2019:Technology outreach & innovation/Let's completely change how wiki links work
 | This is an Accepted submission for the Technology space at Wikimania 2019. |
Description[edit | edit source]
Everyone who edited any wiki page is familiar with links. If you edit in Visual Editor, click the "chain" button or Ctrl-K. If you edit in wiki syntax, add [[square brackets]] and perhaps a pipe character. Who would ever think of changing that?
Well, turns out there are some problems with this approach. It may seem very easy, but it makes some things more manual than they should be. It doesn't necessarily scale well for languages other than English (and not even for English itself). It is not as semantic and machine-readable as it could be.
How could we change it? Let's talk about it. Doing this involves structured data, translation, more powerful editing (both visual and source), and completely rewriting a lot of our software. Sounds impossible, but let's Be Bold and do it anyway.
Relationship to the theme[edit | edit source]
This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:
- Industry, innovation, and infrastructure: Improving how wiki links work will make using Wikimedia projects easier for machines and for people. Machines will be able to process data more intelligently, quickly, and precisely, and humans will be able to read and write more easily, naturally, and efficiently.
- Reduced inequalities: Links were created back in 2001, and hardly changed since then. They were good for English, for people experienced with computers, and for wiki syntax editing. Since then we learned that we need to be more inclusive—for example, to welcome all languages, and people with different levels of computer experience. To be more inclusive and egalitarian we need to change some things about how we work, even if these things are as basic as wiki links.
- Partnerships for the goals: This proposal to change wiki links will make the information in Wikimedia projects more semantic and easier for consumption by others: search engines, machine translation, knowledge bases, machine learning systems. Partners should be interested in this topic.
Session outcomes[edit | edit source]
At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:
- Present my proposals for reforming the links
- Hear opinions about it
- Hear other proposals
- Document everything as food for thought for editors and developers
Session leader(s)[edit | edit source]
Contacts[edit | edit source]
- amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il
Session type[edit | edit source]
Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:
One of these options, whatever works for the space leaders:
- Option 1: Lightning talk - 5 minutes are enough
- Option 2: Roundtable discussion - up to 10 minutes of presenting the initial idea, and more time for discussion and brainstorming
Requirements[edit | edit source]
The session will work best with these conditions:
- Room
- Whatever
- Audience:
- Editors of any Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikisource, etc.), with any level of experience—both new and very experienced editors are welcome.
- Developers of core MediaWiki, Wikibase, other extensions, and tools.
- Any people who are interested in generic knowledge management and organization: hypertexts, semantic web, structured data, data indexing, multilingual knowledge bases, etc.
- Recording:
- Would be nice.