teams, mentoring developers across the globe, providing corporate training and supporting apprentices in their first steps of their IT career. During his career Simone has gained experience in many technologies (both frontend and backend), but he has recently found his framework of choice in VueJS, where he is a very active community member. Simone's free time is spent with his lovely family, building with legos, or cooking some delicious Italian food. When the kids are in bed, he also likes to write blog posts <https://www.zelig880.com> and material for the .Net Magazine, and join numerous online meetups and conferences like vuemeetup.com and JavaScript Marathon <https://dev.to/thisdotmedia/free-vuejs-training-during-javascript-marathon-…> . Simone wanted to share this message with everyone: "I have a very positive attitude in solving complex problems and always see the glass half full. My wife usually says that my eyes really look at the world differently. This 'can do' attitude has helped me since the day I decided to move to the UK with just 170£ in my pocket, and it has been my best companion ever since. I like to invest any time I have to help people that are trying to get into development and help them change their lives." Lindsay Lindsay is a full stack Software Engineer at This Dot from Portland, OR. She has always had a passion for web development, building community sites and projects with PHP. She started her career as an IT professional in 2015, but in 2017, she switched career paths from IT administration to development. She focused on learning Vue.js and Node, while exploring the greater development community around them. Her curiosity drives her to continue learning new languages and frameworks, and applying that knowledge in her work. Lindsay graduated from Western Governors University in 2020 with a Bachelor's in Software Development, with a focus on C# applications. In previous projects, Lindsay has worked across the development stack, including on the database, backend services with many different languages, and frontend with tools like React and Vue. In her free time, Lindsay enjoys spending time with her family, writing, singing, and building the occasional side project. Lindsay previously performed with a community choir, and still likes to keep up her singing voice. Lindsay also has a passion for science fiction and fantasy, and enjoys both writing and reading as much as time allows. She is also a host on the podcast Views on Vue <https://devchat.tv/podcasts/views-on-vue/>, a show focused on the community surrounding the Vue.js framework. Please join us in welcoming Simone and Lindsay! -The Abstract Wikipedia Team Ongoing: - The vote for the Wikifunctions logo concept <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Wikifunctions_logo_conce…> is ongoing until Monday, March 15. - Submissions for communities to join as focus languages <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Lexicographical_data/Focus_languages> for Abstract Wikipedia and new developments on Wikidata are open until April 7.

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Newsletter #21: Focus languages for improvements to the lexicographic extension of Wikidata and Abstract Wikipedia
by Denny Vrandečić 03 Mar '21

03 Mar '21

The on-wiki version of this newsletter is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-03-03 Hello all, The Wikidata team at Wikimedia Deutschland will be working on improvements to the lexicographic data part of Wikidata during this year. The Abstract Wikipedia team at the Wikimedia Foundation will be working on the generation of natural language text for baseline Wikipedia articles in the next few years, and on functions in Wikifunctions to work with lexicographic data. For these cases, it would be beneficial to focus on a small specific set of languages at first. Participating communities will hopefully find that this project leads to long-term growth in Wikipedia and Wiktionary in and about their language. Lydia and Denny would like to choose the same focus languages for both of the teams, as this is beneficial for both projects to have this aligned. We will be working closely together with the focus communities over the next few years. This means that features will land first in these languages and we will have particularly active feedback channels. We are looking for communities that are open to trying out new things. The decision of which languages should be the focus languages should be done together with the wider communities. In particular, we would like to make the decision with a promising self-selecting community. This worked very well for Wikidata, where the focus projects were self-selected. We will use English as a demonstration language and two or three other languages as focus languages. English is chosen as it is easy to demonstrate to a wide audience and is a working language for both development teams. For the focus languages, we want to work with an active and enthusiastic community or seed of a community over the next few years on these projects. In order to be fully transparent, we have compiled a number of detailed other criteria <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Lexicographical_data/Focus_languages…> we would like to use to guide us in our decision, but this assumes that there are communities to choose from. None of these criteria are set in stone, and we are happy to discuss them, remove some if they are not good ideas, or add others if we missed something. Regard this as a strawdog proposal. For example, Mahir Morshed <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mahir256> came up with a complementary set of criteria on Phabricator <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T274373#6821602>, which we will consider in the selection as well. We will have Q&A office hours for discussion, and are open to comments via wiki <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Lexicographical_data/Focus_lang…> or email. We are thinking of a two-pronged approach: - first, to call for communities to propose themselves to work with us; - second, to look at the data and see which languages would be good candidates. We don’t want to set too strict a process. We would like the second prong of the approach to go on throughout the whole process to help us come to a good understanding of the options. For the first prong, we would like the candidate seed groups to describe and nominate themselves on wiki, following a short form <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Lexicographical_data/Focus_languages…>. Nominations should be submitted by April 7, and the decision will be made by April 14 by the teams taking your comments into account. If we notice that self-nominations are not happening, we will try to engage with language communities directly. It is possible that the two teams will choose different candidates, although we will try to avoid that. We are looking forward to hearing about what you think of this proposal. Please comment on the talk page on wiki <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Lexicographical_data/Focus_lang…> . Lydia and Denny

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Newsletter #20: Logo concept voting will start on Monday
by Denny Vrandečić 01 Mar '21

01 Mar '21

The on-wiki version of this update can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-02-25 -- The logo concept <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Wikifunctions_logo_conce…> submission phase has come to a close, and we received 46 submissions and variants <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia/Wikifunctions_logo_…>. I am deeply impressed with the submissions, and am looking forward to the vote. Some of the submissions have a number of variants, and in order to avoid the decoy effect <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect>, we would like to remove concepts that are too similar to each other. For Wikidata, we made the decision inside the team about which variants to choose, and we also dropped a number of the proposals. Here, I would like us to make the decision together, but in order to ensure that things move on, we’ll take a look at the status of the discussion on Monday and then the team will finalize the exact candidates. We also plan to have short notes on each submission (3-4 sentences), so we are asking the submitters (but also everyone else who wants to join in) to write short notes for each of the candidates. A short explanation can do wonders for making a logo more interesting (my second favorite example is the seemingly simple FedEx logo <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx#Logo>). [image: Screenshot 2021-02-25 at 12.46.10.png] This time can also be an opportunity to remove submissions from the pool, or to flag other concerns and make them explicit in the notes, so that voters are aware. This would include similarities to other, existing logos, and we should decide whether we still want to keep the candidate or drop it. We will open the voting on Monday afternoon Pacific time, and keep it open for two weeks until 15 March. Everyone eligible can vote for as many different candidates as they like, and the logo with the most votes will then be submitted to the legal department in order to scrutinize it, and to the design department to refine it. To give an example of how far the refinement could go: this was the winner of the Wikidata logo voting, and it was refined by using a different ratio on the bar and changing the wordmark considerably. We will take similar freedoms with the logo concept this time around too. In summary, here are the next steps: until Monday, let’s agree on the set of logo concepts to vote on, and decide on the notes to accompany them. On Monday, we will then start sending out messages inviting people to vote. I am very excited to see what will be in the corner of our new Website, on t-shirts, stickers, and badges. And thank you all for joining us in this exciting process!

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Abstract-Wikipedia March 2021