(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
Hoi, HAPPY NEWS :)
We will learn a lot, experience many challenges and it does have the potential to provide more of the information that is available to us. Particularly in languages other than English the impact can be huge.
At a Wikidata conference in Berlin we had someone from PanLex present [1], with the new project this is a collaboration that will make a big difference.
Happy to see many parts of the puzzle find a place. Thanks, GerardM
[1] https://mobile.wikidatacon.org/#_session-SE-14
On Thu, 2 Jul 2020 at 18:04, Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Excellent news. Congratulations and glad to see this project being approved.
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020, 9:34 PM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating project in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up good base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting into Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but much more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Hi,
This is really an exciting news. This ambitious project will fill up the knowledge gaps in different languages for sure and will definitely play a vital role in preserving endangered and near-extinct languages in future.
Best wishes, Bodhisattwa
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020, 21:54 Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating project in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up good base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting into Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but much more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating project in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up good base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting into Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but much more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
Denny,
This is extraordinarily good news! I am thrilled that the Foundation and the Community has taken it on board. I think it is a truly seminal, pivotal project for promulgating free knowledge to all corners of humanity. I just could not be happier to know that you will be shepherding the work! Warmest congratulations!
Victoria
On Jul 2, 2020, at 9:38 AM, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating project in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up good base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting into Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but much more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
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Wow! This is a great news.
Thanks for sharing Katherine.
With best wishes
Isaac.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2020, 17:39 Denny Vrandečić, vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
Excited to see even how this mind-blowing idea comes to live!
Congratulations
Galder ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Isaac Olatunde reachout2isaac@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 7:01 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing a new Wikimedia project: Abstract Wikipedia
Wow! This is a great news.
Thanks for sharing Katherine.
With best wishes
Isaac.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2020, 17:39 Denny Vrandečić, vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
_______________________________________________ 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
Good to see such an abstract proposal to reach this point on the way towards becoming a very real Wikimedia project! d.
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 1:05 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga < galder158@hotmail.com> wrote:
Excited to see even how this mind-blowing idea comes to live!
Congratulations
Galder ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Isaac Olatunde reachout2isaac@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 7:01 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing a new Wikimedia project: Abstract Wikipedia
Wow! This is a great news.
Thanks for sharing Katherine.
With best wishes
Isaac.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2020, 17:39 Denny Vrandečić, vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project,
and
deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the
Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice.
Thanks
to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was
confident
enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on
your
guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in
the
next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to
set
up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project
and
planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all
to
come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out
with
you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know
and
love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's
still
able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta
[1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project
that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline
encyclopedic
content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and
more
readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects,
increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and
innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to
other
language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel
like a
Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of
knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using
code,
volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July
and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland,
and a
former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited
that
Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project
and
that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also
invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract
Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be
immediately
directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
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That is a great news!!! Congratulations :)
Just so we are all on the same page, the last approved project was Wikidata right?
And back then, one of initial core members of the project was someone called Denny Vrandečić too, right?
Denny, I'm happy to say that is how patterns start...
Stay safe and take care ^^
Le jeu. 2 juil. 2020 à 7:28 PM, Daniel Mietchen via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> a écrit :
Good to see such an abstract proposal to reach this point on the way towards becoming a very real Wikimedia project! d.
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 1:05 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga < galder158@hotmail.com> wrote:
Excited to see even how this mind-blowing idea comes to live!
Congratulations
Galder ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Isaac Olatunde reachout2isaac@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 7:01 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing a new Wikimedia project: Abstract Wikipedia
Wow! This is a great news.
Thanks for sharing Katherine.
With best wishes
Isaac.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2020, 17:39 Denny Vrandečić, vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project,
and
deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the
Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project
in
the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice.
Thanks
to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on
the
proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was
confident
enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on
your
guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in
the
new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming
to
new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in
the
next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering
your
questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to
set
up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project
and
planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the
project. A
first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all
to
come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did
I
mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for
names,
the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out
with
you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know
and
love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's
still
able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed
as
human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org
wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta
[1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project
that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline
encyclopedic
content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and
more
readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an
approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects,
increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and
innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement
to
create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract
Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020
[2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy
and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language
barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to
other
language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel
like a
Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent
conceptual
models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of
an
article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata
uses
conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages,
it
should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of
knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using
code,
volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone
to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July
and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland,
and a
former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited
that
Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project
and
that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project
may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage
less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also
invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by
whom
knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract
Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4].
We
recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also
recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be
immediately
directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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,
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I guess that depends on whether you count WikiVoyage to be launched in 2003 or 2013 :)
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 10:55 AM Christophe Henner < christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
That is a great news!!! Congratulations :)
Just so we are all on the same page, the last approved project was Wikidata right?
And back then, one of initial core members of the project was someone called Denny Vrandečić too, right?
Denny, I'm happy to say that is how patterns start...
Stay safe and take care ^^
Le jeu. 2 juil. 2020 à 7:28 PM, Daniel Mietchen via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> a écrit :
Good to see such an abstract proposal to reach this point on the way towards becoming a very real Wikimedia project! d.
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 1:05 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga < galder158@hotmail.com> wrote:
Excited to see even how this mind-blowing idea comes to live!
Congratulations
Galder ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf
of
Isaac Olatunde reachout2isaac@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 7:01 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing a new Wikimedia project: Abstract Wikipedia
Wow! This is a great news.
Thanks for sharing Katherine.
With best wishes
Isaac.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2020, 17:39 Denny Vrandečić, vrandecic@gmail.com
wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new
project,
and
deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the
Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project
in
the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice.
Thanks
to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on
the
proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was
confident
enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on
your
guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new
community.
Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in
the
new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming
to
new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement
not
only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention
in
the
next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering
your
questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is
to
set
up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the
project
and
planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new,
dedicated
mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the
project. A
first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you
all
to
come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August.
Did
I
mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for
names,
the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing
out
with
you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp
up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already
know
and
love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been
putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's
still
able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by
human
editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets
expressed
as
human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable
but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher <
kmaher@wikimedia.org
wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta
[1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project
that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline
encyclopedic
content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and
more
readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an
approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects,
increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and
innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our
movement
to
create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract
Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020
[2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy
and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language
barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to
other
language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel
like a
Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent
conceptual
models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create
and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of
an
article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata
uses
conceptual models that are meant to be universal across
languages,
it
should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of
knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using
code,
volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles”
into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow
everyone
to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in
July
and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland,
and a
former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very
excited
that
Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison
teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental
project
and
that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project
may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage
less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also
invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by
whom
knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in
cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract
Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4].
We
recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also
recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored
path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be
immediately
directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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>
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Denny, this is very exciting! Congratulations to this wonderful opportunity.
We should definitely organize a Wikidata Lab on the new project and how we can engage with it. (We might actually have to change the name of the labs, damn!) Whenever you think is the right time for this event and if you indeed think it is worth doing it, please let me know and we'll make it work!
Again, this is great news! Count us in!
João
Em qui., 2 de jul. de 2020 às 13:39, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com escreveu:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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Congratulations on this new opportunity!
Once it rolls out to us content contributors, we will be glad to be a part of it.
Kind regards,
Butch Bustria
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, 12:39 AM Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project, and deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice. Thanks to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was confident enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on your guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in the next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to set up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project and planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all to come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out with you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know and love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's still able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
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sounds like a wonderful project that will help connect cultures and languages in a helpful way for the users, look forward to seeing and helping its development
On Fri, 3 Jul 2020 at 09:26, Butch Bustria bustrias@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations on this new opportunity!
Once it rolls out to us content contributors, we will be glad to be a part of it.
Kind regards,
Butch Bustria
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, 12:39 AM Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project,
and
deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the
Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project in the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice.
Thanks
to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on the proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was
confident
enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on
your
guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in the new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming to new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in
the
next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering your questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to
set
up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project
and
planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the project. A first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all
to
come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did I mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for names, the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out
with
you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know
and
love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's
still
able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed as human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta
[1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project
that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline
encyclopedic
content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and
more
readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects,
increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and
innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to
other
language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel
like a
Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of
knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using
code,
volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July
and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland,
and a
former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited
that
Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project
and
that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also
invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract
Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be
immediately
directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
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
Thank you Gnangarra! And Butch, and Lodewijk, and Brion, and Erik, and Joāo, and Christophe, and Isaac, and Galder, and Daniel, and SJ, and Phoebe, and everyone else, thank you all for the congratulations, and for your interest!
I am also very excited, and looking forward to it - and thanks in particular to everyone who expressed willingness to help - there will be plenty of opportunity for that :)
Thank you all, Denny
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 10:05 PM Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
sounds like a wonderful project that will help connect cultures and languages in a helpful way for the users, look forward to seeing and helping its development
On Fri, 3 Jul 2020 at 09:26, Butch Bustria bustrias@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations on this new opportunity!
Once it rolls out to us content contributors, we will be glad to be a
part
of it.
Kind regards,
Butch Bustria
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, 12:39 AM Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com
wrote:
Katherine, thank you for the warm welcome and your kind words!
I am very happy to be given the opportunity to start this new project,
and
deeply honored by the trust and confidence of the Board and the
Foundation.
Thanks to the many who have listened to me talking about this project
in
the last few years, read my papers and plans, commented on them, scrutinized them, and offered encouragement, criticism, and advice.
Thanks
to everyone who expressed their support and raised their concerns on
the
proposal page on Meta [1]. It is thanks to you that the Board was
confident
enough to make this decision.
There is a lot of work in front of us, and I will continue to rely on
your
guidance and collective wisdom. We will need to foster a new community. Just as with Wikidata, I hope that some of you will become active in
the
new community, and I also want to make sure that we will be welcoming
to
new contributors. We want to extend and grow the Wikimedia movement not only with new functionalities, but also with new people.
Settling in this new position will take quite a bit of my attention in
the
next few weeks, so please forgive me if I may be slow with answering
your
questions between now and then. One of the first things we’ll do is to
set
up new communication channels. We will continue discussing the project
and
planning on Meta [2] for now and also welcome you to the new, dedicated mailing list [3].
One of our first tasks together will be to find a name for the
project. A
first set of proposals have already been made [4], and I invite you all
to
come up with more ideas. We will start that off in July or August. Did
I
mention that you can join us on Meta [2] to discuss proposals for
names,
the project itself, and much more?
Again, thank you all! I am super excited about figuring this thing out
with
you, and am looking forward to coming back to Wikimedia full-time.
Stay safe, Denny
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Name
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:24 AM Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm extremely excited about this project!
Not only will this be directly useful on its own (and a fascinating
project
in its own right!), but it will help our volunteer editors to ramp up
good
base material to work with on the "prose" Wikipedias we already know
and
love.
The idea is really to make the structured data we've all been putting
into
Wikidata available in a human-readable form at a big scale, that's
still
able to be shaped and made into something real and readable by human editors. By moving around where in the chain the data gets expressed
as
human language, we hope to make something that's just as editable but
much
more maintainable in the future and across multiple languages.
-- brion
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:04 AM Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org
wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta
[1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project
that
has
been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline
encyclopedic
content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and
more
readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an
approach
that
aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects,
increase
the
sustainability of our movement through expanding access to
participation,
improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and
innovate
in
free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement
to
create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract
Wikipedia
was
submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020
[2]
after
years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and
lively
discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy
and
the
creativity of the community often runs up against language
barriers,
and
information that is available in one language may not make it to
other
language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel
like a
Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent
conceptual
models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and
maintain
Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of
an
article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata
uses
conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages,
it
should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of
knowledge
to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using
code,
volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone
to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software
development,
and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this
effort
possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July
and
lead
this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a
long-time
community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland,
and a
former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited
that
Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project
alongside
the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project
and
that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project
may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage
less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether
or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also
invites
us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by
whom
knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract
Wikipedia
in
close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get
involved
by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4].
We
recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also
recognize
its
potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be
immediately
directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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
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-- GN.
*Power of Diverse Collaboration* *Sharing knowledge brings people together* Wikimania Bangkok 2021 August hosted by ESEAP
Wikimania: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gnangarra Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page My print shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/Gnangarra/shop?asc=u _______________________________________________ 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
Best news all year. Thank you for moving swiftly on this :)
It has been a fine thing too, to see WikiLambda experiments on Wikispore. https://wikispore.wmflabs.org
I hope this may Herald a new wave of new and complementary projects. There are yet so many types of knowledge that have not found a home in our wikiverse -- we are devising more every year (here's looking at you, thingiverse & ML model hubs) -- and most of them do not naturally end up with free knowledge platforms of their own.
SJ
🌍🌏🌎🌑
On Thu., Jul. 2, 2020, 12:04 p.m. Katherine Maher, kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Thank you SJ, thank you all, for your very welcoming words, and your congratulations!
Regarding Wikispore, yes, this is one of the first conversations that we will have - where the preparatory discussions should happen. I am very much in favor of Wikispore for that, as it is literally meant for that, but we need to figure out a few things together.
I'll kick that off next week :)
And I agree, this way we can help each other to create even more fertile ground for new ideas. I am very excited about that!
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 10:25 AM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Best news all year. Thank you for moving swiftly on this :)
It has been a fine thing too, to see WikiLambda experiments on Wikispore. https://wikispore.wmflabs.org
I hope this may Herald a new wave of new and complementary projects. There are yet so many types of knowledge that have not found a home in our wikiverse -- we are devising more every year (here's looking at you, thingiverse & ML model hubs) -- and most of them do not naturally end up with free knowledge platforms of their own.
SJ
🌍🌏🌎🌑
On Thu., Jul. 2, 2020, 12:04 p.m. Katherine Maher, kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
This is wonderful news. :)
Thank you for the foresight to support this important initiative, and huge thanks to Denny for continuing to tirelessly explore new ways to make knowledge truly universally accessible! This project has the potential to become a new foundation for learning about our world in any language. I look forward to seeing this idea come to its fullest fruition.
Warmly,
Erik
Congratulations to everyone, this is exciting.
It is also very exciting that we have an almost-unprecedented opportunity to build a new project that is fully informed by both lessons from own past projects, as well as from the rapidly developing field of ethics in computer science and AI. From our own past projects, we have learned (among other things) that pitfalls could include contributor recruitment; continued maintenance; transparency and accessibility of the UI; unclear provenance of data; that many communities want a say in how they are represented online, but often don't have one; and that the biases and systemic biases of the world are reflected in who contributes, what sources they use, and what areas of focus are. We have also learned that our relationship with reusers, particularly around structured data that is highly valued by commercial entities, is poorly defined and tenuous. From the movement to build more ethical AI systems, we've learned (among other things) that flawed model assumptions can result in unpredictable and often deeply harmful downstream outcomes; that most sources of data are not transparent in their limitations or provenance; and that incorporating the concerns of people affected by systems can result in less biased data and outcomes.
These are hard problems, and they are not problems that have obvious, one-size-fits-all solutions. But we do have an obligation I think to consider these issues front and center in this new project that we are building. It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and the impact on existing contributors.
In my day job, I am the librarian for a pretty well-known computer science school.[1] There, the recent movement to consider ethics in the computer science curriculum, and in the systems that our computer scientists build, is being discussed now at all levels of the university -- but is being led primarily by students who recognize that they have an obligation, as the next generation of engineers, to help build better systems for a better world. Meanwhile, as practitioners who build systems at Wikimedia, we consider ourselves part of a small group of influential organizations that is "making the internet not suck" -- we believe in openness, in community, and in making sure that everyone in the world has access to knowledge, in their own language; we believe in an aspirational better world. As a part of this mission, we must take questions of ethics seriously -- and we do. We have collectively spent thousands of hours trying to expand our contributor base; thinking about systemic bias; thinking about sources and provenance; trying to open up copyright to make knowledge accessible; working with communities on indigenous knowledge; building UIs that are easier to contribute to. These are all efforts related to our ethics and values. With our new projects, we can set precedent. We can explore the problems that we face today on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons and consider not just how to avoid them but how to build a better project. We can do this in a multilingual context with perspectives from volunteers and staff around the world, in a way that almost no other projects online -- certainly no single university or research group -- can. We can, without much legacy infrastructure to hamper us, spin out worst-case and best case scenarios, ask questions about our data and who might participate, think about downstream consequences. And *that* is truly exciting.
best, -- Phoebe
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Computer_Science_and_Artificial_Intelligen...
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 12:04 PM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Thank you Phoebe for the congratulations, and thank you for the considerations, and I agree with them.
On wiki, Denis Barthel and Ryan Kaldari already raised a number of the concerns - although not all - that you are raising here.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia#Kaldari%27s_concerns
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia#Revisiting_and_twist...
And I tried to answer some of them there. But I do agree that this is not sufficient, and I would love to be able to ensure that the ethical concerns you raise do not get lost, and are sufficiently represented when we do the project.
Alas, I am also a bit at a loss about how to ensure that. Yes, for some of them, we have a pretty good, albeit developing understanding of how to cover them, particularly around ethics and AI and about bias and ethical data. Also I think doing several best / worst case scenario exercises at relevant points is a great idea. The one thing that troubles me most, though, is how to ensure that in the new communities that we will foster the representation among contributors is indeed more representative of the diversity in the world. To the best of my knowledge, we have no answers for that - and I would very much want to learn about this.
So, here's what I can promise - among the many topics that we need to discuss while we are ramping up the project, I will also start an explicit discussion on how to make sure that ethical considerations are sufficiently represented during the development of the project. I obviously cannot promise that we will successfully avoid all ethical pitfalls - but I can promise that I will do my best to do so.
It is, in the end, ethical concerns that motivated me, and some of them are discussed and described here:
https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/vyf7ksah/release/6
It is this motivation of allowing more people to share in more knowledge in more languages which drives me.
I hope you'll join us on the new list and keep an eye on what we're doing. Your voice would be very appreciated.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
Thank you! Denny
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 11:07 AM phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations to everyone, this is exciting.
It is also very exciting that we have an almost-unprecedented opportunity to build a new project that is fully informed by both lessons from own past projects, as well as from the rapidly developing field of ethics in computer science and AI. From our own past projects, we have learned (among other things) that pitfalls could include contributor recruitment; continued maintenance; transparency and accessibility of the UI; unclear provenance of data; that many communities want a say in how they are represented online, but often don't have one; and that the biases and systemic biases of the world are reflected in who contributes, what sources they use, and what areas of focus are. We have also learned that our relationship with reusers, particularly around structured data that is highly valued by commercial entities, is poorly defined and tenuous. From the movement to build more ethical AI systems, we've learned (among other things) that flawed model assumptions can result in unpredictable and often deeply harmful downstream outcomes; that most sources of data are not transparent in their limitations or provenance; and that incorporating the concerns of people affected by systems can result in less biased data and outcomes.
These are hard problems, and they are not problems that have obvious, one-size-fits-all solutions. But we do have an obligation I think to consider these issues front and center in this new project that we are building. It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and the impact on existing contributors.
In my day job, I am the librarian for a pretty well-known computer science school.[1] There, the recent movement to consider ethics in the computer science curriculum, and in the systems that our computer scientists build, is being discussed now at all levels of the university -- but is being led primarily by students who recognize that they have an obligation, as the next generation of engineers, to help build better systems for a better world. Meanwhile, as practitioners who build systems at Wikimedia, we consider ourselves part of a small group of influential organizations that is "making the internet not suck" -- we believe in openness, in community, and in making sure that everyone in the world has access to knowledge, in their own language; we believe in an aspirational better world. As a part of this mission, we must take questions of ethics seriously -- and we do. We have collectively spent thousands of hours trying to expand our contributor base; thinking about systemic bias; thinking about sources and provenance; trying to open up copyright to make knowledge accessible; working with communities on indigenous knowledge; building UIs that are easier to contribute to. These are all efforts related to our ethics and values. With our new projects, we can set precedent. We can explore the problems that we face today on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons and consider not just how to avoid them but how to build a better project. We can do this in a multilingual context with perspectives from volunteers and staff around the world, in a way that almost no other projects online -- certainly no single university or research group -- can. We can, without much legacy infrastructure to hamper us, spin out worst-case and best case scenarios, ask questions about our data and who might participate, think about downstream consequences. And *that* is truly exciting.
best, -- Phoebe
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Computer_Science_and_Artificial_Intelligen...
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 12:04 PM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
--
- I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
Thanks Denny! I appreciate this, and your thoughtfulness as always.
Thanks for starting an explicit discussion. I think our field (meaning, computer science & internet projects broadly) often assumes that these questions will just arise in context, or get solved as we go, but they rarely do. So making ethics a focus from the start is crucial. There may not be good "solutions"! But inviting lots of people in to talk about scenarios etc I think will make a much stronger and innovative project in the end.
all best, Phoebe
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 7:54 PM Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you Phoebe for the congratulations, and thank you for the considerations, and I agree with them.
On wiki, Denis Barthel and Ryan Kaldari already raised a number of the concerns - although not all - that you are raising here.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia#Kaldari%27s_concerns
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abstract_Wikipedia#Revisiting_and_twist...
And I tried to answer some of them there. But I do agree that this is not sufficient, and I would love to be able to ensure that the ethical concerns you raise do not get lost, and are sufficiently represented when we do the project.
Alas, I am also a bit at a loss about how to ensure that. Yes, for some of them, we have a pretty good, albeit developing understanding of how to cover them, particularly around ethics and AI and about bias and ethical data. Also I think doing several best / worst case scenario exercises at relevant points is a great idea. The one thing that troubles me most, though, is how to ensure that in the new communities that we will foster the representation among contributors is indeed more representative of the diversity in the world. To the best of my knowledge, we have no answers for that - and I would very much want to learn about this.
So, here's what I can promise - among the many topics that we need to discuss while we are ramping up the project, I will also start an explicit discussion on how to make sure that ethical considerations are sufficiently represented during the development of the project. I obviously cannot promise that we will successfully avoid all ethical pitfalls - but I can promise that I will do my best to do so.
It is, in the end, ethical concerns that motivated me, and some of them are discussed and described here:
https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/vyf7ksah/release/6
It is this motivation of allowing more people to share in more knowledge in more languages which drives me.
I hope you'll join us on the new list and keep an eye on what we're doing. Your voice would be very appreciated.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
Thank you! Denny
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 11:07 AM phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations to everyone, this is exciting.
It is also very exciting that we have an almost-unprecedented opportunity to build a new project that is fully informed by both lessons from own past projects, as well as from the rapidly developing field of ethics in computer science and AI. From our own past projects, we have learned (among other things) that pitfalls could include contributor recruitment; continued maintenance; transparency and accessibility of the UI; unclear provenance of data; that many communities want a say in how they are represented online, but often don't have one; and that the biases and systemic biases of the world are reflected in who contributes, what sources they use, and what areas of focus are. We have also learned that our relationship with reusers, particularly around structured data that is highly valued by commercial entities, is poorly defined and tenuous. From the movement to build more ethical AI systems, we've learned (among other things) that flawed model assumptions can result in unpredictable and often deeply harmful downstream outcomes; that most sources of data are not transparent in their limitations or provenance; and that incorporating the concerns of people affected by systems can result in less biased data and outcomes.
These are hard problems, and they are not problems that have obvious, one-size-fits-all solutions. But we do have an obligation I think to consider these issues front and center in this new project that we are building. It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and the impact on existing contributors.
In my day job, I am the librarian for a pretty well-known computer science school.[1] There, the recent movement to consider ethics in the computer science curriculum, and in the systems that our computer scientists build, is being discussed now at all levels of the university -- but is being led primarily by students who recognize that they have an obligation, as the next generation of engineers, to help build better systems for a better world. Meanwhile, as practitioners who build systems at Wikimedia, we consider ourselves part of a small group of influential organizations that is "making the internet not suck" -- we believe in openness, in community, and in making sure that everyone in the world has access to knowledge, in their own language; we believe in an aspirational better world. As a part of this mission, we must take questions of ethics seriously -- and we do. We have collectively spent thousands of hours trying to expand our contributor base; thinking about systemic bias; thinking about sources and provenance; trying to open up copyright to make knowledge accessible; working with communities on indigenous knowledge; building UIs that are easier to contribute to. These are all efforts related to our ethics and values. With our new projects, we can set precedent. We can explore the problems that we face today on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons and consider not just how to avoid them but how to build a better project. We can do this in a multilingual context with perspectives from volunteers and staff around the world, in a way that almost no other projects online -- certainly no single university or research group -- can. We can, without much legacy infrastructure to hamper us, spin out worst-case and best case scenarios, ask questions about our data and who might participate, think about downstream consequences. And *that* is truly exciting.
best, -- Phoebe
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Computer_Science_and_Artificial_Intelligen...
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 12:04 PM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020 [2] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list[4]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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Anyone object to using loglan as an interlingua?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan
On Saturday, July 4, 2020, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Denny! I appreciate this, and your thoughtfulness as always.
Thanks for starting an explicit discussion. I think our field (meaning, computer science & internet projects broadly) often assumes that these questions will just arise in context, or get solved as we go, but they rarely do. So making ethics a focus from the start is crucial. There may not be good "solutions"! But inviting lots of people in to talk about scenarios etc I think will make a much stronger and innovative project in the end.
all best, Phoebe
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 7:54 PM Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you Phoebe for the congratulations, and thank you for the considerations, and I agree with them.
On wiki, Denis Barthel and Ryan Kaldari already raised a number of the concerns - although not all - that you are raising here.
Kaldari's_concerns
Revisiting_and_twisting_a_Kaldari_concern
And I tried to answer some of them there. But I do agree that this is not sufficient, and I would love to be able to ensure that the ethical
concerns
you raise do not get lost, and are sufficiently represented when we do
the
project.
Alas, I am also a bit at a loss about how to ensure that. Yes, for some
of
them, we have a pretty good, albeit developing understanding of how to cover them, particularly around ethics and AI and about bias and ethical data. Also I think doing several best / worst case scenario exercises at relevant points is a great idea. The one thing that troubles me most, though, is how to ensure that in the new communities that we will foster the representation among contributors is indeed more representative of
the
diversity in the world. To the best of my knowledge, we have no answers
for
that - and I would very much want to learn about this.
So, here's what I can promise - among the many topics that we need to discuss while we are ramping up the project, I will also start an
explicit
discussion on how to make sure that ethical considerations are
sufficiently
represented during the development of the project. I obviously cannot promise that we will successfully avoid all ethical pitfalls - but I can promise that I will do my best to do so.
It is, in the end, ethical concerns that motivated me, and some of them are discussed and described here:
https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/vyf7ksah/release/6
It is this motivation of allowing more people to share in more knowledge in more languages which drives me.
I hope you'll join us on the new list and keep an eye on what we're
doing.
Your voice would be very appreciated.
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia
Thank you! Denny
On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 11:07 AM phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Congratulations to everyone, this is exciting.
It is also very exciting that we have an almost-unprecedented
opportunity
to build a new project that is fully informed by both lessons from own
past
projects, as well as from the rapidly developing field of ethics in computer science and AI. From our own past projects, we have learned
(among
other things) that pitfalls could include contributor recruitment; continued maintenance; transparency and accessibility of the UI; unclear provenance of data; that many communities want a say in how they are represented online, but often don't have one; and that the biases and systemic biases of the world are reflected in who contributes, what
sources
they use, and what areas of focus are. We have also learned that our relationship with reusers, particularly around structured data that is highly valued by commercial entities, is poorly defined and tenuous.
From
the movement to build more ethical AI systems, we've learned (among
other
things) that flawed model assumptions can result in unpredictable and
often
deeply harmful downstream outcomes; that most sources of data are not transparent in their limitations or provenance; and that incorporating
the
concerns of people affected by systems can result in less biased data
and
outcomes.
These are hard problems, and they are not problems that have obvious, one-size-fits-all solutions. But we do have an obligation I think to consider these issues front and center in this new project that we are building. It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project
proposals
I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or
how we
might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors
and
the impact on existing contributors.
In my day job, I am the librarian for a pretty well-known computer science school.[1] There, the recent movement to consider ethics in the computer science curriculum, and in the systems that our computer scientists build, is being discussed now at all levels of the
university --
but is being led primarily by students who recognize that they have an obligation, as the next generation of engineers, to help build better systems for a better world. Meanwhile, as practitioners who build
systems
at Wikimedia, we consider ourselves part of a small group of influential organizations that is "making the internet not suck" -- we believe in openness, in community, and in making sure that everyone in the world
has
access to knowledge, in their own language; we believe in an
aspirational
better world. As a part of this mission, we must take questions of
ethics
seriously -- and we do. We have collectively spent thousands of hours trying to expand our contributor base; thinking about systemic bias; thinking about sources and provenance; trying to open up copyright to
make
knowledge accessible; working with communities on indigenous knowledge; building UIs that are easier to contribute to. These are all efforts related to our ethics and values. With our new projects, we can set precedent. We can explore the problems that we face today on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons and consider not just how to avoid them but how to build a better project. We can do this in a multilingual context with perspectives from volunteers and staff around the world, in a way that almost no other projects online -- certainly no single university or research group -- can. We can, without much legacy infrastructure to
hamper
us, spin out worst-case and best case scenarios, ask questions about our data and who might participate, think about downstream consequences. And *that* is truly exciting.
best, -- Phoebe
Artificial_Intelligence_Laboratory
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 12:04 PM Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org wrote:
(A translatable version of this announcement can be found on Meta [1])
Hi all,
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia [1], a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more
contributors
and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May of 2020
[2]
after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the
energy
and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not
make it
to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and
feel
like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers
create
and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of
knowledge to
create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into
their
own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to
read
about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to
make
this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member
in
July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at
Wikimedia
Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. We
are
very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on
this
project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may
offer
some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less.
Every
language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate
whether or
how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to
advance
knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also
invites us
to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation
with
the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing
list[4].
We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also
recognize
its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
Yours, Katherine Maher
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/June 2020 announcement [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/abstract-wikipedia --
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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gmail.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
Sorry I'm coming to this discussion a bit late, but I'd like to underline a slightly different aspect of the concern that Phoebe raised:
It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and the impact on existing contributors.
Using the terminology of Ibram X. Kendi (and others), I'd put this as: "it's not enough to not be racist, you must actively be *anti-racist*."
Abstract Wikipedia is a "color blind" project. Indeed it is often described as advancing WMF goals by improving the amount of content available for minority languages.
However, it is built on a huge edifice of ML and AI technology which advantages majority languages and the already-powerful.
As Phoebe mentioned, the subtle biases of ML translation toward majority views (selecting the "proper" gender pronoun for someone described as a "doctor" or "professor", say) are well known, and certainly deserve to be foregrounded from the start, as Danny has pledged to do in his response to Phoebe.
But the infrastructure of this project is built this way from the ground up. Language models for European languages are orders of magnitude better than language models for minority languages (if the latter exist at all). The same is true for ontologies and every other constructed abstraction, down to choices of what topics are significant enough to include in an abstract article---but that ground has been ably covered by Kaldari and others. So let me concentrate solely on language models in the remainder (with some parenthetical asides, for which I hope you'll forgive me).
I would like to challenge Abstract Wikipedia not only to be "not racist" or "color blind", but to be actively *antiracist*. That is, instead of passively accepting the status quo wrt language models (& etc), to commit to actively supporting a language model in *at least one* minority language, treating it as a first-class citizen or (better) the *main* output of the project. That means not just looking for "a good enough language model that happens not to be a European language" but *actively developing the language model* so that the Abstract Wikipedia project *from inception* has a positive effect on *at least one* community speaking a underrepresented language with a small Wikipedia. (Again, WLOG this could apply to general AI/ML support for many many minority groups, but I'm sticking with "at least one" and "language model" in order to make this as concrete and actionable as possible.) This of course also means committing to hire a speaker of that non-European language as part of the core team (not just an "and translations" afterthought), committing to foregrounding that language in demonstrations, and doing outreach and community building to the language group in question. (All the mockups I've seen have been in German and English, and have been pitched to an English-speaking audience.)
I don't think it is wise in 2020 to pretend that "colorblind" business as usual will advance the goals of our organization. We need to actively work to ensure this project has effects that *work against* the significant pre-existing biases toward highly-educated speakers of European languages. It is not enough to say that "someday" this "may" have an effect on minority language groups if "somebody" ever gets around to doing it. We must make those investments proactively and with clear intention in order to effect the change we wish to see in the world. -- C. Scott Ananian
I applaud this idea. Preferably a language family with a large community of practice, 'minority' in the sense of coverage and support by modern tools and scaffolding, not in the sense of limited use.
We used to have a roughly weighted list of major world languages by (spoken, written; primary, secondary) and how well covered they were by wp (articles, contributors). Is there something like that still?
//S
🌍🌏🌎
On Wed., Aug. 5, 2020, 3:19 p.m. C. Scott Ananian, cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
Sorry I'm coming to this discussion a bit late, but I'd like to underline a slightly different aspect of the concern that Phoebe raised:
It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and the impact on existing contributors.
Using the terminology of Ibram X. Kendi (and others), I'd put this as: "it's not enough to not be racist, you must actively be *anti-racist*."
Abstract Wikipedia is a "color blind" project. Indeed it is often described as advancing WMF goals by improving the amount of content available for minority languages.
However, it is built on a huge edifice of ML and AI technology which advantages majority languages and the already-powerful.
As Phoebe mentioned, the subtle biases of ML translation toward majority views (selecting the "proper" gender pronoun for someone described as a "doctor" or "professor", say) are well known, and certainly deserve to be foregrounded from the start, as Danny has pledged to do in his response to Phoebe.
But the infrastructure of this project is built this way from the ground up. Language models for European languages are orders of magnitude better than language models for minority languages (if the latter exist at all). The same is true for ontologies and every other constructed abstraction, down to choices of what topics are significant enough to include in an abstract article---but that ground has been ably covered by Kaldari and others. So let me concentrate solely on language models in the remainder (with some parenthetical asides, for which I hope you'll forgive me).
I would like to challenge Abstract Wikipedia not only to be "not racist" or "color blind", but to be actively *antiracist*. That is, instead of passively accepting the status quo wrt language models (& etc), to commit to actively supporting a language model in *at least one* minority language, treating it as a first-class citizen or (better) the *main* output of the project. That means not just looking for "a good enough language model that happens not to be a European language" but *actively developing the language model* so that the Abstract Wikipedia project *from inception* has a positive effect on *at least one* community speaking a underrepresented language with a small Wikipedia. (Again, WLOG this could apply to general AI/ML support for many many minority groups, but I'm sticking with "at least one" and "language model" in order to make this as concrete and actionable as possible.) This of course also means committing to hire a speaker of that non-European language as part of the core team (not just an "and translations" afterthought), committing to foregrounding that language in demonstrations, and doing outreach and community building to the language group in question. (All the mockups I've seen have been in German and English, and have been pitched to an English-speaking audience.)
I don't think it is wise in 2020 to pretend that "colorblind" business as usual will advance the goals of our organization. We need to actively work to ensure this project has effects that *work against* the significant pre-existing biases toward highly-educated speakers of European languages. It is not enough to say that "someday" this "may" have an effect on minority language groups if "somebody" ever gets around to doing it. We must make those investments proactively and with clear intention in order to effect the change we wish to see in the world. -- C. Scott Ananian _______________________________________________ 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
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 2:01 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
We used to have a roughly weighted list of major world languages by (spoken, written; primary, secondary) and how well covered they were by wp (articles, contributors). Is there something like that still?
I think you might be referring to the links in the 3rd and 4th line of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Lists_of_Wikipedias ? Looking more closely, it appears that the "speakers per article" listing is unfortunately a few years out of date, as the column of "Speakers" was being manually updated from Ethnologue stats (which are now paywalled). I've started a tangential discussion on the talkpage there, about using Wikidata instead. Additionally, none of those links contain the "primary / secondary language" statistics, for which I think we'd need to cross-reference with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1394450) Or perhaps Wikidata can resolve it again, as at least some languages' items include a split of the statistics for that, e.g. Q150. Let's discuss further onwiki?
And +1 to the overall recommendation from C. Scott. :)
Scott,
thank you for raising this really important issue, and I whole-heartedly agree. Since I heard of Ibram X. Kendi's argument to not just be not racist but rather be actively anti-racist, I thought a lot about it (I have a long essay trying to sort my thoughts on that, but I am not sure my voice is helpful in that conversation). But yes, I agree with the sentiment and the idea.
Another statement that has deeply influenced my thinking in preparation for this project was the statement "nothing about us without us", and the implications of that for the Abstract Wikipedia project (and how, currently, we are not really achieving it).
So, in short, yes, I want to commit to both of these as guidelines for how the project will unfold.
Having a specific, non-European and underrepresented language as a first-class development target is a great suggestion, and having someone on the core team with a native-level grasp of that language is, I think, a very good suggestion. Whether and when we can actually implement this depends on a number of factors, such as funding, but yes, ensuring such representation is very much a high priority for myself, and I am very much (and painfully) aware that we are not fulfilling this promise yet.
For the choice of language I hope to go through a process similar as we did for Wikidata, where we worked with the Wikipedia communities to identify potential language communities that would be interested and willing to work together with us. I am planning for us to have a similar process within the next few months.
One advantage of the current state is that the focus for the first part of the project will be solely on the wiki of functions, not yet on the part that generates natural language, and that the current plan calls for additional hires when this second part starts. So all of these decisions and preparations are not blockers during the first part of the project, but will be so for the second - and obviously I want to have them resolved well before.
Also, one correction - we are fortunately not blocked by the availability of language models in a given language. Since the natural language generation, as we plan it, is developed by the communities using functions, we do not need to have a good language model, or in fact, any language model at all, for the system to work. So we have that going for us.
Finally, as answered to Phoebe, I want to tackle these issues heads-on with a call for discussing the ethical implications of this project. Your suggestions are good, and will inform our planning and development, but I am also aware that, in order to have a fuller picture, we need to hear more voices and figure out how to have these conversations. This will happen within the next few months.
Thanks again for raising this important issue! I hope my thoughts on that make sense, and I am happy to further work on them, Denny
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 11:19 PM Nick Wilson (Quiddity) < nwilson@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 2:01 PM Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
We used to have a roughly weighted list of major world languages by (spoken, written; primary, secondary) and how well covered they were by
wp
(articles, contributors). Is there something like that still?
I think you might be referring to the links in the 3rd and 4th line of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Lists_of_Wikipedias ? Looking more closely, it appears that the "speakers per article" listing is unfortunately a few years out of date, as the column of "Speakers" was being manually updated from Ethnologue stats (which are now paywalled). I've started a tangential discussion on the talkpage there, about using Wikidata instead. Additionally, none of those links contain the "primary / secondary language" statistics, for which I think we'd need to cross-reference with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1394450) Or perhaps Wikidata can resolve it again, as at least some languages' items include a split of the statistics for that, e.g. Q150. Let's discuss further onwiki?
And +1 to the overall recommendation from C. Scott. :) _______________________________________________ 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
Scott,
It is perfectly legitimate to be "anti-racist," but races are completely artificial constructs. Racial conflict was interposed during the "tea party" astroturfing in response to the Occupy movements:
https://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/hyoogt/is_this_accurate/f...
Do you support Wikimedia Foundation AI being programmed to be explicitly anti-classist?
Best regards, Jim
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 12:19 PM C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
Sorry I'm coming to this discussion a bit late, but I'd like to underline a slightly different aspect of the concern that Phoebe raised:
It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the academic papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and the impact on existing contributors.
Using the terminology of Ibram X. Kendi (and others), I'd put this as: "it's not enough to not be racist, you must actively be *anti-racist*."
Abstract Wikipedia is a "color blind" project. Indeed it is often described as advancing WMF goals by improving the amount of content available for minority languages.
However, it is built on a huge edifice of ML and AI technology which advantages majority languages and the already-powerful.
As Phoebe mentioned, the subtle biases of ML translation toward majority views (selecting the "proper" gender pronoun for someone described as a "doctor" or "professor", say) are well known, and certainly deserve to be foregrounded from the start, as Danny has pledged to do in his response to Phoebe.
But the infrastructure of this project is built this way from the ground up. Language models for European languages are orders of magnitude better than language models for minority languages (if the latter exist at all). The same is true for ontologies and every other constructed abstraction, down to choices of what topics are significant enough to include in an abstract article---but that ground has been ably covered by Kaldari and others. So let me concentrate solely on language models in the remainder (with some parenthetical asides, for which I hope you'll forgive me).
I would like to challenge Abstract Wikipedia not only to be "not racist" or "color blind", but to be actively *antiracist*. That is, instead of passively accepting the status quo wrt language models (& etc), to commit to actively supporting a language model in *at least one* minority language, treating it as a first-class citizen or (better) the *main* output of the project. That means not just looking for "a good enough language model that happens not to be a European language" but *actively developing the language model* so that the Abstract Wikipedia project *from inception* has a positive effect on *at least one* community speaking a underrepresented language with a small Wikipedia. (Again, WLOG this could apply to general AI/ML support for many many minority groups, but I'm sticking with "at least one" and "language model" in order to make this as concrete and actionable as possible.) This of course also means committing to hire a speaker of that non-European language as part of the core team (not just an "and translations" afterthought), committing to foregrounding that language in demonstrations, and doing outreach and community building to the language group in question. (All the mockups I've seen have been in German and English, and have been pitched to an English-speaking audience.)
I don't think it is wise in 2020 to pretend that "colorblind" business as usual will advance the goals of our organization. We need to actively work to ensure this project has effects that *work against* the significant pre-existing biases toward highly-educated speakers of European languages. It is not enough to say that "someday" this "may" have an effect on minority language groups if "somebody" ever gets around to doing it. We must make those investments proactively and with clear intention in order to effect the change we wish to see in the world. -- C. Scott Ananian _______________________________________________ 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
If "anti-classist" is your way of writing "empowering the less-powerful", then sure. As the rest of my email indicates, I'm choosing to focus on language and language groups, since that's the most direct relation to the output and input technologies of Abstract Wikimedia. Obviously there is no direct mapping from 'race' to language, although those are both social constructs. I found the academic work of the anti-racism movement helpful in thinking about efforts to counteract long-standing structural privileges, but if you prefer to use a different framework feel free. It seems we are aligned on the actual actions required. --scott
On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 3:42 AM James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Scott,
It is perfectly legitimate to be "anti-racist," but races are completely artificial constructs. Racial conflict was interposed during the "tea party" astroturfing in response to the Occupy movements:
https://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/hyoogt/is_this_accurate/f...
Do you support Wikimedia Foundation AI being programmed to be explicitly anti-classist?
Best regards, Jim
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 12:19 PM C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
Sorry I'm coming to this discussion a bit late, but I'd like to underline a slightly different aspect of the concern that Phoebe raised:
It concerns me that, at least in the high-level project proposals I've seen (I haven't been tracking this closely, and haven't read the
academic
papers) I have not yet seen discussions of ethical data, or how we might think about identifying bias, or even how to recruit contributors and
the
impact on existing contributors.
Using the terminology of Ibram X. Kendi (and others), I'd put this as: "it's not enough to not be racist, you must actively be *anti-racist*."
Abstract Wikipedia is a "color blind" project. Indeed it is often described as advancing WMF goals by improving the amount of content available for minority languages.
However, it is built on a huge edifice of ML and AI technology which advantages majority languages and the already-powerful.
As Phoebe mentioned, the subtle biases of ML translation toward majority views (selecting the "proper" gender pronoun for someone described as a "doctor" or "professor", say) are well known, and certainly deserve to be foregrounded from the start, as Danny has pledged to do in his response to Phoebe.
But the infrastructure of this project is built this way from the ground up. Language models for European languages are orders of magnitude better than language models for minority languages (if the latter exist at all). The same is true for ontologies and every other constructed abstraction, down to choices of what topics are significant enough to include in an abstract article---but that ground has been ably covered by Kaldari and others. So let me concentrate solely on language models in the remainder (with some parenthetical asides, for which I hope you'll forgive me).
I would like to challenge Abstract Wikipedia not only to be "not racist" or "color blind", but to be actively *antiracist*. That is, instead of passively accepting the status quo wrt language models (& etc), to commit to actively supporting a language model in *at least one* minority language, treating it as a first-class citizen or (better) the *main* output of the project. That means not just looking for "a good enough language model that happens not to be a European language" but *actively developing the language model* so that the Abstract Wikipedia project *from inception* has a positive effect on *at least one* community speaking a underrepresented language with a small Wikipedia. (Again, WLOG this could apply to general AI/ML support for many many minority groups, but I'm sticking with "at least one" and "language model" in order to make this as concrete and actionable as possible.) This of course also means committing to hire a speaker of that non-European language as part of the core team (not just an "and translations" afterthought), committing to foregrounding that language in demonstrations, and doing outreach and community building to the language group in question. (All the mockups I've seen have been in German and English, and have been pitched to an English-speaking audience.)
I don't think it is wise in 2020 to pretend that "colorblind" business as usual will advance the goals of our organization. We need to actively work to ensure this project has effects that *work against* the significant pre-existing biases toward highly-educated speakers of European languages. It is not enough to say that "someday" this "may" have an effect on minority language groups if "somebody" ever gets around to doing it. We must make those investments proactively and with clear intention in order to effect the change we wish to see in the world. -- C. Scott Ananian _______________________________________________ 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
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