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This week (#5) semantic MediaWiki

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Well, for some reason we may have slowed down the course a little bit. Only 3 of you completed last (long) week activity, but I assume you're watching and learning from the distance.

Now finally as we can see in the course description it's turn for Semantic MediaWiki, which is in fact an extension, a big one with many behaviours altered in the wiki. For those of you who want to be familiar first with the concept, I propose this Semantic Wikis presentation (in video, specially minutes 1:10, 2:56, 11:52, 15:08, 65:30 and 78:09) by Denny Vrandecic.

What I'm more familiar at here is in something you may think is not very "wiki", but from my point of view can help a lot to stucture it ans at the same time facilitate participation. It consists in the ability to declare some properties and right after that create a form, so editors (rather than blank pages or long ones full of text and code) can easily see where and how to add.

A good example? Here: http://discoursedb.org/w/index.php?title=Picture_IDs_are_perfectly_sensi...

So who among you likes that and wants to give it a try. It will require some of us to edit it and add stuff so you can also experiment with the "user" side...

Enric

Jeff Weber's picture
Jeff Weber
Fri, 2011-03-04 17:17

Here is the link to the SMW extension http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Sat, 2011-03-05 05:06

Ok, what you have now is to follow these steps like installing other extensions: http://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Installation And for the purpose of this exercise use all the options by default, but be aware please that if your shortened your URLs need to set the parameter $smwgNamespaceIndex before including SemanticMediaWiki.php.

In parallel, start to consider how a custom form for your wiki should be, a very basic one of the data you want to collect and relate in a semantic way. One example could be a repository of cool webpages description: Name / URL / Description / Tags / Contact info. The semantic forms allow us to generate a template for that, that creates a page with the metadata we decide and then we can create queries or calls from other pages.

So the message is: install it, define what you want to do as a first template test to work with and we discuss here its implementation, ok?

We are extending the period of this course ant this will be the last activity, plus a thread for recap and other considerations about participation...

Let's go for it, many of you are doing an awesome job! :)

Jim Roma's picture
Jim Roma
Sat, 2011-03-05 06:43

It looks like I've got the Semantic extension successfully installed. I created the TestSMW from the instructions and the Version Info page shows Semantic MediaWiki (Version 1.5.6) under installed extensions.
http://jimroma.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page

Jim

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Sun, 2011-03-06 02:15

Ok, Jim it looks right yes :) I just created an user account there, if you please can add me as an administrator I can show you what you need to do next with more detail: create a couple of categories and a form using them, for collecting and displaying the info in a (basic) semantic structure.

Jim Roma's picture
Jim Roma
Sun, 2011-03-06 02:58

OK, You've been added as an administrator.

Jim

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Sun, 2011-03-06 17:15

Fine, I think you still have to go to http://jimroma.com/w/index.php?title=Special:SMWAdmin and press in the button for database installation. Then we will be able to work on declaring properties.

Jim Roma's picture
Jim Roma
Sun, 2011-03-06 23:08

I've done that (I though I did that before). I've also created an account p2pu with password p2pu101 if anyone is interested in checking this out.

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Wed, 2011-03-09 01:15

Hi Jim,

Sorry, I know what it is now: you have to install also the extension for semantic forms: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:SMW_extensions#Semantic_Forms

That's what will allow your wiki to have a similar use like this one: http://www.placeography.org/index.php?title=470_Hopkins_Street%2C_Saint_...

Jim Roma's picture
Jim Roma
Wed, 2011-03-09 05:11

Thanks! I've installed the Semantic_Forms extension. Thanks so much for our help on this. I should probably be able to figure this stuff out myself.

Jim

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Wed, 2011-03-09 11:30

Hi Jim,

Now I have been able to create a very basic form: http://jimroma.com/w/index.php?title=Form:Participant_register (a sample of one of the uses for structured data, which outputs would look like this one: http://jimroma.com/w/index.php?title=Enric)

As you would see, in the recent changes for that I have had to make 3 things first, from Special pages:

Semantic Forms > Create a property (Name, Bio, Gender)

Semantic Forms > Create a template (Adding one field for each new category, and marking on gender it has a list of values)

Semantic Forms > Create a form (where you can fix things like maxlenght, HTML class atribute, if you want the field mandatory, etc) You can also add other templates so forms are created modularly.

You can now try to create another one, or declare some more properties and add them to the template and form in order to test thing with the existing one...

Jeff Weber's picture
Jeff Weber
Tue, 2011-03-08 22:36

I too have now installed the SMW extension and run through the verifications. I still need to establish a form however.

Still trying to get a handle on what Semantic brings to MediaWiki. Please critique the following text notes I made for myself:
"The addition of an extension, Semantic MediaWiki, increases the usefulness of MediaWiki by extending its heretofore presentation of hyperlinked information into searchable data with non-human assistance. The correlation follows, that the semantic mediawiki is to mediawiki as the semantic web is to the world wide web. But what is the impact of 'semantic'? For visualization, one analogy has been presented - the semantic web is to relational databases as the Web was to hyperlinked text content.

The process of 'semanticizing' provides for the introduction of markups (semantic annotations) to the underlying text, which allows computers to read and analyze the information. This enhances the value of the information, through improved search capabilities and other data-aggregation and presentation techniques.

In the context of mediawiki, adding semantic features allows users to add semantic annotations to their text.

Once the extension is installed, MediaWiki is enhanced by offering several 'Special Pages' which allow for browsing and searching. In the MediaWiki's toolbox, a 'Browse Properties' function is added, which shows property:value relationships contained on the page.

Overall, it appears the 'Go/Search' function of the base MediaWiki (which was largely limited to returning page titles) is now enhanced to allow more structured searches of the underlying content."

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Wed, 2011-03-09 01:19

Hi Jeff,

Apart from what I say to Jim about installing the extension for forms, if you take a look at the example, you can see to what extent it allows to open more structure to the information you ask from participants. Apart from that, as you say it also improves searchability within your wiki, and displaying dynamic information about recent changes where needed. If you can also install it I can try to give a couple of examples about how to do it, and we comment it here...

Jeff Weber's picture
Jeff Weber
Wed, 2011-03-09 20:22

I've installed semantic_forms extension, and worked through the example provided.

The end result is section in my wiki which collects book information, and I've started the data with two books I've referenced on MediaWiki. You can see the results here, http://50.17.37.223, and click on the 'Books' link under references. Please feel free to input any other book titles you may have used on this subject, as that will be most appreciated.

Many thanks,

1 person liked this
Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Thu, 2011-03-10 14:59

Hi Jeff, I added one of my favorites here: http://50.17.37.223/index.php/Wikipatterns

Nice work, now you might want to take a look also at the semantic queries "issue" solved by the Drilldown extension: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Drilldown

Example: http://discoursedb.org/wiki/Special:BrowseData/Items (Although there's somehow also a way to increase there typo size according to coincidences, more visual)