[Search wiki] Mini Aricles and Use of the Main Namespace

[Fred Bauder]

They naturally come up so high on any search result that they are there to
easily consult. And if they don't come up, we can just link to them.

Fred

> Once we have wikipedia crawled/imported, it's flagged as a whitelist
> so WP results should show up at the top of any search as the first
> hit, for close or exact matching keywords.
>
> I could see integrating closely with WP's disambig pages, but the   bulk
> of the content should just be a normal search result, no need to
> special case it is there?
>
> Jer
>
> On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Mark (Markie) wrote:
>
>> hmm what would be peoples thought of using wp content in the main
>> space, which could either be local copies or dynamically called,
>> with local overwrite possible, so that we can have minis with "more
>> here" which then links to pages which have either been specially
>> adapted written locally or then just falls back onto wp (or should
>> be just have a kinda "if local exists then use that, if not link
>> directly to wp" thing)
>>
>> thoughts
>>
>> mark
>>
>> On Jan 25, 2008 10:49 PM, jer <jeremie at jabber.org> wrote:
>> >> As has been noted, links within mini articles to other mini
>> >> articles are
>> >> awkward. Using the main namespace for mini articles would make
>> internal
>> >> linking  more straightforward.
>>
>> My inclination is to make almost all views of a mini article be in-
>> context, that you only see them in their search result.  What reasons
>> are there to view them outside of that context?
>>
>> >> There is also the question of what the
>> >> content of mini articles ought to be. One possibility is brief
>> articles
>> >> about the word or term, a sort of mini Wikipedia article.
>>
>> If these are short as in a sentence or two I could see this, but when
>> they grow to be a body of "real" content, the actual answers to the
>> search term, I worry that it's becoming an answer service and not
>> something that compliments one of the core functions of a search
>> result, to direct people somewhere.
>>
>> >> Another is
>> >> adding significant material about disambiguation of the term.
>>
>> Disambig, as well as poorly formed queries, misspellings (that the
>> currently non-existant did-you-mean feature might not cover), and
>> "hot" or fresh searches (like news, memes, so on) that are always
>> harder with algorithmic approaches.
>>
>> What about the usage of mini articles for straight up "this is the
>> best link and isn't in the search result!" ?  Shouldn't we support
>> this and use that data to index and improve the rankings?  Is it a
>> problem to support that usage?
>>
>> >> Either
>> >> alternative could occur in the mini or main namespace. If the mini
>> namespace is used in one of those ways, the question remains of
>> what the
>> >> main namespace is is used for. I have tentatively assumed the
>> search
>> >> namespace is for policy, the help namespace is for help. If you are
>> confused, the main namespace is an article with nothing in front of
>> it
>> >> ([[Apple]] rather than [[Mini:Apple]]).
>> >>
>> >> As an alternative, I suggest that we continue with the mini
>> >> articles as
>> >> a brief introduction to the subject and reserve the main namespace
>> for
>> >> an intensive disambiguation of its subject, including suggestions
>> regarding how to use appropriate keywords to refine searches to get
>> good
>> >> results for various possibilities. Whether our projected user base
>> would
>> >> actively use and develop such pages remains to be seen, although I
>> find
>> >> it enjoyable.
>>
>> I'm starting to agree with this line of thought, and thinking that it
>> might be good if Mini: is limited to a very small size, few
>> sentences, and can add a "see more" which links to a regular article
>> on the topic.  We can set it up so that the Mini's are only viewed,
>> created, and edited in the search result page directly.
>>
>> Am I at odds with current thoughts on this, or does it sound
>> reasonable?
>>
>> >> There are some discussions at Forum:Mini articles and at Forum:Main
>> Namespace I have been so bold as to provisionally advance a policy
>> page
>> >> at search:Main namespace
>> >>
>> >> Fred Bauder
>> >
>> > Here's a suggested treatment I kind of like:
>> >
>> >     1. As an alternative to maintaining separate articles, the
>> "mini"
>> > content could be maintained as a part of a larger article, for
>> example
>> > in the form of a formal "Summary" section. That section would
>> need to
>> > be extracted on the fly. Would this work?
>> >     2. You have put the big, "encyclopedic" disambiguation article
>> > in the
>> > main space, and the "dictionary" article (which also provides some
>> disambiguation, which is good) in the Mini space. To keep the
>> bulk of
>> > links and articles simple, I would prefer to do it the other way
>> around: Put the small, "mini" article in the main space and the
>> large,
>> > detailed one in a different namespace, such as "dis[ambiguation]" or
>> "extended". Or give it an extension, as in "innocence/
>> disambiguation"
>> > or "innocence (disambiguation)".
>> >     My guess is that there will always be many more small articles
>> > than
>> > large ones. Keeping the bulk of the articles in the main space will
>> make linking simpler. Notice all those "create" and "edit" links in
>> parentheses behind the "search query" (keyword?) links. Currently,
>> they all point to Mini. Most links will intend to refer to the small
>> articles. The namespace prefix would vanish, simplifying the links.
>> >     --RainerBlome 00:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
>> >
>> > Perhaps the extended articles could use the Search namespace and we
>> could
>> > put policy in some other namespace such as policy.
>>
>> If interacting with Mini: is abstracted/hidden through the search
>> result page, I think it would be best to keep it the way it is, so the
>> regular articles are in the regular namespace.
>>
>> One *very* long term thinking is that others could mimic the "Mini:"
>> namespace on their own wiki's, and a crawler can build a database of
>> mini articles from any wiki on the web.
>>
>> Jer
>>
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