Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
On 2/4/09, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: For anyone interested in this topic, have a look at Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/ For anyone interested in freebasing, please revert as vandalism any attempt to remove this tacky infobox: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Westroads_Mall_shootingdiff=prevoldid=176405577 There are a few others like it, but most infoboxes are helpful. —C.W. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 6:52 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/01/27/extracting-wikipedia-infoboxes-values-from-text/ For anyone interested in this topic, have a look at Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/ which has populated most of their database with parsed en:wp infoboxes. They have some interesting code ideas, and are happy to talk about it (they hosted a WM-SF meetup last year). -- phoebe ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
I do think it's worth pointing out that literally every time I've mentioned dislike of infoboxes to non-WPians, the reply has been along the lines of Why not? They're AWESOME! I try to explain the objections, but usually the person is so set on the accessibility front that they can't see why anyone would want to avoid the boxes. It's not just bots that want information in an easily parsed format. -Luna On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 7:04 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 2:52 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/01/27/extracting-wikipedia-infoboxes-values-from-text/ Some infoboxes are designed for that sort of thing, some aren't. Some have footnotes for example, and lots of flexibility, which makes it harder, but not impossible, to parse the data. And some projects (for good reason) still virulently reject infoboxes, mainly because people who don't understand a particular subject try to force simplified statements (i.e. sentences, not words or numbers) inside an infobox, and lose nuance and context in the process, devaluing the article as a whole (reading the full text is ultimately more educational). And not all such data is in infoboxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Metadata Something I tried to improve, which still needs expansion and TLC. Some areas of data are in separate templates (not infobox templates) and some are in categories. I'd like to add some of the data-heavy infoboxes to that list, like the ones in maths, physics, astronomy, geography, geology and chemistry, and the other 'hard' sciences. Are any of those infoboxes organised for the extraction of data the way the geographical co-ords templates are? Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
G'day Luna, I do think it's worth pointing out that literally every time I've mentioned dislike of infoboxes to non-WPians, the reply has been along the lines of Why not? They're AWESOME! I try to explain the objections, but usually the person is so set on the accessibility front that they can't see why anyone would want to avoid the boxes. It's not just bots that want information in an easily parsed format. I think my perspective as (let's face it) an ex-Wikipedian is pretty similar to that of the common or garden-variety non-WP reader these days. (This may be why I've become significantly more of an inclusionist since I stopped creating --- and deleting --- articles). I tend to find the infoboxes alternately annoying and silly or practical and awesome, depending on my frame of mind and purpose. If I'm after specific information --- e.g. a recent case where a colleague and I were arguing over the population breakdown of the UK --- the infoboxes save me time and prevent confusion. If I'm just reading for the heck of it (cf. xkcd's hours of fascinated clicking) they tend to be distracting. This is especially jarring in the case of subjects whose details don't break down easily into infoboxes, like real people. As a reader, it's cool to quickly find the national motto of Burundi or the height of Centrepoint Tower without having to read through paragraphs of text. I love infoboxes! But also as a reader, it's distracting to have a professional wrestler's coach or actress's bust size floating in the corner of the screen. I hate infoboxes! I guess you can break that down to say: it's nice when there is a consensus view of what a given infobox should say; it's less nice when the people who populate the infoboxes have different interests and values from you. Cheers, -- Mark Gallagher 0439 704 975 http://formonelane.net/ Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor. --- Count Duckula ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
G'day Luna, I do think it's worth pointing out that literally every time I've mentioned dislike of infoboxes to non-WPians, the reply has been along the lines of Why not? They're AWESOME! I try to explain the objections, but usually the person is so set on the accessibility front that they can't see why anyone would want to avoid the boxes. It's not just bots that want information in an easily parsed format. I think my perspective as (let's face it) an ex-Wikipedian is pretty similar to that of the common or garden-variety non-WP reader these days. (This may be why I've become significantly more of an inclusionist since I stopped creating --- and deleting --- articles). I tend to find the infoboxes alternately annoying and silly or practical and awesome, depending on my frame of mind and purpose. If I'm after specific information --- e.g. a recent case where a colleague and I were arguing over the population breakdown of the UK --- the infoboxes save me time and prevent confusion. If I'm just reading for the heck of it (cf. xkcd's hours of fascinated clicking) they tend to be distracting. This is especially jarring in the case of subjects whose details don't break down easily into infoboxes, like real people. As a reader, it's cool to quickly find the national motto of Burundi or the height of Centrepoint Tower without having to read through paragraphs of text. I love infoboxes! But also as a reader, it's distracting to have a professional wrestler's coach or actress's bust size floating in the corner of the screen. I hate infoboxes! I guess you can break that down to say: it's nice when there is a consensus view of what a given infobox should say; it's less nice when the people who populate the infoboxes have different interests and values from you. Cheers, -- Mark Gallagher 0439 704 975 http://formonelane.net/ Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor. --- Count Duckula ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
On Jan 29, 2009, at 2:48 AM, Mark Gallagher wrote: I tend to find the infoboxes alternately annoying and silly or practical and awesome, depending on my frame of mind and purpose. One solution to the love/hate problem with infoboxes would be to add a hide/show preference... similar to NO_TOC. --Noah-- ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Mark Gallagher m...@formonelane.netwrote: As a reader, it's cool to quickly find the national motto of Burundi or the height of Centrepoint Tower without having to read through paragraphs of text. I love infoboxes! But also as a reader, it's distracting to have a professional wrestler's coach or actress's bust size floating in the corner of the screen. I hate infoboxes! I guess you can break that down to say: it's nice when there is a consensus view of what a given infobox should say; it's less nice when the people who populate the infoboxes have different interests and values from you. A point well taken. :) Any band article with an infobox tends to attract small-time battles over the specific list of genres to include, too, I've noticed -- these people never seem to bother with the prose, I suppose because they might then have to cite references from time to time. Thinking specifically of articles about nations, some of our larger infoboxes manage to get a bit overwhelming. Purely in the interest of brainstorming and discussion, is this good or bad? If it is bad, is there something we could do about it? Break the main infobox down a bit, put smaller infoboxes in major sections of the article? Put some information into split articles (say, all but basic economic info to an infobox on the [[Economy of Foo]] article)? Before we break out the torches and pitchforks, I wouldn't call these serious proposals, just looking for ideas. -Luna ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:02, Luna lunasan...@gmail.com wrote: Any band article with an infobox tends to attract small-time battles over the specific list of genres to include, too, I've noticed I've always thought the proper solution to this is to hardcode the genre line to read music -- although I suppose this would lead to edit wars over the use of such infoboxes in articles on rappers. -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]] ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
Hehe good one -- Alvaro On 29-01-2009, at 22:51, Mark Wagner carni...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:02, Luna lunasan...@gmail.com wrote: Any band article with an infobox tends to attract small-time battles over the specific list of genres to include, too, I've noticed I've always thought the proper solution to this is to hardcode the genre line to read music -- although I suppose this would lead to edit wars over the use of such infoboxes in articles on rappers. -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]] ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
2009/1/28 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/01/27/extracting-wikipedia-infoboxes-values-from-text/ - d. I saw one of the talks about work in this area on youtube. Other than the slight problem that they intialy focused on rambot articles their aproach looked fairly soild. They also got their bot to the point where it could pretty much write wikipedia articles by extracting info from thre web. The other thing they found was than opening sentances are very standardised which made them easy to extract information from. -- geni ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote in message news:fbad4e140901280652k19382f7cw7d6b217f61021...@mail.gmail.com... http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/01/27/extracting-wikipedia-infoboxes-values-from-text/ (...) Maybe it can be taken as a request for information about bots already in use or in development. A med student wrote a tool for filling out citations, and jehochman wrote it into a browser applet. It's botISH, meaning that it doesn't write the quote or find which text it is relevant to or submit the page. If I read the end of it correctly, they want to assign people to do it, first and make programmers, then machines learn from that (which has long been just simply logical, just to identify whether it is feasible). If the sites that the bots access are vetted sources... There are a lot of things I do not know about bots, let me tell you that. ___ http://ecn.ab.ca/~brewhaha/finance/Manual_Spam_Control.htm ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Why infoboxes are good
2009/1/28 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/1/28 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/01/27/extracting-wikipedia-infoboxes-values-from-text/ - d. I saw one of the talks about work in this area on youtube. Other than the slight problem that they intialy focused on rambot articles their aproach looked fairly soild. They also got their bot to the point where it could pretty much write wikipedia articles by extracting info from thre web. The other thing they found was than opening sentances are very standardised which made them easy to extract information from. Ah here's the relevant video: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=cqOHbihYbhENR=1 -- geni ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
