Made less Wikipedia-specific (Wikidata covers that now); made text a little briefer; other small changes
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'''Semantic MediaWiki''' (SMW) is an extension of [[MediaWiki]] – the wiki application best known for powering Wikipedia – that helps to search, organise, tag, browse, evaluate, and share the wiki's content. While traditional wikis contain only text which computers can neither understand nor evaluate, SMW adds ''semantic annotations'' that allow a wiki to function as a collaborative database. Semantic MediaWiki was first released in 2005, and currently has over ten developers, and is in use on hundreds of sites. In addition, a large number of [[Help:SMW extensions|related extensions]] have been created that extend the ability to edit, display and browse through the data stored by SMW: the term "Semantic MediaWiki" is sometimes used to refer to this entire family of extensions.
'''Semantic MediaWiki''' (SMW) is an extension of [[MediaWiki]] – the wiki application best known for powering Wikipedia – that helps to search, organise, tag, browse, evaluate, and share the wiki's content. While traditional wikis contain only text which computers can neither understand nor evaluate, SMW adds ''semantic annotations'' that allow a wiki to function as a collaborative database. Semantic MediaWiki was first released in 2005, and currently has over ten developers, and is in use on hundreds of sites. In addition, a large number of [[Help:SMW extensions|related extensions]] have been created that extend the ability to edit, display and browse through the data stored by SMW: the term "Semantic MediaWiki" is sometimes used to refer to this entire family of extensions.
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Semantic MediaWiki
has been funded in part by projects of the [[wp:en:Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development|Framework Programmes (FP)]] of the European Union, [[SEKT]] and [[ACTIVE]] and by project [[Project Halo|Halo]].
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== Why
Semantic MediaWiki
? ==
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== Why Semantic Mediawiki? ==
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Wikis are a great tool for collecting and sharing knowledge in communities and organizations. This knowledge is mostly contained within texts and multimedia files, and is thus easily accessible for human readers. But though wikis are very good for storing and retrieving individual facts, they are less useful for getting queried or aggregated information. As a simple example, let's say you use a wiki that stores information about projects related to your organization. You have the following simple question:
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Wikis have become a great tool for collecting and sharing knowledge in communities. This knowledge is mostly contained within texts and multimedia files, and is thus easily accessible for human readers. But though wikis
are
very good for storing and retrieving individual facts, they are less useful for getting queried or aggregated information. As a simple example, consider
the
following question:
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:"What
are the
active projects that were started in 2012?"
−
:«What are the hundred world
-
largest cities
with
a female mayor?»
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This should be an easy question to answer, but in fact it's not
-
you would have to read through all of the pages about projects every time you wanted to answer the question. Text searches won't necessarily help. Categories could help to some extent, although they're not an ideal tool and maintaining them can become complex (see below). And there doesn't exist an artificial intelligence tool that could help
with
this task either.
−
[[wp:en:Main page|Wikipedia]] should be able to provide the answer: it contains all large cities, their mayors, and articles about the mayor that tell us about their gender. Yet the question is almost impossible to answer for a human, since one would have to read all articles about all large cities first! Even if the answer is found, it might not remain valid for very long. Computers can deal with large datasets much easier, yet they are not able to support us very much when seeking answers from a wiki: Even sophisticated programs cannot yet read and «understand» human-language texts unless the topic and language of the text is very restricted. The wiki's keyword search does not help either.
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Semantic MediaWiki enables wikis to make their knowledge computer-processable,
so that you can find and display the answer
to
this
question
- and to many more
.
−
+
−
Semantic MediaWiki enables wikis to make their knowledge computer-processable,
e.g.
to
answer the above
question.
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== Where SMW can help ==
== Where SMW can help ==
−
Semantic MediaWiki introduces some additional markup into the wiki-text which allows users to add "semantic annotations" to the wiki. While this first appears to make things more complex, it can also greatly simplify the structure of the wiki, help users to find more information in less time, and improve the overall quality and consistency of the wiki. Here are some of the benefits of using SMW:
+
Semantic MediaWiki introduces some additional markup into the wiki-text which allows users to add "semantic annotations" to the wiki. While this
at
first appears to make things more complex, it can also greatly simplify the structure of the wiki, help users to find more information in less time, and improve the overall quality and consistency of the wiki. Here are some of the benefits of using SMW:
−
* '''Automatically-generated lists.'''
Wikis tend
to contain
many aggregated
lists; Wikipedia itself has thousands, like "[[wp:en:List of metropolitan areas in Spain by population|List of metropolitan areas in Spain by population]]".
Those
lists are prone to errors, since they have to be updated manually. Furthermore, the number of potentially interesting lists is huge, and it is impossible to provide all of them in acceptable quality. In SMW, lists are generated automatically [[semweb:Africa|like this]]. They are always up-to-date and can easily be customised to obtain further information.
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* '''Automatically-generated lists.'''
Lists and tables are a natural way
to
view information at a glance. In some cases, non-semantic wikis
contain
human-generated
lists; Wikipedia itself has thousands, like "[[wp:en:List of metropolitan areas in Spain by population|List of metropolitan areas in Spain by population]]".
These
lists are prone to errors, since they have to be updated manually. Furthermore, the number of potentially interesting lists is huge, and it is impossible to provide all of them in acceptable quality. In SMW, lists are generated automatically [[semweb:Africa|like this]]. They are always up-to-date and can easily be customised to obtain further information.
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* '''Visual display of information.''' The various display formats defined by additional extensions, such as [[Semantic Result Formats]] and [[Semantic Maps]], allow for displaying of information in calendars, timelines, graphs and maps, among others, providing a much richer view of the data than simple lists would.
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* '''Visual display of information.''' The various display formats defined by additional extensions, such as [[Semantic Result Formats]] and [[Semantic Maps]], allow for displaying of information in calendars, timelines, graphs and maps, among others, providing a much richer view of the data than simple lists
and tables
would.
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* '''Improved data structure.''' MediaWiki wikis tend to make heavy use of categories for structuring data. While these are generally helpful, consider the category on Wikipedia called "[[wp:en:Category:1620s
deaths
|1620s
deaths
]]"; if the information in these pages were stored using SMW, these categories could be replaced by simple semantic values, reducing the need for a complex classification system. In addition, if semantic markup within the wiki is stored within templates, otherwise known as [[Help:Semantic templates|semantic templates]], a wiki can easily gain a solid data structure. And the [[Semantic Forms]] extension lets
administators
create forms for adding and editing the data within semantic templates, thus making the addition of semantic information
possibly
even easier and more straightforward than regular wiki text.
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* '''Improved data structure.''' MediaWiki wikis tend to make heavy use of categories for structuring data. While these are generally helpful, consider the category on Wikipedia called "[[wp:en:Category:1620s
births
|1620s
births
]]"; if the information in these pages were stored using SMW, these categories could be replaced by simple semantic values, reducing the need for a complex classification system. In addition, if semantic markup within the wiki is stored within templates, otherwise known as [[Help:Semantic templates|semantic templates]], a wiki can easily gain a solid data structure. And the [[Semantic Forms]] extension lets
administrators
create forms for adding and editing the data within semantic templates, thus making the addition of semantic information even easier and more straightforward than
using
regular wiki text.
* '''Searching information.''' Individual users can search for specific information by creating their own queries, supported via extensions like [[Semantic Drilldown]] and [[Semantic Forms]].
* '''Searching information.''' Individual users can search for specific information by creating their own queries, supported via extensions like [[Semantic Drilldown]] and [[Semantic Forms]].
−
* '''External reuse.''' Data, once it is created in an SMW wiki, does not have to remain within the wiki; it can easily be exported via formats like CSV
, JSON
and
RDF
. This enables an SMW wiki to serve as a data source for other applications, or, in the case of enterprise usages, to take over the role that a relational database would normally play. Through the use of the [[Help:MediaWiki extensions#External Data|External Data]] extension, [[SPARQL]], and other tools, one SMW-based wiki can even use the data from another, eliminating the need for redundancy between wikis. You can also query SMW's data from outside the wiki, via the API or an [[Help:Using SPARQL and RDF stores|RDF triplestore]].
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* '''External reuse.''' Data, once it is created in an SMW wiki, does not have to remain within the wiki; it can easily be exported via formats like CSV and
JSON
. This enables an SMW wiki to serve as a data source for other applications, or, in the case of enterprise usages, to take over the role that a relational database would normally play. Through the use of the [[Help:MediaWiki extensions#External Data|External Data]] extension, [[SPARQL]], and other tools, one SMW-based wiki can even use the data from another, eliminating the need for redundancy between wikis. You can also query SMW's data from outside the wiki, via the API or an [[Help:Using SPARQL and RDF stores|RDF triplestore]].
* '''Integrate and mash-up data.''' Data contained in an SMW installation does not have to be an isolated store of information. Extensions such as [[Help:SMW_extensions#Data_Transfer|Data Transfer]] and [[Help:SMW_extensions#External Data|External Data]] empower you to integrate external data (coming e.g. from legacy systems, web services or linked data sources) and interrelate it with existing semantic data in the wiki. Thus, an SMW-powered wiki can serve as a central information hub in an IT landscape.
* '''Integrate and mash-up data.''' Data contained in an SMW installation does not have to be an isolated store of information. Extensions such as [[Help:SMW_extensions#Data_Transfer|Data Transfer]] and [[Help:SMW_extensions#External Data|External Data]] empower you to integrate external data (coming e.g. from legacy systems, web services or linked data sources) and interrelate it with existing semantic data in the wiki. Thus, an SMW-powered wiki can serve as a central information hub in an IT landscape.
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For contacting the [[SMW Project]], see the [[Contact|contact page]]. For comments and questions, there is an active [http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=147937 user mailing list] that you can join, as well as an [[IRC Channel]], [irc://irc.freenode.net/semantic-mediawiki #semantic-mediawiki]. See [[Help:Getting support]] for further information about support for SMW.
For contacting the [[SMW Project]], see the [[Contact|contact page]]. For comments and questions, there is an active [http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=147937 user mailing list] that you can join, as well as an [[IRC Channel]], [irc://irc.freenode.net/semantic-mediawiki #semantic-mediawiki]. See [[Help:Getting support]] for further information about support for SMW.
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Bugs and feature requests for SMW can also be filed at [https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
BugZilla
]; see the documentation on [[reporting bugs]].
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Bugs and feature requests for SMW can also be filed at [https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
Bugzilla
]; see the documentation on [[reporting bugs]].
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