Submissions:2025/How Different Languages Contribute to Abstract Wikipedia Content's Potential
This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2025.
Title:
- How Different Languages Contribute to Abstract Wikipedia Content's Potential
Type of session:
- Edit-a-thons or Workshops (30-120 min)
Session theme(s):
- Future of Wikipedia
Abstract:
The Abstract Wikipedia team’s plan for the first quarter of the 2025-26 year finally includes as an objective “[d]emonstrat[ing] NLG Abstract Content”, a long time coming since the approval of the project five years prior. In the intervening time much has expanded in the realm of lexicographical data, even as large areas of it still beg for improvements, and there have been many discussions and proposals of how abstract content could work. Yet the discussion of what abstract content even is remains nebulous, as a recent consultation on its location demonstrates, and some still have concerns that this content will simply be thinly disguised English or some other majority language.
This workshop will explore the actual and potential contributions of different languages, both in their lexical information and in any conceptual distinctions, to abstract content as envisioned by this workshop’s proposer. Participants will have the opportunity to generate different types of text from language-independent representations that take advantage of the different ways elements of different languages are put together. Each demonstration will show how new expressions for a wide variety of concepts in a language can be created using parallels from other languages in word or phrase formation. While some examples will refer to features of English, most examples will try to focus on how other languages work and how their features can benefit abstract content more generally.
It is hoped that by the end of this workshop, each participant can identify one concrete way that they can improve something in a language with which they are familiar, in order to facilitate the generation of other content, encyclopedic or otherwise, in various languages when the Abstract Wikipedia project finally launches.
Author name(s):
Wikimedia username(s):
- Mahir256
Affiliated organization(s):
Estimated length of session
- 30-120min
Will you be presenting remotely?
- I will present in-person
Okay to livestream?
- Livestreaming is okay
Previously presented?
- On the general subject of lexemes I've previously presented multiple times before; on the specific subject of Abstract Wikipedia content I've given my thoughts to a Wikifunctions-related group and written a paper on my own work in this area.
Special requests:
- The more time I could have for this the better (a full hour or two) and as a workshop, although I could abbreviate the content into a half-hour lecture slot if this becomes absolutely necessary.