IMHO such automated meta-data would be a fun project, but not within wikipedia. These things could be done via an SQL dump or the XML interface.
The results could be displayed online in a separate project and link to the wikipedia article(s). If it proves useful, wikipedia could then link to that project. "hyperWikipedi", anyone? :-)
Magnus
Abe wrote:
Wikipedia has proven itself as an effective process for creating encyclopedia articles. But, there's an easy way to give Wikipedia the ability to to show causal relations among articles.
For example, all articles could have a tab called "influences". In the case of the article on Copernicus, users would be free to list hyperlinks to other articles that complete the sentence
"Copernicus influenced_____."
and articles that complete the sentence
"______influenced Copernicus".If users did this for many articles, then a network of causation would emerge, where the nodes of the network are articles and the links are "influences". This network could be exploited through a search tool that finds paths of articles between article A and B.
Such a tool would allow for a fascinating study of history. For instance, Wikipedia currently has an article on the Cold War and an article on the Attacks on Sept. 11. But, what if you want to see if there's a causal relationship between the two events? Neither article mentions the other, and rightly so, since any causal relation between them is too indirect for the scope of an encyclopedia article. Also, you won't find one article titled "How the Cold War Influenced 9/11" because encyclopedias typically provide information that fills the middle space of the spectrum between history books on one end, and the daily newspaper on the other. This question would usually be a question for history, because normal methods of tackling such questions require: analysis and time.
But the system I describe above can compress the analysis. Each influence-link between articles would be one tiny piece of analysis between events that happpened close together in time. By drawing a path through these small links of analysis and time, you can connect events that happen farther apart in time, thereby automating the analysis.
There are a lot of other uses of this kind of "influence mapping". And, you could get a lot of fun data to play with, as well. But, that's the main idea I wanted to throw out. Any thoughts?
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