Semantic Mediawiki and the Semantic Web: Difference between revisions

Following Web development for 15 years, the Semantic Web has always been in the background. Today XML is commonly used as an interchange language between applications, Web Services are used by applications requiring rich data exchange, and REST is used as a lighter weight exchange system. All these elements contribute to the SemWeb. Yet providing a practical way to create semantic documents is difficult for the typical end user. Most SemWeb approaches use very explicit, linked codes that would are painful to enter, so clunky forms based interfaces are often used to develop documents.

Contrast this with the fluidity of wikis, a giant force in the development of the participatory Web. A classic wiki allows anyone to edit pages. In creating those pages, hypertext databases can be easily created, with conventions allowing easy organization of documents.

However, to best use a wiki today (rather than using it as a Web based version of MS Word with hyperlinks), one often should use the low level wiki markup. Many people are afraid of working in text, but it adds a lot of fluidity. Over time, we should start to see better rich interfaces, as well as the common pattern of an inexperienced user adding some information, and an expert adding semantic markup. But it's always going to be a benefit to have an idea of how the underlying markup works, similar to how a Web developer knows how a Web page is composed.