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_Completion_and_Balancing. 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_generation_working_group_-_2023_February.webm
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_Committee/2023-02-23_Conversation_with_Trustees#How_to_participate :
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
Wonderful discussions within the February working group! Thanks for providing the link!
I did have one takeaway from listening intently to the underlying "tones" or "design systems" within hearing Maria wanting structured semantics in the Abstract Representation (AR) and then ideas from Krasimir of strong types (encourage predicate usage) and others and then Mahir's showcase of usage of Roles and Actions and Agents, etc.
All the ideas coming together to basically collectively represent... 1. A (Sentence) 2. A (Article) a set of sentences that collectively present a fact or many facts.
I think Constructors can start with a Sentence and together a Constructor pipeline can form the capability to recreate Articles which is the core need. I don't see the need to have a Constructor that can construct an entire Article but maybe we call that a different thing that takes Constructors as input. dunno.
I like the ideas of Roles, Actions, Agents, etc. because this offers wide flexibility across languages themselves. And the bonus is that there's alignment in grammar systems.
If we look at the linguistic structures of sentences we find there to be broad overlap.
1. Action = Verb - read, proved, gained, traveled, etc. 2. Agent = Noun - John, space, Wikidata, etc. 3. Role = Noun - Person, Organization, Actor, Chef, Football Player, Performance, Type, etc. 4. ?? = Adjectives 5. ?? = Adverbs 6. ...
My general worry has constantly been around closely matching subject agreement so that we don't change the tone of articles written, or worst, become too lossy which can change facts themselves to be untrue or slightly skewed and more debateable or contenious.
From Space - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space Currently, the standard space interval, called a standard meter or simply meter, is defined as the distance traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second.
meter Q11573 defined as distance traveled: 1/299792458 meters Q11573 duration Q2199864: 1 second calculated from: speed of light Q2111 traveled by: light Q9128
Or without subject agreement in the sentence (meter being the primary subject - debatable, "interval" is the actual subject which is used to measure space. Which "interval"? The "meter". Gotta love GF there) :
light Q9128 speed: 299,792,458 unit: metre Q11573 per second Q11574 what happened to distance there? It's still there, just hidden inside "metre" as a unit that can be used to measure a distance. Did we lose information, change the facts stated slightly, make things more clear and direct with a subject change, but perhaps the result is that information is now less detailed
Constructors will need to be confident and clear on holding onto subject agreement in sentence structures, I think. Maybe GF grammatical framework folks can indeed help us along in that journey so that we don't begin to lose facts while abstracting and producing AR. But isn't the very essence of "abstraction" as a concept tied towards the loss of facts through summarization where we pull only certain qualities out to represent (abstract) a thing? Something to ponder for the scope team, for sure.
Hi.
Third public NLG workstream? Here is my contribution: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Community:2023-03-17. You can do whatever you want with it, as it is under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (i.e. move, comment, recompile the code example, ...). I am not planning (outlook from today) to attend the meeting.
Dušan Kreheľ
abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org