[Mediawiki-l] Small paying project: new semantic extension to MediaWiki

[Jim Wilson]

Markus said:
> Anyway, rebuilding everything from scratch just to add this feature seems to
> be a lot of avoidable work. We can also assist you with extending SMW (by
> providing extension interfaces etc.). But do as you like.

A while back I had a project in which this feature would have been
very useful.  If new hooks go in to make this possible, please email
the group so others may implement it.

-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)

On 9/25/07, Markus Krötzsch <mak at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
> On Dienstag, 25. September 2007, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> > > Markus and Thomas,
> > >
> > > Yes, I'm aware of http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki (I
> > > believe I referenced it in my original post + cc'd the semediawiki
> > > list(s)?).
> > >
> > > I call my project 'semarbtri' to distinguish it from the existing
> > > Semantic Mediawiki project.
> > >
> > > My biggest beef w/ Semantic Mediawiki (the reason I'm writing my own
> > > extension) is that you can only add semantic information for the
> > > page you're editing.
> > >
> > > For example, on the Lucy page, you could say:
> > >
> > > Lucy has a younger brother [[has_brother::Linus]]
> > >
> > > However, you couldn't add any semantic information about Linus on
> > > the Lucy page. Instead, you'd have to create a new page for Linus,
> > > and add the semantic information there.
> > >
> > > This can be really tedious if you're listing all the characters in a
> > > comic strip (for example)-- you have to create pages for each one,
> > > instead of just including the semantic info when you list them.
> > >
> > > In my opinion, this is why startup wikis end up w/ so many blank pages.
> > >
> > > I think having a plugin that lets you add info to other pages would
> > > be really helpful.
> >
> > That's an interesting point. Semantically, a different person should
> > be on a different page, but you make a good point that in practice,
> > that isn't always the best option. I would suggest adding your feature
> > to the existing extension, rather than reinventing the wheel, though.
>
> It would be not to hard to add something like this to SMW, even in a fairly
> modular way (although the DB layout obviously would need extension). The
> reason that we did not do it is that we felt that it impairs maintainability
> (if you discover a wrong search result, what page do you edit to fix it?),
> and that it might lead to a "semantic shadow wiki" (people creating very
> complex structures on a single page, which is hard to control; e.g. locking
> the page on Lucy during an edit war [controversial girl, that Lucy] still
> would not prevent people to add the disputed information elsewhere). I know
> that there are all kinds of ideas to prevent this, but this certainly adds
> some complexity.
>
> Anyway, rebuilding everything from scratch just to add this feature seems to
> be a lot of avoidable work. We can also assist you with extending SMW (by
> providing extension interfaces etc.). But do as you like.
>
> Markus
>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > MediaWiki-l mailing list
> > MediaWiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>
>
>
> --
> Markus Krötzsch
> Institut AIFB, Universät Karlsruhe (TH), 76128 Karlsruhe
> phone +49 (0)721 608 7362        fax +49 (0)721 608 5998
> mak at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de        www  http://korrekt.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> MediaWiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>
>
>