Because WP is unstructured natural language, this is impossible to automate completely.
I agree. What I intended was a markup language that editors could use. Then somebody could surf Wikipedia with some plugin installed so that marked facts would be highlighted in some way. Clicking on the fact would then bring up a box showing the relevant note card (or multiple variants), and you could select to add it to your database.
I think all the commercial providers of flashcards for SM have failed. Apparently it isn’t that valuable.
Links? I’m more keen on the collaborative idea personally, but I haven’t totally ruled out a commercial (curated) angle. I’m pretty stingy myself, but I would definitely pay for a high quality SR deck. Maybe I’m unusual though.
My theory is that hand-made cards are good enough and often better than purchased ones; it’s even harder for commercial ones to compete with the best freely-distributed ones. (Take a look at the samples for a number of the decks, like the assembler deck. My own assembler flash cards are better!)
The quality doesn’t seem particularly great for the SM bought decks. For instance, for a foreign language deck I’d like to see images and native pronunciations, preferably from multiple speakers. For a chemistry deck I’d like to see 3D representations of molecules, preferably in multiple manners (ball-and-stick, spheres, etc), even better if the flash card allowed for rotational viewing of the molecule.
I definitely wouldn’t buy any of the decks I saw on SM.
There are various plans to finally implement some sort of Wikidata—think “infoboxes on steroids” as an absolute minimum, and then unknown possibilities we haven’t even thought of yet. Erik Moller’s been asking around the Wikimedia Commons and technical lists for ideas of what we actually want in terms of a specification.
I agree. What I intended was a markup language that editors could use. Then somebody could surf Wikipedia with some plugin installed so that marked facts would be highlighted in some way. Clicking on the fact would then bring up a box showing the relevant note card (or multiple variants), and you could select to add it to your database.
Links? I’m more keen on the collaborative idea personally, but I haven’t totally ruled out a commercial (curated) angle. I’m pretty stingy myself, but I would definitely pay for a high quality SR deck. Maybe I’m unusual though.
Currently the only surviving seller of SM flashcards that I know of is SM itself: http://www.super-memo.com/collections.html
And if you look at their recent-addition list (http://www.super-memory.com/sml/accession.htm), #1 is http://www.super-memory.com/sml/2003/651.htm which was last updated… 2004.
My theory is that hand-made cards are good enough and often better than purchased ones; it’s even harder for commercial ones to compete with the best freely-distributed ones. (Take a look at the samples for a number of the decks, like the assembler deck. My own assembler flash cards are better!)
The quality doesn’t seem particularly great for the SM bought decks. For instance, for a foreign language deck I’d like to see images and native pronunciations, preferably from multiple speakers. For a chemistry deck I’d like to see 3D representations of molecules, preferably in multiple manners (ball-and-stick, spheres, etc), even better if the flash card allowed for rotational viewing of the molecule.
I definitely wouldn’t buy any of the decks I saw on SM.
There are various plans to finally implement some sort of Wikidata—think “infoboxes on steroids” as an absolute minimum, and then unknown possibilities we haven’t even thought of yet. Erik Moller’s been asking around the Wikimedia Commons and technical lists for ideas of what we actually want in terms of a specification.
That sounds like a great step in the right direction! I’d love to hear more about this as it evolves.