Talk:How Do I get started - project page

Comment 1 about the toc
I strongly recommend adding a brief "What is SMW" right up the very front, as people who get to this document as their first meeting/introduction to SMW need to know what it is, before they can install or use it in anyway.

You could (should?) consider putting the installation further back or a the end of the manual and point users at the sandbox, or some other test site or site using SMW first, so that they can get their heads around SMW - the install is really a side issue and hopefully just a once off process.

This is a very common failing that I see in many manuals, and web sites etc - there is lots of info about everything, except what the "thing is".

I am in the well and truly in throws of being a new user, so:


 * 1) I wholeheartedly agree this idea is great.
 * 2) I will try to contribute.


 * Cool, thank you for your feedback and your willingness to take part at this. I just changed the toc according your suggestion. Let's see what others think. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; 22:05, 21 November 2011 (CET)

Second proposal
This is a elaborate proposal and I think we should go for that. Whilst doing this we have to make sure that it supplements the existing documentation in a way and that it remains concise and serves as an entry point. This avoids that it replaces the existing documentation of e. g. SMW and SF. Just by looking at the pictures of the slides you prepared it seems to me that parts of this might already be there. They make a good impression. :) Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; 21:05, 11 December 2011 (CET)

A manual for the old-school wiki-admins
Wow, you have created cool harmonious system here! Here is my small proposal: I think we need here not only the guides for wiki-newbies, but also the tutorials for wiki-admins who have been running their traditional non-semantic wikis for some time.

Who is the potential reader of the tutorial?
In this kind of tutorials the reader is a wiki admin who have created her MediaWiki website, added a bunch of templates to it and have the community of users. The consistency of the wiki relies on wiki-editors themselves or probably they have created some amount of lurking around bots. The same goes for lists and summaries in the form of maps, timelines and so on.

What is the goal of the guide?
The goal is to show the reader that SMW can simplify many of her common tasks. The ultimate goal is to make her install Semantic MediaWiki.

What should the guide focus on?
The guide should show how to convert your MW wiki into SMW wiki and what benefits you will get from that.
 * How to add semantics to the templates?
 * How to create a form for the existing template? (this is very important since the Semantic Forms documentation have almost no example)
 * How to clean up your data after the conversion?
 * How to use the new-born semantic data?

Yury Katkov 10:07, 5 January 2012 (CET)