Submissions/Context visualization for Wikipedia articles

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2014.

Submission no. 5011

Title of the submission: In context visualisation for Wikipedia articles

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): presentation

Author of the submission: Miguel Alejandro Parra - Jean Pierre Charalambos

E-mail address: maparrarunal.edu.co

Username: User: maparrar

Country of origin: Colombia

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): RemixLab - Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Personal homepage or blog: http://maparrar.github.io/

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal): For several years now Wikipedia has been an excellent web tool for introducing human knowledge. Users should thus be provided with a meaningful context concerning the information being consulted to provide a broader overview of a specific topic or event. Wikipedia sometimes recommends articles in its section “See also”, although they barely fulfil the purpose of providing context; such information relies on an encyclopaedist’s knowledge regarding specific areas. This paper was thus intended to ascertain a better way of finding an appropriate context for a given article (from collaborative platforms such as MediaWiki) and display it properly; the development of an automated tool which could provide such context is thereby suggested. This tool will have a display window for creating a valuable, easily understood visual context for each user; such context can also be improved through Wikipedians making suggestions via the interface. This tool could be integrated into every wiki involving MediaWiki, and eventually Wikipedia, since it will be created as a MediaWiki extension. It is ongoing work and has a prototype in alpha phase (see http://maparrar.com/wiki/index.php/Atom). This work considers topics such as Search and Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, information visualisation and usability to fulfil the aims of this research. The prototype has been designed as a standard extension of MediaWiki and features three parts: the link processor, the 3D renderer and the extension driver.

The link processor: This programme searches for links between texts and processes them to provide additional information regarding an article being read. It is proposed that further work should address full text processing to ensure obtaining more complete and relevant information. Semantic MediaWiki is an important tool concerning this specific aspect as it can retrieve information based on articles previously tagged with semantic metadata.

3D renderer: The three-js library (http://threejs.org) is used in the current version; it displays 3D scenes in a browser which supports WebGL. This library also allows 3D objects to be manipulated by using advanced techniques to avoid unnecessary processing. Different interfaces and displays can be managed as three.js is written in Javascript and uses the HTML5 canvas, thereby improving the experience without having to install plugins.

Extension driver: This driver coordinates both the renderer and link processor; moreover, it configures the initial variables and inserts HTML and CSS (cascading style sheets) extension content.

Track

Technology, Interface & Infrastructure

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 20 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Depends on sponsorship

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