This newsletter is also available on wiki here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-12-02
-- Monthly public NLG meetings
This year we have started regular meetings about natural language generation (NLG) on Wikifunctions. This will be a crucial functionality that Wikifunctions will need to provide for Abstract Wikipedia, using community-managed code on top of the platform. The meetings have consisted of a mix of Wikimedia staffers, Google.org fellows, Wikimedia volunteers, academics, and practitioners from the field.
These meetings have been very interesting and very lively, and a number of different approaches have been discussed and brought together.
As the year ends, a number of individual situations of the NLG workstream members change, and we want to use that chance to make one of our meetings public each month, in order to talk with even more people, and to provide a potential path for interested contributors to join the group.
Every third Tuesday of the month, at 16:30 UTC, the NLG workstream meetings will be public. Details on what conference technology we'll use and how to join will be shared ahead of the first event, which will be on 17 January 2023 https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1673973054. Volunteers' corner
Talking about the volunteers, the next volunteer’s corner https://meet.google.com/evj-ktbq-hbn is coming up this Monday, 5 December 2022, 18:30 UTC https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1670265037. Bring your questions, your ideas, or even just your curiosity, and we will find and help with places you can contribute. On-going open discussion about Wikifunctions policiez
The discussion about the Code of Conduct https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-11-17 for Wikifunctions and other policies is open, but has not seen much engagement yet. Your contribution would be very welcome https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-11-17 . Wikifunctions is now updating also on Mastodon
You can follow us and engage with on Mastodon @wikifunctions@wikis.world https://wikis.world/@wikifunctions Development updates
Right now, our focus remains on the "Phase Theta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Phases" functionality, making sure that the whole of the interface is usable, useful, scalable, and stable. There are a few Abstract Wiki tasks https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/4876/?filter=BVP6iAWQGwbL tagged "Good first task", and if you'd like to take one on we'd love to chat about them or others in the team's bridged IRC (irc://irc.libera.chat/wikipedia-abstract-tech) / Telegram https://t.me/abstract_wikipedia_tech channel. You can also ask about them in the Volunteers’ corner.
Experience & Performance
- Fixed more FE and BE bugs - Implemented changes informed by decisions made on about mandatory/optional fields in the UI (T321695 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321695) - [Design] Finished designs of string, reference, type change and monolingual string - Implemented task to invert or avoid Expanding Function Calls before Returning from Orchestrator to avoid shipping huge expanded calls to the user (T297742 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297742)
Meta-data
- Finished: Drop back-compat. code in function-schemata (part of T291136 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291136) - Major ticket closed: Migrate orchestrator/evaluator responses to reply with result envelopes including meta-data map type (T291136 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291136) - Bug fix in Orchestrator’s metadata map testing code
Natural Language Generation
- Ariel has shared Scribunto prototype video https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Template_Language_for_Wikifunctions/Scribunto-based_implementation with community