Hello, I regularly read and contribute to Wikipedia under the name Iammaxus. Over the last few weeks, I have been mulling over an idea on how to significantly improve the mediawiki project. I posted the following on my user page before finding and reading this mailing list only to find out that this idea has been discussed here (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-December/007185.html), albeit not with the scale that I'm imagining Because im not sure where to put this in the metawiki, and im not sure if anyone would care if I did, here is an excerpt from a conversation i had with a friend of mine knowledgeable in computer science on 12/24/03 (note that I wasn't seriously asking him to do this, just more of bouncing an idea of off him): I Am MAXUS (2:30:14 PM): yo Chin Jut: hi I Am MAXUS: code a meta data system for wikipedia Chin Jut: what's that mean? I Am MAXUS: i can't even begin to imagine the possibilities I Am MAXUS: well first off I Am MAXUS: organize topics I Am MAXUS: in a tree system I Am MAXUS: this would be part of the meta data system I Am MAXUS: well wiat I Am MAXUS: lemme start from the beginning Chin Jut: ok I Am MAXUS: the overall point is to allow more machine generated info, stuff that shouldnt be manually made like it is now, or even with one time use scripts I Am MAXUS: such as lists of articles I Am MAXUS: tables of dates Chin Jut: alright Chin Jut: "List of famous bears", that sorta thing I Am MAXUS: but much greater than taht Chin Jut: alright I Am MAXUS: so u could just request a list of a certain sub tree I Am MAXUS: etc I Am MAXUS: then it would have more specific meta data I Am MAXUS: such as meta data about books including the author and such I Am MAXUS: so that this would automatically be put into an article about the book Chin Jut: ok I Am MAXUS: so: I Am MAXUS: ? I Am MAXUS: go I Am MAXUS: ]and do it Chin Jut: well, gee Chin Jut: that's a large project Chin Jut: I'm not even sure what to begin with Chin Jut: I mean, what features need to be available? Chin Jut: (I'm not gonna be able to do this, why am I talking?) Chin Jut: what, concretely, needs to be done? I Am MAXUS: good question I Am MAXUS: well first of all, learn xml and shit I Am MAXUS: cause thats how all this junk is done I Am MAXUS: or somethintg I Am MAXUS: lol Chin Jut: But Tim Sweeney speaks disparagingly of XML... I Am MAXUS: does he? Chin Jut: yeah I Am MAXUS: what does he say is bad about it? Chin Jut: lemme see if I can find it Chin Jut: "Does anyone else see XML as an overcomplicated solution the meager problem of serializing data in and out of text files?" Chin Jut: Philip Wadler (one of the main guys behind Haskell) also bashes XML: "So the essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well." Chin Jut: All the same, yeah, I'll learn XML I Am MAXUS: lol I Am MAXUS: well screw those guys I Am MAXUS: cause everyone is using it Chin Jut: yeah Chin Jut: Phil Wadler goes on to say I Am MAXUS: waht does he mean "serializing data..."? Chin Jut: It's worth studying XML just because it became popular while better things did not Chin Jut: Serializing data means writing it and reading it from files Chin Jut: you take a complicated structure, like a tree Chin Jut: and turn it into some linear sequence of bytes Chin Jut: hence, you've turned it into a series... you've serialized it I Am MAXUS: right I Am MAXUS: anyway i dont know if u can usel xml I Am MAXUS: because of the database based nature of it I Am MAXUS: but something similar I Am MAXUS: anyway I Am MAXUS: i dont know about searching, and thats the main function of this system I Am MAXUS: so u have to figure out how to do that I Am MAXUS: so each article has info attached to it I Am MAXUS: ideally, the types of info could be specified by ppl in a realtively plain language way I Am MAXUS: so taht ppl could specify more types of meatadata for certain types of files Chin Jut: what types of metadata would people specify? Chin Jut: Like "this article is about bears"? Chin Jut: Shouldn't that be auto-discovered by computers? I Am MAXUS: thats beyond the scope of this I Am MAXUS: that requires all sorts of human communication stuff Chin Jut: ok Chin Jut: so then what is this, exactly? I Am MAXUS: i told you! I Am MAXUS: for example, lets take the organism pages Chin Jut: ok I Am MAXUS: they all have the classification on the side I Am MAXUS: well instead, each page would have a is a member of this higher group I Am MAXUS: which wikipedia would look at Chin Jut: I see I Am MAXUS: and see what thats a memeber of I Am MAXUS: and dynamically figure out the whole classifcation I Am MAXUS: this is not such a useful example because its much more static I Am MAXUS: but take the date pages, those are useful mommas to meta-fy Chin Jut: ah I Am MAXUS: so if a page is an event Chin Jut: so people would have to say in the event I Am MAXUS: it would include date info I Am MAXUS: and type of event info Chin Jut: "Date info: July 4, 1776" I Am MAXUS: right Chin Jut: and then the date page would say "Search for all pages with date info: July 4, 1776" I Am MAXUS: so it coud be added to the "type of info in history" page I Am MAXUS: that too Chin Jut: "typo of info in history" page? I Am MAXUS: well like the music in history page I Am MAXUS: etxc I Am MAXUS: etc Chin Jut: ah I Am MAXUS: so if u had a page that was under the music subtree I Am MAXUS: and then under the band subtree I Am MAXUS: and u had dates of existence of that band I Am MAXUS: and then there could be an important concert subtree, etc Chin Jut: well, to be technical, I don't think these are trees, I think they're DAGs Chin Jut: but it doesn't matter I Am MAXUS: dag? Chin Jut: directed acyclic graph Chin Jut: in a tree, a node has only one parent Chin Jut: (at most) I Am MAXUS: yeah good point Chin Jut: ok, it's sorta interesting. I have no idea how to do it efficiently, though. But I think I might actually work on it I Am MAXUS: lol I Am MAXUS: i want to copy this conversation into the metawikipedia.org somewhere I Am MAXUS: maybe in the todo for vers 4 or 5 Chin Jut: I want to eat breakfast, because I have yet to do so Chin Jut: bbl I Am MAXUS: bye Chin Jut signed off at 2:48:15 PM. Those are our AOL Instant Messenger screen names. His wikipedia name is Chinju Thanks for reading this, I hope you consider this because I believe this idea has the potential to revolutionize not just the wikipedia, but all sorts of projects.