Abstract Wikipedia/Components

This is part of the development plan for Abstract Wikipedia.

Continues from architecture of Abstract Wikipedia.

We need to extend the Wikimedia projects in three places:

1. in the local editions of Wikipedia and other client projects using the new capabilities offered,
2. in Wikidata, for creating Content (Abstract Wikipedia), and
3. in a new project, Wikifunctions, aimed to create a library of functions.

Extensions to local Wikipedias

Each local Wikipedia can choose, as per the local community, between one of the following three options:

1. implicit integration with Abstract Wikipedia;
2. explicit integration with Abstract Wikipedia;
3. no integration with Abstract Wikipedia.

The extension for local Wikipedias has the following functionalities: one new special page, two new features, and three new magic words.

F1: New special page: Abstract

A new special page will be available on each local Wikipedia, that is used with a Q-ID or the local article name and an optional language (which defaults to the language of the local Wikipedia). Example special page URLs look like the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Abstract/Q62

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Abstract/Q62/de

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Abstract/San_Francisco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Abstract/San_Francisco/de

If the special page is called without parameters, then a form is displayed that allows for selecting a Q-ID and a language (pre-filled to the local language).

The special page displays the Content from the selected Q-ID or the Q-ID sitelinked to the respective article rendered in the selected language.

F2: Explicit article creation

If the local Wikipedia chooses to go for the option of integrating with Abstract Wikipedia through explicit article creation, this is how they do it.

The contributor goes to an Item on Wikidata that does not have a sitelink in the target local Wikipedia yet. They add a sitelink to a page that does not exist yet. This way they specify the name of the article. For example, if Q62 in English would not have an article yet, and thus also no Sitelink, they may add the sitelink San_Francisco for en.wikipedia.

On the local Wikipedia, this creates a virtual article in the main namespace. That article has the same content as the special page described above, but it is to be found under the usual URL, i.e.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco

Links to that article, using the newly specified name, look just like any other links, i.e. a link to [[San Francisco]] will point to the virtual article, be blue, etc. Such articles are indexed for search in the given Wikipedia and for external search too.

If a user clicks on editing the article, they can choose to either go to Wikidata and edit the abstract Content (preferred), or start a new article in the local language from scratch, or materialize the current translation as text and start editing that locally.

If an existing local article with a sitelink is deleted, a virtual article is automatically created (since we know the name and can retain the links).

In order to delete a virtual article, the sitelink in Wikidata needs to be deleted.

All changes to the local Wikipedia have to be done explicitly, which is why we call this the explicit article creation option. We expect to make this the default option for the local Wikipedias, unless they choose either implicit article creation or no integration.

See also the discussion on the integration here.

F3: Implicit article creation

If a local Wikipedia opts in to the Implicit article creation from Wikidata, then the result of calling the Abstract special page on all Wikidata Items that do not have a sitelink to the given Wikidata but would Render content in the given language, is indexed as if it were in the Main namespace, and made available in search as if it were in the Main namespace.

A new magic word is introduced to link to virtual articles from normal articles, see F6 LINK_TO_Q. This can be integrated invisibly into the visual editor.

This is by far the least work for the community to gain a lot of articles, and might be a good option for small communities.

F4: Links or tabs

Every article on a local Wikipedia that is connected to a Wikidata item receives a new link, either as a tab on the top or a link in the sidebar. That link displays the Content for the connected Wikidata item rendered in the local language. Virtual articles don’t have this tab, but their Edit button links directly to editing the Content in Abstract Wikipedia.

F5: New magic word: ABSTRACT_WIKIPEDIA

The magic word is replaced with the wikitext resulting from Rendering the Content on the Wikidata item that is connected to this page through sitelinks.

The magic word can be used with two optional parameters, one being a Q-ID, the other a language. If no Q-ID is given, the Q-ID defaults to the Item this page is linked to per Sitelink. If no language is given, the language defaults to the language of the given wiki.

Example calls:

{{ABSTRACT_WIKIPEDIA}}

{{ABSTRACT_WIKIPEDIA:Q62}}

{{ABSTRACT_WIKIPEDIA:Q62/de}}

If no Q-ID is given or chosen by default, an error message appears.

Later this will allow to select named sections from the Content.

Wikipedias that choose to have no integration to Abstract Wikipedia can still use this new magic word.

Note that the introduction of a new magic word is a preliminary plan. Task 2.3 will investigate whether we can achieve their functionalities without doing so.

F6: New magic word: LINK_TO_Q

This magic word turns into a link to either the local article that is sitelinked to the given Q-ID or, if none exists, to the Abstract Special page with the given Q-ID. This allows to write articles with links to virtual articles, which get replaced automatically once local content is created.

Example call:

{{LINK_TO_Q:Q62}}

will result in

[[San Francisco]]

if the article exists, otherwise in

[[Special:Abstract/Q62|San Francisco]]

Note that the introduction of a new magic word is a preliminary plan. Task 2.3 will investigate whether we can achieve their functionalities without doing so.

F7: New magic word: LAMBDA

This calls a function specified in Wikidata, together with its parameters, and renders the output on the page.

For example, the following call:

{{LAMBDA:capitalize("san francisco")}}

will result in “San Francisco” being outputted on the page (assuming that there is a function that has the local key and with the expected definition and implementation). It uses the language of the local wiki to parse the call.

Consider also the option to call a specific version of a function in order to reduce breakages downstream.

Note that the introduction of a new magic word is a preliminary plan. Task 2.3 will investigate whether we can achieve their functionalities without doing so.

Extensions to Wikidata

We add a new auxiliary namespace to the main namespace of Wikidata. I.e. every item page of the form www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62 will also receive an accompanying Content page www.wikidata.org/wiki/Content:Q62. That page contains the abstract, language-independent Content, and allows its editing and maintenance.

Additional Special pages might be needed. This will be extended in the second part of the project. It requires the agreement of the Wikidata community that the project will be used for storing the abstract content, and another will be chosen if they disagree.

F8: New namespace: Content

New namespace with a lot of complex interactive editing features. Provides UX to create and maintain Content, as well as features to evaluate the Content (e.g. display how much of it is being displayed per language, etc.) This is mostly a subset of the functionality of the F11 Function namespace.

F9: New data type: Content

A new datatype that contains a (short) Content. The main use case is for the Descriptions in Items and for Glosses in the Senses of Lexemes.

F10: Index and use Descriptions in Items and Glosses in Senses

Index and surface the linearizations of Description fields for Items and Glosses in Senses, and also make sure that for Description fields in Items there are no duplicate Label / Description pairs. Allow for overwriting these both by manual edits.

Extensions to other Wikimedia projects

Other Wikimedia projects will also receive F7 LAMBDA and F5 ABSTRACT_WIKIPEDIA magic words, but none of the other functionalities, as these seem not particularly useful for them. This may change based on requests from the given communities.

Extensions for the new wiki of functions

Wikifunctions will be a new Wikimedia project on a new domain. The main namespace of Wikifunctions will be the novel Function namespace. The rest of Wikifunctions will be a traditional Wikimedia wiki.

F11: New namespace: Function

Allowing for the storage of functions, types, interfaces, values, tests, etc. There is a single namespace that contains constants (such as types or single values), function interfaces, function implementations, and thus also Constructors and Renderers. The entities in this namespace are named by Z-IDs, similar to Q-IDs of Wikidata items, but starting with a Z and followed by a number.

There are many different types of entities in the Z namespace. These include types and other constants (which are basically functions of zero arity), as well as classical functions with a positive arity.

Contributors can create new types of functions within the Function namespace and then use these.

Functions can have arguments. Functions with their arguments given can be executed and result in a value whose type is given by the function definition.

The Function namespace is complex, and will have very different views depending on the type of the function, i.e. for interfaces, implementations, tests, types, values, etc. there will be different UX on top of them, although they are internally all stored as Z-Objects. Eventually, the different views are all generated by functions in Wikifunctions.

It will be possible to freeze and thaw entities in the Function namespace. This is similar to a protected page, but only restricts the editing of the value part of the entity, not the label, description, etc.

F12: New special pages and API modules

New Special pages and API modules will be created to support the new Function namespace. This will include, in particular, a special page and an API module that allows to evaluate functions with function parameters given. Besides that it will include numerous special pages and APIs that will support the maintenance of the content (such as searches by number and types of parameters, pages with statistics of how often certain implementations are called, test pages, etc.). The goal is to implement as many as possible of these inside Wikifunctions.

Continued in Abstract Wikipedia tasks.

See also

• Extension:WikiLambda (on MediaWiki-Wiki)