Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

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October 24

Scoring for LLM generated Wikipedia Style models.

I am part of a team at a University where we are building a LLM style model which will be given a topic and will generate different subtopics and then text in order to write an informative article. We are going to be using several different types of scoring mechanisms, but we would ideally like to have frequent wikipedia editors collaborate with scoring the articles.

Is there a specific location that I could reach out to those who are frequently editing on wikipedia? Terribilis11 (talk) 00:23, 24 October 2023 (UTC) Terribilis11 (talk) 00:22, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please dont use LLMs to write articles. See the guidance in the essay at Wikipedia:Large_language_models RudolfRed (talk) 01:15, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We aren't intending to use the LLM to write articles that we will then try to publish either on Wikipedia or the wider internet. Rather we are doing research, where Wikipedia is the gold standard we are trying to reach with our LLM. Terribilis11 (talk) 00:10, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
New articles submitted as drafts are often reviewed by participants in the WikiProject Articles for creation. Perhaps some of them may be inclined in participating in your experiment, in which case the discussion page of the Wikiproject is a suitable location. I think that in any call for cooperation you should describe the objectives of the effort.  --Lambiam 11:40, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I also wondered about the objectives. I get the feeling that the OP is looking for someone to do the grunt work to check the veracity of the LLM article. Every reference will have to be checked and vetted. LLMs are known to hallucinate. Very little - if anything - in an article like that can be taken at face value. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 05:51, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is not clear from the original request that the intention is to produce informative articles for publication. It is also not clear the texts will contain any references. Perhaps one of their aims is to compare the effectiveness of various methods for increasing reliability.  --Lambiam 12:23, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the response. Our goal is for educational research. We are going to be building a LLM that will be focused on writing Wikipedia style articles with citations, and different sub-points. We will also have an automatic scorer that will score the essay based on 1. Well Written, 2. Verifiable with no original research, 3. Broad in its coverage, and 4. Qualitative comments (The first three metrics for a Good Article + Qualitiative comments). We would take a subset of our articles produced and score them by actual Wikipedia editors as a way to verify our scorer is within reason. Terribilis11 (talk) 19:45, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In answer to the location question, there is Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). But as your project maybe educational, there is also Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Have you your axes ready?" MinorProphet (talk) 21:55, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

October 26

Open proxy checker for IPv6?

Hello, I'd like to try with some checkers against open proxy, especially against IPv6 addresses. Is there anything to recommend? ---Lemonaka‎ 17:28, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

October 27

Play an OGG file slower

The file File:Bob Minor, Synthesised Bell Sounds.ogg is used in a number of articles for a number of languages, bringing to life the point of these articles. However, it plays so fast that one needs to be a musical genius to comprehend it. How can a reader play it slower?

(I asked a different question about the same file at Commons:Help_desk#Downloading_an_OGG_file) ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 10:19, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've just listened to it and it seems to be about the right speed for lightish 6 (maybe 8 cwt tenor). Much slower and it would drag on the synthesised bells. There is a YouTube video that shows a course of PBM and at 1:57 goes through it at half speed which might help. See Educational: Plain Bob Doubles (plain course) on YouTube, but you will need to check out copyright before including it directly. The alternative would be to write out a score in either Lilypond or ABC which could then be set at a tempo that you find correct for the article. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your reply, Martin. There's a misunderstanding: I'm not saying that the speed of the file is wrong for the article. All I'm saying is that I would like to listen to it (also) at a lower speed - this was the main reason for posting my question here instead of at WP:HD. That said, I was also hoping there'd be a way that would allow other readers to vary the speed, too, and if there was, I was willing to aid in implementing it here for the benefit of all readers. (BTW, thank you also for you suggestions for rewriting the file. Another way would be to write a MIDI file, either manually with a program like Audacity, or synthetically with a script. All of these, of course, are much more work than simply changing the speed, which I was hoping to be possible, as it is with several other players, such as Audacity or the feature provided by YouTube.) ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 16:34, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can simply download it and play it trough the player of your choice. VLC did it for me. But I think you know that. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 03:30, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Stephan. Yes, that's what the Help_desk question was about. :-) I thought there was maybe a way from within Wikipedia, which was just not well documented, and I could have fixed that. But if there isn't, this question can be closed. It's not worth a feature request. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 21:22, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

October 28

Excel

I suppose it's to be expected—and rightly so, per WP:NOTGUIDE, NOTHOWTO etc—but our article on Excel does not make it quite clear how, in a csv file, one could split each row into its own separate file while renaming it after its first column. Serial 15:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. So... are you asking how to do that thing? You're going to need a macro, which is a program written in VBA that gives Excel instructions on what you want it to do. Typing excel macro split csv into files and rename into your favourite search engine will start you on the right track, including YouTube tutorials that guide you though the process. Matt Deres (talk) 23:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that, Matt Deres! Serial 10:44, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a Python job to me but I guess you can do it in VBA okay. NadVolum (talk) 10:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

October 29

Help with an url

Hello, I need to find the correct link to be able to reference a series of articles based on their profile on the 2023 Pan American Games website. For example, for the swimmer Coby Carrozza (reference number 5), the correct url is: https://results-santiago2023.org/#/participants/athletes?bio=SWM.11435021 (https://results-santiago2023.org/#/medals/search?&bio=SWM.3478795), but I put it in the article and when I click on it, it redirects to the general page (not to the swimmer's file). How can the URL be manipulated so that when adding it in the article as a reference it opens exactly the athlete's file? I appreciate your ideas. Leonprimer (talk) 18:37, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, it seems that Bornan (the company that implemented that competition's results systems) use software that queries their database asynchronously (using the URL parameters you describe) which returns a (proprietary format) object that is rendered (client side) using JavaScript. They haven't implemented a stable HTML-only query service nor a no-javascript fallback option (which also means the Wayback machine isn't helpful) - at least not that I can find. Given that this event includes a parasport element, one might think particular effort would have been put into its accessibility, which often means a plain-text-and-links-html site, but if that exists, I can't find it. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 19:07, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the answer. So means it, that regardless of the configuration used by the developer, we do not have any way to manipulate the url so that it shows the file of each athlete open in a window with its respective url instead of the popup form as shown, isn't it?
@Finlay McWalter:, I have a similar case: the url https://www.usaswimming.org/meet-the-team/national-team-roster, is there a way to find the identifier code of each athlete?, to use it for reference (now clicking on "View Bio" of each athlete opens a window but without changing the url). All the best. Leonprimer (talk) 23:40, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think you can find a static URL (that returns HTML, which is what you need) for either of these. The second one is similar (but different); it's also an AJAX download for each person (the second works differently - it submits a form with an HTTP POST, and gets an HTML fragment response, which its javascript then inserts into the page). -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 10:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

October 30

How does Microsoft Word and Excel store data?

I mean, is it stored in arrays, or linked lists? Or binary trees, etc. And how about for simpler applications like Wordpad and Notepad? 170.76.231.162 (talk) 18:09, 30 October 2023 (UTC).[reply]

It looks like it uses Office_Open_XML format. RudolfRed (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And that probably means that internally it represents documents as trees, similar to the Document Object Model of HTML documents. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We can't really know without looking at the source code, and as these applications are closed source, I wouldn't expect a definitive answer here on Wikipedia. Or you have to reverse engineer it from a memory dump.
For Microsoft Word and Excel, the documents may be internally represented in a way similar to the original .doc and .xls file formats of 30 years ago, instead of the more modern xml-based formats. The people at LibreOffice and precursors have done a decent job at reverse engineering that format, so you might find some details there. For a text editor like Notepad, dealing just with plain text, there are many ways to do this. One needs a compromise between easy deletion or insertion of characters, easy jumping over many characters and memory use. For applications that have been around for decades, memory use may have been more important than today. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:30, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't work with Word. For Excel, you can easily see how it stores data. The xlsx file is a basic zip file. So, unzip it. You will see folders. Go into xl. You will see sharedStrings.xml, which are values shared among sheets. Go into worksheets and there is an xml file for each sheet. The format is easy to look through. The basic concept is that values are stored in a table of values, each with an index. The cells in the spreadsheet are given an index, which is looked up to get the value when it is displayed. You can also see how styles are applied in the styles.xml file. Overall, Excel is a collection of XML files all zipped up. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

October 31