Hi Denny, Markus, and Wikimedians / Wikidatans,
Thanks so much for this momentous next step in Wikipedia & Wikidata's ~300 languages, and for this great overview "Keynote by Denny Vrandečić at SWAT4HCLS 2019" https://youtu.be/yzVA7YLwhTE & thanks too for mentioning the evolution of Wikipedia's medical content (at 21 mins.) & the genetics' focus re GeneDB (at 22:30 ). Appreciating also your approach to Wikidata to Wikipedia in ~300 languages regarding the Constructors, Content, Renderers' approach (from 34 mins to 39 mins).
Looks like Wikipedia is developing the next big multilingual step, - and for the 146 languages in Wikipedia with less than 10 editors in their communities (at 42 mins) out of its 300 languages.
Thank you so much Wikidata founder (now at Google) Denny Vrandečić !
Best regards, Scott PS. Am staying tuned for CC-4 MIT OCW-centric wiki World Univ & Sch's planned online medical schools - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/World_University_Medical_Scho... - and online teaching hospitals - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Hospital - planned in each of all ~200 nation states' official and main languages, for the practice of online medicine. (CC-4 WUaS donated itself to Wikidata in 2015 for co-development, and received the WUaS Miraheze MediaWiki in 2017, but they're not yet interoperable).
On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 11:14 AM Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Yay! Thanks for the positive note! This is appreciated!
Stay safe, Denny
On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 1:44 AM Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
Based on my first read-through of the paper, I think this would be something worth doing. Cheers, Peter.
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Denny Vrandecic Sent: 14 April 2020 02:53 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal towards a multilingual Wikipedia and a
new
Wikipedia project
As some of you know, I have been working on the idea of a multilingual Wikipedia for a few years now. Two other publications on this are here, I have bothered you with mails about it here previously too:
https://research.google/pubs/pub48057/
https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/vyf7ksah
I've also been giving talks about the topic in several places about this idea, some of them have also been recorded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiJ6E9sG6U&list=PLQVG_tuf3Q2fji-CwqEDRJ...
I gathered some awesome feedback in those few years (also from some
members
of this list, thank you!), and I also implemented a few prototypes trying out the idea, learning a lot from that.
All of this has helped to sharpen the idea and come up with a more
concrete
proposal. In short, the proposal is that we do a two-step approach:
first,
allow for capturing Wikipedia content in an abstract notation, and
second,
allow for creating functions that translate this abstract notation into natural language (For simplicity, I gave this two steps names, Abstract Wikipedia for step 1, and Wikilambda for step 2. I realize that both
names
are not perfect, but that is just one of the many things that we can
figure
out together on the way).
I wrote up this proposal in a paper, which I uploaded to my Website
almost
two weeks ago, and I also submitted it to Arxiv. And as soon as it was published on Arxiv, I wanted to share it with you and see what you folks think (I wanted to wait for it as Arxiv would allow the URLs to remains table - my Website has gone down before and might so again).
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04733
The new proposal is much more concrete than the previous proposals (and therefore there is much more to criticize). Also, obviously, nothing of this is set in stone, and just like the names, I am very much looking forward to hear suggestions for how to improve the whole thing, and I
will
blatantly steal every good idea and proposal. I am not even sure what a good venue for this discussion is, I guess, eventually it should be on Meta?, but also about that I would like to hear proposals.
Abstract Wikipedia is a proposed extension to Wikidata that would capture the content next to the Wikidata items. Think of it as a new namespace, where we could create, maintain, and collaborate on the abstract content. Similar to the Wikidata-bridge, there should be a way to allow contributions from the Wikipedias to flow back without too much friction. The individual Wikipedias - and I cannot stress this enough - have the choice to use some or any or all or none of the content from Abstract Wikipedia, but I most definitely do not expect the content of the current Wikipedias to be replaced by this. In fact, I have no doubt that any
decent
article in any language Wikipedia will remain superior to the outcome of the proposed new architecture by far. This is a proposal for the places where the current system left us with gaps, not a proposal to turn the parts that are already brilliant today dull and terrible tomorrow.
Wikilambda is a proposed new Wikimedia project that allows us to share
in a
new form of knowledge assets, functions. You can think of it as similar
to
Modules or Templates, but a bit extended, with places for tests,
different
languages, evaluation, and also for all kind of functions, not only those that are immediately useful for one of the Wikimedia projects, and most importantly, shared among the projects. So one of the first goals would
be
to increasingly allow fo a place to have global templates, another idea that has been discussed and asked for for a very long time. Wikilambda, just as Wikidata, is expected to start as a project supporting the immediate needs of the sister projects, and over time to grow to a
project
that stands on its own merits as well.
We don't really have an effective process for starting new projects, so I am trying to follow a similar path that we took for Wikidata back then.
And
back then it all started with Markus Krötzsch, me and others talking
about
the idea to anyone who would listen until everyone was bored of hearing
it,
trying out prototypes, and then talking about it even more, and improving all of it constantly based on your feedback. And then making increasingly concrete proposals until we managed to show some kind of consensus from
the
communities, you, and the Foundation to actually do it. And then, well,
do
it.
So, I've done some of the talking, with researchers, with the public,
with
some of you, and also with folks at the Foundation, to figure out what
next
steps could be, and how this can be made to work. Here's a more concrete proposal. Now I am here to see whether we can find consensus and be
bold. I
want to hear from you. I want to hear what you think what the right place is to discuss this (here, this list? Another mailing list? Meta?
Wikidata?
Some Telegram or Facebook group? (OK, I was joking about the latter)). Which parts of the proposal are good and which need improvement? Where is more detail or clarification needed to allow for a meaningful discussion?
Just as with Wikipedia and Wikidata and our other projects, this is a
crazy
idea at first. Maybe even more crazy than our other projects. And the
only
way there is a chance of us being successful is, if, eventually,
thousands
of us work together on it. The only way this worked in the past is by
being
open, start out collaboratively, discuss the path forward, and work
towards
creating the project together.
Stay safe, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe