Wikipedia-snapshots without the most important meta layers, i. e. a) the article's discussion pages and related archives, as well as b) the version history, would be useless to me as critical contexts might be/are missing... especially with regards to LLM-augmented text analysis. Even when just focusing on the standout-lemmata.
I’m a massive Wikipedia fan, have a lot of it downloaded locally on my phone, binge read it before bed, etc. Even so, I rarely go through talk pages or version history unless I’m contributing something. What would you see in an article that motivates you to check out the meta layers?
Seeing removed quotations and sources, and the reasons given, could be... enlightening sometimes. Even if the removed sources are indeed poor, the very way they are poor could be elucidating, too.
> "I’m a massive Wikipedia fan, have a lot of it downloaded locally on my phone, binge read it before bed, etc."
Me too, albeit these days I'm more interested in its underrated capabilities to foster teaching of e-governance and democracy/participation.
> "What would you see in an article that motivates you to check out the meta layers?"
Generally: How the lemma came to be, how it developed, any contentious issues around it, and how it compares to tangential lemmata under the same topical umbrella, especially with regards to working groups/SIGs (e. g. philosophy, history), and their specific methods and methodologies, as well as relevant authors.
With regards to contentious issues, one obviously gets a look into what the hot-button issues of the day are, as well as (comparatives of) internal political issues in different wiki projects (incl. scandals, e. g. the right-wing/fascist infiltration and associated revisionism and negationism in the Croatian wiki [1]). Et cetera.
I always look at the talk pages. And since I mentioned it before: Albeit I have almost no use for LLMs in my private life, running a Wiki, or a set of articles within, through an LLM-ified text analysis engine sounds certainly interesting.
You can kind of extrapolate this meta layer if you switch languages on the same topic, because different languages tend to encode different cultural viewpoints and emphasize different things. Also languages that are less frequently updated can capture older information or may retain a more dogmatic framing that has not been refined to the same degree.
The edit history or talk pages certainly provide additional context that in some cases could prove useful, but in terms of bang for the buck I suspect sourcing from different language snapshots would be a more economical choice.
