Semantic MediaWiki
Encyclopedia
Semantic MediaWiki 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
.
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:
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:
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.
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.
wiki, SNPedia
, SKYbrary
, Metavid
, Familypedia
, OpenEI
, the Free Software Directory
and Break.com
's Chickipedia. Organizations that use SMW internally include Pfizer
, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development
, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the U.S. Department of Defense
.
SMW has notably gained traction in the health care domain for collaboratively creating bio-medical terminologies and ontologies. Examples are LexWiki, which is jointly run by the Mayo Clinic
, National Cancer Institute
, World Health Organization
and Stanford University
; Neuroscience Information Framework
's NeuroLex
; and the Concept Hub wiki, operated by 3M
Health Information Systems.
Semantic MediaWiki is also supported on at least two wiki farm
websites: Referata by default, as well as Wikia
on user request.
since SMW was first proposed. 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."
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.
, Amsterdam
, Arlington, Virginia and Berlin
. Each event has drawn around 30-40 attendees.
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
that allows for annotating semantic data
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
within wiki pages, thus turning a wiki that incorporates the extension into a semantic wiki
Semantic Wiki
A semantic wiki is a wiki that has an underlying model of the knowledge described in its pages. Regular, or syntactic, wikis have structured text and untyped hyperlinks...
. 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
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
and CSV
Comma-separated values
A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....
.
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). Krötzsch remains the lead developer as of 2011, while other core developers are Jeroen De Dauw and Yaron Koren.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 triplesTuple
In mathematics and computer science, a tuple is an ordered list of elements. In set theory, an n-tuple is a sequence of n elements, where n is a positive integer. There is also one 0-tuple, an empty sequence. An n-tuple is defined inductively using the construction of an ordered pair...
of the form "subject, predicate, object".
As an example, a page about Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
could have, encoded within it, the fact its capital city is Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. 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:
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.
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.
Usage
Semantic MediaWiki is in use on over 250 public active wikis around the world, in addition to an unknown number of private wikis. Notable public wikis that use SMW include the MetacafeMetacafe
Metacafe is a web site that specializes in short-form video entertainment in the categories of movies, video games, sports, music and TV.The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv...
wiki, SNPedia
SNPedia
SNPedia is a wiki-based bioinformatics web site that serves as a database of single nucleotide polymorphisms . Each article on a SNP provides a short description, links to scientific articles and personal genomics web sites, as well as microarray information about that SNP...
, SKYbrary
SKYbrary
SKYbrary is a wiki created by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, International Civil Aviation Organization, and the Flight Safety Foundation to create a comprehensive source of aviation safety information freely available online. It was launched in May 2008 on a platform...
, Metavid
Metavid
Metavid is a free-software wiki-based community archive project for audio video media. The site hosts public domain US legislative footage. It was started as a Digital Arts/New Media MFA thesis project of Michael Dale and Abram Stern under the advisement of Professor Warren Sack in late 2005 at the...
, Familypedia
Familypedia
Familypedia is a free-to-use public wiki on family history and genealogy. It is hosted by Wikia, a wiki farm. Familypedia is a collaborative effort by amateur genealogists and family historians, with over 30,000 unique people having their own pages among 100,000 articles , with over 114,000 other...
, OpenEI
OpenEI
Open Energy Information is an online platform that "links energy communities and decision makers with valuable energy data, information, analyses, tools, images, maps, and other resources." It was launched by the United States Department of Energy on December 9,...
, the Free Software Directory
Free Software Directory
The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation . It catalogs free software that runs under free operating systems - particularly GNU and Linux. The project was formerly co-run by UNESCO....
and Break.com
Break.com
Break.com is a humor website founded in 1998 that features comedy videos, flash games, and pictures among other material. The chief executive officer of Break is Steve Boss...
's Chickipedia. Organizations that use SMW internally include Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development
Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development
Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that is responsible for discovering and developing pharmaceutical drugs...
, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is one of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, managed by the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The main campus of the laboratory is in Richland, Washington....
, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
and the U.S. Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
.
SMW has notably gained traction in the health care domain for collaboratively creating bio-medical terminologies and ontologies. Examples are LexWiki, which is jointly run by the Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit medical practice and medical research group specializing in treating difficult patients . Patients are referred to Mayo Clinic from across the U.S. and the world, and it is known for innovative and effective treatments. Mayo Clinic is known for being at the top of...
, National Cancer Institute
National Cancer Institute
The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health , which is one of 11 agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NCI coordinates the U.S...
, World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
; Neuroscience Information Framework
Neuroscience Information Framework
The Neuroscience Information Framework is a repository of global neuroscience web resources, including experimental, clinical, and translational neuroscience databases, knowledge bases, atlases, and genetic/genomic resources.-Description:...
's NeuroLex
NeuroLex
NeuroLex is a dynamic lexicon of neuroscience concepts. It is a structured as a semantic wiki, using Semantic MediaWiki. NeuroLex is supported by the Neuroscience Information Framework project.- Overview :...
; and the Concept Hub wiki, operated by 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
Health Information Systems.
Semantic MediaWiki is also supported on at least two wiki farm
Wiki farm
A wiki hosting service or wiki farm is a server or an array of servers that offer users tools to simplify the creation and development of individual, independent wikis...
websites: Referata by default, as well as Wikia
Wikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
on user request.
Proposed use on Wikipedia
Some members of the academic community have been urging the use of SMW on WikipediaWikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
since SMW was first proposed. 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."
In a 2010 Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
online article, Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
Deputy Director Erik Möller
Erik Möller
Erik Möller is a German freelance journalist, software developer, author, and Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation , based in San Francisco, California...
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.
Spinoff extensions
A variety of open-source MediaWiki extensions exist that use the data structure provided by Semantic MediaWiki. 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 browserFaceted browserFaceted search, also called faceted navigation or faceted browsing, is a technique for accessing information organized according to a faceted classification system, allowing users to explore a collection of information by applying multiple filters...
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, which has been held twice a year since 2010, in Cambridge, MassachusettsCambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, Arlington, Virginia and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. Each event has drawn around 30-40 attendees.
See also
- DBpediaDBpediaDBpedia is a project aiming to extract structured content from the information created as part of the Wikipedia project. This structured information is then made available on the World Wide Web. DBpedia allows users to query relationships and properties associated with Wikipedia resources,...
- FreebaseFreebaseFreebase is a large collaborative knowledge base consisting of metadata composed mainly by its community members. It is an online collection of structured data harvested from many sources, including individual 'wiki' contributions. Freebase aims to create a global resource which allows people to...
- List of applications with iCalendar support
- OntoWikiOntoWikiOntoWiki is a free, open-source semantic wiki application, meant to serve as an ontology editor and a knowledge acquisition system. It is a web-based application written in PHP and using either a MySQL database or a Virtuoso triple store...
- SMW+SMW+SMW+ is an open source software bundle composed of the wiki application MediaWiki along with a number of its extensions. It is produced by the German software company Ontoprise GmbH. SMW+'s extensions include, most notably, Semantic MediaWiki and the...
Further reading
- Software could add meaning to 'wiki' links, Matthew Sparkes, New ScientistNew ScientistNew Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
, June 7, 2006 - Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandecic, Max Völkel, Heiko Haller, Rudi StuderRudi StuderRudi Studer is a German computer scientist and professor at KIT, Germany. He is the head of the knowledge management research group at the Institute AIFB and one of the directors of the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute . He is former president of the Semantic Web Science Association, and a...
: Semantic Wikipedia. Journal of Web SemanticsJournal of Web SemanticsThe Journal of Web Semantics is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier. It covers knowledge technologies, ontology, software agents, databases and the semantic grid, information retrieval, human language technology, data mining, and semantic web development. The...
5/2007, December 2007. Struktur fürs Wiki, Rolf Strathewerd, Linux-MagazinLinux-MagazinLinux-Magazin is a German professional journal. It addresses itself to readers who work professionally with the Linux operating system. The Linux Magazin is the second oldest magazine about Linux in the world...
, July 2009 - Smart, P. R.; Braines, D.; Bao, J.; Mott, D.; Huynh, T. D.; Shadbolt, N.: Supporting Distributed Coalition Planning with Semantic Wiki Technology. In: 4th Annual Conference of the International Technology Alliance (ACITA'10).
External links
- Semantic MediaWiki on mediawiki.org
- Semantic MediaWiki Community Wiki
- Video of Nick Grandy explaining SMW at an Oxford Geek Night
- Semantic MediaWiki: Towards Wikipedia 3.0