Hi everyone,
This is really news from a week ago, but there's a new version out of the
Semantic Bundle, that now includes the latest stable version of Semantic
MediaWiki, 1.9.2, as well as updated versions of most of its other
extensions. It took a little while to "iron all the kinks out", as well as
to make sure that the package fully works for people across different
systems, but now everything seems to be fine.
About Semantic Bundle: it's a package of over 25 extensions and libraries,
that includes SMW and extensions that are typically used in conjunction
with it.
You can read more about SB, and download it, here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_Bundle
-Yaron
Hello everyone,
Another employee at my work posed an interesting question to me today that I
didn't know the answer to. He asked, are there any other companies in regulated
industries that make use of Mediawiki. I told him I'd ask here because I didn't
know.
To provide a little bit of context for the question: we are currently developing
an extension that allows us to do risk assessments and software validation for
compliance with the FDA's CFR 21 Part 11. We are using Mediawiki as the basis
for this because we already use it for our knowledge base and because this means
that we can take advantage of the history tracking functionality of Mediawiki
allowing us to see who changed what when, something that is reasonably
important.
We also are making use of Mediawiki to allow electronic access our SOPs for most
of the laboratory, this is controlled through the Pending Changes extension
combined with page protection to ensure that changes can only be made by a few
select people and that they get reviewed before going live.
I myself am also curious whether or not any other businesses make use of
Mediawiki in similar ways or in similar enviornments.
Thank you,
Derric Atzrott
Computer Specialist
Alizee Pathology
Semantic MediaWiki Conference (SMWCon) Spring 2014: Call for Participation
and final call for contributions
The Semantic MediaWiki Conference (SMWCon) Spring 2014 in Montreal [1] is
less than a week away (May 21-23). We have an interesting lineup of talks
and
tutorials, with major themes around the use of wikis in science and
hospitals,
using Semantic Forms, and developing elements of the Semantic Mediawiki
universe, including two sessions on Wikidata. We even have a session on
Cirque
du Soleil's wiki!
About SMWCon
SMWCon is a twice-yearly conference that brings together researchers, users,
developers and enthusiasts of Semantic MediaWiki and related projects, such
as
Wikidata. Semantic MediaWiki is a family of extensions to the open-source
wiki
software MediaWiki (best known for powering Wikipedia) that allow a wiki to
store structured data in addition to textual content, thereby, turning a
wiki
into a flexible, collaborative knowledge repository.
Keynote Speaker
Markus Krötzsch is our keynote speaker, with the provocative talk "Wikidata
and what it means for SMW."
Program Outline and Late-Breaking Submissions
This year, unlike at previous SMWCons, we will have both regular talks and
tutorials on the first day, starting Wednesday morning with sessions on
wikis
and science and tutorials Wednesday afternoon. So please review the
preliminary
schedule [1] and we hope you can be here for all three days. If you're
already
signed up for a talk, please let us know if you need a different time slot.
We still have room for a few more talks, and will enable lightning talks.
You
can also bring a poster or demo. For any questions, please contact the
program
chair at vid at zooid.org.
Important Facts
Event Dates: May 21st to 23rd 2014 (Wednesday to Friday)
Location: Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
Conference wiki page: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2014
Conference poster:
https://semantic-mediawiki.org/w/images/6/67/Smwcon_spring2014_poster.pdf
Participants: Everybody interested in semantic wikis, especially in
Semantic MediaWiki, e.g. users, arts and community groups, developers,
consultants, business representatives and researchers.
Organizing Committee
René Witte [General Chair]
David Mason [Program Chair]
Bahar Sateli [Local Chair]
Sponsors
Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University, Montréal,
Canada
Registration
Registration is open at EventBrite [2].
We hope to see you in vibrant Montreal next week!
1. https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2014
2. http://www.eventbrite.ca/e/smwcon-spring-2014-registration-11160710987
Dear enterprise MediaWiki users and enthusiasts,
I'm happy to announce the release of the Site Settings extension:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Site_Settings
This extension lets you configure the wiki's settings, like its name,
language and skin, via the web interface, at the page Special:SiteSettings.
It's similar in concept to the Configure extension, except that, unlike
Configure, it doesn't know about other extensions and their settings;
instead, it uses hooks to let each extension add in its own fields. (No
extension makes use of Site Settings yet, but I'm planning to start adding
usage of it in some of my own extensions at some point soon.) Also, I think
its user interface is a little nicer than Configure's.
Site Settings is derived from code that has been running on my wiki farm,
Referata (referata.com) for a long time - for that reason, I started it out
at version 0.5 instead of 0.1. And speaking of wiki farms, this is the
first step toward the release of my long-delayed extension Wiki Garden,
which is intended to power wiki farms, and which ties in heavily with Site
Settings (since administrators of individual wikis within a farm will only
be able to configure their own wiki via the web interface).
Nevertheless, I hope Site Settings will be useful for standalone
installations of MediaWiki as well, as an easier way to change around the
settings. I hope people try it out, and all feedback is appreciated.
-Yaron
--
WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting · http://wikiworks.com
We've gotten some feedback already -- https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/issues/212 -- about the RC for MediaWiki 1.23 that Markus made last week. Hopefully we can get this issue addressed in time for SMW users.
Are there any other issues that people have run into that we should know about before we do attempt to make a final release of 1.23?
If you've tried the RC and not run into any problems, that would be good to know, as well.
Thanks,
Mark.
For a current project, I have found that Auth_remoteuser can take care
of a lot of the grunt work, but I felt the need to update it a little.
I have the feeling (wrong?) that this extension is one that is used in a
lot of places but it hasn't been touched for a couple of years.
Could I get people to test out the modifications I want to contribute back?
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/127405 -- mostly just formatting
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/127406 -- refactoring
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/127407 -- changing invocation
I've made some effort to keep this compatible with the previous version.
If you want to try this out as a drop-in replacement for your current
Auth_remoteuser, you can use
http://mah.everybody.org/Auth_remoteuser.php.txt -- but please report
back any problems you have.
Thanks,
Mark.
--
Mark A. Hershberger
NicheWork LLC
717-271-1084
Hi everyone,
My MediaWiki reference book, "Working with MediaWiki", was first released
in November 2012; and I don't have to tell anyone on these lists that there
have been a lot of changes to MediaWiki and its extensions since then -
updated interfaces and skins, marked improvements to extensions like
VisualEditor and Scribunto, and new extensions like CirrusSearch and
Bootstrap. I'm happy to announce that I just released a "2nd printing" of
Working with MediaWiki, updated for 2014. It has an updated cover (now with
a matte finish, if you get the physical book!), and lots of updated text
and images - about 25% of the pages have had some sort of change.
To read more about "Working with MediaWiki", and to see options for buying
it, whether as a printed book, an e-book, or a PDF file, you can go here:
http://workingwithmediawiki.com/
Thanks,
Yaron
--
WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting · http://wikiworks.com
Semantic MediaWiki Conference (SMWCon) Spring 2014: 2nd call
for contributions
Dear semantic wiki users and developers,
Save the dates! SMWCon Spring 2014 will be held at Concordia University
this year in the vibrant and culturally-fascinating city of Montréal,
from May 21-23. We are inviting you to submit your contributions to
assemble the conference program. Registration is now open, with early
bird rates applicable until April 30th.
About SMWCon
This twice-yearly conference brings together researchers, users,
developers and enthusiasts of Semantic MediaWiki and related projects,
such as Wikidata. Semantic MediaWiki is a family of extensions to the
open-source wiki software MediaWiki (best known for powering Wikipedia)
that allow a wiki to store structured data in addition to textual
content, thereby, turning a wiki into a flexible, collaborative
knowledge repository.
Keynote Speaker and Invited Talks
Markus Krötzsch is our keynote speaker, with the provocative talk
"Wikidata and what it means for SMW."
We will have additional invited talks discussing advanced uses of
Semantic Forms, aspects of semantic wikis in healthcare and science
settings, as well as using SMW for Open Data.
Call for Contributions
Attendees, talks and tutorials are shaping up. Tutorials have been
proposed around setting up and supporting semantic wikis, bootstrapping
wikis with structures, ontologies and vocabularies, and using natural
language processing (NLP) systems with wikis.
As we are putting together themes and speakers of the upcoming
conference, we welcome new contributions from you on the applications
and development of semantic wikis (for a list of topics, see below). You
can propose your contributions on the conference website in form of
regular talks, posters or super-short lightning talks. All submitted
proposals will be reviewed and we will do our best to consider your
proposal in the conference program. If you've already announced your
talk it's now time to expand its description.
More tutorials (particularly around Semantic Mediawiki basics) and talks
are very welcome to cover the breadth of Semantic MediaWiki applications
and users. Please aim to submit your talk or tutorial proposal by May 7,
to allow us preparing a first version of the conference program. If you
need help setting up either, please contact the program chair at vid at
zooid.org
Please note that all tutorials and presentations will be video and audio
recorded and made available for others after the conference.
Important Facts
Submission Deadline: May 7 (please contact the program chair if you need
to submit later)
Event Dates: May 21st to 23rd 2014 (Wednesday to Friday)
Location: Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
Conference wiki page: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2014
Participants: Everybody interested in semantic wikis, especially in
Semantic MediaWiki, e.g. users, developers, consultants, business
representatives and researchers.
List of Topics
Here are some suggested starting points:
Specific applications
* Applications in science
* Applications in business
* Other applications such as culture and personal wikis
* Open data and government-supported repositories
Concepts and development
* Evolving semantic wikis into Linked Data platforms
* Text Mining and Natural Language Processing for Semantic Wikis
* Extending via PHP, Javascript and API-based extensions
* Widgets
* Interoperability and mashups
* Community building, feature wishlists and Semantic MediaWiki's roadmap
* Improving user experience
* Helping new and experienced users contribute
* Modelling complex domains
* Access control and security aspects
* Multi-lingual and cross-lingual sites
Organizing Committee
René Witte [General Chair]
David Mason [Program Chair]
Bahar Sateli [Local Chair]
Sponsors
Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University,
Montréal, Canada
Registration
Registration is now open at [1] with early bird pricing until April 30
for SMWCon May 21 - 23 in Montreal [2].
We hope to see you at SMWCon in Montreal!
1. http://www.eventbrite.ca/e/smwcon-spring-2014-registration-11160710987
2. https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2014
This announcement is also available at
https://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2014/Second_call