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The disambiguation could be challenging. (Does "The Sun" link to our closest star or the tabloid in the UK.) It would be a fun project to try and determine the
by nostromo 14y ago
The disambiguation could be challenging. (Does "The Sun" link to our closest star or the tabloid in the UK.)
It would be a fun project to try and determine the correct link based on the context.
- mindcrime 14y agoJust make the link to the disambiguation page, if there is one? Otherwise, make it a special link that doesn't go anywhere directly, but uses some javascript/CSS to raise a dialog when clicked, that gives you the different choices?
- stephengillie 14y agoAuto-generate disambiguation pages? When a search term matches a tag, and none of the tagged pages have a clear "majority probability" of being correct, it would display a list of all pages with the tag, in order of popularity.
- helium 14y agoI don't think it would be a good idea if wikipedia required that you to run Javascript to navigate the site, and it would make for pretty bad SEO.
- eru 14y agoWikipedia doesn't need to care to much about SEO.
- derleth 14y ago> Just make the link to the disambiguation page, if there is one? Otherwise, make it a special link that doesn't go anywhere directly, but uses some javascript/CSS to raise a dialog when clicked, that gives you the different choices? Both of these things would be amazingly annoying to the majority of Wikipedia users.
- mindcrime 14y agoI'm only talking about auto-generated links that can't be clearly disambiguated by the system. At worst, the experience wouldn't be any worse than it is today.
- derleth 14y ago> I'm only talking about auto-generated links that can't be clearly disambiguated by the system. But they could be disambiguated by humans, which is my point. Humans understand context.
- mindcrime 14y agoSure, and when humans create links, they should continue to create them just like they do not. I'm picturing an "auto linkifier" that creates links that no human has gotten around to creating yet. Whether or not something like that would be a net win for Wikipedia is up for debate I guess. That said, I think they already do have a bot that can do at least a limited amount of auto-linkification, but I can't swear to it.
- bogger 14y agoI guess an added bonus of what you're suggesting is that the correct link could be crowdsourced; if the system kept track of which of the options users clicked on, it could figure out pretty quickly which one is correct.
- jayflux 14y agoExactly this. It would take some AI to work it out, unless using the context around the link. "Sun" could refer to many things, its not really possible for wikipedia to know which one you're on about. So links are still done manually.
- sp332 14y agoThis reminds me of an article I read about IBM's Watson. As a demo in front of a lot of people, a researcher was going through a stack of journals and feeding in data about anthrax. Most of the data was about animals, but the researcher was asking Watson to extrapolate possible effects on people. Watson responded "I assume by people you mean humans, and not People magazine." Edit: found the link (PDF) http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~nilufer/classes/cs5811/2003-fall/hiltzik0302.pdf http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~nilufer/classes/cs5811/2003-fall/hilt... Here's the actual quote: “Do you mean Anthrax (the heavy-metal band), anthrax (the bacterium) or anthrax (the disease)?” “The bacterium,” was the typed answer, followed by the instruction, “Comment on its toxicity to people.” “I assume you mean people (homo sapiens),” the system responded, reasoning, as it informed its programmer, that asking about People magazine “would not make sense.”
- sp332 14y agoLate edit: funny that I remembered this being Watson when it's actually Cyc, a longtime rival of the Watson project.