Talk:Abstract Wikipedia/Overview

Page move

@GVarnum-WMF: Are you sure this page should be moved to be subpage of "Abstract Wikipedia" instead of "Wikilambda"? It seems it describes only the second and as far as I can understand, they are separate projects regardless of their strong relationships. It is also possible to have title "Abstract Wikipedia/WikiLambda" or "Abstract Wikipedia/WikiLambda/Overview". Note this (and maybe other recently moved) page is linked from context of WikiLambda. --Wargo (talk) 21:25, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Wargo: Sorry for the late reply! Yes, the whole set of pages was requested to be moved to as they are now. Both names are just temporary placeholders until we've all discussed something permanent, cf. Abstract_Wikipedia#Alternative_names and the banner at the top of that page. Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 05:44, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia

The project seems to be very much doubling down on Wikifunctions and ignoring the longer-term Abstract Wikipedia goal. This seems to me a pity as I think that progress could be made on defining how the language-independent Abstract Wikipedia could work (just assuming that Wikifunctions will be available) before Wikifunctions is actually implemented. Strobilomyces (talk) 13:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

@Strobilomyces: In the team, we're really looking forward to working seriously on Abstract Wikipedia, but we don't want to charge ahead on that work before there's an active Wikimedia community working in the Wikifunctions area. I would worry that doing a lot of work on the concept whilst it's still very theoretical and far away would exclude a lot of people, and lead us to making assumptions that aren't true and in general not be respectful of the range of views across the Wikimedia communities, and esI pecially in the Wikifunctions community that will be closely involved in the work. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF) Thanks for your quick answer. Has there been a change in the scope of the Abstract Wikipedia project? If so, shouldn't this have been announced? The current scope and objectives pages etc. have very little mention of what I understand as Abstract Wikipedia. Is the page Abstract Wikipedia/Architecture still valid?

I don't agree with your worry that making proposals is disrespectful of the people who may or may not use those proposals, since I think that such documents are exactly what they will need and what will be needed to set up the overall architecture. Who are these "Wikifunctions communities"? You imply that the WMF will be involved in the Abstract Wikipedia part, since you state that the team is looking forward to working on Abstract Wikipedia, but what work will be done by other groups and what by the WMF team? Surely this needs to be defined long before any real work is started. I thought that the communities who will write the language functions and abstract text could be starting work as soon as Wikifunctions becomes available. As it stands, a single person or a small team of people could make a system for a particular language. If that is not true, that needs to be clarified in the scope and planning pages. If there is going to be long a process of defining roles, teams, etc., it is urgent to specify who will organize that work (possibly the WMF?) and to start assigning teams and responsibilities. It is not clear to me that the WMF has taken on any role in the Abstract Wikipedia part.

At present I think that the "Wikifunctions communities" are "anyone who feels like having a go" and if that is not correct, the WMF has the responsibility to say so, and say something about how this will be determined and what we are waiting for. Even if it is true that the time for specific Abstract Wikipedia proposals is sometime in the future after a long process, the WMF is at fault for not making this clear. Strobilomyces (talk) 15:07, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Has there been a change in the scope of the Abstract Wikipedia project? If so, shouldn't this have been announced?

No, nothing's changed there.

The current scope and objectives pages etc. have very little mention of what I understand as Abstract Wikipedia. Is the page Abstract Wikipedia/Architecture still valid?

Yes, pretty much, but as I said, we've not been working on things beyond the "Wikilambda" box on the system diagram (now called Wikifunctions). Once Wikifunctions is built and live, then the community can begin, and start discussing how the "Renderers" and "Constructors" etc. might work or indeed if that's the approach they want to take.

At present I think that the "Wikifunctions communities" are "anyone who feels like having a go" and if that is not correct, the WMF has the responsibility to say so, and say something about how this will be determined and what we are waiting for. Even if it is true that the time for specific Abstract Wikipedia proposals is sometime in the future after a long process, the WMF is at fault for not making this clear.

I'm sorry, I do not understand. A fundamental principle of the Wikimedia movement is that decisions are made by those who turn up. People can't turn up and be active editors of wikifunctions.org until it launches, so we can't ask them to start making decisions based on their experience of the reality of creating functions, working with other community members across languages, and forming and adjusting policies for the wiki, until they have such experience.

(Also this is entirely off-topic for this thread; maybe you move this somewhere better or should start a new one in a larger venue?) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF) Thank you for your new answer. For me there are two projects, "Wikifunctions" which provides a library of functions for various different applications, and "Multilingual Wikipedia" (which I thought was called "Abstract Wikipedia"), which will attempt to provide a system to generate text in multiple natural languages from a single "abstract text". Multilingual Wikipedia will use Wikifunctions as a tool. The two projects are almost independent, except that Wikifunctions must be suitable to hold the functions used to implement the text generation in Multilingual Wikipedia (and so some extra requirements from Multilingual Wikipedia may be imposed on Wikifunctions). Soon Wikifunctions should become available and that is great, and it will be an independent wiki project. Can you say where would be a more appropriate place for this discussion? This, the talk page of the overview of Abstract Wikipedia, seems quite reasonable to me.

Perhaps I should have been paying attention to Abstract Wikipedia/Architecture and Abstract_Wikipedia/Tasks#Part_P2:_Abstract_Wikipedia, which I assume are still valid. Wikifunctions is P1 and what I understand as Multilingual Wikipedia is P2. You say

People can't turn up and be active editors of wikifunctions.org until it launches, so we can't ask them to start making decisions based on their experience of the reality of creating functions, working with other community members across languages, and forming and adjusting policies for the wiki, until they have such experience.

I think that the general conclusion of this sentence, that it is not possible work on the P2 part yet is completely wrong. In software projects often a lot of design work is done before there is any coding. Prototypes and examples could be made using some other platform (Wikifunctions is just the programming language here and in princple part P2 could be built using some other software). I don't think that understanding how to use Wikifunctions is very relevant to making a proposal for how Multilingual Wikipedia will work and what the abstract text will be like. I think you have things back-to-front here, and that people can perfectly start discussing how the "Renderers" and "Constructors" etc. might work (as you say) without having Wikifunctions available.

I really don't understand your vision of how Multilingual Wikipedia will get going. You referred earlier to "Wikifunctions communities" who should be important also for Multilingual Wikipedia. But apart from a few people trying things out, the users of Wikifunctions will have their own particular projects such as including basic libraries or implementing thing now done by templates. They probably won't be working on language functions unless they have a specification how to do so; on the other hand other volunteers who are interested in languages could probably do a lot of work on Multilingual Wikipedia without getting down to the detail of coding - there will be other jobs such as setting rules and populating tables. The ones who are interested in an eventual Multilingual Wikipedia (or even a sub-project such as auto-generating captions) are not the community who will appear due to other Wikifunctions applications. But it would be very useful to document this vision (who would be the "Multilingual Wikipedia communities" and how they could put themselves forward or be found?) How will someone be able to turn up and become a participant in the Multilingual Wikipedia project?

Note that if the specification of P2 of Abstract_Wikipedia/Tasks were worked out in more detail, it might result in new requirements and changes to P1 (Wikifunctions). I appreciate that it is right to give priority to the Wikifunctions project, but I think 100% priority is too much at the present time. Strobilomyces (talk) 19:07, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Can you say where would be a more appropriate place for this discussion? This, the talk page of the overview of Abstract Wikipedia, seems quite reasonable to me.

This page is semi-historical, as you can see from the edit history which shows that this page hasn't substantially changed since it was created two years ago during the initial 'pitch' for undertaking this project. I think the actual talk page of the Abstract Wikipedia project, where dozens of people have commented, would give you a wider audience for your thoughts and concerns.

Perhaps I should have been paying attention to Abstract Wikipedia/Architecture and Abstract_Wikipedia/Tasks#Part_P2:_Abstract_Wikipedia, which I assume are still valid.

Those two are both also old documents and aren't necessarily current, either. Detailed work for software projects, as always, is carried out in Phabricator, not on-wiki. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 08:30, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF) OK, now I've made my comment on the main talk page. I tried to look at Phabricator, but didn't find much apart from Wikifunctions tasks; perhaps I need to be more familiar with that tool. I have made some examples with an analysis on this page. Thank you again for your answers. Strobilomyces (talk) 19:53, 9 April 2022 (UTC)