> The big problem I can see with Semantic MediaWiki is that it involves
> horrible new wikitext syntax
Semantic MediaWiki lets you annotate links and values anywhere in wiki
text with the property they denote. With SMW you put the property name
before "::". That's it. Minimally horrible, compared to e.g. template
syntax ;-).
So
Berlin is the capital of [[Germany]] with a population of 3,391,407.
becomes
Berlin is the capital of [[Is capital of::Germany]] with a population
of [[Population::3,391,407]].
> ... although if that can be hidden inside
> the template code, all the better.
Yes, use of a templates may not have to change at all. Someone only has
to modify the template to output SMW syntax and property names in wiki text.
> Mostly what [infobox templates] need is
> standardisation
If all you're trying to do is capture information from infoboxes,
DBpedia shows how much is possible already, and standardization can only
help. But at some point you'll want to tell machines what the template
field names represent. (DBpedia does an amazing job of inferring the
type of a template field, but still gets some wrong.) The extensions
that extend the SMW extension are evidence that its formalism for
representing properties and datatypes within MediaWiki and thence in RDF
is useful. I hope any effort to "bring semantics to infobox templates"
would build on that.
Respectfully yours,
--
=S Page