Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Wikitech

Parallell word processing in Wikipedia?

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rolf.lampa at rilnet

May 21, 2008, 6:25 AM

Post #1 of 7 (204 views)
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Parallell word processing in Wikipedia?

Isn't parallel word processing exactly the kind of thing which wikipedia would
have use for? Watch the demo video :

http://www.textflow.com

Isn't that how it should be done?

Regards,

// Rolf Lampa

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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

May 21, 2008, 6:35 AM

Post #2 of 7 (193 views)
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Re: Parallell word processing in Wikipedia? [In reply to]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Rolf Lampa <rolf.lampa[at]rilnet.com> wrote:
> Isn't parallel word processing exactly the kind of thing which wikipedia would
> have use for? Watch the demo video :
>
> http://www.textflow.com
>
> Isn't that how it should be done?

Well, the particular software is closed-source and uses Flash, which
is itself closed-source, so it would be unacceptable for Wikipedia
use, of course. The video demonstrates a standard conflict-resolution
GUI, effectively identical to that used by (for instance) TortoiseSVN,
except they have cool but useless visual effects.

So no, this is nothing but buzz. There's nothing of interest to us
here, or probably to anyone.

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Ryan.Lane at ocean

May 21, 2008, 7:24 AM

Post #3 of 7 (191 views)
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Re: Parallell word processing in Wikipedia? [In reply to]

You may want to look at this:

http://wiki.synchroedit.com/index.php/Main_Page

It does something similar. It is written in Java, but doesn't seem to
work well with IE. I remember trying it in the past, and it seemed
interesting. I can't get it working properly right now though; it may be
abandonware.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces[at]lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces[at]lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
> Rolf Lampa
> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 8:26 AM
> To: wikitech-l[at]lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Parallell word processing in Wikipedia?
>
> Isn't parallel word processing exactly the kind of thing
> which wikipedia would
> have use for? Watch the demo video :
>
> http://www.textflow.com
>
> Isn't that how it should be done?
>
> Regards,
>
> // Rolf Lampa
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l[at]lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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rolf.lampa at rilnet

May 21, 2008, 7:48 AM

Post #4 of 7 (192 views)
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Re: Parallell word processing in Wikipedia? [In reply to]

Simetrical skrev:
> Rolf Lampa wrote:
>> Isn't parallel word processing exactly the kind of thing which wikipedia would
>> have use for? Watch the demo video :
>>
>> http://www.textflow.com
>>
>> Isn't that how it should be done?
>
> Well, the particular software is closed-source and uses Flash, which
> is itself closed-source, so it would be unacceptable for Wikipedia
> use, of course.

I was thinking about the idea, of course. I mean, Ajax is available to all... =)

> The video demonstrates a standard conflict-resolution
> GUI, effectively identical to that used by (for instance) TortoiseSVN,
> except they have cool but useless visual effects.

I was supposing that the demo was a "rigged fancified" version of the real
thing. In any case, having an overview of text contributions and changes in one
place, is a benefit compared to separate views, of course.

> So no, this is nothing but buzz.

Nice buzz isn't a bad thing, though. Not all buzz is useful, but this one seems
to be one. To mee it didn't look like a visual trick which can't be done with a
PHP application (MW) with the support of some Ajax magic.

> There's nothing of interest to us here, or probably to anyone.

The fact that the basic idea is already known, and used, in other context,
doesn't mean that it's useless in another. In any case, this visual trick (or
whatever one prefers to call it) will probably appeal to many people doing
collaborative text editing.

BTW, isn't most UI stuff "visual tricks" compared to what happens in code under
the hood? UI deals with users conceptual level, and his needs and intents,
while code is computer technology.

What you actually did in your reply was giving us all a fairly good
"translation" of the user concept shown in the video put in "computer
technology terms". An almost perfect translation at that. In other words, you
translated something which seems to be a little more than only buzz... <ducking>

:)

Regards,

// Rolf Lampa

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May 21, 2008, 7:58 AM

Post #5 of 7 (191 views)
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Re: Parallell word processing in Wikipedia? [In reply to]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Rolf Lampa <rolf.lampa[at]rilnet.com> wrote:
> The fact that the basic idea is already known, and used, in other context,
> doesn't mean that it's useless in another. In any case, this visual trick (or
> whatever one prefers to call it) will probably appeal to many people doing
> collaborative text editing.

Well, I wasn't entirely awake, I think (nor am I now!). This is not
really different, UI-wise, from TortoiseSVN's merge thing, as I said;
but both are a great improvement over the merge capabilities of
MediaWiki itself, of course. The only thing is, edits on wikis tend
to be relatively short and immediate, and extensive merging is almost
never needed. So trying to get a nifty merging thing (there's no need
for AJAX here, when the full text is available on the client side) is
probably a waste of effort from MediaWiki's perspective.

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rolf.lampa at rilnet

May 21, 2008, 8:43 AM

Post #6 of 7 (182 views)
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Re: Parallell word processing in Wikipedia? [In reply to]

Simetrical skrev:
> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Rolf Lampa <rolf.lampa[at]rilnet.com> wrote:
>> The fact that the basic idea is already known, and used, in other context,
>> doesn't mean that it's useless in another. In any case, this visual trick (or
>> whatever one prefers to call it) will probably appeal to many people doing
>> collaborative text editing.
>
> Well, I wasn't entirely awake, I think (nor am I now!).

=.O

> This is not
> really different, UI-wise, from TortoiseSVN's merge thing, as I said;
> but both are a great improvement over the merge capabilities of
> MediaWiki itself, of course. The only thing is, edits on wikis tend
> to be relatively short and immediate, and extensive merging is almost
> never needed. So trying to get a nifty merging thing (there's no need
> for AJAX here, when the full text is available on the client side) is
> probably a waste of effort from MediaWiki's perspective.

Perhaps you're right in the current WP context.

There's a potential though for MW used in other contexts, such as corporate
wikis etc where you sometimes need to look very closely at your wording before
publishing a text.

Possibly theres a potential in this way of merging text also for WP when doing
Q-work on existing articles. Editors could select several old revisions, which
in part held good contributions (but were reverted because of the "whole" being
not so good) and then the better parts of a partly good (or bad) revision could
be merged into a new quality revision. Could be powerful.

O.O ?

:)

// Rolf Lampa

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wiki at marcusbuck

May 22, 2008, 6:58 AM

Post #7 of 7 (161 views)
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Re: Parallell word processing in Wikipedia? [In reply to]

Simetrical hett schreven:
> Well, I wasn't entirely awake, I think (nor am I now!). This is not
> really different, UI-wise, from TortoiseSVN's merge thing, as I said;
> but both are a great improvement over the merge capabilities of
> MediaWiki itself, of course. The only thing is, edits on wikis tend
> to be relatively short and immediate, and extensive merging is almost
> never needed. So trying to get a nifty merging thing (there's no need
> for AJAX here, when the full text is available on the client side) is
> probably a waste of effort from MediaWiki's perspective.
Well, most edits are short and clear, but there are massive rewrites of
articles or pages too. Take
<http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Niederdeutsche_Sprache&diff=prev&oldid=40361365>
as an example (just a quick example, I guess, there are much more
complex examples around). It is really painstaking to look over such
edits. In many cases I just revert or I just accept the edit, cause it
is too laborious to dig through all the sentences and look whether the
changes are appropiate, copying and pasting (changing back and forth
from one browser tab with the edit box to another with the diff) and in
the end you have to do three more edits to correct your copy&paste mistakes.
It would be really cool, if you could do the merge by just clicking on
the sentences. Would save much time in reviewing massive rewrites.
But I guess, that is a feature that should be implemented in the WYSIWIG
editor for Mediawiki yet to be written. (We need more paid
programmers... Too sad, you can't _force_ voluntary contributors to do
specific tasks ;-) )

Marcus Buck
Slomox

Marcus Buck

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