| --- |
| license: |
| - cc-by-sa-4.0 |
| - cc0-1.0 |
| language: |
| - en |
| pretty_name: Ballast T1 |
| size_categories: |
| - 10M<n<100M |
| task_categories: |
| - text-retrieval |
| tags: |
| - knowledge-base |
| - wikipedia |
| - rag |
| - grounding |
| - hallucination |
| configs: |
| - config_name: passages |
| data_files: "passages/lic=by-sa/rank_bucket=*/*.parquet" |
| - config_name: statements |
| data_files: "statements/statements.parquet" |
| - config_name: labels |
| data_files: "statements/labels.parquet" |
| --- |
| |
| # ⚓ Ballast T1 |
|
|
| The prose tier of the Ballast knowledge artifact: **full-body English |
| Wikipedia as rank-quantized passage chunks**. It spans 37.4M chunks across |
| 7.0M articles (11.9 GB zstd parquet), in the same nested-bucket layout as |
| [Ballast T0](https://huggingface.co/datasets/OpenBallast/ballast-t0). Where |
| T0 carries facts as triples, T1 carries the paragraphs those facts live in. |
| This is the tier for narrative and long-tail questions that triples cannot |
| serve. |
|
|
|  |
|
|
| **Measured context** (all numbers, protocol, and caveats: |
| [results-retrieval.md](https://github.com/OpenBallast/ballast/blob/main/docs/results-retrieval.md)): |
| with **Qwen3.5-9B-Base (int8)** answering open-ended (≤24 tokens, normalized |
| alias-containment grading) on 2,000 probes from **SimpleQA + NQ-open**, |
| grounding against this corpus with a CPU-only retriever moves accuracy |
| **0.1540 → 0.3315** (single-pass 0.2885; the two-pass support-check |
| architecture adds the rest, and revalidated held-out on PopQA). At equal or |
| less GPU memory, that beats a 12B model running alone (0.1565) by |
| **+17.5 points**. These are generative string-match numbers: a different |
| and harder instrument than the logprob multiple-choice scores on the T0 |
| card; the two do not compare. |
|
|
| ## Layout |
|
|
| Hive-partitioned Parquet; the partition key is the corpus-quantization axis |
| (same rank composite as T0: log sitelinks + log claim count). A level Lk = |
| buckets 0..k. `manifest.json` at the repo root carries per-file counts, |
| bytes, sha256 hashes, and build provenance. |
|
|
| ``` |
| passages/lic=by-sa/rank_bucket={0..7}/*.parquet |
| statements/statements.parquet # 31.9M whitelisted Wikidata statements (CC0) |
| statements/labels.parquet # 10.2M entity labels for rendering them |
| manifest.json |
| ``` |
|
|
| `passages` schema: `qid`, `chunk_idx`, `title`, `heading`, `text` |
| (+ `rank_bucket` and `lic` from the path). Chunks are paragraph runs merged |
| greedily to a ≈1.2 KB target and are **atomic**: serving stacks pack whole |
| chunks or skip them, never truncate. This is the byte-identity condition the |
| published measurements depend on. |
|
|
| | bucket | chunks | articles | bytes | cumulative | |
| |---|---|---|---|---| |
| | 0 | 1.96M | 75K | 662 MB | 0.66 GB | |
| | 1 | 0.76M | 76K | 258 MB | 0.92 GB | |
| | 2 | 1.46M | 150K | 582 MB | 1.50 GB | |
| | 3 | 2.25M | 332K | 784 MB | 2.29 GB | |
| | 4 | 3.28M | 642K | 1.00 GB | 3.29 GB | |
| | 5 | 4.69M | 931K | 1.40 GB | 4.69 GB | |
| | 6 | 7.04M | 1.34M | 2.13 GB | 6.82 GB | |
| | 7 | 16.0M | 3.47M | 5.05 GB | 11.86 GB | |
|
|
| ## Use it |
|
|
| ```sql |
| SELECT chunk_idx, heading, text |
| FROM read_parquet('ballast-t1/passages/**/*.parquet', hive_partitioning=true) |
| WHERE rank_bucket <= 3 AND qid = 'Q42' |
| ORDER BY chunk_idx; |
| ``` |
|
|
| To download only a level: |
| `snapshot_download("OpenBallast/ballast-t1", repo_type="dataset", |
| allow_patterns=["passages/*/rank_bucket=[0-3]/*", "manifest.json"])`. |
| |
| ## Run it locally (serving format) |
| |
| `serving/sqlite/` carries the same chunks (byte-identical to the parquet |
| distribution) as per-bucket SQLite for the |
| [`ballast` CLI](https://github.com/OpenBallast/ballast-cli) (v0.3.0+). |
| The name index joins T0 labels and aliases by QID, with a |
| normalized-title fallback for the 1.28M tail articles T0 never named. |
| Entity-name lookup over prose is functional but unbenchmarked: the |
| measured retrieval numbers above come from the two-pass research stack, |
| which the CLI does not run yet. |
| |
| ```bash |
| uvx openballast pull --tier t1 --level 3 # 1.6 GB download, 8.7 GB on disk |
| uvx openballast serve --corpus t1 # proxy :11435 + MCP :11436 |
| ``` |
| |
| | level | download | on disk | | level | download | on disk | |
| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |
| | L0 | 0.52 GB | 2.0 GB | | L4 | 2.42 GB | 12.1 GB | |
| | L1 | 0.71 GB | 3.1 GB | | L5 | 3.52 GB | 16.7 GB | |
| | L2 | 1.09 GB | 5.7 GB | | L6 | 5.16 GB | 23.5 GB | |
| | L3 | 1.64 GB | 8.7 GB | | L7 | 8.98 GB | 40.5 GB | |
| |
| Sizes are measured from `serving/sqlite/serving_manifest.json` (per-file |
| bytes + sha256), which `pull` also reads to print cost before |
| downloading. |
| |
| The `statements` config is the typed-fact sidecar (subject `s`, property |
| `prop`, object `o` or literal `o_lit`), restricted to a ~70-property |
| whitelist over English-Wikipedia entities, useful as a structured |
| cross-check on prose answers. |
| |
| ## Curation & processing |
| |
| Not a Wikipedia mirror: a chunked, rank-quantized, license-cellular |
| derivation of one. The pipeline, in order: |
| |
| 1. **Scope.** Article namespace only, from the `pages-articles-multistream` |
| dump; redirects resolved (their titles feed the alias index rather than |
| producing duplicate articles); Category/Portal/Template pages excluded. |
| The build covers 99.4% of the dump's 7.54M articles. |
| 2. **Section filtering.** References, external links, see-also, |
| bibliographies, galleries and similar tail sections dropped by heading |
| match before parsing. |
| 3. **Stripping & chunking** (`t1-chunk-v1`). Wikitext stripped with a |
| deliberately simple parser: templates, infoboxes, and tables are |
| *dropped, not rendered* (cost measured and stated under Limitations); |
| paragraphs merged greedily to a ≈1.2 KB atomic-chunk target, first |
| chunk of each section prefixed `Title — Heading:` for self-containment. |
| 4. **Rank join.** Articles joined to the T0 entity rank map by QID, so the |
| prose tier shares the triple tier's notability axis and one entity |
| spine; unmapped articles land in the tail bucket rather than being |
| dropped. This cross-tier alignment (same QIDs, same buckets, prose + |
| triples + statements composable) distinguishes this from existing |
| passage dumps (KILT, wiki-dpr and kin are also years staler and |
| single-granularity). |
| 5. **Dedup.** Exact (qid, chunk_idx) duplicates removed across parse |
| shards at packaging. |
| 6. **Statements sidecar.** The CC0 statements config is Wikidata truthy |
| statements restricted to a ≈70-property whitelist (media, sports, |
| family, positions, taxa: the relation types the eval populations |
| actually ask about), both endpoints restricted to English-Wikipedia |
| entities, plus the labels needed to render them. |
| |
| ## Limitations |
| |
| - **Raw encyclopedia prose, shipped verbatim.** Chunks contain whatever |
| English Wikipedia contained at the snapshot: biographical detail about |
| living people, descriptions of violence and other sensitive topics, and |
| any vandalism that survived patrol. Filter downstream to your use case. |
| - **The parser is deliberately simple.** Templates, tables, and most markup |
| are dropped; occasional markup residue (HTML comments, entities) survives |
| in chunk text. A raw-vs-stripped census priced the cost at **3.2 |
| percentage points (NQ-open) / 4.4 (SimpleQA) of gold-answer capture** |
| versus a perfect parser. The gap is accepted deliberately; the residue is |
| noise, not silent loss. |
| - **Coverage follows notability**, as in T0: head buckets skew to globally |
| notable topics; articles without a mapped T0 entity land in the tail |
| bucket (7). |
| - **Staleness horizon**: the `enwiki-20260701` dump. Rebuilds are versioned |
| releases. |
| |
| ## Provenance & license |
| |
| Parsed from the English Wikipedia `pages-articles-multistream` dump |
| (`enwiki-20260701`): the same corpus build the published retrieval results |
| were measured against, plus the statements sidecar. Ranking joins the T0 |
| rank map. |
| |
| **Passages: CC BY-SA 4.0** (Wikipedia contributors). Attribution resolves |
| through each chunk's `title` to the source article and its revision history; |
| derivatives of the text carry share-alike. **Statements + labels: CC0** |
| (Wikidata contributors). The front-matter lists both licenses; each config's |
| license is stated here and in `manifest.json`. Companion artifacts: |
| [ballast-t0](https://huggingface.co/datasets/OpenBallast/ballast-t0), |
| [ballast-evalsets](https://huggingface.co/datasets/OpenBallast/ballast-evalsets). |
| |
| Questions and issues: [github.com/OpenBallast/ballast/issues](https://github.com/OpenBallast/ballast/issues). |
| |
