Because the timeline to use ORES models (ticketed here) for newcomer tasks is longer than initially planned, we want to roll out an initial version that uses the "morelike" algorithm first prototyped in T231506: Newcomer tasks: prototype topic matching.
We need to set up the ability to back the interface with morelike results, drawing on the articles lists that the ambassadors generated in T233465: Newcomer tasks: article configurations for topics.
@kostajh's original task description
This task proposes that we build the backend for topic matching that uses the "morelike" search we experimented with, and eventually declined to pursue in favor of the ORES backed solution.
I'm proposing this task for a few reasons:
- Implementing the morelike backend is really straightforward based on our current code
- Having a backend in place allows us to build the topic filter widgets using actual data rather than faking it
- Adding the backend seems prudent while we sort out all of the un/known un/knowns with the ORES approach
- Even once the ORES backed approach is ready, it might be interesting to pursue as a variant test for some period of time
- The most difficult and time consuming part of this, which is gathering articles to use for each "topic", was already done by the ambassadors for our target wikis (except for viwiki, they'd have to do it)