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* [http://oxford.geeknights.net/2007/april-11th/talks/nick-grandy.mp4 Video of Nick Grandy explaining SMW] at an Oxford Geek Night
* [http://oxford.geeknights.net/2007/april-11th/talks/nick-grandy.mp4 Video of Nick Grandy explaining SMW] at an Oxford Geek Night
* [http://korrekt.org/talks/Wikimania2007/SMW.html Semantic MediaWiki: Towards Wikipedia 3.0]
* [http://korrekt.org/talks/Wikimania2007/SMW.html Semantic MediaWiki: Towards Wikipedia 3.0]
* [http://howiw.com SMW Howiw]


[[Category:Semantic wiki software]]
[[Category:Semantic wiki software]]

Revision as of 17:27, 12 September 2011

Semantic MediaWiki
Developer(s)various
Stable release
1.6.1 / August 20, 2011 (2011-08-20)
Repository
Written inPHP
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeMediaWiki extension
LicenseGPL
Websitehttp://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/

Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is an extension to MediaWiki, that allows for annotating semantic data within wiki pages, thus turning a wiki that incorporates the extension into a semantic wiki. Data that has been encoded can be used in semantic searches, used for aggregation of pages, displayed in formats like maps, calendars and graphs, and exported to the outside world via formats like RDF and CSV.

Authors

Semantic MediaWiki was initially created by Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandečić and Max Völkel, and was first released in 2005. Its development was initially funded by the EU-funded FP6 project SEKT, and was later supported in part by Institute AIFB of the University of Karlsruhe (later renamed the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).

Basic syntax

Every semantic annotation within SMW is a "property" connecting the page on which it resides to some other piece of data, either another page or a data value of some type, using triples of the form "subject, predicate, object".

As an example, a page about Germany could have, encoded within it, the fact its capital city is Berlin. On the page "Germany", the syntax would be: 

 ... the capital city is [[Has capital::Berlin]] ...

which is semantically equivalent to the statement "Germany" "Has capital" "Berlin". In this example the "Germany" page is the subject, "Has capital" is the predicate, and "Berlin" is the object that the semantic link is pointing to.

However, the much more common way of storing data within Semantic MediaWiki is via MediaWiki templates which themselves contain the necessary SMW markup. For this example, the "Germany" page could contain a call to a template called "Country", that looked like this: 

{{Country
...
|Capital=Berlin
...
}}

The "Country" template would handle storing whatever the value of the parameter "Capital" is, using the property "Has capital". The template would also handle the display of the data. Semantic MediaWiki developers have estimated that 99% of SMW data is stored in this way.[1]

Semantic MediaWiki also has its own inline querying tools. For instance, if pages about countries stored additional information like population data, a query could be added to a page that displays a list of all countries with a population greater than 50 million, along with their capital city; and Germany would appear in such a list, with Berlin alongside it.[2]

Usage

Semantic MediaWiki is in use on over 200 public active wikis around the world, in addition to an unknown number of private wikis.[3][4] Notable public wikis include the Metacafe wiki, SNPedia, SKYbrary, Metavid, Familypedia, OpenEI,[5] the Sunlight Foundation's OpenCongress wiki[6] and Break.com's Chickipedia.[7][8] Organizations that use SMW internally include Pfizer,[9] Harvard Pilgrim Health Care,[10] Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development,[11] the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,[12] the Metropolitan Museum of Art[13] and the U.S. Department of Defense.[14]

SMW has noticeably gained traction in the health care domain for collaboratively creating bio-medical terminologies and ontologies.[15] Examples are LexWiki,[16] which is jointly run by the Mayo Clinic, National Cancer Institute (NCI), World Health Organization (WHO) and Stanford University; Neuroscience Information Framework's NeuroLex; and the Concept Hub wiki,[17] operated by 3M Health Information Systems.

Semantic MediaWiki is also supported on at least two wiki farm websites: Referata[18] by default,[19] as well as Wikia on user request.

Proposed use on Wikipedia

Some members of the academic community have been urging the use of SMW on Wikipedia since SMW was first proposed.[20] In a 2006 paper, Max Völkel et al. wrote that in spite of Wikipedia's utility, "its contents are barely machine-interpretable. Structural knowledge, e.g. about how concepts are interrelated, can neither be formally stated nor automatically processed. Also the wealth of numerical data is only available as plain text and thus can not be processed by its actual meaning."[21]

In a 2010 Technology Review online article, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller was quoted as saying that Wikimedia was interested in adding semantic capabilities to Wikipedia, but that they were unsure whether Semantic MediaWiki was the right solution, since it was unclear whether it could be used without negatively affecting Wikipedia's performance.[22]

Spinoff extensions

A variety of open-source MediaWiki extensions exist that use the data structure provided by Semantic MediaWiki.[23] Among the most notable are:

  • Semantic Forms - enables user-created forms for adding and editing pages that use semantic data
  • Halo - facilitates creation, retrieval, navigation and organization of semantic data via graphical and intuitive interfaces
  • Semantic Drilldown - provides a faceted browser interface for viewing the semantic data in a wiki
  • Semantic Compound Queries - provides a parser function for displaying multiple queries at the same time, such as within a calendar or a map
  • Semantic Result Formats - provides a large number of display formats for semantic data, including charts, graphs, calendars and mathematical functions
  • Semantic Maps - displays geographic semantic data using various mapping services
  • Semantic Internal Objects - provides a parser function that allows for flexible storage of so-called "n-ary relations" within pages

Community

The official gathering for Semantic MediaWiki developers and users is SMWCon.[24] Three SMWCon events have been held so far: one in Cambridge, Massachusetts in May 2010,[25] one in Amsterdam in September 2010[26] and one in Arlington, Virginia in April 2011.[27] Each event has drawn around 30-40 attendees.

See also

References

  1. ^ "semantic templates help". Semantic MediaWiki. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  2. ^ "inline queries help". Semantic MediaWiki. 2011-06-22. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  3. ^ "List of active SMW-using wikis". Smw.referata.com. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  4. ^ "Smw Faq". Semantic-mediawiki.org. 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  5. ^ DOE Launches New Website to Bring Energy Technology Information to the Public, press release, December 9, 2009
  6. ^ "OpenCongress Wiki". Opencongress.org. 2011-02-15. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  7. ^ "Chickipedia". Mademan.com. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  8. ^ "Semantic MediaWiki testimonials page". Semantic-mediawiki.org. 2011-06-30. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  9. ^ "Bio-IT World 2009, Track 3". Bio-itworldexpoeurope.com. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  10. ^ Wikify Your Metadata! Integrating Business Semantics, Metadata Discovery, and Knowledge Management, March 16, 2010, EnterpriseDataWorld Conference Schedule
  11. ^ knowIT, a semantic informatics knowledge management system, WikiSym 2009, Laurent Alquier, Keith McCormick and Ed Jaeger
  12. ^ "Semantic MediaWiki Projects at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory". Wiki.ontoprise.com. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  13. ^ Bringing the Semantic Web to Museums, Paul Miller, January 27, 2009
  14. ^ Flexible, purposive SMW use, SMWCon Spring 2010, Clarence Dillon
  15. ^ Semantic Wikis: A Comprehensible Introduction with Examples from the Health Sciences. Maged N. Kamel Boulos. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, Vol. 1, No. 1, August 2009.
  16. ^ "Informatics.mayo.edu". Informatics.mayo.edu. 2009-07-14. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  17. ^ "Concepthub.org". Concepthub.org. 2011-04-15. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  18. ^ "Referata". Referata. 2011-06-28. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  19. ^ Get Your MediaWiki Hosting Here, Jennifer Zaino, SemanticWeb.com, December 1, 2008
  20. ^ Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandecic, Denny Vr, Max Völkel (2005), Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - The Missing Links, Proceedings of Wikimania 2005{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ M Völkel, M Krötzsch, D Vrandecic (2006), Semantic MediaWiki, Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web, p. 585, doi:10.1145/1135777.1135863, ISBN 1-59593-323-9{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. ^ Wikipedia to Add Meaning to Its Pages, Tom Simonite, Technology Review, July 7, 2010
  23. ^ List of Semantic MediaWiki extensions.
  24. ^ "SMWCon homepage". Semantic-mediawiki.org. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  25. ^ "Spring 2010 SMWCon homepage". Semantic-mediawiki.org. 2010-11-01. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  26. ^ "Fall 2010 SMWCon homepage". Semantic-mediawiki.org. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
  27. ^ "Spring 2011 SMWCon homepage". Semantic-mediawiki.org. Retrieved 2011-07-21.

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Semantic MediaWiki.
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