Abstract Wikipedia/Phases/it

Development of Abstract Wikipedia will proceed in two major parts, each consisting of a large number of tasks. Part P1 is about developing the wiki of functions, and Part P2 is about abstract content and natural language generation. On this page, we further break down the tasks of Part P1 into phases that each cover some of the work under a given task. The below contains links to Phabricator, where tasks and phases are broken down even further.

This wiki page might be stale. The canonical place for information about the tasks is Phabricator. Find our current state on Phabricator.

We expect to take about ten phases before launching the wiki of functions.

All the below phases cover work under Task P1.2: Initial development, unless marked otherwise.

Part P1: Wiki of functions

Phase α (alpha): store, display and edit header — Fatto 2020-08-25

1. Set up replicable development environment. — compito T258893
   • Fatto Start extension. — compito T258893
   • Fatto Config works, upload bootstrap content.
   • Fatto Reuse existing JSON ContentHandler. — compito T258893
   • Fatto Allow for entering JSON objects through the raw editing interface. — compito T258893
2. Fatto Extend and hardcode checker for JSON objects to check for ZObject well-formedness. Nothing that is not well-formed will be further handled or stored. Well-formedness should probably be checked both in the PHP and the JS code (should be easy to write anyway).
   • Fatto in PHP. — compito T258894
   • Well-formedness: key syntax, allowed keys, values are strings or proto-objects or lists of values. — compito T258894
3. Fatto Every stored top-level ZObject must be a Z2/Persistent object. — compito T258897
4. Fatto Create Z1/Object, offering one key, Z1K1/type.
5. Fatto Extend hardcoded validator to check Z1K1/type.
6. Fatto Create Z2/Persistent object. — compito T258897
7. Fatto Z2/Persistent object has the keys Z2K1/ID and Z2K2/value, and Z2K3/Proto-Label, the latter being counterfactually just a single string with no language information. — compito T258897
8. Fatto Extend hardcoded validator for Z2/Persistent object so far. — compito T258897
9. Fatto Provide hardcoded display for Z2/Persistent object (that is the header) (that is a pretty big task). — compito T258898
10. Fatto Provide generic view for the Z2K2/value object. — compito T258898
11. Fatto Turn Z2K3/proto-label into the proper Z2K3/label for multilingual text.
12. Fatto Extend viewing for Z2K3/label with multilingual text.

Phase completion condition: As a user [of a site with the MediaWiki extension installed], I can create and store a string as a new ZObject, e.g. "Hello world!".

Phase β (beta): create types and instances — Fatto 2021-02-04

1. Fatto Hardcoded validators for Z4/proto-types and Z3/proto-keys. — compito T258900
   • A Z4 has a Z4K2/keys with a json List of Z3s.
   • A proto-key has a Z3K1/ID and Z3K2/type and Z3K3/label (mirror the development of label for Z2K3?).
2. Fatto Create Z4/Type and Z3/Key (Task P1.14).
3. Fatto Search for ZObjects by label. — compito T260750
4. Fatto Use Z4 type data and key declarations for validating objects. — compito T260861
5. Fatto Use Z4 type data and key declarations for generic view of objects. — compito T258901
6. Fatto Use Z4 type data and key declarations for editing and creation of objects. — compito T258903 & compito T258904
7. Fatto Provide hardcoded display and edit interface for Z12 type. — compito T258900

Phase completion condition:

As a user, I can create and store an object implementing any on-wiki defined type, e.g. the positive integer one

Phase γ (gamma): functions, implementations, errors — Fatto 2021-04-02

1. Fatto Introduce a simple error object. — compito T261464
2. Fatto Introduce simple function. — compito T258957
3. Fatto Introduce simple implementation, for now only built-ins. — compito T258958
4. Fatto Create a few functions and built-ins. — compito T261474
5. Fatto Introduce a simple function call type. — compito T261467
6. Fatto Tester type (Task P1.10). — compito T261465

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can store a function call, a function, and a tester (only the objects, no actual evaluation yet), e.g. if(true, false, true) (read "if true then false else true", i.e. negation)

Phase δ (delta): built ins — Fatto 2021-05-11

1. Fatto Evaluation system for built-ins. — compito T260321
2. Fatto Enable web users to call evaluation through an API module (Task P1.5). — compito T261475
3. Fatto Special page for calling evaluation (Task P1.11). — compito T261471

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can use a special page to evaluate a built-in function with supplied inputs, e.g. to check whether the empty list is empty.

Phase ε (epsilon): native function calls — Fatto 2021-06-30

1. Fatto JavaScript implementations (Task P1.12). — compito T275944
2. Fatto Python implementations (Task O6). — compito T273517
3. Fatto Allow forms to be included for evaluation. — compito T261472

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can use a special page to evaluate a user-written function in one of the supported languages, e.g. call a user-written function in Python to add up two numbers.

Phase ζ (zeta): composition — Fatto 2021-08-27

1. Fatto Allow for composition implementations (Task P1.6). — compito T261468

Phase completion condition:

• As a user, I can implement a function using composition of other functions, rather than writing it myself, e.g. negate(Boolean → Boolean). — Fatto
• (Stretch condition) As a user, I can see the results of testers on the relevant function implementation's page. [This might need to be moved to a later phase as not all requirements may be met this point. Must be done by phase ι.] — Fatto

Phase η (eta): generic types — Fatto 2022-04-08

1. Fatto Allow for generic types, particularly for Z10/List and Z8/Function, and replace Z10/List and Z8/Function. ― compito T275941
2. Fatto Errors can be processed like ZObjects.
3. Fatto User-defined types work with validators.

Phase completion condition:

• Being able to implement curry as a composition on the wiki, but without requiring strict static analysis — Fatto
• Making it possible to create the following three 'user-defined' types on the wiki: positive integer, sign, and integer — Fatto
• Being able to make a generic wrapper type through composition on the wiki — Fatto

See also the newsletter posted about this phase.

Phase θ (theta): thawing and freezing — Fatto 2023-06-19

1. Fatto Freezing and thawing content (Task P1.7). ― compito T275942
2. Fatto Task P1.9: Pass security review. — compito T274682, …
3. Fatto Launch public test system (Task P1.4). — compito T261469

Phase completion condition:

• As a sysop, I can freeze and unfreeze any user-written object (akin to, or maybe the same as, MediaWiki's protection system); all system-supplied objects are permanently frozen.
• As a user editing a frozen page, I can change the label, but not the implementation, whereas on an unfrozen page both are possible.
• ZObjects are stored using the new canonical form for typed lists, and all parts are still working
• View and edit function is implemented and tested successfully
• When several implementations are available, the "best" is chosen. (Fitness determination to potentially be changed later.)
• We measure the clock time & memory use of each function run, and display it on the execution result & in the implementation/test table.
• Edits to system-defined ZObjects are restricted to users with the correct rights. Understandable diffs are emitted. Results are cached.
• Text with fallback, references, strings, lists is implemented and tested successfully
• A shared understanding with the community of how the team will contribute to Wikifunctions, and why, is documented
• Designs for viewing and editing multi-lingual documentation on mobile and desktop are approved. UX is instrumented and data collected.

Phase ι (iota): documentation of objects

1. This is a preliminary assignment, moving the documentation tasks here.
2. Provide editing for the header (additionally to full raw editing) (that is a pretty big task) — this refers only to the labels, actually.
3. Extend editing for Z2K3/label with multilingual text.
4. Extend the header with Z2K4/documentation. — compito T260954 & compito T260956
5. Extend editing to deal with Z2K4/documentation. — compito T260955

Phase completion condition: As a user, I can document a ZObject in any and all supported languages, using a wikitext.

Phase κ (kappa): cleanup

1. Tightening up and clean up tasks, to close all pre-launch tasks.

Phase completion condition: As the Abstract Wikipedia Team, we feel ready for launch, including sign-off from all relevant colleagues.

Phase λ (lambda): launch

1. Phase λ (lambda) is meant for launch. If there are pre-launch tasks that prevent that, so be it, obviously.
2. Set up a new Wikimedia project.
3. Move some of the wiki pages about the project from Meta to Wikifunctions.

Phase completion condition: As a person on the Web, I can visit and use Wikifunctions.org to write and run functions directly on the site.

Unphased tasks

Pre-launch tasks that need to happen but are not phased in yet:

• P1.1: Project initialization.
• P1.3: Set up testing infrastructure.
• P1.8: Launch beta Wikifunctions.

Post-launch tasks of Part 1

• P1.13: Access functions.
• P1.15: Lua-based implementations.
• P1.16: Non-functional interfaces.
• P1.17: REST calls.
• P1.18: Accessing Wikidata and other WMF projects.
• P1.19: Monolingual generation.

See also

• Part P2: Abstract Wikipedia.
• Non-core tasks (optional).