Practical Semantic Mediawiki

This hands-on session for non technical users emphasizes the "need to know" aspects of Web publishing, wikis, information design and Semantic Mediawiki for flexible, structured, practical re-usable content that fits into the Web of Data. It is not expected participants will become experts in all these topics, but will be able to create a site, and have an overview of what can be done as a basis of progressive learning.

Forward

Practice site: http://practice.zooid.org/wiki/Practice

Acronyms

• MW: Mediawiki
• SMW: Semantic Mediawiki

Web publishing

Difference between Semantic Mediawiki and static web sites, CMS, Mediawiki

• Static web sites can be more difficult to manage, it's harder to re-use content.
• Content management systems use forms to guide content editing, but they tend to require low level changes (database, programming), and end users have constrained access to the site
• Mediawiki is designed to organize large sets of pages, potentially with many people contributing
• Semantic Mediawiki adds structured information and views

Access models

• Fully open, no login required
• Require login for editing
• Require created accounts to edit (closed editing)
• Require created accounts to access (fully private)
  • Encryption to avoid snooping

Access models can be changed over time; avoid starting a wiki with jargon or unsympathetic content.

Site users

• Levels
  • De-emphasize control, make it as flat as possible
  • Bureaucrats still exist - edit site-wide content and styles, block pages and users
• OpenID signin

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

Accessibility

Here, accessibility refers to supporting people with vision, keyboard control or cognitive difficulties.

• Making sites accessible generally increases usability
  • Works on more devices from text browser to handheld
  • Typically more straightforward navigation
  • Accessible hot keys can be used by any expert user
  • The curb cuts principle
• Mediawiki is accessible, SMW has issues (forms)
• Value content over appearance
• Good tags for images, image maps

Terms of use

• Creative Commons - share with options for attribution, non-commercial, changes
  • Choose your license
• Traditional copyright - by permission only

• Re-using content
  • Find CC media

Using Mediawiki

Mediawiki is the underlying software of Wikipedia. It is robust, supported by a large community and supports hundreds of useful extensions.

Progressive uses

• Basic site with pages and categories
  • You just need to know a few things for your wiki to be as useful as most Web sites
• Add widgets for more interactivity
• Wiki gardening to reorganize content
• Add semantic classes for reusable data
• Guide users of the site
  • Viewer
  • Casual editor
  • Advanced editor, gardener
  • Semantic coder

Creating pages

• How to name pages
  • One topic per page
• Short, avoid special symbols, use sentence type capitalization, avoid Title Case unless appropriate
• Code and matching brackets

Basic markup

Rather than using a rich text editor, Mediawiki uses a progressively learned set of markup, that's designed to be human-readable, consistent and enforces meaning over appearance. It's not dependant on special programs, and could be carved into a park bench and retain its meaning.

• ''Italic'', '''Bold'''
• * List heading level one — use # for numbered list
  • ** List level two — ## for numbered list
    • ...
• =Heading one=
  • ==Heading two==
    • ...

• [[Mypage]] — A wiki link
  • "Red links" are links to pages that don't exist
  • [[File:Mypicture.png]] — Media (inline or link)
    • A shortcut to creating images is to create the File: link first, then follow the red link to the upload form
  • [[Mypage|This is my page]] Alternate link text (using pipe symbol)
• [http://theirsite.com] — A non-wiki link
  • Use a space after the link to use your own link text. [http://theirsite.com Their site].

• {{My Template}} — A template (reusable content, function or variable)
  • Don't Repeat Yourself
  • Pipe symbol is used to pass parameters — {{Show Something|Something}}
• {{ #geocode: Montréal, Quebec}} — Template function, in this case geocode turns a place name into geographic coordinates
• {{{1}}} — SMW variable, in this case the first value passed to a template

• Finding pages
• Starting new pages
• Proactive linking
  • Brainstorm using links

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

• Categories
  • Subcategories

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

• Uploading images and files

• Moving pages
  • Moving preserves the original link, can be useful for "also known as"

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

Template:SH Triple Template:SH AddTemplate:SH Obsolete
Bonus practice: Add an image, place it on the right and include a caption.

• Deleting pages

• Templates - used for consistently reused content

Making pages look good

CSS is the style system of Web pages and can also be used in Mediawiki. Like wiki markup, learning can be progressive.

Placeography | Biofuel Visions

• Re-using CSS styling <div style="background: orange">Hello world</div>
  • Avoid losing meaning (don't use <big> for headers), keep it simple
• Re-using styles MediaWiki:Common.css
• Possible to hide MW's menus and change the 'skin'

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

Bonus practice: Move your div to a reusable template

Semantic Mediawiki

SMW is an extension ecology of MW that allows marking up content for re-use and creating easier to use forms and views.

• Meaning through annotations and relationships
  • You define the relationships for your application
  • Triples — subject, predicate, object
    • Subject — what we're talking about
    • Predicate — the relationship type
    • Object - what the subject is being related to
  • Combine them and you can flexibly describe anything

• • Montréal is a place
  • Montréal has population 1,906,811
  • Montréal has geographic coordinates 45.5088889, -73.5541667

• What properties does your content need to be useful?

Inline property annotation

Single instances of data can be marked-up using annotations. Annotations are like categories, but they use a double colon, and can either be values or pages.

[[Date::Jan 1, 2011]]

Or combinations:

Page: Montreal

• [[A::Place]]
• [[Population::1,906,811]]
• [[Geographic coordinates::45.5088889, -73.5541667]]

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

• Built-in types
• Geographic coordinate
• Viewing all properties
• Subtypes

Queries

• Queries
  • {{ #ask: [[A::Place]] }}
  • {{ #ask: [[Category:City]] }}

Classes

Instead of using inline property assignments, semantic classes use templates.

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

Page: Montréal

{{Entity |A=Place |Population=10000 }}

• http://practice.zooid.org/wiki/Special:CreateClass (template, properties, forms)
  • One topic per page
  • Formlink {{#formlink:Comment|Add a comment}}</formlink>

• Class templates will often contain queries that show linked classes

The distinction is in the capability, and the phrase 'community plumbing.'

When developing a functional web site, once we get into the php / database level, things get tremendously more complex. Semantic Mediawiki avoids that altogether by building on Mediawiki markup and a higher level of expression.

The Drupal core developers have a policy of not maintaining backward compatibility between major versions. So a client with a Drupal 5.x module has a real problem. If something goes wrong or needs to be changed/extended on a module, you have to find a developer willing to do that work, which is very specific. They may need to update to the latest Drupal, which is a major undertaking when all modules are considered. Any change on a Drupal site, no matter how minor, might involve dozens of hours, it involves accessing the server via ssh or ftp, changing the database, you name it. It's clearly out of the hands of mere mortals. I saw this again and again, and was forced to create this situation. I see a lot of programming shops that have bad relationships with their clients and act very defensively, with high charges for every change, because of the complexity involved.

Whereas with SMW, you can view the source of any page to see how something was done, and do it yourself.

Granted, SMW is not a full programming system and can't do everything php/Drupal can do, but it can cover a large number of cases - blogs, discussions, home pages, events, hypertext pages, database functions including locations, dates, etc.

Many non programmers edit Wikis, none can change a Drupal site. They're completely reliant on the plumber. The plumber has to chose a particular version of Drupal for particular modules, which is probably not the most recent version so it has built in obsolescence. If the client can't reach their original plumber, they better hope they can find someone who can deal with the previous work. SMW has core underpinnings, with markup on top of that, and it's all built on the thousands of tested MW modules.

People can progressively learn MW/SMW, they really can't do that with Drupal without creating a disaster. I've taught non technical people to create schemas, queries and views in SMW. They typically didn't use the advanced function after the overview, but at least I'm teaching them more than how to fill in a form, and the computer isn't so much a scary database and mystical programming language, it's clear it's a participatory medium built on the momentum of Wikipedia. There's no similar heralded Drupal site (Drupal was used for the Howard Dean campaign, but any CMS could have been used).

I don't know much about Wordpress, from what I understand it's more something you use as is, the customization is more around themes. Last I checked, Drupal was heading in a more fluid direction with CCK (with RDF under the covers for reusable content across sites), but it's still not the same thing as the "aliveness" of an SMW page. If I could cc this message to an SMW install (extensions exist for this), I could create todo events, pages, entities, all using the established MW/SMW combo from email.

My interest is in digital literacy.. getting people to stop using computers as fancy typewriters, instead create reusable statements, schemas, queries, progressively build on their knowledge in focused ways, always able to learn from examples. SMW excels at that. Any content on an SMW site can be reused between functions, and sites can access each other's information.

MW/SMW also comes with a culture of Creative Commons style licenses. On a MW/SMW site, any user can create their own sub site out of pages and structure, and take it away if they need to. On a Drupal site, it's all top down.

I try to get this across to clients, ultimately they usually enjoy the overview but can't participate for their own good reasons, which is fine. SMW isn't ready for everything yet, but I think the markup approach is the best way out of MS Word / forms based approaches.

See also: SMW as Lego blocks

Views

• Format= parameter to queries
  • {{ #ask: [[Geographic coordinate::+]]|format=map}}

• Timeline, Calendar, Map, Facet browser

Basic inference

Inference is used to derive information from basic information.

{{#ifexpr: {{{Population|}}} > 50000 | [[Category:City]] }}

If the page's population is greater than 50000, then put it in the category of city.

This is a simple form of artificial intelligence, that be very useful for large sets of pages for arbitrary classifications.

Future directions

• Relating ontologies (categories and properties) between sites
• Reusing content
• Creating a big picture across the web where anyone can ask questions and add their data

Mediawiki Widgets

Mediawiki Widgets allow embedding third-party site content for rich media (Youtube, photo sites, etc) and interactive discussions (DISQUS, Twitter, etc) without needing to set it up or host it on your site.

• DISQUS discussion
  • Register with DISQUS
  • Get key
  • Create widget
  • Embed widget on pages

Converting content or sites

• Pandoc
• Convertors for Open Office, Microsoft Word

Hosting

• Export a site, modularize by category
  • Complete site export
• Special:Version
• Free light/startup hosting
• Inexpensive Mediawiki with SMW option
• Wikia
• Self-hosting

Getting help

• View source of pages
• Mediawiki help sites and community
• Semantic mediawiki help sites and community
• If it's for an open cause, ask me
  • Let's form a user group