Re: [Semediawiki-user] Noob Tutorial?

[Jan S. <Jan@Bytesmiths.com>]

Wow, S! (Is that your REAL name? :-) Thanks for your generous ideas!

It sounds really inspiring. I realize that in some cases, it is less  
than ideal for us (like n-ary relationships or database tuples rather  
than forcing a tenuously related page to be the "self" object of every  
declaration), but it's certainly an improvement over what we'd been  
doing.

And I promise not to confuse it with a project management system,  
although I intend to push it in that direction. I've got FastTrack  
Schedule for that stuff. :-)

I have marked this email for further study, and may raise some  
questions a bit further on.

On 25 Feb 09, at 22:01, S Page wrote:

> It's hard to explain SMW because the aha! moment that will make you  
> "get it" varies with each user.  "SMW annotates values and links in  
> wiki pages", go click around a page like http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Special:Browse/IkeWiki 
> , "SMW lets you put RDF triples on web pages", read the Help from  
> start to finish...  who knows what explanation or action will work  
> for you?  For what it's worth, "SMW lets you make statements about  
> wiki pages" had me at Hello :-)
>
> Jan Steinman wrote:
>
>> * Recipes are stored as wiki pages.
>
> Heh, check out http://www.theoldecookerybook.com/ , it uses  
> Property:RecipeIngredientNormal to relate a recipe to an ingredient.
>
>> It would be great if ingredients  and amounts could take on  
>> meaning, so that one could assemble a menu  and come up with a  
>> shopping list.
>
> You could query for recipes with Has_ingredient::Cheese and  
> Has_ingredient::Corn.  As Yaron said, trying to do amounts is  
> trickier although a many-valued property like [[Has ingredient  
> quantity::Cheese; 250g]] should work.  If you make each ingredient a  
> page (theoldecookerybook has them as strings) then you could go to  
> an ingredient's page and query for what recipes use it, or maintain  
> an inverse UsedInRecipe property.
>
>> * At meetings, individuals volunteer to be responsible for action   
>> items. ... We need to  be able to call up lists of what tasks any  
>> individual has agreed to  take on.
>
> There are many way to do it.  If you create a page for each task,  
> then you can put
>  [[AssignedTo::User:JanSteinman]], [[Due date:2009-02-30]],  
> [[Priority: 4 - Urgent]] etc.
> on it, and then queries for tasks by date, or tasks assigned to each  
> user are trivial.
>
> Agreements and Projects are similar kind of thing.
>
>> ... some Agreements (Projects) are important enough to
>> have their own page, with timeline and budget, while others  
>> ("approved  last meeting minutes") don't want to be cluttering up  
>> the major  agreement lists.
>
> One thing you must understand about SMW is it *always* tells you  
> something about the wiki page with the annotation.  If you put
>    [[Assigned to::User:JanSteinman]] said he would
>    buy more [[Uses material::red staplers]].
> on your Meetings/2009-02-25 page, in SMW you are making statements  
> about your February meeting, which is probably not what you want.   
> You have to create a page for each subject of statements you make.
>
>> * We have Projects that each have a page with structured  
>> information,  such as Need, Description, Goal, Timeline, Plan,  
>> Materials, Budget,  Reconciliation, etc.
>
> You'lll probably use a template, probably use Semantic Forms to ease  
> entry.  Someone set something like this up on a wiki I work on,  
> though it didn't get widespread use; see the template/form/query on http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Projects
>
> Either Timeline becomes a set of Start_date, Review_date, Due_date  
> properties, or if it's more complicated you could create a subpage  
> of the project for each milestone, and give a date to each of those.
>
> If you think making annotations in wiki pages will magically give  
> you a full-blown project management, materials, or budgeting  
> system... you're going to be disappointed.  These are still just  
> wiki pages of markup and links, not rocket science!
>
>> get a quick summary of
>> all Projects' Descriptions, or get a report of all approved  
>> Projects'  projected costs, etc.
>
> Create a Property:Description page with [[has type::String]], then  
> surround blocks of text on a few existing pages with [[Description::  
> and ]] , then go back to Property:Description.  Create a  
> [[Property:Budget]] with [[has type::Number]] and surround the  
> budget figure on a few pages with [[Budget::$4215]].  Then return to  
> the Property: pages.  It's magic!
>
> As with recipe ingredients, if you make each Material a wiki page  
> (rather than a string), then it's easier to browse to see every page  
> related to that material.  But even if something is a string this is  
> still doable, click the '+' sign next to values in Special:Browse.
>
>> * Members...
>
> Sounds like simply categorizing user pages would work pretty well.
>
>> Can SMW  provide inference about pages not written?)
>
> On the Task:Get_supplies page you can say [[Uses material::Red  
> staplers]] before you have the "Red_staplers" wiki page.  However as  
> I touched on above, you make statements about a page on that page,  
> so you can't say User:WarrenBuffet [[Offers skill::finance]] without  
> creating a page for User:WarrenBuffet.
>
>> just having trouble figuring out where to "dive in" and get started.
>
> Here's one way to dive in.
> 1. Make some simple annotations on a handful of pages in some area  
> like Recipes or Meetings.
> 2. Refine the properties, e.g. add types or allows_value enumerations.
> 3. Create queries on your Semantics test page.
> Cycle through 1-2-3 until you've got a feel for how semantics will  
> work in that area.
> 4. Then you very likely want to make templates (or add semantics to  
> existing templates) for common assignments, and/or use Semantic Forms.
> 5. Then apply the annotations/templates/forms throughout that area.
>
>> I am also not certain my installation is correct.
>
> SMW seems OK on your site, but you messed up the handling of the CSS  
> (and probably the JavaScript) used by SMW.  The CSS in
> http://www.ecoreality.org/wiki/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/skins/SMW_custom.css
> is interpreted as a missing wiki page.  Somehow your other CSS like http://www.ecoreality.org/wiki/skins/common/commonPrint.css 
>  works.
>
> BTW, your Property:IsLinkedTo won't tell you anything, you want to  
> name the relationship between pages, e.g. [[Property:Is a budget  
> line item in]] or at least [[Property:Is part of]]
>
> I hope this helps.
> --
> =S Page
>


:::: You know what? What makes our economy grow is energy. And  
Americans are used to going to the gas tank (sic), and when they put  
that hose in their, uh, tank, and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of  
it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on,  
and I don't want somebody to tell me I gotta change my way of living  
to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we've  
worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it, and  
if we're going improve (sic) our standard of living, you have to  
consume more energy. -- Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) ::::
:::: Jan Steinman, http://www.VeggieVanGogh.com ::::