Help talk:Semantic MediaWiki

Phlox's introduction to the subject in about October 2007

 * (reproduced here as a good starter for discussion; but a forum may be a better place for later discussion broken into specific aspects of the subject)

What does the hassle of conforming to such templates or supporting these hidden blocks of information buy us? Well, brushing aside all the gee whiz applications of semantic databases, our genealogy wikia would eventually benefit from very practical features, such as the simple idea that it allows information to be shared between articles. Meta's Semantic Mediawiki extension supports encoding data in a central way that can be accessed anywhere in the wiki. It looks like normal wikitext. For example, a person article for Joseph Hester might mention a fact as part of the body of the text of the article:

...Joseph's parents were father is::Elias Hester (c1832 and...

Previously, one would make a link to another article. With semantic markup, you are asked to do just a little more work so that the semantic relation is indicated (father is). Any time this information is updated, everyone that wants the change can get it. EG. I have a family tree, and for one of the cells I can hardcode the Elias Hester or I simply put 

Some of this stuff is working today, (see example for california at ontology semantic wiki page ). When it matures, it is surely something that future contributors to Genealogy wikia will want to begin to use. Note that any it is just another wikitext operator, and this doesn't impose any radical demands on authors. It can be ignored by the majority of contributors, but I expect will gradually gain many converts simply due to time savings. It can be used in an evolutionary way, and I expect the transition will be fairly gradual, with a mixture of usage of hardcoding versus re-using data. This will suit wikia managers very well, because the server loading created by complex templates using such queries are not well understood. It could be that caching will make it a non issue, but note that data dependencies are multiplied. Change the data declaration father is:: relation for William the conquerer, and you could potentially invalidate the cached pages of hundreds and hundreds of pages using this information. It's also impossible to predict what the issues are with vandals. The same issue arose when wikipedia first started, (the objection was that allowing users great power will mean they will abuse it)- come to think of it, I think the nobility said the same thing about allowing the rabble to vote. Anyhow, a gradual transition allows everyone to learn and adapt.

Other explorations of interest:
 * Microformats and genealogy information
 * Inline queries using Semantic mediawiki extension
 * Meta's article on the extension: Semantic MediaWiki

For the foreseeable future, we cannot predict how the data representation formats of the genealogy community will evolve, and can only adapt along with them. At some point, it is inevitable that Genealogy wikia will have a data mass sufficent to earn us a seat at the table so that we may positively influence such evolution.

For the near term, we should encourage folks to encode information using standard templates such as Template:Person. This will help the future upgrade of the data to representations such as the above.