Wikipedia:WikiProject Concepts/Discussion

It would be quite useful to store only the relevant data for each day/month/year/decade/century page (e.g. 1985). That way we could implement more advanced queries, e.g. "list all important events in the years 1348-1352" and minimize the amount of stored data (saying that John Doe was born on DD/MM/YY once rather than adding his name to both the Days list, the Months list and the Years list).

---

Regarding the Concepts WikiProject, I would like to understand better what qualifies as a concept and what doesn't. For instance, is "electron" a concept? How about "beauty" or "religion"? What happens if there are wpc articles about concepts which are also treated elsewhere in the Wikipedia? --AxelBoldt

• I'm not yet sure how to define the concept of "concept". I'd say that a concept is something that can be defined by its relationships to other concepts (somewhat circular, I know... anyone have a better definition?). "Electron" is definitely a concept. I'll get around to defining it eventually. "Beauty" and "religion" are loaded words. If you find a particular, simple definition for those terms, I'd say you would have defined concepts. But probably not everybody would agree to call these concepts "beauty" and "religion". The idea here is to start from concepts, then slap a name onto them, rather than the other way around. Thanks a lot for your interest! --Seb

• Done deed. wpc/electron

• Concerning your last question, the goal of wpc is an orderly organization of theoretical knowledge. It is all structure and (almost) no meat. So I would rather not call a wpc entry an "article". It is to be hoped that deeper treatment will be found in the Wikipedia, which is why there is a section for links into it.

• • I'm still waiting to hear how doing this contributes to the goal of writing an encyclopedia, exactly. If it doesn't make any clear, demonstrable contribution, I am thinking that it would probably be better to carry out this project on a different wiki. --LMS

---

I think by far the best way to figure out how to "organize all known concepts in a logical manner" is to write encyclopedia articles. Trying to say a priori how concepts are related, without exploring all the multivarious ways, in detail (here, the devil is in the details), of how different topics are related, seems inefficient.

• I hope that discussions of concepts will result in new relationships that can be integrated in the definition. In that sense, I wouldn't say that we're trying to say a priori how they are related. The first edition of a concept entry is a priori; but a posteriori modifications are always possible.

• • But if the data-gathering is done from actual articles that give the details about concepts to be interrelated, of what use is project, other than as a philosophical investigation (not something of particular interest for an encyclopedia per se, but interesting in itself--speaking as a philosopher, I agree with that)? In other words, if the articles-organized-by-hypertext in their "natural" relations do themselves wear their structure on their sleeve, and you use that to develop a conceptual hierarchy, then what is the point of making the conceptual hierarchy?

I also don't see what the point of trying to "organize all known concepts in a logical manner" for Wikipedia would be. How would we use the work? As I understand it, the point of "WikiProjects" is ultimately assist in the building of an encyclopedia. How does "WikiProjects Concepts" do that?

• I'm not only interested in building an encyclopedia, but also in building an encyclopedia that makes it easy and quick for a reader to find and learn about stuff that is related to his/her interests. And I believe that an easy-to-follow logical structure is one of the best ways to get acquainted with concepts that we know nothing about, starting from concepts that we do know about. I'll try to find a good example for you. Check back this page in a while.

• • I share your goal 100%. But how will this project "make it easy and quick for a reader to find and learn about stuff that is related to his/her interests"? It looks to me like you're developing a conceptual scheme, what some people (slightly annoyingly, to philosophers :-) ) call an "ontology," and I am having trouble understanding how having that contributes to our goal. See, I've been working professionally on building encyclopedias for almost two years now, and before that I gave a great deal of thought to the very idea of conceptual hierarchies. I think that philosophically they're very interesting and important. So we're on the same page as far as the inherent interest of this sort of project is concerned. But I haven't seen any good evidence that developing a hierarchy benefits an encyclopedia project. In particular I think it's a mistake to try to shoehorn content into a hierarchy--this is one main reason I am so adamantly opposed[?] to subpages for encyclopedia articles. I think that an optimum description of an aspect of the universe, such as we are trying to develop on Wikipedia, necessarily describes its relations to other aspects of the universe in the most precise way possible. Anything short of that sort of complete description is necessarily a simplification that contains inaccuracies.

The very best thing we all can be doing on Wikipedia is writing encyclopedia articles about stuff we know about. --Larry Sanger

• I respect your opinion. I believe I'm not the first contributor to propose that we complement Wikipedia articles with an access structure. I hope you don't see this project as a threat for the Wikipedia itself. I for one believe it could make it even more attractive. --Seb

• • I respect your opinion too. :-) What exactly do you mean by "an access structure"? Would this be a conceptual scheme that is somehow tailor-made to provide some sort of clear, helpful "access" into the content of Wikipedia? OK. In what ways could a conceptual scheme be used to give clear, helpful access into the content of Wikipedia (or however you'd like to describe what "access" amounts to)? Suppose I happen upon http://www.wikipedia.com and I don't want to use the search engine--I want to start browsing through the categories to find an article about what I'm interested in. How, precisely, would your work be used to help me? I suppose you might think it could help organize a set of navigational links at the bottom of the article page. But isn't that better explored by the people who are writing each individual page--the experts on each individual subject area?

• • I do see a threat for Wikipedia--not a serious one, but definitely a philosophically interesting one :-) --in that people will try to, as I say, shoehorn the complex universe we live in into tidy conceptual structures, at the expense of accuracy and with the very real potential of causing yet more internecine warfare, now about what the "correct conceptual scheme" is. I think most such disputes are pointless, when we can usually go to the facts themselves, i.e., complete articles about subjects, which then necessarily spell out the relations that subjects have to other subjects. (Whenever you talk about something, you have to mention something else, to which it is somehow related, and if your language is precise and accurate, you will have accurately stated exactly what the relations are between the things--and hence between the concepts.)

• • I hope it's clear that I'm mostly interested in just thinking about this, as a philosopher. But I do definitely also have a motive to prevent us from possibly wasting our time. Just writing articles is always a good idea, I think. :-) --LMS

Okay, let me try to /Recap this.

See also : WikiProject Concepts