> From: jc@sahnwaldt.de
> Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 22:47:07 +0200
> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Accelerating software innovation with Wikidata and improved Wikicode
>
> I think software and most other engineering products need a much
> higher level of coherence than artefacts that are consumed by humans,
> like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is full of inconsistencies and even
> contradictions. When I browse Wikipedia, I often stumble upon
> statements on one page that are contradicted by another page. That's
> not a big deal - sometimes I can easily tell which statement is
> correct (and fix the other pages), sometimes I can't, but either way,
> I am not a computer: I don't follow these statements blindly. In a
> computer program, such inconsistencies would lead to erratic behavior,
> i.e., bugs. This means that a completely open wiki process will not
> work for software.
>
> In a way, a lot of open source software is developed in a restricted
> wiki way: someone proposes a change, but before it is merged, it is
> checked by people who (hopefully) know all the nooks and crannies of
> the existing code. A bit like edit-protected pages in Wikipedia:
> everyone can propose changes on the talk page, but only admins can
> actually make these changes.
>
> Christopher
>
> On 7 July 2013 04:16, Michael Hale <hale.michael.jr@live.com> wrote:
> > I'm glad you mentioned that the same issue applies to electronics. I suppose
> > I could have just referred to Moore's law instead of the relatively recent
> > increasing size of datacenters. I like asking computers to work hard, but I
> > find it hard to think of valuable things for them to do. You can play a new
> > game or donate time to BOINC, but not very many great games are produced
> > each year and BOINC typically runs algorithms that benefit humanity but not
> > specifically you. For example, my genetics tests say I have an increased
> > risk of prostate cancer, so I'd like to be able to tell Folding@home to
> > focus on the proteins that are most relevant for the diseases I'm most
> > likely to get.
> >
> > I still have hope that a more wiki-like model could work for developing
> > software libraries though. The problems of technical design in software and
> > hardware are similar, but software can be developed more fluidly and rapidly
> > due to the lower barrier to entry and non-existent manufacturing costs.
> > Essentially all electronics are designed and simulated with software prior
> > to constructing physical prototypes these days.
> >
> > I've thought about the integration problem some, but I haven't ironed out
> > how it would all work yet. I think standard object-oriented programming and
> > modeling techniques have been absorbed by enough programmers that it might
> > be worth a shot though. Essentially, each article would have a standard
> > class and supporting data structures or file formats for the inputs and
> > outputs of its algorithms. It would be like the typical flow chart or visual
> > programming languages you can use with libraries like Modelica, but on a
> > larger scale and the formats would often be more complex. So, like, you
> > would have a class representing a cloud, with flags for different
> > representations (density values in a cubic grid, collections of point
> > particles, polygonal shape approximations, etc) which are used for different
> > algorithms. So then you would have code that can convert between all of the
> > representations, code for generating random clouds (with potentially lots of
> > optional parameters to specify atmospheric conditions), code for outputting
> > images of the generated clouds in different styles, and algorithms for
> > manipulating them through time. Then if I wanted to see the effects on a
> > specific cloud I've made drifting over the ocean in different atmospheric
> > conditions, I could grab the code to instantiate 3D Euclidean space with a
> > virtual camera, add some gravity, add some ground, add some water, add an
> > atmosphere, add my cloud, and then simulate it with adjustable parameters
> > for the accuracy and speed of computation. Now, there are a lot of details
> > that leaves out, but I don't know of another way to easily mix capabilities
> > from high-end graphics software and various specialized simulation
> > algorithms in lots of ways. Graphics software typically gives you some
> > simulation capabilities, and simulation software typically gives you some
> > graphics functionality, but I want lots of both.
> >
> > I think having more semantic annotation tools will be great, but I don't
> > spend most of my time doing searches. There is an astounding amount of
> > information, data, and media on the internet, but it's not hard to find the
> > edge if you really try. It's pretty crazy if you search for images of "blue
> > bear" how many results come up, but if you search for "blue bear and green
> > gorilla" you don't get anything useful. Then you get to face the craziness
> > of how many options you have for combining a picture of a blue bear and a
> > different picture of a green gorilla into one picture. I think it's
> > interesting what they are trying with the Wolfram Alpha website, but they
> > will always have to limit the time of the computations they allow you to do
> > on their servers, so that's why I think we need better libraries to more
> > easily program the computers we have direct control over.
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: dacuetu@gmail.com
> > Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 17:49:41 -0400
> > To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Accelerating software innovation with Wikidata and
> > improved Wikicode
> >
> >
> > Thanks for sharing your thoughts Michael, it is also something that has been
> > bothering me for a while and not only in programming, also in other
> > technical domains like electronics.
> >
> > In my opinion, the reason why programming (or technical design in general)
> > couldn't follow the wiki world is because it has some structural differences
> > that require a different approach. To start with, there is the problem of
> > integration, where code solutions are usually part of a larger system and
> > they cannot be isolated or combined with others blocks as easily as you
> > would combine text fragments like in Wikipedia. I'm sure that all those 10
> > open file examples have some particularities about the operative system,
> > method, supporting libraries, etc.
> > The part of scavenging and gluing will be always there unless you follow the
> > approach used in hardware design (wp: semiconductor intellectual property
> > core).
> >
> > Since that kind of modularity trend is hard to set up at large scale other
> > than what is already stablished, it would be more practical to focus on what
> > can be improved more easily, which is the scavenging. Instead of copying
> > code fragments, it would be better to point to the fragment in the source
> > code project itself, while at the same time providing the semantic tags
> > necessary for describing that fragment. This can be done (more or less) with
> > current existing semantic annotation technology (see thepund.it and Dbpedia
> > Spotlight).
> >
> > If this has not been done before it is maybe because semantic tools are now
> > in the transition from "adaptation of an emerging technology" into "social
> > appropriation of that technology". For the wiki concept it took 6 years for
> > it to be transformed into wikipedia, more or less the same amount of years
> > between SMW and Wikidata. Semantic annotation of code will eventually
> > happen, how fast it will depend on interest in such a tool and the success
> > of the supporting technologies.
> >
> > Micru
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 at 3:10 PM, Michael Hale <hale.michael.jr@live.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > I have been pondering this for some time, and I would like some feedback. I
> > figure there are many programmers on this list, but I think others might
> > find it interesting as well.
> >
> > Are you satisfied with our progress in increasing software sophistication as
> > compared to, say, increasing the size of datacenters? Personally, I think
> > there is still too much "reinventing the wheel" going on, and the best way
> > to get to software that is complex enough to do things like high-fidelity
> > simulations of virtual worlds is to essentially crowd-source the translation
> > of Wikipedia into code. The existing structure of the Wikipedia articles
> > would serve as a scaffold for a large, consistently designed, open-source
> > software library. Then, whether I was making software for weather prediction
> > and I needed code to slowly simulate physically accurate clouds or I was
> > making a game and I needed code to quickly draw stylized clouds I could just
> > go to the article for clouds, click on C++ (or whatever programming language
> > is appropriate) and then find some useful chunks of code. Every article
> > could link to useful algorithms, data structures, and interface designs that
> > are relevant to the subject of the article. You could also find data-centric
> > programs too. Like, maybe a JavaScript weather statistics browser and
> > visualizer that accesses Wikidata. The big advantage would be that
> > constraining the design of the library to the structure of Wikipedia would
> > handle the encapsulation and modularity aspects of the software engineering
> > so that the components could improve independently. Creating a simulation or
> > visualization where you zoom in from a whole cloud to see its constituent
> > microscopic particles is certainly doable right now, but it would be a lot
> > easier with a function library like this.
> >
> > If you look at the existing Wikicode and Rosetta Code the code samples are
> > small and isolated. They will show, for example, how to open a file in 10
> > different languages. However, the search engines already do a great job of
> > helping us find those types of code samples across blog posts of people who
> > have had to do that specific task before. However, a problem that I run into
> > frequently that the search engines don't help me solve is if I read a
> > nanoelectronics paper and I want to do a simulation of the physical system
> > they describe I often have to go to the websites of several different
> > professors and do a fair bit of manual work to assemble their different
> > programs into a pipeline, and then the result of my hacking is not easy to
> > expand to new scenarios. We've made enough progress on Wikipedia that I can
> > often just click on a couple of articles to get an understanding of the
> > paper, but if I want to experiment with the ideas in a software context I
> > have to do a lot of scavenging and gluing.
> >
> > I'm not yet convinced that this could work. Maybe Wikipedia works so well
> > because the internet reached a point where there was so much redundant
> > knowledge listed in many places that there was immense social and economic
> > pressure to utilize knowledgeable people to summarize it in a free
> > encyclopedia. Maybe the total amount of software that has been written is
> > still too small, there are still too few programmers, and it's still too
> > difficult compared to writing natural languages for the crowdsourcing
> > dynamics to work. There have been a lot of successful open-source software
> > projects of course, but most of them are focused on creating software for a
> > specific task instead of library components that cover all of the knowledge
> > in the encyclopedia.
> >
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Etiamsi omnes, ego non
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