Wikispooks:Semantic Mediawiki

Semantic Mediawiki (SMW) is an extension for the basic Mediawiki software that powers the Wikispooks site. It's purpose is to provide semantic definition and querying capabilities which are lacking in the basic software.

SMW on Wikispooks

SMW is installed on Wikispooks, as are most of its related extensions (ie extensions to Mediawiki that are dependant upon SMW to functions). To date (November 2013) Wikispooks has only made limited use of SMW - most notably its Semantic Forms extension.

Timelines

Experiments with timelines, notably the JFK Assassination Timeline have made further use of SMW. The timeline semantic results format must have at least one date property defined in order to correctly order its 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.

Development

The timeline experiments have made it clear that SMW has considerable potential to enhance the functionality of Wikispooks by making its contents more accessible to well thought out querying. Among other things, this will require:

• Identifying and defining other semantic properties in its existing content.
• applying the new properties to existing content.
• facilitating the use of the defined properties on new pages - best done by careful design of templates and corresponding data-entry/editing forms

Please feel free to add to and edit this page. The talk page is best to make suggestions, ask questions etc.

Caution

The semantic property definition process is easy - almost too easy in fact - and it has pitfalls. The most obvious of these to date is that it is possible to create large numbers of properties accidentally whilst experimenting with their use on templates that are already in use on many pages. That in itself would not be so bad except for the fact that, once defined, it seems that they cannot be deleted, even where there is no page or usage made of them - See Special:Properties for an illustration of what can happen.