Tips for editors

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Revision as of 11:32, 9 February 2010 by GiulioFontana (Talk | contribs) (→‎HOWTO add a field to the semantic description of a project)

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This page is a repository of suggestions, tips and tricks for editors (i.e., all users!) of AIRWiki.

Resources

These resources (internal to AIRWiki or not) can be handy when you are trying to figure out how to do something:

  • MediaWiki help: general help for users of wikis.
  • SMW help: help on the semantic tools provided by the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) extension used by AIRWiki.
  • SMW_Project_Workflow: description of the complete lifecycle of a project in AIRWiki, from proposal to closure. Useful if you are setting up or coordinating a project.
  • Dynamic Page Generation: guidelines for the creation of semantic queries within AIRWiki. A collection of useful examples.
  • AIRWiki_Ontology: this is the structure of the ontology behind the semantic elements of AIRWiki. Useful to keep in mind when writing queries.
  • SMW extension: official page of the SMW extension for MediaWiki. It provides a list of the features of SMW.
  • Semantic Forms extension for SMW: official page of the extension providing SMW with semantic forms functionality, listing its features.

Also, don't forget that the list of special pages includes many useful tools.

Tips for inexperienced Semantic MediaWiki users

AIRWiki includes semantic elements based on the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) extension to the established MediaWiki system. The use of SMW enables the user with the possibility of using queries to extract specific content from the wiki; here you can find some examples of queries.

AIRWiki also uses the Semantic Forms extension to make semantic-level editing of pages easier through the use of customized forms.

Below you find some tips that should help MediaWiki users to get to grips with SMW. If you don't even know how MediaWiki works, it's better if you take a look to its help page before reading on.

For newbies

This webpage gives a short introduction to what SMW is and why it is useful.

About the names of semantic properties

When writing queries, beware! The name of a property can be DIFFERENT from the name used in the semantic part of the wiki pages describing the objects of your query. For instance, any project page includes something like 

{{Project
| [...]
| restopic=SomeTopic
| [...]
}}

But if you are writing a query to select the projects with topic SomeTopic you should NOT use 

[[restopic::SomeTopic]]

Instead, you have to use the name of the property corresponding to the "restopic" field in the project page. This name is "prjResTopic": therefore your query should use 

[[prjResTopic::SomeTopic]]

How can you find out the right name for the properties associated to (the content of) a page? When a page includes semantic information, clicking the "Browse properties" link in the toolbox on the left gives you a list of all the properties defined for that page.

Note 1: the correspondencies between properties and field names in the semantic code of a page are set by the relevant semantic form. For instance, for a project they can be seen (and altered, if you know what you're doing...) by editing the Form:Project page.

Note 2: in some cases the name of a property is preceded by a prefix in the form "PREFIX:" this means that the property has been imported from an external ontology, or defined in accordance with it. Examples of such prefixes are "A:" (referring to Annotea) and "Foaf:" (referring to the Friend-Of-A-Friend project). In any case, AIRWiki properties having a prefix are used exactly in the same way of the other properties.

HOWTO add a field to the semantic description of a project

We will describe the operations that had to be performed to add a new field to the description of, in order to integrate the new field with the SMW framework of AIRWiki and to make it fully usable for semantic queries. Of course, the procedure can be easily generalized.

IMPORTANT: this kind of operations introduce structural changes in the AIRWiki. They should be performed only after consultation with professor Bonarini.

Let's add the field "Coordinator" to the Project category, to describe the person that is managing the project (while the "Tutor" is in charge of the students participating to it). These are the steps:

1. Creation of a new category called "Coordinator". By using the Special:CreateCategory page, this is easy, but we are asked to specify which category (if any) Coordinator should be a subcategory of. The general rule is: define a new category B as a subcategory of a category A which includes all the possible elements of B, but the minimum number of elements outside B. If A doesn't exist, do not define B as a subcategory. By applying this rule, we define "Coordinator" as a subcategory of "Person": in fact the coordinator is most certainly a person, but can be even external to Politecnico di Milano.

2. Choice of the forms which are influenced by the change. The forms are used for simplified input of data, and are the preferred method to create new pages (when a form is available for the page, of course). Available forms are listed in the Special:Forms page: in our case, the only form to be changed is Form:Project.

3. Modification of the form for Project. By editing the Form:Project wiki page, we must now insert a field associated to the Coordinator category into the form. Beware: this is a dangerous operation, if you are not an expert of SMW syntax. The best option is to use copy-and-paste judiciously. By adding 

! [[Property:PrjCoordinator|Coordinator(s)]]:
(NameSurname1; NameSurname2; ...)
| coordinator
|-

to the form in a suitable place, we ensure that:

  • a new field (called "coordinator") is added to the form: from now on, any page created or edited using this form will possess a box where the coordinator must (note the "mandatory") be specified;
  • a new property (called PrjCoordinator) has been introduced but not yet defined

4. Creation of the new property PrjCoordinator associated to category Project. After its definition, the value of the property for a specific page belonging to that category will be usable to perform queries. This is done using the special page Special:CreateProperty. This creation mask asks you to specify the kind of values of the property: in our case, we chose one at random since we were to replace the property page's text immediately after.

5. Definition of the new property. We edited page Property:PrjCoordinator and substituted completely the wiki code in it with the following text, adapted from Property:PrjTutor: 

This property is used to indicate that a Project is managed by one (ore more) Coodinators.


6. Choice of the templates which are influenced by the change. The templates are used to display in a standardized way the data of a page. Available templates are listed in the Special:Templates page: in our case, the only form to be changed is Template:Project (it must be changed because it defines the category Project).

7. Modification of the template for Project. Beware: this is a dangerous operation, if you are not an expert of SMW syntax. The best option is to use copy-and-paste judiciously. In our case, we had to perform two modifications. First, altering the description of the template by inserting the following text: 

| coordinator=Leonardo Da Vinci
|         ***NOTE:*** you can specify a LIST of coordinators, separating them with a semicolon (;). Coordinators and tutors can overlap.

Then, altering the graphical description of the template to add a table row showing the coordinator(s). This required adding the following text: 

|-
{{Tablerow|Label=Coordinator|Value={{#ifeq:{{{coordinator|}}}|||{{#arraymap:{{{coordinator|}}}|; |x|[[prjCoordinator::User:x|x]] ({{#show: User:x| ?Email }})}}}}}}

AIRWiki special pages dedicated to semantic content

The Special:SpecialPages page includes many interesting tools for the management of the semantic elements of AIRWiki. Below are those which are most useful to non-expert users.

Browsing existing elements

Creating new elements

  • Special:AddPage create a new page with (also) semantic content, using one of the available forms

Basic ideas behind AIRWiki

The following guidelines represent decisions about the structure of AIRWiki that have been taken. You should always comply with them when editing the AIRWiki.

  • All reasonably static information about the AIRLab should be published in the AIRLab website. All information which need to be modified more frequently (say: at least twice a year) should instead be put into the AIRWiki. The AIRWiki also offers the possibility of building pages which are automatically updated.
  • The AIRLab website should mention all the research areas active in AIRLab; but some of these could be absent from the AIRWiki.
  • AIRWiki DOES NOT include a "Projects" page (where the projects of AIRLab are listed). Projects are listed in the pages of the relevant research area.
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