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?
Abe
Abe wrote:
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".[...] Any thoughts?
It's an original idea, but I'm afraid I don't really see the major usefulness in it. It sounds like little more than a funny toy, and for that I doubt it's worth the implementation effort.
How do you define "influenced" anyway? Just about everyone and everything has in some way influenced some broad subject, say [[Art]] or [[Mathematics]], and Art and Mathematics in turn have in some way influenced just about everything...
Timwi
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.
It's a great idea, although for it to be useful for any kind of analysis we would have to work out a system to show the extent and type of relationships involved. More importantly, however, how many people would be willing to put the time into cataloging our existing (now more 300,000 on en, for instance) articles? The kind of study you propose wouldn't be useful unless the information were reasonably complete.
It may be "easy" to implement technologically (a new namespace and a minor UI change), but building it up to the point of usefulness is another story entirely.
Abe
How can you tell who was influencing whom? Most of the time these influences are tenuous and speculative. Perhaps the greatest influence on someone's life was his kindergarten teache, but no-one can know for sure. If someone worked with another for some time it's easy to conclude that the older had influence on another. I noted somewhere that there was a famous black widow murderess in the 1930s Balkans. She had managed to stow 40 bodies in her cellar. It would be pure speculation to suggest that this influenced Kesslring when he wrote his play, "Arsenic and Old Lace." The chronology seems right, but it's still speculation.
Ec
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?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
How can you tell who was influencing whom? Most of the time these influences are tenuous and speculative.
One way to find reliable influences is in another field: how scientists (and their works) are influenced by other scientists. At least in theory, the references section of a scientific work should list all influences. Here is reliable data for possible "influences"-tags, but way to much of it, so even here a representation of influences would be near-useless. But it's a fascinating idea, to be sure.
BTW: Going back to the history-influences-idea: of course there are cyclic influences: Bush influences the Taliban, the Taliban influence Bush. Most interesting things go in these transaction cycles ...
__ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
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?
Abe _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:59:55 -0400 (EDT), Abe arafi@umich.edu wrote:
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.
Interesting but how do we resolve the POV problem? do we want endless arguments over whether America influenced the Taliban; George Bush influenced oil markets; oil influenced Gulf war.... to name a few?
Hemanshu
Hemanshu Desai wrote:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:59:55 -0400 (EDT), Abe arafi@umich.edu wrote:
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.
Interesting but how do we resolve the POV problem? do we want endless arguments over whether America influenced the Taliban; George Bush influenced oil markets; oil influenced Gulf war.... to name a few?
YES!
That's the small enough price of neutrality. No article is sacred, and that's healthy. People on both sides of these issues are enraged when they see the blatant POVism of their opponents destroying their own very neutral views. The control freaks worry me a lot more than the trolls, because they use a patina of legitimacy to impose their POV.
Resolving "POV problem"s will be an incremental process that may take years.
Ec.
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 08:47:06 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Interesting but how do we resolve the POV problem? do we want endless arguments over whether America influenced the Taliban; George Bush influenced oil markets; oil influenced Gulf war.... to name a few?
YES!
That's the small enough price of neutrality. No article is sacred, and that's healthy. People on both sides of these issues are enraged when they see the blatant POVism of their opponents destroying their own very neutral views. The control freaks worry me a lot more than the trolls, because they use a patina of legitimacy to impose their POV.
Resolving "POV problem"s will be an incremental process that may take years.
The question is what do all these questions have to do with making an encyclopedia? This is clearly a distinct project
Hemanshu
Hemanshu Desai wrote:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 08:47:06 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Interesting but how do we resolve the POV problem? do we want endless arguments over whether America influenced the Taliban; George Bush influenced oil markets; oil influenced Gulf war.... to name a few?
YES!
That's the small enough price of neutrality. No article is sacred, and that's healthy. People on both sides of these issues are enraged when they see the blatant POVism of their opponents destroying their own very neutral views. The control freaks worry me a lot more than the trolls, because they use a patina of legitimacy to impose their POV.
Resolving "POV problem"s will be an incremental process that may take years.
The question is what do all these questions have to do with making an encyclopedia? This is clearly a distinct project
Absolutely everything. How can we possibly separate the articles from their objectivity? Being on paper made Britannica a static encyclopedia. By being an editable on-line Wikipedia it becomes more dynamically linked with the processes that create it.
Ec
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