From: Yaron K. <ya...@gm...> - 2008-11-24 20:34:52
|
Hi everyone, Here's my report on the first-ever Semantic MediaWiki users meeting, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts over the weekend, at the offices of the Monitor Group. The meeting was divided into two days: the Saturday session was an all-day event that featured discussions and presentations on a wide variety of SMW-related topics, and the Sunday session was a half-day event that focused on two topics: in-depth discussion of possible additions to the SMW and its spinoff extensions, and ideas about building and strengthening the SMW community, including thoughts about future meetings. There were about 30 attendees for the Saturday session and 10 for the Sunday session, and both numbers were significantly than I expected when we first started talking about the meeting. There were attendees from both Germany and various parts of the United States, and among the attendees were representatives of consulting companies who implement SMW-based solutions (Monitor, Ontoprise, mindXchange, SAIC), university groups where SMW-based research is done (RPI, MIT, "Karlsruhe Institute of Technology", i.e. the University of Karlsruhe), and large-scale websites built using SMW (caBIG Knowledge Center, FamilySearch, SNPedia, Referata), among others. Also included were "special surprise guests" Markus Krotzsch and Denny Vrandecic, who phoned in via Skype for the Saturday morning sessions. Overall, I think the meeting was a success - many connections were made between people working on similar problems, or encountering the same obstacles, and there was a great deal of information exchanged. And the facilities and equipment were superb, thanks to some great work from the Monitor team. There were too many thoughts raised during the meeting to try to summarize all of them, but here's my attempt to list a few of the recurring ideas that came up: - There should be more communication. This is true for nearly everyone - groups and individual developers who create features or extensions should announce what they're doing before they start developing, not after it's done, and should solicit feedback more; consulting companies should communicate more about the projects they're working on; etc. This mailing list and the SMW Forum (http://smwforum.ontoprise.com) were raised as the two best places to do that, although of course any communication is better than none. - There should be more documentation. That includes codifying "best practices" and use cases, and expanding help pages. On that note, some pleas were made to re-open registration on semantic-mediawiki.org (sorry, Markus and Denny, I'm just the messenger). And more generally, a need for tutorials was expressed, including online screencast videos, PDF documents and maybe even published books. - Many new features were requested. The number one request seemed to be for access control through SMW - letting administrators close off parts of a wiki for viewing (and, less importantly, for editing), using semantic properties - and making sure that SMW inline queries respect that and hid results that users shouldn't see. Thankfully, according to Ontoprise they're working on implementing such a feature, although it's still in the planning stage. Also popular was workflow, which is tied in with access control and which involves, most notably, various user groups being notified when specific changes are made to the data; and what I call "true n-ary relations", which is the ability to define free-form internal subjects within a page, each with their own set of properties. - Finally, there was discussion about the need for future user meetings. It was suggested that semantic-related conferences, such as SemTech and ISWC among many others, could include either official or unofficial SMW-specific meetings. In addition, it was tentatively decided that there should be two dedicated SMW user meetings such as this one every year, most likely in the fall and spring, and most likely alternating between the United States and Europe. So that's it for my notes. You can read more about the discussions, view slide presentations and see some photos, from the two links at the top of this page: http://smw.referata.com/wiki/SMW_users_meeting The minutes are still being added to, but hopefully what's there provides a good sense of how the meeting went. -Yaron |
From: S P. <in...@sk...> - 2008-11-25 01:24:42
|
> the first-ever Semantic MediaWiki users meeting, Congratulations. > which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts (also the headquarters of One Laptop Per Child which uses SMW. I *really* should have attended.) > - There should be more documentation. That includes codifying "best > practices" and use cases, Everyone and anyone should read and update http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Suggestions http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_query_cookbook http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tips and make additional "Help:" pages; inform this list when you add knowledge. (The pages are there and not semanticweb.org because cookbooks and demos need sample data.) > - Many new features were requested. Did nobody mention better ways to control the appearance of property values? All the new Result Formats are great but you can't say how individual columns should appear. The pain of making values appear the way they want is the biggest disappointment of wiki.laptop.org editors when they try SMW. For example, Property bug_number::15541 should always display as a link and without a comma. I filed enhancement request for a Property:Has_format , https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15541 Anyway, well done! Warmest regards, -- =S Page |
From: <zeh...@mo...> - 2008-11-25 09:24:52
|
Quoting S Page <in...@sk...>: > > - Many new features were requested. > > Did nobody mention better ways to control the appearance of property > values? All the new Result Formats are great but you can't say how > individual columns should appear. The pain of making values appear the > way they want is the biggest disappointment of wiki.laptop.org editors > when they try SMW. For example, Property bug_number::15541 should > always display as a link and without a comma. I filed enhancement > request for a Property:Has_format , > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15541 I agree that property pages could contain more information besides the [[has type::]] declaration to allow users to give hints to programmes how to handle the semantic data values. I experiment (within my SQFT extension) with this possibility as my wiki consists (at least initially) mainly of an XML database dump converted to properties and would therefore appear in normal view as more or less empty pages. So I display pages via a modified Special:Browse function which uses properties like 'property display' and 'property link' on the property pages to determine the desired display (or linking) of a property value. More advanced features include the use of certain other extensions (e.g. Sergey's Widget extension or the iframe extension). If i.e. the value of the (nary) property 'location' would be [[location::Moskow;55.754796;37.621479| ]] and Property:location contains [[property display::widget:Google Maps,label=$0$,lat=$1$,lng=$2$| ]] than (assuming the widget 'Google Maps' is set up) a small Google map of the location is displayed as value in the 'Browse' table instead of just the usual string 'Moskow (55.754796, 37.621479)'. Or as a more exotic example if a property of a protein page contains the name of an uploaded file with its 3-D structure data, the declaration [[property display::jmol]] on the corresponding property page results in the display of a small three dimensional interactive image of the protein instead of just the file name (using the extension 'Jmol') similar to the default display for images. At least in my experience enabling more advanced displays of semantic values can improve the information content of the simple table view of the semantic properties of a page quite a lot and still retain the original purpose of the semantic data. Cheers, Gu |
From: Solbrig, H. R. <Sol...@ma...> - 2008-12-01 19:04:36
|
Folks, I went to the URL's below, but the banner says: "This site is a playground for testing Semantic MediaWiki. All content entered or uploaded here may be deleted at any time, and nothing here should be assumed to be true." Uh...? Harold Solbrig | Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics | 507-293-3774 | sol...@ma... -----Original Message----- From: sem...@li... [mailto:sem...@li...] On Behalf Of S Page Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 7:22 PM To: Yaron Koren Cc: Semantic MediaWiki Users Subject: Re: [Semediawiki-user] Notes from the Boston SMW Users Meeting > the first-ever Semantic MediaWiki users meeting, Congratulations. > which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts (also the headquarters of One Laptop Per Child which uses SMW. I *really* should have attended.) > - There should be more documentation. That includes codifying "best > practices" and use cases, Everyone and anyone should read and update http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Suggestions http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_query_cookbook http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tips and make additional "Help:" pages; inform this list when you add knowledge. (The pages are there and not semanticweb.org because cookbooks and demos need sample data.) > - Many new features were requested. Did nobody mention better ways to control the appearance of property values? All the new Result Formats are great but you can't say how individual columns should appear. The pain of making values appear the way they want is the biggest disappointment of wiki.laptop.org editors when they try SMW. For example, Property bug_number::15541 should always display as a link and without a comma. I filed enhancement request for a Property:Has_format , https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15541 Anyway, well done! Warmest regards, -- =S Page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Semediawiki-user mailing list Sem...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user |
From: Yaron K. <ya...@gm...> - 2008-12-01 19:17:16
|
I assume you're talking about the links to sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.orgthat S Page included. I agree that a testing site is not a good place for any kind of documentation; and if those pages are there only because semantic-mediawiki.org is closed for editing, it's another argument for re-opening registration on that site. -Yaron On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 2:04 PM, Solbrig, Harold R. <Sol...@ma...>wrote: > Folks, > > I went to the URL's below, but the banner says: > > "This site is a playground for testing Semantic MediaWiki. All content > entered or uploaded here may be deleted at any time, and nothing here > should be assumed to be true." > > Uh...? > > > Harold Solbrig | Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics | > 507-293-3774 | sol...@ma... > > -----Original Message----- > From: sem...@li... > [mailto:sem...@li...] On Behalf Of S > Page > Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 7:22 PM > To: Yaron Koren > Cc: Semantic MediaWiki Users > Subject: Re: [Semediawiki-user] Notes from the Boston SMW Users Meeting > > > the first-ever Semantic MediaWiki users meeting, > > Congratulations. > > > which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts > > (also the headquarters of One Laptop Per Child which uses SMW. I > *really* should have attended.) > > > - There should be more documentation. That includes codifying "best > > practices" and use cases, > > Everyone and anyone should read and update > http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Suggestions > http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_query_cookbook > http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tips > and make additional "Help:" pages; inform this list when you add > knowledge. (The pages are there and not semanticweb.org because > cookbooks and demos need sample data.) > > > - Many new features were requested. > > Did nobody mention better ways to control the appearance of property > values? All the new Result Formats are great but you can't say how > individual columns should appear. The pain of making values appear the > way they want is the biggest disappointment of wiki.laptop.org editors > when they try SMW. For example, Property bug_number::15541 should > always display as a link and without a comma. I filed enhancement > request for a Property:Has_format , > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15541 > > Anyway, well done! > Warmest regards, > -- > =S Page > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > - > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's > challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great > prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the > world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > Semediawiki-user mailing list > Sem...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user > |
From: Andreas W. <a.w...@ut...> - 2008-11-28 10:07:07
|
Hi, Yaron Koren wrote: > Also popular was workflow, which is tied in > with access control and which involves, most notably, various user > groups being notified when specific changes are made to the data; Is there somebody working on the notification/workflow topic? I am currently considering coming up with an extension which monitors changes on semantic annotations in a wiki and issues an event once such a change is observed. Such events could be used as an input for a workflow. If somebody is working on/thinking about that I would be interested in an offline exchange of ideas. best regards Andreas |
From: Denny V. <dv...@ai...> - 2008-12-02 18:10:51
|
Hi Andreas, Frank Dengler is currently working on representing processes within a SMW -- not exactly a workflow, but it probably isn't too far away from each other. You can find an example here: <http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/projects/process> Best, denny Andreas Wombacher wrote: > Hi, > > Yaron Koren wrote: >> Also popular was workflow, which is tied in >> with access control and which involves, most notably, various user >> groups being notified when specific changes are made to the data; > > Is there somebody working on the notification/workflow topic? > I am currently considering coming up with an extension which monitors > changes on semantic annotations in a wiki and issues an event once such > a change is observed. Such events could be used as an input for a workflow. > If somebody is working on/thinking about that I would be interested in > an offline exchange of ideas. > > best regards > Andreas > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > Semediawiki-user mailing list > Sem...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user |
From: Thomas S. <sch...@on...> - 2008-11-28 10:21:13
|
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Hi,<br> <br> the Halo-extension offers Semantic Notifications since version 1.3. This allows you to formulate a query. This query is executed periodically. If the result of that query changes, you get an email that shows the differences.<br> <br> Cheers<br> Thomas<br> <br> Andreas Wombacher schrieb: <blockquote cite="mid:492...@ut..." type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Hi, Yaron Koren wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Also popular was workflow, which is tied in with access control and which involves, most notably, various user groups being notified when specific changes are made to the data; </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""><!----> Is there somebody working on the notification/workflow topic? I am currently considering coming up with an extension which monitors changes on semantic annotations in a wiki and issues an event once such a change is observed. Such events could be used as an input for a workflow. If somebody is working on/thinking about that I would be interested in an offline exchange of ideas. best regards Andreas ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/">http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/</a> _______________________________________________ Semediawiki-user mailing list <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Sem...@li...">Sem...@li...</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user">https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user</a> </pre> </blockquote> <br> <br> <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- Thomas Schweitzer Professional Services ontoprise GmbH - know how to use Know-how --- ontoprise ist Generalunternehmer für Vulcans Semantic Wiki im Projekt Halo <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ontoprise.de/content/e991/e1060/e1528/index_ger.html">http://www.ontoprise.de/content/e991/e1060/e1528/index_ger.html</a> --- Amalienbadstraße 36 (Raumfabrik 29); 76227 Karlsruhe Tel.: +49 (0) 721 509 809 39; Fax: +49 (0) 721 509 809 11 eMail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sch...@on...">sch...@on...</a>; www: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ontoprise.de">http://www.ontoprise.de</a> Sitz der Gesellschaft: Amtsgericht Mannheim, HRB 9540 Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Angele, Dipl.Wi.-Ing. Hans-Peter Schnurr </pre> </body> </html> |
From: Yaron K. <ya...@gm...> - 2008-11-28 16:43:37
|
Semantic Notifications actually came up briefly at the meeting; and it seems to me quite useful, and a likely candidate for the basis of workflow functionality. However, there are several disadvantages to it at the moment that I think render it not yet fully usable for this purpose: - it's part of Halo - in my opinion, it should be a separate extension; and from what I understand, this is being planned - it lets one set up notifications per user, but not for an entire user group - being able to define and use groups is a need common to both access-control and workflow, and hopefully there'll be way to define groups that can be used by both systems (I should note that "groups" here would most likely be defined in wiki pages, and distinct from MediaWiki's own user groups) - the defining of queries and notifications happens directly in the database, and not through wiki pages - it's always better, in my opinion, to define data within the wiki when possible. -Yaron On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 5:15 AM, Thomas Schweitzer <sch...@on...>wrote: > Hi, > > the Halo-extension offers Semantic Notifications since version 1.3. This > allows you to formulate a query. This query is executed periodically. If the > result of that query changes, you get an email that shows the differences. > > Cheers > Thomas > > Andreas Wombacher schrieb: > > Hi, > > Yaron Koren wrote: > > > Also popular was workflow, which is tied in > with access control and which involves, most notably, various user > groups being notified when specific changes are made to the data; > > > Is there somebody working on the notification/workflow topic? > I am currently considering coming up with an extension which monitors > changes on semantic annotations in a wiki and issues an event once such > a change is observed. Such events could be used as an input for a workflow. > If somebody is working on/thinking about that I would be interested in > an offline exchange of ideas. > > best regards > Andreas > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the worldhttp://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > Semediawiki-user mailing lis...@li...https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user > > > > -- > Thomas Schweitzer > Professional Services > ontoprise GmbH - know how to use Know-how > --- > ontoprise ist Generalunternehmer für Vulcans Semantic Wiki im Projekt Halohttp://www.ontoprise.de/content/e991/e1060/e1528/index_ger.html > --- > Amalienbadstraße 36 (Raumfabrik 29); 76227 Karlsruhe > Tel.: +49 (0) 721 509 809 39; Fax: +49 (0) 721 509 809 11 > eMail: sch...@on...; www: http://www.ontoprise.de > Sitz der Gesellschaft: Amtsgericht Mannheim, HRB 9540 > Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Angele, Dipl.Wi.-Ing. Hans-Peter Schnurr > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's > challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great > prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > Semediawiki-user mailing list > Sem...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-user > > |
From: Thomas S. <sch...@on...> - 2008-11-28 17:02:17
|
> Semantic Notifications actually came up briefly at the meeting; and it > seems to me quite useful, and a likely candidate for the basis of > workflow functionality. However, there are several disadvantages to it > at the moment that I think render it not yet fully usable for this > purpose: > - it's part of Halo - in my opinion, it should be a separate > extension; and from what I understand, this is being planned That's correct. We plan to separate all modules of the Halo extensions. However, we are not sure if this means that Semantic Notifications runs without Halo. But Halo will run without Semantic Notifications. > - it lets one set up notifications per user, but not for an entire > user group - being able to define and use groups is a need common to > both access-control and workflow, and hopefully there'll be way to > define groups that can be used by both systems (I should note that > "groups" here would most likely be defined in wiki pages, and distinct > from MediaWiki's own user groups) We are currently designing access control . And very probably there will be user groups (that are indeed distinct from MediaWiki's groups). So it's a good idea to use these groups for Semantic Notifications as well. > - the defining of queries and notifications happens directly in the > database, and not through wiki pages - it's always better, in my > opinion, to define data within the wiki when possible. Well, we've got a very nice user interface for that. (In fact so nice, that I always forget the syntax of #ask.) Of course it is a good idea to add further notification mechanisms besides emails e.g. RSS feeds etc. We welcome every developer who wants to contribute to our extensions. (see http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Main_Page for further details.) Best, Thomas -- Thomas Schweitzer Professional Services ontoprise GmbH - know how to use Know-how --- ontoprise ist Generalunternehmer für Vulcans Semantic Wiki im Projekt Halo http://www.ontoprise.de/content/e991/e1060/e1528/index_ger.html --- Amalienbadstraße 36 (Raumfabrik 29); 76227 Karlsruhe Tel.: +49 (0) 721 509 809 39; Fax: +49 (0) 721 509 809 11 eMail: sch...@on...; www: http://www.ontoprise.de Sitz der Gesellschaft: Amtsgericht Mannheim, HRB 9540 Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Angele, Dipl.Wi.-Ing. Hans-Peter Schnurr |
From: S P. <in...@sk...> - 2008-12-02 13:46:21
|
Yaron Koren wrote: > I agree that a testing site is not a good place > for any kind of documentation; People say there's no place for information to go, I suggest a reasonable location, then they complain about the neighborhood?! ;-) Voltaire had it right when he said "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien," commonly translated as "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Someone will only remove stuff if they think it's worth doing, contributions are preserved in a revision history, same as any other wiki, and if a better location appears you can copy and paste (why am I explaining this on a mailing list for wiki experts?). Edit away if you have suggestions and tips and recipes. Cheers, -- =S Page http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Suggestions http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_query_cookbook http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tips |
From: Yaron K. <ya...@gm...> - 2008-12-02 21:45:01
|
Right you are. :) Keep up the good work with the documentation, and if a better location comes along, I'll be sure to help with the copying and pasting. :) -Yaron On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 8:42 AM, S Page <in...@sk...> wrote: > Yaron Koren wrote: > >> I agree that a testing site is not a good place for any kind of >> documentation; >> > > People say there's no place for information to go, I suggest a reasonable > location, then they complain about the neighborhood?! ;-) Voltaire had it > right when he said "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien," commonly translated as > "The perfect is the enemy of the good." > > Someone will only remove stuff if they think it's worth doing, > contributions are preserved in a revision history, same as any other wiki, > and if a better location appears you can copy and paste (why am I explaining > this on a mailing list for wiki experts?). Edit away if you have > suggestions and tips and recipes. > > Cheers, > -- > =S Page > > > http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Suggestions > http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_query_cookbook > http://sandbox.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tips > |