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