---
datasets:
- juno-labs/simple_wikipedia
language:
- en
license: cc-by-sa-3.0
source_datasets:
- wikipedia
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: train
    path: data/train-*.parquet
tags:
- simple-wikipedia
- wikipedia
- markdown
- sqlite
---

# Simple English Wikipedia (Markdown)

Recurring weekly snapshot of Simple English Wikipedia (https://simple.wikipedia.org/), which uses shorter sentences and limited vocabulary compared to the main English Wikipedia. This makes it smaller, easier to parse, and better suited for on-device or bandwidth‑constrained assistants while still covering broad general knowledge. Ideal as an offline Wikipedia MCP server backing a household AI assistant.

- Dump date: 2026-02-01
- Source dump: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/simplewiki/20260201/simplewiki-20260201-pages-articles.xml.bz2
- SHA-1: 2e69e254423c30c5d7a27fe46dbd4690550f3b6b
- Records: 275630
- Refresh cadence: Weekly on Sundays at 11:00 UTC

## Dataset Structure

Columns:
- `page_id` (int64): Unique page identifier from Wikimedia dump.
- `title` (string): Article title.
- `content` (string): Article body converted to markdown with internal and external links preserved.
- `content_no_link` (string): Same content with markdown links stripped to plain text.
- `importance` (string): Importance for a household smart speaker assistant (`low`, `medium`, `high`, or `unknown` when not categorized).
- `truncated` (bool): `true` when the source article exceeded 40,000 characters; only the first two paragraphs are parsed and stored in this case; otherwise `false`.
- `error` (bool): `true` when the article could not be parsed (content fields are empty in this case); otherwise `false`.

## Processing

- Downloaded `pages-articles` XML dump and verified SHA-1.
- Kept only namespace 0 articles, skipped redirects, and dropped titles beginning with “List of”.
- Stripped templates/ref/gallery blocks and file/category links; converted headings, lists, tables, and internal/external links to Markdown with page IDs.
- Stored a SQLite mirror (`pages` table) alongside the Hugging Face dataset.
- Markdown links point to the target page's numeric ID for fast lookup without a title-to-ID join.

## Usage

Load with `datasets`:

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juno-labs/simple_wikipedia", split="train")
print(ds[0])
```

SQLite usage (`simplewiki.sqlite` mirrors the same columns):

```bash
sqlite3 simplewiki.sqlite "SELECT page_id, title, substr(content,1,200) || '...' FROM pages LIMIT 5;"
```

You can also mount it in code:

```python
import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3.connect("simplewiki.sqlite")
cur = conn.cursor()
for row in cur.execute("SELECT title, content FROM pages WHERE page_id = ?", (7553,)):
    print(row)
```


## Categorization

Importance labels indicate how useful an article is for day-to-day offline household smart-speaker queries; `unknown` is used when labeling is disabled or fails.

- Model: openai/gpt-oss-120b
- distribution:
  - low: 4.04%
  - medium: 6.81%
  - high: 1.26%
  - unknown: 87.88%

Prompt template:
```
You are classifying Simple Wikipedia articles for offline storage on a home voice-assistant used by households in the United States. The smart speaker may be in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, or other common areas.

Goal:
Decide how important it is to store an article offline so the assistant can answer common, everyday user questions using the content of the article.

Guidelines:
- Think about what typical families, parents, kids, and adults might ask a smart speaker at home.
- Consider how often the topic is likely to be asked about and how useful the information is day-to-day.

Importance levels:
- "high": Very common or important topics that many households are likely to ask about regularly.
  - Major holidays, widely-known public figures, basic school topics for kids.
  - Frequently asked geography or time questions (countries, big cities, days, months, seasons).

- "medium": Useful but not essential topics that some households might ask about sometimes.
  - Common hobbies, sports, and entertainment topics.
  - Popular animals, foods, and travel-related information.
  - Well-known historical events or scientific ideas that are not asked about every day.

- "low": Rarely asked or very specialized topics.
  - Obscure historical events, people, or places.
  - Advanced science, math, or technical subjects.
  - Niche cultural topics or very narrow interests.

Some example questions a family member might ask:
- "When is Christmas this year?"
- "What is the tallest mountain in the world?"
- "How old was the oldest dog ever?"
- "Who invented the telephone?"
- "What is the dewey decimal system?"
- "How many tentacles does a squid have?"
- "What are the colors in the rainbow?"
- "When did Einstein die?"
- "What is the population of Tokyo?"

Examples (with reasoning just for demonstration):

1.
Article title: "Christmas"
Short summary: Christmas is a widely celebrated holiday on December 25, often involving gifts and family gatherings.
Explanation (example only): Families frequently ask about dates, traditions, recipes, and activities related to this holiday.
Answer: high

2.
Article title: "Volcano"
Short summary: A volcano is a mountain where hot melted rock (lava) can come out during an eruption.
Explanation (example only): Kids and adults might sometimes ask about volcanoes for school or curiosity, but it is not an everyday need for most households.
Answer: medium

3.
Article title: "Soccer"
Short summary: Soccer is a popular team sport played by kicking a ball into a goal.
Explanation (example only): Sports topics are common, but not every household asks about them regularly. It is useful but not critical.
Answer: medium

4.
Article title: "Battle of Poitiers (1356)"
Short summary: A medieval battle in the Hundred Years' War between England and France.
Explanation (example only): This is a specific historical battle that only a small number of users are likely to ask about.
Answer: low

5.
Article title: "Quark–gluon plasma"
Short summary: A very hot, dense state of matter studied in high-energy physics.
Explanation (example only): This is an advanced scientific topic that almost no household will ask a smart speaker about in daily life.
Answer: low

6.
Article title: "Elephant"
Short summary: Elephants are large mammals that live in Africa and Asia.
Explanation: Very common trivia questions from kids and adults; frequently asked in homes.
Answer: high

7.
Article title: "The Moon"
Short summary: Earth's natural satellite.
Explanation: Very common astronomy trivia; asked often in households.
Answer: high

```