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Introducing New Features to Wikipedia: Case Studies for Web Science

Authors:
Mathias Schindler at Deutscher Bundestag
Mathias Schindler
Denny Vrandečić at Google Inc.
Denny Vrandečić
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Wikipedia is a free Web based encyclopedia produced by hundreds of thousands of online contributors. Today, Wikipedia offers more than 10 million articles and is available in more than 250 languages. For some of these languages, Wikipedia is not just free, but the only encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a complex sociotechnical process.
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... Research in understanding how systems for collaborative knowledge creation are impacted by events like data migration is still in its early stages [20], in particular for structured knowledge [12]. Most of the research is focused on Wikipedia [6], which is understandable considering the availability of its data sets, in particular the whole edit history [26] and the availability of tools for working with Wikipedia [19]. ...
... What is the formula for Continued fraction?26. What is the formula for Pythagorean theorem? ...
Introducing MathQA -- A Math-Aware Question Answering System
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  • Jun 2019
We present an open source math-aware Question Answering System based on Ask Platypus. Our system returns as a single mathematical formula for a natural language question in English or Hindi. This formulae originate from the knowledge-base Wikidata. We translate these formulae to computable data by integrating the calculation engine sympy into our system. This way, users can enter numeric values for the variables occurring in the formula. Moreover, the system loads numeric values for constants occurring in the formula from Wikidata. In a user study, our system outperformed a commercial computational mathematical knowledge engine by 13%. However, the performance of our system heavily depends on the size and quality of the formula data available in Wikidata. Since only a few items in Wikidata contained formulae when we started the project, we facilitated the import process by suggesting formula edits to Wikidata editors. With the simple heuristic that the first formula is significant for the article, 80% of the suggestions were correct.
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... But the communities of the many Wikimedia projects have repeatedly shown that they can meet complex challenges with ingenious combinations of processes and technological advancements. 13 ...
Collaborating on the Sum of All Knowledge Across Languages
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Oct 2020
Wikipedia's first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident—a wiki attached to a nascent online encyclopedia—has become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of “free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal. The contributors consider Wikipedia's history, the richness of the connections that underpin it, and its founding vision. Their essays look at, among other things, the shift from bewilderment to respect in press coverage of Wikipedia; Wikipedia as “the most important laboratory for social scientific and computing research in history”; and the acknowledgment that “free access” includes not just access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is biased by who documents it. Contributors Phoebe Ayers, Omer Benjakob, Yochai Benkler, William Beutler, Siko Bouterse, Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze, Amy Carleton, Robert Cummings, LiAnna L. Davis, Siân Evans, Heather Ford, Stephen Harrison, Heather Hart, Benjamin Mako Hill, Dariusz Jemielniak, Brian Keegan, Jackie Koerner, Alexandria Lockett, Jacqueline Mabey, Katherine Maher, Michael Mandiberg, Stephane Coillet-Matillon, Cecelia A. Musselman, Eliza Myrie, Jake Orlowitz, Ian A. Ramjohn, Joseph Reagle, Anasuya Sengupta, Aaron Shaw, Melissa Tamani, Jina Valentine, Matthew Vetter, Adele Vrana, Denny Vrandečić
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... Research in understanding how systems for collaborative knowledge creation are impacted by events like this data migration are still in its early stages [23], in particular for structured knowledge [18]. Most of the research is focused on Wikipedia [11], which is understandable considering the availability of its data sets, in particular the whole edit history [27] and the availability of tools for working with Wikipedia [22]. ...
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Conference Paper
  • Apr 2016
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  • Jan 2014
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Article
  • Jan 2013
  • APPL SOFT COMPUT
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Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2011
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Introducing MathQA: a Math-Aware question answering system
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2018
Purpose This paper aims to present an open source math-aware Question Answering System based on Ask Platypus. Design/methodology/approach The system returns as a single mathematical formula for a natural language question in English or Hindi. These formulae originate from the knowledge-based Wikidata. The authors translate these formulae to computable data by integrating the calculation engine sympy into the system. This way, users can enter numeric values for the variables occurring in the formula. Moreover, the system loads numeric values for constants occurring in the formula from Wikidata. Findings In a user study, this system outperformed a commercial computational mathematical knowledge engine by 13 per cent. However, the performance of this system heavily depends on the size and quality of the formula data available in Wikidata. As only a few items in Wikidata contained formulae when the project started, the authors facilitated the import process by suggesting formula edits to Wikidata editors. With the simple heuristic that the first formula is significant for the paper, 80 per cent of the suggestions were correct. Originality/value This research was presented at the JCDL17 KDD workshop.
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D.: Web Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Web
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Full-text available
  • Jan 2007
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Full-text available
  • Sep 2007
  • J WEB SEMANT
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The two magics of web science. Keynote at the WWW2007 conference in
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T. Berners-Lee. The two magics of web science. Keynote at the WWW2007 conference in Banff, Canada.
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The Two Magics of Web Science
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