Planetary Release Notes

Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 show some of the key features of the Planetary system. The images are from the live system on http://planetmath.org. Footnotes provide more details on our implementation strategy and future plans.

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Figure 1: “Article UI” (reader view), including problems attached to articles, with any metadata. (Source: http://planetmath.org/AnalyticContinuation)

Figure 1 illustrates a key new feature of the system: a block containing problems now shows up whenever the article has attached problems. The figure also illustrates interactions that are available to any logged-in reader when browsing an encyclopedia article, including adding a new problem, adding a correction, asking a question, or adding the article to a collection.

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Figure 2: Autolinked terms in uploaded problems (Source: http://planetmath.org/node/87318)

Figure 2 shows a problem, with its own set of interactions, including the ability to create a new solution. Problems come with a “Related Articles” block that shows all articles to which the problem has been attached. Once solutions have been added, they will be listed in another block.

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Figure 3: Solving a problem (Source: http://planetmath.org/node/87319/edit)

Figure 3 shows the new LaTeX editor, with the user in the process of adding a solution to the problem we just looked at. The text of the problem statement is copied onto the screen above the LaTeX field, so the user doesn’t have to open multiple tabs to keep track of the basic information they need to solve the problem.

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Figure 4: Paradata that shows up as a user works their way through a collection (Source: http://planetmath.org/node/87317)

Articles, problems, and other content can be added to collections, which function as “playlists” for math content, as illustrated in Figure 4. As the user works their way through the problems in a given collection, personalized metadata (or, more precisely, paradata) shows up in the “My info” field. If another user adds a review for a solution, this information will appear. Although collections are just ordered lists, they can also contain other collections, allowing the user to create and share a tree-like outline, or more general network structure of paths through the content.

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Figure 5: Search being used to add items to a collection (Source: http://planetmath.org/attach/87317)

Figure 5 shows a common UI that is used with collections, groups, and questions. Here, the user is adding an item to a collection using free-text search. New member objects can also be added by autocompleting on the title, if the title is known, or added directly.

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Figure 6: Adding a question (Source: http://planetmath.org/node/add/question/36278)

Figure 6 shows a question being added “in context” – which would have been done using the “Ask a question” UI element, like as pictured in Figure 1. Currently, articles, problems, collections, and solutions can have questions attached to them about them. The user can also ask a question without specifying the context by using the “Add content” menu item from the left sidebar directly.

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Figure 7: Current questions appear in context (Source: http://alpha.planetmath.org/radiusofconvergence)

If a question was asked “in context”, a link to the question shows up in the relevant context, as depicted in Figure 7. Questions also show up in the left-hand sidebar along with other recent activity, and this is persisted across the site. This is a essentially a sort of light-weight free advertising for users who contribute questions.

Questions also show up in a special-purpose feed. Note that with these features, we are not trying to clone the interactions on StackExchange, although we are certainly inspired by the activities there. Rather, we are working to use questions and other new features together with the encyclopedia, to help build a cohesive and coherent mathematical knowledge base.

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Figure 8: Making improvements to the encyclopedia when answering a question (Source: http://alpha.planetmath.org/attach/87353)

As indicated in Figure 8 answers are supposed to appear in encyclopedia articles. That means the answerer can either point to an existing article (and add a brief “memorandum”) – or add a new article. This way, questions that deal with topics that aren’t adequately covered by current articles should lead to improvements to the encyclopedia.

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Figure 9: Groups workflow: the option to create a buddy list (Source: http://alpha.planetmath.org/users/jac)

Figure 9 illustrates one of the new, simple mechanisms that Planetary provides for managing access to articles. The user can create a “buddy list” and everyone on the list will have access to all of his or her articles. An existing team can also be specified, in which case, all members of that team will have access to each of the user’s articles. In particular, if a user wants to make all of their articles world editable, they can simply specify the World Writeable team as their buddy list.

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Figure 10: Groups workflow: a team’s shared content (Source: http://planetmath.org/node/85137)

Teams (Figure 10) are similar to buddy lists. Any content that is added to a team is made editable by all of that team’s members – but accordingly, group content can only be shared by someone who already has editing permissions. Collections can be used to assemble content that are is not editable to others – or indeed to the collection-maker.

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Figure 11: Browsing via Mathematics Subject Classification (Source: http://planetmath.org/msc_browser/03-XX)

Figure 11 shows the MSC browser, which provides an efficient way to find relevant content in the encyclopedia.

Title	Planetary Release Notes
Canonical name	PlanetaryReleaseNotes
Date of creation	2013-12-10 16:00:40
Last modified on	2013-12-10 16:00:40
Owner	unlord (1)
Last modified by	unlord (1)
Numerical id	21
Author	unlord (1)
Entry type	Topic