Jay R. Ashworth skrev:
On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 01:29:45PM +0200, Rolf Lampa wrote:
This is also the actual reason for why I'm a bit hesitant about the term "Alias" (since that abstract word doesn't mean much to most people, it doesn't give them a "guide line" so to speak). We can mean the same thing with a word, but now I'm talking about the pedagogical aspect, motivating and explaining the (untended) concept to editors. In that context Synonyms means something, it means more, it kind of intuitively gives most people at least some ideas about what kind of /relevant/ keywords to add to a Synonym list.
Though I don't think the word synonym accurate reflects what's going on here:
No, not exactly the same, hence my attempt to focus on the possible drawbacks with aliases, by trying to narrow in on something positive, something that hopefully wouldn't be as risky as aliases sounds in my ears.
Synonyms is a "narrower" concept than aliases, I really didn't imply that they were the same.
synonyms are words which mean much the same as other words.
Exactly, that's what Synonyms are good for. "Same as" is your word for it, which is also my point here, Synonyms implying that it's not giving the impression of that an article is covering everything, or something that doesn't really comply with the title.
Instead a Synonym (usually) covers just the concept someone is looking for, although whith other but relevant words. In other words, same meaning, same semantics.
We really are talking about aliases: also known as --
"Also known as" is a Synonym (in the context of an article title).
Other uses of a broad alias concept would NOT add value, which is my point.
different spellings (usually) for the same words.
Different spellings should not, in general, be dealt with manually (like it is dealt with now, using Redirects), since it can be automated.
At least, in the pattern-driven examples I've seen mentioned upthread.
Yes, more ideas exist about what kind of information to define as Aliases, but some of those ideas really isn't a good idea at all, in that they'd intend to manually define what's already in the text - namely the text. That part, presenting keywords from the text, should be handled by smart indexers and stemmers. As usual.
The text is already there and it's indexed by more or less smart search mechanisms, and Section headers are also existing information which can be used, or given rank by indexers. In short, automation could provide with just the kind of stuff which people would tend to define as an alias, manually..., if alias is meant to be perceived as a B R O A D concept. Which would be really bad.
Hence my suggestion to go for Synonyms instead. Synonyms is not a broad concept. Which is a good thing. Further, it is graspable, and it would provide just that which machines cannot provide, relevant and non ambigous semantics.
And this is where the whole idea with aliases (if allowing a too broad interpretation) is at risk of becoming what I just said, a redundant YARR, simply because it'd only add extra saturation to the articles to add alias definitions overlapping what's already in:
1. the text (indexed, more or less clever, using stemming etc) 2. section headers 3. categories 4. existing redirects. (5.) keywords (new approach to how to interpret categories?)
It does not add value to put manual effort into widening or diversifying the meaning of a title or topic, or already existing subtitles, with aliases without very strict guidelines.
It does not, for example, add any value to start listing, manually, any existing sub topics of an article as a list of aliases, because you will find such info using any silly search engine, with the main title/keywords having the highest rank, and the rest, the body text, with lower ranks, and the two presented even together on the same search result page (that is, the semantic connection already done). Aso.
Synonyms, on the other hand, adds value, because people usually search for concepts or "problem domains", just that which machines isn't very good at figuring out.
Categories/keywords is for broadening the title/topic, and that already exists. And the Redirects should (preferably) not deal with misspellings, redirects should instead be Synonyms. Fix that first. And then add to it this new idea, to let users add/manage Synonyms/Redirects directly from the target page.
For more detailed & fine grained *manual* specification of article semantics there's other existing solutions like the Semantic Web/Wiki.
Regards,
// Rolf Lampa