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And an explicit goal of the project: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Google.org_Fellows_evaluation_-_Answer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A

And an explicit goal of the project: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Google.org_Fellows_evaluation_-_Answer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Google.or... > In particular, according to Keet, Grammatical Framework notably lacks the flexibility to handle certain aspects of Niger-Congo B languages’ morphology. The traditional answer to this kind of critique would be to say, “Let’s just organize an effort to work on Grammatical Framework.” The design philosophy behind Abstract Wikipedia is to make as few assumptions about a contributor’s facility with English and programming experience as possible. Organized efforts around Grammatical Framework (or otherwise) are not a bad idea at all. They may well solve some problems for some languages. However, the contributor pools for under-resourced languages are already small. Demanding expertise with specific natural languages like English and also specific programming paradigms contracts those pools still further. and > A solution designed by a small group of Westerners is likely to produce a system that replicates the trends of an imperialist English-focused Western-thinking industry. Existing tools tell a one-voice story; they are built by the same people (in a socio-cultural sense) and produce the same outcome, which is crafted to the needs of their creators (or by the limits of their understanding). Tools are then used to build tools, which will be again used to build more tools; step by step, every level of architectural decision-making limits more and more the space that can be benefitted by these efforts. and > The evaluation acknowledges little to no value to the effort that Wikifunctions is investing in being multilingual in terms of natural languages, even for implementations. It is unclear as to how a solution that is built on top of (the existing Lua-based Scribunto scripting system) would succeed in being multilingual, and not just be an English project which the other languages may be invited to use, if they understand it, but would be mostly blocked from contributing to.

jsmith45 3y ago
The plan seems to actually be auto replace the Z values in the editor views with human readable values, which will automatically use the contributors preferred language. This of course only works if all functions, and all parameters, etc have had labels submitted for your language. They indicate wanting to cater to cultures that might not use a base 10 representation of numbers, so would presumably autotranforms numeric literals for people from those cultures. They are worried about programming languages being englished based, but seem to think that similar autotranslating of keywords is a good enough approach, so that is why they NEED to support multiple languages, so that they might hypothetically support some language that supports base 60 math and keywords based on [insert language here]. Plenty of room for abuse here, as it would be really easy to edit functions being used for text generation of less popular languages to output offensive text, for things not tested by the test cases. And nobody except people who know that language will be able to tell for sure that this is not a legit contribution. Then of course people will by trying to code sandbox and then container breaks, cryptominers, etc. I expect a giant game of whack-a-mole between the project and the admins. On that note even ignoring the abuse, or people trying to utilize the service for free compute resources, I can see the costs of this service becoming substantial really quick. Just from things like legitimate contributions of test cases, and new language implementations, and running the test cases again all the different implementations.
- riffraff 3y ago
  > And nobody except people who know that language will be able to tell for sure that this is not a legit contribution This is already the case with wikipedia, there was the recent story that most of the Scots wikipedia was written by someone who does not know the language, in the style of "English, as she is written".
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  Ah so pretty much how Excel has localized function names
  - account42 3y ago
    Which solves about zero problems and creates many. Let's stop this woke nonsense and instead focus on improving english speaking ability of the world. Having a common language everyone understands only has benefits.
userbinator 3y ago
A solution designed by a small group of Westerners is likely to produce a system that replicates the trends of an imperialist English-focused Western-thinking industry. WTF. Virtue-signaling identity politics has no place in computer science.
- direwolf20 3y ago
  What? It's a true statement, but it has little to do with computer science, but does to do with software engineering. Did the word "imperialist" trigger reflexive typing? In my opinion this project is about 20 layers too abstract to actually produce working and useful software. But it's not virtue signaling if they're actually trying to do the thing, is it? Virtue signaling is when you act like you're doing something virtuous and then don't. If they're trying to create a programming syntax that maps to every known human language, good on them. They'll probably fail, but it's not really a stupid concept, especially when your organization's purpose is to spread knowledge to the whole world.
  - lmm 3y ago
    > In my opinion this project is about 20 layers too abstract to actually produce working and useful software. But it's not virtue signaling if they're actually trying to do the thing, is it? Virtue signaling is when you act like you're doing something virtuous and then don't. If one belives avoiding well-known tools and (english-based) programming languages is likely to actually make it easier for contributors using those languages to contribute to Wikipedia in those languages, then it's real. If one believes that this is not actually going to result in more usable tools, and the intention of avoiding tools from English-speaking Westerners is signalling rather than actually getting better results, then it's virtue signalling.
    - dleeftink 3y ago
      By that account, above discussion of what is and isn't virtue signalling is itself virtue signalling--mere platitudes rather than contributing to actionable outcomes. I'd think us, or any foundation for that matter, should be able to lay out an agenda before outcomes are achieved, how (un)realistic they may be. A dot on the horizon to aim for, not necessarily achievable but a heading at least.
barrysteve 3y ago
I don't know why he rails against English. Computer programming uses a small subset of English in code and the industry nearly always uses the American socio-cultural kind of English. English is the fullest language we have, with all the infamy of pilfered concepts from the European continent. The language/natural language distinction is reductionist, halving all language, when in reality it is a structure that cannot be halved. He recommends reducing languages down to their most basic elements. This is a mistake that doesn't go anywhere. You end up with a pile of sticks. All his crictisms of English (one voice, limited understanding, ect) can be leveled at any living, breathing human. I wonder where the experiment goes. His criticisms of English should be better.
majoe 3y ago
> ...Westerners... > ...Western-thinking When did we become Westerners and started to think in the same way? I recognised a trend for such expressions in the news, too, in the last few years. It's misleading and creates a "we against them" mentality.
- riffraff 3y ago
  Allegedly, somewhere between 1500 and 1980. "The decline of the west" by Spengler was written a century ago.
- jmopp 3y ago
  When I think of 'Western culture', I think of the culture that developed in Protestant Europe and English-speaking America from the early modern period onwards, and aspects of which are diffusing through the rest of the world. I agree that it's a bit too broad of a characterisation to really be of use, but it is a thing.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  For many, many centuries. It's not anything from the last few years, nor is it "we against them". The West is essentially all the world's nations whose cultures are derived from or greatly influenced by Latin speakers and Judeo-Christian values, which traces its influence back to Ancient Rome. It's a very valuable and important thing to recognize, because things that people in the US and Europe often implicitly assume are human universals, aren't. They're only universal across the West, and not found in e.g. China or India. So it's not creating division. It's recognizing difference that already exists, but that not everyone is always already aware of, because we tend to exist in our own little bubbles.
account42 3y ago
Ok so its just overcomplicated for woke reasons. Having a lingua franca for computing is a good thing. All these efforts to localize computing are nothing but a giant waste of time.

jsmith45 3y ago

The plan seems to actually be auto replace the Z values in the editor views with human readable values, which will automatically use the contributors preferred language. This of course only works if all functions, and all parameters, etc have had labels submitted for your language. They indicate wanting to cater to cultures that might not use a base 10 representation of numbers, so would presumably autotranforms numeric literals for people from those cultures. They are worried about programming languages being englished based, but seem to think that similar autotranslating of keywords is a good enough approach, so that is why they NEED to support multiple languages, so that they might hypothetically support some language that supports base 60 math and keywords based on [insert language here]. Plenty of room for abuse here, as it would be really easy to edit functions being used for text generation of less popular languages to output offensive text, for things not tested by the test cases. And nobody except people who know that language will be able to tell for sure that this is not a legit contribution. Then of course people will by trying to code sandbox and then container breaks, cryptominers, etc. I expect a giant game of whack-a-mole between the project and the admins. On that note even ignoring the abuse, or people trying to utilize the service for free compute resources, I can see the costs of this service becoming substantial really quick. Just from things like legitimate contributions of test cases, and new language implementations, and running the test cases again all the different implementations.

riffraff 3y ago
> And nobody except people who know that language will be able to tell for sure that this is not a legit contribution This is already the case with wikipedia, there was the recent story that most of the Scots wikipedia was written by someone who does not know the language, in the style of "English, as she is written".
pantalaimon 3y ago
Ah so pretty much how Excel has localized function names
- account42 3y ago
  Which solves about zero problems and creates many. Let's stop this woke nonsense and instead focus on improving english speaking ability of the world. Having a common language everyone understands only has benefits.

userbinator 3y ago

A solution designed by a small group of Westerners is likely to produce a system that replicates the trends of an imperialist English-focused Western-thinking industry. WTF. Virtue-signaling identity politics has no place in computer science.

direwolf20 3y ago
What? It's a true statement, but it has little to do with computer science, but does to do with software engineering. Did the word "imperialist" trigger reflexive typing? In my opinion this project is about 20 layers too abstract to actually produce working and useful software. But it's not virtue signaling if they're actually trying to do the thing, is it? Virtue signaling is when you act like you're doing something virtuous and then don't. If they're trying to create a programming syntax that maps to every known human language, good on them. They'll probably fail, but it's not really a stupid concept, especially when your organization's purpose is to spread knowledge to the whole world.
- lmm 3y ago
  > In my opinion this project is about 20 layers too abstract to actually produce working and useful software. But it's not virtue signaling if they're actually trying to do the thing, is it? Virtue signaling is when you act like you're doing something virtuous and then don't. If one belives avoiding well-known tools and (english-based) programming languages is likely to actually make it easier for contributors using those languages to contribute to Wikipedia in those languages, then it's real. If one believes that this is not actually going to result in more usable tools, and the intention of avoiding tools from English-speaking Westerners is signalling rather than actually getting better results, then it's virtue signalling.
  - dleeftink 3y ago
    By that account, above discussion of what is and isn't virtue signalling is itself virtue signalling--mere platitudes rather than contributing to actionable outcomes. I'd think us, or any foundation for that matter, should be able to lay out an agenda before outcomes are achieved, how (un)realistic they may be. A dot on the horizon to aim for, not necessarily achievable but a heading at least.

barrysteve 3y ago

I don't know why he rails against English. Computer programming uses a small subset of English in code and the industry nearly always uses the American socio-cultural kind of English. English is the fullest language we have, with all the infamy of pilfered concepts from the European continent. The language/natural language distinction is reductionist, halving all language, when in reality it is a structure that cannot be halved. He recommends reducing languages down to their most basic elements. This is a mistake that doesn't go anywhere. You end up with a pile of sticks. All his crictisms of English (one voice, limited understanding, ect) can be leveled at any living, breathing human. I wonder where the experiment goes. His criticisms of English should be better.

majoe 3y ago

> ...Westerners... > ...Western-thinking When did we become Westerners and started to think in the same way? I recognised a trend for such expressions in the news, too, in the last few years. It's misleading and creates a "we against them" mentality.

riffraff 3y ago
Allegedly, somewhere between 1500 and 1980. "The decline of the west" by Spengler was written a century ago.
jmopp 3y ago
When I think of 'Western culture', I think of the culture that developed in Protestant Europe and English-speaking America from the early modern period onwards, and aspects of which are diffusing through the rest of the world. I agree that it's a bit too broad of a characterisation to really be of use, but it is a thing.
crazygringo 3y ago
For many, many centuries. It's not anything from the last few years, nor is it "we against them". The West is essentially all the world's nations whose cultures are derived from or greatly influenced by Latin speakers and Judeo-Christian values, which traces its influence back to Ancient Rome. It's a very valuable and important thing to recognize, because things that people in the US and Europe often implicitly assume are human universals, aren't. They're only universal across the West, and not found in e.g. China or India. So it's not creating division. It's recognizing difference that already exists, but that not everyone is always already aware of, because we tend to exist in our own little bubbles.

account42 3y ago

Ok so its just overcomplicated for woke reasons. Having a lingua franca for computing is a good thing. All these efforts to localize computing are nothing but a giant waste of time.