Introduction
What is WikiSummarizer?
WikiSummarizer is a Web-based application specializing in automatic visualization and summarization of Wikipedia articles.
What is summarization?
Automatic summarization is the creation of a shortened version of a text by a computer program. The result is a summary that presents the most important points of the original text.
What is a summary?
A summary is a shorter version of the original information. It highlights the major points from the much longer article. The purpose is to help the reader to quickly get the essential points in a short period of time.
How does WikiSummarizer work?
WikiSummarizer automatically summarizes the Wikipedia articles. The program identifies the most important keywords and ranks them by relevancy. For each keyword the most significant sentences in the original text are presented to the reader. You instantly get the headlines with the most important sentences and keywords.
The blending of visualization with summarization, knowledge browsing, mind mapping provides you with a wide range of means to explore relevant content. At a glance, without much reading, you immediately spot the key information chunks.
All the summaries are stored in the WikiSummarizer knowledge base. Users can easily search the knowledge base by keywords and download the summaries.
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| About WikiSummarizer |
Summarization and speed reading
In fact when we are summarizing, we are zipping through the whole content, homing in on the important chunks. The summaries give us a feel for the whole article. The summarization works like apowerful filter to save time and effort.
With the ability to summarize web pages everybody can become an instant speed reader. With just a click of a button, WikiSummarizer extracts the most relevant keywords and sentences!
You instantly see what the web page is about. The key points are highlighted. This brings your view into focus. You can view any part of the text that contains your favorite keywords. You can rapidly take notes and create mind maps complete with references to the sources.
You get more done in less time. You don’t have to struggle with the text or train to become champion speed reader. And you don’t have to struggle with information overload.
WikiSummarizer as your research companion
With WikiSummarizer you can skim through the key points to easily discover what’s important to you. The summaries of interest lead you to the next step by suggesting search refinements. Use newly discovered keywords to make your searches more specific and relevant. In effect, with summarization you substantially reduce the time to discover valuable knowledge.
The summarization helps with answering such questions as:
- Is this relevant to what I’m looking for?
- Will this give me the answers I’m looking for?
- Is this related to my interest?
- What are the main topics discussed?
What makes an effective summary?
An effective summary is highly readable and focused on the most relevant information. It provides a way to gain quick understanding.
Summarizing is important for strategic readers because it helps rapidly grasp the meaning of text. Providing accurate and concise presentation of the original text's most important points is at the heart of helpful summaries.
The extracted keywords serve as a powerful checklist guiding your eyes from one relevant point to another relevant point. In effect the long original text is reduced without missing the main pointsand without distorting the meaning and intentions of the original version. The ability to identify the key topics and sentences and present them as Visual Summaries is WikiSummarizer's the most valuable capability.
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| WikiSummarizer - Knowledge Base and Visualization |
WikiSummarizer– key features and benefits
WikiSummarizer filtering, summarizing and visualization help users quickly locate the essential information they are looking for. This is achieved by generating highly effective summaries that allow you to evaluate content by reducing the valuable time you spend on hunting for relevant information.
The key benefits are:
- Ease of understanding - visual and structured preview of content helps you determine relevance without reading the entire text
- Easy navigation - keywords and summary sentences are presented in a convenient outline format
- Convenient downloading of Visual Summaries, Tree Views, Keyword Clouds and mind maps
- Speedy information reviews - you can scan the keyword list, select keywords of interest and keep in view only the related summaries
- Rapid note taking – the summarization gives you a head start on note taking by spotlighting keywords and key sentences. You can select the passages and keywords of most interest and download them as structured outlines and mind maps.
- Convenient referencing and citation sourcing by providing access to the entire Wikipedia content organized as a knowledge base.
How can I use and view the summaries?
Visual presentation is at the heart of good communication and the key to speeding up learning. WikiSummarizer offers 3 ways to visually review the summaries:
- as Visual Summaries – interactive maps;
- as Visual Trees - structured outlines; and
- as Keyword Clouds linked to the Wikipedia Knowledge base.
Each of these presentation formats offers specific advantages for quick evaluation, learning and communication.
These highly complementary and interactive presentation formats are focused on making learning and discovery effortless and stimulating curiosity and innovation.
What is Visual Summary
Visual Summary is an interactive map of the key topics and summaries. You can easily zoom in on any topic for more details and easily zoom out to get the overall picture. Visual Summary offers a very effective method for illustrating the essential concepts and summaries. The keywords form a map with links to the related summaries.
In effect, Visual Summary is an interactive map that users can quickly navigate by opening and hiding the details as needed. The most important keywords are located on the top of the map. In addition, Short Summary and Full Summary are presented.
What is Tree View?
Tree View is an interactive outline presented as a tree structure. It is a form of executive summary spotlighting the most essential content. The keywords generate a table of contents, guiding users to the related summaries.
What is Keyword Cloud?
Keyword Cloud offers a visual representation of text in the form of keyword metadata. The importance of the keywords is indicated by font size. The larger the font, the more important the keyword is. Keyword Clouds are useful for quickly perceiving the most prominent topics. The keywords are hyperlinked to Wikipedia Knowledge base, a module of WikiSummarizer.
What is WikiSummarizer knowledge base?
WikiSummarizer knowledge base is like a gigantic map pointing to the most important information in Wikipedia. This map allows instant retrieval of the most useful summaries across all Wikipedia articles. Users just need to enter a keyword of interest to get the summaries.
You can think about the knowledge base as a library of topics with summaries and relationships pointing to the most relevant information.
The summaries can be downloaded to user’s text editor and mind mapping applications.
Summarizing a Wikipedia article
- Select the Summarize Wikipedia article tab.
- Enter any keyword; you can also select keywords from the suggestions provided.
- Click on the Summarize button.
Note 1: If the keyword you entered is not described in Wikipedia, the message "Unable to find article" will be displayed. Please check the spelling for capital and smaller case letters and singular or plural form.
Note 2: If you use a keyword that has multiple meanings, you will be presented with a selection "may refer to". By simply clicking on any of the choices, the Visual Summary will be created.
Using the Wikipedia Knowledge Base
- Select the Wikipedia Knowledge Base tab.
- Enter a keyword and click the Search button.
- The search results provide a list of summaries from Wikipedia that contain the desired keyword.
- Each item on the list provides summaries for the keyword.
- In the "Display first" file you can choose the number of summaries.
Note 1: If the keyword you entered is not described in Wikipedia, you will see the message "Unable to find article."
Note 2: If you use a keyword that has multiple meanings, you will be presented with a selection "may refer to". By simply clicking on any of the choices, the Visual Summary will be created.
Using the Get HTML Code option in Keyword Cloud
If you would like to publish Keyword Clouds you can click on the Get HTML code button to obtain the HTML code you need for embedding the Keyword Cloud in you blog, website, email, and documents.
Switching between Visual Summary, Tree View and Keyword Cloud views
To select your view, choose the radio buttons. You can keep switching between the views.
What if I do not get a Wikipedia article summary?
Wikipedia requires exact spelling of keywords and phrases. The spelling is case sensitive. If your term is spelled in Wikipedia with a capital letter and you entered it using lower case, the summary may not be generated. Also, some of the Wikipedia articles are entered as singular and plural forms so you need sometimes to experiment.
What are the best practices for producing summaries?
The summarization works best when the web pages contain text. Web pages containing only graphics and/or videos cannot be summarized. The more text on the page, the better the generated summaries.
Export Functions
What is Rich Text Format (RTF) export?
You can export summaries to your text editor. RTF is a popular document interchange format. Most editors work with the RTF format so when you export the summaries, you will be able to easily edit them to suit your needs.
What is HTML (Visual Summary) export?
The HTML export presents the summary using Visual Summary, which can be displayed in any web browser. Visual Summary provides users with the ability to navigate summaries using keywords. It is a convenient way to focus attention on the desired content.
Visual Summaries can be shared as interactive maps that can be uploaded to blogs and websites to illustrate the textual content.
What is Mindjet MindManager export?
The export to Mindjet MindManager application converts summaries to MindManager mind maps. It is a convenient way to automatically create mind maps from web pages and documents. Since many mind mapping applications import MindManager maps, this format can be conveniently used for creating mind maps in most mind mapping applications.
What is XMind export?
The export to XMind converts summaries into XMind mind maps.
What is MindGenius export?
The export to MindGenius converts summaries into MindGenius mind maps.
What is iThoughts export?
The export to iThoughts converts summaries into iThoughts mind maps for iPad and iPhone users.
Adapting WikiSummarizer for other applications
Can I use the WikiSummarizer technology for different information sources?
Yes. The WikiSummarizer technology summarizes web pages and most popular document formats including PDF, Word, and TXT. A summarization application can be adapted to any website, SharePoint, corporate document repository and content management system.
As access and volume of data is rapidly increasing there is a need to simplify the ability to use and knowledge-mine information. In particular the use of information provided by search engines, RSS services, subscriptions to academic and professional libraries, massive amounts of blogs, websites, news alerts, etc. – all these sources are very suitable for the use of automatic summarization.
What can I use WikiSummarizer for?
The phenomenon of information overload means that accessing the relevant information in the sea of text is difficult. There is too much to read and far too little time to do it. WikiSummarizer works as a companion application to provide the most relevant summaries of the original Wikipedia articles. Coherent and accurate summaries are vital for a quick understanding.
If you are researching any topic, the Wiki Summarizer knowledge base will rapidly provide you with the list of the most relevant Wikipedia articles and summaries. If you are a student, a writer, a journalist, a busy professional, a blogger and need to quickly and efficiently learn, discover, analyze, review, compare, judge, and find out about any topics among the almost 4 million articles in Wikipedia you will find Wiki Summarizer a convenient companion application.
How do I discuss the use of this technology for my applications?
Question and suggestion are welcome and encouraged. Please share your feedback using the Contact us form.
Why we ask for Support, Suggestions and Donations?
WikiSummarizer is a huge undertaking in knowledge sharing that provides summaries of all Wikipedia articles, developed by a small, dedicated team with limited resources. We rely solely upon user support and welcome your contributions via PayPal to help us continually index and update our Wikipedia sources; add servers; increase bandwidth and update this site. Please try Wiki Summarizer and share your experiences with us, as well as letting us know what else you would like to see in the future. Our current release allows to:
- efficiently visualize and summarize articles across ALL Wikipedia pages for references to your research topics
- download the summaries as Visual Summaries, Tree Views, Keyword Clouds to assist your research, publishing, learning and blog writing
- download the summaries as mind maps for instant visualization in your favorite mind mapping application
- take notes – quickly collect topics and sentences from all contextually relevant Wikipedia pages
- speed-up reading by condensing each article to the essential keywords and summaries
- make a long story short – the summaries headline most important sentences giving instant information capsules
Your donations, support and feedback help making WikiSummarizer a valuable knowledge discovery companion to Wikipedia. Our goal is to facilitate finding essential facts and identifying the relevant information hidden in documents so we can all benefit from the wealth of facts stored in Wikipedia. Many thanks,
The WikiSummarizer team
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