Wikispooks talk:Semantic Mediawiki

Cleaning SMW Data

There must be ways to remove these unused properites - if needs be, using SQL queries. A higher level way is preferable of course, so possibly from Special:SMWAdmin. If that doesn't do it, it might be worth reading http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Repairing_SMW%27s_data. Robin (talk) 12:23, 13 December 2013 (GMT)

That was my initial reaction on seeing them too, but inquiries to the SMW mailing list brought several replies from people with the same problem and none from the SMW admins/gurus with a possible solution - other than direct SQL querying with phpMyAdmin. I will have a good look at the 'repairing data' pages again though because site SMW functionality is bound to be compromised to some degree by still using 'Data Store 1'. What I have learned from the SMW list and site posts to date is that the SMW user-base is much smaller than I previously thought. That does not bother me too much because the developers are keen as mustard. Down side is have little time for non-geeks with what they probably see as elementary problems outside genuine and obvious bugs - of which there are many - but usually promptly fixed. --Peter P (talk) 13:12, 13 December 2013 (GMT)

Namespaces

How about using more namespaces to differentiate page subjects?

Namespace	Mandatory  Template	Semantic  Form	Use
document:	Template:DocProv	Form:Document	3rd Party Publications
book:	Template:Book	Form:Book	Articles about books
person:	Template:Person	Form:Person	Articles about people
event:	Template:Event	Form:Event	Articles about events

I like the semantic forms - a good help to people to create semantic data.

Robin (talk) 12:36, 13 December 2013 (GMT)

What's wrong with disciplined use of top-level categories to do the same thing - plus radical pruning of the category tree by replacing most sub-categories with properties - but better thought through? A category can be assigned a default form too. I confess to still struggling a little with the best/optimal way to differentiate Name-space, Category and Property usage though. For example, I was going to put timeline events in a separate namespace; even created it and put all the necessary stuff in LocalSettings.php. In the event I didn't use it (yet) and currently don't plan to. Beyond a certain clarity, all that user-defined namespaces do is place an additional word (with hidden number for DB usage) and colon before the page title which can also be a bit of a pain. And there are a lot of both 'Person' and 'Event' pages already in 'Main' - though most are assigned to sub-categories of Category:People and Category:Events. --Peter P (talk) 13:35, 13 December 2013 (GMT)

Oh, I hadn't noted that forms can be assigned to categories - so namespaces are not actually needed to do this. I think the clarity they afford may make them worthwhile in the end (today I edited [[Document:The Franklin Scandal], an introduction to Book - The Franklin Scandal about The Franklin Scandal). Though I made the Template:Doctypes categories today, this is a bit of a transitional step/use of legacy technology - the actual 'meaning' of category (~"is associated with") is a bit fuzzy, so longer term I think we're better off replacing them with more precise semantic alternatives. When we know enough about how to fit the bits together. Inspired by the success of SMW here I also added SMW to the UG Wiki today, so I should be getting a bit more experience on how to manage things. Robin (talk) 15:06, 13 December 2013 (GMT)

Probably best to let things settle down for a bit after all these major changes and upgrades. As you say get a bit more experience managing things. BTW - Your (almost tentative) suggestion of making Document subjects the name(s) of ordinary (Main NS) articles was inspired. It has the potential to tie all 3rd party content to crowd-sourced articles that can further develop, research and explain it. I can't help tinkering every time I see an edit on 'Recent Changes' to a document that takes me back to when I originally put it up. There's a lot of stuff here that would benefit from easy intuitive linking and browsing and SMW looks like an impressive - and fairly easy - way to realise it - to me anyway. --Peter P (talk) 16:59, 13 December 2013 (GMT)