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?
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…
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.
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.
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
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!