4 ms·

The Abstract Wikipedia idea is a great advance. > knowledge is encoded in machine readable format and that we can start to write programs over this knowledge g

The Abstract Wikipedia idea is a great advance. > knowledge is encoded in machine readable format and that we can start to write programs over this knowledge graph But surely that abilty has been the goal of wikidata from the start?

coolreader18 6y ago
Perhaps, but this seems to be moving towards a more holistic machine-readable article graph. If you look at a page from wikidata[0], it seems to be basically a key-value database (e.g. earth.highest point = [ mount everest { from sea level, 8000m } ], while the "full article" terminology used in the announcement seems like it may be even more connected/informative/structured than that. [0]: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2
- afandian 6y ago
  Agreed, but my point was that the aim has always been to encode these facts and then mix them into wikipedia for any assertion / attribute, so that any fact is backed by an assertion.
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    Exactly. The main difference is that they would now not be used to generate the infoboxes, but actual prose.
- baddox 6y ago
  I don't see any indication that Abstract Wikipedia articles are anything more than a sequence of "constructors" and those "constructors" are essentially just triples (with qualifiers) that a "renderer" turns into a specific human language. The example they give is the constructor: rank(SanFrancisco, city, 4, population, California) And the English renderer will output: "San Francisco is the fourth largest city by population in California."
- Tarean 6y ago
  The data is stored as a bunch of triples but it encodes a graph. You can use tools like sparql to query that graph. https://www.stardog.com/tutorials/sparql/ https://www.stardog.com/tutorials/sparql/
incompatible 6y ago
I'm curious whether this new project has been driven in any way by the difficulty of integrating data from Wikidata into Wikipedia. It various a lot by language, but the user communities are quite hostile to Wikidata in some cases. I think it's generally on the grounds that since Wikidata is a wiki, it can be easily vandalized and its data can't be trusted.
- bawolff 6y ago
  I dont really think so - the goal is to fill in the gaps of knowledge, not to replace existing wikipedias and whatever policies they may have.

coolreader18 6y ago

Perhaps, but this seems to be moving towards a more holistic machine-readable article graph. If you look at a page from wikidata[0], it seems to be basically a key-value database (e.g. earth.highest point = [ mount everest { from sea level, 8000m } ], while the "full article" terminology used in the announcement seems like it may be even more connected/informative/structured than that. [0]: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2

afandian 6y ago
Agreed, but my point was that the aim has always been to encode these facts and then mix them into wikipedia for any assertion / attribute, so that any fact is backed by an assertion.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  Exactly. The main difference is that they would now not be used to generate the infoboxes, but actual prose.
baddox 6y ago
I don't see any indication that Abstract Wikipedia articles are anything more than a sequence of "constructors" and those "constructors" are essentially just triples (with qualifiers) that a "renderer" turns into a specific human language. The example they give is the constructor: rank(SanFrancisco, city, 4, population, California) And the English renderer will output: "San Francisco is the fourth largest city by population in California."
Tarean 6y ago
The data is stored as a bunch of triples but it encodes a graph. You can use tools like sparql to query that graph. https://www.stardog.com/tutorials/sparql/ https://www.stardog.com/tutorials/sparql/

incompatible 6y ago

I'm curious whether this new project has been driven in any way by the difficulty of integrating data from Wikidata into Wikipedia. It various a lot by language, but the user communities are quite hostile to Wikidata in some cases. I think it's generally on the grounds that since Wikidata is a wiki, it can be easily vandalized and its data can't be trusted.

bawolff 6y ago
I dont really think so - the goal is to fill in the gaps of knowledge, not to replace existing wikipedias and whatever policies they may have.