Wikifunctions talk:What Wikifunctions is not

Collection of gadgets?

Apparently I get to make the first comment ever on this talk page. One thought that occurs to me is that MediaWiki sites often host snippets of JavaScript as either gadgets or sitewide JavaScript in Common.js. When it comes to CSS, you can use TemplateStyles to embed CSS only in the template you want those styles to appear in, instead of on every page load. In theory, you could use Wikifunctions to do the same, to host a gadget on Wikifunctions and then embed that into a wiki page through some kind of syntax. (I gather you can't exactly do this yet, but perhaps in the future?) My question is, does Wikifunctions include being a library of gadgets that can be used on Wikimedia wikis as part of its scope? Harej (talk) 22:26, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Harej Thanks for your feedback (and sorry if I reply this late). Maybe this could be something to be discussed at project chat or to be linked there in order to come to a conclusion, since it seems that there would be a need for a community decision on this. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:12, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Uncomputable Functions

Maybe this should be a different page entirely, but Wikifunctions should not include entries on uncomputable functions, or if it does, it should have a way to designate them as such and not allow implementation attempts. Examples:

• Halts(source code string, input string)
• BusyBeaver(n)
• PostCorrespondenceProblem(A's, B's)
• IsReachable(graph, start, end) on an infinite graph

The benefit of including such pages would be to have something to point to when someone tries to create such a function. Jasper Deng (talk) 22:29, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng Thanks for your feedback (and sorry if I reply this late). Maybe this could be something to be discussed at project chat or to be linked there in order to come to a conclusion, since it seems that there would be a need for a community decision on this. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:12, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

What the heck does this mean?

The second paragraph of the "Wikifunctions is not an encyclopædia of algorithms" section is (emphasis added):

Yes, we expect to have a function for the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two integers. And there might be one or more implementations which are based on Euclid's algorithm to calculate the GCD. But Wikifunctions' main goal is not to gather algorithms, and it would not be incomplete if it didn't include some, and used alternatives instead to compute the GCD. If you are looking for that, many Wikipedias are actually great resources.

What the heck does that third sentence mean? AFAICT, it says:

1. Wikifunctions' main goal is not to gather algorithms
2. it could be complete without including some algorithms
3. it may use "alternatives" to compute the GCD

This raises lots of questions:

• Phrase 2: does this mean that some algorithms should be included? If so, which? If not, what does it mean?
• Phrase 3: What does "use" mean; will Wikifunctions use these functions, or archive them? And, "alternatives" to what?

Does all this mean that Wikifunctions will collect the best function(s) for each need, but not worry about collecting all the well-known functions for each need? If so, it would be good to say so... -- Dtgriscom (talk) 22:48, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, I agree that this part looks unnecessarily complicated. Maybe we can discuss together a way to better phrase it? Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:10, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, the first step is to decide what it is supposed to mean, and I'm still not clear on that. Is there a (perhaps more verbose) well-written description somewhere of what Wikifunctions is supposed to be? Or could you supply one? -- Dtgriscom (talk) 17:42, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

meta:special:mylanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/Goals, maybe? I think it's saying that there's probably more than one algorithm out there to compute a GCD, and while that may turn into more than one WF:glossary#implementation, they will all be tied to a function page which takes numbers as inputs and outputs their GCD. Arlo Barnes (talk) 23:10, 5 February 2024 (UTC)