I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
This has been somewhat answered by the Simple English Wikipedia. But even Simple was recently nominated for deletion in whole on meta, although the nomination failed. I'm not sure it can be done without splitting off multiple projects, but the problem with that is that our cross-wiki vandals are savvy to new sparsely populated projects, and they use those as a place to roam, meaning you need significant community effort just to maintain whatever content contributions are to be had.
V/r TJW/GMG
On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 7:15 PM Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 01:01, Timothy Wood timothyjosephwood@gmail.com wrote:
This has been somewhat answered by the Simple English Wikipedia. But even Simple was recently nominated for deletion in whole on meta, although the nomination failed. I'm not sure it can be done without splitting off multiple projects, but the problem with that is that our cross-wiki vandals are savvy to new sparsely populated projects, and they use those as a place to roam, meaning you need significant community effort just to maintain whatever content contributions are to be had.
This sounds crazy can you explain it properly as I dont contribute to WikiPedia that much these days so am not really aware of whats going on politics wise.
I am suggesting basically a new (sub) section tags for introductions that can contain :-
a) A default introduction b) The expert topic area. c) Individually targetted introductions
Thanks for the reply,
Aaron
V/r TJW/GMG
On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 7:15 PM Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Well the purpose of the Simple English Wikipedia is to provide a resource for children, people who are learning English, or others who have difficulty understanding the regular English Wikipedia. It's understaffed and underpopulated, but in principle it takes care of a lot of your problem if eventually fleshed out in content and coverage.
Wikimedia projects are good at copy/pasting the software to make new projects, but we're not very good at significantly adapting radical new features of the exiting software, which is why we ended up with a Simple English Wikipedia as a stand alone project, rather than a tab in the existing English Wikipedia to switch to "simple mode". But we still have the problem of adequate volunteers, and lesser populated projects can struggle for years.
The main problem with suggesting an "expert" version of an article is that we're very short on experts. The system is designed to compensate for that by requiring expert sources, meaning you don't need to be an expert to contribute; you just need to be competent enough to read and understand what the experts have written.
I may be confusing things even further, and sorry if I am.
V/r TJW/GMG
On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 8:25 PM Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 01:01, Timothy Wood timothyjosephwood@gmail.com wrote:
This has been somewhat answered by the Simple English Wikipedia. But even Simple was recently nominated for deletion in whole on meta, although the nomination failed. I'm not sure it can be done without splitting off multiple projects, but the problem with that is that our cross-wiki
vandals
are savvy to new sparsely populated projects, and they use those as a
place
to roam, meaning you need significant community effort just to maintain whatever content contributions are to be had.
This sounds crazy can you explain it properly as I dont contribute to WikiPedia that much these days so am not really aware of whats going on politics wise.
I am suggesting basically a new (sub) section tags for introductions that can contain :-
a) A default introduction b) The expert topic area. c) Individually targetted introductions
Thanks for the reply,
Aaron
V/r TJW/GMG
On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 7:15 PM Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are
a
kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default
needs
facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Aaron,
Interesting ideas. I’ve thought about these topics in the contexts of digital textbooks and e-learning, adaptive content and adaptive explanation.
An implementation idea is that users could have settings and preferences and that these could be accessed in the server-side processing of wiki articles utilizing something like conditional preprocessor macros. Also possible is the utilization of wiki templates or Lua scripting. This could require users to log in to access these features. Default content could need to be provided for users not logged in.
Another implementation idea is to output HTML/XHTML documents which include all of the possible content and which utilize JavaScript for client-side processing of articles, accessing user settings and preferences to process and present adaptive articles.
Another implementation idea is to utilize user-controlled data storage solutions such as Solid [1][2] to store users’ settings and preferences. With Solid, the same data for users’ settings and preferences could be utilized across Wikipedia, digital textbooks and e-learning solutions.
Best regards,
Adam
[1] https://solid.inrupt.com/about
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_project)
________________________________ From: Wiki-research-l wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com Sent: Friday, February 8, 2019 7:15:21 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: [Wiki-research-l] User type context sensitivity to introduction sections.
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
On the English language wikipedia the guidelines about ledes are pretty clear and such articles are in breach of them. Please tag them with {{lead rewrite}} when you find them. TW lets you do this via javascript magic.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 13:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I think we might be missing the point here of the original request. I am a native fluent speaker of English and I have 4 university degrees. I don't need Simple English Wikipedia, but there are definitiely articles on English Wikipedia that I cannot read because they are not sufficiently introductory in terms of content. For example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleotide
loses me pretty quickly as I have not studied biochemistry for some number of decades so I don't really understand/remember the terms in which nucleotides are defined within the article. But I don't think we need to have a technical solution. We probably need some simpler introductions to some topics, either within one article or as two separate articles, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_genetics
Perhaps we need some navboxes that provide a sequence for reading through a number of articles in some sensible sequence to learn about a larger topic.
I think we have plenty of solutions with the tools at hand. I think we just need to identify the problematic articles and hope someone with the right expertise is willing to write the simple introduction or suggest a sequence of articles to be read or whatever is deemed to be the best way to cope with readers coming to the topic with a range of prior knowledge.
Kerry
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the fact that it only covers the English language, which most people don't know, and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the world. (I'm saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who prefer to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this indirectly benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is always a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and DEFAULTSORT moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections that all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated from the prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed semantically for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as for translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page could have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks such as templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major changes in how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of code and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's worth thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray <aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for what I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki libraries and adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to make it seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from other Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the fact that it only covers the English language, which most people don't know, and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the world. (I'm saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who prefer to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this indirectly benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is always a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and DEFAULTSORT moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections that all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated from the prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed semantically for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as for translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page could have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks such as templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major changes in how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of code and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's worth thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for schools, and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ? Just an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for what I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki libraries and adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to make it seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from other Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the fact that it only covers the English language, which most people don't know, and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the world. (I'm saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who prefer to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this indirectly benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is always a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and DEFAULTSORT moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections that all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated from the prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed semantically for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as for translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page could have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks such as templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major changes in how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of code and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's worth thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you are a kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are too complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default needs facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
Allow me to propose something different: Wikipedia needs better writing, not technical solutions. And for different target groups, we need different encyclopedias: * for children * for people with disabilities, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache * for scholars, e.g. "Wikipedia scholar". A different wiki for every target group can be arranged in the best possible way for the target group.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Sa., 9. Feb. 2019 um 21:55 Uhr schrieb Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com>:
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for schools, and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ? Just an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for what I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki libraries
and
adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to make it seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from
other
Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the fact that it only covers the English language, which most people don't know, and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the world.
(I'm
saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who prefer to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this
indirectly
benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is
always
a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and
DEFAULTSORT
moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections that all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated from
the
prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed
semantically
for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as for translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page could have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks such
as
templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major changes in how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of code and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's
worth
thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you
are a
kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are
too
complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default
needs
facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I believe that the English language term you are looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English and the problem is that en.wiki policies already require plain english. The core of the issue is that writing in plain english is hard and currently there are few tools to support editors produce it.
A decent reading level test applied by section and calculated using a javascript tool that fitted into the standard wiki framework for tools would be a very useful addition. The tool could annotate the article and for new articles notify the article creator. Of course, we'd need supporting materials to aid editors learn plain english and so forth, but we have to start somewhere.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 11:22, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Allow me to propose something different: Wikipedia needs better writing, not technical solutions. And for different target groups, we need different encyclopedias:
- for children
- for people with disabilities, such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache
- for scholars, e.g. "Wikipedia scholar".
A different wiki for every target group can be arranged in the best possible way for the target group.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Sa., 9. Feb. 2019 um 21:55 Uhr schrieb Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com>:
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for schools, and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ? Just an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for what I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki libraries
and
adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to make it seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from
other
Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the fact that it only covers the English language, which most people don't know, and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the world.
(I'm
saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who prefer to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this
indirectly
benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is
always
a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and
DEFAULTSORT
moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections that all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated from
the
prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed
semantically
for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as for translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page could have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks such
as
templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major changes in how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of code and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's
worth
thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you
are a
kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are
too
complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default
needs
facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Hello Stuart, No, I totally disagree. :-) I absolutely don't mean "plain English" but the special concept as described in the article linked. And I do not think that we need a software solution. We need good writing skills. Kind regards Ziko
Am So., 10. Feb. 2019 um 03:02 Uhr schrieb Stuart A. Yeates < syeates@gmail.com>:
I believe that the English language term you are looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English and the problem is that en.wiki policies already require plain english. The core of the issue is that writing in plain english is hard and currently there are few tools to support editors produce it.
A decent reading level test applied by section and calculated using a javascript tool that fitted into the standard wiki framework for tools would be a very useful addition. The tool could annotate the article and for new articles notify the article creator. Of course, we'd need supporting materials to aid editors learn plain english and so forth, but we have to start somewhere.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 11:22, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Allow me to propose something different: Wikipedia needs better writing, not technical solutions. And for different target groups, we need
different
encyclopedias:
- for children
- for people with disabilities, such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache
- for scholars, e.g. "Wikipedia scholar".
A different wiki for every target group can be arranged in the best possible way for the target group.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Sa., 9. Feb. 2019 um 21:55 Uhr schrieb Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com>:
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for
schools,
and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ?
Just
an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for
what
I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki
libraries
and
adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to
make it
seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from
other
Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the
fact
that it only covers the English language, which most people don't
know,
and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the
world.
(I'm
saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who
prefer
to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this
indirectly
benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is
always
a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and
DEFAULTSORT
moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections
that
all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated
from
the
prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed
semantically
for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as
for
translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page
could
have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks
such
as
templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major
changes in
how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of
code
and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's
worth
thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you
are a
kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles
are
too
complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default
needs
facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea
are
welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
This has been discussed many times, see also: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Multi-level_Articles_(By_Diffic...) https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Filter_content_based_on_desired... https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Divide_Wikipedia https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Create_Scientific,_Popular_and_... (and links from there)
Federico
Hoi, Do realise that when this is the 'best practice' we will make the gap between English and the others only bigger.. From my perspective to improve quality, we could start with linking to Wikidata for blue, red and black links in any Wikipedia. This will have a measurable quality effect of some 6%. It is easy to implement and what is proposed is imho technically not something that is easily realised. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 13:27, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Stuart, No, I totally disagree. :-) I absolutely don't mean "plain English" but the special concept as described in the article linked. And I do not think that we need a software solution. We need good writing skills. Kind regards Ziko
Am So., 10. Feb. 2019 um 03:02 Uhr schrieb Stuart A. Yeates < syeates@gmail.com>:
I believe that the English language term you are looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English and the problem is that en.wiki policies already require plain english. The core of the issue is that writing in plain english is hard and currently there are few tools to support editors produce it.
A decent reading level test applied by section and calculated using a javascript tool that fitted into the standard wiki framework for tools would be a very useful addition. The tool could annotate the article and for new articles notify the article creator. Of course, we'd need supporting materials to aid editors learn plain english and so forth, but we have to start somewhere.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 11:22, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Allow me to propose something different: Wikipedia needs better
writing,
not technical solutions. And for different target groups, we need
different
encyclopedias:
- for children
- for people with disabilities, such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache
- for scholars, e.g. "Wikipedia scholar".
A different wiki for every target group can be arranged in the best possible way for the target group.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Sa., 9. Feb. 2019 um 21:55 Uhr schrieb Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com>:
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for
schools,
and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ?
Just
an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming
for
what
I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki
libraries
and
adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to
make it
seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content
from
other
Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss
the
fact
that it only covers the English language, which most people don't
know,
and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the
world.
(I'm
saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who
prefer
to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this
indirectly
benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page
is
always
a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and
magic
words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and
DEFAULTSORT
moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some
sections
that
all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated
from
the
prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed
semantically
for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently
its
rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki
syntax
editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as
for
translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page
could
have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks
such
as
templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major
changes in
how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot
of
code
and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes
it's
worth
thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how
Wikipedia
works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com >:
> I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if
you
are a
> kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different > introduction. > > Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles
are
too
> complex at the start. > > Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as
default
needs
> facilitating by WikiMedia technology. > > Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this
idea
are
> welcomed. > > Regards, > > Aaron > > > -- > Aaron Gray > > Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
> Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Dear Stuart,
The problem with notifying the article creators and templating the articles is that the people who wrote that content are not necessarily the ones who can rewrite it more clearly. And templating rarely solves problems, it often just adds more clutter to a confused article.
AutoInforming the editor probably works for people who have linked to disambiguation pages. But otherwise as Ziko has pointed out the solution is better writing, and you don't get that by templating. You do get that through correcting and fixing things, Wikipedians notice when people improve our contributions, and many of us learn from that. I certainly have. Having a hidden category of articles with overly high reading ages would be a good move, and could attract the sort of Wikipedians who can fix that issue.
Some time around 2007 Wikipedia shifted from a soFixIt culture to the current less supportive SoTemplateItForHypotheticalOthers to fix culture. The community then went into decline, and despite the 2015 rally, in some ways we have a smaller more toxic community now than in 2007. One theory is that the three phenomena, community size, toxicity and templating are quite closely related.
Jonathan
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 02:02, Stuart A. Yeates syeates@gmail.com wrote:
I believe that the English language term you are looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English and the problem is that en.wiki policies already require plain english. The core of the issue is that writing in plain english is hard and currently there are few tools to support editors produce it.
A decent reading level test applied by section and calculated using a javascript tool that fitted into the standard wiki framework for tools would be a very useful addition. The tool could annotate the article and for new articles notify the article creator. Of course, we'd need supporting materials to aid editors learn plain english and so forth, but we have to start somewhere.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 11:22, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Allow me to propose something different: Wikipedia needs better writing, not technical solutions. And for different target groups, we need
different
encyclopedias:
- for children
- for people with disabilities, such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache
- for scholars, e.g. "Wikipedia scholar".
A different wiki for every target group can be arranged in the best possible way for the target group.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Sa., 9. Feb. 2019 um 21:55 Uhr schrieb Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com>:
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for
schools,
and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ?
Just
an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for
what
I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki
libraries
and
adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to
make it
seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from
other
Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the
fact
that it only covers the English language, which most people don't
know,
and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the
world.
(I'm
saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who
prefer
to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this
indirectly
benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is
always
a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and
DEFAULTSORT
moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections
that
all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated
from
the
prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed
semantically
for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as
for
translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page
could
have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks
such
as
templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major
changes in
how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of
code
and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's
worth
thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you
are a
kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles
are
too
complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default
needs
facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea
are
welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org