Hi Cheng, As you say there are many recommendation systems, some of them already work or used to work with wikipedia (like StumbleThru) or just to find interesting articles (like reddit.com/r/wikipedia ). In my opinion those systems are better developed externally because if not done right, they can get easily annoying... for instance, if you use previous contribution or watchlist data, I might have edited or be watching articles about themes I am not longer interested in. And if done right, then you need to put many more hours than a Gsoc would allow you. Anyway, maybe a mentor is interested, if not take a look to the proposed projects with mentor. There are some cool ideas there too :)
Micru On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Cheng Xing <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Wikimedia Developers, > > My name is Cheng Xing, and I'm interested in working with Wikimedia for > GSoC this summer. I sent the email below to the mailing list few days ago, > but it didn't seem like it went through, so here it is again. > > Thank you for your time! > > Sincerely, > Cheng > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: "Cheng Xing" <[email protected]> > Date: Apr 18, 2013 5:40 PM > Subject: [Google Summer of Code '13] Project Idea - "Inspire Me" Button > To: <[email protected]> > > Hi Wikimedia Developers, > > My name is Cheng Xing, and I am a freshman in Cornell University College of > Engineering planning to pursue a major in Computer Science and minor in > Electrical and Computer Engineering. > > The gist of my idea is this: Create a magical "Inspire Me" button in the > homepage of Wikimedia sites so that it directs the user to a page that > he/she is most likely interested in. In other words, it's a page > recommender system. > > For example, if a programmer clicks the "Inspire Me" button on Wikipedia, > articles such as the Whitespace programming language, Rubber Duck > Debugging, etc. would show up. Things that the user probably doesn't know > about, that would probably interest the user, will show up by clicking that > button. Very occasionally there'd be random things like Stitches, which > the user might know nothing about, but might actually be interesting. > > I got this idea from three different places: Pandora, XKCD, and my own > Wikiholic-ness. Pandora, for its impressive recommender system that uses > user accounts and likes/dislikes to track recommendation data; XKCD, for > its entertainment through their "Random" button; and lastly, my own > Wikiholic-ness, for its eagerness to find random interesting things on > Wikipedia. > > I think the best part of Wikimedia is its ability to inspire people from > all over the world, and it has achieved this by simply presenting > information to the masses. In my opinion, a tool that filters and > recommends information to users would be much more inspirational. Just > imagine how many people all over the world can find their dreams this way. > > I realize that this could become quite a big project, so if I get the > chance to work on this, I will do a small part (possibly the basic > infrastructure of the system) for GSoC, and I am more than willing to > continue to contribute after that. > > I have some ideas of how this recommender systems would work, but this > email is pretty long as it is. Please send me questions and comments! I > really appreciate it. > > Sincerely, > Cheng > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Etiamsi omnes, ego non _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
