Thank you Dmitry! Well phrased and to the point!
As for "templating", that might be the worst of both worlds; without the
flexibility and over-time improvement of automatic descriptions, but making
it harder for people to enter (compared to "free-style" text). We have a
Visual Editor on Wikipedia for a reason :-)
On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:07 AM Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
My thoughts, as ever(!), are as follows:
- The tool that generates the descriptions deserves a lot more
development. Magnus' tool is very much a prototype, and represents a tiny
glimpse of what's possible. Looking at its current output is a straw man.
- Auto-generated descriptions work for current articles, and *all
future articles*. They automatically adapt to updated data. They
automatically become more accurate as new data is added.
- When you edit the descriptions yourself, you're not really making a
meaningful contribution to the *data* that underpins the given Wikidata
entry; i.e. you're not contributing any new information. You're simply
paraphrasing the first sentence or two of the Wikipedia article. That can't
possibly be a productive use of contributors' time.
As for Brian's suggestion:
It would be a step forward; we can even invent a whole template-type
syntax for transcluding bits of actual data into the description. But IMO,
that kind of effort would still be better spent on fully-automatic
descriptions, because that's the ideal that semi-automatic descriptions can
only approach.
On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:36 PM, Brian Gerstle <bgerstle(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Could there be a way to have our nicely curated
description cake and
eat it too? For example, interpolating data into the description and/or
marking data points which are referenced in the description (so as to mark
it as outdated when they change)?
I appreciate the potential benefits of generated descriptions (and
other things), but Monte's examples might have swayed me towards human
curated—when available.
On Tuesday, August 18, 2015, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Ok, so I just did what I proposed. I went to random enwiki articles
> and described the first ten I found which didn't already have descriptions:
>
>
> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film about a Gulf War friendly-fire
> incident*
>
> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *largest known species of land snail,
> extinct*
>
> - "List of Kenyan writers", *notable Kenyan authors*
>
> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *annular eclipse which lasted
> 77 seconds*
>
> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *historic Civilian Conservation
> Corps post-and-beam building*
>
> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *debut 1980 studio album by Goombay Dance
> Band*
>
> - "E-1027", *modernist villa in France by architect Eileen Gray*
>
> - "Daingerfield State Park", *park in Morris County, Texas, USA,
> bordering Lake Daingerfield*
>
> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *2014 Live album by Mexican pop singer
> Fey*
>
> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *6th UEFA Regions' Cup, won by Castile
> and Leon*
>
>
>
> And here are the respective descriptions from Magnus' (quite
> excellent) autodesc.js:
>
>
>
> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film by Edward Zwick, produced by John
> Davis and David T. Friendly from United States of America*
>
> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *species of Mollusca*
>
> - "List of Kenyan writers", *Wikimedia list article*
>
> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *solar eclipse*
>
> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *Construction in Connecticut, United
> States of America*
>
> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *album*
>
> - "E-1027", *villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France*
>
> - "Daingerfield State Park", *state park and state park of a state of
> the United States in Texas, United States of America*
>
> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *live album by Fey*
>
> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *none*
>
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Just trying to make my own bold assertions falsifiable :)
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:32 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> The whole human-vs-extracted descriptions quality question could be
>> fairly easy to test I think:
>>
>> - Pick, some number of articles at random.
>> - Run them through a description extraction script.
>> - Have a human describe the same articles with, say, the app
>> interface I demo'ed.
>>
>> If nothing else this exercise could perhaps make what's thus far been
>> a wildly abstract discussion more concrete.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> If having the most elegant description extraction mechanism was the
>>> goal I would totally agree ;)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> IMO, allowing the user to edit the description is a missed
>>>> opportunity to make the user edit the actual *data*, such that the
>>>> description is generated correctly.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> IMO, if the goal is quality, then human curated descriptions are
>>>>> superior until such time as the auto-generation script passes the
Turing
>>>>> test ;)
>>>>>
>>>>> I see these empty descriptions as an amazing opportunity to give
>>>>> *everyone* an easy new way to edit. I whipped an app editing
interface up
>>>>> at the Lyon hackathon:
>>>>> bluetooth720 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VblyGhf_c8>
>>>>>
>>>>> I used it to add a couple hundred descriptions in a single day
>>>>> just by hitting "random" then adding descriptions for
articles which didn't
>>>>> have them.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd love to try a limited test of this in production to get a
>>>>> sense for how effective human curation can be if the interface is
easy to
>>>>> use...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Jan Ainali <
>>>>> jan.ainali(a)wikimedia.se> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Nice one!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does not appear to work on svwiki though. Does it have something
>>>>>> to do with that the wiki in question does not display that
tagline?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige <http://wikimedia.se>
>>>>>> 0729 - 67 29 48
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till
>>>>>> mänsklighetens samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
>>>>>> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2015-08-18 17:23 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske <
>>>>>> magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>gt;:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Show automatic description underneath "From
Wikipedia...":
>>>>>>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> To use, add:
>>>>>>> importScript ( 'User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js' ) ;
>>>>>>> to your common.js
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:47 AM Jane Darnell
<jane023(a)gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It would be even better if this (short: 3 field max)
>>>>>>>> pipe-separated list was available as a gadget to
wikidatans on Wikipedia
>>>>>>>> (like me). I can't see if a page I am on has an
"instance of" (though it
>>>>>>>> should) and I can see the description thanks to another
gadget (sorry no
>>>>>>>> idea which one that is). Often I will update empty
descriptions, but if I
>>>>>>>> was served basic fields (so for a painting, the creator
field), I would
>>>>>>>> click through to update that too.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:58 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<
>>>>>>>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Jane Darnell, 15/08/2015 08:53:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Yes but even if the descriptions were just the
contents of
>>>>>>>>>> fields
>>>>>>>>>> separated by a pipe it would be better than
nothing.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> +1, item descriptions are mostly useless in my
experience.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> As for "get into production on Wikipedia" I
don't know what it
>>>>>>>>> means, I certainly don't like 1) mobile-specific
features, 2) overriding
>>>>>>>>> existing manually curated content; but it's good
to 3) fill gaps. Mobile
>>>>>>>>> folks often do (1) and (2), if they *instead* did (3)
I'd be very happy. :)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Nemo
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dmitry Brant
>>>> Mobile Apps Team (Android)
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
--
EN Wikipedia user page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian.gerstle
IRC: bgerstle
--
Dmitry Brant
Mobile Apps Team (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:36 PM, Brian Gerstle <bgerstle(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Could there be a way to have our nicely curated
description cake and
eat it too? For example, interpolating data into the description and/or
marking data points which are referenced in the description (so as to mark
it as outdated when they change)?
I appreciate the potential benefits of generated descriptions (and
other things), but Monte's examples might have swayed me towards human
curated—when available.
On Tuesday, August 18, 2015, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Ok, so I just did what I proposed. I went to random enwiki articles
> and described the first ten I found which didn't already have descriptions:
>
>
> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film about a Gulf War friendly-fire
> incident*
>
> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *largest known species of land snail,
> extinct*
>
> - "List of Kenyan writers", *notable Kenyan authors*
>
> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *annular eclipse which lasted
> 77 seconds*
>
> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *historic Civilian Conservation
> Corps post-and-beam building*
>
> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *debut 1980 studio album by Goombay Dance
> Band*
>
> - "E-1027", *modernist villa in France by architect Eileen Gray*
>
> - "Daingerfield State Park", *park in Morris County, Texas, USA,
> bordering Lake Daingerfield*
>
> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *2014 Live album by Mexican pop singer
> Fey*
>
> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *6th UEFA Regions' Cup, won by Castile
> and Leon*
>
>
>
> And here are the respective descriptions from Magnus' (quite
> excellent) autodesc.js:
>
>
>
> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film by Edward Zwick, produced by John
> Davis and David T. Friendly from United States of America*
>
> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *species of Mollusca*
>
> - "List of Kenyan writers", *Wikimedia list article*
>
> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *solar eclipse*
>
> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *Construction in Connecticut, United
> States of America*
>
> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *album*
>
> - "E-1027", *villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France*
>
> - "Daingerfield State Park", *state park and state park of a state of
> the United States in Texas, United States of America*
>
> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *live album by Fey*
>
> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *none*
>
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Just trying to make my own bold assertions falsifiable :)
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:32 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> The whole human-vs-extracted descriptions quality question could be
>> fairly easy to test I think:
>>
>> - Pick, some number of articles at random.
>> - Run them through a description extraction script.
>> - Have a human describe the same articles with, say, the app
>> interface I demo'ed.
>>
>> If nothing else this exercise could perhaps make what's thus far been
>> a wildly abstract discussion more concrete.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> If having the most elegant description extraction mechanism was the
>>> goal I would totally agree ;)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> IMO, allowing the user to edit the description is a missed
>>>> opportunity to make the user edit the actual *data*, such that the
>>>> description is generated correctly.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> IMO, if the goal is quality, then human curated descriptions are
>>>>> superior until such time as the auto-generation script passes the
Turing
>>>>> test ;)
>>>>>
>>>>> I see these empty descriptions as an amazing opportunity to give
>>>>> *everyone* an easy new way to edit. I whipped an app editing
interface up
>>>>> at the Lyon hackathon:
>>>>> bluetooth720 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VblyGhf_c8>
>>>>>
>>>>> I used it to add a couple hundred descriptions in a single day
>>>>> just by hitting "random" then adding descriptions for
articles which didn't
>>>>> have them.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd love to try a limited test of this in production to get a
>>>>> sense for how effective human curation can be if the interface is
easy to
>>>>> use...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Jan Ainali <
>>>>> jan.ainali(a)wikimedia.se> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Nice one!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does not appear to work on svwiki though. Does it have something
>>>>>> to do with that the wiki in question does not display that
tagline?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige <http://wikimedia.se>
>>>>>> 0729 - 67 29 48
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till
>>>>>> mänsklighetens samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
>>>>>> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2015-08-18 17:23 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske <
>>>>>> magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>gt;:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Show automatic description underneath "From
Wikipedia...":
>>>>>>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> To use, add:
>>>>>>> importScript ( 'User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js' ) ;
>>>>>>> to your common.js
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:47 AM Jane Darnell
<jane023(a)gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It would be even better if this (short: 3 field max)
>>>>>>>> pipe-separated list was available as a gadget to
wikidatans on Wikipedia
>>>>>>>> (like me). I can't see if a page I am on has an
"instance of" (though it
>>>>>>>> should) and I can see the description thanks to another
gadget (sorry no
>>>>>>>> idea which one that is). Often I will update empty
descriptions, but if I
>>>>>>>> was served basic fields (so for a painting, the creator
field), I would
>>>>>>>> click through to update that too.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:58 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<
>>>>>>>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Jane Darnell, 15/08/2015 08:53:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Yes but even if the descriptions were just the
contents of
>>>>>>>>>> fields
>>>>>>>>>> separated by a pipe it would be better than
nothing.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> +1, item descriptions are mostly useless in my
experience.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> As for "get into production on Wikipedia" I
don't know what it
>>>>>>>>> means, I certainly don't like 1) mobile-specific
features, 2) overriding
>>>>>>>>> existing manually curated content; but it's good
to 3) fill gaps. Mobile
>>>>>>>>> folks often do (1) and (2), if they *instead* did (3)
I'd be very happy. :)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Nemo
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dmitry Brant
>>>> Mobile Apps Team (Android)
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
--
EN Wikipedia user page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian.gerstle
IRC: bgerstle
--
Dmitry Brant
Mobile Apps Team (Android)
Wikimedia Foundation
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
_______________________________________________
Mobile-l mailing list
Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l