Abstrakt Wikipedia/Phasen

Development of Abstract Wikipedia will proceed in two major parts, each consisting of a large number of tasks. Part P1 is about developing the wiki of functions, and Part P2 is about abstract content and natural language generation. On this page, we further break down the tasks of Part P1 into phases that each cover some of the work under a given task. The below contains links to Phabricator, where tasks and phases are broken down even further.

This wiki page might be stale. The canonical place for information about the tasks is Phabricator. Find our current state on Phabricator.

We expect to take about ten phases before launching the wiki of functions.

All the below phases cover work under Task P1.2: Initial development, unless marked otherwise.

Part P1: Wiki of functions

Phase α (alpha): store, display and edit header — Fäerdeg 2020-08-25

1. Set up replicable development environment. — Aufgab T258893
   • Fäerdeg Start extension. — Aufgab T258893
   • Fäerdeg Config works, upload bootstrap content.
   • Fäerdeg Reuse existing JSON ContentHandler. — Aufgab T258893
   • Fäerdeg Allow for entering JSON objects through the raw editing interface. — Aufgab T258893
2. Fäerdeg Extend and hardcode checker for JSON objects to check for ZObject well-formedness. Nothing that is not well-formed will be further handled or stored. Well-formedness should probably be checked both in the PHP and the JS code (should be easy to write anyway).
   • Fäerdeg a PHP. — Aufgab T258894
   • Well-formedness: key syntax, allowed keys, values are strings or proto-objects or lists of values. — Aufgab T258894
3. Fäerdeg Every stored top-level ZObject must be a Z2/Persistent object. — Aufgab T258897
4. Fäerdeg Create Z1/Object, offering one key, Z1K1/type.
5. Fäerdeg Extend hardcoded validator to check Z1K1/type.
6. Fäerdeg Create Z2/Persistent object. — Aufgab T258897
7. Fäerdeg Z2/Persistent object has the keys Z2K1/ID and Z2K2/value, and Z2K3/Proto-Label, the latter being counterfactually just a single string with no language information. — Aufgab T258897
8. Fäerdeg Extend hardcoded validator for Z2/Persistent object so far. — Aufgab T258897
9. Fäerdeg Provide hardcoded display for Z2/Persistent object (that is the header) (that is a pretty big task). — Aufgab T258898
10. Fäerdeg Provide generic view for the Z2K2/value object. — Aufgab T258898
11. Fäerdeg Turn Z2K3/proto-label into the proper Z2K3/label for multilingual text.
12. Fäerdeg Extend viewing for Z2K3/label with multilingual text.

Phase completion condition: As a user [of a site with the MediaWiki extension installed], I can create and store a string as a new ZObject, e.g. "Hello world!".

Phase β (beta): create types and instances — Fäerdeg 2021-02-04

1. Fäerdeg Hardcoded validators for Z4/proto-types and Z3/proto-keys. — Aufgab T258900
   • A Z4 has a Z4K2/keys with a json List of Z3s.
   • A proto-key has a Z3K1/ID and Z3K2/type and Z3K3/label (mirror the development of label for Z2K3?).
2. Fäerdeg Create Z4/Type and Z3/Key (Task P1.14).
3. Fäerdeg Search for ZObjects by label. — Aufgab T260750
4. Fäerdeg Use Z4 type data and key declarations for validating objects. — Aufgab T260861
5. Fäerdeg Use Z4 type data and key declarations for generic view of objects. — Aufgab T258901
6. Fäerdeg Use Z4 type data and key declarations for editing and creation of objects. — Aufgab T258903 & Aufgab T258904
7. Fäerdeg Provide hardcoded display and edit interface for Z12 type. — Aufgab T258900

Phase completion condition:

As a user, I can create and store an object implementing any on-wiki defined type, e.g. the positive integer one

Phase γ (gamma): functions, implementations, errors — Fäerdeg 2021-04-02

1. Fäerdeg Introduce a simple error object. — Aufgab T261464
2. Fäerdeg Introduce simple function. — Aufgab T258957
3. Fäerdeg Introduce simple implementation, for now only built-ins. — Aufgab T258958
4. Fäerdeg Create a few functions and built-ins. — Aufgab T261474
5. Fäerdeg Introduce a simple function call type. — Aufgab T261467
6. Fäerdeg Tester type (Task P1.10). — Aufgab T261465

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can store a function call, a function, and a tester (only the objects, no actual evaluation yet), e.g. if(true, false, true) (read "if true then false else true", i.e. negation)

Phase δ (delta): built ins — Fäerdeg 2021-05-11

1. Fäerdeg Evaluation system for built-ins. — Aufgab T260321
2. Fäerdeg Enable web users to call evaluation through an API module (Task P1.5). — Aufgab T261475
3. Fäerdeg Special page for calling evaluation (Task P1.11). — Aufgab T261471

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can use a special page to evaluate a built-in function with supplied inputs, e.g. to check whether the empty list is empty.

Phase ε (epsilon): native function calls — Fäerdeg 2021-06-30

1. Fäerdeg JavaScript implementations (Task P1.12). — Aufgab T275944
2. Fäerdeg Python implementations (Task O6). — Aufgab T273517
3. Fäerdeg Allow forms to be included for evaluation. — Aufgab T261472

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can use a special page to evaluate a user-written function in one of the supported languages, e.g. call a user-written function in Python to add up two numbers.

Phase ζ (zeta): composition — Fäerdeg 2021-08-27

1. Fäerdeg Allow for composition implementations (Task P1.6). — Aufgab T261468

Phase completion condition:

• As a user, I can implement a function using composition of other functions, rather than writing it myself, e.g. negate(Boolean → Boolean). — Fäerdeg
• (Stretch condition) As a user, I can see the results of testers on the relevant function implementation's page. [This might need to be moved to a later phase as not all requirements may be met this point. Must be done by phase ι.] — Fäerdeg

Phase η (eta): generic types — Fäerdeg 2022-04-08

1. Fäerdeg Allow for generic types, particularly for Z10/List and Z8/Function, and replace Z10/List and Z8/Function. ― Aufgab T275941
2. Fäerdeg Errors can be processed like ZObjects.
3. Fäerdeg User-defined types work with validators.

Phase completion condition:

• Being able to implement curry as a composition on the wiki, but without requiring strict static analysis — Fäerdeg
• Making it possible to create the following three 'user-defined' types on the wiki: positive integer, sign, and integer — Fäerdeg
• Being able to make a generic wrapper type through composition on the wiki — Fäerdeg

See also the newsletter posted about this phase.

Phase θ (theta): thawing and freezing — Fäerdeg 2023-06-19

1. Fäerdeg Freezing and thawing content (Task P1.7). ― Aufgab T275942
2. Fäerdeg Task P1.9: Pass security review. — Aufgab T274682, …
3. Fäerdeg Launch public test system (Task P1.4). — Aufgab T261469

Phase completion condition:

• As a sysop, I can freeze and unfreeze any user-written object (akin to, or maybe the same as, MediaWiki's protection system); all system-supplied objects are permanently frozen.
• As a user editing a frozen page, I can change the label, but not the implementation, whereas on an unfrozen page both are possible.
• ZObjects are stored using the new canonical form for typed lists, and all parts are still working
• View and edit function is implemented and tested successfully
• When several implementations are available, the "best" is chosen. (Fitness determination to potentially be changed later.)
• We measure the clock time & memory use of each function run, and display it on the execution result & in the implementation/test table.
• Edits to system-defined ZObjects are restricted to users with the correct rights. Understandable diffs are emitted. Results are cached.
• Text with fallback, references, strings, lists is implemented and tested successfully
• A shared understanding with the community of how the team will contribute to Wikifunctions, and why, is documented
• Designs for viewing and editing multi-lingual documentation on mobile and desktop are approved. UX is instrumented and data collected.

Phase ι (iota): documentation of objects

1. This is a preliminary assignment, moving the documentation tasks here.
2. Provide editing for the header (additionally to full raw editing) (that is a pretty big task) — this refers only to the labels, actually.
3. Extend editing for Z2K3/label with multilingual text.
4. Extend the header with Z2K4/documentation. — Aufgab T260954 & Aufgab T260956
5. Extend editing to deal with Z2K4/documentation. — Aufgab T260955

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can document a ZObject in any and all supported languages, using a wikitext.

Phase κ (kappa): cleanup

1. Tightening up and clean up tasks, to close all pre-launch tasks.

Phase completion condition: As the Abstract Wikipedia Team, we feel ready for launch, including sign-off from all relevant colleagues.

Phase λ (lambda): launch

1. Phase λ (lambda) is meant for launch. If there are pre-launch tasks that prevent that, so be it, obviously.
2. Set up a new Wikimedia project.
3. Move some of the wiki pages about the project from Meta to Wikifunctions.

Phase completion condition: As a person on the Web, I can visit and use Wikifunctions.org to write and run functions directly on the site.

Unphased tasks

Pre-launch tasks that need to happen but are not phased in yet:

• P1.1: Project initialization.
• P1.3: Set up testing infrastructure.
• P1.8: Launch beta Wikifunctions.

Post-launch tasks of Part 1

• P1.13: Access functions.
• P1.15: Lua-based implementations.
• P1.16: Non-functional interfaces.
• P1.17: REST calls.
• P1.18: Accessing Wikidata and other WMF projects.
• P1.19: Monolingual generation.

Kuckt och

• Part P2: Abstract Wikipedia.
• Non-core tasks (optional).