SMWCon Fall 2013/Revolutionizing page naming with semantic properties

The MITRE Gestalt Framework (MGF) comprises a set of extensions and patterns of use for construction of web-based social semantic knowledge applications that complement the MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki software. Out of the box, that MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki software provide a blank sheet of paper for capturing enterprise knowledge. Additional extensions and patterns of use are necessary to add structure to that knowledge and promote findability. Our customer environments do not have the millions of editors that contribute to and support Wikipedia. Therefore, there needs to be enough structure in place to help get the wiki content to a critical mass in order to foster contribution. Using the MGF, we have constructed dozens of semantic wikis with varying levels of success and adoption. Through this process, we have learned numerous lessons on how to build and encourage the acceptance of semantic wikis.

One of the problems that we encounter repeatedly in the type of semantic wikis that we develop is the question of how to name wiki pages. Sometimes there is no simple, meaningful way for a user to create a page name, and sometimes there is a need to allow special characters in a page name or to allow the name of a page to change easily over time. Quite often, we find it helpful to have the actual name of a page from the perspective of MediaWiki to be an automatically-generated static page id, while allowing a semantic property to indicate a name that would be meaningful to a user. This creates complications, including how to select a page in a field of a semantic form. To support this alternative approach to page naming, we have used a modified version of the SemanticTitle extension as well as several extensions to SemanticForms that we have custom developed and are in the process of submitting to the open source community. There are still a couple of open issues, but this approach has already greatly simplified page creation for our customers.

In this talk, we will describe the advantages and disadvantages of this alternative approach to page naming. We will introduce the extensions that we use to support this style. We will give examples, including live demonstrations of several wikis using this approach. And, finally, we will discuss and solicit feedback on open issues.