Hello all, I was inspired by the happenings on the wikia.com site, http://familypedia.wiki.com I had written a while back about being able to pull in external content into a mediawiki site. I was going to respond to that but could not find that email. Anyway, I had thought early on with regard to mediawiki and the semantic web that this was a very appropriate use for such technology. There are so many resources out there for genealogy research... it would help to integrate the information in some way. I don't know how much of it is open source or open content. The big name that comes to mind is Ancestry.com... of course they make money by selling subscriptions and so they may not want to open up their content but has anyone heard of any resource for information in this field that has made their data/information available for a large global graph that the Semantic Web is? I'm somewhat new to MW and SMW, so I hope my questions don't sound too ignorant. 1) Is it difficult to copy some of the content from one wiki into a new wiki that - that is to say copy some of the articles... an export of articles and then an import elsewhere. I know MW lets one export and then import, so could one export a whole collection of articles or category of articles and then bring them into a new wiki? 2) Would there be a way to export the Semantic data as well? Forms, annotations, etc? 3) Maybe some folks know more than I do about these things, such as the reasons one might want to self-host their wiki, in addition to using wikia.com 4) Similarly, would this create redundant or conflicting data or is there a way around that? I guess one issue is about how open the data on wikia.com is. Thanks, Bruce
On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 4:06 AM, Bruce Whealton bruce@futurewavedesigns.com wrote:
- Is it difficult to copy some of the content from one wiki into a new
wiki that - that is to say copy some of the articles... an export of articles and then an import elsewhere. I know MW lets one export and then import, so could one export a whole collection of articles or category of articles and then bring them into a new wiki?
Yes.
- Would there be a way to export the Semantic data as well? Forms,
annotations, etc?
To my knowledge, yes, as everything's kept inside articles.
- Maybe some folks know more than I do about these things, such as the
reasons one might want to self-host their wiki, in addition to using wikia.com
Well, self-hosting definitely gives you more control over your environment and the extensions you want, while going with us at Wikia will give you less of that, but that also means less tech work for you as everything magically works, *and* gets enhanced over time.
Neither solution is inherently better, I believe – depends on what your needs and preferences are. But you can always give us a try. ;)
- Similarly, would this create redundant or conflicting data or is there a
way around that? I guess one issue is about how open the data on wikia.com is.
All wikis at Wikia are publicly editable and open to public view in whole.
As for data access, we publish weekly XML dumps of both the current versions of the wiki's article and the their full history.
Oh, and you'll need to request SMW to be enabled once your wiki is setup if you with Wikia, as it's not in the default extension set (not everybody needs SMW, after all) – go to Special:Contact on your new wiki and ask for SMW or, if you have problems, drop me a line.
Hope that helps. :)
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