Wikispooks:Semantic Mediawiki
![SMW.png](/w/images/thumb/a/af/SMW.png/100px-SMW.png)
Semantic Mediawiki (SMW) is an extension for the basic Mediawiki software that powers the Wikispooks site. Its purpose is to provide semantic definition and querying capabilities which are lacking in the basic software. This offers two main benefits to the site - (i) a richer set of ways to organise and use the information, (ii) the possibility to define site feeds to export the data in a predictable format, which others can build.
Contents
SMW on Wikispooks
SMW is installed on Wikispooks together with a bunch of associated extensions (Semantic Bundle). Towards the end of 2013, Wikispooks has been expanding its use of SMW - most notably through Semantic Forms extension.
Timelines
- Full article: WikiSpooks:Timelines
- Full article: WikiSpooks:Timelines
Experiments with timelines, notably the JFK Assassination Timeline have made further use of SMW. Timelines are a semantic results format which must have at least one date property defined in order to correctly displayed events. The JFK timeline currently uses 3 semantic property definitions (Start, End and Description), 'Start' and 'End' are of property type 'Date' and 'Description is of property type 'Text'.
The properties currently used by the timelines experiments may need to be changed to accord with standard but evolving semantic properties syntax and grammar.
Properties
Wikispooks has 3 categories of properties:
For properties which are working as planned and will be permanent features of the wiki | |
For properties which are operational but not necessarily working properly or at all | |
For properties which are not yet used, on which you are seeking feedback |
New Properties
Be careful when creating new properties. Properties are easy to make, annoying to remove, so before defining a new property you should first mooting the idea by making a using template:property to make a property page explaining the idea. Then await feedback from others. See Special:Properties for an illustration of what can happen.
Development
Existing use of SMW suggests that it has considerable potential to enhance the functionality of the site, making its contents more accessible to well thought out querying. Among other things, this will require:
- Some capable programming by editors up to speed on SMW
- Identifying and defining a core set of semantic properties (and possibly also concepts) which are useful for structuring the data
- Applying these new structures to the existing content
- Allowing for seemlessly creation of these structures on new pages by non-SMW aware users (i.e. through semantic forms)
Integrating with Mediawiki
Mediawiki's main organisational tools for arranging pages are the namespace and the category. Adding SMW's properties and concepts to the mix allows for considerable flexibility in how to organise data. The basic approach is a replacement of the generic grouped together with (category) relationship by SMW's more precisely defined relationships (properties). How best to do this remains an open question, but some basic principles are:
- Properties and Concepts are generally to be preferred to categories
- For reasons of reliability and maintenance, data should be dynamically produced (e.g. from templates) rather than input by hand whenever possible
- Hard thinking is preferable to hard work where possible :)
See Wikispooks talk:Semantic Mediawiki for more detailed discussion.
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