Abstract-Wikipedia March 2023

abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org

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No updates for the next two weeks
by Denny Vrandečić 31 Mar '23

31 Mar '23

Hi all, Just a heads up that this week and the two following weeks will be without the usual updates. It's not that nothing update worthy is happening - on the contrary - but I will be taking vacations, and will not be working during that time, and my colleagues are busy enough that I decided not to delegate this task this time around. We will in the future set up a system that does not rely on me, but given that we are not launched yet, this has not been our priority so far. Volunteer's corner on April 3rd will proceed as planned. Enjoy the time, and see you again in the third week of April. All the best, Denny

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Newsletter #108: Abstract Wikipedia and Grammatical Framework
by Denny Vrandečić 23 Mar '23

23 Mar '23

The on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-03-23 --Abstract Wikipedia and Grammatical Framework Aarne Ranta <https://www.cse.chalmers.se/~aarne/>, a member of the Abstract Wikipedia NLG Special Interest Group, and professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Gothenburg>, has written an article titled “Multilingual Text Generation for Abstract Wikipedia in Grammatical Framework: Prospects and Challenges”. Here is the abstract of the article: Abstract Wikipedia is an initiative to produce Wikipedia articles from abstract knowledge representations with multilingual natural language generation (NLG) algorithms. Its goal is to make encyclopaedic content available with equal coverage in the languages of the world. This paper discusses the issues related to the project in terms of an experimental implementation in Grammatical Framework (GF). It shows how multilingual NLG can be organized into different abstraction levels that enable the sharing of code across languages and the division of labour between programmers and authors with different skill requirements. The plan is to start with a simple but functional multilingual NLG system and to proceed towards more and more sophisticated language and wider coverage of topics, also allowing a human in the loop to create content via a Controlled Natural Language (CNL). The paper can be read here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-21780-7_6 It can also be accessed as a preprint free of charge from the following link: https://www.grammaticalframework.org/~aarne/preprint-AAM-textgen.pdf

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Newsletter #107: Quo Vadis, Abstract Wikipedia?
by Denny Vrandečić 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

The online version of this newsletter can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-03-15 Quo vadis, Abstract Wikipedia? Abstract Wikipedia will allow more people to contribute their voices to a baseline of knowledge, whilst working in an interface in their language. This shared baseline of knowledge will then be made available in many languages. This will be achieved by creating, storing, and maintaining the baseline of knowledge, per individual article, in a notation that is independent of natural language. We call content written in that notation "abstract content". This abstract content will then be turned into text in a specific natural language, with the help of the library of functions from Wikifunctions. Thus, Abstract Wikipedia will allow a speaker of any language to contribute content for readers of many different languages. This will allow more people to read more content in their language. Example Assume that we want to create a new Wikipedia article for the planet Jupiter, and the first version of this article shall be the following (these are the first two sentences of the Simple English Wikipedia <https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter> article): *Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It is the fifth planet from the Sun.* The abstract content representing this natural text could look like this: Article( text: [ Superlative( subject: Jupiter, quality: large, class: planet, location constraint: Solar System), Definition( subject: Jupiter, definition: Rank( rank: Positive integer( value: 5), object: planet, by: Relational noun( noun: distance, to: Sun)))], categories: [Jupiter, planet, Solar System]) Wikifunctions would have types for Article, Superlative, Definition, Rank, *etc.*, which are used here as the abstract notation for the content of these two sentences. This abstract content is shown using labels in English here for our convenience, whereas in fact they would all be ZIDs (from Wikifunctions) and QIDs (from Wikidata). There will be software components to provide for the viewing, creation, and editing of abstract content. Wikifunctions will then also provide functions that take this object as an argument and generate natural language text such as the above. One question that needs to be answered is where these objects would be stored, and how to associate the above object with the Wikidata item for Jupiter, Q319 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q319>. We were originally planning to have this conversation and decision before the launch of Wikifunctions, but looking at the complexity of the system and the fact that it is very difficult to imagine given that so little of it is tangible so far, we decided not to open this question for discussion now, but to wait until after the launch of Wikifunctions, when we will all have a better understanding of how that part of the ecosystem works. Below, we outline a few options that came up in the discussion between folks on the Abstract Wikipedia team and the Wikidata team at Wikimedia Deutschland. It also ties to some of the questions Lydia Pintscher and I were answering in an interview on the Wikimove podcast episode <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WIKIMOVE/Podcast> that was released today and that we invite you to listen to. Thanks to Nicole Ebber and Nikki Zeuner for the interview! We are genuinely undecided about the best answer, and we would benefit from a wider discussion of the options, and potentially other options as well. Please also ask questions - these can often clarify and shine light on points that are muddy to us as well. We currently are focusing on the following five options: 1. A new tab on items in Wikidata 2. Create a new data type for objects on Wikidata 3. Objects on Wikifunctions 4. Objects on a new Wikipedia language edition 5. Unattached namespace on an existing project Let’s discuss these five options in the following. Option 1: A new tab on items in Wikidata We could add a tab, leading to a new namespace on Wikidata with a new content type, where the abstract content would live. This namespace would be attached to the item namespace in Wikidata. This way, every abstract content would have a natural place to store its associated abstract content. Given the little use of the item talk pages on Wikidata, it seems an additional talk page may not be valuable, so we might want to redirect people to the item's main talk page for any discussions. One big question would be where to store content for Wikivoyage and other projects about the same items (*e.g.* the abstract content we might want to write about Q90/Paris from the perspective of Wikipedia would be different from that for Wikivoyage). Would that need yet another namespace? Adding a new associated namespace would be a technical challenge; adding several would be a complex task, and we hope that not to happen often. Option 2: Create a new data type for Wikifunction objects We could create a new data type on Wikidata for Wikifunctions objects. Then the community could create a property on Wikidata that stores the abstract content on a given item as a literal. This would have the added flexibility that the community could add more abstract contents to an item for specific use cases, e.g. to represent content from Wikivoyage, or to represent the history of an item, the etymology of a word, *etc.* We will need such a datatype and the UX for it anyway, given our planned support for abstract descriptions <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-07-29>. In fact, this might be the simplest way to support abstract description. However, the UX of Wikidata doesn't lend itself to this easily, and adapting to this model would be challenging given the constraints of an item page. Existing properties are edited as one or a small number of simple, short text boxes, often with auto-complete; abstract content would instead be a larger text area, with helpers and possibly a toolbar, a preview control, *etc.*. One option could in principle be a modal dialog for editing, but these come with their own inherent UX downsides and are usually more complex to implement than the same functionality in its own dedicated environment. Also, this would break the current design patterns of an item page, and may not be aligned with the patterns that might be planned for its future. Further, while abstract content is somewhat structured and machine-readable, it is less (or differently) so than an Item, and its structure would probably not be queryable with SPARQL. This option comes with two additional challenges: some Wikidata items, already nearing the maximum size, would grow still further, and we would need a solution to allow that, and second how to deal with the visualization, editing, and diffing of potentially very large and complex values. Option 3: Objects on Wikifunctions Instead of having objects live in Wikidata as the values of statements or on an additional tab, Wikidata could merely store a pointer to an object on Wikifunctions. We still would create a new data type, but that data type would be just the ZID of an object stored in Wikifunctions. This would solve all the challenges of the previous option, and retain many of its advantages. It would have the additional advantage that several items could refer to the same object on Wikifunctions. Whereas this sounds rarely useful for the abstract content of Wikipedia articles, this might prove very useful for abstract descriptions of Wikidata items and the abstract glosses of lexemes. With the creation of abstract content, types, and natural language generation functions on the same platform, collaboration between people who focus on one of these areas would be more direct. This option could be a challenge for the Wikifunctions community. The scope would expand to cover content as well as functions. This could make it difficult for the smaller community, and need more community patrollers like those already active on Wikidata. Option 4: Objects on a new Wikipedia language edition We could launch a new Wikipedia language edition in which the main namespace is abstract content. This could be called e.g. the multi-lingual Wikipedia (mul.wikipedia.org) language edition, or the abstract Wikipedia language edition (abstract.wikipedia.org). Like all other language editions, the pages are connected to the items via sitelinks in Wikidata. If Wikivoyage wanted to use the same approach, they would need to copy the setup and create a multi-lingual Wikivoyage edition (or, as Option 4B, perhaps these could be a different namespace on a single shared ‘abstract’ content wiki?). This would give a very clear distinction of what is Wikipedia content and what is not, and give the abstract content a distinct visibility, which would otherwise be somewhat hidden between Wikifunctions and Wikidata. On the other hand, it would splinter the communities further, and mix in a "new" concept of a wiki that isn't really a Wikipedia but is labelled as such. Option 5: Unattached namespace on existing project We could introduce a new namespace to an existing project where the abstract content for Wikipedia would effectively live. Here are the most likely options: 1. Wikidata (as a separate namespace, not attached to the items) 2. Commons 3. Meta 4. English Wikipedia (not attached to the articles) Whereas technically all these options would be the same, they would be extremely different from a social and community perspective. We will refrain here from discussing these differences for now, unless this starts becoming a more likely option. Rant: One Wikimedia movement, or many projects? Conway’s law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law> states that software mirrors organization, or, as it was put, if you put three teams to work on a compiler, you get a three-pass compiler. The opposite is also true, as previously observed <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…> by Guillaume Paumier <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom>: a software system determines the community structure that evolves around the system. Within the Wikimedia projects, we often see this effect in the dynamics between the different Wikipedia language communities, the Wikidata community, the Commons community, Meta, *etc.* The stories of local protection of media files on Commons, of wikis opting-out from global anti-abuse tools, or of short descriptions in English Wikipedia should be warning enough. The question we ask today is not only hard because there are genuine technical challenges that we have to overcome, and we have to make a tradeoff. It is additionally so much harder because we can anticipate that there will be fracture lines between the different projects, and maybe even anticipate how these fracture lines would shape out. The whole story would be so much easier if we would, in general, regard ourselves as being part of one common movement, as one large community. But I doubt that we will see much progress on this trajectory before we have to resolve the above question. Until then we only can remain mindful about the possible solutions, their effects, and that we should be careful to design for the world as it is and as it likely will be, and not for the world we wish to be. Public NLG workstream on Tuesday On Tuesday, March 21, there will be the third public NLG workstream meeting on JITSI. Feel free to reach out to me and suggest presentations beforehand if you want. We have a bit already planned, but there is still space. The meeting is 16:30-17:30 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1679416242>, which is an hour off for US friends.

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Newsletter #106: Decolonizing Functions
by Denny Vrandečić 17 Mar '23

17 Mar '23

An on-wiki version of this newsletter can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-03-02 ---- Decolonizing Functions In the newsletter two weeks ago <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-02-17>, we discussed the history of the idea of a compendium of functions, tracing it back to al-Khwarizmi <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi> and his influential book on Algebra <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Compendious_Book_on_Calculation_by_Comple…>. I noticed an uptick in reactions to that piece from people of cultural backgrounds that relate to al-Khwarizmi. And that should come as no surprise. If one identifies, even roughly, with white, Western, Christian, heterosexual, cis-gendered men, it is easy to miss how many of the narratives we encounter are tuned to that demographic. If one doesn’t identify with that demographic, having a figure or narrative that reverberates more with one's own identity or heritage can feel empowering and inspiring. It can offer an example of, “look, there’s someone like me, and look at that great thing they did!” For a few decades now, we have seen a refreshing trend of diversifying the protagonists in the stories being told in books, movies, and in newspapers in the Western world. Unfortunately, these 'novel' protagonists are often met with pushback and resistance, as if the world of stories and narratives was a limited space, as if by having more narratives that are tuned to under-represented demographics we thus reduce the narratives that are tuned to the most prominent demographic. But the cultural space is not a zero sum game; the space of narratives is infinite. Similarly, Wikipedia, by being online, does not have to think about page limitations in the way a printed encyclopedia does. Writing two paragraphs more on al-Khwarizmi in a Wikipedia version does not mean I have to write two paragraphs fewer on Pascal. I do not have to balance the space I dedicate to Ada Lovelace with the space dedicated to Charles Baggage. Writing more about the history of the Dagomba people does not mean I need to cut down on the history of Rome. Each Wikipedia has to (and does) struggle with the effect of its policies and guidelines on how we are biasing the encyclopedia towards certain narratives, but that is a different story, to be told by someone else in a different place. A few weeks ago, *Nature <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)>*, one of the leading science journals in the world, published two articles in tandem: one on making mathematics truly universal <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00223-w> through the program of decolonization, and the other on why the idea of decolonizing mathematics is no cause for alarm <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9>. These articles are part of a much-needed series on decolonizing science <https://www.nature.com/collections/giaahdbacj> *Nature* is running. Decolonizing mathematics is not a novel concept nor phrase the term goes back at least a good quarter century <https://www.jstor.org/stable/41674951>, and also this newsletter wrote about it previously <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-12-09>. Predictably, the articles in *Nature* have caused alarm and have been misunderstood, pretty much in the way the articles themselves predicted. The way I understand the program of decolonizing mathematics is to follow two principles: - first, to recognize the contributions of people with diverse backgrounds, in order to offer more protagonists who can inspire and with whom more people can identify - second, to provide examples and motivations that are relatable to under-represented backgrounds and identities, in order to reach and be more immediately helpful to more people <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yanghui_triangle.PNG> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yanghui_triangle.PNG> Yanghui's triangle, published 1303 The first principle relates more to Wikipedia than to Wikifunctions, and even though there is room for improvement, Wikipedia is already pretty good at reflecting a comprehensive and multi-faceted history (see, for example, the history of Pascal’s triangle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_triangle#History> on English Wikipedia), especially across different language editions (compare to Yang Hui’s triangle <https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%A8%E8%BE%89%E4%B8%89%E8%A7%92%E5%BD%A2> on Chinese Wikipedia). I hope that with Abstract Wikipedia we will see an even tighter integration of different narratives, and see their wider distribution in many languages. The second principle in particular can and should also be applied to Wikifunctions. We should make space for examples which are rooted in the individual backgrounds of under-represented users of Wikifunctions, to highlight how many different people can benefit from Wikifunctions. This was exemplified by al-Khwarizmi’s book and its focus on Muslim inheritance law, but also how relatable examples in university courses lead to much better results, as described by Jessica Nordell <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Nordell> in her book *The End of Bias: A Beginning* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-250-18618-8>. I very much hope that Wikifunctions will consciously provide the space for relatable and diverse examples from many different areas. Recordings The recording of Maria Keet’s presentation on abstract representations is now available on Wikimedia Commons. Maria Keet talks about the design of the "abstract content" language for writing "constructors", which are those pieces of structured information that are positioned between Wikidata and Wikifunctions as a source on the one side of the pipeline and the machinery for rendering that content into natural language sentences or paragraphs of text on the other side in the pipeline. The recording can now be watched on Commons here: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abstract_Wikipedia_Natural_language_generat… The regular *Conversation with Trustees* is an opportunity for community members to speak directly with the Wikimedia Foundation's Trustees about their work. The Board of Trustees is a volunteer body of movement leaders and external experts in charge of guiding the Wikimedia Foundation and ensuring its accountability. The 23 February 2023 conversation included a short update on Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions, and answered some community questions that were asked. A recording of the conversation is available on YouTube for now, and will also be available on Wikimedia Commons eventually <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Comm…> : www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqHUrpU2Rc Volunteers’ corner on 6 March 2023 This upcoming Monday will see our monthly Volunteer’s corner. The meeting will be on Monday, 6 March 2023, at 18:30-19:00 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1678127424> and you can join on Jitsi on the following link: https://meet.jit.si/AWVolunteersCorner Bring your questions, your ideas, or even just your curiosity, and we will find and help with places you can contribute. Development update - The large patchsets we have been working on are landing or close to landing - *Goal 2* (efficient and correct evaluation) has seen the patch land that splits the one big evaluator into individual language evaluators. We are working now on propagating these changes to the beta. - *Goal 3* (meta-data) has seen the patch land that reorders implementations. We are now working on enabling that on the beta. - *Goal 5* (meta-data) the work on typed lists is ongoing, and work on function calls has been picked up and a first version has landed - *Goal 6* (stable and secure system) has seen the rights system land, and now requires deployment and testing - *QTE* has presented the work on e2e testing that will lead to integration testing become part of CI - *Design* has reached a state where we have caught up with the state of the implementation, and are have prepared most of *Goal 9* and have starting now to prepare for documentation in the next phase

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Abstract-Wikipedia March 2023