An idea. I'll try to be short.
Wikipedia has a lot of information, and it is heavily crosslinked. But it's not indexed. I mean an index of people, and index of places and an index of things. And events. And countries. And lakes. And whatever. Each index is a table (in database terms), with a few required fields. You could the add a page (or a part of it) to an index (or more indexes) by specifying theese required fields of an index (probably in the wiki source).
Using this you could look up things/people that happened, borned, died or whatever on a given day. Or things that happened in Tokyo. Or list books or movies that have wiki pages about them. Possibilities are quite broad. Look up pages that are in multiple indexes, "events" and "presidents of the world" for example.
"indexers" would be wikipedians who index things. Make and index, like "countries" or "operating systems" or "mysteries". And then collect things into that index. And specify the attributes of that index. There are pages like this, I know, for database systems for example, but you see this is a different level. You could create an index of abbreviations for example...
(I don't have much time to discuss it, but if anyone finds it worth working on, please let me know. Later I might join in. Have a nice day.)
Aren't categories a primitive form of index?
Alfio
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Kardos Andris wrote:
An idea. I'll try to be short.
Wikipedia has a lot of information, and it is heavily crosslinked. But it's not indexed. I mean an index of people, and index of places and an index of things. And events. And countries. And lakes. And whatever. Each index is a table (in database terms), with a few required fields. You could the add a page (or a part of it) to an index (or more indexes) by specifying theese required fields of an index (probably in the wiki source).
Using this you could look up things/people that happened, borned, died or whatever on a given day. Or things that happened in Tokyo. Or list books or movies that have wiki pages about them. Possibilities are quite broad. Look up pages that are in multiple indexes, "events" and "presidents of the world" for example.
....
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
So, do we need another kind of *indexing*, or just a new way of cross-reading existing categories?
Magnus
Kardos András schrieb:
Yes, a *primitive* form of an index.
Alfio Puglisi <puglisi@...> writes:
Aren't categories a primitive form of index?
Alfio
On Mar 10, 2005, at 1:56 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
So, do we need another kind of *indexing*, or just a new way of cross-reading existing categories? Magnus Kardos András schrieb:
Yes, a *primitive* form of an index. Alfio Puglisi <puglisi@...> writes:
Aren't categories a primitive form of index? Alfio
I think I understand some of the original intent behind this idea, so let me expand upon what I thought the idea was.
Let's take an existing article, which already has some categories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
It has a fairly small set of current indexed categories: Categories: 1929 births | 1945 deaths | Diarists | Dutch writers | Murdered writers | Holocaust | Dutch World War II people | People with asteroids named after them
It does *not* have the following possibly relevant, hypothetical(?), categories attached: People born on June 12 | Famous Jewish People | Famous Young Authors | People who hid during the holocaust | Authors whose work has been disputed | Authors whose work was redacted by their family | People who died in Bergen-Belsen | Authors whose work had been converted to theater | Authors whose work became opera | Authors who were born in Frankfurt am Main | Authors born in Germany | Famous Reform Jews | Famous Montessori Students | Famous Aachen residents | Events of July 8th | Events of October 28th | Authors who told biographical account using pseudonyms | People published in Het Parool | Plays by Goodrich and Hackett | Pulitzer Prize winning Dramas | .... (the list goes on and on)
As you see, the currently existing categories can scratch the surface, but can also miss many connections (as currently implemented).
As I understand the idea, it is about either: a) Much more human indexing categories being applied b) Automated systems so that the "what links here" kinds of information are added in some way to existing indexes, or categories, or utilized in an obvious way to display existing connections....
-Bop
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Ronald Chmara schrieb:
Let's take an existing article, which already has some categories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
It has a fairly small set of current indexed categories: Categories: 1929 births | 1945 deaths | Diarists | Dutch writers | Murdered writers | Holocaust | Dutch World War II people | People with asteroids named after them
It does *not* have the following possibly relevant, hypothetical(?), categories attached: People born on June 12 | Famous Jewish People | Famous Young Authors | People who hid during the holocaust | Authors whose work has been disputed | Authors whose work was redacted by their family | People who died in Bergen-Belsen | Authors whose work had been converted to theater | Authors whose work became opera | Authors who were born in Frankfurt am Main | Authors born in Germany | Famous Reform Jews | Famous Montessori Students | Famous Aachen residents | Events of July 8th | Events of October 28th | Authors who told biographical account using pseudonyms | People published in Het Parool | Plays by Goodrich and Hackett | Pulitzer Prize winning Dramas | .... (the list goes on and on)
As you see, the currently existing categories can scratch the surface, but can also miss many connections (as currently implemented).
As I understand the idea, it is about either: a) Much more human indexing categories being applied b) Automated systems so that the "what links here" kinds of information are added in some way to existing indexes, or categories, or utilized in an obvious way to display existing connections....
So, a variant of [[Category:]] would do it, like [[Index:]]?
With [[Index:Author]] and [[Index:Born in Germany]] present, a special page could "see" the connection when asked for "(author) AND (born in Germany)".
Or we take it a step further: [[Index:Germany|born|died|]] would add both "born in Germany" and "died in Germany".
The last "|" is for list sorting, as seen for [[image:]] constructs; it should be [[Index:Germany|born|died|Frank, Anne]] (yes, she didn't die in Germany, just an example)
Magnus
Let's take an existing article, which already has some categories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
It has a fairly small set of current indexed categories: Categories: 1929 births | 1945 deaths | Diarists | Dutch writers | Murdered writers | Holocaust | Dutch World War II people | People with asteroids named after them
The Anne Frank article also shows the limitations of the Category feature. Do we need 200 categories just for born in, died in XXXX? Instead the "people" index would contain name:Anne Frank, born:1929/06/12, died:1945, nationality:german... And the "events" index would contain memorable moments of her life. With a more database like aproach - a table with fields. Searchable. And then you could also open the original pages you found, if you want to know more.
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 02:51:08 -0800, Ronald Chmara ron@opus1.com wrote:
On Mar 10, 2005, at 1:56 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
So, do we need another kind of *indexing*, or just a new way of cross-reading existing categories? Magnus Kardos András schrieb:
Yes, a *primitive* form of an index. Alfio Puglisi <puglisi@...> writes:
Aren't categories a primitive form of index? Alfio
I think I understand some of the original intent behind this idea, so let me expand upon what I thought the idea was.
Let's take an existing article, which already has some categories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
It has a fairly small set of current indexed categories: Categories: 1929 births | 1945 deaths | Diarists | Dutch writers | Murdered writers | Holocaust | Dutch World War II people | People with asteroids named after them
It does *not* have the following possibly relevant, hypothetical(?), categories attached: People born on June 12 | Famous Jewish People | Famous Young Authors | People who hid during the holocaust | Authors whose work has been disputed | Authors whose work was redacted by their family | People who died in Bergen-Belsen | Authors whose work had been converted to theater | Authors whose work became opera | Authors who were born in Frankfurt am Main | Authors born in Germany | Famous Reform Jews | Famous Montessori Students | Famous Aachen residents | Events of July 8th | Events of October 28th | Authors who told biographical account using pseudonyms | People published in Het Parool | Plays by Goodrich and Hackett | Pulitzer Prize winning Dramas | .... (the list goes on and on)
Aside from "Authors born in Germany" which "Authors who were born in Frankfurt am Main" would be a subcategory of these are all valid, the problem is that they lead to alot of clutter currently, it has been proposed that a "hidden cateogory" feature be added, for example for featured articles (their categories are currently on the talk pages, a lame hack) and this index feature looks similar to that.
As you see, the currently existing categories can scratch the surface, but can also miss many connections (as currently implemented).
As I understand the idea, it is about either: a) Much more human indexing categories being applied b) Automated systems so that the "what links here" kinds of information are added in some way to existing indexes, or categories, or utilized in an obvious way to display existing connections....
-Bop
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org