User:99of9/ArticleWriting

<< IN DRAFT >>

My advice for writing a simple Abstract Wikipedia article. (Current Context: a populated place, as requested on Project Chat.)

1. Find a comparable article that is well constructed (see later section) and has a similar theme. Here are some examples I've helped with or written:

• Q17198982 Diablo
• Q3130 Sydney
• Q3183 Perth

1. Much of the structure or even some of the statements can be copied directly across. Open both articles in edit mode. Left click on the triple dot of the fragment you want to copy, and choose "Copy to clipboard". Then in the article you're creating either click + then "empty fragment", or left click a triple dot and insert above or below. Finally left click the triple dot and "Paste from clipboard". See also: Help:How to create an article
2. Once a fragment is in, check if it renders well (in English at this stage since it is the only language in which functions can be expected to be configured). You may need to change one of the arguments to adapt to your subject.
3. Put sentence separators (f:Z35672) between sentences. (In some languages this will be no gap at all, but in most will provide a space.)

Adding new content

From Commons

Adding thumbnails makes articles look good. The function to use is f:Z36038. You need to put a language-configured function in the alt-text, because a monolingual text that you typed in would just be monolingual. The simplest function to put in the alt text is f:Z36270 for which you need to pick a QID representing what the picture shows.

From Wikidata

Go through the main statements, and see if you can simply call f:Z36218 with the property you want. This is a very versatile and easy function to use and often gets you a nice result with a reference back to Wikidata very quickly. But even the English implementation cannot currently grammatically handle all 10k Wikidata properties. Surprisingly many work. Eventually each language may need case statement to send different properties to different renderers. But in concept it's well-defined, because almost all properties are already well defined on WD. So technically, your abstract call is correct and any poor rendering in English is not your fault. (Although personally I'd rather not add a statement until it renders well in at least one language!)

From your favourite Wikipedia edition

Consider implementing some of the structural elements:

• Section headings directly from QIDs are usually well translated across many languages, and don't need much grammatical modification. Sometimes you'll want the plural, so there's a second function for that.
• "Main articles" statements are an easy way to link to sub-items of a concept. These are almost all red-links for now, because they're even more specific than the article we're writing. But they are also often translated into many languages. Even though there's no sentence, the reader often learns something from the fact that this is an important sub-article (e.g. in the "economy" section of Australia, if there is a "main article: mining in Australia", then you have already learned that mining is an important part of the Australian economy).

Scan through the article with an existing function in mind. If you're thinking about f:Z36983 ("A is a B located in C"), then you get up to a section that discusses the media coverage in your city, you can add "Channel 7 is a television station in Sydney." Note that even though the article is about Sydney, Sydney doesn't have to be subject A in your sentence, it can be object C.

Similarly, you can use f:Z36218 Wikidata values from other items (you'll need to change the default subject to a different "Literal Wikidata Item Reference" ) if they're relevant to your topic (Perhaps your topic is the value of their WD statement, or perhaps you've already established the relation between your main subject and this concept you're now explaining in more detail).

Things to avoid (at first)

1. Don't try to join multiple sentences into a single paragraph call. That is too expensive for the orchestrator, so it will error. Instead each fragment should be either a new sentence, a sentence spacer, a picture, an infobox, or some other single call.
2. If possible, avoid composing function calls on AW. If wrapping or converting non-HTML types, this is usually better done on WF, so that other AW users can just make a single HTML call. We have already started wrapping quite a few of the monolinguals and strings, so find the HTML-returning versions of NLG functions.
3. Don't worry too much about wikilinks. The generic functions will tend to overlink your sentences. Later you will wrap these in a function which removes links to QIDs you specify. This kind of composition does have to be done on AW, because it is part of the editing process ("Do I really want a link to the concept of largeness in this superlative sentence"?)
4. Don't try to force a sentence into a broad or ill-defined function (e.g. subject-verb-object). If you want to say "Person X died in place Y" you might get tempted to bash an existing function with inputs [X, death, Y], but if it's not designed for the type of sentence you actually want, in some languages it may end up saying "X deathed Y" or something similarly useless. The fact is, we don't currently have a function specific to "Person X died in place Y". So skip that fact for now. (By the way, we do have f:Z37683 if you want to say someone was born in your location. It is currently immature, but at least it means exactly what you want it to mean.)
5. Even choosing the wrong function out of "defining role sentence" or "non-defining role sentence" can make it wrong ("Channel 7 is the television station in Sydney" vs "Channel 7 is a television station in Sydney").

Functions to try

Finding the right functions using search tools on Wikifunctions is currently not easy for a newcomer. Some that seem to have the right name don't work as intended. It is better to look through existing usage, or catalogues compiled by experienced users. I'll make a list of my own here. There are a few of these already (feel free to link to them). But even they may be a little out of date, because NLG functions are being written and have been changing quite rapidly since AW was released. We are still figuring out what is needed. Even many of the current generation of functions may eventually be replaced or reimplemented.