
Wikibook-Bot – Automatic Generation of a Wikipedia Book - ghosthamlet
http://arxiv.org/abs/1812.10937v1
======
geraldbauer
FYI: If you put a bunch of text files (with formatting in the markdown
convention) in a folder, that is, a github repo and add _config.yml with the
octobook-book-2018 remote theme you will get a book "automagically" build (and
hosted on a content delivery network) all for free thanks to GitHub (Pages).
See [https://github.com/octobook](https://github.com/octobook) and for more
details the talk notes on octobook
[https://github.com/geraldb/talks/blob/master/octobook.md](https://github.com/geraldb/talks/blob/master/octobook.md)
Cheers. Prost.

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yorwba
TIL there are not just Wikibooks [1] but also Wikipedia books [2]. TFA is
about the latter (but calls them Wikibooks).

I guess the difference is that Wikibooks are written from scratch and expected
to have a coherent structure like a normal book, whereas Wikipedia books only
need to link to existing Wikipedia articles, so they're easier to create.

[1] [https://en.wikibooks.org](https://en.wikibooks.org)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Books)

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CamTin
This is a fascinating idea, which rings very similar to the idea of "trails"
as described in Vannevar Bush's "As We May
Think"([https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-
we-m...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/)): the creative forging of trails through existing works as a
way to generate new knowledge, except in this cases its done automatically by
a machine! Even more interesting would be an editor interface to allow a
natural intelligence (ie a person) to make edits in the trail, rather than in
the ultimately-produced book.

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cooper12
There's a surprisingly large amount of research done based on Wikipedia. Those
interested might want to check out the Research Newsletter:
[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter).

By the way, I found this linked in the sidebox that might be more
understandable to laymen: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612726/this-
algorithm-bro...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612726/this-algorithm-
browses-wikipedia-to-auto-generate-textbooks/)

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userbinator
This is not a new idea...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmniScriptum#Wikipedia_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmniScriptum#Wikipedia_content)

[http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/2010/02/odd-tale-
alphascript-p...](http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/2010/02/odd-tale-alphascript-
publishing-betascript-publishing/)

Also discussed on HN before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183986)

